Ben is part of the problem.

I'm a big baby. Burn me down.

2011-04-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

I've copy-pasted this entry from my incredibly stupid OK Cupid profile.
***
I have more or less decided to stop initiating contact with you, ladies. I can, so far, predict with 100% accuracy what will happen when I initiate contact:

1. Nothing

or

2. A perfunctory reply intended to discourage further contact.

I have had some very interesting conversations with a few of you (all of which were initiated by you, the ladies, I might add) wherein this topic came up. It was several times suggested that I was "contacting the wrong women". Well, no shit. But the implication was that I was only contacting the "hot" women. This offended me because I've been fairly careful about who I was attempting to contact and it also assumed some very stereotypical things about me as a male.

Of course I appreciate beauty, but I also appreciate beauty in its many and varied forms. Besides all of that, the commercial ideal of "hotness" is mainly irritating to me; it mostly doesn't exist in reality. On top of that, most of the girls I've met who fit (or tried to fit) that ideal were insufferably unpleasant and conceited. They knew they were "hot". That kind of thing comes through pretty strongly in profiles as well, I've definitely seen it and avoided it (interesting aside: they were all low-percentage matches). But this site is positively loaded with beautiful women of all types. However, in spite of your profiles, you are wholly inscrutable.

I don't assume that you need (or even want) a run-down on how I went about deciding who I should contact, but the broad strokes are that I was only contacting women with quite high match/friendship percentages (both apparently wrong). I've had some experience with low-percentage matches and I think the algorithm is fairly accurate in this regard*. Anyway, I would further refine the options by who seemed not only most approachable, but also who had the most common interests and who wasn't an obvious mismatch. To wit: ladies who describe themselves as "fit" are automatically passed over; I just can't imagine that I wouldn't be a disappointment to them somehow (you see? I try to consider you in this; I don't want to waste your time). Likewise with ladies who make a lot of demands; every man who tries to date them is doomed, I think.

This all sounds very mechanical and coldly analytical, but I assure you that it isn't. I try to figure out who I think I would get along with, who I wanted to get along with, who I thought would enjoy my company. I imagine that almost everybody does this, but what do I know? Maybe some women only look at the body type or income fields**.

I tried to compose my messages like a sane, adult person would. I consider myself a gentleman and I use complete sentences, but I've heard horror stories about guys who try to start off a conversation with the most lewd and disgusting comments you can think of. These people exist! It's crazy! I try to make it as clear as possible that I'm not one of them!

What remains is the likelihood that women on OKC are either constantly inundated with horrifying messages from which mine are somehow indistinguishable, or that the very act of trying to contact them places me in a submissive position which turns them off no matter what I've said. Surely there's more nuance to it than this, but I never get any feedback upon which to base new suppositions.

All of that, or I'm just that unappealing (which is a distinct possibility). I suppose it's possible that women on OKC don't know what they want, too. Or that they're waiting for Mr. Perfect to come along and digitally sweep them off their keyboards. In any case, I ultimately feel like I'm the problem.

I very deliberately wrote my profile (which I've since taken down) in a way that introduces me in an honest and (I thought) approachable way. I wanted women to know that I was a real person and not some repressed creep looking for a hook-up or getting thrills from your disgust. The hope was that it wouldn't feel like such a risk in contacting me. I have met some great women (some not so much, but that's the way of it) this way. But exactly none when I initiate contact.

How do other men do it? Are they so overwhelmingly confident, optimistic or attractive that women just can't say "no"? Does the shotgunning of horrendous comments (like lascivious construction workers) eventually yield some results? I must be doing something wrong.

Whatever the case, I'm pretty much done initiating contact. I've had far better luck with letting dating come to me than going in search of it. That said, it will probably stop altogether now.

Let the flaming begin! (Assuming that anybody reads this)

* Do you know what a "palooka" is? An inexperienced or incompetent boxer. A person you "work out" on to hone your chops. I have most definitely been a palooka for women angling to improve their dating "skills" (and get a dinner or two). The dates really had nothing to do with me apart from me being the dinner-donor.

** I swear on a stack of holy books of your choice that this really happened. I was on a bus and a 20-something girl was complaining loudly on her cell-phone that "some ugly guy was looking at me and it grossed me out!" How dare he! Just a moment later she was asking her friend why more hot guys weren't checking her out. Hard to say, maybe they heard her coming.

Deadlines and other horrible crap.

2011-03-18T10:32:00.000-07:00

Before the drama of my divorce began, I contemplated suicide every day. It's a good thing that the will to live is so hard-wired in us, or I'd be long dead. Seriously (I actually came close a couple of times to doing it). This wiring does not, however, stop me from seriously considering suicide every day. EVERY day. Especially on days when things go alright for me. I don't know why that is, exactly. I suspect it's because I've been down for long enough that when I'm up a bit, I have to equalize and so I dip even lower. My base-line is that low these days. Also, I don't trust joy. I can enjoy it, I can savor it for a while, but I don't trust it. Whenever I'm moderately happy, I always feel like that's the moment when everything will turn to shit. Whether it does or not is beside the point; when I'm really down, everything "feels" like shit (whether it is or not) and it's felt that way long enough that, even though I hate it, that's the emotional state that feels normal to me. That's the emotional state I can rely upon. This is a terrible state of affairs.

So, my deadline. I seriously considered killing myself on my 39th birthday, but I didn't because I was SO depressed that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I did, however, start planning (almost unconsciously) to off myself on my 40th birthday (my "deadline"). It seems like a good time to do it. Not because it's the beginning of "over the hill" or something, but because it's such a tidy number! 40. Nice, even number of years. I have no kids, no prospects of having kids; only a partial education (nobody cares how smart you are if you don't have written proof that you can complete a course of study [which makes sense in its way]), a history of low-end jobs... I'm not in demand, I benefit nobody. Oh, sure, I could go to community college (and I do think about doing that, but I never move on it) and work my way through a degree and finally have a B.A. in something when I'm 44 or 45, but to what end? If you think there's no agism in the job market, then you don't know a fucking thing. Especially in this dog-shit economy. I'm amazed that I have the job I have because I'm older than pretty much everybody (there's one exception) by at least 10 years. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I don't have any major responsibilities to stick around for.

Am I bitching? I'm bitching. I'm also having a pity party, take out your tiny violins! Boo hoo!

Anyway, my big point is that I feel like the world wouldn't even notice if I take myself out of it. Oh, sure, my family and the barest handful of friends I have would be upset for a while, but I wouldn't be missed for long. Besides all of that maudlin dreck, it just seems like a responsible thing to do. I'm not unique or special (nobody is, ultimately), I've more or less wasted the potential I was born with. It would create a job opening, it would make room for somebody else in the world. What have I brought to the world of humans? I can't think of anything, it all cancels itself out. For every "positive" thing I think of, I can think of at least two negative things. A net loss. Give somebody else a shot at making something worthwhile in their life.

I've put a lot of thought into how I would do it, too. I want to kill myself responsibly! I'm still mulling the options that would allow me to leave as many harvestable organs as possible. Drowning (in December) seems the best way in those terms; it would be like putting myself on ice, preserving the organs until my body is fished out of whatever body of water I did it in. That would be a worthy contribution: my liver and kidneys are probably pristine (as a non-drinker), my lungs are in good shape (non-smoker), heart feels like it's doing okay; my eyes aren't perfect, so maybe they wouldn't want those. It's good that they can't do anything with brains (yet), 'cos mine is shot. Really, that's the lynch-pin to this whole existential dilemma: my stupid brain. Oh, and there are several gold crowns in my mouth, that might be worth something.

By now some of you (you, the three [maybe] people who have read this awful blog) are probably thinking, "he should really talk to somebody about this". Yes, I should. It's something I'm looking into, but with no health benefits and limited public resources, it's not so easy as just going to talk to somebody. I was thinking of launching into a diatribe about how mental health services are so undervalued, but other people have done it much better; read about it elsewhere. Anyway, I want to talk about it (why do you think I wrote this horrible blog?), but the most insidious thing about depression is that you come to think of your problems as being unworthy of anybody's time. Why would I bother apparently happy, "normal" people with my problems? I'm not important enough to warrant anybody's consideration. This is another big problem for me, I assume that I'm worthless and beneath anybody's concern (even my own).

