All I wanted was gas

I left the apartment Thursday morning with a simple plan: head east down Interstate 10 to highway 177, and circle counterclockwise around Joshua Tree National Park. I figured it was a little less than 150 miles and that I'd be back in time to go for a swim before cooking dinner. The forecast was for 26 degrees, sunny, no precip expected. I was wearing shorts and a T shirt underneath my mesh ballistic pants and jacket.

Things took an interesting turn when I tried to gas up after leaving the Interstate. The first gas station was closed, and the second one no longer had pumps out front. I went in and asked the girl behind the counter where the nearest place to get gas was, and she said "There's a place a couple miles down the road, I'll call and see if they're open today". That didn't sound promising, but my only other choice was to backtrack down the Interstate 20 miles, which meant it would take me 45 minutes just to get back to where I already was. Whoever it was she called was open, and she gave me the following directions: "Go 3 or 4 miles down the highway until you see the sign that says Chuckwalla Valley, turn right, and just follow the road to the gate. They'll sign you in and send you to the pumps" Sign me in? Hmmm. I didn't know where this was leading, but my curiosity had been piqued, so down the highway I went. And found this:

While I was taking this picture, in the distance I could hear the high pitched screaming of motorcycle engines being pushed to the limit. It's TRACK DAY!!! I signed the waiver at the gate and received directions to the pumps. While I was gassing up I could see half a dozen bikes tearing around at high speed on the large road style course. When I was done I parked next to pit row and wandered around. I was up on the bleachers watching the last rider doing laps when I saw him go down in a lowside slide on a corner and disappear into the desert in a huge cloud of dust. When the dust settled I could see he wasn't getting up. It took me a minute to realize that nobody in the pits knew he'd gone down, but when I started shouting and pointing there was a sudden flurry of activity and a couple of trucks went tearing out to give the guy a hand.












He was okay, by the time they arrived he was up on his feet. Limping, but moving under his own power.

After he and his bike were back in the pits a couple of guys came over to thank me for alerting them to their friends plight, and of course, we wound up talking motorcycles. I was about to take my leave when one of them asked if I had ever done any track time. "I've done FAST Riding School back home," I replied, "but never any racing."

"Fast?" The guy said. "With Michel Mercier? Is he still around?" That started a whole new conversation that attracted a few more people, and then the first guy asked "As long as you're here, would you like to do a few laps?"

Would I!?!?!? Do bears crap in the woods? Do skydivers dive from the sky? Reluctantly I pointed out that my bike wasn't track ready, and I didn't have the proper gear. "We can fix the bike up in a few minutes, and you look like you're about my size." Fifteen minutes later, with the tank bag and seat back bag removed, the radiator antifreeze replaced with water wetter, all the lights and speedometer taped over, wearing a borrowed leather racing suit and boots, I was pulling onto the track.

They sent out a pace bike to lead me around the track for the first couple of laps and show me the racing line. "The third time you go past the pits he's going to pull away, don't try and keep up with him, just go at your own pace." The child leading me around was on a bike half the size of mine, and he didn't even look old enough to shave yet. I was so wound up and excited it's a good thing he was there otherwise I probably would have slid out in the first turn. We did 3 laps with me desperately trying to remember everything I had been taught at FAST, and fervently wishing I had spent a lot more time last summer running the Eastern Ramps and working on my cornering technique. I played Simon Says, following his line as well as I could and doing my best to imitate his technique. I was just starting to relax and settle into it when the kid pulled away. I was giggling in my helmet as I slid off the seat, leaned the bike over, and extended my knee towards the ground going into turn One. I had no illusions about my technique or speed, nor did I care. Exactly 6 months ago I was lying in a hospital with a broken neck, today I was on a racetrack in the California desert going to beat hell. I could not possibly imagine life getting any better.

All I wanted was gas.

Palm Springs is nestled in the Coachealla Valley, surrounded by mountains that look like they're close enough to hit with a baseball, and truly is an oasis in the middle of the desert. I hadn't seen green grass since early November. New Mexico, southern Arizona, and large swaths of southern California are baked sand and rock with the occasional stunted tree or bush. Now I'm surrounded by lush green lawns, flower beds, colorful hedges, palm and shade trees are everywhere, some streets are even lined with orange and lemon trees covered in fruit. Beth's apartment is gorgeous, with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a private balcony, it's own laundry facilities, and the living/dining room alone is bigger than any apartment I have ever lived in. I have my own room, a bed that isn't a bunk and comes complete with a teddy bear, my own bathroom that isn't overflowing with someone else's crap, a toilet that doesn't sound like an airliner taking off, the grocery and liquor store is a five minute walk away, the list goes on. It's a Mexican style adobe building with a clay tile roof in a gated community that has a heated 15 meter salt water pool, fully equipped exercise room, gas barbecues, hot tub, a car wash bay.......

I spent my first morning shopping and running errands, including getting a key copied at the hardware store. After the kid had 2 different blanks fly out of the jaws while he was trying to make a copy I stepped in and explained the proper technique. I had owned the exact same machine for 20 years. I went on to coach him through the cutting process, and when it was done realized the owner was standing behind me. "Who are you?" he asked with a smile on his face. "A retired hardware store owner" I replied. We wound up going for coffee as he questioned me about my store and how I had managed to retire so young. "I decided early on that I would get out while still young enough to enjoy myself, and that I was prepared to do whatever it took to make that happen. After that, it was just hard work." He insisted on not charging me for the key.

When Beth had first issued her invitation she had insisted on the recuperative vale of spending a couple of weeks convalescing about her pool. I put that to the test this afternoon. I had the place all to myself when I arrived, nobody else used the pool while I pounded out 100 lengths for a total distance of a kilometer and a half, and I was all alone as I lounged in the sun reading my book afterwards. It felt like my own private pool.

Beth may need to call the sheriff to get me out of here. 

"Come out to the coast..."

"Come out to the coast, we'll have a few laughs!"
Bruce Willis, as detective John McClain, in the movie Die Hard

"Come out to California, we'll get up to no good!"
Beth Bryan, in an in email offering me unlimited use of her spare bedroom in Palm Springs.

