Lessons Learned on the Road

My high school buddy Brad and I, somewhere in the Black Hills. 

I recently returned from a bike trip to South Dakota, the focus of which was the Sturgis bike rally and riding the Black Hills.  I put on just under 5000km round trip, and I learned a few things along the way.  I'd like to share some of them with you.

Lessons Learned on the Road

- At 100 km/h, rain stings a bit.  At the same speed, hail hurts A LOT.

- Riding without a helmet is awesome, but it's sure nice to have one in a hail storm.

- Leather gloves are completely useless in the rain.

-Leather boots are completely useless in the rain.

- Mink oil, no matter how much of it you use on your leather stuff, doesn't change the last two statements in any way.

- A rider will care about how he looks in direct and opposite proportion to the deterioration of weather conditions.

- A $110 room does not necessarily mean a nice room.

- Funny looking saddlebags will get you attention even amongst $80000 custom choppers.

- No one can look you in the eye when your forehead is peeling in the shape of the contiguous United States.

- A fresh, hot, small double double could easily fetch $10 amongst the right crowd in South Dakota.

- It pays to check into your data plan before leaving the country.  It costs a shitload when you forget.

- A pocket full of cash disappears very quickly at a motorcycle rally, even at $3/beer.

- Speaking of beer, the only one in South Dakota that is truly worth drinking is made in Shiner, Texas.

- If you take your jacket off, it'll rain.  If you put it on, it'll get hot.

- If you have stock pipes at a motorcycle rally, a tachometer is essential.

- As the lead singer in a band at a motorcycle rally, you should never, ever say "I wanna hear you make some noise"... unless you really don't want to finish the set.

- Relating to the previous lesson, 20 Harleys are way louder than most rock bands.

- Tulsa spelled backwards is "a slut".  Thank you, George Thorogood.

- A dirty bike at a bikini bike wash is a wonderful thing.

- A bikini bike wash is a wonderful thing.

-Bikinis are wonderful things.

- What was I talking about?


There's a Lesson in Here Somewhere, But I Haven't Figured it Out Yet

- There seems to be a correlation between a Ted Nugent show and violence.  More on that later.

- A woman's willingness to bare her breasts in public seems to relate in some way, in negative proportions, to the general publics' willingness to look at them.

- On my way to South Dakota, severe weather attempted to keep me from leaving Regina. On my way home from South Dakota, severe weather attempted to keep me from entering Regina.  So here's my question:  what the hell's your problem Regina, you old cow?  When people talk trash about you, I defend you.  I tell them about central Albert Street, the Legislature grounds, your amazing parks.  I'm on your side!  Stop with the gale force cross winds and marble sized hail, already!


It may not be readily apparent after having read this blog, but I loved almost every minute of that trip, and wouldn't change a thing.  The rock shows, the spectacle, the riding, the scenery, the history, the renewal of old friendships... Sturgis and the Black Hills are a treasure, and if you haven't yet been there, you MUST put it on your bucket list.  Trust me.

A Conversation with the Ghost of Uncle Farquart

Inspired by and in the style of George Carlin.

Uncle Farquart:  Bloooarrrgh!

Dirk Danglenuts:  Holy hell!  What the...

UF:  Remember me?  It's Uncle Farquart. I'm dead.

DD:  I went to the funeral.

UF:  Oh, right.  Anyway, the Big Man sent me to warn you.  Kinda like the Ghost of Christmas Past, but without the flying and stuff.

DD:  Figures.

UF:  I'm in Hell, dude.  It sucks.

DD:  Really?  You seemed like a good guy.

UF:  Mostly... remember that thing I did with the chicken?

DD:  What do you think?

UF:  (coughs), right.  Well, it turns out they have souls.  Who knew?

DD: (nervous), Really?  Um... are there any other ones?

UF:  Just wallabies.

DD:  Well, I'm screwed.

UF:  Bloooarrrgh!  Pay attention!  I'm here to warn you!

DD:  About hell?  That I should avoid it?  I think I got that.

UF:  You have no idea, kid.  Fire?  Brimstone?  I should be so lucky.

DD:  Ok then, what's it like?

UF:  Well, do you remember that tv gameshow, Don't Forget to Use Your Own Lyrics?

DD:  No.

UF:  Crap, wait.  That hasn't happened yet.  I keep forgetting about the "time has no meaning" thing.  Anyway, it sucks.  People make up their own crap on the fly to the tune of top 40 radio hits.

DD:  Jesus.

UF:  (sighs), Contestant number one.

DD:  Huh?

UF:  Every week, he pulls that "I am the Son of God" crap.  You'd think with that whole miracles gig He's got going, He'd give himself a sense of timing.

DD:  He's bad, then?

UF:  You should hear Him rap.  Although... He can actually sing the "censored" bleep.  That's pretty cool.  Anyway, that's not the worst of it - you should see what His Mom's into these days.  Makes that Magdalen bitch look like a Girl Guide.

Mary:  I heard that, dickhead!

UF:  Goddammit, this is supposed to be a private haunting!