A lot of this stuff is given strength by lingering problems from my divorce. Jen was such a cunt to me, was so cold and inconsiderate (she's a narcissist, after all); there's still so much hurt and anger left over from the whole fiasco. Yes, I hear you, I'm trying to find a way to talk to somebody about it. All of the things that happened have been turned inward. That's the craziest thing of all: there's still a part of me that's totally in love with her (at least with the memory of her). That makes it particularly difficult when it comes to beating up on myself. When I'm in that crazy place, it's CLEARLY my fault that things went the way they did, I DESERVE to be miserable now. But when I'm swinging the other direction, it appears to have been ALL Jen's fault (personality disorder or not). There's a middle ground, to be sure, but I'm not certain of where it is.

So much shit to work on...

I wish I had a tidy end to this terrible post. I've got a few months before my 40th birthday, I'm trying to figure this stuff out (or at least give it room) and get some perspective on it.

Shoulder that weight.

2011-01-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

In September of 2010, I had a bike accident and separated my right shoulder. Here's how it happened:

I was heading East on 45th from Wallingford to the U District. Just as I was mounting the curb on the bridge over I-5, I had to swerve left behind a utility pole. What I didn't see was the access box on the side of the pole. I struck the box (thank goodness for my helmet) with my head, which set me off balance. I then struck the square, wooden post with the "ramp metered" sign on it. It was painful and all that. I more or less recovered in about 5 or 6 weeks. I also neatly snapped the wooden post (apologies to WSDOT).

That broadly covers the mechanics of how it happened. Here's the why:

I talked to a girl.

There are bike-posts at the EMP. I had seen a white Bianchi Pista fixie locked to one of them several times and always wondered about to whom it belonged. As I was leaving that particular day, there was the owner of the Bianchi unlocking her bike! Her name is Monica. She's very pretty and - as near as I can tell - very nice. I was excited to meet her and strike up a conversation. We spoke of bikes and jobs and all that kind of chit-chat. But when it got a bit more personal, it also got awkward. We established that we were both riding towards the U District via Fremont/Wallingford, then - after a long pause - she pointedly informed me that she preferred to ride alone. I took the hint and just kind of dropped the whole conversation. This would have been the end of it, but we kept shadowing each-other all the way over Dexter and into Fremont. At some point she changed course, I've not seen her since.

So all of that in mind, I continued up Stone Way and then onto 45th. I was disappointed that the whole encounter had gone so awry. It began as an examination of the conversation, but morphed into a depressing critique on how ill-adept I am at talking to girls. It went even further to become a proof that women do not like me and that I shall be alone for the rest of my life. It was in this frame of mind that I went sailing onto the bridge. I was so distracted by my self-flagellation that I wrecked and ended up with $2,500.00 in ER bills, a separated shoulder and six weeks of relative inactivity (and weight-gain). Who knew that talking to girls was so hazardous?

Now I'm riding again; still trying to lose the weight (again!). Also still trying to talk to girls in spite of the apparent danger. I have managed to make a couple of friends (work friends, not "let's go hang out" friends) with the effort, but I can't help but feel like I'm still doomed when it comes to dating. It doesn't help that most of the girls I've ended up talking to are eight to ten years younger than I am. No matter how nicely any given conversation goes, I end up feeling like the "creepy old guy" at work. All of this says nothing of feeling like I'm always vastly out-classed by the women I work with. So, what's a boy to do?

I re-activated my OKCupid profile. I get an occasional visitor, but that's it. I've sent messages to a handful of women, but none of them has ever replied. The whole online dating thing is frankly stupid (but at least I'm not paying for the service). I haven't read one profile yet that didn't thoroughly intimidate me. In fact, lots of profiles I've read seem to be designed to make men run headlong the other way. There are a few who are so prickly that I wonder why they bothered to make a profile to begin with; I got the distinct impression that they didn't want to meet anybody at all. Equally baffling are the ladies who present the reader with a list of demands on personality and physiology (and indirectly income!) so particular as to exclude almost every man. Perhaps that's the point. But why go to all the trouble to prove to yourself (and anybody unfortunate enough to read your profile) how fiercely independent you are? Do you really expect anyone to find that endearing in any way?

Every time I read my own profile, I want to delete it and start over (or just delete it for good). Doubtless I'm over-thinking the whole thing, but I get so many mixed messages from the profiles I read that I don't know how to present myself anymore. I guess it's good to know what you want (or what you think you want); but I can't help but feel like my business isn't needed or even particularly desired.

Check this out: Every single day at work I see dumpy, schlubby guys with beautiful girlfriends/wives. It's mind-boggling! I can't help but wonder what it is that they have which I haven't. Can it be that I'm irreparably pudgy, dumpy and unattractive? Does it really just come down to resource allocation and the perception of a man as safety and being a provider? I'm at a loss and I'm starting to take it personally.

That's the worst part of it: taking it personally. I catch myself becoming angry at attractive women(!). WTF is that about? Resentment at a perceived judgement or perceived rejection? At least I catch myself; but it's such a compelling story to tell myself (how worthless I feel I am). It's difficult to break it up once it's rolling along. Again, I'm surely over-thinking this thing; but what the hell does one do with this kind of frustration?

Here's a joke that the ER doc who looked at me didn't get at all:
Doc: We've got your x-rays here, your right shoulder isn't dislocated after all, it's separated.
Me: Oh. Does that mean it's going to divorce me?
Doc: What?

It's (not) over 9,000!

2010-11-11T08:50:00.000-08:00

So, it's over. The divorce is final. I was there at the final moment, to put it to rest personally. She didn't want me there, I think; it was her show, after all. I found it remarkable that I was silently bawling in front of the judge and Jen seemed frankly happy and buoyant! Hooray! What a cunt.

Have I mentioned that she has a personality disorder? She does. Narcissism that borders on being a sociopath, sometimes. She will be the very last person on Earth to admit it or even acknowledge that there might be something amiss with herself. Makes me wonder what the hell she talks about with her therapist. I know she was working on her "daddy issues", but really that just goes along with making everything about her. When I was super depressed, not bathing regularly, not brushing my teeth regularly, just not looking after myself ("why bother?" says depression), she actually said that I was trying to push her away and make her not find me attractive anymore. Thank you for making my depression all about YOU. Furthermore, nothing could have been further from the truth. I was DESPERATE for her acceptance, her affection, her attention. ANYTHING would have been better than living with a person who was so completely emotionally detached. I was still completely in love with her, but I was panicking at the growing emotional distance she was putting between us.

My reaction? To clam up, not say what was bothering me, don't make waves. Admittedly, it was a stupid tactic, but that was the head-space I was in at the time. "Just don't make things worse if you can help it." That, of course, made things worse. Lack of communication on my part (both our parts, really) and utter lack of understanding (and interest) in what I was going through. It's hard to deal a person going through a depressive episode, but it's got to be totally impossible for a narcissist. A person who only thinks about how things affect or benefit themselves is altogether unable to begin to sympathize or empathize with depression. When we went to see my therapist (at my therapist's request, she wanted to meet Jen), Jen's question to her was, "If he gets depressed, what do I do?" Wow. Like there was a magic charm that would fix me so that she wouldn't have to deal with it.

She did things like this often and not just to me, either. The way she dealt with people was baffling to me. She was your implacable ally until she didn't need you anymore. After that, it was like you didn't exist. She was done with you. Family, friends, co-workers, husband; these were all just factors in her ongoing cost/benefit analysis. You aren't a person to her, you are a thing that might benefit her for some reason; a thing that might gratify some desire temporarily. All of these insights came well after the fact, of course. At the time, I had pangs of uncertainty about her when she did things like this, but I was in love with her, I let them slide.

It may be pointed out that all people are like this to one extent or another. That might be true. But with Jen, it was definitely true; she made a science of it.

"Bob" help the next person she ends up dating. He's in for a rude surprise somewhere along the way.

The whirlpool

2010-09-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

Why do I do this to myself?

I took one quick look at her profile and now I'm having cold sweats and want to off myself. She's getting skinny (frankly, I think she looks ill), she's having fun, everything is going her way. I had such a surge of HATE flow through me, it was scary.

I then went through my FB page and deleted all the photos of her I could. It was like setting myself on fire. There is still such an abundance of hurt for me in this.

The Darkness

2010-06-04T01:22:00.001-07:00

In my whole life, I've never been so angry that I couldn't sleep until all of this divorce bullshit started. Now, whenever I get an email from Jen (guaranteed), I end up wide awake and seething for at least half the night.

If I start to drift off to sleep, I always wake up moments later from horrible, dark dreams which I can't bring myself to describe (beyond "horrible" and "dark").

