Saturday’s Bumper Sticker
Saturday’s Theme Music
I walked two miles this morning prior to my writing session. As I did, I thought, man, it already feels hot. Sweat was soaking my shirt, hat, and shorts. I knew from checking the weather that it had already been in the seventies but that the heat index was about six degrees hotter.
It felt it. It fortunately didn’t feel like the one hundred nine degrees reported in Denver, thank the fates. As expected for me, I began streaming songs about heat, and ended up with this Billy Idol gem from 1982, “Hot in the City”.
Be Careful Out There
If you like to walk, as I do, around your town, be careful.
Caution and awareness are seared in my head. A friend in another town was walking his dog one morning several years ago. A vehicle killed him and his dog. The driver was never identified.
People get distracted, even drivers. Some don’t like stopping for people in crosswalks. I know it, because they’ve told me. They don’t care about the law, safety, or anything else. Some are too busy with other things. I’ve seen people eating as they drive, talking on their phones, or putting on make-up. Some looked at me as they passed and gave me a nod or a wave. So they see me, but kept going.
Crossing in front of the Jackson County Library in Ashland where Main Street becomes Siskiyou Avenue is the most hazardous in my experience. There’s a traffic light – the final one downtown as you’re going south – about fifty feet in front of it. Leaving downtown frees drivers from the multiple crosswalks, traffic lights, and twenty miles-per-hour speed limit. Now freed, they gun their engines and race up into the twenty-five MPH zone. They don’t to stop again, not when they’ve already had to stop so many times, especially for someone crossing the street in a crosswalk. Better to just miss the person and keep going, right?
Yes, it happens. It’s not fiction or exaggeration.
Perhaps the most disturbing incident this week was the Ashland Police Department‘s car that didn’t stop for me. It was about one in the afternoon. Traffic was light, and it was a beautiful summer day. I was in the southern crosswalk, crossing Main Street at First street. An APD vehicle was approaching. The blue and white SUV was several car lengths away from the northern crosswalk in the center of three lanes. He didn’t stop; he didn’t look my way. I could clearly see him, a white guy with a goatee, with a heavy, burly build, and a receding hairline and sunglasses – but he couldn’t see me (I guess).
When he didn’t yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk, neither did two other vehicles, both following him, but in two different lanes. Why should they? The APD car didn’t stop, so it must not be the law, or enforced, they probably assumed. Both of the drivers saw me, giving me a look as they passed, with one driver, a young woman in her twenties waving at me.
The APD car didn’t have his emergency lights on. He, and the others, stopped at the traffic light up the street at Second and Main.
So be careful. Lot of people are distracted. It happens. Many just don’t care or don’t want to stop for pedestrians. And many just don’t see you.
Or so they pretend.
Find A Club
I sat down to write and poured out a paragraph.
Then I stopped to regard what I wrote.
Yech, I said. It was as appealing as a dirty cat litter box.
I don’t wanna write, I whispered in my inner vault, aware of the blasphemy that I was uttering.
Nor did I want to walk. I’d completed two and a half miles. The thought of another step depressed me.
I wanted to be on the beach, basking in sunshine as I listened to the waves and watched them crash on the shore.
I wanted to be reading a book, sitting at a restaurant, enjoying food that I don’t allow myself to eat because it’s not healthy. I wanted to be listening to music and laughing with friends. I wanted to be flying away, driving away, buzzing away.
I didn’t want to be writing, walking, doing yardwork, cleaning the house, or eating healthy.
Just like that, I knew I was into one of my dark moods. It was overtaking me like a terrifying storm.
Nuts, I said. Nuts.
I returned to writing. Every word felt like a struggle. I kept pushing, looking for a carrot to use, urging myself, just finish this paragraph, and then doing it again. I really needed a club. It’s a day like this when I could use a personal training urging me to push myself. Without one, I had to do it alone.
It was a gritty session. I actually counted the words. When it was nine hundred fifty, I said, good enough, and shut down. Then I grit my teeth and braced myself to walk. I wanted at least two more miles before going home.
I know the words that I wrote today will not seem any different from my usual output. It’s just the mood that’s affecting me. Sometimes I don’t need a carrot or a club. I just sit down and write. And then there are days like today, when neither a carrot nor a club seem like enough.
