Dollar General: Passing the Savings onto No One

The stanky Walmart bag story reminded me of another low cost mecca of the South (one that also exists up North but less noticeably so), Dollar General.  I wasn't born in a palace, so I'm familiar with dollar stores.  When I was a little kid, I thought they were great because I could actually afford to buy things there, making me feel like an adult.  A standard summer vacation of ours was to drive out to the suburbs of Cleveland (on a single tank of gas, as was noted each year) to visit family, and one of the highlights was always the Big Lots discount store they had out there.  We didn't have Big Lots in my hometown at the time (not true now).  I ended up with a lot of unused fishing lures from that store, and I loved them all.  I think most of the reason they make fishing lures so flashy is to attract humans to buy them, not fish to eat them.  Best I can remember, fish mostly wanted balled up pieces of cheddar.

Now that I'm an adult, dollar stores elicit a different emotional response.  The first is a bit of disgust with the realization that cheap, shiny goods were intended as a starter kit for a future of purchase-based personal-satisfaction.  You're not buying garbage, you're buying smiles.  The second is a bit of sadness as those stores are usually a depressing reflection of the local economy.  Dollar stores, pawn shops, and check cashing joints are usually a really bad sign for the future of a small town.  There will usually be a few adult bookstores sprinkled in there too.

$6.99 is a good deal...

Throughout Mississippi, 'Bama, GA, and SC, Dollar General was everywhere.  As my ride down to Asheville was done mostly at night, I never had a chance to pop in and see what necessitated such brick-and-mortar frequency.  But on my way back to Philly, a daytime crawl, I had plenty of opportunities to explore the aisles.  And guess what?  I get it now.  Dollar General is a mini-Walmart, so if you can't make it to Walmart, go to Dollar General.  They have a wall of refrigerators and freezers, aisles full of discount food, and even a hardware section.  Everything you could possibly need.  (I bought more than a few $1/bag salted pumpkin seeds on my way down, as well as a few bags of Knorr Noodles.)

But unlike Walmart, the only options were real bottom of the barrel options.  It's not so much that everything was inexpensive, as much as everything was cheap.  Food with no nutritional value, walls of soda, home goods that have a life expectancy of maybe two uses.  As I watched people push entire grocery carts up to check-out, it occurred that only a few explanations could cover the need to buy that much from a Dollar General:

1. No other stores in the area
2. Broke
3. Raised that way/Don't know any better

All three of those possibilities can be directly tied to a downturned economy.  If there are no other stores, it could mean that other stores started and failed, or chains researched the locally economy and didn't see the town as a viable expansion option.  If Dollar General is just people's preference, it's either out of necessity or habit.  People that don't need Dollar General don't decide to suddenly become Dollar General people.  And once you're a Dollar General person, there's no way out.  You go there because you're broke.  Then you buy cheap products that break right away and have to go back to buy more.  Now you've spent twice as much but still only have the cheap good that's going to break again.  Eventually you spend 10x as much on a piece of garbage, so you're broker than before and need Dollar General more than ever.  You should buy it again.

And then it becomes generational.  All that cheap food?  Oh yeah, it's terrible for you.  So you eat the high sodium instant food, have a heart attack at 50, end up in the hospital, but you're broke (hence shopping at Dollar General) and you've been firmly against socialized welfare because you don't want handouts from Washington D.C., so you survive for a bit at the hospital equivalent of Dollar General, but the years of eating poorly can't be fixed, and tens of thousands of dollars later you die, dropping the bill on your kids who are now guaranteed a life of Dollar General.  Do you really think this is not by design???

Speaking of dying (economies, this time), growing up, my home town had two grocery stores five minutes away.  The bigger of the two is now a discount grocery outlet that sells cheese labeled by color, not type.  The smaller disappeared over a decade ago.  Within a mile of that grocery store is now a Dollar General, Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, and Dollar Plaza.  These are all actual, not-made-up-off-the-top-of-my-head places.  Probably not moving back there.

All that said, I now live in Seattle, a city not known for its dollar stores.  There is, however, a deconstructed coffee house, which I find an equally troubling reflection of the local economy.  Deconstructed coffee is coffee that hasn't been mixed for you.  Like, people are paying extra to pour in their own cream and sugar.  It's just another thing people buy to prove that they're wealthy.  Like Jaguars and Apple Watches.  To prove that money is but for novelty.  Because there aren't any real problems here, like homeless tent villages and high addiction rates, so spend the money on having people not pour cream into your coffee.  

Does that leaf blower have a snooze button?

Day 7 - Sept. 22, 2016 - A.H. Stephens State Park > Cayce, SC

Is there any nicer way to wake up in the woods than to the sound of a leaf blower outside of your tent?  You are correct if you pointed out that I was in fact not in the woods, technically, but in a nearly $30 a night State Park.  I hadn't yet paid my camp fees, though, and the thought crossed my mind that maybe I shouldn't.  Yes, at around 8am, a member of the park staff rolled through the campground attempting to loudly blast away the fallen foliage.  For those that did not inspect the photo of A.H. Stephens State Park that was included in the last ride post, most of the trees in the area were of the pine variety, meaning that this dipshit was attempting to leave blow pine needles.  Was he doing a bit?  At 8 in the morning?  Are you serious?  Beat it, Kaufman.

I had a long day ahead of me and I hadn't planned on starting it so early.  There were over 130 miles standing between me and my layover in Cayce, SC (just outside of Columbia), and the Southern ACOE and State Park systems gave me little choice but to handle this portion of the ride as a lone segment.  Honestly, though, I'd rather spend the $30 camp fees on cheap beer than help pay for park employees to leaf blow pine needles.