So, do I stay awake miserable and angry, or do I try to suffer the dark nightmares of the deepest recesses of the reptilian part of the brain and get some sleep (even if it's not particularly restful)? This dilemma SUCKS.

All aboard the hater train

2010-05-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

Everything falls apart.

2010-05-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Well, the divorce becomes final any moment now. Jen has refused my last offer to undertake some kind of therapy / reconciliation. I've been grappling with all the underlying anger of the situation; I've had terrible nightmares and sleepless nights from it. I get NO closure in this, Jen refuses to talk about it (to me, anyway). One interesting aside: Her offer to give me three months living expenses in exchange for signing over the condo to her was pretty funny. I countered that I would sign it over for $10,000 and be done with it. NOW she wants to go to mediation! LOLZ She wants to be rid of me, but she doesn't want to help me in any substantial way. Of course, she's dislocating her shoulders from patting herself on the back for her generous offer; I think it's going to be an interesting mediation.

She's lost ALL touch with what things really cost. She makes nearly six figures and thinks that all I have to do is get a job and everything will be fine, I'll be instantly prosperous. I had to remind her that most apartments want first/last/deposit to get in the door, she said, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that." No shit. That's one item in a litany of things she hasn't thought about.

When we had only been together for a short time, I heard her complaining to her friend, Kong, that her first job after college only payed $25 per hour and Kong agreed that that was chump change. The feeling was all indignation and repulsion at the very thought of ONLY making $25 per hour. I interjected, "what does that say about me, then? I only make $16 per hour." They fell all over themselves trying to backpedal and justify what they said, but their meaning was clear enough to me. Now imagine going up against that feeling of entitlement in a divorce mediation.

What else... I've got a job which pays crap and offers VERY few hours (and no benefits), but it's the first job I've landed in over a year, so I'm keeping it for now. However, I certainly can't afford rent on what the job pays, so I'm kind of stuck again. A couple of friends have offered that I can stay with them for a while, which is very generous of them, but they both live well out of the way from where I need to go. Argh!

I'm also running out of meds. I can get them refilled, but it means using the money I was lent for getting into an apartment. Fuck's sake.

So, everything is falling apart (again).

What the hell has happened?

2010-04-14T12:49:00.000-07:00

I'm staying at my sister's place. It's small. She and my brother-in-law have been very gracious and generous to let me stay here this long, but I know they'd like me to move along.

Jobs are a pain in the ass. To get, I mean. I've had one interview for a custodial job which I was mislead to think was full time; turns out that it's "contingent", more or less on-call, but you have to call them everyday to find out if there's work. Ugh.

I have an interview at a bookstore soon; that job will only pay $8.75 per hour, but I'm betting that the atmosphere of the place will be better than sweatin' it in the middle of the night in an office building (when there's work).

I've been REALLY damn depressed for the last three or four days. I don't know exactly what's brought it on, but it's awful. I know that it's particularly awful because I've been planning my own death. I know, I know... Nobody wants to read that. Even I shudder to admit it. But things are rough.

I think I'd been circling this particular dip for a little while, but what put me over the edge was having fun. I went to Honk! and had a great time. I even talked to a couple cute girls and enjoyed that as well. Then, on the way to where ever it was I was going next, I actually felt my spirits drop through the floor. It was bad. I managed to find a sunny place to sit and tried to give it room, tried to give it space.

Later, I went to Bikes Are Beautiful and, in spite of my foul mood, managed to have a good time and talk to a couple pretty ladies. Again, on the way home, I felt my spirits take a dive. It was all I could do to get back to my sister's place and go to bed without flipping out.

Next day, I made myself ride Bike Sabbath and it was great. My round trip was 36 miles and we did a LOT of hill climbing. I had a lot of fun and got some exercise. Then, on the way home, down again into the abyss. WTF? Why am I not allowed to enjoy anything?

The BIG dip happened Tuesday. Jen asked me to bring my tax forms over so she could do taxes. I was had a minor panic attack on the way over, which was lovely. When I got there, she was already gone to her Ultimate Frisbee practice; but just being in the condo again made me burst out crying. I think I won't really start getting over it until the divorce is final. That said, I still don't want to get a divorce, I so want to pull this out of the fire. I miss her so much.

After the condo, I went to .83 and was in such a foul mood that I made an ass of myself. I was in no mood to climb hills and was vociferous in my displeasure with it. Frankly, I rather doubt anybody but me really noticed, but I felt terrible for being so bellicose. I cut out early from the ride and came back to my sister's place, still really upset.

Today, I totally lost it. Bawling, hysterical. I talked to my mom, which helped somewhat, but I'm still touch-and-go.

So, prolonged unemployment, a pending divorce and not having a place to really feel "safe" (as in "my own place") all add up to awful emotional upheaval. Ugh. I don't know what else to say about this.

How it's going down...

2010-03-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

So much stupid, dramatic and hurtful shit has gone down since I wrote here. I'll sum it up eventually, but for now just have a look at the last-ditch effort I made to get through to her (which had no effect, as expected):

Having talked to [my therapist] and done some serious reflection, I've got some things to say.

I have to get all of this off my chest. In my heart of hearts, I want my saying this to jolt you out of wherever you are; but I have no expectation of that happening. It's the wishful thinking part of grieving the loss of this relationship. Or the bargaining, perhaps. In any case, I want this to all turn around. I want to be with you still. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you, even if I want you to feel some semblance of the hurt I've been through. I want to strike a chord in you somewhere that makes you rethink all of this. Wish wish wish... Wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first. No matter, I have to get this off my mind, I have to get it out of me.

I missed a lot of the warning signs of oncoming depression. All true, all irrevocable. I certainly didn't handle it well either; I retreated into myself, into WoW, into whatever would distract me from feeling depressed. I quit looking after myself and became a paranoid, smelly, unpleasant person to be around. Such is the very nature of untreated depression. It's also true that our communication broke down, but the real kick in the teeth for me was how you handled it.

You are a narcissist, or at the very least you have narcissistic tendencies (which are amplified by the emotional upheaval of the divorce process). You admit to being a control freak, that should have been a clue for me; but where it really began was way back when we first got together and I offered you the books to read in order to help you understand what I was going through. Your persistant, flat refusal to do so should have set the alarm bells off (EVERY time you refused). When you tried to tell me that you weren't a "strong enough person" to deal with the depression, you really meant that my depression was inconvenient for you and that you couldn't be bothered to learn about it or deal with it in any practical way. It took a while, but I've finally teased out what you meant. The way you said it, it sounded like even YOU didn't believe it. You were saying it just to mollify me and justify to yourself what you were doing.

You're afraid of emotions. You really only want people when they're "happy". Oh sure, you'll tolerate a certain amount of ennui or whatever, but really you're just waiting for happy to come back. You told me that you'd been waiting for three years for me to "be happy". As if you had no part at all in that. Apparently it was incumbent upon me to be happy or else I wasn't being "your partner". I don't think you understand what it is to be a "partner", or a "wife" for that matter. You certainly weren't MY partner. You tried to be a facilitator, you tried throwing time at me, but you never wanted to get involved in any way. You tried to "wait it out". Do you think it might be depressing to have a wife who wants no part of your emotional life apart from happiness? It is!

As an aside, you really take after your father on that count, I think. I've never witnessed him expressing anything but "meh" and mild amusement. He's thoroughly bottled-up, I always detected that there was a wealth of emotions buried down under his insulation. You certainly do you best to insulate yourself against emotions. By contrast, your Oregon family is replete with emotion. Granted, your aunt and grandmother are mostly filled with sorrow and/or indignation, but I think that gives lie to why you can only tolerate them in measured doses. As I said, you'll tolerate a certain about of deviation from "happy", but not for long.

You're afraid of becoming truly, deeply intimate with anyone, because that involves getting into deep, emotional territory. When I was really down, you said you didn't know how to help, you suggested I go see [my therapist] and try to work it out. But what you were saying was, "YOU fix this problem, I can't be bothered with it." When you told me that, "this isn't working for me", that should have been another in a series of alarm bells. When the situation strayed out of your ideal, happy parameters, it was no longer "working" for you. You actually said that to me, "this isn't working for me". Working FOR you. Working FOR YOU. Another way of saying, "YOU aren't meeting my expectations". "YOU have to fix this." "YOU are the problem." It was a tacit profession that you were not in any way responsible for it and shouldn't be expected to deal with it. My life had become an imposition upon you. You wanted to help as long as you didn't have to do anything personally, like sympathizing.

