My Biking Ambition

I have six and a half weeks until RAGBRAI - the 500 mile bike ride across Iowa. I am currently sitting at a little under 400 miles for the year. It would be nice if I could get 1,000 miles in before the ride begins. It's ambitious, I know, but possible.

If I could manage 150 miles per week, I'd hit my goal, no problem. This sounds like quite a bit, but it's really only 5 days of 30 miles each week. I could even break it up into two seperate rides of 15 miles each. And riding at about 16 mph, this would mean less than 2 hours a day. We'll see how things shape up...like my calves and thighs. Ha!

When did I do all this planning? Why, on my 30 mile ride today, of course! It was a good day for a ride, temps in the 70's and mild winds from the North. I pushed it hard, averaging 16.5 mph for the full 30 miles. I took a couple of short breaks to get a drink and wiggle my toes - they get numb. It's funny how a good ride gets you thinking about pushing yourself a bit further, like reaching for a full 1,000 miles of training when they say (and past experience has shown) that 500 or 600 miles does you just fine.

The Pirate Escapes II

Here’s how it works: The pirate is given five items – as varied and crazy as you can imagine – and a single scenario of peril to escape. From there, things get…interesting as the pirate attempts ANOTHER GREAT ESCAPE.

The Items:
1. A black licorice rope
2. A petrified dung ball (from a dung beetle of course)
3. Six mint-flavored toothpicks
4. Three fortune cookies (without fortunes)
5. A Pizazz pizza oven

The Scenario of Peril:
You’ve wandered on your goldfish raft into disputed waters. The gun ships of the Iranians and the British are bearing down on you, both wanting to smite the lawbreaker and famous great escape pirate. (Courtesy of Neal)

Sometimes you just get lucky. It’s not every day you have the opportunity to sink two gun ships from two separate countries. Okay, if you are a pirate like me, it happens more often than you would believe, but it’s still a red letter day for the calendar.

Still naked, and still drifting along on my makeshift raft of expanded goldfish crackers, I notice two gun ships, one British and one Iranian. I can see from the large guns slowly turning my direction that my sudden appearance has stroked their attention. Fine. It’s not like I was doing much today. I can sink a couple of ships. (Jeez, look at my own boat at the bottom of the ocean if you don’t believe me.)

Luckily, as I was drifting along, I managed to pick up a couple of useful items. I took the 3 fortune cookies, without fortunes (who takes the fortunes and leaves the cookies anyway, they’re the best part!), and quickly soaked them in the ocean water to make them more malleable. I then wrapped the solid, petrified dung ball in the now squishy fortune cookies. I attached 5 of the mint toothpicks to my new “killing stone.” The toothpicks jutting out from the squishy fortune cookie mess gave my “killing stone” mace ball-like appearance. The burning sun quickly hardened the squishy fortune cookie mess. And not a moment too soon, I was finally within range of the ships.

I stuck the remaining toothpick in my mouth – I like chewing on toothpicks – and scanned the British ship for my target. Soon I found him. Some poor sap just doing his job aiming his boat’s large cannon-like calibers at me. I threw my “killing stone” David-like, and with deadly accuracy impaled the poor sap in the eye. He slumped forward onto his controls. The guns came to life, swinging from my position and locking on to the Iranian ship, unleashing fury. The roar was deafening as the British ship pummeled the Iranian one. Not one to back down from a fight, the Iranian ship targeted the British ship and let loose. I guess somebody forgot about little ole me. Heh.

I take the platter from the Pizazz pizza oven and attach it to my arm with the black licorice rope. I use this as a shield to deflect any desperate, small-caliber shots from panicked crewmembers as I sail by the sinking ships. Amazingly enough, those panicked crewmembers, they don’t much care about shooting at me. They seem to be more concerned with the whole not drowning thing.

As I quickly remove the shield – black licorice burns skin on contact – I listen to the screams of the drowning sailors. That’ll teach them to mess with a stunningly naked pirate. I think to myself, that’s another great escape, pirate!
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And that's how it is done. If you have a perilous scenario and five tools of escape to challenge me, please post them in the comments...and you will soon witness: Another Great Escape, Pirate.

Comic Book Review

Y: The Last Man vol. 8: Kimino Dragons TPB
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artists: Pia Guerra, Goran Sudzuka, Jose Marzan Jr.

This is still one of the best comic series being published today. Kimono Dragons collects issues 43-48 of the series that explores a world in which all the males have mysteriously died. All except amatuer escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. Working with secret agent 355 and scientist Dr. Allison Mann, the last two males alive are on a dangerous and eye-opening quest through a fragmented world of women in search of a cure and Yorick's missing love, Beth.

This latest volume finds our heroes in Japan in search of Ampersand, stolen by a mysterious, samurai sword-packing woman. Meanwhile, back in Kansas, Beth and Yorick's sister, Hero, continue their search for Yorick and arrive at the bunker with a special surprise for its occupants. Little do they know, Alter and her Israeli army are closing in as well.

I don't want to spoil the series by revealing too much of the plot. The real strengths of this series are the surprises and twists the story takes as it barrels along toward its conclusion this year. The premise of a world populated only by women could easily fall into cliched or weak-minded male fantasies, but here is where Y shines. The women left are intelligent and opportunistic and kind and vicious...they're real. This story - this volume - is not just some throwaway experience. You think, you feel, you care about these characters and their journey. As things wind down we'll start to get the answers we've been waiting years for.

The Pirate Escapes

Here’s how it works: The pirate is given five items – as varied and crazy as you can imagine – and a single scenario of peril to escape. From there, things get…interesting as the pirate attempts ANOTHER GREAT ESCAPE.

