You've Got an Organ Going There! No Wonder the Sound Has so Much Body

Here's a quick-fix:

First, welcome back Eric. Although it seems that you were unaware of my little purge, you've managed to re-assert yourself in my clean, new, perfect world.

Also, Balek is making an abortive attempt to clean up his life. Again. Why don't you try quitting smoking or something?

Lastly, to add some poorly needed body to this post, a little conjecture:

And by conjecture, I mean a lesson in having an over-active imagination.

So, last night I was studying for my calculus tutorial at Tyler's place. The time came to go and get creamed by all those lttle numbers, and we walked out of the door. His house is sort of on a hill. It's built about 15 feet up from the level of the parking lot. There's a concrete stairway with a railing leading down to the parking lot and steeply angled grass on both sides. I, as usual, was riding my bike. I had locked it to the top of the railing as there are no convenient pipes or wrought iron jutting from the front of Tyler's house for me to use. I unlocked it and contemplated the annoying trip down to ground level. I could walk to bike down the stairs. Lots of bumps, no real enjoyment. I could walk it down the grass. Significant chance of falling and looking like a goof. It's that steep. I could carry the bike down the stairs. I already carried it up and wasn't looking to repeat the experience in reverse.

Then I had a great idea: Why not just release the bicycle down the hill? It made perfect sense in that first moment. I could let the bicycle ride itself down the hill, and (because it was such a shitty bike) it would undoubtably fall over and skid to a halt at the bottom of the hill.

But maybe (I thought) I should have more faith in the old thing. My mind was quickly filled with a far more interesting outcome: As the bicycle gains speed, it also gains stabillity. The bicycle could have, theoretically, shot down the hill, gaining a fairly respectable pace whe it hit the ground. It was at this point that my initial ideas were replaced: Instead of rolling onto its side the bicycle could, within reason, have kept going quite easily. It may have continued on it's course straight across the parking lot into the back of a car. If it weren't for the lock. Purely from a speculative viewpoint, the weight of my bicycle lock could pososibly have influenced the course of it's travel enough to make it turn in a slow graceful arc, missing the car by inches. Eventually it would turn bac towards the hill I had launched it from. If there wasn't another car in it's way. Luckily, as my mind traced a lazy line around the parking lot, it would have connected with the car at a right-angle to its side. Thus, the large, well-filled front wheel would make contact with the robust polymers of the rear-side pannel of the station wagon in question, but not any other part of the bicycle. Of course, being the caring individual that I am, I would have immediately run down the hill to check on the condition of the car. And not just because if this event which did not happen had happened to occur at the time of my imaginings, it would have been observed by another car-ful of people who were invisible to me until after the time when I would have launched the bike (had such an event ever occured).

After this train of thoughts (certainly not of events), I decided that my bicycle had finally proven itself worthy of a name. or rather that it was worthy f me using this Mountain Bike Name Generator to think of one for me. My first answer was "Hell on Wheels". I didn't think that that aptly described my bicycle, so I typed "Yellow Shit-eater" (The term that I usually use to denote my bicycle) into the machine and got "King Gnarly" back. I think that I can handle that.

I managed to pay little enough attention on the way to calculus tutorial that my bicycle unseated me and hit me in the nuts. Three times.