My 360 coffin arrived from Microsoft two days ago.  With my console lovingly bundled inside, I took it to UPS for shipping to Texas where it will hopefully be repaired to a working state.  In the meantime, I’ll have to console (ha ha) myself with the Wii and Zelda, no matter how slow that game feels.

There are times when I feel I’ve hit the heights of nerdery, when I look at family, friends, and acquaintances wondering why it is I am so very far removed from sharing their priorities in life. My home and office are decorated with objects that would drive a 10 year old child into raving lust. I am better versed in videogames and cartoons than I am in literature and wine. There isn’t a single day that passes without a reminder that I am not the same adult as the other adults I know.

But then I see things like this and realize that I’m far more normal than some people. The “this” in this case is a Manhattan group of Jedi enthusiasts who gather for light saber training. And the sad part is that I wish I were freakish enough to join them. How cool would that be? Getting together with Star Wars geeks, spinning through choreography, slashing through the air with your saber replica…

If Alec Guinness could do it, so can I.

So that’s it then, my Xbox 360 is useless. Well, not entirely useless - I can play on the Dashboard all I want, but as soon as I go to play a game, I get 3 minutes into it and the entire system locks up.

Which means I have at least 5 weeks to wait to finish BioShock. Son of a bitch.

As I pull the 360 from my console shelves, I can’t help but look at my past consoles - the PS1, PS2, GameCube, Dreamcast, Xbox 1, Genesis - and marvel at the fact that they have all managed to live long, healthy lives without ever once giving me a problem.

Maybe, some day, Microsoft will figure out and fix their design flaws in the 360, but by then, it will be time to move on to the next generation.

PennDOT announced today the completion of BicyclePA Route V, which pretty cleanly crosses the center of the state. What’s notable of Route V is that it cuts right through the heart of Centre County, going through Snow Shoe, Bellefonte, and Zion.

If you’re PDF friendly, you can check out the maps on the DOT FTP site.

It’s a 360 mile route. At my current levels of cycling, that’d take me, oh, six days to finish. Looks like I have a new goal after I achieve the MS 150.

Went to see They Might Be Giants at the State Theatre last night. Damn fine show, and it made me realize that they’ve released way too much music over the years. Brandy had her wishes fulfilled by a play of “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, but I walked away empty handed, wanting desperately to hear “Don’t Let’s Start”, which remains my favorite for nostalgia and guitar pantomime reasons.

The surprise of the night was definitely when they kicked into one of their kids songs, though they definitely don’t scream “The Fucking Alphabet of Nations!!” on the CD. Even if they did, we’d probably still let Gareth listen to it. When it started, Brandy and I turned to each other and pretty much jumped up and down. I almost, almost dual-high fived her. Luckily, I reigned it in. I would have never lived that down as I am not a fan of the high five.

Oppenheimer opened for them, and I was pretty quickly hooked. The only reason I didn’t walk out with a CD is that I didn’t have any cash on me, but it is readily available at places like CD Universe (or download the album for less then $2 at legalsounds).

I went out for one of my customary lunch rides today. Today was a ride out Old Gatesburg Road, then onto South Nixon, across Whitehall, and out to Pine Grove Mills. I’ve done this ride several times already and never had a car problem.

I didn’t have one today, either. At least, not one that I knew about until I got back to the office.

One of the guys on my test team said, “Was that you with the death wish out near Pine Grove Mills?” Death wish? What?

According to this guy, he was coming down a hill and around a corner and barely noticed me cycling along the side of the road. He says that had he been traveling faster (and that he normally travels 15-20MPH above the speed limit), I would have been toast. My day-glo eight foot tall flag? Didn’t see it because I was under tree shade at the time.

Gotta tell ya, this sort of pissed me off. I’ve always hated cyclists who demand the center of the lane, holding up all traffic behind them, but after hearing this guy, I’m starting to understand why cyclists do that - they do it to make sure motorists are unabashedly aware of their presence. Turns out that my normal course of action, which is to stay as far to the right as possible - is only serving to make me more likely to be hit by people who can’t be bothered to 1) travel the legal speed limit and 2) anticipate potential obstacles.

Sure, there has always been the chance that I’d be run over. That fear kept me from riding on roads for a long time, and it wasn’t until the RBR Rally that I gained any confidence for road riding. But even when I decided to ride on the roads, I kept to infrequently traveled roads and have always hugged the shoulder. When cresting a hill, I wave passing cars past so they don’t have to wait any longer than necessary to pass. By all measures, I’m a considerate cyclist, but this means approximately jack shit if somebody tells me that they can’t be bothered to drive safely.

Is it just because I’m on a trike? No, not according to this person. He says he still wouldn’t have seen me until it was nearly too late. Do people just not do visual scans of roads? I’m a six foot long, three foot high moving object traveling with traffic with a bright white helmet and a neon flag. You’d think people would perhaps notice that. Apparently not.

To make things even more fun in our conversation, he asked if I travel the corner that connects Old Gatesburg with South Nixon. When I said yes, he suggested I go through the gravel pull-off at that corner because he routinely cuts that corner short and drives on the shoulder. Hey, I have another solution… Don’t fucking drive on the shoulder! What time does one gain cutting that stuff short? .0001 seconds?