When she first made that offer I was stoned on morphine fresh from surgery, wearing a cervical collar, lying in a bed in Intensive Care in a hospital in Montreal.  She repeated the offer several times, and so today I leave for a month in California. I'll be using her apartment as a base of operations, making bike trips of varying distance and duration all over the state. She's going to be pretty busy with work for most of the month, but we've planned a couple of weekend excursions that should prove to be entertaining. Beth has a friend of hers who is a bail bondsman on call, so I'm sure everything will turn out just fine. She has emailed me a detailed set of directions including the best places to stop and buy gas before I cross the border from Arizona, and I have stockpiled 2 bottles of Grey Goose, 2 bottles of Ciroc berry flavored, and a bottle of Chopin, as the liquor taxes are much lower in Arizona. She has even gone so far as to give up her garage to allow me a secure place to put the bike. The bike is very tightly tied down on the trailer, all my crap is loaded in the car, except for the crap I have abandoned in my wake or pawned off on someone else, the laundry is done, and the only thing left to do is to slam the door as loudly as I can when I depart the house before dropping the keys off to Margaret.

"You are condemned to forever be front float...."

"You are condemned to forever be front float,
And so shall your children, 
And your children's children,
And your children's children's children."

The curse placed upon my head by Dan B.C. two years ago at the Canadian Record continues to haunt me. I called out the organizers when they didn't follow their own rules, fined all of them beer in front of a crowd, and in return was cursed for all eternity.

We didn't jump at all on Saturday but at least we didn't have to sit around all day waiting for the clouds to clear and the rain to stop. The organizers used the Skydive Photography website to post updates which allowed us to go into town or back to our rooms and sleep. By the time the rain stopped in the early afternoon the drop zone was totally submerged. We were done for the day. After a nap Beth and I joined a crowd of people heading to a movie. Since I had already mixed some Grey Goose into a couple of bottles of bottles of Gatorade all we needed was some popcorn and we were set for the afternoon. By the time we finally got to the Bent Prop some people had been drinking since mid afternoon and the party was building to epic proportions. The Sisters In Skydiving Boogie had carried on as if everything was going according to plan, but as I looked down the length of the bar I couldn't help thinking their plan had probably included more boys. Normally in a Skydiver Bar the ratio of men to women is 10 to 1. Tonight however, in this Skydiver Bar, the ratio was totally reversed. And these girls were ready to PARTY!!!!!

The drink of choice for the evening was white wine zinfandel or cocktails instead of the usual draft beer, the girls were all dressed in their Saturday evening finery, and there weren't anywhere enough boys to waste it on.

I grabbed a stool at the bar (that's where you get the best view), and had just ordered my first drink when I was introduced to a very attractive, very friendly, and halfway trashed lady who turned out to be be Sally Kirkby, the wife of Mark, the host of our event. She's the touchy feely type and likes to flirt, but it's all in good fun as nobody in their right mind would dare cross the line with the wife of the Captain of Arizona Airspeed . Unless they didn't know she was the wife of the Captain of Arizona Airspeed. I could see on the television showing the live feed from the wind tunnel that Mark was coaching tonight, and Sally told me he would be done at 9. I figured he'd need about half an hour to debrief his student and would be in the bar for 9:30. I started feeding her drinks as fast as she could pack them away and at around a quarter past nine I called over young Curt and introduced him to her, only telling him her first name, then casually backed away. Sally quickly discovered that all it took to make this kid blush bright red was to look at him and smile. By the time Mark came through the door a few minutes later Curt had bought her a drink, and she had one arm around his shoulders and was running her other hand up and down the kids arm. The look of horror on the poor kids face as he realized who the cougar who was draped over him was married to was priceless! By then half the people in the bar were watching to see how it would play out. Mark just shook his head, and saying something about ''the babysitter is waiting", half carried her out the door.

At the dirt dive the next morning when Mark was putting us in our slots for the planned 35 way he put Curt next to him in the base, "Where I can keep an eye on you". By then anybody who hadn't been in the bar had been told what happened and the remark was greeted with howls of laughter and several of the girls growling or purring like cougars. Right on cue, Curt flushed bright red. But my role didn't escape Mark's notice, and I was sentenced to be front float. Coincidence? Karma? Or was it was Dan's curse still following me around? For most of the day I was the first guy to climb out the door and block the wind for the rest of them. Late in the day he had me swap places with Curt, putting me where Mark could watch me, and making Curt front float. Oh yeah, he knew exactly what he was doing.

We did 6 difficult jumps Sunday to give us a total of 11 for the event. There wasn't an easy slot on any of the dives and everybody got to try leaving from various exit positions into different slots, and most of us got to try leaving from both the lead and chase plane. My favorite part was breakoff on jump number 5 of the third day. The whole dive had us turning points with diamonds or zippers, and since we'd flown the pieces around during the skydive, when it was time to leave we tracked away in our own little formations. People often leave in tracking groups, but watching the video of all those diamonds and zippers turning and leaving brought cheers and applause from everyone.

But the best part of the day came at Curt's expense. In the late afternoon as we were sitting on the trams waiting to take us to our airplanes, in front of about 50 people, Sally Kirkby came strutting through through the loading area on stiletto heeled black leather boots. She stopped a few feet short of our tram, and with everybody watching to see what was going to happen, with a huge smile on her face, waved and called out "Hi Curt!", before she tossed him a wink and strutted back to the hangar. Everybody let loose in gales of laughter as Beth shouted "Oh MY God! He's turning purple!" I thought the poor kid's head was going to explode.

I first came to Arizona in January of 2004, met a couple of guys from Airspeed, came back for a skills camp in the spring of that year, and left the camp with a videotape of the jumps we'd done. To fill up the extra space at the end of the tape they added on footage from the previous years Arizona Challenge. It was the first time I had ever heard of the event, and was blown away. These skydives obviously weren't designed to be successful, they were designed to be A Challenge! If it was easy anybody could do it! I had never seen pictures or video of any skydive that could be so large and at the same time to complex. I tried to imagine myself some day having the skills to be able to participate in that event, and at the time it seemed almost impossible that I would ever be invited.

When Mark did the closeout on Sunday, he told us that everybody on this event would be receiving an invitation to the next Arizona Challenge, to be held in May. I guess he's forgiven me for getting Sandy trashed and hanging her on poor young Curt.

I'm Back!!!!!

I'm Back In The Saddle Again!!!!

