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I don't care if you've got studded tires that bond to asphalt at an atomic level and all-wheel drive monitored by an artificially intelligent supercomputer: if the roads haven't been plowed yet and you're half a car-length off my rear bumper, you are an asshole.

That is all.

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In my head, that is. Through careful application of too much caffeine and just enough alcohol, I have managed to spin myself into something resembling a rapid cycle. This, as you might imagine, is not good.

It didn't take much...just a couple of weeks of daily caffeine overdose, coupled with a beer in the evenings, all folded into a generally stressful situation (selling house, ending relationship, hitting road). It serves, once again, to illustrate how delicate my particular brand of consciousness seems to be, and how quickly I forget lessons that I've already learned. I'm still pissed that the obstetrician lost the User Guide that my brain came with; it would've saved me a lot of trouble over the years.

The first clue arrived as I was walking down the hallway in the office yesterday, feeling super euphorically good. Then a little voice said, Uh, dude? An hour ago you felt like shit. Think about that for a minute. Which I did, and that small step back allowed me to see the pattern that's been unfolding and cycling over the past week or so. Up and down, up and down. The thing about such mood mashups is that the good parts tend to make you forget about the bad parts, so that it's difficult to nail down what's actually going on.

Not to worry: I'll pull out of it, once again staggering back towards a vague semblance of normalcy.

This is why it is vital that I make my pedal-powered journey. Having each day consist of getting from place to place, locating food, and finding shelter will provide the stimulus and distraction that sitting in a new apartment watching TV with the cat would not. No chance to dwell on things for too long, no opportunities to sink into the recliner and justify an entire six-pack instead of a beer or two.

It's Pedaling For Sanity (Or A Reasonable Facsimile Thereof)! Yeah, boyeee!

And other assorted exclamations of enthusiasm, delivered with a sincerity not quit felt, but which nonetheless are genuine to the extent allowed by current neurochemical and psychological circumstances. Your mileage may vary.

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As always, I feel I should restate Position #213, namely, that the DSM IV - the Psychiatrist's Holy Book, as received by the Prophet Spitzer, from which all diagnoses flow - is an obsessively Aristotelian attempt to codify the human condition by defining aberrance. It is part of an overarching philosophy which rests upon the idea that happiness - seemingly defined as "functioning in society in a way which minimizes internal conflict and anxiety" - can best be achieved by readjusting the vagaries of neurochemistry with manufactured chemicals. The perfect expression of this system, the most efficient combination of this book with the psychopharmacopia it supports, will be a numbered diagnosis for every patient's complaint with a corresponding course of chemical treatment, fitting into a matrix approved by medical insurance companies.

Like Aristotle's exhaustive classifications, this brand of human nature management only goes so far before it begins to beg the questions it purports to answer. The conclusion is always implicit in the premise: if you are ill, your behaviors fit into a particular diagnostic grid in this book...and vice-versa.

It is the ever-expanding scope of that diagnostic grid which concerns me; according to the DSM-IV, I'm "ill." Sick. Not functioning properly. Et cetera. The diagnostic category I supposedly fit into is Atypical Bipolar II. The "atypical" part is a diagnostic shoehorn - I had gotten fed up with my anxiety symptoms, and went to see a psychatrist. If you go to see a psychiatrist, that's what they do: diagnose. If you don't fit the criteria, they'll bend the criteria.

But I'm not "mentally ill," in the very real sense that I am not malfunctioning, I am not debilitated, I am not dysfunctional. What I am is highly susceptible to the extremes of emotional experience that are common to every human being on the planet. I readily achieve states that differ only in extremity and cause from those known to others: lately, for example, the ring of the phone sometimes squirts a jolt of adrenaline into my blood, and my heart thumps as though I've just been startled by a jungle beast. At other times, the most mundane items instantiate exquisite pathos: a too-simple meal of a cheese and pickle sandwich, the sight of someone dining alone in a restaurant.

I believe that everyone, either consciously or unconsciously, makes a decision about what will guide their experience of reality. They will either be subject to the social consensus in its totality, or they will take what they value from that consensus and discard the rest. There are many who should take the latter course but do not. I think that drives more anxiety in this culture than anything else.

In any event: going cold-turkey off of the caffeinated Cup Of Death (and playing through a most excellent video game) has greatly improved my head. I can still feel the fragility, there...tip too much in either direction, and off I go again. It will be interesting to see how I respond to the radical change of daily life I've got planned for myself.

Speaking of which: if it's as nice outside as it looks, I may just have to go for a trike ride...

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This is a view I'll be seeing quite a lot of. Fortunately, the scenery will change. I won't be paid well or allowed to use explosives, though (10 Astonished Points to anyone who can peg that reference. Hint: "He's got space dementia!").

Right now, the entire idea of the trip seems like bad craziness. I've got the kind of jitters that knock down forests, and the fact that we're about to go to contract on the house makes it worse. Yep: I'm really trading a roof over my head for a nylon tent. Some days that makes all kinds of sense to me. Lately, it's been completely unreal. So I'm having bouts of the Big Unreality at the moment. Big bouts, landing on my face! It's all laughs until someone loses their lunch.

Working on the build helps a bit. I've been designing and re-designing the various systems in my mind for months - where to put the solar panels, how to carry the batteries, what switches to use, and so on. Now that I've actually got the trike, and can see just how laughably impractical some of my ideas are, I can really...no, wait, that sucks! I have to build all this stuff in less than two months! Agh!!! To the Bat Medicine Cabinet, Boy Wonder! Bring me the Bat Benzodiazepines!

