Ill-Advised Bicycle Ride

"I'm going to go ride my bike," I said, and by "bike" I did not mean motorcycle. For once.

(There was a time when I was becoming an avid cyclist, always off gallivanting around under the motivation of two pedals alone, cranking my away along streets and byways with such regularity that I even bought a little mirror that velcro-ed to the handgrip, affording me a view of the approaching traffic that would soon be spraying me with road grime. At some point I stopped, though, and the mirror - and the bike - didn't see much use for nearly a year.)

Whistling up the street at first, several realizations blew over me. First, the bike seemed very light, and wobbly, compared to the 350-lb. KLR650 I usually ride. Also slower.

The seat hurt, too - I thought the KLR had a small seat until I recalled the paltry padding sensation of two butt bones nestled into half an inch of foam rubber.

The wind blows fairly loudly, you know, without a helmet - reminding me that the whorls and curvatures of my naked pink ears were designed to locate predators, not hustle through the atmosphere at 25 mph.

And there are odors. Driving by in a car and noticing someone laying down fresh mulch isn't half the visceral experience you get upon suddenly sucking in a whiff of that long-forgotten, acrid scent.

I rode past mailboxes I'd never noticed, with clever devices I'd never noticed to alert the owner when the mailman had come - small weights tied to strings that dangled in the breeze once the door had been opened. I thought about the ingenuity involved and the countless trips saved as I rode by, going nowhere for no reason.

I noticed hills that got a lot steeper than they were the last time I drove up them, the crests somehow heaving skyward the moment I turned my back.

I noticed my own voice, the sound of panting as I struggled to keep my legs moving.

I noticed who was selling their cars, or vans, or lawnmowers, or all three, and whose lawn-care policies leaned toward meticulous tending, next door to people practicing defiant neglect.

There were puddles I never noticed, cropping up on bridges mainly, and my tires threw up flecks of mud onto my hat, shirt and shorts, striping me from stem to stern so that even when I'd gotten home, kicked the kickstand and removed the shirt, my wife still commented that it looked like I'd had an accident in my pants.

And then I noticed my legs burning, the muscles taut and achy, thighs brushing together as I strode toward the shower, a clammy, self-powered adventurer who looked like he'd crapped himself.

I'm going to try again tomorrow.

My Beef With Mazda

I'm in favor of a mild degree of spousal mocking - I think it's healthy.

That's why when Penny is going off about paint not transferring correctly through her silkscreen, or the paper store discontinuing her favorite paper, I usually don't resist the temptation to giggle and repeat her complaints in a loving falsetto.

"Yeah!" I say, smiling. "Those dirty, discontinuin' so-and-sos at the paper store ... how dare they?"

Most of the time she drops her scowl and smiles back, but not always. It's a risk I'm willing to take.

And, likewise, when I'm staring out the passenger window at a new Mazda RX-8 and wishing aloud that it were prettier, I don't get bent out of shape when Penelope makes fun of me. That's fair.

I just like pretty cars, okay? When I see a 92-95 RX-7 going down the road - a sadly infrequent event these days - the third generation model, with the swoopy fenders and the double-bubble roof, like the metal is gently shrink-wrapped around the passengers ... or one of those new Cadillac XLRs, the really angular ones with the Corvette motor - or even a Corvette, for that matter; they started looking really nice around the turn of the millenium ... or, say, a 67-72 Chevy C-10 - a shortbed, with a white cab... it makes me happier than I was before.

When somebody releases a new car and it's beautiful, and popular, the quality of my life goes up, because all my driving gets that much more scenic. That's why I wish they'd redesigned the RX-8 a little more to my liking.

Ridicule if you will.

Oral Hygiene, Culinary Aspects of

This morning I had a dentist's appointment at 10 o'clock. It went okay.

I ended up buying a special toothbrush and agreeing to be fitted for a special mouthpiece I'll have to wear when I sleep, because apparently I grind - or "gnash," as the dentist put it - my teeth at night. This is no good.

I wonder what I've been dreaming about lately to make me clench my jaw with all my slumbering might. I rarely remember my dreams.