God:  Look pal, She's the Mother of My Child.  Whaddya want from Me?

UF:  Grow a Pair, for Chrissakes!

G:  Double serving of steaming dog turds for you.  Now hurry up, I need My Feet exfoliated.  (vanishes)

M:  Not done with you, buddy.  (vanishes)

DD:  They seemed nice.

UF:  The crap I gotta put up with.  ANYWAY - I'm supposed to tell you - you can get credit for suffering experienced on earth, at a two to one rate.  Kinda like the Canadian judicial system, but without the free room and board.  But it's gotta be real suffering; none of this "but I really hate asparagus" crap.

DD:  But I really do!

UF:  Doesn't count.  It's gotta be painful.

DD:  Alright, fine.  But where's the devil in all this?

UF:  What, Lucie?  Listen kid, here's what they don't tell you in sunday school - sure, he was tossed out of Heaven, but not for being any kind of badass.  They couldn't afford to feed his big ass anymore.

Lucifer:  (from a distance, muffled), I heard that!  I'm gonna roast your... Oooh, pancakes!

UF:  See what I mean?

DD:  So... Satan doesn't run Hell... Mary's a slut... Jesus can't sing... and God's a Giant Puss.  That about cover it?

UF:  Well... when you put it that way... it doesn't sound that bad.

DD:  Later, Uncle Farquart.

UF:  Later.  (vanishes)

On the Nature of Friendship

I've been fortunate to have a number of great and lasting friendships in my life, and recognize that I'm extraordinarily lucky this way.  I have friends from high school and shortly after that I can sit down with at any time and feel completely comfortable, regardless of the topic of conversation, even if I don't agree with them.  This is a rare thing, and wonderful to have.  I count among my very best friends my wife, my parents and my wife's parents.  My younger brother, whom I tortured endlessly in my teens, is also a friend that I would not want to do without.

Like everyone else, I have quite a number of "peripheral" friends, people that I enjoy seeing and interacting with, but who wouldn't impact my life in any meaningful way if they were to disappear suddenly, never to be seen again, except perhaps to cause me to think, "what ever happened to ________?".

There's one person however, that somehow became, almost instantly, a great joy and comfort to me; immediately, entirely irreplaceable, a crutch in good times and bad, someone that I wanted to see and speak with regardless of circumstance, whose viewpoint was seldom my own, but who always made me think.  His weaknesses and strengths mirror my own, even though they are quite different.

This language that I am limited to is entirely inadequate in expressing how much this man means to me.  Let me be clear here though, for those of you whose sense of humor tends toward the childish - there is nothing in our friendship that could be taken as homosexual. I'll say no more on the subject, lest you demand that "He doth protest too much", and bring to this topic something that has no place in it.

This friend - much too small a word, by the way - brings to my life an intimate kinship beyond the bounds of our very different upbringings and adult lives.  On the surface, there would seem to be nothing common in our experiences to bring us together as brothers, but nonetheless, the bond that I feel is beyond any I've felt before.  With no disrespect or lessening of my other great friendships intended, I say that this one has taken me past the outside of my existential bubble and into new territory.

Recognizing that this guy is as completely flawed as the rest of us, of course.  He's no Messiah, no great Prophet, just a dude whose company and time I enjoy immensely.  We connect, that's all.

Did I mention that I met this man only five years ago?  That he's some number of years younger than I, but yet much older in soul?  That yesterday, he boarded a plane to eastern Canada, there to stay for at least one year in the interest of furthering his chosen career?  That I encouraged this move as I knew he was stagnating, while swallowing the horror that filled me at the prospect?

So - the nature of friendship.  There are billions of us on this rock, but this one tiny excerpt of humanity impacts me in a way that none other has.  What makes this wonderous thing happen?  I have no idea.  I'll see him again, and I have no doubt that our friendship will continue to flourish in the future.  But in his honor and absence, I'm keeping my mind open to it happening again, elsewhere.

Take great care, my irreplaceable friend, and make good this opportunity to be what I already know you are.

Isn't life a glorious thing?

... And While I'm on the Subject of Clean Genitals...

I have to admit to feeling just a little bit superior to the guy next to me at the urinal when upon finishing, he squirts a gob of soap into his hand, washes vigorously, and then dries off, while I take a moment to admire my physique in the mirror and unwashed, strut out of the place with my head high.  I've thought this out, you see.  I'm going to make sense of the whole thing for you, and you may just come around to my point of view.

I don't wash my hands after using the washroom.  I don't see the point.  First of all, urine is basically sterile, as it contains ammonia.  Secondly, I don't piss on them anyway.  Thirdly, I bathe.  Here's my rationale:

At some point most days, I take a shower.  I don't have space here to accurately describe my complete grooming regimen, but take it from me - when I'm done, I'm clean.  Especially my junk.

Immediately upon completing said regimen, I dry off and put on a pair of freshly laundered undergarments - the style and fit of which will vary from day to day depending on what I plan to do that day, and whether or not I've reached the bottom of the pile where all the old, worn out underwear are.  But regardless, they're clean.

Then I put on the rest of my clothes, and go about my day.

Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm a pretty tactile person and I touch stuff constantly, usually with my hands.  Doorknobs, butter knives, dish cloths, my cat, whatever.  There are a lot of things to touch in a day.  Thing is, most of them have been touched by other people and other things, like insects, bacteria and such.  That stuff all transfers over to my hands.  Can you imagine how many people have touched, handled, maybe even stuffed into a g-string, that beat up old five in your wallet?  What about your debit card?  Where have you put THAT lately?  And don't even get me started on the hand-shaking thing.

So later in the day, maybe after a beer or two (handed to me by a waitress that's been serving beer to hundreds of other grimy people, and let's face it, people are dirty fuckers), I have to take a leak.  I go to the washroom, do my business, and guess what... my meat and veg is exactly where I left it last - in my pants.  Hasn't touched anything but the inside of my clean gontch. Which leads me to the following conclusion:  It's the old hymen hammer that needs freshening up, not my hands.  If we can get honest to Jesus, bona fide ball washers installed in the washrooms of this great country, I'll be the first one in line.  Until then, dear scrubber - I'm better than you.

Ruminations on the Lottery, and Bag Washing

Like most everyone, I occasionally find reason to bitch and complain about my life and what gets handed to me, but the fact is that I've been exceptionally fortunate so far, compared to the greater part of the rest of the world.  For the sake of redundance, I'm going to list a few of the ways in which I've already won the lottery:
1. I was born in Canada.  The advantages of this are beyond measure, and would take much too long to list here.
2. I was born white, and have never had to suffer racial discrimination.  I've never been refused a job, apartment, service, or anything else because of my race.  I've never been unfairly hassled by police or border agents.
3. I was born in Saskatchewan, and raised on a farm there.  Some don't see this as an advantage, but I do.
4. I was born to an amazing woman who never fails to inspire me with her wisdom.
5. I lucked into a job that pays me more money than I deserve, and has lasted far longer than I expected.
6. A beautiful and (very) tolerant woman consented to marry me.  She hasn't changed her mind yet, and God knows I've given her reason to.
7. I have a couple of great kids, and even a grandson.

So the short list looks pretty good, and I didn't do a thing to earn any one of them.  Most of them were beyond my control, and gave me tremendous advantage right out of the chute.

But here's the thing... I was in the shower yesterday washing my ball sack (never mind how fast) and thinking about the lottery ticket in my jacket pocket.  I was imagining all of the things I was going to do after I cashed that sucker in, going so far as to figure out what I was going to say to my boss about why I wasn't going in to work last night.  Then I thought - here I am, enjoying a hot shower and a lot of soap, something that the better part of the 7 billion souls on this rock don't have access to, preparing to go to a job that allows me to work only 14 days out of a month and often less than 40 hours per week on full salary, and I'm lusting after the big one.  WTF?

I stood there a moment, absently rubbing my loins, soap bar in hand, and thought about what I was contemplating.  It brought to mind something I had read the day before, in the Biography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, an essay entitled "The Character of Man".  It begins like this:

"I desire to contemplate him from this point of view - this premiss:  that he was not made for any useful purpose, for the reason that he hasn't served any; that he was most likely not even made intentionally; and that his working himself up out of the oyster bed to his present position was probably a matter of surprise and regret to the Creator.  For his history, in all climes, all ages and circumstances, furnishes oceans and continents of proof that of all the creatures that were made he is the most detestable."

The essay goes on to point out the savagery and selfishness of the race in terms beyond argument.  I hung my head in shame.  Then I dried off, got dressed and went to check my lottery ticket.

It's important to note here that as I placed my ticket into the checker, I went through a series of emotional states.  In the one or two seconds it took for the machine to return it's result to me, I felt:  .25 seconds of anticipation.  .25 seconds of disbelief.  .25 seconds of surety that the owners of the store had rigged the machine and were cleaning all of the tickets out of the garbage slot at the end of each day and rechecking all of them in the REAL ticket checker in the back storage room.  .5 seconds of murderous rage, wherein I looked around for a weapon.

In all of the 7 billion or so moments that were experienced on earth at that time, none were any more self-serving or brutish - excepting only that no actual violence was done.  Without that tiny little bit of reserve I possess as a result of societal pressure, I would right now be in a very small room, possibly with a roommate, being told how pretty I am and worrying about my anal virginity.  If I could pry my feeble mind from myself for a second or two, I might give some thought to the bloody carnage left behind at the local Mac's store after I pulverized two clerks, a pimply teenager and an over-tanned, orange hued psycho-diva, with a can of Red Bull.

So I guess my point is this:  Mr. Twain is correct, we're all pathetic, self-serving dirt holes at our base; we never do anything at all unless it makes us feel good in some way; we're all selfish and desirous of more no matter how much we already have, and there is no other species of critter on the earth that couldn't do a better job of things.  Higher purpose?  Selfless sacrifice?  These things are the exception not the norm, and come about only when they satisfy an inner craving for some imagined - and illusory - idea of glory or admiration from our peers.

I know, fun huh?  I'll try not to be so negative next time.