The Father's Day from hell

So. I love Canada and biking, so Tiff says, go to Canada this weekend. Stay a night and get up early and do a bike ride, I'll watch the baby. You can watch him on Monday.

So I forgot the sunblock.
And I broke my bike.
And my car.

It could have been a lot worse, though. I woke up bright and early, and had had my double double from Timmies and was down to the trailhead near Brantford by 7:30am. The rail trail was pretty shaded for the first half, so I didn't burn anywhere near as badly as I could have.

When my bike broke, I was only 3 miles from my car, having done 37 already. I was able to hold my grip shift in tight, keeping the bike in gear for the last three. Again. I could have had to walk...

And back in the US, on the NY State Thruway, my radio cuts off. Meh.... My Ipod isn't super reliable anymore, so I figured it would come back on in a bit. Then I checked my speed. 0MPH. 0RPM. 0 Fuel. Er....... It sure seemed like I was doing 65-70 as I watch the world whizz by, so I figure, hrmm.... I know where I need to stop for gas, I'll get there, get gas, and see if I can start the car again.

Then my car tells me I'm going 140, 7000RPM and I have a full tank of gas, but my airbag is broken and one of my doors is open.... Sweet. I'll take the free tank of gas, but I'm not too keen on getting an airbag in the face going 140, and if my door is open, my luggage has just been donated to the Seneca Nation. Then it's all back to zero again. This would all be amusing, except my transmission was trying to adjust repeatedly to what my car must think is a disturbing new driving pattern on my part.

This happens back and forth enough for me to eye up the shoulder for a place to stop, when my music comes back on, and everything is as it was.

Fast forward to 15 minutes from home, and everything starts all over again, except this time, the 140 to 0 to 140 delusion happens about fifteen times instead of three, and my transmission is not at all impressed. So I do something dumb. I pull over. And I can't start her back up again. Called Tiff to come get me, with baby in tow... Then I do something even dumber. I try to push the car into an actual parking space and the darn thing almost rolls down a hill. (I jumped in really quick and slammed on the brakes.) Luckily, this must have woken the darn thing up, because I try starting again, and she starts, just as Tiff is pulling in the parking lot.

Getting home the last few miles was an adventure, as my car just decided to stall whenever I stopped. Don't know if that was related, but a car that has trouble starting is not what you want to have stall, so I took a creative route home that had a minimum of stopping and made it.

Now I need to decide if it's worth getting it fixed, or if we should just go to one car.

Up since 3am... what the heck

I've been up since 3am thanks to a helicopter that buzzed our house last night. Didn't wake baby, but I definitely couldn't go back to sleep. When I woke up, I had the strangest sensation of feeling like it was five years ago. It's not that I was delusional or anything, I knew it wasn't 2003. But, the detail of my memory, particularly of my former job, was strikingly clear. It made me value all the more what I have now and be grateful for it.

On another "try to get your head around it" topic, I was recently reading a news article about the recent attempts at an altitude record for sky diving, and about the current record holder. I found this video on YouTube that I've been watching over and over. I still can't comprehend it. I ended up downloading the song from the video though, Boards of Canada. Pretty cool.

Wings in 6...

Wow, that was the closest non-OT game I've ever seen. Credit to the Pens that the Wings totally outplayed them in five out of six games, and they still made it THAT CLOSE.

Henrik Zetterberg: - The 5 on 3 kill in game 4 won him the Conn Smythe. He deserved it just for that, let alone scoring the cup winning goal.

Chris Osgood: - Strong when he needed to be. What a comeback story. (And my favorite player, so extra good for me... So glad Hasek got chased...)

Nicklas Lidstrom: - The perfect human.

Darren Helm: - I like this kid a LOT. It looks like we have Draper 2.0 at least.

Johan Franzen: - Holmstrom is good, but I think Franzen should be the top winger with Datsyuk and Zetterberg now...

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Marc-Andre Fleury: - No fault here. This guy is a solid goalie. It's too bad his biggest in-game mistake had to be the one that cost them the cup, but with Kronwall's mistake in Game 5 that ended up losing it for the Wings, I can't say anything except "Karma's a bitch."

Sidney Crosby: - Needs to grow up a little, but hopefully he'll get there. Way talented, no doubt about that. If he can get some good coaching and mentoring, he has the talent to be Pittsburgh's Stevie Y. (Rather see him go that route than the next Lemieux. He needs to quit with the whiny attitude...)

Evgeni Malkin: - I felt bad, since I LIKE Malkin. He just wasn't in the game at any point in the series. Even his goal didn't wake him up. Reminds me a lot of Sergei Fedorov, both in good ways and bad ways.

Brooks Orpik: - I'd have him on my defense line - any time. He definitely made a name for himself this playoff in my book. He was the name I was most frustrated with, which makes him the peskiest defender for sure.

Ryan Malone, the entire defensive unit... You guys played your hearts out and should have no shame in this loss.

Vindication

Ah, it's nice to read all the articles about $4 gas and the changing face of American car ownership. Tiff and I made a smart move in 2002 buying a little Mazda Protege5 instead of a hulking Tribute. There have been maybe 10 times we wished we had a bigger vehicle for trips or carrying stuff. Ten times. Five years. We get over it.

Warning. This post is about to get crabby. (And I'm generally a pleasant guy in real life, although not so much up here in the blog...)

There's still this notion of an "entitlement society" in our country. I'm going to "pamper" myself... I deserve it... I'm great... Why is it that people fail at math when it comes to looking at their own finances and condition? Right now, people are learning that that sense of entitlement is just entitling them to foreclosure and permanent penury.

A former colleague and I had a conversation about housing prices around that same time in 2002, when Tiff and I were thinking of buying our first house. Another guy, who was not really a responsible type, had just dropped way too much on a house, I'm sure with an ARM, saying it was a can't lose proposition, better than wasting money on rent. I told the colleague I was talking to, that if that guy said it was a can't lose proposition, we better re-think what's going on right now. Perhaps he was missing the boat.

SUV = You lose. Way to go, smart one. Ditto for that McMansion you can't afford. Should have thought harder in 2003, but you didn't did you? The problem is that to get there, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, "My self worth is not dependent on the things I buy for myself." Good luck with that.