If this doesn’t brighten your Thursday… well… I hope something else does. But this really oughta do it.

Don’t thank me, thank Dennis Perrin.

Grampa and Gramma

Tuesday last week, I flew into Quad Cities Airport, located at Rock Island-Moline on the Iowa-Illinois border. I arrived early in the morning, rented a car, and drove the rest of the way to Peoria. My last visit was five years ago, when I’d arrived in time to say goodbye to my Gramma, and then stayed a week until the service. My rental car’s satellite radio meant I had more choices this time than simply browsing through country, latin, and right-wing agitation, but most of the choices were wasted on me. I wasn’t looking for musical stimulation as much as I was comfort, so I settled into a classic rock station and drove. Driving through the cornfields was soothing.

I’d come this time for my Grampa’s funeral and to spend some time with Mom and my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Most of us were born in Peoria, though one cousin was born to my aunt in Germany on the Army’s dime, and another was born and raised in Santa Barbara until she was a teenager. My folks and I left Peoria in the 70’s and migrated to Southern Illinois, where they went to school and worked for years until they split up, and later headed for opposite coasts. Mom’s been in Ventura since ‘85, I’ve been there and half a dozen other cities since then.

The Backyard

By noon I was at Grampa and Gramma’s house, built around 1950 right next door to Great Grampa John and Great Gramma Bea’s house in West Peoria, down the street from the Franciscan Convent. My memories of Great Grampa are fuzzy, Great Great Gramma a little clearer. Great Great Gramma had moved in with John and Bea in her 40’s, claiming to be terminally ill and wanting to be with her daughter and son-in-law for what she was certain were her final months. She lived with them until she died at 99, outliving my Great Grampa John by several years. She was a hypochondriac and loved soap operas. One day she yelled to my Great Gramma, “Bea! Come quick! That’s what I’ve got, just like on TV! I’ve got coma!”

My first night in town, the whole family went to Crusen’s on Farmington Road, a bar and grill with an outdoor deck and gracious wait staff. Several of my cousins are pregnant or carrying infants or both, and seeing them as adults with their critters was both unsettling and delightful, as I tend to think of them all as being about 8 years old. There was something on the menu called a Horseshoe, which is an open-faced two-patty burger smothered in fries and cheese. I opted for the less intimidating cheeseburger, and a couple beers. That night, we sat around the fire pit in the back yard, drank some beer, shared some stories about Gramma and Grampa and things my mom and aunt and uncles did when they were kids.

Grampa and Fish, A Long Time Ago

Wednesday I woke up and realized I’d turned 40 years old, partly because it was my birthday. But also because staying up until after midnight and drinking four beers had left me feeling kinda old. Not hungover, more like my head was cross-threaded on my neck. Preparations were under way for the service, photos and dress clothes were organized and packed into cars. I played some frisbee in Great Gramma’s yard with my uncle and cousin for most of the morning while waiting to pick up my suit.

I’d found a dry cleaner close by, and explained that I’d just flown in and needed the suit for the service the next day. He’d agreed to have it done by 11:30 a.m., which left plenty of time until the service. When I went to pick it up, I saw a man filling five-gallon buckets with water from the neighbor’s garden hose, and taking it into the dry cleaner’s. He turned out to be the owner. He came out to the counter, shook my hand and said, “You’re the one I did the suit for, right? Very sorry to hear about your Grampa.” He told me that the guys doing road construction out front on Western Ave had turned off the water main, but the neighbor had agreed to let him use the hose to fill buckets to fill the boiler, so that he could finish my suit. I was floored, and felt really good about being in the midwest.

The Urn, Springdale Cemetery

The burial service at the cemetery was beautiful. Grampa’s ashes were mixed with Gramma’s, and were buried next to Great Grampa. Two Marines came from Quantico and presented a flag to us, and the local VFW Color Guard fired a 21-gun salute. I found it impossible to have hostile or cynical feelings about America’s military during the service, just as I had at my Grandfather’s funeral 15 years ago. Taps played in the background, every expression and movement was solemn, deliberate, and real. It filled me with pride, sadness, and a profound sense of the honor bestowed upon my Grampa. I held my mother’s hand through the eulogy, and afterwards picked up four shiny buckeyes from the ground around the graves.

We stopped at Schooners for lunch before the memorial service. The grill was down, but the fryer was up, so I ordered a tenderloin. What came out of the kitchen was a pounded piece of battered and deep-fried pork, about a foot square. It was over four times bigger than the bun sitting on top of it, which presumably had a mate trapped underneath. I cut it in half, and into quarters and ate one. Ordinarily I might’ve been game for two of the quarters, and it was good, but I wasn’t very hungry, and it wasn’t good enough to make me hungrier.