They say if you dream about losing your teeth, it has to do with money - losing all your money, I'd assume. I can see how the two go together, having just paid a hefty dentist's bill.

Lunch was tricky. We grilled bratwurst, which is not difficult, but the next part, the eating part, took some effort.

You just can't absentmindedly shove food in your face once you start thinking - I mean really thinking, about your teeth. I pictured ketchup and mustard smearing across the enamel, and the bun wedging its way between my incisors, as the pickle juice corroded my gums...

That was the worst bratwurst I ever had.

I wouldn't be surprised if I dreamed about it tonight, grinding my teeth like I guess I always do, gnashing my molars against the microscopic residue of my toxic lunch.

Maybe It's Just Me

Before I get into this, let me say a few words about that story I wrote and posted here: Thanks for reading it.

Now: I'm not sure why, and I'm happy to entertain suggestions, but I get really depressed whenever I see or think about job resumes.

I just had to research the standard resume format for a project here, and I found several dozen websites with untold thousands of sample resumes, and every one I looked at just made me want to die.

"...More than 6 years' experience in industry-related fields, with strong focus on interpersonal skills. Certification from management training course in Fall 2003. Generated revenue for outstanding products with measurable returns from..."

Oh, death. Deliver me now from this earthly torture.

What's the deal, I wonder? Why do I abhor them so?

Do you?

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Conclusion

Don throttled up further, not seeing the exterior panels of the building warping and caving, creaking agonizingly and threatening to buckle. The entire structure leaned slightly inward, yielding to the hellacious thrust.

Over the deafening roar, he was clawing at the controls, pulling levers and twisting dials and yelling down to Virgil, who could hear nothing over the engine’s scream, though he was doing his best to keep eye contact with his now-terrified pilot.

Huge billows of fire now flew from the back of the engine, a massive, hot-rodded turbine unit originally intended for a 747. Reporters at this point openly fled, notebooks and tape recorders in hand, seeking cover under trucks and trees, diving beneath anything that seemed hidden from Virgil’s immense monstrosity.

A photographer was found hours later, still reluctant to come out from under a Volkswagen.

Most now peeked out from their refuge, horrifically enraptured by the frenzied destruction being wrought just feet from where they’d been standing moments earlier.

Virgil, until now frozen on his crate, jumped down and sprinted through the haze of the intense heat, the ground shaking below his feet with each step. He ran straight to the purple car, pulling Jerry over the windowsill and dragging him around behind a concrete supply building.

Each looked over his shoulder as he ran, glancing just in time to see the most terrible image either would ever know, a sight each would describe time and time again in years to follow: the line, the tow-cable connecting the purple car to the frame of the Behemoth, going slack.

What happened next, eyewitness accounts would later confirm, came slowly, but with the horrific inevitability of glacial shift, and doubly awful to behold – as all in attendance would not only have to watch the destruction taking place there that morning, but would be forced to stand by helplessly as the car, now known only “The Purple Car,” so heartbreakingly beautiful to all fortunate enough to have witnessed it, was achingly, brutally crushed beneath the towering, snorting, fire-breathing Behemoth – the very vehicle it was designed to usher into the world.

Its expertly formed fenders and trunk were mercilessly flattened beneath the building-sized machine, its tires exploding, wheels deforming, then the interior being squashed, the creamy leather upholstery twisted and stained by the relentless rubber onslaught.

By the time the windshield shattered, most of them had looked away, unable to watch any more.

In fact, when, seconds later, the Behemoth finally came to a rest atop the once-pristine wreckage, having at last run out of fuel, there was only one man who saw it, and it wasn’t Virgil, or Jerry, or even Don in the cockpit, who was finishing up wetting his pants.

It was another man – a quiet, unshaven man whose identity is still not known, but who leaned against a wall and took in all the chaos.

“That was… amazing,” he thought silently to himself. “No one’s ever seen anything like that.”