This is not to say that I enjoyed being depressed and "making" you unhappy, but your attitude was all indignation. Where I would have tried to be supportive and compassionate, you distanced yourself from me and took it as a personal affront. It was always my understanding that in a marriage people become intimately acquainted with each other, all the ups and downs, the good and the bad. Worse still is that for each expression of your indignation, I took it as a sign of my own worthlessness and used it to beat myself down a bit further. When you told me that you felt repulsion at the thought of me, it very nearly drove me to suicide; but it was also a signpost pointing at narcissism (to say nothing of being thoroughly humiliating).

Even in the end-game, your continued series of unilateral actions all point to fear of emotions by way of narcissism. This whole one-sided, unilateral divorce... Being a control freak, you have to control the situation to protect yourself. You have to control access, we only talk when it suits you and only about the things you wish to talk about (in addition to forcing me out of the condo). When I tried to press you on your reasons for your decisions, you became angry. Control freaks / narcissists cannot have their motives questioned, otherwise you might have to admit some wrongdoing. You might have to reassess your actions. You might have to FEEL responsible for your actions and how they affect others, you might have to feel anything at all. Controlling perceived truth is very important to you as well, I imagine that "our" friends and your family know very little about the details of what's happened. But if they did, they would surely find out how childish and selfish you're being. Can't have that now, can we? Best to keep all of that on the down-low, strictly "between two people". You have an image to uphold, after all.

Your whole insistance on "being friends" after the divorce further proves my point. Being "friends" afterward would definitely relieve you of any feelings of guilt or responsibility over the whole affair. You cannot abide feeling like you are wrong about any of this. You've got this whole thing all planned out so that all I have to do is sign the papers and go away and you can get back to your perfect, little, self-affirming illusion of happy life. After all, if I should decide that I don't wish to be your friend afterward, that's all on ME and no reflection at all upon you. What a jerk I am! It will allow you to feel some righteous indignation (you've learned that from your aunt and grandmother). Likewise your insistance that you haven't taken any of this lightly rings disingenuous. Odds are good that you've actually thought about this very little, the whole thing smacks of knee-jerk decision making.

So now you're getting everything you want. I look at this photobooth picture of you and your Ultimate friends. You're drunk on happy. You've been bingeing on happy with your Ultimate friends who are only ever happy when you see them. Why suffer the sad guy when you can get yourself tore up on happy with the happy people? Geez, why suffer the sad guy at all? It's best to push out the spectre of emotions and just be happy. Best to push it out.

Treating our relationship (and by extension: me) as disposable once it wasn't to your liking was the deepest cut. Your total refusal to attempt reconciliation bears that out (because it would almost certainly require you to feel a great many things). You have run rough-shod over me repeatedly and I can't imagine that you'll ever appreciate how much that hurts. To the very end I've been totally in love with you; desperate to keep our relationship together. I factually KNOW that you cannot possibly understand how much this hurts, because that would involve feeling something.

Ultimately, you've done all of this in order to protect yourself. You're afraid of emotions and of intimacy of any depth. The very idea of becoming intimate with what I was going through must have been terrifying to you. Likewise you can't allow yourself to feel bad about anything you've done. You can't let it happen, you can't doubt yourself, so you harden your position and become even more unsympathetic, you become dismissive and cold.

I'm willing to bet that this state of affairs has dogged all of your relationships; after all, the only common feature of all of your dissatisfying relationships is YOU. As long as this state persists, it's going to not only wreck any relationships you have in the future, it's going to prevent you from ever being truly intimate with yourself or anybody else.

That said, it would have been my great pleasure to become intimate with that part of your personal growth. Marriage is supposed to be a collaboration, a synergy. It would have been unthinkable for me to refuse to be a part of your self discovery and growth. Unconscionable! It might have been difficult, heart-rending work, but I would have done it. I would have been there. That's what marriage is: WORK. So when it came to it, you quit. You quit early on! The reason I became as depressed and paranoid as I did was partly because you pulled away. I definitely felt it and it terrified me. It ultimately prevented me from approaching you, how do you approach someone who's so emotionally disengaged? You were my wife! I loved you! But the more you pulled away, the more depressed I became, who could I turn to if not my wife? It definitely took both of us to get here, but you're the one who threw us under the bus. This divorce is all on YOU.

I sincerely, deeply, truly hope that you deal with your emotional issues (of which the narcissistic tendencies are only a symptom), because they're going to destroy your relationships. You are capable of such lavish affection and love, I miss it so very much. But when a relationship starts to get deeper than surface level (or stray from "happy", or whatever your "plan" is), you disengage and become a cold, calculating surgeon. You excise yourself from the relationship and ultimately discard it. Again, you do this as a means of protecting yourself from truly feeling things, and that is the greatest tragedy. You deserve to be whole and happy as much as anybody on Earth, but until you can genuinely open yourself to the rich pageant of emotions in yourself and others, happiness will exist only as a surface level veneer, a façade; real happiness will forever elude you.

Cowardice, Divorce and YOU (me)

2010-02-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I shouldn't be shocked, but here I am feeling utterly shocked and thoroughly devastated. Interesting aside: I cried so hard that I almost threw up! I don't recommend it to anybody, but it was an interesting sensation.

Jen has decided that divorce is the best way to "work on 'us'". Why do any kind of couples therapy when you can just get divorced? Easy peasy! This is all such bullshit that it practically defies description.

Naturally, my depression is the chief culprit, but she does admit that she doesn't have any idea how to relate to or deal with it. Then again, she actually said, "I guess I'm not a strong enough person to deal with the ADD and depression". This coming from a woman who is without a doubt one of the strongest people I've yet met; which makes this sound to my ears like, "I guess I can't be bothered to deal with your problems or learn anything about them". Refusing to do any kind of couples therapy all the while, mind you; which smacks of cowardice to me.

So, now I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself. I'm going to start boxing up all my shit today and move it into storage. After that, I don't know what. I can't sleep on my sister's couch for long, their place is just too small to comfortably accommodate three adults (one of whom is an intermittently blubbering mess). I have no job (still!), no money and - in a way - nowhere to go. Fuck my life.

Apologies for the Negative Nelly-ism.

3 weeks later...

2010-01-28T15:45:00.000-08:00

So, I've been Colorado for nearly three weeks.

I stayed with my brother and his wife and their daughter for the first two weeks, which I loved. It was great to get to spend time with them and feel like I was part of a family. I got to help get their daughter on the bus and help her with homework and stuff. It was easy to "blend" in a bit with them, I felt comfortable there.

So, for the last week I'm staying with my dad and his wife and their son. It hasn't been bad at all, but it's not as comfortable. I haven't spent much time with my dad in the last 15 years or so. Also, their son is kind of a drama-king. He's 14, so it's not totally unheard of, but it's also a bit more than I can handle some days. It's a whole family dynamic which I won't get into here, but suffice it to say that he comes by it honestly via his mother.

It also doesn't help matters that I'm headed back to Seattle soon, to a very uncomfortable situation with no end or resolution in sight. I've exchanged some emails with Jen and had a couple of IM chats, none of which made me feel any better and some of which gave me anxiety attacks.

She says we have "living arrangements" to take care of. This, to me, sounds like "we have to move you out". I'm trying not to be too much of a pessimist about it, but I expect to be told to get all my stuff out when I get back. Ugh. I'm having an anxiety attack just typing about it. The job-market SUCKS, studio apartments (even rooms for rent) are pricey and I have a bank balance in the negative numbers. She may cut me a new check ('cos I never deposited the other one), but that won't magically get me a job or anything.

Speaking of jobs. I had one really good interview, but didn't get the job. A job which wouldn't have paid a living wage and wasn't even full-time. Ugh.

Anyway, I'm truly hating the idea of going back to Seattle, but I can't stay here either. Jobs are no better in Colorado than in Washington.

My therapist asked me if I still wanted to reconcile with Jen. I told her that I didn't know anymore. She said that's totally normal when a person feels hurt. It throws everything into question about a relationship. This didn't make me feel much better, apart from being told that it's normal to feel this way.

Guess we'll see what happens, eh? I have a week until my next appointment with my therapist. Jen's been to see her Microsoft therapist several times in the time I've seen my therapist twice. I'm sure she feels like I'm dragging my feet (psychologically speaking). Well, I'm not sure, but I suspect it. The pessimist in me wonders if the relative infrequency of my appointments will be used against me as a sign that I'm not committed to the process or something. What a dick I am!

Ugh.

Everything sucks and it's all my fault.

2010-01-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

Seriously, if you don't want to read awful, angry crap, then turn away now.