Since I was staying with friends in Cayce, I was going to need to plan my arrival time accordingly.  I figured my best bet of them being home would be earlyish in the day, as they have jobs and lives and whatnot to attend to during the day.  Based on my previous days' rides, I figured if I left around noon, took breaks for dinner, a few rest stops, and breakfast, I could be in bed in Cayce by 7am or so.  That would give me 13 hours of riding and 6 hours of wasting time.  Also, if I had any bike troubles, that padding wouldn't be a bad thing.

I'm sorry to say that I paid to stay in that park.  It wasn't even easy to pay, as I had to ride around a lake to find the office and there was no way the staff had even seen me until I walked in through the front door.  The staff was even in the middle of the office counting the night's money, almost as if to show me how they were already well funded and that my money was definitely just going into the leaf blower gas fund.

It was a long day of riding, which gave me a lot of time to stare at my map and wonder.  All around the South, I'd been passing lakes that had the most peculiar, jagged edges.  In my experience, lakes are usually round in nature, with erosion working in a somewhat uniform manner.  But down here, it was not like that at all.  Unless you've seen what I'm talking about, it can be tough to imagine.  So here, take a look:

Click on the image to see a bigger version, yo!

Ok, in that screenshot, the following super jagged lakes are visible: Allatoona Lake, Carters Lake, Chatuge Lake, Hiwassee Lake, Lake Blue Ridge, Lake Burton, Lake Greenwood, Lake Hartwell, Lake Lanier, Lake Murray, Lake Rabun, Lake Wylie, Lake Woodruff, Nottely Lake, Tugaloo Lake, Yonah Lake, and honestly I'm tired of making this list so I'm just ending it here but you get the gist.  Looking at that map for the first time, you're probably thinking the same thing I thought: What up with those jagged lakes, yo?

Well, I'll tell you, yo.  After looking up info on each of those lakes, I started to notice a trend... none of those are natural lakes!  They're all reservoirs and dams and other human made/altered structures.  Even the Savannah River has been dammed and leveed into it's current state.  The Georgia.gov website even flat out says:

Most of the lakes you will visit in Georgia — Lake Sinclair, Lake Chatuge, West Point Lake and so many more — are man-made. These types of lakes are usually created when humans build artificial dams in an existing river or stream. Builders sometimes protect smaller reservoirs from seepage by compacting the loose soil around it or lining the reservoir with fabric or compacted clay.

That made so much more sense!  We were the jagged makers, not nature.  Well, physics more than nature, but nature is easier to anthropomorphize.  Physics would definitely wear glasses, though, were it to be a humanized entity.  And it would be all, "nice jagged lakes," and then probably laugh it up with Chemistry and Biology.

It was after midnight when I stopped in Ridge Spring, SC for a late night dinner break.  Nothing was open in the tiny town of less than 1,000 people according to internet, but there was a nice park with picnic benches and lights.  Tired of bagged pump water, I had hoped there would be a gas station or convenience store, but just having a place to sit down was a fine compromise.  As I sat there eating my dollar store noodles, I checked my route.  I still had about 42 miles to go to get to Cayce, most of which appeared to be downhill, meaning if I kept my current pace I'd reach my destination at a terrible hour.    Getting to the house at 5am would be a bad idea.  The dogs would start barking, waking everyone up, making them all mad at me, kicking me out onto the street, sleeping in a gutter because I was so tired.  Then I remembered I was in the South.  I could just find a Waffle House to kill time at.  That or a Walmart.  Who doesn't like walking around a South Carolina Walmart at 5am?

I should have known that after washing down cheap noodles with warm, metallic water while battling a swarm of mosquitoes, I'd find a 24 hour Circle K convenience store a short distance away on the outskirts of town.  Better late than never, I guess.  I leaned Tibor up against the glass and headed in for some coffee.  That was when I met a store clerk that had to have been bored out of his mind.  I'm assuming, at least.  How stimulating could the night shift at a podunk Circle K be?

He struck up a pleasant conversation as soon as I walked in.  He even made a fresh pot of coffee for me.  When I went to pay, we started talking about the unusually high prices of the different goods at the store and about how big chains swoop in, push out the smaller shops, pay less to their employees, and charge higher prices to their customers.  But that was a function of the 24-hours of operation.  A lot of hours to be running lights and paying employees.  A lot of hours of no customers walking through the doors to buy coffee.  So to keep those doors open for the very occasional late night customer, he had to work later for less and I was going to have to pay more.  The big winner will always the corporation and its shareholders, but at least I got coffee at 1am in the middle of nowhere.

While we talked, and we talked for a while as neither of us had anywhere to be any time soon, his girlfriend and her friend walked into the store.  They'd just gotten off of work around the corner and came over to say hi.  When they saw me standing their in my lycra, the questions started.  Where was I coming from?  Where was I going?  Does my butt get sore?  Was I scared to ride at night?  Was I scared of cars in general?  Did people harass me?  Did I get stopped by cops ever?  I said that nobody ever bothered me, really.  That the closest I had to trouble was getting buzzed by some hillbilly pickup truck in Alabama.  And that all the cops I'd run into on bike had been nothing but nice with the exception of a cranky cop in California a few years back who'd been a little gruff.

That was when they pointed out an obvious fact.  I was white.  They were black.  My never running into trouble had nothing to do with my bicycle, it was because I was a white guy on a bicycle.  I paused for a second to think, and then agreed.  They were completely right.  I told them so, and that I had no idea if they would be harassed by cops or other people.  I really didn't have to worry about that much as a white male in my mid-30s without face tattoos.

We shot this breeze for a while longer, with me encouraging the girlfriend's friend to get into distance riding as she'd expressed an interest, and a little after 2am I hit the road.  I was about 40 miles from Waffle House, meaning I could get there by 6am, eat a slow breakfast, and get to my Cayce home by 7 or 8am.  Then sleep.