“You know, maybe I recreate that, indoors, except with giant trucks instead of cars. Giant trucks that crush everything in sight. Yeah. Folks will line up.” His dark eyes glimmered in the smoke drifting Eastward from the disaster. “Yeah. We’ll do it on weekends, on Sunday,” he concluded, waving a gray billow away from his face.

“Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.”

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part Seven

At first all they could see was a wheel, or more accurately a tire, but they could see that its tread was gigantic, easily the width of a garden row, and steadily rolling down forward toward them.

Then more, and more, it emerged, silencing everyone as it roared to itself, a towering, flaming giant that barely fit through the hangar doors. No one said a word or snapped a photo as it rolled out, all of them just silently backing away, craning their necks skyward to try and see the top.

It dwarfed everything, including the hangar - from its massive, refrigerator-sized doors to a trunklid like the roof of a house, terminating in bold, swooping tailfins that reached back several yards, each more than twice the length of a conventional car. The doorhandles stretched four feet across, workable only by electric release latches buried beneath the skin. A dozen bolts secured each monumental wheel, each lugnut larger than a coffee pot. The windshield looked like it had been originally intended for skyscraper, which it had - the headlights came from a demolished lighthouse. A chrome extension ladder reached down from the doorsill. It was clearly a - no - The, Behemoth.

Virgil, the proud, tiny father, smiled wide upon his creation.

A few reporters recognized Don Kline, project manager at Chrysler, five stories up, in the drivers’ seat, looking thrilled. The distance and altitude, combined with a few remaining wisps of rising morning fog, concealed his subtle expression of concern.

Down on the ground, Virgil peered up at him, grinning, not noticing anything wrong.

As the engine flared higher, flames reaching several car-lengths back, a few flecks of paint from the hangar began peeling off and drifting back into the dark hole, glowing embers wafting down to the cement floor below.

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part Six

...Jerry, in the drivers’ seat, beamed up at Ex, waiting for his signal.

Virgil nodded, and the V8 grew louder, building into a familiar, syncopated growling. The gallery stepped back, nodding appreciatively. Mr. Exner apparently wanted to show off the new car’s power.

The V8 roared, the tone from the tailpipes resonating melodiously off the hangar’s metal walls. It was tuned perfectly, thrumming just so – Virgil had selected his mechanics well.

Something was wrong, though. The reporters, at first drawn back from the creation, giving it space, were now drawing in closer, examining it for possible flaws, any unthinkable imperfection.

Though the engine revved higher and higher, rising to a coarse, pained yowling, the car barely moved. By inches it crept forward, straining against its invisible load with tremendous effort, the engine now close to redline, transmission groaning, dangerously near its breaking point.

It was at this moment that a second motor fired. There was a sudden pop, and a dim blue flame appeared somewhere back in the hangar, glowing, accompanied by low, loud static noise that surrounded them all and sounded like the whole ocean rushing in at once.

The crowd leaned in closer to the darkened bay, straining to see what was running in there, what was on fire. The distant flames seemed to grow orangish at the tip, then white, brightening gradually as the noise built in intensity. Hands pressed over ears; eyes squinted, seeking.

The purple car, out in the sun, its engine still pinned into the red, slowly resumed rolling forth. Jerry’s face briefly showed relief, though he still was checking the rearview mirror anxiously.

The flame inside the hangar lengthened, turning a pale whitish shade, and the noise got somehow louder still. Slowly, slowly, the second car was being towed out into the daylight.

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part Five

...On this cue, two workmen, skilled craftsmen from Virgil’s days at Chrysler (whose salaries were now paid from his cashed-out stock options) released the locks and drew open the hangar doors.

At first only a sliver of sunlight fell into the cavernous opening, glinting off the mirrored finish of a chrome-dipped bumper.

The photographers readied their lenses, taking light readings, setting apertures, threading in flashbulbs.

Faintly, the burbling purr of a big-block V8 could be heard, resonating out from the darkened recesses of the hangar.

A pair of headlights switched on, glowing yellow together, just inches off the ground.

Slowly, smoothly, the car rolled forward, floating out into the crisp California dawn.