I can't decide which is my favorite part:
That Johane posted it?
That Fuzzy filmed it?
That I'm wearing a cervical collar?
That a Bunch Of My Favorite People On The Planet agreed to come along?
The line in the credits where it it says "Johane "Granny" Kenny?
Having given it due thought and consideration, I'm reasonably certain my favorite part is that I didn't die.
And Damn!!!!! I look Good!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsFrOORjB9o&sns=em

"Come To The Sun"

"Skydive Arizona, Come To The Sun"

Usually, but not always. It's 8 in the morning, and we've been released for the next 2 hours because of the pouring rain outside. It's not all bad though. The Sisters In Skydiving Boogie is running this weekend so as I type this there are about 30 very fit ladies doing yoga in front of me in the main hangar. It sure beats  watching videos on YouTube or being back home watching it snow.

Of course I'm qualified.....

Of course I'm qualified for the Invitational Event, the check cleared didn't it?

There was one slot left on the sequentials organized by Mark Kirkby of Airspeed for the 25th to 27th. He must have been desperate to fill it because he took me even after I told him how current I wasn't. He had 15 minutes of tunnel available on Thursday evening and offered it to me to help get me up to speed. Let me think about that for a minute: 15 minutes of one on one tunnel time with the captain of the Best 4-Way Team On The Planet, who coincidentally was the instructor on my very first tunnel camp a decade ago. HELL YEAH!!!!!

I spent $270 to have him reteach me a bunch of stuff I used to know about flying but had forgotten over all the years of boogies, 4-way, and big ways. It was some of the best $270 I have ever spent.

Friday morning Mark split us into 2 groups of 16 each for our first day, he took one group and Chris Farina took the other. Beth and I were among the least experienced people in the groups. The quality of the skydives was incredible, by the time we got to our third jump we were breaking into 4, 4 person diamonds, flying them around and turning points. The ceiling was coming down and on the 4th jump we exited at ten thousand five hundred feet and still turned points. Everybody was all exited about it but all I could think was "I come from a Cessna drop zone, exiting at 10.5 means we got 500 feet of bonus altitude, of course we turned points!"

On the last jump of the day Joseph forgot his helmet so the pilot passed back a pair of ratty, cracked, beat up goggles. The ceiling had come down even further, and since he was front float, he was the first to climb out and cling to the plane at the front of the door, in rain at 100 mph. I was the very last diver coming out the door so I wasn't expecting the rain but since I had a full face helmet on it didn't really bother me. Joseph, on the other hand...... Imagine yourself getting sandblasted at 120 miles an hour.

http://www.skydivingphotography.com/events/airspeedinvitational2040ways-012513


This is the link you can click on to see the pics and video from the day. My videographer was George Katsoulis, and Beth had the other guy. I'm in the dark suit with a blue helmet and a sky blue container with red and yellow stripes.

"That's a Felony...."

"You were doing eighty-six miles an hour. That's a Felony!" Said the Cop in a conversational tone.

I had taken a good look at the map and picked out what I thought would be a good route for a day's ride: north to Queen Valley,then highway 60 northeast to Superior, Globe, and Show Low, 260 west to Payson, then back south down highway 88, the highway I'd ridden the day before, back to Eloy. A huge triangle. Ambitious, but do-able. If I'd started out about 2 hours earlier.

I'd been overdressed the day before so I went with fewer and lighter layers, bringing some extra clothes with me for when I got to the mountains. Highway 60 was a perfect never ending series of sweeping corners, with just enough tighter corners to keep me from getting complacent. I've always been more of a fan of the twisty type road where I'm always hopping back and forth between 2nd and 3rd gear, alternating between full throttle and heavy brakes. That's the sort of road that's fun for a while but wears you down after an hour or so. This was the type of road where you could relax a little, enjoy the view, and carve through the corners. It's the sort of road Jennifer loves, and as I tore along I pictured the grin she'd have on her face if she had taken up my invitation to load her bike onto the trailer with mine and bring it down.

The speed limit started out at 65 but dropped to 55 when I entered the San Carlos Indian Reservation. I was never doing less than 75. The road looked kinda straight-ish on the map but www.bestmotorcycleroadsus swore it was good which is why I picked it. The road kept climbing and soaring as I kept crankin' and bankin', until I finally came out on a vast plateau, and realized how cold it had gotten. I hadn't even noticed the snow at the side of the road. When I pulled over to add some layers I turned on my GPS and discovered that I was at just over 8,000 feet of elevation. No wonder it was getting cold. The vegetation had changed from dwarf shrubs, to cactus, to pine forest. There was only one dot on the map supposedly showing a town, which turned out not to exist, and the only town I did find wasn't shown on the map, probably because it had been abandoned many years ago. There was almost no traffic, and what little traffic there was consisted mostly of motorcycles going the other way.

The road started to drop and warm up again and halfway to Show Low began an endless series of switchbacks as it descended into the Salt River Canyon. Down down down down and then more down. Every couple of miles were places for trucks to pull over to let their brakes cool, and many corners had runaway truck ramps on them, a lane straight off the end of the road headed upwards, filled with loose gravel to drag an uncontrolled vehicle to a halt. There were lots of warning signs about the corners, which I of course ignored and kept up my pace all the way to the bottom, occasionally stealing a look across the canyon at the road snaking back and forth up the other side.

At the bottom of the canyon was another abandoned group of buildings, including one that from the look of it had to be the town jail. There were iron bars on the windows and a couple of cells inside.

When I crossed the river I entered the Fort Apache Indian Reservation and began the climb back up out of the canyon. Going up was every bit as much fun as going down as I easily passed everything that got in my way.

By the time I had covered half the distance from the canyon to Show Low, I realized how late it was getting, and that between the high elevation and the lowering sun it was quickly cooling down. I pulled over to check my map, and decided while the smartest move would be to turn back to Globe, I probably didn't have enough gas to make it. I had no choice but to press on to Show Low, fuel, and then return down the road I was on to lower elevations and warmer temperatures. That plan did have the bonus of letting me make another run through the canyon.

I dropped back into the canyon just as the sun was setting. As I tore up the other side a semi went past me headed down trailing a billowing cloud of thick blue smoke. When I drove into it I could taste the acrid stench of burning brake pads and wondered if he would be availing himself of the runaway lane at the bottom of the next corner.

Up and out of the canyon, twilight was ebbing and the temperature was dropping fast as I crossed the plateau, averaging 85-100 miles an hour on those corners as I hustled to get out of the mountains before it got too cold.