NOW.

This post is entirely composed of non-constructive, angry blathering. I'm an asshole for posting it, but here it is.

So, I got really REALLY depressed last February. I lost an entire summer to it. I played retarded Warcraft and moped. I spent the better part of the fall doing the same thing.

Somewhere in there, my wife tells me that she's no longer attracted to me. Ouch. I'd become a depressed, fat fuck. I couldn't say that I blamed her, but it still stung like hell. It still does.

Instead of using that pain for introspection and then refocusing it into action for getting healthy and resuming therapy, I used it as an excuse to pummel myself even more and sink ever deeper into depression. Such is the way of depression. It sucks. Given that I had stopped sitting and stopped getting regular therapy, I wasn't able to intercept all of that shit happening. It just ran me over and dragged me along.

A bit later on Jen tells me, after some romantic overture or other, that she doesn't think of me that way anymore. OUCH. That's fucking great. See above paragraph for the repeating pattern. Pummel, sink, pummel, sink ad nauseam.

Now she wants me to move out. OUCH OUCH OUCH. My sister offered that I could sleep on their floor as needed, and I have done periodically. But they have a one-bedroom apartment and I know it makes them uncomfortable to have me there. Rather, I think it makes them uncomfortable. My sister denies it categorically, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm a big imposition on them. So, unwelcome at "home", an imposition away, I really feel like I have nowhere to go. NOWHERE. I also have no job. Jen wrote me a check for three grand, just to get me out of the condo (FUCKING OUCH), which is convenient for her, being that she's the one with a job and resources et al. I haven't cashed it, fuck that. I've looked at studio apartments, rooms for rent, but nobody wants an unemployed person. On top of that, I'm a good deal older than most people who advertise rooms for rent are figuring on. Let's see, rent to the student or the creepy, old guy?

So, she says she can't work on the relationship until I've "proven" to her that I can look after myself and that she's "reconnected" with whatever it is that she wants to do with her life. This sounds plausible, but it also sounds like she's looking for confirmation and permission to hammer in the last nail. Everybody I've talked to says that this is exactly backwards of the way these things are normally resolved. I have to take their word for it, I've never done this before.

It's my understanding that Jen has never had to deal with depression in her family before. With a couple of notable exceptions, her family is almost relentlessly content. Contrast that with my family: All of my sibs (except my youngest sister, as far as I know) have the same abiding, chronic, low-grade depression. I didn't think any of my family would know how it felt to want to throw yourself in front of a bus, but it turns out that most of them really REALLY do understand. Scarily so.

When we first got together, I offered Jen a couple of books to read that explain how these things work and how to understand what's going on. She declined. When we first got together I was getting regular therapy and was sitting at least once daily. I was on top of it. As things got worse and I quit being on guard about my mental state, I offered again. Declined. Now that things are all but in the shitter, I offer again. Now she says it's too late. How fucking convenient.

She said she never knew if it was depression or laziness or the ADD (or whatever). I tell her it's definitely depression, but I know (again, I feel) that it sounds like an excuse to her. Like I'm making it up or something. This has been a through-thread in my life: Whenever anybody questions what's going on with me, the explanation sounds like an excuse and they reject it (some have even said so. "There's no such thing as depression!" somebody said that to me once). The dominant opinion on the matter (according to non-depressed people) is that depression is bullshit. Just snap out of it! Oh, were it that easy.

Anyway, now I'm being paid-off, pushed out. No money, no job (I keep applying, I've had one interview for a job that isn't full-time and doesn't pay a living wage) and nowhere to go, really. Fuck me. I have to "prove" to her that I'm still worth being married-to. WTF? She says that she's not taking this decision lightly, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like she just wants to be rid of me and once I get established she'll end it.

So, here's a big FUCK YOU to 2009. You sucked and it was all my fault. So far 2010 isn't much better, but it has potential. Right now I'm an angry, depressed, fat, unfuckable asshole. A thorn in the side of everybody I come into contact with. A big cry-baby who's too lazy / crazy to look after himself. QQ more!

I have no clear ending for this, this is mainly a free-floating rant. Probably NOBODY* will ever read it, so who cares what I put in it. Hooray for that.

* - If you have had the misfortune to stumble upon this entry, I apologize. Nobody should have to read this.

Erm...

2009-09-01T14:30:00.001-07:00

No update today! Nope nope nope!

Utter drivel.

2009-03-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

So, it's been ages since I've written anything here. What have I been up to? Very little.

Things at the bike shop slowed down a LOT after Christmas, I was reduced to two days per week in an effort to save the shop some money. I was fine with this, frankly. You can only clean and arrange everything in the shop just so many times.

Even after my schedule adjustment things continued to slow down, so after a while I volunteered to "lay myself off" because it was almost more trouble than it was worth to spend two days per week trying to generate busy-work. There were no repairs and practically no customers. I'm officially "on call", but I've yet to be called. I'm told that business is picking up slowly and that when Spring gets into full swing I'll definitely be needed again.

What have I been doing with all my free time? Again, very little. I was unfortunately introduced to World Of Warcraft (the MMORPG) and have spent a good deal of time developing the talents and skills of imaginary characters rather than my own. It's amazing, if not precedent-setting, how addictive WoW is. I have logged on for the sole purpose of checking the status of items I put up for auction and three (or more!) hours later realized that I'd done NONE of the house-work I'd sworn myself to do. But I'd leveled once and done three dungeons! Ugh.

What else... I've been NOT sitting, although I've been reading some books that really make me WANT to start sitting again. It's amazing to me that even though I know without a shadow of a doubt that sitting will be entirely beneficial to me and those who have to interact with me (hiya, Jen!), I cannot get myself to sit on that zafu and DO IT! Argh! What the hell is that about? I suspect that it's the desperate throes of the ego trying to protect itself from the full-frontal assault that is zazen. Every single morning I think, "I could go sit right now. It's quiet and I've not made myself busy yet, this is the moment!" Then I turn on the TV (or worse, the computer and its seductive distractions) and don't sit. It's hilariously stupid.

All of this "free" time has allowed me to become something of a shut-in. I've been neglecting friends and family, neglecting myself (read: getting fat and even smellier!) and so on and on. When you turn to WoW (or whatever) for social interaction instead of riding your bike (me, I'm looking at YOU) or being with your friends, then you're altogether missing your life and probably making others sad. Even doing this feels like a distraction from doing things which need to be done. Of course, nobody is as hard on me about this stuff as I am, but the fact remains: I'm just killing time. This kind of "free" time is also fertile ground for me to over-think everything which - if it were a marketable skill - I could make bank on as a master of the art. Maybe I could give seminars.

So, this is my blanket apology to friends and family: I'm terribly sorry for having neglected and/or ignored you. You're all great.

2008-09-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

LOL.
...and OUCH.

I'm a (happy) dork.

2008-09-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

Firstly, Jen is awesome. I just wanted to get that out of the way.
She's off to Hawai'i for a week to help her dad celebrate his recent retirement from 36 years working for Delta Airlines. Why didn't I go too? I have no job and am ashamed to face him (only partly kidding).

Also: When Jen flies stand-by on her dad's pass, she's S1 or S2 (from years and years of flying stand-by on her dad's pass [read: seniority]); however, when I also fly on her dad's pass, I drag us down to something like S30 (again, only partly kidding). So this way she actually gets to go and possibly gets into first class! Hooray for...first class(?).

Secondly, I got new, blue stuff for the Brinks Bike: (1)Blue dice valve-stem caps (with sparkles in!), (2) blue, reflective stars for covering up the ugly joint/seam in my electric blue deep v's, (3) blue, anodized seat-post clamp and (4) blue, anodized Chris King headset. Wee ha ha! I'm such a dork. Still waiting for you job leads (or money), by the way.

I've pretty much decided on trying Panaracer T-Serv tires for the Brinks Bike. I have not, however, decided on straight black or their pretty, blue ones...could be too much blue...

Oh, and Greg informs me that you can now get blue, anodized brakes! Not just the brake-hoods, but the brake mechanisms themselves. Still another opportunity for too much blue!

On that topic, I've been considering my options for crank-sets. I was thinking I would go with Campagnolo Record track cranks again ('cos I'm a high-roller [see blue dice valve-stem caps]), but now I'm considering the blue, anodized Sugino "Messenger" cranks (which I'm told are the Sugino 75 cranks with pretty colors and a trendy-sounding name). At least the Sugino crank sets use a square taper like the Campy ones, so it would be easy enough to change it out later on if the Suginos don't work out.

