Keeping the shitty side down

This is probably too much information, but I’ve just noticed that about half of the perforated sheets of toilet paper I use do not actually touch my shit. At least for me. I tend to use two or three sheets per wipe, folded to make a layer of two or three, depending on the softness of the stool situation. Obviously on softer days three layers is best. Who wants to get shit on your fingers, even if you’re going to wash them afterwards?

Thinking about this this morning in the outhouse as I’m folding three sections (it was that kind of day) it comes to me that only one of the three sheets actually performs the dirty work. The other two work in support as a kind of insurance against an untimely breakdown. Of course if the work is getting done by the first layer, the second and third layers function only as a redundancy. An engineering sidebar. Just in case.

Which led me to the observation that, if my usage represents something close to the norm, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50% of the perforated squares of ass-wipe are produced to function as back-up. They get one play during which they remain relatively unsullied and then are dropped into the same shit-hole as the others. It’s sobering that this redundancy might be a principle of nature. Half or more of us function as place-holders. Back-up plans. Unlikely to be used, but still necessary enough. You might get called up. You won’t know when and you might not like it when it happens, but it’ll be important. That shit is going to matter and you are going to stand in the gap. It may be your destiny, it may not.

Sometimes it seems that you have bad timing, that you end up being on the shitty side too often. This past long weekend I’m out riding mountain bike with a large group of friends. It’s Cuyuna and it’s awesome – SO AWESOME – and I’m on the way back to the campsite after about six hours of riding with 20-year-old JW (who only has two bikes and no kids, and me with my kids all grown up, so we end up riding together on our own schedule and, like I said it’s AWESOME) and I’m done, as in almost no water and legs of jelly done, and the rest of the group of dads ride up yelling for glory, set free from the constraints of responsible parenting. Now. Now they’re going to ride and it’s going to be super fun. Well of course young JW turns around to join them, but this old guy is done. I know it. There’s no other way to put it. I play it prudent, accept my destiny, and ride back to the tents alone.

It's a matter of perspective really. Even though not turning around and going back for another two hours was probably a mistake, I’m willing to live with it because I don’t rightly know what the shitty side might be or when my destiny to catch the shit might come up. I mean I’d just had six hours of awesome riding with JW and I was rightly bagged. This much I knew. Why tempt fate with what I didn’t know? I don't know. Shit. It could’ve been awesome. The shitty side might have held strong, leaving me clean and redundant. I know the analogy doesn’t hold all the way. I kept the shitty side down, and I didn’t get thrown into the shitter as a redundancy. You could say that my roll hadn’t come up. It could be that I'm just hanging over the top now (or under, depending how you install your roll) waiting for the next cosmic peristalsis. Who knows? As for the weekend, things stayed awesome and unshitty right to the end, and here are a few pics to prove it.

Tents, sky, bikes - not shitty at all.

Even 20 year olds tire out.

The Bobsled - Keep 'yer outside foot down!

Minor shitty - a flat at the bottom of Sand Hog Mountain.

The 29er was ... sweetly not shitty.

27 year anniversary - The couple that rides together, rides together! Amen!?

CX 2013 Race #6 - You had to be there!

Back in the day we high school boys would, each of us on one occasion or another, try to tell each other these stories about the super-duper incidents and events we'd experienced or witnessed but couldn't quite communicate using words, and then end this failed storytelling with "You had to be there." I feel that way all the time when trying to explain to people at work, who have never seen a cross race, much less ridden in one, why I had a good race, or a not-so-good one, or why I think it's completely okay to keep on racing with (virtually) no hope of winning a race - in fact, that I feel that placing eleventh is a win for me. It's exactly like "you have to be there" in order to get it. You have to be at a race, to get some sense of it. But to really get it, you have to be in a race.

Southern Cross was awesome! You had to be there! What else can you say to explain it all? That's what I'm thinking as I'm standing in the doorway of a colleague's office and trying to answer his question, "How was your race this weekend?" (He's just bought a cross bike. He likes it. He wanted to try a race this year, but he couldn't this weekend because of family matters. I believe him, I really do.) So, since he's asked, I start to explain about the twelve times riding up the hill, or describe the six times you had to get past the sand - was it faster to ride it? or run it? and that you split the difference and rode it three times, and then decided it was faster to run it for the last three - or explain the race wisdom of always dropping into the faster gear when your "go harder even when you can't" cx soul demands it, rather than giving in to the "take it easy" betrayal suggested by your mind and body's screams asking you to shift up for a break. Even as you're saying all this, you see that he's looking back at you like a nineteenth century portrait, you just know there's no way to do this right. He's just holding position. He wasn't there. He has no idea. He can't, because he's never been there. 

I believe that if Martin Heidegger would have ridden a few cx races, he may have had an easier time explaining and illustrating his version of being in, or dasein. When you ride a cross race you are existentially compelled into the fullness of yourself in the world. You are involved in a moment. You participate fully in it, and then the next one, and so on, one moment after another. You are driven into the breathing in, the solitary gasping, pumping and running and pushing and heaving of yourself into and against the world. On your own on your bike during a cx race you are completely present. You are your own existence and you are lost in it within the world. You can hardly tell the difference between you and the hills you climb or the wind you flout or the barriers you hurdle. You can only be involved in it all then. You can only be aware of yourself there. It's absolutely hellish in its beauty. 

But there you are. And when you stop there are others who are there too. They are with you, and they have their being too, and you have yours, and you are being there together. And it's eye-cryingly marvellous. Stick-in-the-eye-cryingly marvellous. For once you've been there alone, you can be there with the others who have been there too and you can all say bullshit to a bunch of this empathy crapola. You can heckle the hell out of me if you've been there. 

What could be more appropriate than the damned cheering on the damned as they navigate the winding road into their own hellish haven of self-discovery? So bang a gong! 

Hand up a pierogi.

Hand up a beer. 

Give me a hand up when I fall.

You have to be there. 

Absolutely.