The following is an example of one such GREAT ESCAPE:

The Items:
1. five goldfish crackers
2. Sponge Bob air freshener
3. Ziplock baggy
4. tube of Carmex
5. mailbox flag

The Scenario of Peril:
Stuck on a sail boat with the sails on fire. (Courtesy of Kristin and Annie)

I wake up one morning to find the sails on my sailboat engulfed in flames. Crap! This was the second time in the same week this had happened. I need to get one of them fancy boats what moves itself with one of them spinning motor thingies.

Not all that concerned with the flaming sails – this HAS happened before, remember – I look around the boat to find some supplies that will help me out of this unfortunate situation. The pickings were slim – my “date” must have run off with all my valuables while I was sleeping last night. I wonder if SHE set fire to my boat? Wait! Where the heck did she go…we’re in the middle of the ocean…did she just hop on the back of a passing sea turtle and drift away? A sea turtle…I should look for a sea turtle to hop on to and drift away from this fiery deathtrap. There’s never a sea turtle when you need one.

Okay. Focus. Fire. The first step in fire fighting is stripping naked – you don’t want to burn holes in your clothes. I whip out the tube of Carmex – not JUST for chapped lips – and cover myself in it. This will protect me from the fire. What? You don’t believe me? It protects your lips from the burning sun, which is like SO MUCH more fiery than a fire…it’ll protect your body, too!

I then take the Ziploc baggy I found in the kitchen of my boat and dump out the carrots it contained. Whoops. I should have eaten those carrots before dumping them into the ocean. I hope I don’t go blind while rescuing myself because I dropped my carrots. I fill the baggy with some water from the ocean. I then stop and observe the way the fire is attacking my sails. I know that I’ll have only one shot at this, and it has to be perfect. I locate the weakest part of the fire – that little spark that’s trying SO HARD to burn the tip of my largest sail – and launch the baggy of water directly at it. I miss, of course, because the boat shifts under my feet – stupid ocean! The baggy of water flies right through a hole burned in the sail and is lost in the ocean on the other side of the boat.

Dingo baby! That was my only baggy. There goes the boat.

Deciding to abandon ship, I take the necessary steps to ensure my escape. I grab the five leftover goldfish crackers from my late-night snack, the Sponge Bob air freshener I kept next to the wheel of the boat, and the mailbox flag I use as a tool to de-bone fish. I give my sad, burning and sinking ship one last look, and jump overboard.

As I fly through the air – I had a tall boat – I drop the five goldfish crackers down onto the water below me. As soon as they hit the water they ballooned up like goldfish crackers do when they hit water. The expanded goldfish crackers float on the surface of the water and I land directly on top of them. Goldfish crackers are both a healthy snack and extremely well load-rated. They support my weight perfectly – probably because I am naked and not carrying that extra 4 and ¼ pounds of clothing. Then, standing on my floating goldfish crackers, I raise the mailbox flag in my hand to catch a sea breeze. The breeze and current carry me away from the doomed ship.

I attach the Sponge Bob air freshener over one eye as a pirate eye-patch – no PROPER sailor, even one on a goldfish cracker craft – would be caught dead sailing the ocean blue without his pirate eye-patch. That's another great escape, Pirate!
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And that is how it is done. If you have a perilous scenario and five tools of escape to challenge me, please post them in the comments...and you will soon witness: Another Great Escape, Pirate.

The Stacks

I am both blessed and thwarted by my short attention span and my ability to remember fictional things. This means that I can often be found in the process of reading or watching many different things all, more-or-less, at the same time. And miraculously enough, I can remember what's going on.

When this doesn't work - when I'm reading or watching boring, educational stuff - I have the memory of an Etch-a-Sketch. One shake of my head and it's gone.

Thus I introduce: The Stacks, a weekly list of all I'm currently reading, or watching on DVD.

The Stacks - June 4, 2007

Books:
The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials II) by Philip Pullman
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
The Dark Tower (Dark Tower book 7) by Stephen King
Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko
On Writing by Stephen King
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

DVDs:
The Loop (TV series)
That 70's Show: Season 6 (TV Series)
Kitchen Confidential (TV Series)
Scrubs: Season 3 (TV Series)
Kidnapped (TV Series)
Venture Bros.: Season 1 (TV Series)
Angel: Season 4 (TV Series)

Comics:
Y: The Last Man vol. 8: Kimono Dragons (TPB)
Green Lantern Corps: Recharge (TPB)
Challengers of the Unknown Must Die (TPB)
Animal Man vol. 3: Deus Ex Machina (TPB)
I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League (TPB)
Pearls Before Swine: Sgt. Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic (Treasury)

Look for reviews/thoughts of selected materials from The Stacks...when I finish something. Anything.

Off to court...and it's only my first post

It had to happen. Jury duty. The plan killer. The time killer. Excatly like you would imagine.

There were some highlights, though. The judge who was assigned to speechify at the jury pool - an actual, year long assignment that just HAS to be fun - was pretty entertaining. His 20 minute speech was historical, nearly hysterical at some points. He included a brief history of the courthouse (designed and built by men who had fought in the Civil War) and a list of its warts (the rats, the cockroaches, the fire hazards, and the nifty little tidbit about the Department of Public Health once condeming the building). It sure made me anxious to kick back in such a historical death trap.

The thing is...as excited about the whole process as I was by now - rats?! - the waiting game began. The first 15 minutes were okay. Some people were getting called to join juries, so I figured that I'd either be called or sent home. Soon.

Nope. They called over half the people out of the room for juries, and then just disappeared. And so I sat. And sat. It was almost lunch time - 2 hours later - before someone finally came back to tell us that we were dismissed. For today. I may have to go back Wednesday? Are you kidding me?