The thing I was writing yesterday, that I was trying to decide if it should be serious or silly or both? I chickened out and gave it a normal tone. It’s too real to be flip. And too absurd to be serious. So, here are roughly 1,400 words on gambling in sports. It begins:

Welcome to the wide world of losing it all, where you can experience the thrill of maybe and the agony of near certain defeat.

It’s just a matter of when, and how you lose it. And how easy they made it for you to do so. And, also, how much. And how.

If that doesn’t grip you, the rest is a meaty summation of links I’ve been hanging on to for a while. Now I know you’re hooked. I finally wrote the thing because I needed to clean out my inbox. And it’s important.

One of my colleagues wrote to say that he was going to include it in a class. Hopefully not in a “Don’t do it this way” sense.

I was looking up something not too long after this got published and was amazed at how much more stuff had come out, just today, that should go into the thing. The online gambling world moves so, so fast. One more reason to stay away.

Gambling is a thing I could never do — I will never have money that is that disposable — and thus there are many nuances that I don’t have firsthand experience with, but some of the people wrapped up in this have some heartbreaking tales. And it’s skewing younger and younger, as a habit, and, for some, an affliction. Scary stuff.

The snow has not melted. Mostly because it is extremely cold. We watched a neighbor try to blow snow off his driveway today, but it had frozen in spots, and so he was having a difficult time with it. I think my lovely bride pointed it out in the hopes that I would internalize the lesson. He’s a pretty industrious guy, our neighbor, but he must have been busy yesterday since he didn’t get to this chore until today. And so now he struggled because some of the snow had frozen into place. It was good that we cleared ours yesterday.

And it is even better that there’s no more in the forecast, at least until next weekend perhaps. Like all modern playfully superstitious people I will assume that it is because we have a snow blower at the ready.

In our last house, we had a driveway not much longer than the length of a car. A few shovel strokes and you were set. But, last winter, our first winter here, we returned from a trip and found that this driveway is much longer when you measure it in shovel lengths. We came back to a day-or-two old pile of snow six or eight inches deep. And so, we shoveled. Only it was so cold we just stayed cold as we cleared the drive. That was enough for my lovely bride to go buy a snowblower. A few weeks later snow returned to the forecast, I assembled the snowblower as best I could (it was missing four parts) and waited for the snow. I did not add the oil or gas because, I thought, Let’s just see what happens tomorrow. And when that tomorrow came around it was dry as a bone. That was the last threat of snow last winter. So, the blower went into the storage.

Last weekend I brought it out. And remembering that it needed a little extra assembly, we went to the hardware store. I was missing two bolts that held the handle together, and two that hold down the chute. (And, yes, I had to look that up just now.) If there’s one thing in the world I’d like to not do on a Saturday, it’s go to the same place twice. To prevent that, I decided to take the snowblower to the hardware store. Maybe someone there could help me find the appropriately sized hardware. What I’d been using were random bolts and screws I had, and also some bungee straps. But we had the time and opportunity to do this right, plus there’s this great old guy at the hardware store, the sort of fellow that’s done everything and wants to share his knowledge. And I am a sponge, particularly about snow blowers. This is my first one.

Only, he wasn’t there. But a young guy pitched in to help. In fact, he took over the project. I just stood and nodded and thanked him. Maybe I look like the old guy to him. Maybe this getting old thing will have its advantages when I eventually do get old. Anyway, I bought four bolts and two knobs from him. We picked up some bird seed and left.

And this is where you know this story is about the snow blower, but also, Saturday. We left the hardware store and stopped by the drug store. My lovely bride had to pick up a prescription and I wondered around looking at the advancements in cat toys and sleep care. Then we went home. I pulled the snow blower from the back of the car and set out to add the new pieces.

One bolt was missing.

Now I’m going back to the hardware store for the second time, which is the thing I didn’t want to do twice on a Saturday. Only my car won’t start. It’s been cold. The battery was sluggish. I hadn’t driven it in several days. I tried again. It cranked. I drove to the hardware store, left it running, locked it up, went inside, and found the bolt I needed.