Being a white guy in America really does come with a lot of advantages.  Especially if you're born into the middle class with a stable, non-dysfunctional family.  Anyone that argues otherwise is lying, deluded, or a real dope.  I'm not saying it's a guarantee of happiness or success.  I'm just saying, it's a really good opening roll.  But race, gender, nationality, sexual preference, etc. are all Earth-based social constructs used to hold some people down while boosting others up with zero regard to the content of their character and their personal capabilities.  Do you know what cares little for social constructs?  Physics!  Yup, the great equalizer!  All Physics knows is that 1,500lbs of metal, plastic, and rubber traveling erratically down US-1 at 70mph do not have the consciousness required to create reasons to dislike someone before they ever get to know them.  Physics knows that all humans squish the same when a great mass accelerates through their XYZ coordinates.

Based on previous discussions, it seems to me that most people feel that night riding is dangerous.  Yes, it's more difficult to see at night.  Yes, you're more likely to encounter tired or drunk drivers.  Yes, ghosts of kidnapped children will try to lure you into the woods and off a cliff.  But one nice thing about night driving is that you can tell what's going on behind you by the headlights that appear around you.  While riding on US-1, headlights that were still a good distance behind me were aimed very close to where I was on the shoulder instead of in the middle of their lane (where they belong).  I looked back and could see a sports car that was angling out of its lane, drifting towards the shoulder.  Not wanting to see where this was going, I pulled as far over on the shoulder as I could, entirely off the road to be safe.  I was pedaling in the grass when the car, still 50-100' back realized that I was up ahead and swerved hard to the left.  It then blew past me (I was plenty safe from where I stood), and fishtailed wildly for the next few hundred feet before pulling off at the closest exit and speeding off.  The driver was either drunk or distracted.  In either case, I was happy it was night time so I had some sort of warning.  Also happy he or she was now off the road.  My skin wasn't going to save me from that math equation.

By 5am, I was only five miles from Waffle House.  My legs felt like they were going to fall off and my stomach was rumbling.  I couldn't wait for some waffles.  Please note that if you ever find yourself in a position where Waffle House sounds good, it means you're delirious.  Waffle House is not good.  Ever.  I was clearly delirious.

I parked at 5:30 and walked into that Southern breakfast chain with its trailer park charm and ordered a waffle, hash browns (capped and peppered), and a coffee.  When I took my first sip of coffee, I was reminded of the same thing I am reminded of every time I eat at a Waffle House: Oh god, why did I think this was a good idea?  The coffee tasted like soot, the waffle was paper thin, and the hash browns were soggy.  Yup, I was in Waffle House.  It's the grossest, but I always go back.  Me and Biz.  I've even chipped a tooth at a Waffle House.  Why do I do this to myself?

After killing an hour in that booth, I headed back out.  I got to the front porch of my vacation home around 7am.  There didn't appear to be anyone awake, and the dogs were quiet, so I parked my bike and fell asleep on the porch.

Weak Kneed Trainees: Titanium Stabilizers Required

Day 6 - Sept. 21, 2016 - Indian Springs State Park > A.H. Stephens State Park

The RV guy was friendlier, well, far less suspicious at least, in the morning.  I never met his wife, so it may have been a Norman Bates situation in that mobile home, but in any case, his wife or him in a wig seemed to have cooled down a bit after a good night's sleep.  If getting out into nature can't take your edge off, maybe it's time for an entire life re-evaluation.  There is no shame in take some time off in a mental wellness facility for some real rest and relaxation.  They'd even have a chance to talk with professionals about how to make their overall life more enjoyable.  How to cope with the day to day without living in fear and on the brink.  I mean, trees can only do so much.

After giving him a peace offering of a Philly Bike Tours sticker (he could slap it on the golf cart parked behind his RV), I headed back to my site to pack up.  While breaking down my tent and stuffing my odds and ends into assorted sacks and panniers, the real campground hosts rolled up.  They were a retired couple, and the husband was quick to loudly apologize for the shenanigans of the night prior.  He said that the RV across the way housed two overzealous trainees who didn't quite get how everything worked yet.  I don't know if the trainees could hear him over their air conditioning, but it wasn't for lack of trying on the host husband's part.  They then said to swing up to their site before I left to pay, as they didn't have change in their golf cart.

Once I was all packed and hitched, I climbed back out of the park to their site.  Like the ACOE camps, the State Parks had been mostly designed with RVs in mind.  Getting out of camp was a slow crawl with tired legs.  An unnoticeable ascent for a car, though.  Should be some sort of effort-based discount for bikes, right?

The campground hosts gave me big smiles and waves as I came up.  As they made change for my overpriced campsite (more on that in a later post), we talked about camping and hosting.  They were avid campers and enjoyed hosting as an extension of that.  Apparently, Southern state parks could get quite competitive for hosting spots, as Canadians pour down to escape their cold weather later in the season.  This couple already had other plans for their winter, though.  They were going to be snowmobiling through the Black Hills once the winter set in.  It was safe to say they were far more adventurous than the trainees parked across the street.  How many folks do you know that spend their retirement blasting down snow-packed horse trails in southwestern South Dakota?  Heck, that even sounds a bit much for me, with the low temperatures and the high chances of slamming into a tree at 60mph.

What made this even more incredible to me was the fact that the whole time they recounted their past adventures and future plans to me, the husband was being held up by a pair of titanium legs.  He clearly didn't let them slow him down, and he wasn't shy about bringing them up.  Since he wasn't shy, I had questions.