It was a terrible day of struggling to write like crazy, but tomorrow is another day.
Thursday’s Theme Music
I’d planned a two-mile walk yesterday evening. Starting I’d end up at the pizza place where my friends and I meet for beers and conversation once a week. Then I’d walk home, giving me a nice, round three-mile walk, a pleasant cap to the day.
A brief thunderstorm had passed through right before I started out. The temperature remained about eighty-five, but thunderstorms still haunted the mountains around our valley, and the humidity had climbed. I heard thunder as I went up the hills, planning to climb high and then descend. As I walked, the temperature dropped about twelve degrees. Rain ratcheted down on me and then stopped. Thunder boomed. Calling an audible, I descended and set on a path to meet with my friends.
Somewhere in all of this, I’d been thinking about plans and priorities. From that, I started streaming Metallica, “Nothing Else Matters”. Now it’s stuck on a loop so I’m putting it out there to release myself.
Enjoy.
Fansweatulous
It’s what you get when you start out feeling fantabulous but walk two miles in the heat and end up drenched in sweat.
A New Bag
Here’s an unsolicited product testimonial.
I bought a new laptop bag at the end of April. It was about time. I go through laptop bags about every five years. The one I was using had a shoulder strap. I use a large HP laptop. Because it doesn’t have a long battery charge, I carry a power brick and cords with me. I walk one to three miles before and after my writing sessions. Carrying that weight had become comfortable. It was especially so in the summer’s smoky heat, when temperatures popped into the high nineties to over a hundred, and the valley trapped wildfire smoke that drifted down from the mountains.
Besides that, my laptop bag had worn through in a few places. I’d paid fifty dollars for the leather and vinyl creation, more than twice what I’d paid for the fabric bag it replaced.
I’d decided that I needed a back pack variation. I found an Eagle Creek convertible laptop backpack that was large enough for my HP. This one was available for one hundred fifty-nine dollars, over three times what I’d paid for the other one. But, I use it every day, and I needed a more comfortable way to transport my laptop. So I pried open the wallet and put out the cash.
I’m pleased that I did. I’ve used it for a month and it’s much easier to strap that thing onto my back and hike around town. It feels surprisingly light.
I also have a large, wheeled laptop bag that I employ for flying. I decided I’d use the new Eagle Creek bag for my travels to see how it worked.
Again, I was pleased that I did. The Eagle Creek bag has multiple zipped compartments that helped me organize my books, boarding passes, gum, glasses, etc., along with the laptop and its accessories. The new bag fit under the airline seat with ease. It was small enough that I could pull it out from under the seat and put it up against the edge of my seat and have the legroom available during the flight.
All in all, a worthwhile purchase. It looks sturdy and durable. I’ll see if it lasts five years.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Wasn’t streaming anything in my head this morning, save the theme music from “Magnum, P.I.” by Mike Post. I think Mike Post wrote half of the theme music for television shows in the seventies and eighties. Sure seemed like it.
I decided today needed something crunchier. As I walked, my mind recovered a little gem from 1999 by a man named Lenny Kravitz, “Fly Away”. I like those opening chords, and the general message, “I’d like to fly away.” 1999 was a damn fine year for me, maybe my favorite year.
Crank it up and sing it with Lenny. You can even play the air guitar.
Good Day
Ever get out there walking and feel the air and a sharp wind, and, giving anxious glances toward the sky, think, oh, no, I’m not dressed right? But then the sun clears its throat and heat finds you. Songs start streaming in your mind, powering you into a faster pace. Busy people and singing birds fill the background, and the air acquires a sweet freshness, and you think, this right here, right now, this is a good day.
Don’t You Hate It?
Don’t you hate it when you’re stopped behind two other cars, because they’ve legally stopped for a person in the crosswalk, and the car coming up behind you whips into the other land and accelerates to about ten M.P.H. over the speed limit and just misses the pedestrian in the crosswalk?
Yeah, I don’t think the man in the crosswalk was happy, either. Mindful of people being like icebergs, with so much of them hidden out of sight, I wonder what kind of idiot is driving that car.
Michael Seidel, writer 