Shortly after full dark, the inevitable happened. Just after I had entered one of the few short straight stretches a vehicle came around the next corner, and almost the instant he was in sight he hit his blue and red roof lights. Crap! A State Trooper! I hadn't seen a single Cop all day. By the time he got turned around I was already parked on the shoulder with my 4-ways on, and was dismounting the bike while I  started to take off my helmet.

"Good evening sir, how are you today?"

That's not how these exchanges usually start out. It's usually more along the lines of "You frickin moron!" and then goes downhill from there. Believe me, I know.

"There is a speed limit on this road. It's fifty-five. You were doing eighty-six miles an hour. That's a Felony!"

Oh Crap Oh Crap Oh Crap Oh Crap!!!!! I didn't know exactly what that meant, but I knew with absolute certainty it wasn't good.

You could have knocked me down with a feather when he spoke his next words: "I'm just going to give you a warning, but fer gosh sakes slow down! Ya gotta be safe!"  He looked me up and down and asked "Are ya gettin' cold?" When I told him yes, he replied that the highway would drop quickly in the next 10 miles coming into Globe and get much warmer. "But ya gotta be alive to get that far! Would ya'all like to warm up in the car while I check your paperwork and write up your warning?" Back where I come from the motto seems to be "To berate and punish", but this guy seemed to take the whole "Protect and Serve" thing pretty seriously.

We spent the next 20 minutes sitting in the Cop car with him showing me on my map which were the best bike roads in Southern Arizona (turns out he rides a Harley, surprise surprise), and he filled me in on all the details about the various ghost towns along that highway. He also mentioned, almost apologetically, that should I get pulled over for speeding in the State of Arizona "for the next little while", the warning would come up, and that a ticket for the full amount was a statutory requirement, no discretion.

I gave the kind man a heartfelt thank you, proceeded on my way, and for the next 2 hours not once did I exceed the speed limit so much as .1 of a mile an hour.

I've used my Get Of Jail Free Card for this state, it's time to head to California.

Flying a plane is like riding a bicycle...

Kevin and I had carefully examined the bikes tires before I left Ottawa, coming to the conclusion that there was at least 3,000 more kilometers in them. I had already ordered a set from Sportbiketrackgear.com and run across the border to pick them up in Ogdensburg, but the decision was made to save them for later in the season and just get a set put on when needed in California. We were only off by about 2,700 kilometers. The day after I had made my frigid run into the mountains I noticed a fine little checkerboard pattern on the rear tire. Closer inspection clearly showed that the cord was showing through. They weren't just due, they were way past due.

I left early Tuesday morning for Phoenix, the closest place that had the type and size of tires I wanted. The forecast for when I left the house was 5 degrees, rising to 26 by mid afternoon. How the hell was I supposed to dress for that? I'm used to dealing with extremes of heat and cold on a bike, but not on the same day. I opted to leave the house wearing extra layers including the insulated thermal insert liner in my ballistic pants with jeans underneath, and a medium weight jacket. I went through the production of wheeling the bike outside and relocking all the locks behind me as I exited back through the house. I pulled the front door shut, having already engaged the self locking key in knob lock, reached into my pocket for the key to lock the deadbolt, and realized I had left it in my leather jacket, hanging in the closet. Crap! Nancy would freak if she found out I hadn't locked every single lock in the god-damn house when I left, so with no other option, I knocked on the door to get her to come and let me in so I could fetch my key. Five Full Fucking Minutes later I was still outside. How is it that the woman who is woken from a sound sleep by the slightest bump of a bathroom door can't hear someone pounding and kicking at the front door? I finally gave up. Let the Crack Heads have her.

As I got on the bike I realized the day was warming up fast and that I had worked up a sweat beating upon and yelling at the door. With no options I got on the bike and left. It turned out I was only a little overdressed for the drive in but it was obvious I wouldn't need all the clothing I had brought. When I waddled into the bike shop and asked if there was somewhere I could change clothes I was teased by everybody in the service department. "You're not in Canada any more!" was the theme.

The tires were swapped out in record time, and including labor it cost me less than it would have back home to simply purchase the tires and change them myself. The mechanic stood the old ones next to the new ones, and it was sobering to think that both Kevin and I felt they were still good.

And I was off! After taking it easy for the first 60 miles to let the new tires scrub in, I spent the rest of the day carving the corners in the canyons northeast of Phoenix in the Mazatzal mountains as far north as Payson, before working my way back down through the Sierra Ancha Mountains, then the Pinal Mountains, finally getting home 10 hours after I had left. The speed limit was 75 MPH most of the way, so I was usually doing closer to 90. It was a perfect day. Warm, no crosswinds, smooth pavement, no traffic, constant curves and level changes, and the bike felt like a Thoroughbred given it's head to just run. It was the kind of road that machine was designed for.

The only problem was fuel. The map showed places on the road that offered the hope of regular fuel stops, but it was a constant series of disappointments. At one point as I ran low it looked like my best bet would be a dot labelled "Sunflower". I went past the sign announcing the town, and as I crested a rise I could see a solitary building with a huge billboard on the roof. It read "Pete's TOPLESS Cabaret". I probably could have gotten gassed there, and maybe a couple of other things, but getting Gas was out of the question. The next dot on the map looked promising from a distance, but when I drew closer I could see that town consisted of about 50 billboards, and not a single dwelling or business. I think they just put the names on the map to fill up the empty spaces, there's nothing there, really.....

When I finally got home there was nobody to let me in, so I reluctantly text-ed Margaret, my landlady, and told her my predicament. She promptly text-ed me back saying she had a spare key with her at work, at Rigging Innovations, over at the  airport. That's the company that manufactures the Talon series of parachute containers, and when I went to fetch the key it led to a complete tour of the production line.

Shortly after I returned home Nancy came in, and the first she realized that the deadbolt hadn't been locked when she was home earlier in the day is when I apologized for not locking it on my way out. She looked shaken, but said "Well as long as the gate was locked, I guess it's not a big thing." She then asked if I had climbed over the fence to get out, so I told her "Naa, all you have to do is push on the post a little and the gate just pops open, no key required." Her eyes grew huge, she swayed on her feet, and I'll swear I thought she was going to faint dead away, no doubt picturing the Zombie Crack Head Horde that could have been waiting for her. It's difficult to believe this woman jumps out of airplanes, but is worried about a gate not being secure. To the paranoid people who check behind shower curtains looking for axe murderers: If you find one, what's your plan?