Apparently he had lost them because of a fall.  Not directly from the fall, but due to complications resulting from the fall.  He'd fallen off of a ladder or building while working (I really wish I'd written this all down somewhere) a few years back, and had landed on his legs, breaking them both.  Based on a minuscule amount of research on my part, it sounds like he had a tibial shaft fracture, which sounds ungodly painful.  So the impact sent a lengthwise fracture up each of his tibia and/or fibula, requiring multiple surgeries to attempt to repair the damage.  After the first rounds of surgery, while he gained some mobility, the pain was still unbearable.  After the next few round, it was still terrible.  Eventually, it seemed he wouldn't be able to get rid of his pain without getting rid of his legs.  Presented with the choice between a life filled with pain and a life with metal legs, he took the metal legs.  And that was that.  No more pain, and with some rehab and practice, he was back at a point where, in his 60's, he was snowmobiling through South Dakota and camphosting around the country.  It was inspiring to say the least.  He saw the loss of two limbs as an obvious solution to a problem rather than as a life changing dismemberment and appeared to have zero regrets after making the decision.  Apparently "practical" and "fearless" don't need to be on opposite sides of the personality spectrum.

After saying my goodbyes and receiving well-wishes, I hit the road, only getting lost briefly as I tried to find Route 42.  Flovilla, GA isn't a bustling metropolis, but apparently it has a middle school that takes day trips to the state park.  It's impossible to seem like you're not lost when riding a bicycle full of orange bags past a classworth of 8th graders a second time in less than ten minutes.  No.  I'm not from these parts.

My day was spent mostly in or around state or federally protected land, something I wasn't used to down South.  I'd started in Indian Springs, moved through Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, over Lake Oconee (with its $500/night Ritz Carlton) which fed into the Oconee National Forest, and eventually reached A.H. Stephens State Park.  Georgia felt like a shift into a different kind of South.  The humidity lowered, the timezone changed, and State and National Parks started reappearing, which meant no more ACOEs.  My only fear with this shift was that there would be no more pickled eggs.  I'd miss that South.

A.H. Stephens was situated in Crawfordville, a town that could be missed mid-blink, which was were I made a pre-camp Dollar General run.  I don't know that I'd ever been inside a Dollar General prior to this tour, and I seemed to be stopping there every other day by now.  Stocked, I headed into camp.  I knew this experience would be better than the last one just based on the fact that the entrance bore a sign that read something like: "If arriving after 5pm, please check-in in the morning."  Oh good.  This State Park shouldn't have crazy town trainees up my ass.

I was loving these late summer Southern parks.  Per the usual, my site was in a very unpopulated campground.  There was one site occupied by someone on a motorcycle tour and another site much further off with an RV, but aside from that, I had the place to myself.  At the nearly $30 per night they were charging for tent campers, I'd have rather had the entire place to myself.  And maybe a nice hot tub waiting for me.  Was that too much to ask?

A.H. Stephen's State Park Bathroom (Courtesy of GAStateParks.org)

Before I wrapped up dinner, another car pulled into the campground loop, parking in front of the "Comfort Station" (bathroom).  It was a family of four, and they weren't there for camping.  We chatted for a bit, and it turned out that they were from Crawfordville and their electricity had recently been shut off.  Without a functional water heater, they were running up to the state park at night to make sure their kids could still take hot showers.  It was good to be reminded there are worse things in life than $28 campground fees...

I Moved

I was driven to Philly in 1999 with everything I needed in a single carload, and I'd be leaving the city the exact same way almost 18 years later.  A little longer of a drive to Seattle, though.

Having driven cross country a handful of times and ridden across once, I wasn't too interested in making stops along the way.  I just wanted to get to Seattle and have the drive be done with.  Another reason I didn't really want to make stops was that I didn't want to leave my car (with almost all of my worldly possessions) and the three bicycles racked to the back of it unattended for too long.  I'd only recently gotten Tibor back and I wasn't ready to lose him again.  So instead of making it a 2,800 mile sight seeing leisure tour, I turned it into a grueling marathon of discomfort.  I really don't recommend that approach.  I also don't recommend riding your bicycle on Interstate 70, but sometimes you don't really have a choice.

While I had made the decision to not make stops, I wasn't going to let that prevent me from seeing new sights.  That in mind, I chose the Northern Tier as my route.  I'd never been to North Dakota as an adult (but I love South Dakota), only been around Glacier National Park in Montana (and it was gorgeous), and had never been to northern Idaho (I heard it was like Montana).  There was no way around the boring start of PA > OH > IN > IL, but at least I was giving myself something to look forward to for the second half of the drive.

Google Maps said I had about 43 hours of driving ahead of me.  Looking at my overloaded Chevy HHR with an early-80's Sears X-Cargo roof rack and the three aforementioned bikes hanging from the rear, I assumed a few more hours would tack themselves on while driving below the speed limit in order to keep my RPMs out of the red.  At most, like 48 hours of driving, right?  I could knock that out in three days.  Totally.  Truckers do it all the time.  I hopped into my car a little before 10:30am EDT on Wednesday.

A little over 74 hours and 3 gallons of coffee later, I pulled into Seattle, my ankles swollen like a pregnant lady's and my roof top carrier an insect graveyard.  Exhausted and atrophied, I peeled myself off of the front seat, happy to know that the trip was finally over and I could finally elevate my legs.  I really had no idea the whole ankle thing could happen.  I'd been sleeping in my car at rest stops, and all that sitting must have trapped a ton of fluid down low.  Like wearing squishy ankle weights.

Bug splatter spanning ten states.

Aside from the ankle issue, here are some other things I learned:

• If you know anyone in Minneapolis, you'll see them no matter how briefly you're in the city.
• Pickled eggs are just as good in the far north as they are in the deep south.
• North Dakota is proud of its oil.  They have postcards saying so.
• Fargo is the halfway point between Philly and Seattle, that's why they're all sister cities.
• Ronna and Beverly are the best.
• There are Badlands in Montana, not just the Dakotas.
• Wisconsin has tall rock formations that I assumed could only be found around Utah, but I'd forgotten about glacial lakes.

Anyway, now that the drive is done, I'm a Seattleite.  Come visit.