One thing I'm damn certain of is that I will NOT - in spite of its prettiness - be using a blue KMC 1/8th inch chain (I wore out the pink one in record time). I'm considering an over-beefy Wipperman chain, 'cos it's over-beefy and sounds a bit like a buzz-saw when you're going fast. Plus, it's named "Wipperman", which just sounds awesome; like you're gonna take it off and lash unruly motorists and/or shrubs (or whatever) at the drop of a hat. J, you should look into getting such a chain.

What else... The job search is thus far laughable. The only response I've received is one for a work-from-home shipping and receiving job. Yes, you read that correctly: work-from-home shipping and receiving. Sounds dodgey to me, too. They want to make sure you're qualified to operate a fork-lift as well. Where, in my apartment? Weird.

I've recently been to Colorado to visit. It was the first time in several years that Eric, Genevieve, Cinda and myself have all been in the same place at the same time (photos eventually). Eric and I went to the Shambhala Mountain Center one day and that was great, but mostly it was just hanging around, catching up with each other and getting reacquainted with my niece, Cameron. Jen came along as well, but had to leave early for work and Ultimate. They have food in Colorado. I ate some. We got to see Jim & Diane and their son, Ethan as well.

It was a great visit. Everybody said they'll come to Seattle for the next visit.

Lastly, Jen has great legs.

It's coming together...

2008-08-11T13:28:00.001-07:00

It's very exciting in the dorkiest way. I got my new wheels (well, the rims, hubs and spokes) out of "hock" from Aaron's today and the Brinks Bike is taking shape! Now I just need everything else (and the money to pay for it). Anybody have job leads for me?

Tee hee!

2008-08-07T15:33:00.001-07:00

From Scott: " Bicycle god hates [Monica], but Pole Monster has her number."

I understand that she's looked at MANY bikes recently, including a single-speed one which I privately (now PUBLICLY) hope she gets. (^_^)

The last couple of rides I've been on have been quite good. Good to the point of having mini-epiphanies about how much fun it is to ride. Ahh... Tuesday night we went to Madison Park Beach 'cos it was just too hot and sticky to ride a lot. That said, I ended up riding what felt like a lot, probably because it was mainly uphill. But it was good! It was cooler by the water and I was energetic enough to take the hills with a minimum of being irritated with myself for being out of shape.

It was funny that the ride out of Madison Park separated into two distinct groups: The Geared Group and The Fixed-Gear Group. I ended up leading the Fixed-Gear Group - who didn't feel like trying to ride up the steepest part of Madison - through the stretch of the Lake Washington Loop Route which bypasses the Arboretum (particularly Lake Washington Blvd., which is quite narrow [only two lanes, one in each direction, and no shoulder to speak of] and almost always high in traffic) over to MOHAI and then quite easily to the U District and the College Inn Pub where everybody was meeting up post-beach.

Not being a drinker, I opted to not hang around and instead rode with Ray over to Eastlake where I learned some sad news: Thursday, 7th August is Ray's LAST RIDE with Point83. He's moving back to PA to be closer to his family. Uncool, Ray. Uncool. There were a lot of rides you were supposed to go on with us (both .83 and Slow Sunday). Whatever, man.

Suffice it to say that we'll miss having you around. Best of luck in PA, Ray.

Ben vs. Taxi, Critical Mass Fracas et cetera

2008-08-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

What have I been doing lately? What HAVEN'T I been doing!*

On my way to July's Critical Mass I hit a Taxi on my bike. That was fun! I was on Pine headed West behind a CRV (or a RAV4 or some other smallish SUV) in the center lane when the left-most lane filled up with cars and then the CRV stopped short. I - noticing that the right-most lane was apparently empty - darted right and noticed the parked taxi. At that moment there was about half a car-length between the front of the CRV and the trunk of the taxi, I figured I'd just dart left back into traffic and then feel very nimble and traffic-savvy and self-satisfied. No such luck. Just as I pull alongside the CRV, the CRV lurches forward totally closing the gap. The curb was about 8 or 9 inches tall and so was out of the question for bunny-hopping onto the sidewalk (which was full of pedestrians and people dining at the outside cafés) at speed and on a bike ill-suited to bunny-hopping. Having nowhere else to go, I just hit the brake as hard as I could, locked my feet into a skid and plowed into the back of the taxi. The trunk lid of the taxi was actually quite soft and springy (although my helmeted noggin did smack the back window sufficiently to make a good deal of noise and startle the fare in the back seat). Like many things in life, it looked a lot worse than it was.

I was not injured, only embarrassed. To his credit, the taxi driver (and the fare!) got out and made sure that I was alright. Roughly 30 people had seen me collide with the taxi and were now asking me if I was okay. It felt like a very awkward and impromptu press conference. I assured everybody that I was okay and announced that my next show would be at 8:00pm.

The taxi was altogether unscathed.

Riding to the Critical Mass (hereafter: CM) meet-up I noticed that my bike had a distinctly different feel; more twitchy and with crazy foot-strike (when your feet hit the front wheel, in case you didn't know). Scott noticed that I wasn't altogether there and said, "you look like you maybe don't wanna ride." He was right! But I did ride with CM for a while, long enough to get up on Capitol Hill and remember that if my frame/fork were indeed bent (and they were!) that it wasn't really safe to ride (and I REALLY needed another spectacular failure whilst riding). So I went home.

That decision proved wise in a number of ways, not least of which was that I ended up missing two major incidents on CM.

I should note that CM is usually a peaceful (if raucous) demonstration and generally doesn't inspire great ire in most people. But July's CM was different. There was an incident on Capitol Hill which shocked everybody, I think. You can read about it here (Scott's blog):

http://sweetbike.org/?p=184
&
http://sweetbike.org/?p=185

The short version is that CM decided to go down a narrow, residential street (why? who knows? CM is leaderless and whoever is in front determines where CM is headed next**) where a man and his passenger were promptly "corked" (blocked from moving by people on their bikes) and after a while the man decided that he was tired of waiting for hundreds of bicycles to pass by and lurched onto the sidewalk...running down two cyclists (one of whom went to the hospital with an ankle injury). This was made worse when a group of now-infuriated cyclists chased the car for a block and managed to slash all four tires and destroy the windshield and rear window. It was massive over-reaction all 'round. Truly unfortunate.

Additionally, my friend, Jeff, said that CM went down Interlaken. For those who don't know, Interlaken is a steep and curvy stretch of road that winds through a ravine on the North East side of Capitol Hill. Part of it is regular two-way road, the rest is a run/walk/bike path. The beginning of the RWB path part is right where Interlaken and 19th Ave. intersect. The bit of 19th Ave E in question intersects with Boyer Ave at the bottom of a VERY steep hill.

19th Ave E & Boyer Ave

Some CM riders decided to go down 19th Ave instead of the RWB path. At the bottom of that hill a rider crashed at high speed and about 10(?) other riders crashed into him. Jeff said that the guy was out cold and that EMTs came and put him on a back-board and the whole shot, flopping like a rag-doll. Again, most unfortunate.

Also: This CM was Jeff's girlfriend, Cara's FIRST Critical Mass. He said that she will probably come to CM again even though he had described it beforehand as being totally harmless and safe (which it is, usually). I lol'd.

Here's Jeff at Moon Garden (Moonlight Garden?) after Slow Sunday (3rd August, 2008).
Here's Jen and myself as well.
What else...
I'm gradually putting my Brinks Bike together. My wheels are pretty, but no photos yet.

Hooray for steel frames! I got Stormy Pinkness (my Redline) up to Aaron's and he stretched the top tube and down tube back into shape and bent my forks back into almost original position. I'm still getting some foot-strike, but it's MUCH better. Sorry, no photos, I didn't think that far ahead. :(

Had my frame been aluminum or carbon, I'd be screwed. Bent or dented aluminum is done-for, get another frame. Carbon, ditto. Steel really is the optimal frame material for me. Our friend, Monica, had a similar incident: colliding with a bollard on the Burke Gilman trail. Maybe I can get pictures of her bent frame for reference...

* I haven't been doing lots of things. For instance: I haven't been successfully finding a job. I haven't been participating in the Space Program. I haven't been performing three nights per week at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village. Et cetera ad nauseam.

** I have twice found myself inadvertently leading CM. Once while I was headed home! It was an unfortunately fractious CM where lots of people got dropped and I decided to ditch it altogether. A guy came up alongside me and asked where we were going. I looked over my shoulder to see about 50 people behind me. D'oh!