Late today I received an email from Mathieu. He passed his Pilot Proficiency Check in the simulator in Louisiana last week, and after being endlessly poked and prodded by his flight surgeon, no doubt in some strange and unnatural ways, has been cleared for flight status, and can return to work. There, now we both have our lives back.

"Flying a plane is like riding a bicycle, it's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes." Robert Stack, in the movie Airplane!

Room Mates, and other pests

"There might not be an "I" in Team, but there's 3 "U's" in Shut The Fuck Up!" Overheard by Paul Wing on the creeper pad at Canadian Nationals, 2009

Except for a few weeks several years ago when a friend needed a place to stay in Ottawa, I haven't had to share accommodations with anybody since a certain little brunette moved west more than a decade ago. Every day in this house I'm reminded of why I haven't had a room mate. The two girls living here are quite nice, but not without problems. One of them has complained frequently, though politely, about the noise made when people close the bathroom door. "It's very echo-y in here. It wakes me up at night" When the toilet is flushed it makes a racket like the toilet on an airliner, but she has never complained once about that, just the incredibly faint bump of a door closing. Diane, Beth, and I, have been taking great pains to close the door as s-l-o-w-l-y and as q-u-i-e-t-l-y as possible, to the point of ridiculous. We tip-toe around the place and whisper to each other even during the middle of the day when we're the only ones home. Yet on Sunday morning Nancy stopped on her way out to mention the noise yet again, and the 3 of us just sat in the living room, speechless, I can't imagine it being physically possible for the door to be closed any more quietly. When we got home from jumping that day and Nancy was out, Diane ran to the bathroom and repeatedly slammed the door as hard as she could. She came back up the hall with a great big grin on her face. "There! Take That!"

We share a bathroom with Paige, the other tenant  She has more personal care products scattered about the bathroom than you will find in some drug stores. There isn't a square inch of level surface that doesn't have multiple bottles of multiple brands of makeup, shampoo, skin care products, Q-Tips, etc., stacked upon it. When I go in to shower in the morning the only place to put my shaving kit down is on the lid of the toilet. I'm sure she'd have stuff piled on that as well if she didn't have to lift it to pee.

And every single lock in the house is locked 24 hours a day. The yard is surrounded by a five foot tall chain link fence that also has a lock. Once you get through that one, the front door has a deadbolt and key in knob lock that are also always used. Nancy once locked the door behind her when she went out get something from her car, returning in less then 10 seconds. When I want to take the bike out of the garage, I unlock the deadbolt to the garage, then the key in knob lock, cross the garage, retract the barrel bolt locking the garage door closed, recross the garage to activate the door opener, wheel the bike outside, re-cross the garage to the switch for the opener, and once it's closed, it's back across the garage to throw the bolt on the door. Then I exit the garage back into the house, locking the deadbolt and key in knob lock behind me, grab my helmet and jacket, go to the front door, retract the deadbolt and unlock the key in knob lock, step through, lock the two of them behind me, unlock the gate ("How stupid is that? Does she think a crack head can't hop a fence? They practice it all the time being chased by Cops!" said Diane), and lock the gate behind me. Finally, I'm outside. At least I've found a way to defeat the lock on the gate. A slight push on the post moves it over the one quarter inch required to allow the bolt to clear and the gate to open, saving me having to screw around with that one. But if the crack heads figure that out, they'll probably be swarming around the house like zombies since they won't have to hop over the fence anymore.

Diane and I got up early today to climb Picacho Peak before she had to catch her flight. It normally takes 4 hours, we made the round trip in two hours and fifteen minutes. It's a saddle shaped mountain near Eloy that was used as a landmark by wagon trains coming west. It's rated as extremely difficult, with steel cables fastened to the rock in places so you can pull yourself up, and in some places so you don't fall off the sheer cliffs. We overtook a lot of people on the climb up and the climb down, but nobody passed us. Broken Neck? What broken neck? There has been a steady stream of people coming up to me since I arrived to offer sympathy over the accident, and to inquire about my recovery. All I can say is get the hell out of my way, I've got my life back, and I'm going to live it!

Paige lost her brand new Go Pro Black limited edition video camera exiting from the plane yesterday. Those things are worth 400 bucks. She hit her helmet on the top of the door and it tore off. We were on the load, and I happened to be wearing my Contour Plus 2 video camera,  which incorporates GPS tracking. It gives you graphs on the side showing speed, altitude, distance covered, and time, and shows your actual course over the ground on a Google map. Her boyfriend and I plotted the exact point over the ground where she lost it, then used the track our 4-way made in freefall while being pushed by the wind to calculate the distance covered by the slower falling camera  (2 minutes 30 seconds, she's not the first person to have one knocked off their head at 12,500 feet above ground), and came up with the likely landing area. Paige and her boyfriend were leaving to look for it when I had to take Diane to the airport. The camera was back at the house before I was. Like the bench that Remi clobbered the day before, the camera is just fine.

Beth will be returning on the weekend to join me for 3 days of 16 and 32-way sequential's with Mark Kirkby, and Gary Beyer, founding and now returned members of Arizona Airspeed, the team that has won more US National and world titles than other team in the history of the sport. I hope I'm not in over my head.

Diane returned to minus 37 degree temperatures in Winnipeg. We had to run the air conditioner in the car on the way into Phoenix, she's in for a bit of a shock at the other end. The house seems empty and echo-y without the girls around. Maybe I'll start the bike up inside the garage, that should fill the silence nicely. I'm sure Nancy won't mind.

On the first jump of the second day of the camp, Remi Aguila, whom I first met when he lived in Montreal, joined the big-way camp. He wound up being the very last diver coming out of the SkyVan. That meant he had to run the full length of the airplane before hurling himself headfirst out the door to chase the rest of us. Except there was a problem with one of the benches about halfway down the plane, and instead of it being folded up out of the way it was still down. I pointed it out to the person behind me, but they didn't bother pointing it out to Remi, who was behind them. He had beat me to the formation by a wide margin the day before so I was surprised when he didn't show up, and when I turned to track away and he was nowhere to be seen I remembered the bench. He never had a chance. He hit the steel frame and plywood bench at a full charge, and went down like a sack of wet cement. He never left the plane. But the guy who was running beside him was wearing a video camera and caught the whole thing. We watched it several times in the debrief, including a couple of times in slo-mo. It turned out Remi was by then sitting on a chair outside the debrief room with a bag of ice on the goose egg on his shin that was already the size of a baseball. He heard the groans and gasps when we watched it the first time slowly turn into cheers and applause by the time we were watching it in slo-mo the second time. Don't worry, there was no permanent damage, the bench will be fine.