Infinite Jest: Ain't that some BS

After almost two years of on and off reading, I finally finished Infinite Jest.  The first 400 pages were what took the most time, with sprawling world and character development that tried its hardest to shake my interest, resulting in multiple other books being read along the way.  But somewhere around that 40% mark, the story took off and really sucked me into the book's alternate reality.  The last week of the book was spent reading my days away with wide eyed intrigue at how this colossus of a story was going to wrap up.  With so many open ended storylines and less than one hundred pages to go, I knew I was in for a whirlwind finale.  And now that I've finally finished those last few pages, I can soundly say that Infinite Jest was possibly the most unsatisfying books I've ever read.  Rarely will I say this about a book, but I almost wish that I had never picked it up.

In summary...

There are thousands of reviews and critiques of this book.  It's been hailed as post modern genius and it's been derided as a liberal arts love note to AA.  In the foreword, David Eggers calls it, "drum tight and relentlessly smart," but others may be more inclined to call it braggadociously verbose and heavy handed.  This book, like all books, is open to subjective discourse, so as a brief nod to DFW, you can, like, think whatever you want.  Personally, I think that this book doesn't goddamn end, so I don't really care how masterfully crafted, intelligently insightful, or imaginatively told it is if it's not a finished product.  If a story can't be wrapped up in 1,100 pages, just keep writing and I'll read it once it's complete.  What's another 200 pages?

Before continuing down that path, I just want to say that I can see what critics and literarians love(d) about this book.  DFW is an amazing writer.  The world development that managed to be both expansive and fine-grained, the floating narration with character dependent affects, the exciting and interesting storylines, the introspection and thoughtfulness, the waits and reveals, the character development both forwards and backwards.  It pulled me in and I loved it.  I was so invested in the lives of these people that I wanted nothing more than to see how their intertwined follies wrapped up in a messy little bow.

But being pulled so deeply into the story and its players made the non-ending all the more aggravating.  Why spend so much time building this world and narrative to just seemingly stop mid story?  Is that the joke?  Is the joke on me for reading for so long?  For the sake of those that can't be dissuaded from making the time investment, I'm going to put my list of dangling thread gripes in a white font, so if you want spoilers, just highlight the space that appears empty below:

• Gately - He's in his hospital bed, as physically incapacitated as he had been at the end of the dilaudid binge that resulted in Fax's death (presumably in a horrific manner), suffering through a clear message of damned if you do/if you don't.  But that message seems to have been pretty clear throughout the whole book.  Why not end on a stronger message or at least with some sort of character closure?


• Hal - He's losing his mind on his way back to the Y.G., with an unsubtle message around drugs not being bad for everyone, and in some cases, a life/mind saver.  Why don't we get to see the climactic shift?  I would've loved to hear in Hal's words, not in my own.


• JVD - Were the lights a reference to an Ennet Houser accidentally finding the Entertainment and then wiping out the whole house?  Same goes for Gentle, Tine, and crew.  Was that final viewing infiltrated?


• Marathe/Steeply - So... not wrapping that up in any way?  No one is going after the casket?


• Mad Stork/Wraith - Why introduce the wraith so late in the book to then never really use him again?


• Darkness - Was he the telepath moving things around?


• E.T.A. - Was there a mass murder at that final hob knob soiree?


• The Entertainment - I like that the Entertainment wasn't explored too deeply, but I would've really loved to see some sort of personality type that was immune.  My assumption was that the clinically depressed would be safe from it, and that would be some sort of reveal.  I guess the Entertainment was just another form of addiction.  Oh well.


• Orin - Should I be surprised that the only character to receive proper closure is Orin?  What could have been more cathartic to DFW than to horrifically murder the symbolic manifestation of every character trait he so deeply loathed in another person (assumption on my part)?  Just try and kick your way out of that one, O.  That turn was about as blunt as renaming North America to O.N.A.N.


• Misc. - There were more open threads, like Pemulis' future, the Mario/C.T. reveal that went unexplored, John Wayne, Stice's forehead/face skin in relation to telekinesis, and more, but I think I hit the big ones.  

Maybe the joke wasn't on me.  Maybe the joke was on an entire industry and I just happened to be a casual bystander turned collateral damage.  Maybe DFW tricked the entire publishing and literature industry, spending a decade laughing as they paraded down the street naked in the finery, bragging about their understanding of the unfinished garment.  I don't know.  Maybe I just don't get it and should keep re-reading it until I get it.  I'm not going to do that.  If you get it, don't explain it to me.  I'm done with this book.

Fairy Shrimp: What are you trying to tell me?

Fairy Shrimp, aka Anostraca, are weird little critters.  Weird not so much in their appearance, as animals at the bottom of the ocean are far stranger, nor in mechanism of survival, as locusts do that whole seven year thing that I find bonkers.  Think about how much can happen in seven years!  Say you're a little larva that buries itself deep in the ground and then seven years later you decide to come back up for air, but you can't.  Try as you might, you keep gnawing and pushing, but the dirt seems too hard to penetrate.  What happened?  Oh, that's right, progress happened.  You now live under a highway whose pavement was laid three years prior and are going to die before you figure out how to get around it.  Dumbass cicada.

No, Fairy Shrimp are weird because they send such a mixed message symbolically!  What are you trying to tell me, Fairy Shrimp?  What's your deal?

I should probably pump the brakes for a minute.  Ok, here's a little background.  In the precambrian era, the ocean ran through parts of the Pacific and Mountain timezones.  Eventually these waters receded leaving lakes that were reduced to ponds then puddles and finally to waterless deserts.  This is why Utah has such awesome natural rocky structures and why the Black Rock Desert is so alkali.  With Utah, arches and hoodoos were carved by flowing water, and in the Black Rock, living organism turned into dead organic matter with high alkaline content.  This is why skin can seem to get burned by the dust in the Black Rock Desert.  High pH, Low pH, All Bad pH.

