As I get older and my family more complex, I find that going camping is a huge god damned production. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy camping - I really do - but just check out this list of stuff we take:

To buy
Gallon Zip Loc bags
Batteries - 2 D, 1 brick
Firewood
Lunch Saturday - Something easy
Dinner - Mountain Pies
Bread
Pizza sauce
Cheese
Pepperoni
Butter
Breakfast Sunday - Eggs (beaters), bacon, juice
Lunch Sunday - Cold cuts, chips
Bread
Turkey
Mayo
Tomato
Lettuce
Potato or Sun chips
Snack - marshmallows
Diet Coke
Bottled water
Ice

To pack
Tent
Chairs
Flashlights
Sleeping bags
Pan
Cooler
Sleeping pads
Bikes
Draftmaster
Hatchet
Lighter
Newspaper
Mallet
Shovel
Gareth’s food and meds for two days
Gareth’s suction, catheters, and charger
Toys/books for Gareth
Diapers, wipes, et cetera
Clothes for the three of us
Swimsuits
Towels
Biking bag, water bottles, trike cushion
Kayak and related gear
Camera and batteries (recharge them)
trash bags
paper towels
bug spray
Toiletries
Sunscreen

Part of me wishes that our camping could be simplified to a tent, some trail mix, and a good pair of hiking boots, but the reality is that we are suburbanite flatlanders who require some level of comfort while recreating in the woods. One time, I even looked at prices for pop-up campers. Doing so filled me with the same sense of dread as shopping for a mini-van, but I know that, at some point, a camper will be more and more appealing to me.

A few weeks ago, Circuit City was selling Kingdom Hearts II for $10. Since it had a Tron world in it, I couldn’t resist purchasing it.

But holy hell, I started playing it and it took me five hours just to get to the title screen and start the actual game. Now that I’m there, the game is a lot more enjoyable, but that was quite a hurdle.

Having never before played a Square Enix game, I had to come into work and ask other folks if all their games started this way. Turns out no, KHII just has the longest intro ever.

28.5 miles, downhill speed of 36MPH.

I’m so pissed that I didn’t break 30 miles.

Within the past 7 days, I have pedaled 50 miles. 20 on Saturday, 15 on Sunday, 8 on Tuesday, and 7 today. I would have expected that, at some point, my legs would be sore, but so far, they’re just fine. Chances are good that I’ll do another 7-8 on Friday, taking my total to 58 miles.

It’s amazing how much of a motivator a recumbent rally can be. I had always avoided road rides because of traffic fears, but after two days of strength in numbers riding, I have now lost my fear and don’t have a problem taking the lane at a busy intersection (such as Whitehall Rd/R26) even when I’m sitting lower than the bumper of the truck idling directly behind my rear wheel.

Speaking of that rally, Gareth was along for the ride when we did the 20 mile route. He was good for that first hour, but when we hit mile 11 on the way back, he lost it. I don’t think he’s ever been so pissed at me before. Turns out that two hours is a long time for a child to sit on a bike, regardless of the comfort of the seat. Lesson learned.

Following up a bit on yesterday’s post, I once was trapped in a van with somebody who was incredibly religious and figured out a way that God gave the okay to shoot people with a glock if need be.

This guy’s wife also liked sex “on top”, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, we got into a discussion regarding God, faith, evolution, and atheism. He was doing his best to figure out why it was that I didn’t believe in God when, at one point in my life, I was doing puppet ministry and was the favorite teen in the local Methodist church.

When we somehow got to the death of my father, he pounced: “Do you blame God for your father’s death?”

“No, I blame his 30 years of chain smoking. He died of lung cancer.”

In fact, I never once thought, “Why, God, why?” It was so patently obvious that my dad poisoned himself over a very long period of time and suffered the consequences. I’m not saying I don’t miss him, but I’m sure not about to try to place blame elsewhere.

The same will probably happen soon with my mother who is overweight, diabetic, suffers heart palpitations, and continues to smoke. No anger need be directed towards the heavens if that passing comes to be.

During our conversation, we were hitting on creationism vs. evolution. I found myself saying the following: “Have you ever thought that maybe evolution actually happened and was set in motion by God? If you go with that slant, then we can all just agree to study evolution and not worry so much about its point of origin.” Yeah… I went and applied intelligent design “theory” before even having heard the phrase. Go me. I differed a bit from ID in the fact that I was suggesting that evolution still took its own course after its supernatural jumpstart. I wasn’t suggesting that humanity was a known goal.