We were waiting to board the planes for another formation load when I spotted this gorgeous, sleek, sexy, fast looking home built airplane on the ramp. At least, I assumed it was a home built, I've never seen anything quite like it. It reminded me of a smaller version of a P51 Mustang, with side by side seating, and a better paint job. I remembered Gord saying something in the Bent Prop a few parties earlier about having an app for his phone where you could enter the registration number of an airplane and it would give you aircraft type, model, year, owner, etc., from the federal database. It took only a moment for Gord to look it up, which is when I noticed what the number actually was. N51PZ. It was registered as an Experimental Aircraft (home built), made in 2002. I want one. I wonder what Mathieu is planning for next winter? Maybe he'll want to build a plane.

When our coach for the day asked if anybody wanted to be Super Floater, which means you leave off the lead plane half a second before everybody else, Beth leapt up, squealing and waving her arms. You get to fall away looking directly back up the line of flight and watch as everybody flies in from the other plane. It was a slot I had never tried so later in the day when he offered it up again I did my best Beth imitation, leaping up and down, waving my arms shouting "Me me me me me!" There was a bunch of people that stuck up their hands but I got the slot so for the next couple of jumps I put on my video camera. It was awesome! The cameraman and I left side by side, tracking upwards, and suddenly I was 20 feet above the base and just swooped down into my slot. I found out afterwards that Kurt had turned his camera around to video me as I came in to grip his leg. If I can figure out how to edit his video together with mine it should look pretty cool.

The Canadians have earned quite a reputation this year, with a disproportionate number of reserve rides, injuries, landing problems, and general bonehead moves. I watched one guy flare late, a split second before crashing into a bush, coming to a sudden stop with the lines, canopy, and bush, in a tangled mess. His next landing he flared halfway then finished the flare with only one arm,making a  diving turn into the ground. He got up afterwards, limping. Aidan saw me watching and said that it was one of the best landing the guy had made since he arrived.

Somebody made a reservation at a restaurant in Casa Grande last night for 40 people, but only gave them a couple of hours notice so they didn't have time to lay on extra staff. After we'd been there for an hour and there were still people waiting for their first drink order a bunch of us abandoned the place, power shopped Walmart, and enjoyed barbecued steaks back at the house. Text messages were going back and forth as soon as we left the restaurant, and the race was on to see who would eat first. We were on our second bottle of wine by the time they got their drink orders, and were cutting into our steaks before the rest of them had any food in front of them.

It's Sunday, the last day of the Invasion. There will be pizza tonight at Lyal and Cathy's before the people who are left catch their flights out tomorrow. The place will suddenly be very empty and quiet. That's a good thing, the pace of partying is wearing me down.

I can honestly say......

Last Saturday morning I got hold of Margaret and she got me settled into the room I rented from her for the rest of January. There are 2 other bedrooms in the place that are rented to a couple of girls that are long term tenants. Diane is staying with me in the room for 10 days, and Beth will be driving in from Palm Springs to use one of the spare bunks on the weekends. I introduced one of the tenants, Nancy, to Beth on the first night, and I guess I didn't mention that she was just passing through because she was caught completely off guard one morning when the short brunette had been replaced by a tall blond. "How long are you staying for?" I'm not sure she believed my explanation that it was all innocent, but she hasn't tried to have me evicted for turning her home into a house of ill repute.

About 20 of us trotted out to a Mexican restaurant one night and after an hour of drinking and eating chips and salsa the waitress came to tell us that the kitchen had caught fire and we wouldn't get our meals. Most of us arrived half in the bag to begin with so it didn't bother us overly much. As Brian Forbes said: "I can honestly say I've had worse meals than a pitcher of Margaritas." So we went back to the Bent Prop for more beer and pizza.


"Hangovers used to be a bit more fun when I was younger." Gordon Pinsent.

Every night here has either started or ended, and on several occasions started and ended, in the Bent Prop Saloon. The only night since getting here I haven't gotten trashed I still woke up with a hangover the next day because the hangover from the day before was so severe it was still lingering. One night after having spent a couple of days doing coach jumps, grateful students were buying me drinks so fast I couldn't consume them fast enough to stay ahead. At one point I had half a dozen double shots of Grey Goose lined up in front of me. That was after I had arrived at the bar drunk. I'm enjoying the company while it lasts, as soon as the Invasion is over the place will empty out and there will only be people around to jump with on the weekends. 

Diane got drafted by Aidan and has been coaching in the tunnel most nights. She's been having trouble with the visor on her helmet, and one night, after it had slammed open several times while she was in the tunnel, it tore off completely, coming back down in a shower of pieces when they shut down the fan.

This morning was the start of the big way camp, which is when the real fun began. I could easily fly any slot on the 30-ways we're doing so I spent the first 4 jumps volunteering to go on the Base in the center to give the less experienced people a chance to try some new slots. That means we fell flat, happy and stupid, until the rest of the group tracked away from us, and then the Base got to play. We'd start turning points with what little time we had left before we too, had to leave. Left hand donut, right hand donut, and then a round was the plan. We got the 2 donuts finished before my audible altimeter started insisting it was time to go, and Aidan shot me a dirty look as I quickly backed away and started turning into my track. I felt a little guilty at ditching the last point until I saw the video. At 5,500 feet we started kicking our feet and everybody leaves. You see us start turning points, and the cameraman keeps filming until he decides he's gone low enough and dumps out his parachute. The last thing you see is us getting smaller and smaller still turning points as the planet gets closer and closer.

The last thing somebody had said to Fuzzy Dave before he boarded a plane a few days ago was "What could possibly go wrong?" When it came it time to dump he had a malfunction and had to cut it away and use his reserve. Earlier today while we were in the loading area he was joking about it, and just as he finished repeating the words, someone shouted and pointed up at another main coming down in a ball and someone flying along under a reserve. Fuzzy quietly suggested that nobody repeat the phrase until the Invasion was over. There have been a lot of reserve rides this week, but with the exception of somebody who waited too long to cut away, and didn't leave enough time for his reserve to properly inflate, everyone has landed safely. That guy is in hospital but will fully recover.