Now that we've established the Black Rock Desert is really just a dried out lake bed, we can move onto Fairy Shrimp, the critters that once thrived in the now desiccated lake.  Anostraca are non-domesticated Sea Monkeys (Brine Shrimp).  And just like Sea Monkeys, Fairy Shrimp are able to maintain themselves in an egg state for years (up to eight, or so I hear) without dying out.  But unlike brine shrimp, they aren't sold to children in this dormant state.  No, instead they lie just below the top soil, if you want to call it that, of post-lake drylands.  Those eggs lie there in waiting, resisting the heat of the sun and dry of the air, in the hopes that one day, rain will drench the barren landscape, providing them with enough swimming room to hatch and get their freak on with another Fairy Shrimp before the sun turns their happy home into a fine mist floating through the air.

Actual Size

And that's exactly what's been going on for centuries.  Those little buggers lay dormant for years, heavy rains eventually hit the desert, they hatch, they feed, they breed, they lay more eggs, they die, the water evaporates, and the cycle starts anew.  This takes me back to the start.  What are they trying to tell us with their life's story?  Is it a tale of resilience?  A story with a moral rooted in the importance of persistence in an unpredictable, uncaring, inhospitable environment?  Proof that life is important and strong enough to overcome any obstacle given time and patience?  Or is it an example of the futility and meaninglessness of life?  Their lives are brief and they accomplish nothing other than creating more brief, meaningless lives.  Are you trying to tell me that life is hard but entirely worth the struggle or that to spend time struggling is foolish and that life is an unfair joke?  Seriously!  Don't leave me hanging like this!  Ugh, stupid Fairy Shrimp and your cruel ambiguity.  Fine.  Take your secrets to your grave and see if I care.

The Parable of the Three Water Filters

I was recently on the phone (talking, like, using my voice) with a friend of mine from Moab, and during our conversation, she reminded me of the famous local fable of the three water filters.  I couldn't remember the tale in its entirety, so I called the Grand Country Public Library and had a librarian track down the ancient, sun bleached scroll on which it was written.  From there in the Artifacts and Relics room in the basement, she read these words:

One summer day, under the sweltering desert sun, three weary travelers came upon the same hidden spring.  As they sat down upon the large rock covering the tiny oasis, they discussed the virtues of each of their water filtration systems.

The first traveler was a young man in his 20's, and he carried a gravity based water filtration system.  He stated that his water filter was the best because it required the least amount of effort.  All he needed to do was fill the dirty water bag with one mighty scoop and then hang the filtration system from a nearby rock, allowing gravity to handle passing the water through the filter to the clean bag.

The second traveler was a bearded man in his 50's, and he carried a standard, hand operated, backpacking filter. He claimed that the young man was wrong, and that his water filter was the best because it was the fastest.  Sure, it required more effort with all of the pumping, but the work was worth it, as his filter was 10x faster than the gravity filter.

The third traveler, a man by the name of Troy, also carried a standard, hand operated, backpacking filter.  His filter was different from the old man's, though.  Not in model, as they were the exact same, but in operation speed, as Troy's was only 2x faster than the gravity filter.  He said that he wasn't sure if his water filter was best, but he at least knew it was better than that slow-ass gravity filter.  He also had his suspicions that it might be better than the old man's due to some basic knowledge of how filtration through dense, semi-porous rock worked.

The first traveler died of dehydration on that rock while waiting for his clean bag to fill.  The second traveler (also) died of dehydration a few days later when he succumb to Giardia induced diarrhea, as his filter was missing a gasket and was not really filtering anything, hence the speed of which he was so boastful.  The third traveler, hydrated and in good health, eventually found his way back to civilization and lived happily ever after.

Moral: Water filters should pump slowly, as proper filtration takes time.  But seriously, gravity?  That's soooooo slow!

Some say that isn't a fable at all. That it's a true story you can still hear faintly echoing off canyon walls if you listen closely enough.  Still others say, "Yeah, that's a lie.  No one died.  The slow filter part was spot on, and the guy with the missing gasket is lucky he never got sick drinking that filthy, standing water, but other than that, this story was parabolic at best and braggartly at worst."  As it's an ancient fable, I guess we'll never know the truth...

This is the filter I use.  I love this filter and have used it all over, never once getting sick.  Please notice the red gasket that's faintly visible near the bottom of the main filter cylinder, just above the widened threaded bottom.  You need that.
(Photo courtesy of MSR)

Cryptobiotic Soil: Watch your step!

Last week, I spent most of a post complaining about people not issuing proper warnings, and in doing so, putting their viewers at risk.  In the days since, I've realized that there was an important safety warning that I should have issued prior to writing about the desert canyons of Southern Utah.  Not your safety, as I've written about nothing remotely dangerous to humans, but for the desert's safety.  When hiking or camping in that region of the country, with its harsh sun, whipping wind, and towering stone walls, it's easy to forget how fragile all ecosystems really are, and that every step you take could potentially set the environment back decades, centuries, or millennia.  In the case of those dry, stony wilds, there is a teeny tiny microorganism that is (almost) unnoticeably holding the desert together, and if you're not careful, you could easily wipe out vast colonies while dragging your tired feet through the sand.

A few days back (post-wise), I was in the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.  Sand dunes are the result of wind having free reign to do whatever it wants with loose sand and fine dirt.  The biggest reason that rolling dunes don't dominate this whole region (as there is enough fine dirt to make many miles of dunes) is a fine crust holding much of the soil in place, made up of opportunistic bacteria living semi-symbiotically with moss and lichen.  This crust, called Cryptobiotic Soil (Crypto, for short), acts as a natural scab preventing the desert from hemorrhaging sand into the surrounding environment.  Here's a picture of what it looks like:

When I say "Crypt" you say "O"!  Crytp! O! Crypt! O!

