man bites country

So... election, blah blah, depressing, blah blah. Maybe I'm more attractive now to Americans desparate to get out of the country :) (a la www.marryanamerican.ca). Let's skip all that depressing stuff and backtrack a week to when it was just my life that was officially insane. Here's the recap:

Last Wednesday there was a full eclipse of the moon, my thesis was handed in to be bound (with a minor hiccup, but for all intents and purposes), I formally ended my two and a bit decades of being a student, and the Boston red sox overcame the curse of the bambino to win their first world series in 86 years.

Oh, and I also had an appointment to get my tax withholding set up right, and found that I have a sub-optimal health insurance plan and that I need to switch to a different one.

Then new things:

Thursday I bike out to buy bits and pieces for a Halloween costume (I already had the black pants, red shirt, sunglasses, gloves, scarf, and ice skates. I just needed devil horns and a trident and spray on snow for the glasses - what can I say, given everything that happened the day before hell MUST have frozen over. In light of recent political events, I'd say I was even prescient). So anyway I'm biking out, I come up to a stpped car, I go, he goes, we go crunch. Taking stock of the injuries afterwards I had a small graze on my thumb, a bent front wheel, and a very apologetic American on my hands who was probably convinced I was going to sue him blind.

He gave my busted-ass bike a lift home, gave me a ride back to the shop, and gave me money to cover a hefty percent of the cost of a new wheel (any shortfall being my dumb-ass fault for moving in front of him). I'm considering donating it to the national society for the promotion of hyphen-ass terms instead though. They've done more to make this paragraph better than... I don't know, the letter Q or something.

Then comes Friday. I took my bike in to get fixed... got a new wheel, a new computer to track my speed and cadence, and my rear fender finally fixed on properly (long story, but it may even have contributed to the crash by distracting me at the wrong time). And while I'm doing all this I get told about a fun ride the next day. 30 bucks and you get fed all your meals, cruise down the MKT trail to Rocheport (pretty town with a winery), drink some winery wine, and shoot on home. I figured I needed friends and missed biking, so hey, that's set.

So then I do some work and go to the Halloween party. The costumes were pretty impressive. There was a weapon of mass destruction, a box of wine, a dominatrix (with real nipple clamps on her belt), Super Mario and Luigi (with their cat dressed up as the princess - honest to God)... yeah, and me (had to explain the "cold day in hell" thing to a few people, but what can you do). There was also a punch bowl that bubbled with dry ice. VERY cool. And I met some nice people - most of whom were in clinical psych. I insist that this has nothing to do with their professional interest in me. Even if it's true. Especially in that case.

So Saturday arrives and I'm up at the crack of dawn to go biking. It turns out that half the people in the ride are dressed up too. Including one guy who dressed his whole bike up as a massive box of "Mike and Ike" candy. He even had a box of the real thing to which one could compare his handy work. I don't know if the design was more impressive or the fact that he could still ride the bike in all that boxing and construction paper. Other people had bike trailers with coolers on them, and suchlike.

Anyway, I hung back with the trail group of people, who it turns out were composed of a hefty contingent of semi-professional triathletes who were bringing large quantities of wine and beer and baileys with them and having a merry old time cruising along. One guy even had speakers wired up to his bike for portable music. They were a riot of fun, stopping every half hour, chatting it up, singing songs. I also had pitches made to me for the best places to buy bike and running stuff in town (leading candidate: "Tryathletics"). There was, for some reason, about 5 or 6 different crashes on the ride (most of which considered hilarious), a few burst tires, and a broken collar bone (not mine, not hilarious). This is apparently a phenomenally high accident rate for one of these trips, even factoring in the alcohol. There was also a toddler-sized "Barbie" peddle car that was fished out of a river and towed along behind a bike for miles and miles. Last seen it was being driven home on someone's roof rack. But not before a semi-naked guy got towed up and down the road on it.

Suffice to say that a good time was had by all, and despite my being out of shape and still racking up about 55k's (30 odd miles) on my new bike computer, I still found the energy to go out that evening and have tea with someone I met at the party the previous evening.

So then on Sunday I go and spend a few hours phoning people from the Democrat local headquarters, reminding them to go out and vote, Monday I got health insurance more sorted out (a big ordeal. Thanks private health care!) Tuesday I spent an afternoon knocking on doors reminding all the people who weren't home to vote (see I care enough about the states to try to help them - but did they listen? [sigh]). Rest of the week I did... more stuff... y'know. Ye GAWDS is this ever long already! And not that funny. Sowwy. I'd ask you to forgive me, but that would be admitting liability for the type of grievous mental harm lawsuit that you are no doubt already talking to your lawyer about.

Well, time to sign off then. Take care and read you around.