My favorite part of a camp like this is the accusations of blame when something goes wrong, and the resulting denials, and counter-accusations. Diane and I are far and away the two most experienced people on the camp so I've enjoyed myself poking fun at the bone headed moves made by the less experienced. It's all on video, deny it all you want, the only one you're fooling is yourself. Since I had taken Base for the day I got to pick my own slot for the last 30 way of the day. I chose last diver, the very last person to exit from the lead plane. The lineup was so loose that I was all the way back next to the pilot, and by the time it was my turn to charge the  door the Base seemed miles away, and I vented during the debrief, claiming that I had been so far from the door I'd had to take a bus to get there. I think I made my point.

It's Friday night, I've been here for a week, I've got 10 or 11 weeks to go.

I not going to defend the decision, but.....

It's Monday afternoon, I'm just back from a very chilly ride up through Coolidge, Superior, and into the Pinal Mountains. It wasn't too bad starting out, but as I climbed higher and higher into steep sided canyons it got colder and colder, and I finally turned around. I  stopped to warm up at a roadside cafe with a full parking lot that had one empty stool at the counter. The waitress called me "Hon', and "Sweety", and had a steaming mug of coffee in front of me before I had even come to a full stop. Everybody in the place seemed to know everybody else and they all wanted to know who I was. It took me twice as long as it should have to eat my lunch because I kept having to introduce myself and shake hands with yet another friendly local. "Where y'all from?", and "Thanks fer visitin!" was the theme.

Before I left home my doctor said that I was good to skydive, and that the joints wouldn't get any stronger if I waited any longer. I'm not going to defend the decision, but yesterday, with a hand picked 4-way, and with the best videographer on the drop zone, wearing the appropriate safety equipment....

I was just a little bit nervous. We were on jump run when Jo reached over and pointed at my belly. I tried to look down to see what she was pointing at but with the collar on I couldn't tilt my head downwards. That's when I realized I wouldn't be able to see my handles in an emergency, and was suddenly seized with panic over whatever it was that had gotten Jo's attention. Smiling away, as always, Jo reached over and undid my seat belt, which I should have done 10 minutes and 11 thousand feet earlier. Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, but it serve to relax me and the jump went off without a hitch.

The usual Invasion silliness is going on, students deciding that after 20 jumps they've got it all nailed and wanting to try things they're not remotely capable of being a constant theme. A videographer spent so much time time getting himself comfortable out on the camera step he didn't even notice that his group climbed out and left, and when the next group climbed out he was just as surprised to see them as they were to see him still clinging to the plane. He let that group and one other group leave before he finally fell off. After he landed he marched over and gave the people he was supposed to get video of shit for leaving without him. Somebody finally pointed out that it was their job to jump, it was his job to get the video, farting around so much you didn't notice them leaving was no excuse.

Diane is on the 4-way camp that started today. On their first jump it was minus 20 degrees at altitude. When they were in the air I was still warm in my bed. A couple of groups chose to stop jumping until it warmed up. It's the coldest I've ever seen it here, on my ride into the mountains this morning there was snow at the side of the road in some canyons. I'd like to do some more jumps, but I'm going to wait until it warms up later in the week.

Maybe it will keep the dust down

I took a quick look out the window before I left to see if the tumbleweeds were still there so I could get a picture. They were gone, apparently they're afraid of snow. It's going to be an interesting drive.

I drive way too fast to worry about my cholesterol

The shortcut worked!!! But then, I was going like hell.

Thursday Night, late Thursday night. This is the furthest I've been from the drivers seat since yesterday morning. I'm in the Motel 8 just outside Albuquerque New Mexico, Ciroc Vodka and lemonade in hand. I've either been driving, sleeping in the drivers seat, fetching coffee, or pumping gas, since I left home at 6:45 Wednesday morning. 2 Time zones, 32 hours of driving, 2100 miles, yes, that's miles, not kilometers, and not a single speeding ticket. The first day I could have done in my sleep, I was tracing the same route I'd taken a dozen times to the FreeFall Convention and hardly needed to look at the map until I'd crossed into Missouri. I slept in the car that night and should be in the Bent Prop Saloon for dinner Friday night. Things were helped along greatly by the fact that once you cross the Mississippi all the states have a posted limit of 75 Miles An Hour. Add in a fudge factor, and I was simultaneously impressed by my average speed and horrified by my gas mileage. Pulling the trailer can't be helping.

Speaking of trailers, every time I put a bike on one, there's a problem. The first time I loaded a bike unsupervised I came within a hairs breadth of flipping a perfectly good BWM right off the side of the trailer upside down to the ground. My technique hasn't improved. If I don't have a problem loading a bike, I seem to compensate by nearly dropping one off when I unload it. The only time a motorcycle on a trailer is safe with me is in transit.

Until now.

And, now, for something completely different.

I checked all the tie downs before I left the house, and the very last thing I did was take a bungee cord and tie it as tight as I could around the front brake lever and handlebar, locking the front wheel. The bike has 4 tie down straps on it, pinning it to the trailer in a X shape, each corner securely fastened to the bike and trailer by ratchet straps capable of withstanding 1500 pounds of stress each. Kevin showed me how to tie a bike down to a trailer, and he insisted that one of the most important steps was to tie off the front brake. He swore up and down that in an emergency it would keep the bike from moving. I thought he was full of crap, but just in case, every time I loaded a bike I tied off the brake. All the real work was done by the bikes suspension: you just kept reefing up on the ratchets, tightening the bike down to the trailer until the springs had no more give, and the fucker wasn't going to go anywhere.

Late Wednesday afternoon, tearing along through a construction zone in Cleveland, with concrete barriers on either side of a tight, uneven asphalt surface, I hit the Mother Of All Potholes. There was a semi-trailer riding my ass, and another right beside him in the other lane. I saw the car in front of me suddenly pitch down and forwards to the left, and before I had braced to take the impact of the hole myself my eyes went up to the rear view mirror. My front left wheel dropped in first, starting a wave that went through the tongue of the trailer finally whip-cracking the back of the trailer several feet in the air. It seemed like slow motion as I watched my bike and trailer disappear upwards out of sight in the mirror, drop back down, slam into the ground, bounce back up, and reappear, with the bike on the trailer...... barely.

It was canted over at about a 30 degree angle and I watched in horror as I waited for it to fall off the trailer completely.

Just to put things in context: I had been having the best year of my life, and then I Broke My Neck. I got my life back on Tuesday, and there I am on Wednesday watching my (non-blond) Baby getting tossed under the wheels of a couple of 18 wheelers.