That Sucker’s Huge

The memorial service was beautiful. We each told our favorite stories about him, talked about what a wonderful person he was, and how much he’d meant to us. I gave a short eulogy, in which I tried to put into words all the feelings I had about what an amazing, decent, funny, loving, hard-working, and human person he was. It wasn’t possible to convey everything he meant to me, I know I felt like a chump trying to put words together that lived up to how much I loved and revered him. I started to say how much I was going to miss him, when I realized how much I missed him already and my face started failing, so I closed with a thank you and sat down.

That night, we went out to Agatucci’s for thin-crust pizza. One of the bartenders bought me a beer for my birthday. I ordered a side salad, which came out as a handful of iceberg lettuce with a dollop of bleu cheese dressing on top. The pizza and the beer were plentiful and delicious. We went home after, circled around the fire pit, drank beer until late at night and told Peoria stories. My aunt, my mother, and I slept soundly in the Starcraft camper-trailer, set up in the driveway.

The Firepit

Thursday I took my uncle and cousin to Bradley Park and played a few holes of disc golf. Bradley’s not a tremendously long course, and it seems like the flow’s not as good as I remember it after what must’ve been a redesign, but it’s fun to throw on. It was really just a warm-up for heading down to Pekin with my aunt’s boyfriend to play McNaughton Park. He was one of Peoria Frisbee Club’s early members, was involved in designing and building Bradley Park’s original course in 1984 and the championship course at McNaughton Park, and ran tournaments and actively promoted the sport for about 13 years. He and my cousin and I headed to McNaughton and played 18 long, gorgeous holes on a perfect day. I couldn’t have been happier or more grateful. I’m not sure when or how I’m going to make it back to Pekin, but when I do I’ll have my full bag with me.

We headed home after our round to clean up before meeting the family at The Burger Barge. This is where your diet goes to die a swift, violent death. I opted for the outstanding Peacemaker Barge, which is the result of a head-on collision between a fried-catfish sandwich and a fried-oyster po’boy, served with a pile of freshly fried potato chips, and it destroyed me. But the monster of the menu, the challenge I couldn’t even conceive of taking on, was the Red White and Moo:

2 – 9 oz. Burgers smothered w/cheese, our Butterfly pork chop slid in between with lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion and Dock Sauce.
(Now that’s All American!)

The Peacemaker

That night, we got some more beer, gathered around the fire pit, and got into our folklore. I really, really want a fire pit.

I spent Friday with the family, and got to visit with Great Gramma Bea. She’s 102, and though she admits that there’s a lot she doesn’t remember, there’s lots of light left behind her eyes. I drove back to Quad Cities Airport that afternoon and got back to D.C. late. Saturday morning I chased and wrestled my laughing children, and worked the Bike Clinic later on.

We had my birthday party Sunday, which featured hot dogs and ribs and rice tomato salad and baked beans and mac and cheese and plenty of beer and plenty of high-grade socializing. We counted 20 children, mostly between two and six, running laps around the house. It terrifies me that these psychotic ferrets will make decisions about our end-of-life care one day. The Wife made a chocolate cake that had 5 iced layers and one red-cake layer on top in the shape of a sprocket. It was a spectacular and exhausting weekend.

Over the course of the last couple weeks, I’ve gone from a manageable one-ninety-ish to over seven hundred thirty five pounds. You’d think I’d be much bigger, but it’s mostly density, so I wear it pretty well. My first thought Monday morning was that I needed to have my intestines bead-blasted. I’m hoping that a couple months of vigorous bike miles and salads for lunch will bring me back to “reasonable”, maybe even on the way to “fightin’ weight”.

But right now, all I’m fightin’ is the desire to eat two burger patties with a pork chop slid between.

[updated for red-pen offenses and to add a pic]

Awesome:

The story is told of a Australian whose favorite hobby is ballooning who decided to practice her favourite sport one Sunday afternoon. She miscalculates the wind and gets blown across the Pacific Ocean and lands in a field someplace in America. As she is lying there half-stunned in the basket, an American rushes up and says, “What happened?” The Australian woman says, “Where am I?” The American replies, Why, you are in a basket in the middle of a field.” To which the Aussie woman asks, “Are you an economist?” “Yes I am, how did you know?” said the American. “Because the information you have given me is completely accurate and totally useless.”

My fast commute route takes me down southwest on Michigan Ave towards Washington Hospital Center, where I pick up some brick alleys that hug the stonewalls of historic Glenwood Cemetery. I cut west at Channing, turn south for a block on First NW, and then, if the light’s green, lean into the turn west onto Bryant St, which winds downhill below McMillan Reservoir towards Howard University. That little stretch is a real pleasure.

