Roseanne, the Zombies and the BUG

Hack Hack Cough Cough

It has been rather cool here in East Central Florida for the past week and I managed to contract one of my dreaded every-other-year colds that tend to put me on the skids for a couple days. When this happens I bravely face my illness with as many potions and powders and pills as I can get my hands on.  My goal is to survive through over-the-counter induced coma. I pile books next to my bunk, add blankets to the pile and say my farewells to my dogs and my woman and then crawl into my nest to meet my fate.

Trailer Park Benefits

We don't have a Health Plan here at the Park; in fact, if anything, it would have to be called an Unhealth Plan. Besides, I am far too bold and manly to report to the hospital for a mere chest cold. Not me. What I do is take a bunch of pills that look vaguely like Christmas candy, drink syrups that taste like nothing else in the world and then spend two or three days catching up on my reading, sleeping and alternately whimpering for mercy and howling for more soup or orange juice or whatever else enters my feverish head.

The Bad English Patient

The Blonde is always very indulgent for the first couple of hours. Once she realizes I actually do have an illness and not just a more worser than usual hangover, she suddenly remembers a bunch of errands and shopping she forgot to do and then disappears for the next couple of days. She ain't no Florence Nightingale, but I admit that I am the worst patient in the world and if we were Eskimos, there would be an ice floe somewhere out there with my name on it.

But that was three days ago and now here I am, typing merrily away with only an occasional rumble in my chest and that delightful sniffle thing that doesn't warrant an actual nose blowing but makes you snert and sniff and wish for warmer days.

Irregular Programming

As an inveterate Bicycle Nerd I hang out at a Site called Old Ten Speed Gallery. Over there we are like those guys in High School that really did believe that Esperanto would one day be the One World Language, instead of Klingon. But our language is bicycles and OTSG is like that saloon where everyone knows your name. In the course of yacking it up about an old Schwinn Caliente a frequent contributor mentioned that Roseanne Barr and John Goodman are appearing in a pilot episode of a new TV series. This time the plot centers around life in a Trailer Park.

I know what you are thinking. You're thinking “Hey! Trailer Park Cyclist! You live in a trailer park!”

Or maybe you're thinking, “Esperanto? What's that? Some kind of soup?”

Or, “ Remember when this Blog used to be cool?”

Hold on. I have to blow my nose. Did I mention that I have been sick?

Hooray For Hollywood

So anyway, these Hollywood big shots are going to try and illustrate in a touching and humorous manner what I live with everyday. They will get it wrong, of course. These guys are so far removed from this layer of strata that they can't even imagine what really goes on. Me, I came to trailer living late in life, as many do. But most of those other elderly trailer dwellers have sold their homes up North and came here to live in pretty nice trailer parks with golf carts and swimming pools and clubhouses where they all get together and do all that hokey crap that you do when you retire. Whatever it is. I don't know. I only say it is hokey because I went to one of those places once and in the clubhouse there were a bunch of people only marginally older than me actually doing the Hokey-Pokey. No, really.

The Whispering Pines isn't a retirement trailer Park. It isn't a place where elderly people come to hang out until, You Know. I guess those big fancy retirement parks are like luxurious ice floes.

Zombies!

The Whispering Pines is more of a place to come and not wait for the Big Sleep, but rather to embrace it.   Most of the people here are pretty drug-addled. The advent of these super-strong downers like oxycontin or whatever it is has created a new American Class. While the middle class is shrinking, we now have the Rich, the Poor and the Zombies. Government subsidized medical programs are shoveling these Zombie Pills into the eager maws of the impoverished like Manna from Hell. I see it everyday. The sheer volume of these pills is unbelievable.

I don't expect to see a lot of Zombie episodes on Rosanne's new show, but it would be pretty cool if there were. In fact, unless I break down and buy a TV, I probably will never even see a single episode.

This is all a little depressing. Probably aftershocks of the meds I took for my cold. Did I mention...

Meanwhile,  Back At the Bicycles...

In the world of bicycles, frequent commenter and Horticulturizing Cyclist Dee was kind enough to answer my query as to what she has been up to Down Under:

To: Trailer Park Cyclist:

In my copious spare time I am the president of the James Cook University Bicycle Users Group. A couple of years ago the Uni got a new high tech central cooling system, and all the old individual cooling plants were set to become redundant. The cooling plant for the library was housed in this great little building I had always liked, so I contacted my facilities management people and asked if it could become a bike shed when the old plant was removed. To my surprise and eternal gratitude they thought that was a great idea, and they spent a lot of money to make it happen. It needed a new concrete floor, and a roof (I guess it never had a full roof before) and they partitioned off a workshop and added lockers. They wanted to add showers but there was no plumbing available. I almost lost the project at that point because they figured if I couldn’t have showers I wouldn’t want it, but they were so wrong!

Anyway, many meetings and good will later it is all happening. Took us a fair time to get the community bike shop concept going, because it needs volunteers. I got tired of waiting for interested people to come together and went out with another employee and gathered up all the abandoned bikes at the colleges and put them in the shed, and now lots of people are really excited to have bikes to play with, and the workshop is starting to take shape.