My point, really, was to make this guy think that maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t thought about all the possibilities. That, to me, is the first step in free thinking. Our conversation didn’t have any long term impact on him, though. The guy drove like a maniac, so I wasn’t keen to get stuck in the van with him too often in order to reinforce these new thought patterns. Plus, he had a glock.

When I was a teenager, I attempted the same thing within my own family. I one day asked my at the time very Catholic mother, “How do you know that the Bible wasn’t written by Satan just to mess with you?” The reaction to that was not pleasant. Role playing games were thrown out, heavy metal music and paraphernalia was destroyed, and I was no longer allowed to skip church. Had she stopped for a moment, she could have realized that such a scenario relies upon the existence of Satan which, ostensibly, means there’s a God to which we would have to answer regardless. But no, the reaction was that such a thing was not possible because the Bible is the word of God. And there was no questioning that.

That was the moment when I stopped believing in God.

I put on a fine act for several years after that, counseling at church camps, making puppets talk about Jesus, joining the friggen choir. I professed to be “born again”, attended Christian music concerts, and was active in youth groups. At one point, a minister told me he thought I was destined to be a minister myself. Mostly, I just wanted attention. What kind of godly child would have his camp kids wear bras under their shirts all day only to end the evening with a rendition of “The Bra-dy Bunch” wherein they remove said bras and fling them over their heads? (And, equally terrible, I had to cajole female campers into lending them to us.)

Hmmm, probably shouldn’t have admitted to that last bit.

I ran into a cousin of mine while picking up photos at Wal-Mart last night. This particular cousin, without fail, always tells me that the resemblance between my father and me is stunning. He mentions this largely because my father has been dead for 17 years, half of my life.

As we talked about how our respective families were doing, how our jobs were, et cetera, he stopped to say that my father was likely looking down at me from above, proud of all that I’ve done.

I smiled, nodded politely, and muttered, “Yep.” What I really wanted to say was, “Well, I don’t think there’s an afterlife, so he’s probably just dead. And the only person that I really need to be proud of me is myself.”

Don’t get me wrong. Folks that know me know I’m an attention whore so it seems like I’m constantly fishing for approval, but as I explained to Brandy last night, that’s really a case of running around saying “Look how awesome I am!” and not “Do you think I’m awesome?”

Anyway, there’s usually little sense in making somebody feel bad for trying to be nice, so I let those things slide. But for the record, I feel the same way about people that say “Bless you” when I sneeze. I don’t really require a blessing every time I clear dust from my nasal passage. Nobody blesses me when I fart or belch.

Speaking of atheism, I finished reading Hitchens’ “God is not Great” last night. My one line review: not nearly as intolerable as Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”. I’ve now moved onto lighter reading - the rise and fall of Commodore computing.

Well, illegal to sell, anyway.

A bill has been introduced in New Jersey to prohibit the sale of bicycles that use wheel diameters of 20″ and have quick release levers.

According to the legislation, over 100 cases of injured and disfigured New Jersey youths have been attributed to the absolute horror that is the quick release!

Unfortunately, lots of recumbents use 20 inch wheels (or, rather, 451 and 406mm wheels) with quick releases since it means not having to carry a wrench to change flats.

It’ll be interesting to see how recumbent sellers in the Garden State deal with this if it becomes law.

http://www.guidehorse.org/sneakers_horses.htm

I don’t know what to make of this.

About three times a week, I do an 8.5 mile round trip from Pine Hall Road to West Aaron Drive during my lunch hour. The route I take goes through Tudek Park in both directions so that I can enjoy throwing my rear wheel around the sharp corners of the gravel Tudek paths.

There was a bit of a field trip at the park today, and it just so happened that I really had to stop to use the bathroom.

Four different kids ended up on my trike (per my permission) and a whole crowd of them came over to gawk and ask questions. One asked me why I rode a trike instead of a regular bike. There were two answers. The first was, “Because everybody else rides those kinds of bikes. I wanted to ride something different.” It was an honest answer. The other answer was, “Because I can ride this for hours and miles and it doesn’t hurt my butt.”

It wasn’t long before I got the dreaded “How much does this cost?” question. When I revealed the answer, one little girl dropped her jaw and said, “How can you afford that?” “I have a job.”

Eventually, I really did have to use the bathroom, so I appointed one child to guard the trike while I used the facilities. After my rest break, back on the trike I went to complete the apex of my route.

All the kids thought the trike was cool, and a couple said they’d like to have one, but the price point really is the kicker. Recumbents are just too expensive, especially considering that most kids will grow out of them quickly.