I followed that route this morning, the air was cool and misty, the streets wet from last night’s rain. I came down First, slowed substantially given the wetness of the streets, and I remember thinking as I approached the corner of Bryant, “Oh, neat, they repainted the crosswa–” That was right before my tires got quiet, then made the very quiet hiss of rubber squeegeeing water off glass.

I’d only been going about 10mph or so, but I probably dived 15 to 20 degrees into the off-camber turn, and that little bit of rain on fresh crosswalk paint wasn’t going to hold me at any speed with any significant lean. Fortunately, The transition from upright to laid-down was pretty smooth and not very dramatic.

My right shin’s got a nice strawberry patch, and I can feel the bruise on my hip growing, but otherwise I came out fine. I gotta say, the Trucker’s a well built piece of steel, it’s in fine shape. My two-day-old Nitto Noodle bars (graciously discounted by City Bikes since the old ones got bent in a wreck*) picked up some gouges on the outside of the drops. Certainly annoying, but I haven’t taped them yet, and a little wet-dry sandpaper will take the rough parts off okay. At least they’re still straight. Also: Dickie’s shorts, though they occasionally grab tall water bottles when you get out of the saddle, are indestructible. Mine show no damage, not so much as a frayed cuff.

The rest of the commute was uneventful, slow, and as uniformly upright as I can remember being on a bike. I rode the whole rest of the way like I was on icy steel construction plates. It also got me thinking about road racing, in that I have no idea how people come down mountain descents doing 40-50 mph, in the rain, on 23c tires, with 50-100 other people packed in tightly around them.

Score for this week: one crash, one wipeout. Neither resulted in serious injury or damage, and I was thankfully wearing my helmet for both. Nevertheless, I gotta say, only 6 days into August, and it’s got a commanding lead for 2009’s coveted “Month I Hated The Most This Year” award.

Incidentally, is there a reason crosswalk paint doesn’t have non-skid material mixed into it?

*It’s true! Saul at the downtown store told me they just instituted a policy by which you get a 5-10% discount on parts you’re replacing because of a collision or wreck! Another reason to love City Bikes, folks.

Via MinusCar, a group of Iowans have started an online petition, seeking to put a measure on the ballot to make bicycling on farm-to-market roads illegal. Because, you know, when you’re driving along on a back country road in your minivan, just trying to send a text message to your husband or pastor, and you accidentally kill a cyclist, it really makes you feel bad. And not just for a little while! Sometimes you feel really, really bad about killing someone with your car for a long time! Plus, just like hitting a deer, it can cost a lot of money to fix the car.

A commenter notes that there is now a counter-petition to have motor vehicles removed from Iowa’s rural roads:

Over the past ten years the number of motorists using these farm-to-market roads has increased dramatically, as have the number of preventable accidents and fatalities.

Traditional rural methods of commerce are significantly impacted when forced to share the farm-to-market roadways with motorists. Because of the growth of today’s commerce and agricultural business, shared roadways are no longer safe or practical in today’s society.

Operators of automobiles routinely disobey speed limits, spook horses and raise clouds of dust. They zip about, and act as though they own the public road itself!

So please if you are a resident of the world join us and help make our roadways safe for both people and livestock. Thanks for your time and your support.

My favorite comment so far:

These 4 wheeled horseless carriges have gone too far, besides creating useless wars for rubber, oil, steel they create a place for youths to experiment with sex and liquor! Time to ban them from all our roads!

Sex and liquor? Really? Hm. Maybe I should drive a car more often.

I know that saying this may result in some gnashed teeth and rent garments, but I’m going to state, unequivocally, that I think this is going too far. I’m reasonably certain that Iowa’s rural roads can accomodate bicycles, tractors, buckboards, and motor vehicles, and that people can share the road safely and responsibly.

Maybe the folks on opposite sides of this debate need to get together, and experiment with sex and liquor (maybe even in a car, so long as they’re not driving on a rural road at the time). I mean, it couldn’t hurt?

From Biking Bis, read about these enterprising Angelinos who got tired of waiting for the city to create bike lanes that had been approved 15 years ago, and did it themselves. Enjoy this Bicycling Magazine article about Los Angeles’s Dept. of DIY.

Smudgemo posted this awesome film, telling the other side of the story. Enjoy this short documentary from StreetsFilms, Veronica Moss, A.U.T.O. Lobbyist. If loving her Navigator is wrong, she doesn’t wanna be right.

And finally, someone over at Eschaton posted this, and I gotta say, this might just knock Red Fang out of my top spot for greatest video of all time. Might. I haven’t decided yet. But if I was stuck on the proverbial desert island with only two music videos, Red Fang and this one would probably be the two.

Happy Thursday!

[UPDATE]: So before I saw that video, I knew I’d heard of Zach Galifianakis, but I had no idea who Bonnie “Prince” Billy was. This is who he is, wow. He’s really, really good.