The guy saw me.

“Oh no! Did it not work?”

Just missing a part. He was sure he’d picked it out for me. I was ready to pay. He would have none of it. It’s a galvanized thing and costs about $.40 cents and so I didn’t mind. He surely did pick it out for me, it probably just got lost in transit. But he would have none of it, and he insisted I take the part. And maybe the hardware store, twice, isn’t such a bad thing.

Then I drove over to an auto parts store, to test my battery. The guy came out, shivered through the test, and suggested it was just the cold. That’s what I expected, but I figured I had the time and I could get ahead of this for once. It just needed to charge, he said. Keep it running for a while, he said, let the alternator do its work.

I continued the drive, and filled up the tank, and then slowly drove home the long way. It cranked just fine after that. We’ll try it again tomorrow, as part of another domestic tale that will most surely be worth your time.

Anyway, it did snow yesterday, but not enough to seem to need the snow blower, I thought. Later, I was reading posts and realized that is a value judgment people actually make. Maybe I had that one right.

But the snow blower is here. Ready. Ready to not be used. Because we’re playfully superstitious about this.

Ten years ago, today … and I’m not making this a regular feature, but I mentioned it in passing yesterday and it’s super cold here and this is a nice change of pace … we were in the south Caribbean. Specifically, here:

This is the famous California lighthouse in Aruba. It was built between 1914-1916. Topping out at 100 feet, the stone was quarried on the island. The lighthouse is named after this part of the island, which was named after a 1910 shipwreck. The SS California was traveling from Liverpool to Central America and people on board were having a party when the ship ran aground at midnight. The next day the locals saw the damage and waded out to pick up the vessel’s cargo: merchandise, furniture, clothes, and other provisions. They took it all down to Oranjestad to sell it.

We’d gotten there by bus, but the return bus did not return. We started walking. It’s an island, but it’s a long walk, about eight miles as I recall. Finally, a bus which seemed to have the business model of picking up stranded hitchhikers gave us a lift. And then we rented a cab from a lovely woman who was proud to give us a great tour of her home, full of history, demographic insights, and natural medicinal remedy tips. She took us to her brother’s house so we could see iguanas, because they were always in his yard.

We’d hired her for a 90-minute tour, but she turned into an almost three-hour experience.

Aruba is a desert island. And they have the cacti to prove it.

(Click to embiggen.)

She also took us to these picturesque places, like this inlet by the Bushiribana ruins — a gold smelter used to extract gold from the nearby hills for about a decade in the early part of the 19th century — on the eastern side of the island.

I just found her on Instagram. She’s still showing off her island home with that same incredibly warm, welcoming hospitality. I just uploaded a picture we took with her 10 years ago today and tagged her in it. I hope she’s doing well. That was a great trip, Aruba was just one day of it, and the time we spent riding around with her is a real standout moment in a trip that was, truly, filled with them.

I’m not going to do a reminiscence post about the whole trip or make a regular deal out of 10-years-ago today. (It’s all in the archives here, if you want it.) I only wrote all of that because there’s something like a 57-degree temperature swing between here and Oranjestad.

This evening, after an afternoon of profitable work — emails were answered, a syllabus was formatted, etc. — I went downstairs to give my bike a try. I did a 15-mile sprint session in Neokyo. Three spring segments at about 30 miles per hour (so it is confirmed, I am getting slower), but one PR and … what the heck is that?!?!?

Then I rode another 15-mile segment elsewhere, and passed 95 other people along the way. They didn’t know that we were racing, but that’s more of their concern than mine.

So it was that I got back on the bike, for the third time of the new year, and felt much better about it. Time off is a good thing.

But now I’m behind on the mileage spreadsheet … so time off has drawbacks?

Until tomorrow, when I return with tales of unimaginable exploits and feats, ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>go read that column on gambling.