Both truckers must have seen what had happened on my trailer as they both suddenly backed away from me, whether out of self preservation or  an attempt to help I'll never know, but it gave me enough room to s-l-o-w-l-y apply my brakes, e-a-s-e into an exit ramp, and finally pull into a Mcdonalds parking lot. The entire time I could barely tear my eyes from the rear view mirror. Any moment I expected to see the bike topple off and disappear over the concrete barriers into the construction zone.

I walked around the trailer for a couple of minutes while I pieced together what had happened. Both rear  tie downs were unhooked. The trailer had been tossed in the air, and came down with enough force to drive the rear suspension down even further, putting enough slack in the straps to enable them to both fall off. The bike was then held on by the 2 front downs, and the front brake. If the brake hadn't been tied off, and the bike was able to roll forward......

If I'd been lucky it would have fallen onto it's side on the trailer and bounced around causing thousands of dollar damage as it bounced around. Unlucky, and I'd be shopping for a new bike.

Kevin used to be my rigger, he packed my reserve. In that capacity he never had a save, and I never owed him a bottle. I do now. That stupid bungee cord was the only thing standing between the FZ staying put or flopping off the trailer.

I straightened up the bike, reattaching the straps, and tightened them so much I half expected to see the corners of the trailer start to bend up.

I'd managed to get ahead of the weather when I left home. According to the DJ the forecast was "Fog, heavy at times, with freezing rain later in the day, followed by heavy snow, high winds," (finishing as a note of hysteria crept into his voice) "great big cracks in the earth and God knows what the Hell else!" I was caught by part of the system coming up from Mexico but apart from some rain the weather has been great for driving. I'm a little worried about today though. When I stepped outside to grab a couple things from the car I was literally blown off my feet. Tumbleweeds were blowing through the parking lot and a dozen had become entangled in the bike, car, and trailer. I can barely see 100 feet in the dust. The forecast between here and Eloy is for winds gusting to 65 miles an hour. That's the speed at which a Cessna becomes airborne! Take a Cessna 150, put it on a strong enough cable, and you could fly the thing like a kite out there today. At least I'll be going straight into it for the most part and won't have to deal with a crosswind, but the sandblasting effect will probably do as much damage as  almost suffered when the tie downs came loose.

Shortcuts only work if....

Or: The Cannonball Run

I'm heading southwest at the usual dangerous and unsafe rate of speed with most of the usual paraphernalia: tent, sleeping bags, motorcycle gear, a couple computers, plenty of cash, credit cards, clothes for 3 different seasons, a self inflating mattress, a bottle of Coureur De Bois (Quebecois Maple Cream - heaven in a brown bottle!), several cameras, a kite, a hot air corn popper, a stack of books, and dragging the trailer I bought from Nathalie in the divorce, loaded with my baby, my Yamaha FZ1. And, in a surprising last minute twist, my Orthopedic surgeon gave me his blessing to Skydive, "As long as there's no head butting" No problem! Everybody knows Skydiving is a no-body-contact sport, right? I flunked my last x-ray a month ago and delayed my departure to Arizona by 10 days to give the final joint in my neck 4 more weeks to fuse in what even the doctor seemed to think was a futile hope I would be able to jump. This afternoon he examined the x-ray very closely, pronounced me healed, and said it was as strong as it was going to get. I ran straight home and added my gear to the great big stack of crap in the front hall waiting to be loaded in the car.

The Canadian Invasion began on January 5th and runs for 2 weeks. That's when Lyall Waddell brings his entire drop zone down from Edmonton and takes over Skydive Arizona, inviting any other interested Canadian skydivers to join them. When it's over Diane will be returning to work, but I don't have anywhere I need to be, and a friend has invited me come visit them in California for a bit so when the party is over I'll continue further west.

A friend of a friend rents out rooms in a house she bought just off the end of the runway at Skydive Arizona, and I have rented one of the rooms until the end of the month. If you take the shortcut across the cotton field it's only a 10 minute walk to the Bent Prop Saloon.

The last time I left town for this long was a quarter of a century ago. I left Ottawa on a Friday morning, headed to meet a girl in Montreal to spend the weekend. I missed Montreal, and wound up in Florida. Everything probably woulda' bin fine 'cept I ate some Peyote on my way out of town, which is when everything gets kinda fuzzy, and the next thing I saw going by was palm trees. I got home 6 months later. Texas was lovely that time of year. So was Louisiana, Alabama, Oregon, Washington, B.C., the list goes on......

The only part I'm not looking forward to is the drive down. Because of the delay in my departure to attend the appointment for more x-rays, in order to arrive in Eloy the same day that Diane does I'll have 3 1/2 days to cover the entire 4,139 km distance. She had already bought her plane ticket from Winnipeg before I found out about my late departure. 3 1/2 days, 4,139 km. I wasn't kidding about the dangerous and unsafe speed part. And it looks like weather may be a factor. For the last few days I've been closely studying the weather forecasts to make the best decision about my route. There's a huge low coming up from Mexico moving northeast across the US, if I cover enough territory on the first day I may miss the worst of it. But I may wind up at higher altitudes in New Mexico and Arizona passing through the tail end of the system. High altitude and a low pressure area this time of year in that neighborhood usually means snow.

Which brings me to The Cannonball Run. A few years ago my sister and brother-in-law gave me a book for Christmas about a race called the Cannonball Run. I was familiar with the title because of a movie of the same title from 1981 in which  "A wide variety of eccentric competitors participate in a wild and illegal cross country race". Until I read the book, I thought it was just another silly, though entertaining movie. What I discovered when I read the book was that not only was the movie based on actual events, but that the movie didn't even come close to telling the true stories of the race, in this case the truth was so much more entertaining than the fiction. I especially remember the author talking of being in a Ferrari as it slid sideways down a steep, ice covered mountain road, somewhere in Arizona in the middle of the night because they had decided to take a shortcut. As my buddy Michael will be the first to testify, "Shortcuts only work if You Go Like Hell!!!!!!"

Not recommended on an icy mountain road in the dark.

In a sports car.

But in this case the guy at the wheel was a professional race car driver, and it turned out well, though just barely.

I'll try and keep that in mind as I approach the Rockies with my SUV full of computers and camping gear pulling a loaded trailer not equipped with brakes.

I just hope it isn't dark when I get there. Or icy. Or snowing. Maybe I shoulda' brung a race car driver. I definitely won't be taking any shortcuts.

Or any Peyote.