“Ooooh,” went the reporters, gaping openly in varied but similar expressions, each one a unique mixture of pleasure, amazement and lust. The gathered nodded in agreement - Virgil Exner had truly proven his talent, proven himself, outdone himself.

Oh, the sinuous curves of the front fenders flowed achingly, exquisitely down the metal surface and into the doors, curved and beaming in the sunlight, coated with layer upon layer of deep, liquid purple.

“Andalusian Aubergine!” Virgil told them. “My new signature color.”

There was an audible gasp as the windshield came into view, arced just so and framed in a bezel of pristine, silver threaded chrome. It was a droptop.

The rest of the car slinked into view, ever so slowly, ever so graciously, like a long metallic feline stepping out of its shadow, revealing itself to its enchanted prey, and its final shape was spread before them.

It had to be eighteen, twenty feet long, and no more than waist high anywhere, not even at the sloping summit of that heartbreaking windshield. The longest, lowest, widest car any of them had ever seen. It didn’t even seem to roll. It glided.

Spontaneous applause spread amongst the reporters, none of them taking their eyes off the car, mutely slapping their hands together in dumbstruck incomprehension.

Virgil stood atop his perch, looking down upon them all, smiling, waiting. “Pictures later, fellas,” he said, noticing several cameramen hurriedly focusing their lenses. “There will be plenty of time for that later…” He smirked a bit, leaning toward the crowd and lowering his voice. “We’re not done here yet.”

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part Four

“Gentlemen, thank you all for coming,” Virgil boomed, standing on an overturned parts crate outside the double-padlocked doors of Project Bay Four, the home to many of his creations over the years, and now to this, his crowning achievement. The sun was coming up over the San Fernando Valley, burning off the misty chill of a desert morning.

Virgil addressed them as a group, but took care to make eye contact with many of the familiar faces he recognized in the crowd. “I appreciate your... sticking with me over the past few months, and I know that my latest design probably won’t be earning you any advertising dollars anytime soon. Cars generally need to get produced before people can buy them.”

The fifty or so assembled journalists laughed amongst themselves, then quieted to let him go on.

“But I feel that what lies behind these doors, what these fine, loyal individuals here have helped bring into existence, represents the highest evolution of modern automotive design. It’s where four-wheeled transport is going... or should go... and the embodiment of everything we love about cars.”

Virgil paused for emphasis, scanning the faces of his audience to make sure they were eager and expectant. They were.

“...This, despite the assumptions of some, that today’s consumer is seeking a smaller, more economical... appliance-like automobile, something with no element of personal expression, just pure... transportation.” He tried not to sneer as he uttered this last word, to no avail.

“What you will see here today, what you will go back to your offices and write about, is... more than just a car. It is... a new era in the history of the automobile. Gentlemen, I give you...

"The Behemoth.”

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part Three

“That was horseshit and you know it, Jerry,” Virgil growled into the handset. “Now, I know things have changed on my end, but this project is still fully funded and we’re going ahead with it. I’ve got Don’s word on it.”

“Okay, Ex,” said Virgil’s long-time associate and the closest thing he had to a friend. “Okay.”

“Good. So we’re on for tomorrow? You put the word out to all those media schlubs and everybody?”

“Oh yeah, I told ‘em. They’ll be here. Magazines, newspapers, radio… even a couple TV stations said they’d cover it.”

“Good, good, Jerr. That’s great.”

“I just hope we have something to show them, Ex.”

“Don’t worry about that. They’ll just wish they brought more film, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Alright, Ex.”

“Talk to you this afternoon. Call me if anything comes up.”

“Alright.”

“Alright.” Outside his window, Virgil saw the paint prep crews starting their masking, dragging the long curtains along their tracks in the metal rafters. Tomorrow was in less than twenty hours.

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part Two

“Morning, Mr. Exner.” The chief mechanic, whose name Virgil did not know, greeted him as he entered the hangar.

“Morning. The engineers gone yet?” Virgil asked, squinting over the man’s shoulder to gauge the night’s progress.