We also talked about obstructions on tight roads, like bikes traveling Whitehall between Atherton and College Ave. There is no shoulder on that road at all, lots of little hills/valleys, and near constant oncoming traffic. It’s a real bear to pass anything on that road. Both cyclists and construction/farm equipment travel it and hold up traffic, but guess which one is intolerable? Cyclists. Yep, because the heavy equipment is huge and slower than cyclists, it has to be tolerated, but cyclists somehow incite anger in drivers. Drivers who are, most certainly, not maintaining the speed limit through that passage.

Look, I don’t want to be a bitter cyclist, but I don’t want to be dead, either. If you’re a driver that doesn’t pay attention to the periphery or one that frequently drives through shoulders and bike lanes, could you please stop? At some point, there’s going to be somebody on a bike in that space and neither of you are going to enjoy meeting one another via a collision.

Years ago, while driving through Lemont, I nearly clipped a cyclist. He pulled up alongside the van, shouted some obscenities, and pounded the exterior of the vehicle. Every time I drive through Lemont, I remember that moment, and it reminds me to always be looking for objects in addition to cars. Don’t wait until you hit somebody to learn the same lesson.

As I’m not known for being emotional, it may surprise you to know that emotional moments are not foreign to me. In particular are what I call the “Dad” moments - those times in fatherhood when you’re so happy you could (and nearly do) cry. Unfortunately, all of my dad moments are rather odd, but here goes:

Reading “The Hobbit” to Gareth in the hospital - This one almost doesn’t count since it was Gareth’s second day of life and he was largely unresponsive, having just the night before gone through his traumatic entry into this world. Still, it was something I really wanted to do, so I headed into a little bookstore in Danville, grabbed their last copy, and got back to the NICU to proceed with the narration. It was something I had always pictured doing as a dad, even if I didn’t picture having to do it in those circumstances.

Introducing Gareth to Quake 3 Arena - Holding him with one arm and gaming with the other, I sat Gareth in my lap so he could see what his dad did for fun. We’ve revisited Q3A a few times since then when I was adapting joysticks for his use as input devices. Since then we’ve moved onto other less bloody games.

Gareth’s first trip to a movie theater - For Shrek 2, of all things. Years have been spent honing the sharp edge of my movie snobbery. I am intolerant of chatter, children, phones, and comedians in my theater environment. As such, I was always very concerned about taking Gareth into a theater with his suction gear which consists of a small suction pump connected to a canister and tubing. When you kick it on, it makes quite a bit more noise than one would imagine, which does nothing for a normally quiet movie setting. After Shrek 2 had been in theaters over a month, I took Gareth to a show I thought would be largely empty. It sort of was, but there were enough other attendees that I started feeling self-conscious. But when the lights dimmed, the trailers played, and the opening of the movie started to run, I forgot about everybody and just marveled that I was sitting in a theater with my son. Seriously, I teared up. Then, about 10 minutes into it, Gareth lost all interest and started crying like crazy. We left shortly thereafter.

Gareth discovers that the soul still burns - Due to the various joysticks I have for console games, we eventually gave up on PC gaming and moved to the basement where Gareth discovered Donkey Konga, Taiko Drum Master, Dance Dance Revolution, and Soul Calibur. After just a little time with Soul Calibur, Gareth picked up on the fact that movement was handled with the joystick and attacks were handled by the buttons. He quickly learned to move his hand to the stick to position his fighter and then move that same hand to the buttons to kick, punch, and throw. How could I not be proud of that? He has now added Wii Sports Baseball to his list of regular games. He also has an insane love of video game theme songs - I have only to whistle the Donkey Konga theme or hum the intro to Taiko Drum Master to make him burst into instant laughter. No, he does not know the Mario theme.

Gareth faces down Darth Vader - I spent so much time worrying about taking Gareth away from his support staff (nurses, doctors, therapists) that I spent no time contemplating how great a vacation could be, so imagine the 180 I did when we arrived at DisneyWorld and almost instantly ended up on a stage with lightsaber on hand, swinging at Darth Vader. Holy shit. From that moment on, we all had a great vacation, and I had another dad moment. That one became a Gareth moment, too. He enjoyed telling everybody he knew that he fought Darth Vader and that daddy dropped the lightsaber.

Gareth gets his first bike - And probably his last.  About the time I decided to get back into bicycling, Gareth decided he loved nothing more than to pedal a trike around his preschool playground. From that moment, I planned for us to find a way to ride together. I got three dad moments out of this event: a first moment when he sat on his bike for his fitting; a second moment when we rode it for the very first time even though it was raining and in January; a third moment when we rode together in the RBR rally. Our ride in the Colyer 4th of July parade comes close, but that wasn’t emotional enough to qualify under my “Dad moment” rules.

Walking Gareth to school - This is the moment that inspired today’s entry. This morning, I walked Gareth to his second day of kindergarten, meeting one of his classmates on the way, hanging out while we waited for the crossing guard, and dropping him off in his classroom. On the way back, I just realized how great it felt to do that, to be an honest to goodness parent of a child old enough, smart enough, and lucky enough to be going to school like any other kid when his whole life has been stacked against him.

I’m bound to have plenty more dad moments in my lifetime, but these are a good start. Here’s a prediction, though - my next major dad moment will come when Gareth is able to express himself without the help of others. I’m going to be a blubbering mess when that happens.

And then I’m going to worry about all the stuff Brandy and I have said in front of him over the years. There are some words he definitely knows that shouldn’t be repeated in polite company.