In the above photo, you can see little Crypto neighborhoods surrounded by loose sand rivers, like a desiccated micro-Venice.  Without those little Crypto pockets, this entire photo would just be of loose sand.  Then, after years of wind gusts and rain, it would just be stone.  Now instead of a few square feet of Crypto, imagine acres of it, with juniper trees, cacti, and Mormon Tea plants growing throughout.  Crypto is everywhere in this landscape, and if it weren't, there wouldn't be a landscape to hold together.

So what is it?  Crypto is created by cyanobacteria that, when wet, move upwards in soil leaving a slime trail.  This trail then hardens in the sun, starting the scab, which allows for moss and lichen growth to follow.  The cyanobacteria then lay dormant until the next rain fall, at which point they start moving around again, forming a newer, higher (fractions of a millimeter) level of crust, which more moss and lichen can grow on.  It is a very slow process spanning centuries.  The highest I've seen in some larger Crypto cities could be measured in inches, which equates to hundreds of years of that bacterial scab holding the sand below it in place.

Aside from providing erosion protection, Crypto also performs the important task of fixing nitrogen in the soil.  For all of you non-farmer out there, sand does not make for the best potting soil.  Yet pinyon pines and juniper trees seem to pop up effortlessly out of the sandy, waterless soil.  What's their secret?  I'll never tell...  No, it's Crypto.  The secret is Crypto.  Aside from making crusty scab slime, the bacteria leaves yummy yummy fixed nitrogen for the plants that want to grow in the stabilized soil.

Now that you know how important Crypto is, and how the Utah desert would be a barren wasteland without it, you're probably wondering how you could do your part to protect it.  That's very responsible of you!  The biggest thing you can do is just leave it alone.  If you walk on Crypto, that's it, you've demolished decades (or centuries) of growth, loosened the soil in and around it, and have condemned it to death by wind gust.  To really hammer that home, here's info from a great article by Jayne Belnap of the USGS:

Because of such slow recolonization of soil surfaces by the different crustal components, underlying soils are left vulnerable to both wind and water erosion for at least 20 years after disturbance (Belnap and Gillette, 1997). Because soils take 5,000 to 10,000 years to form in arid areas such as in southern Utah (Webb, 1983), accelerated soil loss may be considered an irreversible loss. Loss of soil also means loss of site fertility through loss of organic matter, fine soil particles, nutrients, and microbial populations in soils (Harper and Marble, 1988; Schimel et al., 1985). Moving sediments further destabilize adjoining areas by burying adjacent crusts, leading to their death, or by providing material for "sandblasting" nearby surfaces, thus increasing wind erosion rates (Belnap, 1995; McKenna-Neumann et al., 1996).

Scary stuff, right?  So what can you do to help, aside from not visiting the Utah desert?  The easiest thing you can do is: Stay on Trail.  Crypto does not grow on established trails due to the amount of foot traffic they see.  Staying on trail may seem lame, but there's nothing lame about protecting the environment.  And if someone calls you lame for caring, let me know and I'll have a word with them.

That said, if you are unable to stay on trail, here are some other places Crypto doesn't grow.

• Washes - Washes form after a rain storm.  Crypto can't survive in a wash, since it will be swept away every successive storm.  Walk in washes.


• Exposed Rock - Crypto requires soil for the cyanobacteria to move around.  Exposed rocks that don't have soil won't have Crypto.  Walk on those rocks.


• Plants - Oof, this is a tough one and I'm sure fists are already being shaken in my general direction.  Avoid this one as much as you can, since you'll still be doing environmental damage.  That said, the desert is full of scrubby brush.  Scrub brush is a lot more resilient than Crypto.  If you have to choose between one or the other, step on the plant.  It'll bounce back, Crypto won't.

Ok.  I feel like that was a pretty good PSA.  If you didn't click on that link above, you should.  It's a quick read, very informative, and makes no buts about the importance of Crypto.  Here, let me give you the link again.  

So the next time you're in the desert, be Crypto aware.  Don't step on it, don't bother it, don't even look at it funny.  Oh, but you can pee on it: When moistened, the cyanobacterial filaments become active, moving through the soils and leaving a trail of the sticky, mucilaginous sheath material behind. (Belnap)

Rainy Day Riding

It rained all day today.  It rained all day in the above photo too.  It sure does rain a lot sometimes.

Oh, how I hate the driving rain,
The blowing, slowing, soaking rain,
Blinding sheets and eyeball strain,
Frozen skin and muscle pain.

Wind numbed digits start to shake,
Churning knees begin to ache.
Maybe I should take a break?
Rest won't make a fraud or fake...

Freezing gusts drive me insane,
Stormy thoughts torment my brain.
Frozen flesh still burns with pain?
Why am I on bike, not in a train?

My mind begins to darkly learn,
It's only worse at every turn,
No escape for me from icy burn,
No warm respite, for which I yearn.

But through the blowing, slowing rain,
I find a calm I can't explain,
A cooler head returns to reign,
My hopeful spirits back again.

It's how it goes when out on tour,
Wind can blow and rain can pour,
A happy ride sometimes a chore,
Until the joy returns once more.

Muscles mend and knees unsprain,
Struggles leave, and strengths remain,
One day to suffer, a life to gain,
Come to think... I can't complain.

Tricycles Gangs

I was riding down to South Philly via the South Street Bridge today when I passed a guy on an ape hanger chopper.  I'm not that fast, he was just going slow due to traffic.  Traffic that's going to get a whole lot worse once the new Roberts Center for Pediatric Research is completed.  That's when things are going to get bonkers.

Anyway, I passed this guy on his hog, and kept going.  Then he passed me once the light changed.  Then I passed him at the next light.  Then eventually we met, with him stopped at the front of a long line waiting for the light to change at 22nd and South.  Stopped at that light, I got a pretty good look at him.  He was a stereotypically, tough-looking biker-dude.  In his late 40's or early 50's, he looked like he'd probably seen and thrown a punch or two.  Based on his sun faded jacket, he'd probably also put a fair amount of mileage on that bike.  I'm assuming that whole time he was checking out my sweet Ross cruiser and thinking about how tough I was too.

