The Hell You Say

This will be short and sweet. The last few months since ski season ended have provided me a wealth of new adventures in my New Englandah life. I'll wait while you grab some adult diapers in case you piss yourself from shock....

Moving on, herewith is a snapshot of the crazies:

Stars on Ice

My friends and I learned how to CURL Olympic style. Our team name is The Straighteners (wait for it...think about it...ahhhh, ding ding ding! Light bulb!) We won our games or matches or whatever they're called. Our main man Mitch was a great teacher, unlike that other dude who shall not be named. (Ahem, Gestapo.)

Brunchy Wunch

Some of us also set out on a Saturday brunch tour of Vermont. So far so good, but these Yankees don't understand eggs-over-medium. They're consistently either hard-boiled yolks or raw. I'm reluctantly learning to deal with it.

Suck it, Martha

After the snows melt, it's always fascinating to see the wreckage uncovered. I found earrings, clothing and even someones phone around my house. I'll tell you what - losing something in five-feet of compacted snowbank is unfortunate. You don't wanna fall in one (trust) much less search for missing objects (or people). It's a futile effort.

The Great Thaw also revealed trashed garden beds. April showers bring May flowers, I understand, but they also bring a shit ton of weeds. Dandelions are pretty in random meadows but not in my yard. I'd had enough of my landlord's laziness and decided to take up gardening (or more accurately: crazy lady weeding.)

After three hours one day and a few the next, my yard and beds were weed free. Even pretty, if that's possible. I liked it because I quickly entered a methodical, meditative routine while experiencing immediate results. I also may or may not have trashed a perfectly bedded and thriving shrub.


But like most everything else I ever tried, this didn't last long. Haven't touched it since.

Run? Run where?

I've always felt that in order to run, I needed a destination (with a cupcake and pint of beer awaiting me), or at the very least...a good scare.

Let it be known that I gave running a last chance, I went in the mornings and a time or three over lunch. I took it seriously and heeded advice from my running enthusiast friends.

But that shit did not take.

I lumbered through a 5K running most of the time and walking some of the time, ready to cut whomever thought this was a good idea.

Especially the person that designed the course to be UPHILL at the end (shoot him!)

My friend and I finished strong, sprinting Chariots of Fire style through the finish line and straight to the porta potties. It was only after we quickly emerged did we realize the finish line was another 100 yards away.

So we made like bandits and sprinted through it anyway.

Then we ate cheese.

Meet Jake

This is Jake.


Jake is a vintage cruiser painted by bike artists of yore. He's turquoise (my signacha culah!) and has a metallic purple chain. It was love at first sight.

I finally conquered my fear of The Devil's Toy! I loved riding Jake. We went all around the bike path along the shores of Lake Champlain. I finally got to see the causeway to the islands! In a different town! Fifteen miles round trip!

I even rode Jake to work.

Though a silly joke to others, taming Jake was a huge and deeply personal accomplishment for me.

Kill Jake

Last Friday, I decided to play nice with the carbon footprint reduction Gods and rode Jake to work. It was the second day I'd done so and had my route planned out.

Long story short, I almost missed a hard angled turn into our office building's courtyard and overcompensated by turning too widely.

And then promptly caught the edge of a cement retaining wall with the inside fender of my back tire sending me like Superman to the left over a wall into a tree and my bike to the right.

You can imagine my surprise because all was well when I successfully cleared it with the front tire.

Needless to say, after minutes in and out of consciousness on a bench, I collected myself - and my bum left arm - to head into work. It wasn't 15 minutes later that I knew the Emergency Room, my surrogate womb since childhood, was calling my name.

Sure enough, I fractured the top of my my left radius:

And all I got was a stooooooopid, dinky sling. It's a damn good thing I'm so dominantly right handed so I can go about life without much interruption, only intense frustration at everything including typing one-handed. My ortho doc appt is next week and the scheduler mentioned a cast (a CAST!!), so it's wait and see.

I've revisited the scene of the crime and realize a kid could clear that and be fine. It really was an unfortunate and ridiculous sight to behold, I'm sure. I suppose I just fell exactly right to make an ass out of myself (what's new?) and be terribly inconvenienced.

In the meantime, no painkillers other than Advil (shame, I could have made some sweet cash. CALM DOWN, D.E.A. Take a joke.)I don't have patience for dull nagging pain and won't let the arm get me down!

Jake is banned to a shed somewhere doing hard time and I'm carrying on. And to think I made it through all of ski season AND a race without one ER visit...

If the bus is a'rockin'...

True to form, if I want something badly enough I'll get it. So when one of my best friends called to invite me on the road to see her, her hubby and our friends perform on the Country Throwdown tour, I didn't hesitate.

When I told her I broke my arm, you would've thought I told her I got a paper cut, but that's neither here nor there. So I jumped in the car and drove three hours, one-handed to New Hampsha for an all-access backstage experience.

I made new friends, ate good food, drank good beer, heard great music and enjoyed the company of some phenomenal artists: Little Big Town, Montgomery Gentry (saw Gentry's bare ass) and the songwriters and friends of Bluebird Cafe. These guys are some of the brains and hearts behind your favorite songs on the radio and are amazingly gifted individuals chasin' dreams. (Buy their music!!)

In the event you were wondering, this is how you rock a tour bus:

Max it out, crank the music and dance hard. I stayed in the back to protect ElBlow, but still managed a good, gimpy time.

(More to come on this topic.)

Here's hoping I don't break anything else this weekend.

Yours truly,

Megster the Muppet