Posts Tagged → being a michigander-burgher-ite

The Birds & The Weeds

For some reason, I was up at 6:15 on Tuesday morning. I really don’t know why; all I know is that the longer I laid there, the more I thought about other, more constructive things I could be doing. That’s quite a change from two months ago when I was on the cusp of filling out my application to be a professional bed layer. A position I feel I would have excelled at!

I’d like to give big props to the O.G. Mindbender and Mindbender II (The Wrath of Kahn) for getting me out of bed and back feeling like myself again.

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Over the Moor

Imagine, if you will, the opening credit montage of an early 1990’s British crime series on BBC America. I, the unassuming sheep farmer/pub-goer turned amateur photographer/mystery sleuth, make my way across the green moors of the English countryside with a jaunty spring in my step and a small film camera around my neck as my rambunctious border collie runs ahead doing border collie type stuff. I stop and look out at the rolling green hills in front of me; the camera pans the scene in my gaze before zooming in on my face and a twinkle in my all-knowing sleuthly eye as I light my pipe filled with 100% legal in the State of Michigan kush tobacco and then take a photo with my little jank camera.

Now imagine that absolutely none of that happened.

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Talking GAS*

*Gear Acquisition Syndrome

On Things Not Really Cycling, Again

Back about five years ago, I had a Nikon D7100 DX camera, and for reasons that I can’t remember, I sold it. I THINK it was because I started getting into the Fuji X System and thought I would switch to full-on Fuji. As it turns out, I sold all my Fuji gear and went all-in on Nikon Full Frame. Going the opposite direction of most photographers and crap picture takers such as myself.

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Mindbender and Me

MINDBENDER II (THE WRATH OF KHAN)1

“Here, take this. It’s a mixture of horse placenta, baby spit, and the toenail of a sodomized goat, manufactured in the basement of a New Jersey pharmaceutical company/suburban home.”

ME

“Will it slow my metabolism down even further and cause me to gain even more weight like all the other shit has?”

MINDBENDER II (THE WRATH OF KHAN)

“No, no, it was weight neutral in trials; it will just help with your want to leave the house. And who knows, it might even get you back on your bike or in the woods with your camera. Trade: Phenodihydrochloride benzelex. Street: The embalmer”

ME

“Balls. I’ll swallow it and run a mile.”

Me grabs handful of colorful pills and shoves them down his throat.

MINDBENDER II (THE WRATH OF KHAN)

“Not those pills, THESE pills, those are my M&Ms, you stupid nipple. By the way, you still owe your $30 copay from our last session.”

Me proceeds to write a check with milk chocolate—now freed from its hard, colorful candy shell— smeared across his chubby face.

ME

“What’s today’s date again?”2

— SCENE —

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Feeling Nifty

Somehow it’s Wednesday, and I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’ve done since my last unneeded post. Oh yeah, nothing. Well, at least nothing all that physical, that’s for sure.

To be honest, I have been struggling to find the want to leave the house for anything other than food and beer over the last couple of months, but in recent days the combination of warmer temps (hello 45˚, yo!!), sun, and an appointment with Mindbender II (The Wrath of Kahn) to change some shit up has helped to point me in the direction of unfucking myself and mild—but acceptable—increased motivation and energy levels.

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Blinded by The Light

“Blinded by the light,
Woke up like a douche3 in the middle of the night.”

— Blinded by The Light, by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

After days, nay weeks, of being a morbidly obese, mentally drained housebound hermit, I ventured out into the world on Friday morning for a snowshoe at the Forest Hill Nature Area. Hooray for being a functioning adult.

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Winter Continues

There’s really nothing like waking up to a fresh February snowstorm. Coffee tastes a bit better, breakfast is just a little more relaxing, and the urge to angrily shit on the floor like a caged ape and throw it at the first person that walks in front of the house is just a tad more indomitable.

If you think that throwing feecus is adjectivally extreme, just be glad I didn’t venture into the messy masturbatory world of caged primates and/or their evolutionary cousin, the overweight housebound adult male human in winter hibernation mode, AKA Auto-erotic-hibernation.4

That was probably more weather-inspired poo and goo talk than you or anyone other than me wanted. I digress.

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Lumbered Questions

Greetings, fellow Soilers, today I bring you Reader Mail!

Why? Because I got nothing else to talk about. Yeah, I could talk more about bikes and parts like I did in the last post, but in reality, the (higher-end) retail bike biz might not even be a thing in a few months, given 2020’s perfect shit storm of COVID, factories moving due to Trump tariffs, and unforeseen consumer demand. Not to sound like a fucking QAnon Qonspiracy Qook, but if you want a bike and it’s in stock, BUY IT NOW!! Same with parts.

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