O-week is next week, and we will be selling cheaply anything we get fixed by Wednesdays market day. As for the rest, I figure I will invite students to choose a bike, join the BUG and do it up to keep for free themselves. I just love all this. I am a terrible doer.

But NOT a terrible Zombie.  Good work,  Dee!  JOIN THE BUG!

That's it for now.  

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Hack Attack

#51

Hemingway Said: All You Have To Do Is Write One True Sentence

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

After yesterday's entry and my subsequent recovery ride I looked into this foreclosure rescue stuff and to get started I Googled up “Hawk's Park Code Enforcement” and saw that they were having a monthly staff meeting at 2 p.m. and it was open to the Public. I looked at the time and it was 1:30 so I dashed out of the Library and pedaled over to City Hall to attend said meeting. I thought that this was one of those magical moments of sweet serendipity I sometimes experience and I was going to breeze right into my rewarding new career as a Super Maintenance Man for these forlorn and abandoned real estate refugees. But it had been a long time since I had fought City Hall and I had quite honestly forgotten the whole “you can't get there from here” mentality that goes on in any government office. I marched into the seriously and ironically ramshackle office of Hawk's Park Building Department and there behind the counter was a twenty-something girl playing Solitaire on the computer. She did a pretty good job of hiding her annoyance at me interrupting her work.

     

     “Hi,” I said. “Isn't there a Code Enforcement meeting going on today?”

     “No. There's a meeting, but it's not about Code Enforcement.”

     “Oh...well I saw on the computer that there was a meeting today at two o'clock and I thought it was open to the public. Does that sound right?”

     “I don't know. “ She pointed vaguely around the corner and said, “You can go back there if you   want to.”

     “Uh, I don't want to interrupt them. I mean, are there any citizens back there?”

     “I don't think so.” 

I was starting to think I had stumbled into a weird version of “Bring Your Twenty-Something Daughter to Work” day. I was on the verge of asking if there was a grown up I could talk to when The Voice said “try harder.” So I gave it another stab.,

     

     “Maybe I should explain myself. I was reading an article in yesterday's paper about these abandoned properties that need clean-out, grass cutting and minor repair and so on and no one seems to know who is responsible for that and the article went on to say that Hawk's Park was going to consider the “Cape Coral Model” for a solution. I thought maybe that subject would come up in today's meeting and that's why I'm here. I'm basically just looking for a job.”

ADHD: Is It You Or Is It Me

I was speaking as rapidly as I could while at the same time holding back just enough to make what I was saying understandable. I have learned that you only have a highly limited amount of time to attempt expressing ideas or even whole sentences these days without resorting to flashing images or twitter speak. Plus sometimes I can be a bit hyperactive. But it didn't work. As I was talking I watched her expression shift from vague attention to something that looked like a stab of acute pain and finally to that glazed absence that meant that Elvis Has Left the Building.

     “Does any of this mean anything to you?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question. I already knew the answer.

     “No, I don't know anything about all that,” she said. “Last year they took bids and and hired somebody but they never did any work for us. But if you go around the corner to where you pay the gas bill...”

     “Thanks!” I said. “You've been very helpful! I'll just go around the corner here...”

Chilled Sunshine

I never knew when I would have to come back here and deal with her again. This is a really small town. I might very likely run into her later at the grocery store or the Crooked Angel Saloon. Enter Laughing and Leave 'Em Smiling, if you know what I mean. I stepped out into the the crisp fresh air of what I like to call the “Chilled Sunshine” of Florida in the Wintertime.   Hawk's Park City Hall, a rambling-shambling kind of place, sits right down on the Indian River, which is a part of the Intracoastal Waterway. A big cruiser passed by, headed south. All the big boats are headed South this time of year, headed for Miami and the Keys and on to the Bahamas and the Caribbean and anywhere else they want to go, I suppose.

My Net Worth Equals One Hour

One of those big power cruisers burns about ten or twelve gallons of diesel fuel per hour. And diesel dock prices are usually about $6 per gallon, sometimes more. So one of those big power boats heading south for the rest of the winter costs more to operate per hour than my current net worth. Just a passing thought as I walked around the corner to where you pay the gas bill so I could beg for a job cutting grass. But then The Voice cut in. “Screw it, man. Go for a bike ride and fight this fight another day. Take these frustrations in small doses.”

Never argue with The Voice, I always say. I took one of my slow rides around the neighborhood,just soaking in that chilled sunshine, the perfect 68 degree afternoon, watching those rich bastards cruise south on their fat-ass gas-hog boats while I did lazy figure eights in the big parking lot of the waterfront park across from City Hall, watching the sailboats cruise by and watching the seagulls fight over things that are important to seagulls.

Catch A Breeze

My reasoning is this: Life its ownself sure as hell has it's ups and downs, but sometimes I get to ride my bicycle like a kid; I remember being a kid and just cruising mindlessly around the neighborhood, just enjoying the swoop of the bike, the breeze on my face and the sounds and smells and warmth of a place that makes me happy just by my being there. I have spent a lot of time and energy being unhappy in places where I didn't want to be. And those were days when I had plenty of money.

 The truth is clear: I would rather be poor here than rich there.

Whispering Pines Trailer Park and Bicycle Emporium

#7