Twenty miles this morning, which was the rough equivalent to midday on Venus. The heat index was 102 and I learned a very important thing on this ride across an eternal purgatory: shade is important.
Can you tell I’m an intellectual?
It has been a while since I’ve been on my bike. My legs felt like goopy clay, churning sometimes, freewheeling at other moments and never answering the call as they should. When the heat kicked in I think my brain went beyond non-autonomous functions like shifting gears and concentrated on things more important like perspiration and demanding I take a drink.
We had here, though, a type of asphalt cement that was being baked again. The county, should they feel compelled, could do road work for half price this month because much of their equipment could be left at the office. The sun is baking everything, including the brains of the road workers. And people foolhardy enough to be riding their bike at the you-should-know-better hour of 8 a.m.
I noticed that the sun was killing me, but when I got under trees, everything felt significantly better. Like a good scientist, I continued observing this phenomenon until I could state for certain that a pattern had emerged. Of course my brain was a hunk of melted chocolate by then, but I had my answer: shade = good. Problem: this road has little shade.
And so I called it a ride, because how much of this do you need, really? (I did get a new picture for the front page, though, so that’s something.)
Which is when I decided to stop at a gas station for a Gatorade where something unusual and unexpected happen. And I will tell you that story below, but I must say this first: I live in a lovely town. Counting the years I attended undergrad here I’ve spent six years in residence. It is a fine college town. The people are friendly, generally decent and helpful and, I think, it is because we all know we’re lucky to live in a nice place. So that’s six years, and aside from the occasional town versus gown thing, and whatever condescension — which was never much, mind you — I received as a student by the locals, I don’t recall having ever experienced a truly snooty moment from anyone. (At least when I didn’t deserve it.)
So the story: I go into this gas station, who’s initials shall remain nameless, but the acronym stands for Quick Trip. There’s an older lady and a younger man working there. I’m going to say they were related, but I have no idea. This is a nice clean place. Good location, all of that. They have two full walls of beverages. I wander in and in my dazed, sizzling brain state look for the Gatorade that will hopefully give me the electrolytes of life.
The young guy walks the length of the store and starts eyeballing me. Not in a subtle way, but in a serious and obvious looking me over way. Like he’s going to ask me if I have any needles, drugs or weapons on me before he pats me down sort of way. I grab my drinks and start navigating up to the counter to pay for my beverages. This takes a little effort because I have my bike with me and don’t want to knock anything off their shelves.
Now, I took my bike inside because I don’t ride with a lock, there’s no place to tie it down anyway and I’m not interested in watching my expensive machine disappear with someone else. Also my phone and other important things were on board today. So I take my bike inside. I’m trying to line the front wheel and the handlebars off so I don’t knock off a can of Dinty Moore with the drops and this requires a pause, a steer and a come-on-brain-work moment. My shadow over here has noticed I’ve stopped, has turned and walked back to study me again.
I get it. And, look dude, I’m wearing bike shorts and a bike shirt. You think I’m stuffing a sleeve of crackers somewhere on my person?
I make my way to the front and my conversation with the lady staffing the register goes like this:
“Ain’t never seen that before.”
What’s that?
“Someone bringing their bike in the store.”
Well, it is expensive and I’m cheap and I don’t want to lose it.
“This is a good neighborhood …”
I know, it is. I live just down the road.
A fine neighborhood, to be sure. And yet you’ve got your boy giving me long hard looks. Lady, don’t judge me. I’m riding a bike. I have on a helmet and an iPod. I’m sweating like Zeus being confronted by Hera. I feel for the hard-working African-American man who kindly held the door for me as I exited and he entered. I can’t imagine what she thought of the young Hispanic male who walked in after that.
“This place is just going to Hades.”
Yes, I’m sure she thinks this, is scared of it and can blame the heat on the confluence of so many undesirable things, sweaty white guy and two men who do not fit into her expectation of a nice neighborhood.
I stood there thinking, I should go clean myself up and come shop here in a more respectable manner, just to see if they recall this visit. But then I thought, No. You’ve been judged and found unworthy. By a gas station attendant. You need not spend any more money here.
I refer you to Smith’s First Rule of Commerce, Marketing and Entrepreneurship: Do not make it hard for me to spend my money with you.
At home I got cleaned up, stretched out, denied aloud that I was going to sleep and then promptly took a three hour nap. My body ran hot the rest of the day, it does that some time, and I took on the task of the daily reading.
The message for politicians who now find themselves adept at the art of brinkmanship: your upcoming vacation may not be as pleasant as you’d like. Even for Congress, people are displeased:
Nor has the spotlight in the past few weeks helped Congress: Nearly one in five independents say they think less of both congressional Democrats and Republicans as a result of the budget negotiations. Not a single one of the independents interviewed now thinks more highly of both sides.
Every now and then the electorate pays attention. And on some of those occasions they peer beyond the soundbites, dismiss the rhetoric, look to their children and they form opinions on you. And that must give you cause to tremble. I’ve had some very interesting conversations and heard still more from several demographics talking about elected representatives lately; there’s a lot of displeasure that can’t solely be blamed on unemployment rates.
My representative’s office did send out a Cut, Cap and Balance email about a week after the legislation was dead. You can imagine what the replies must have been like.
Want an electric car from Chevrolet? No one does, it seems. Sadly Weekly Standard is not allowing comments there. They would no doubt be an entertaining read.
Look. I know who Maureen Dowd is. I know what she does and why she has the pulpit she does. Hasty, red meat rhetoric doesn’t bother me because it is easily dismissed. Curdles the moment you write it and leaves the author with the worst sort of legacy. If that’s what you’re after, good for you. I’ve read this stuff for years, studied it studiously and written about it professionally. But, really:
Most of the audience staggered away from this slasher flick still shuddering. We continue to be paranoid, gripped by fear of the unknown, shocked by our own helplessness, stunned by how swiftly one world can turn into a darker one where everything can seem familiar yet foreign.
“Rosemary’s Tea Party,” an online commenter called it.
If the scariest thing in the world is something you can’t understand, then Americans are scared out of their minds about what is happening in America.
Every view is fine, and every semi-organized group needs yipping attack dogs, too. It gives people a role to play, and maybe a nice seat at a correspondents dinner. That’s great. My visceral problem with op-eds such as these are that, 80 years from now, someone is going to pull this up off that old dusty — What did they call it back then? Interweb? Worldtubes? — and see things like this in the paper of record during a period supposedly beyond yellow journalism, written by those flush in the glow of those would do good with their pen, comfort the afflicted with their FTP and afflict the comfortable with their retweets. And instead of some good copy, or even a nice argument, you get:
Tea Party budget-slashers didn’t sport the black capes with blood-red lining beloved by the campy Vincent Price or wield the tinglers deployed by William Castle. But in their feral attack on Washington, in their talent for raising goose bumps from Wall Street to Westminster, this strange, compelling and uncompromising new force epitomized “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and evoked comparisons to our most mythic creatures of the night.
They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones. (Conjuring that last image on Monday, Vladimir Putin described America as “a parasite.”)
Remember: The New York Times created something called Times Select because they thought all of America would plunk down $50 to read such gems from Maureen Dowd et al. That lasted exactly two years, and was successful for almost none of that time.
And so, because we need perspective, we must once again turn to a comedian:
No matter how you feel about it, there’s a reason people trust the guy. It doesn’t take a day on hot asphalt to realize that. Well, maybe it does.
And now we must go buy birthday cards. Because we have a host of people to recognize in August and nothing says “We respect and love your kind and generous contributions to what make us who we are” like a midnight trip to Walmart. More on that tomorrow.
