more normal than not

We rode our bikes around one side of the lake yesterday.

The minivan is down for a while….so taking all 6 of us in one vehicle is pretty impossible….so we took two vehicles loaded with people and bicycles….and went to the lake to ride.

A lady stopped her Mercedes before we started riding to tell us that it was horribly dangerous to ride around the lake.

Jenny said that she thought she might have been trying to chase us away.

It wasn’t dangerous.

It’s funny how things go like that….when we bought our other property, people told us that it was covered up with snakes.

So far, we’ve seen one black snake.

That’s it….one black snake.

Anyway, this is about the lake and riding a bicycle…..and really about “lake people”.

I don’t really know what a “lake person” is.

Maybe it’s one of the people who whoop it up on the dock of their expensive lake house?

Maybe it’s one of the ones sitting on the porches of the “mansions on the hill”?

Maybe it’s one of the ones who look at us riding our bikes on the public road around the lake like they’re wondering what we’re doing on their turf?

Maybe it’s just people in a position to enjoy living around the lake?

Maybe that’s all there is to it.

It looks pretty idylic.

I think that I must be a little jealous.

It’s funny, though….even amongst the “lake people”, there’s a weird hierarchy.

The ones on the side of the lake we were on probably think that they’re on the “good side”….and even on the “good side”, there are grand mansions and little shacks.

Of course, the little shacks are pretty expensive.

It’s something about the “location”.

But….the little shacks look pretty shabby in comparison to the new buildings.

People sure do have some money.

How does that happen?

Of course, cleaning up after our dinner, I threw away a cup of leftover rice….and thought, “Man….that would be a feast for some of the folks in other countries….”.

So….I guess that it’s all relative.

It is funny when the lake people look at us like we’re invading their club.

How do you get into that club, anyway?

 

picture from an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about “fancy houses on the lake”….and that featured one on Lake Summit.

I did a lot of our car repair work that I needed to do this morning.

Changed the plugs and reattached the transmission cooler in the Jeep….replaced the thermostat and tried to find the very slow coolant leak in the Toyota….and started to refurb the fuel rail in the Grand Caravan so that it wouldn’t light us on fire at some point when its slow GAS leak ignited.

The part that I was “oringing”…trying to tighten things up and make the gas stop coming out….bounded out of my hands and flew into the black hole at the back of the engine compartment….never to be seen again.

It’s floating in some kind of alternate dimension as we speak.

Of course, without the part I lost, the fuel rail would really pour out the gas if I tried to drive it.

It’s just a big hole now, so as the gas flowed out onto the hot exhaust manifold, it would also decrease our gas mileage in a big way.

I guess that this escapade was successful in making me reevaluate what kind of a foul mouthed…. Christian I espouse to be.

What a bad example I am!!

What a vocabulary expander!!

I was like a rabid little Rumpelstiltskin….dancing around on the gravel….cursing a blue streak because I’d just grounded our family vehicle for a good long time….because the part that I was trying to fix is a pain in the rear to get at and because it’s only available from the dealer….who can only do a two-day order on Monday….so the earliest I’d get it is Tuesday….but I can’t order it from the cheap place because then it would get here on Thursday….and we can’t wait that long for the minivan to be running again.

We can’t wait.

The thing about doing something like that is that because I needed to get at things from the top of the engine, I didn’t put the minivan up on the ramps….so I couldn’t crawl around in the gravel and reach up into the bowels of the beast from below….possibly finding the dime sized piece of brass colored metal….the little cap that flew out of my grasp.

I couldn’t do that.

The best I could do was to do my famous Mr. Fantastic stretchy routine and bend my arms in ways no man should ever have to do….and try and reach the piece I’d lost by closing my eyes and feeling around in the sharp corners and grease.

All that did was open multiple wound sites and pack them with 200,000 miles worth of bacteria and crud.

I don’t know where that part flew off to.

Smooth is only smooth until a part goes to the darkest side.

My best laid plans leave me SWEARING in my driveway.

Swearing.

Later, we had some good hamburgers….I had a beer….and things felt better.

It is what it is….we’ll get it fixed….the whole fuel rail….and I’ll have them do the back valve cover gasket while they have everything torn apart.

It’ll be good.

You’ll see.

It will be good.

“peace in the valley” Dawes

The moon was behind the clouds this morning….so things weren’t quite as bright as they’d been the last couple of days when I went for my run.

I know the moon was back there….that’s what moons do…hide behind the clouds sometimes.

We drove up to Asheville yesterday to look at a car for my daughter.

Here’s the car we looked at:

It looks pretty good in the picture.

