Skeletons

The Story Thus Far

All my life I have kept journals. I wish I had them all. I don't. The viciously peripatetic lifestyle I have lived means many things were lost along the way. Many things were lost, and people too. Abrupt changes of residence, sometimes in the middle of the night (and frequently not-sober) means things lost and not missed until much too late. Also, there are those dark nights of the soul when, reading the notes from my many adventures and mishaps, I was less than impressed with what I had to say about them. That resulted in some book burning, alas, torn pages fed to the fire between solemn swigs of rum and that delicious melancholy that comes from tripping down memory lane.

But then around 1993 I got my first computer, a venerable IBM Aptiva that almost instantly became my best friend and confidant. The learning curve was stupendous, but a couple of those “...for Dummies” books and one massive manual that came with floppy discs (remember those?) set me on the path of learning and so I have a fairly unbroken record of my comings and goings ever since.

Did I Ever Mention...

Then, two years ago, I made my blogging debut on the international stage of the World's Greatest Cycling Blogs when I got guest posted at The Fat Cyclist and the journal-keeping ended and I started airing my dirty laundry and spreading my fertilizer here at the 

Trailer Park Cyclist. It has been a heady experience, to say the least. I now have a massive following of dozens of people and the voices in my head, once a raging chorus of angry villagers, has melded into one more or less calm and semi-benevolent Voice that (while still a bit of a nuisance) I can listen to without wincing or breaking into manic laughter or descending into a violent maelstrom of rebellion against myself.

Nuisance? You consider me a nuisance? I think I have the phone number for the Angry Village People around here somewhere...

“No, no, Voice, you must have misunderstood! I said you gave me a new sense of life! We're pals!”

Uh huh. By the way, there's a Voice convention in Kalamazoo next month and I'm going to need a few days off.

“Then you're going to have to use sick days. You used up your vacation time while I was out in L.A. last year.” These Voices, I'll tell ya...

Let's see...here it is. Angry Policeman Village Person...1 800 I'M ANGRY...

“Ok, Ok, take as long as you need.” I can't win.

So Anyway...

But: for some reason, I am keeping a journal again. I have a spreadsheet I use to keep track of various expenditures and where I also chart my cycling miles and maintenance. I record my daily electric usage and how much water I use and if this current stretch of (poverty induced) sobriety continues I may start keeping track of caloric intake and output and drop these thirty pounds that bedevil me when the wind is in my face or I am pedaling up the wrong side of a steep Florida drawbridge. So as I write down these numbers (a long habit from a lifetime of keeping track of payroll and materials and progress and keeping score) I also type in brief notes on the weather and my mood and just what is going on in my life that I might want to remember later. These notes soon expanded into...

You better explain about the electric and the water.

“What?”

Most people don't keep daily records of how much electricity and water they use. It makes you sound a little odd.

“Well Voice, sounding only a little odd is an improvement, don't you think?”

But I'll explain: there are two reasons I am writing down the minute details of my existence in proper spreadsheet form: One is that everything sucks right now and it keeps me from spinning out of control. It grounds me and acts as a kind of buffer, or inner refuge. It reminds me that things have been bad before and then got better and that it will get better this time, too.

The other reason is more mundane. I'm just figuring out what kind of gear would satisfy my needs if I were to think about solar power and rain catchment systems and so on...plus I'm a nerd and keeping track of stuff is a lifelong habit, hence my lifelong habit of keeping a journal.

But now that I have successfully segued a full circle I have forgotten what the point was.

No, seriously, I just reread this post and it's gone, whatever I was going to say. I've got to start writing faster...

So I'll Just Make Something Up

It was probably something about how I often read back over the years and it is a little embarrassing how one year is like another; but there is good stuff in there, too, stuff that I think kicks ass but that I would never put on here. What is it? I knew you were going to ask. Figure it out. Open your closet and rattle the skeletons in there and listen to the music the bones make. Then imagine that you are a twice-married maniac who has been self-employed for life, who never really had anyone to answer to except God and my probation officer and imbued with a taste for strong drink and wild ladies and the places where both can be found. Add more than two decades of working on the road throughout the Gulf States and going at night to those places and indulging in those things...

I'll Never Tell...

I once had these two girls in Alabama convinced that I was the Prince of Alaska and the next day when I finally made it to happy hour the bartender said the first drink was on him and those girls had been in earlier and he had heard all about last night, Your Highness...

Or the time I went into the post office after my second marriage went away and I was going to get a stop put on my mail because I was leaving town. But there was an unusually long line and I never, since I got out of the military, wait in lines...so I drove home in my old step van and just pulled the mailbox out of the ground, post and all, and threw it into the back of the truck. It was still there a month later when I was sitting at the Crooked Angel Saloon before opening time, drinking Bloody Marys on the tab with the crew on a rain day. The old man who had been delivering our mail in this little village for the last twenty years came in the back door with the saloon's mail, saw me sitting there and said, with all the authority vested in him by the U.S. Government: “Don't move! Stay right there!” then went out and came back in with a big paper grocery bag filled with court summonses and past due bills and fan mail from my ex and her lawyer. He dumped it all out on the bar and then gave me a mocking salute before heading back out. “I think we'll need another round,” I said...

The Flocking Incident when Skinny Bates and I grabbed a big trash bag full of popcorn from the Mermaid Saloon and went down to the north end of the beach where all manner of seagulls were wintering. We started feeding them and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by more damn screaming birds than you have ever seen in your life. We jumped into Skinny's jeep and careened back up the beach towards town while I kept throwing popcorn. It was highly Hitchcockian and we almost did not make it...it showed up on radar at the Coast Guard station and they scrambled a chopper to go see what the hell this...mass was heading south down the beach...

One drunken night fighting with a girl I had only met the night before, her screaming about god knows what before storming out of my apartment...I stomped around cussing and suddenly remembered that she had paid for the stuffed shrimp sizzling away in the oven. I felt bad and ran outside to call her back and suddenly heard a screeching of tires and a horrendous THUMP! as I looked to the highway to see a human body flying through the air. “It's a deer!” I said to myself, knowing damn well that it wasn't a deer and I went running down there, wondering if this made me a murderer...but it wasn't her, it was some other drunk who I also recognized. The cops got there damn quick and I ran back to my apartment “to get a blanket” but also I didn't want those shrimp ($12 a pound) to burn...

That guy lived and I was telling this story to him over a beer a couple years later. Some time after that I found out that he walked into traffic AGAIN a year later.

Yeah. And he lived AGAIN.

One day leaving the crew on the roof, saying I had to go take care of some business at the bank, only to stumble across my sailing buddy Cromwell. He already had the Hobie hitched up and the cooler loaded and I got into his truck, saying “don't go past the job,” (it was right across the street from the beach ramp) but of course he did and I'll never forget the things those Christian young carpenters of mine screamed from the roof of the new restaurant as they saw us drive by...

There are a surprisingly large number of female visitors to our town who actually believe that there are maritime laws against wearing bathing suits when sailing past the three mile line...something to do with sea turtle safety, or was it manatees...

There's more. Hundreds more. But I would never tell these stories in public. Never.

That's why I keep a journal.

tj

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and House of Secrets

#105