As we sat there, a pair of two other motorcycles rolled northbound on 22nd.  As they reached the intersection, they slowed and eyed up the guy next to me.  He eyed them in return.  Then they made hand gestures at him.  He then returned his own hand gesture; a standard Italian, closed-hand, wassamattawityouse gesture, accompanied by a frowny scowl (see below).

Eh!  Paesan!

After that gesture, the two guys rolled through the intersection and stopped at the northwest corner to talk to this guy.  This was it!  I was going to see a street fight!  A motorcycle gang street fight!  This was going to be awesome!

But there was no fight.  Instead, one of the two guys yelled over, "Hey, you want to ride with us?"  To which the guy next to me replied, "No, I have to ride to 4th St!"  And that was when I burst out laughing.  I'd looked at these bikers as macho tough guys, when I should have been looking at them like the grown up children we all are.  "Hey, do you wanna ride bikes down to the park?"  "Nah, my mom said I gotta get home before dark or I'm gonna be grounded."  "Aw, come on, stop being such a dweeby."  "I don't wanna be grounded!  We're supposed to go to a Phillies game this weekend!  They're giving away mini baseball bats at the gate!"

Apparently it's not that big of a jump from adolescent wheelie kids to adult biker gangs.  They just want to ride bikes and hang out with their friends.  I'll have to remember that the next time a motorcycle blows by me revving it's engine.  That loud rev isn't the decibel equivalent of a peacock's tail as I had always assumed; it's a sonic plea for friendship and camaraderie.  It's a call to the other vroom vrooms out there: "You wanna ride bikes?"

Jigsaw Puzzles: Making Brains Gooder

After Capitol Reef came Moab, where I would be meeting Quentin.  I got there early, though.  I whole day early at that.  What ever is a person to do in Moab, UT for one whole day?  Visit Arches National Park?  Rent a mountain bike and tackle Poison Spider?  Psh... it was a no-brainer.  Jigsaw puzzles.  I was going to do some jigsaw puzzles.

When's the last time you did a puzzle?  Not a crossword or sudoku, but an actual 1000 piece, make the picture appear, no that piece doesn't go there so stop trying to make it fit, jigsaw puzzle.  Do you even remember the last time?  We did them all the time as kids, (You all remember those puzzles.  Disguised as fun games, they secretly taught us all about the alphabet, farm animals, and spacial relationships.), but then as we grew older, we ditched them, thinking there was no more to be gained from the assembly of their interlocking pieces.  For shame, all of us!  Puzzles are still important!

According to one article that I've read from a biased source:

Research is now showing the quantifiable benefits of carrying this activity into adulthood... jigsaw puzzles and other mind-flexing activities can actually lead to a longer life expectancy, a better quality of life, and reduce our chances of developing certain types of mental illness, including memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s Disease (by an amazing third). 

But how does this simple toy accomplish such amazing things? Most likely it is due to the simultaneous use of both sides of the brain. The left brain hemisphere, our analytical side, sees all of the separate pieces and attempts to sort them out logically. The right brain hemisphere, our creative side, sees the “big picture” and works intuitively. Both types of thinking are required in order to successfully piece the puzzle together. In exercising both sides of the brain at the same time, we create actual “connections” between the left and right sides, as well as connections between individual brain cells. These connections increase our ability to learn, to comprehend, and to remember. In addition, completing a puzzle, or even just the successful placement one piece, encourages the production of dopamine, a brain chemical that increases learning and memory. 

The connections made while working on jigsaw puzzles aren’t limited to our brain cells. Exercising both sides of the brain simultaneously also allows the brain to move from a Beta state, the wakeful mind, into an “Alpha” state, the same mental state experienced while dreaming. The Alpha state is where we tap into our subconscious mind. Jigsaw puzzles naturally induce this state of creative, focused meditation, where connections can be made on deeper levels.

Woah!  Who would've thought?  So much science, right?  And their sources are totally credible.  If you don't believe me, click on the citation links provided with that article.  What do you mean neither of those links worked?  Try clicking again, I'll wait.  Still didn't work?  Well, who needs sources anyway?!  In any case, you should keep reading below where they talk about jigsaw puzzles being a metaphor for life.  That's some deep stuff.

But really, what isn't a metaphor for life?  To prove it, I'm going to open up a book and flip randomly and then blindly put my finger down on a word.  Here goes: Page 111, "drink".  Ok, "drink"... Give me a minute... Ok, here goes: Life is like a drink in that you need to take it slow to properly enjoy it.  If you rush through either, you'll miss out on the subtle nuances of each sip/day.  When you're young/have a full glass, you want to grow up so quickly/drink as much as you can, but gulping down life experiences/drinks rather than savoring/learning from them will leave you wishing you had better used that freedom that comes with a lack of adult responsibility/full glass of beverage.  BOOM!  Everything is a metaphor for life!  Eat it, JigsawJungle.com!

Ok, let's get back to this.  While I was in Moab, I did a few with a rad Moabite and was reminded of how much fun jigsaw puzzles are.  The strategies (Edges first, obvs, but then what?  Sort by color?  By shape?  By section?).  The anticipation (I can almost see the mountain!).  The frustration (Did we lose a piece?  How am I not finding that piece?  It should be obvious!  It's neon freakin' green.).  The discoveries (Oh, right.  Colors are interpreted relative to their surroundings.  Neon freakin' green isn't quite as neon without it's surrounding neon pieces.).  And ultimately, the satisfaction that comes with patience and persistence (This puzzle has been conquered!  We are a team of geniuses!  How is it 4am?).

All that said, you should go do a puzzle tonight.  Start with a nice 500 piece puzzle and see how it goes.  I bet your brain will thank you in the morning.

I was ready to murder this sadistic ladybug puzzle by hour 6.