The owner was a nice guy who didn’t know anything about cars….but as I started asking him questions that he couldn’t really answer, I started to figure out things on my own.

You remember the movie “The Shining”?

Remember how that little kid kept saying “redrum” over and over?

We’ll call this car “redcar”.

It had issues.

After checking it out and then jumping it off to get it started, the owner asked if we wanted to test drive it….and mentioned that it didn’t have power steering and was hard to steer.

I don’t think that power steering was optional equipment on a 1992 Sentra.

I showed him where the empty power steering fluid reservoir was and told him it needed fluid….and that having some fluid might help the steering problem if everything else was still working.

In the ad, the car had been described as needing brake pads….but when we test drove it, the screeching was different than a worn pad would make.

I can’t describe it.

Maybe a bad hub? I don’t really know.

It was a really bad dry scraping/screeching sound.

So…it was a redcar that wouldn’t start or steer and that made horrible screeching sounds when it was rolling.

Oh…..and it didn’t have a driver’s side seatbelt.

That’s not a good car for your “little girl”.

I noticed that when we got home, the owner had dropped the price by a couple of hundred bucks.

Good luck.

That’s something to learn from this experience….or maybe I should say that it’s something to remember.

NICE GUYS WHO DON’T KNOW ANYTHING CAN GET YOU INTO AS MUCH TROUBLE AS EVIL PEOPLE WHO GET YOU IN TROUBLE ON PURPOSE.

They really can….if you let them.

That redcar was one left behind….thank goodness.

But enough about that.

Check this song out by Amy Helm….Levon’s daughter.

Good stuff from a good musical family….

“rescue me” Amy Helm

 

 

I’m running again.

I give myself credit for “running”….even though what I do is really kind of “shuffling”.

I move….and I don’t walk….so even if I’m doing it when no one else can see me….and it’s really kind of a shuffling sort of running….I AM RUNNING.

Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned my lack of proper form?

It sounds a lot grander when I just say, “I’m running. I’m putting in the mileage. I excel at life.”

I should gild the lily a little….talk it up.

Why not? Who would know if I stretched the truth and never got timed or let anyone see me doing it? Why not?

The moon was receding this morning….but even though it still wasn’t the giant blue moon of a couple of nights ago, on a cloudless early morning it lit up the night sky.

That makes it easy to run when I can see everything.

Stumps are still sometimes “bears”…..but the second look is easier when there’s some light to see that it was just a stump after all.

Ponder.

There’s some guys around here named “Ponder”.

What a great last name.

I’ll bet that’s something they never gave a second thought to, though.

They never “pondered” their last name.

Most of them don’t strike me as “that kind of guy”.

There is a time in between light and night when it is so quiet and so beautiful that I can’t help but…..what? But what?

Ponder.

I guess that I’m enraptured by the peace of standing in the middle of a quiet road….staring up at the stars and the partial moon….pondering….knowing how small I am but how much a part of all the bigness I am, too.

All the bigness.

People come to the conclusion somehow that there is “no God”. It’s science….historical explosions and aggressive DNA….random and vague, sometimes, concrete and understood, other times….atmosphere and weather and all the other explainable phenomena….ordered and common and, probably most beautifully, to some….with US at the center of it all.

The biggest bang of all….when we need to describe a miracle.

Who could comprehend the scale of a miracle?

A “man centered faith” doesn’t hold any interest to me.

There’s more than just “us”.

But….”us” is what we know.

It’s something we can put our finger on….even if knowing about “us” doesn’t get “us” any closer to treating each other well.

What I know is that I feel the breeze…see the stars….hear the birds waking up….and I can’t help but believe that something good designed this.

Maybe it’s just a “nice morning”….that’s enough, too.

There’s a lot to ponder.

All the time….a lot to ponder.

How do I show the thankfulness this all deserves?

“his eye is on the sparrow” John Medeski

Under the hood, it smells like gas.

Under some parts under the hood, this part may be leaking.

That’s a hard “easy fix”.

I better get it fixed soon….real soon.

Of course, there are other things that it could be….that’s the beauty of cars or anything in life, there’s other options as to what “could be wrong”.

Right or wrong, there’s always multiple possibilities.

It’s a frog on a log in the middle of the pond in a…..kind of situation.

But….traceable if you do the legwork and take stuff apart.

I’ll have to figure out how to get it in to the mechanic soon.

And….then….again…it could be nothing.

That’s important to raise that possibility….before I get everybody excited about something like that.

It could always be nothing….or not.

Smelling gas isn’t a good thing, though.

That’s the beauty of Google….I have about 5 different possibilities for leaking gas smell after doing some research….and the Grand Caravans are notorious for this problem.

Better get it fixed.