“Yep. They left around seven. Everything looked pretty standard, they said, considering…”

“Good, good.” Virgil cut him off, already on his way up the concrete steps to his studio overlooking the production floor. Once there, as always, he switched on the fluorescent lights and opened up his briefcase, leaning over the latest blueprints, unfurled onto the drafting table.

The Man Who Hated Little Cars, Part One

Spring, 1960
Virgil scooped his Wheaties, half-noticing the crunching sensation ringing through his fingers as the milky metal edge of the spoon burrowed through the hearty, dampened flakes. He was trying to ignore the murmurs of his daughter’s friends, Kathy and Sharon, who had stayed over the night before and whom he knew called him “Vagisil Ex-Lax” behind his back.

What he was paying attention to was the May issue of Sports Car Illustrated, and its cover story on the new, “ultra-zippy” car model being imported from Britain, something called a Mini Cooper.

“Disgusting,” Virgil mumbled to himself. He poked his nose closer to the glossy photographs, scrutinizing each detail of the new design, each one more ridiculous than the last. “Look at that flat windshield, those tiny wheels, like a damned, silly, overgrown... lawnmower.” This last characterization struck him as especially clever, and he let out a soft chuckle through his mouthful of cereal.

Sharon took this as an invitation to chat. “Is there something funny in your car book, Mr. Exner? Can I read it?”

“Maybe later. I have to go now,” Virgil replied quickly, and, folding his magazine into his briefcase, gulped the last of his coffee before bursting out the door. The girls looked at one another and listened for the sound of his car’s motor firing up, then burst out giggling.

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax!” they jeered in unison - even his daughter, Beth, who usually kept fairly quiet.

The Man Who Hated Little Cars

Luke, I wrote a story. You flipped me off and kicked my ass and I thank you.

And now, in honor of my friends' trip to Story, Indiana for their wedding anniversary, I'm going to post my story here.

It is a fictional piece about a real person: Virgil Exner, Chrysler's first vice-president of styling, the man regarded as the "Father of the Tailfin."

The background information came from a site I found called Mopar Style and was written and researched by Dave Schultz. I'll include an excerpt here as the preface.

*****

"In the summer of 1959, a Chrysler executive received a tip that Ford and GM were going to downsize their cars dramatically, and executives viewed “Spy Photos” of the downsized cars. There was panic because they were convinced that customers would buy the smaller cars instead of Chrysler’s. The designs for the 1962 Chryslers had already been set, but the directors immediately gave the head designer, Virgil Exner, the directive to shorten the wheelbase by three inches and to make it eight inches narrower. Exner told the directors that doing that to his designs would make the car look like Hell, but it fell on deaf ears.

When the 1962 models of Ford and GM roll out, Chrysler found out they had been a victim of a hoax by Chevrolet. The car-buying public agreed with Exner that just lopping inches off the car had made it ugly, and no one bought them. Chrysler needed a scapegoat, so they fired Ex."

*****

This is where my story picks up - a few months after Virgil's departure from Chrysler. Tomorrow, I'll post the beginning.

Family Outings And How They Would Be Different if Our Dog Vince Were A Wooly Mammoth Instead

"C'mere! Here, boy! That's a good boy!"

"No, wait, don't get in the car yet, not yet, wait... DAMMIT, VINCE, YOU CRUSHED THE WHOLE BACK END OF THE CAR!"

"AND THERE GOES THE FRONT END TOO!"

"DAMMIT!"

"No, I'm sorry, I'm not yelling at you... you're a good boy, you just..."

"FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, HE JUST TOOK OUT THE BREAKFAST NOOK WITH HIS TAIL!"

Hooray For Yahoo

A few months back I wondered in print if Google was indexing the things I write here. It turned out that it was not, which disappointed me more than it probably should have.

But it all worked out, because now I'm more overjoyed than I probably should be upon discovering that Yahoo *does* index my entries, and you can actually end up at this site just by looking for stuff I've talked about.

In fact, a lot of traffic here at On Like Popcorn has been Yahoo Search users looking for more information on Ben Feldman, the World's Greatest Insurance Salesman, who I wrote about last September. If any of you Feldman fans are reading this now, I'd like to say thanks for coming, and I hope you found what you were looking for, even though I doubt it.