[UPDATE AGAIN]: Jesus. This is beautiful.

[UPDATE ONCE MORE]: This is wonderful too. Okay, I’ll be visiting a brick-and-mortar record store tonight… I wonder if there are any left?

We finally sold the Xtracycles, and we’re signing the papers on our new car today! Woohoo!

I learned recently that my father had printed out one of these posts, and my grandmother had read it, and remarked, “Someone’s trying to be funny.” When she found out it was me, and that I frequently try to be funny here on my blog, she simply replied, “Blogs are ruining the world.”

Ruining the world! It’s nice to know that my grandmother believes I’m involved in something as important as ruining the world, really warms my heart, but I can’t take credit for it. I wasn’t involved in creating violent video games, movies with ratings of “R” or better, comic books, Howard Stern, pulps, jazz, country, or rock and roll. I didn’t replace live musicians with 78’s, vaudevillians with movies and television, or telegraph messengers with telephones. I haven’t modernized or downsized or offshored anyone’s manufacturing job. I haven’t sold anyone a tranch of anyone else’s shitty mortgage, nor have I sold anything resembling an insurance bet on anyone’s tranches of other people’s shitty mortgages. I didn’t replace human-scaled towns and cities with unwalkable automobile slums, and I sure as fuck didn’t fill these streets with luxury automobiles the size of train cars, complete with cybernetic navigation and personal multimedia systems to absorb all the surplus cognition their drivers have left over from buying these asinine metal mammoths and paying almost no attention to actually piloting them.

But perhaps that’s not the part of the world she’s talking about. Perhaps she’s referring to the world of opinion journalism, a Broderian utopia in which respected public figures like Michael Gerson can take to the pages of the serious, tempered, grown-up pages of the Washington Post and opine…

American conservatism — intellectually ascendant during three decades in which relatively low taxes and a stable money supply produced the greatest accumulation of national wealth in history — is now staring into an abyss.

…without some anonymous scoundrel from a steel town responding…

Low fuel costs, improved communication technology, and the political disintegration of a competing economic sphere allowed companies to shift production overseas. Cheaper labor combined with inexpensive transport made it more profitable to build shit there even if the main consumer market remained in America. With the end of an effective labor movement and the decline of productive industry, real wages stagnated, but financial institutions, ever more central to the so-called service economy, made it increasingly easy to obtain credit. The “engine” of the American economy became the consumption of commodities produced cheaply overseas and sold domestically. The financial institutions playing the credit game conceived of a series of increasingly elaborate hoaxes to make what was at root the provision of seemingly limitless IOUs to individuals and businesses regardless of collateral assets or ability to repay seem like a profitable business model. The only major area of non-military domestic production that remained viable and vibrant was the construction of bullshit, half-assed houses in which Jenn-Aire 8-burner ranges and Sub-Zero side-by-sides gave the nouveau riche sheen to 6,000 sq. ft. houses with 4″ interior walls and brick on the street-façade only. Successive governments, declaring home-ownership a sort of human right, not to mention patriotic duty, along with their colluders in the Fed, made monetary policy to encourage easy lending and financial institutions folded that in right along with consumer credit to drive a go-go economy of trade-up houses, credit-card purchases, and new cars every 18 months. The Ponzi-themed fantasy-game of infinitely rising home prices made everyone feel richer than they really were. The inevitable point at which the money due would become unrealizable seemed . . . evitable. The stocks of the shell-game players kept rising, buoyed by the titanic confidence of those who believed that cycles and bubbles had been beaten. The foreign nations who sold us greater and greater quantities of oil and produced greater and greater quantities of shit for our domestic markets bought our currency and financed our consumption. The greatest, Babelian tower of horseshit phoney-baloney non-wealth ever in the history of everything anywhere amen hallelujah inshallah was constructed over thirty years in an orgy of bland consumptive excess that would impress in a Satanic sort of way were it not so monumentally crass, asinine, soul-vacating, and chintzy. We were not even good at being gaudy, as the above-mentioned mass-produced mansion and its matching driveway Hummers suggests.

I realize, of course, that it’s just a matter of perception. When I look at the discursive world she thinks is being ruined, from where I’m standing it’s a crispy smoldering lump without much in it worth saving. I’ll consider it substantially closer to unfucked when IOZ has a bi-weekly column in the Washington Post, while Gerson checks his mailbox, fingers crossed, hoping he’ll find a check from Pajamas Media.

Also in my unfucked world: Joe Scarborough is arrested, but it doesn’t make the news, because who the fuck is Joe Scarborough? In my grandmother’s unfucked world, by contrast, people don’t say “fuck” on the Internet, or anywhere else. You can understand how we’d be pretty far apart on the most effective route to media Nirvana.