Of phantom cupcakes and roller derby.

2008-05-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sure the 2nd annual Cupcake Ride would have been great if it had held together AT ALL. Also, it was amazingly hot, which bodes ill for strenuous riding (for me, anyway).

The crowd assembled at Westlake Square was nice enough, but also impatient. Scott was leaving later than intended and while I was getting an update on his whereabouts the group took off. "See ya!" was the extent of the parting.

As Scott didn't know the address of the Cupcake Royale in West Seattle, I waited for him. When he turned up, we took off and began the adventure in mild heat-stroke. At the Eastern foot of the low bridge to W Seattle, we ran into Teresa who told the following tale:

From the get-go, the group started falling apart. A group of riders in front decided that they'd rather go fast and bolted ahead. Not everybody was able to keep up and people started ditching (which sucks) right away. A girl who was trying to keep up with the fast kids had a mechanical and was dropped from the fast pack. Teresa stopped to help her and the remainder of the ride dropped both of them. The girl with the mechanical went home. Teresa pressed onward to the Western foot of the low bridge to tell Malora that she, herself, was going home. Malora told her that she was going to wait for Scott and myself.

After hearing her tale, I figured we would finally catch up the ride. Scott had gone ahead while I was talking to Teresa, so when I arrived at the Western foot of the bridge I was surprised to see no one there. I figured that - given the heat - they would surely take the long, gradual way up to Cupcake Royale (which was incorrect), so I made for Avalon to then head out to Alki Point. On the way there Scott rang me and said that he was waiting in a parking lot just around the corner of Avalon. When I arrived, we were both bright red and miserable. I said, "I can feel my heart beating in my armpits!" To which Scott replied, "Oh good, then it's not just me." We doused ourselves in water and rested in the shade of a nearby tree while discussing whether to try and catch the ride.

When we decided to head for food in Georgetown, we ran into Kevin. He too had been dropped, but was waiting for the ride to pass by the low bridge again (as they must, unless they take the VERY long way around through White Center and South Park). After a bit of phone tag with Malora, it was decided to bail. Kevin headed to Madison Beach, Scott and I to Georgetown and then Magnusson Park.

When it became apparent that there wasn't nearly enough time to both places, we opted instead to eat at Uwajimaya. The air conditioning was too comfy for us, we tarried longer than anticipated. Quite apart from that, I had a major energy drop-off on the way and was quite pale, according to Scott.

Thank goodness for the #73 bus!

From the U District it was quite an easy ride to Magnusson Park and although we arrived late, there was still plenty of roller-derby to witness (and I would like to witness more in the future!).

Ugh. It was a long, hot day, but the evening was cool and pleasant. Scott, Aden and myself all rode to the Eastlake Zoo and from there I went home.

I had more kvetching to do in this post, but nobody wants to read all that indignant shit.

WTF?

2008-05-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

Do you see that? The handlebars are mounted below the headset. BELOW the headset. WTF?

A history of awesome part failures.

2008-05-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

I've had a variety of issues with bike gear. I bought my Redline 9-2-5 as a complete build (the only way you can get it unless you know somebody at Redline, probably) and it wasn't long before I started destroying the OEM parts.

First to go were the stock tires. I don't even remember what kind they were, only that I had numerous "mystery flats" and got thoroughly sick of them. After some research I learned that many people had issues with the stock tires and so I replaced them with Schwalbe Marathon Slicks (700x30) which solved the problem (plus they had reflective side-walls).

Second to go was the rear wheel. The stock wheels were Alex rims with low-flange Redline hubs. Shortly after I switched from single-speed to fixed gear I began breaking spokes in the rear wheel. After some consultation with Aaron (of Aaron's Bicycle Repair in West Seattle: http://www.rideyourbike.com/ ) we decided that a Velocity Dyad rim (made for tandem bikes) and a Phil Wood high-flange track hub would be the strongest combination (also with Phil Wood spokes: heaviest gauge in back, double-butted in front). So out went the Alex/RL wheel and I got a spanky PINK Phil track hub!

Next went the quite uncomfortable saddle (which I replaced with a black Brooks B17) and the front wheel (made to match the rear wheel). I would like to add that in the few years that I've had the Velocity/Phil wheels, I've had them trued THREE times (rear wheel twice, front wheel once) and broken ONE spoke-nipple. Not bad, eh?

When the Cane Creek headset went to bits I began thinking that I should have just invested in a frame set and fork and built the bike up from scratch. I also decided not to view part failures as unpleasant surprises and instead just wait for them so I could turn them into upgrading opportunities. I replaced the Cane Creek with Chris King.

Around this time the moustache bars were beginning to hurt my hands and wrists. So I switched to Nitto "noodle" bars and raised the whole cockpit a bit.

I was gradually trashing the FSA crank set and so decided to upgrade. I initially wanted to go Dura Ace or Sugino, but ended up getting the newest thing in cranks and chain-ring: Paul. I won't say that I was coerced, but I was definitely "encouraged" to get the Paul set-up because it was "cool" and Paul's stuff was reputed to be heavy business. So I got a 1/8th inch cog and PINK KMC 1/8th inch chain (which I wore out in record time [3 or 4 months] and then replaced with a SRAM PC-1 1/8th inch chain). I also upgraded to a Phil Wood bottom bracket (high-end quality stuff) with a Campagnolo taper for the Paul cranks.

This arrangement worked quite well for quite a while...

However, eventually the Paul cranks began giving me problems. The four-bolt interface with the chain-ring came loose and when the folks at Aaron's tried to re-tighten it the threads stripped right off the bolts. Paul honored the warranty and sent a new crank-arm which he attached with automotive-grade thread-lock which solved the loosening problem.

Again, this worked well for a while. Imagine my surprise when I actually broke the crank-arm itself! It was fortunate that I wasn't moving very quickly and was also seated when it went. At first I thought I had unclipped from my Frogs, so I was feeling around with my foot for the pedal and having no luck at all. Then I looked and found that there was NO PEDAL. Thanks to whomever it was behind me who picked it up and brought it to me.

The wear pattern on the broken ends indicated that it had been gradually cracking for a while, but there were no visible indications and it didn't squeak or anything either. Paul again honored the warranty and sent another new crank-arm, but I was finished with Paul's cranks.

I did more research and was leaning toward Dura Ace cranks when it was pointed out to me that I'd have to buy a proprietary Dura Ace bottom bracket to use them. As I already had a Campy-tapered BB, I went on Aaron's recommendation and got a Campagnolo Record track crank-set, which, I was repeatedly assured, was the strongest thing available*.

I should point out that not only were Aaron and the other ABR mechanics totally baffled about the Paul crank failure, but the Paul people were equally confounded. When I visited their booth at NAHBS 2008 in Portland I mentioned that I had broken a Paul crank-arm and they said, "oh, that was YOU!" They later told me that of all the crank-sets they'd sold, there were only three reports of broken crank-arms (but they had all broken in the same place). As a result, they made design changes to (one hopes) avoid repeats of this failure in the future. So some good may come of it.

Also, somewhere in there I switched from the Nitto noodles to Ritchey Bio-Max ergo-bars and PINK fizik bar-tape. The drop position on the Nitto bars was a bit too far away for comfort; the Bio-Max ergo hump put the position closer and solved that problem. Now I understand that Nitto makes an ergo-bar with a shallow drop...something to think about for future upgrades (and building my IRO)!

This brings us to my most recent part-failure.

I was heading up to Aaron's to help Gypsie with her music-management system (read: extracting music and organizing it), I was waiting in the turn lane between the stadiums in SoDo so I could go South on 1st Ave (and then to Spokane and then to West Seattle et cetera). The turn arrow turned green and I stood on the left pedal to "sprint" into motion and get through the intersection when something gave way and I fell onto the handle-bars and then onto the pavement (and into the straight lane). It's very fortunate that 1) I wasn't moving very quickly, 2) the traffic was light that day and there were no cars going straight through the intersection to run over me, 3) this didn't happen when I was sailing downhill on Pine heading into downtown. I quickly jumped up, grabbed my bike and the silver part from the street and hustled to the sidewalk. After calming down a bit I inspected the crank-arm to see where I had broken it, but the arm was fine. It took me a moment to fully realize that I had snapped the spindle from the Phil BB and that the end of it was still securely bolted into the arm! I limped across the street to the bus-stop by Pyramid and took the #22 up to Aaron's. Along the way, I noticed that my right arm was bleeding and that my neck and shoulder were in a goodly amount of pain. What was it that I was saying earlier about not viewing part failures as unpleasant surprises? Anyway, the breakage pattern would seem to indicate that it failed suddenly and not gradually as the Paul cranks had.