So in an effort to attract more random guests through Yahoo, which is now my favorite web portal by far, I will briefly discuss topics people seem to be interested in: frequently-searched topics more like Ben Feldman and less like the way in which I flavor coffee.

Hold on a second while I find out what are the current most popular web queries...

Ahem.

So, did you hear about Britney Spears and President Bush trying on prom dresses with an ivory-billed woodpecker? I guess Scott Peterson and 50 Cent helped them out during the NFL Draft. It was supposed be even more awesome than Halo 2.

Being Me

You are making the coffee for yourself and your wife, although you always think of it as just making it for her, even though there are two mugs on the counter and two mugfuls of coffee in the pot, always, and you never even really know which mug will be hers and which will be yours until the moment you bring both into the living room and set one down before her - still, you imagine that you are making coffee only for her.

You are not even really making the coffee at all - no one really does - the coffeepot did the brewing and the warming and the pumping and the filtering and so forth. You’re just sugaring and creaming, but not in that order, and you have a vague hunch that the sugar is not really necessary - there’s plenty of sugar in the nondairy creamer, you checked once - but still you sugar her coffee, and yours, every day. Hey, you’re young, and why drink coffee that tastes bad?

Recently you tried to gradually wean her and yourself from this reliance on refined sugar, which is bad, they say, incrementally scooping less and less of the granules into the daily brown circles below you on the counter. She surprised you right away by noticing, vaguely anyway, commenting that “this coffee’s not as good as your usual that you make.” You didn’t explain about the coffeepot doing the actual making, because you hadn’t thought of it, and just resumed adding the extra quarter-spoonful after the standard spoonful per mug that makes her coffee taste good.

You open the lid of the sugar pot and immediately plunge the spoon down into the granules. As you pull it back out, visually sizing up the tiny mountain on the end which you guess qualifies as a “heaping” teaspoon, you notice a tiny insect flying up from the vicinity of your spoon. The insect is tiny, but moving dramatically enough that you can’t imagine how you would have missed it up until now, so you conclude that he must have been trapped in the sugar pot until you opened it, trapped earlier when you brought your bowl of raisin bran over to the sugaring station for a little more than a heaping teaspoon. It was kind of bland.

The thought of the fly being stuck inside the sugar pot for the last ten minutes, buzzing around in the dark, is a little gross, you realize, but not so gross that you’re obligated to tell your wife when you bring her the coffee, as you would be if, say, you noticed mold in the creamer just as it poured into the cup - no, it’s more in the region of grossness that requires you *not* to tell her, as it would be a needless ruining of a perfectly okay cup of coffee that still will taste perfectly fine.

Besides, one of these cups is yours.

Glub Glub

Glub Glub
Originally uploaded by This Guy Colin.

Across the river from Madison, Indiana on Sunday, the water level was right where it should be. But in the past, it's gotten out of hand, as this poor building here will soggily testify.

Rushed Summary

I'm back at work now after a three-day anniversary road trip. Already the meetings are piling up against one another and deadlines are looming, but before I shift back into work-work-work mode I wanted to say something about the trip.

Thank you, Penelope, for being such a wonderful partner to go on adventures with. Everything sounds more fun and exciting when I imagine us doing it together.

The Hampton Inn & Suites, Scottsburg

Our hotel room features complimentary breakfast, cable television and high-speed internet access. It's pretty nice, although I keep thinking that if it were my place I'd want to get some of these light fixtures changed, from fluorescent to pretty much anything other than fluorescent, and I'd probably shove these two Full (they're kidding themselves about these being Queen-size) beds together, if only the headboards weren't epoxied to the wall. Oh, and I might build in a small half-bath over there by the Executive Desk - I don't know how couples or anybody else gets by with fewer than one toilet per occupant.

Yeah, if we were staying here permanently, I'd be making a few changes around here. But we're not, and now that I'm writing this I'm thinking that our temporary status is probably my favorite feature about the place.

After the hot tub.