Again, everybody at ABR was impressed(?) that I had managed to break something which almost never breaks. Phil is honoring the warranty and is sending a new BB. I briefly wondered if Phil makes a BB with a titanium spindle, but I'm not sure that it would necessarily be stronger (just lighter, which isn't really a consideration for me as I weigh ~270 lbs right now [which sucks]). I'm also under the impression that titanium parts flex a lot, but I've yet to do much research into these issues. If you have any information about this stuff, do pass it along, won't you?

So how's that for an epic post? Lots to read, some pretty pictures...it might be my best post yet! Hooray and ouch.

* There are MTB/BMX crank-sets and BBs which are virtually indestructible, but they come in a limited range of chain-ring sizes (topping-out at around 42 teeth, which is fine for MTB/BMX, but not great for fixed-gear or road riding), so we didn't consider them for this bike.

OMG an post in this blogs!

2008-04-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a while since I've adding anything here. No sh!t, right?

Oh, looking for a jobby-job. 'Nuff said.

Thinkin' 'bout bikey-bikes. It's in mah head.

People talking about upgrading their bikes really makes me want to build up my IRO. Oh, but for the money involved, I would.

Instead of the "Fitz" decals (which I have) on the gray bike, I was thinking I should have gone instead with "Bikes" 'cos it sounds and looks a bit more like "Brinks". Oh well.

I'm still considering the blue/gray/silver scheme. I'm also considering going with double-strap cages instead of the Speedplay Frogs. Mainly because I'm discovering cracks under the metal rings through which grease is leaking when I re-grease the pedals. To expect the pedals/cleats to last forever is, of course, unreasonable. But I don't fancy buying new ones (again with the money!). Maybe Crank Bros. eggbeaters or candies? Argh. Make no mistake, I love my Frogs, they're super easy to get into and out of and have served me quite well for a couple of years now.

I must confess that I find the double strap cages to be quite cool looking, which does, embarrassingly, influence my thinking on the matter. Also, I could just wear shoes (Adidas Superstar IIs, I'm looking at YOU) instead of cycling-shoes which aren't particularly comfortable for walking around in (and is hard on the cleats). What's a jobless tub to do?

On the topic of cycling-shoes: I'm having a love/hate relationship with my new Sidi Dragons. They fit, but just. If I wear thick socks, my toes will fall asleep after a while. If I wear thin socks, my toes get cold and eventually numb (in cold riding conditions). Yes, I've heard of wool and do, in fact, own a few pairs of Smart Wool socks which serve me well.

What a luxury to have such complaints! Hooray for America!(?)

Depression is a downer, I don't recommend it. Nobody wants to hear about that, so that's all I'll say.

At least I've found a "club" to ride with which is always enjoyable. Slow Sunday is awesome. We get to enjoy the daylight(!) and put on miles without the race-pace. We stop to get foods and snack! We take in the view! Hooray!

Alright, I've errands to run.

Pre-fab Deko-chari?

2008-02-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

I dunno if this is still available, but holy cow! It looks awesome (and heavy).

2008-02-14T23:14:00.001-08:00

Horpy Balenzymes Doi!

2007-12-23T19:00:00.001-08:00

It's aminated!

2007-11-08T22:19:00.001-08:00

Brinks Bike

2007-10-07T22:53:00.001-07:00

Imagine this in reflective blue vinyl decals on a metal-flake battle-ship gray frame. I'm going for the Brinks Truck effect as I'll have blue hubs and rims, blue CK head-set, blue seat-post collar, blue saddle and blue bar-tape. It's gonna be NEAT-O.

Oh yeah, my blog...

2007-09-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been bleedin' ages since I've posted anything here.

What's happened in that time? Stuff, really. Wedding stuff. Work stuff. Some bike stuff. Thing stuff.

http://fitzmoto.wordpress.com/
This is our wedding info site.

I'm back at the warehouse after six months of trial house-husbandry. But this time it's all about putting the warehouse to bed. All (or most) of the stock is going to Johns Hopkins University for distribution. So I've been "throwing freight", gathering cartons, stacking cartons, wrapping pallets of cartons and then banding said pallets. FUN. At least I'm getting a work-out. I call this position "Assistant Grave-Digger".

Bike stuff: my IRO frame finally showed up. The blue I chose for color online turns out to be teal in real life. So I'm going to get it powder-coated a deep, metallic blue (to match the "electric blue" Velocity Deep-V rims I want). It'll be pretty.

I might also like to get my Redline powder-coated. I was thinking about a bright, metallic, bubble-gum pink. You see, I've finally decided on a name for it, "Stormy Pinkness". I borrowed that title from a They Might Be Giants song of the same name. Anyway, if I could, I might like to get my Velocity Dyad rims anodized a metallic pink as well (or instead). Pretty pretty!

What else is happening...
I'm trying to get my sitting practice back in motion. So far I've managed to unearth my shrine/altar and begin regular offerings again. Re-arranging the bedroom helped a lot with that. So I'm getting back in the mind-set at least, now I just have to get back on the zafu and SIT.

I've been having an interesting time thinking about setting up a Butsudan at Jen's dad's house in Kaneohe. It's easier for me to sit if the trappings of practice are present (a crutch[?] I will eventually have to do away with, maybe). Shirokiya at Ala Moana has a selection of Butsudan and shrine accessories, but their most inexpensive model is still $300-ish. I may settle for a nice bit of Butsuzo like my home shrine/altar. But where to find it in Hawaii? Online is an option I'm considering. I'm also considering what kind of cushion to take and probably leave at Jen's dad's house (Jen's dad is hereafter "Paul", cos that's his name). Shopping for religious stuff seems so weird to me.

I prattle on.

fArt School F(r)iends!

2007-01-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, this design is unimpeachable. Simple, legible, relates strictly to point83 hipster dickheads and not dead-baby mutants, and lacks all manner of photoshop filters. This card is the epitome of purist shite. ENJOY IT OR STFU.

Whole E Schitt

2007-01-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

Somebody liked one of my designs. So this is the suggested back for it, a bandaged arm. Fitting I think.

It's been an interesting process, coming up with these designs. It's been so long since I did anything "creative" that I shared with anybody else, I found that I was VERY invested in how other people felt about the submissions. I was taking the relative silence very personally.

In face, I've been taking a great many things personally. My sense of injustice has resurfaced or perhaps found new emphasis. This is both fascinating and frustrating. I'm quite certain that it correlates to the fact that I have not sat over a month. Time to get back to the cushion, I think.

Added an alternate font version.

Not cool enough.

2007-01-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

This is the last one I'm submitting. I give up.

Time on my hands...

2007-01-05T00:36:00.000-08:00

...for more spoke card designs!

2007-01-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

More lame ideas for spoke cards.

Spoke card

2007-01-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

This is a very quick shop of my idea for a Point83 spoke card.

Not great, but it's my first one.

So, what's it gonna be?

2006-12-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

What the hell does one blog about? Everything? More to the point, what the hell CAN one blog about? Answer: whatever it is that you blog about. So I'm going to do what most everybody else does and just think "out loud" via the computater and let it out in a jumbled mess.

Blogs are like everything else, a representation of the collection of ideas that we have banging around in our skulls. Then other people's collections of ideas come to be buffeted by them. It's all very abstract.

Anyway, there are a few things in my life that are worth writing about (as in everybody's lives). My main interests are Zen (a very difficult topic to talk about meaningfully), bikes (a bit easier), language (I LOVE foreign languages) and my lovely lovely wife (who gets mentioned last so that you'll remember her!). Ultimately all of this stuff (and ALL stuff universally) is connected, but I don't know how to fully extricate and expound upon it, so there will be a lot of cross-referencing to keep you entertained (or whatever). Also, there will be a lot of parenthetical references (because I like them).

I also like to play with language and I will doubtless make many totally deliberate and voluntary (and involuntary) typos, misspellings and grammatical catastrophes.

This is kind of like a manifesto, only it's not. It's also a definitive and vehement statement (or something, whatever). It's at once a warning and an excuse for my expression! How versatile of me!

Finally, it's a total MESS. How can you read this? Are you reading it? Are you hungry? I am, Ima (oh! there's one!) go to the grocery and all that.

Flappy Thanksgiving?

2006-11-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

What better way to spend a family-type holiday than opening a blog and then blogging in it?