Sort of. I am having to scale a couple of things back - no portable amateur radio transceiver, because 1) the sunspot cycle is at its ebb, which means that radio wave propagation on the 10-meter band sucks and the transceiver would be useless weight, and 2) I don't have enough time to study for the exams that would allow me to upgrade my license so I can use other, better bands. The switching system for the various solar panel and battery power options will be less complex, because the installation of the cellular antenna mast means that I don't have as much room on the trike's rear rack as I thought I would, so everything has to fit into a smaller box.

Today, I hitched the trailer up and laid the folding solar panels out across its rack to see what options I have for deploying them while I'm riding.

That's what you're looking at here - viewed from the back, across the solar panels. When I get them properly strung up with cunning bungie cords, they'll be stretched flat, ready to suck up the sun's photons and use them to power my gadgets and my forward-mounted anti-jerk laser cannon.

The times when this wacky scheme of mine seem the most real are when I'm actually on the trike, which is a good thing, because it'd be bad news indeed if it felt like an impossible task while I was pedaling.

If I manage to pull this off, even I'll be impressed. However, I am fully anticipating that, at some early point in the trip - maybe even the first day - I will roll to a stop by the side of a road I've never been on before, lean over, and heave my most recent meal into the ditch.

I expect I'll feel better afterwards, though, so I'm kind of looking forward to it.

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Is the background too yellow?

On my laptop - which I used to do the site redesign a while back - it's nice and pale. But it's brighter on my CRT upstairs, and who knows what it looks like outside of my house.

Also: who here believes that God might - just might - be a peyote button?

(Seriously, though, the yellow background thing could improve your eyeballs.

The God/peyote thing...I'm just curious.)

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...due to the arrival of a savage bunch of tattooed Picts, who are apparently here to avenge the death of King Drust IX.

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This sucks.

Actually, it's really cool.

But I need an ultra-compact methanol-fueled powercell that will run my laptop for two days now, not at the end of the year!

[Via OhGizmo!, which got it from Engadget.]

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And so, despite the fact that the management of a handful American ports accounted for less than 10% of the actual price of the worldwide deal, despite the fact that the United Arab Emirates is probably the most moderate of Arab Muslim nations, even despite the fact that Dubai is known as the "Sin City" of the Arabian Peninsula, the deal is quashed:

DP World, the United Arab Emirates state-owned company that had agreed to buy several port terminals in the United States, said today that it will transfer those properties to an American-owned company, bowing to a political groundswell against the acquisition.

The decision came just hours after a delegation of Republican leaders in Congress told President Bush in an Oval Office meeting that Congress would act within days to block the company's acquisition of the United States port terminals in the name of national security, lawmakers present said.

This was not a national security question. This was a referendum on how the public really feels about the whole “not all Muslims are terrorists” idea that the administration has been at great pains to emphasize since 9/11, and rightly so.

Bottom line? “We don’t trust Muslims. At all.”

The common statement from the congresscritters of both parties was that this imbroglio was a response to conspicuous constituent involvement. If that's true, I can’t help but think that this means that the American people won’t need much of a nudge if it becomes necessary to declare war on Arabs or Persians instead of an abstraction. One more stateside attack would do it.

Frankly, it’s their own damn fault. The house of Islam is in disarray, and too many of its residents remain silent in the face of their brothers’ murderous rampages.

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Me, I like me some Sufis. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan rocks tha house, and his heir apparent, Faiz Ali Faiz, is starting to grow on me, even though he's got that Western rock star thing going on. Rumi? Sufi par excellence!

So it's interesting to me that, while Danish cartoons inspire riots and murder, and unfounded rumors of Korans being flushed down the toilet spark more riots, when someone actually turns the tombs of Sufi saints into a toilet, there is nary a peep:

The imam wasn’t around, but we met the mosque caretaker Hussein Mahmoud inside. He was happy to show us around and tell us what’s what.

Three Sufi saints are buried under the mosque dome. Most of the people who pray here aren’t Sufis; they are mainstream Sunni Muslims. But they honor and venerate the mystics for whom the mosque was founded.

“Zarqawi destroyed the tombs,” the caretaker said. “He and his men turned this room into a toilet.” He shook his head in disgust at the filthy Islamists who fouled their Islamic shrine. Muslims who say Al Qaeda is not really Islamic may have a point.

“You see that there in the floor?” he said. “That’s where they began to install plumbing.”

I braced myself. “How do you feel about the U.S. bombing this mosque?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said, as if he had never even pondered the question. “It’s okay, I suppose. I am grateful. If they had not done it this place would still be a toilet.”

That's from Michael Totten's account of his visit to the Kurdish village of Biara in Iraq. He's been blogging from Iraq for quite awhile now, and his Middle East Journal is excellent reading.

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Yawn.

Man, I just know that my genotype was designed to lope through the forest chasing after deer and other snack foods. Lately, I've got the laser focus in the morning, then at mid-day I have a sandwich or a mastodon, and a sort of gooey fog descends on me like a soporific brain blanket. I need a nap.

But this is America, land of multiple fluorescently-illuminated cubicle hells (really - Judas is two cubes over, being crunched in the jaws of the Beast, which is really a drain on his productivity, but it's an HR problem and I'm not getting involved). So no nap for me.

What I'll do instead is make laps around the facility, which is so sprawling that you can actually do a quarter-mile circuit without going up any stairs. I'll do that twice.

But what I really want to do is settle down on a slab of rock near the cave entrance, maybe pick my teeth with a bone, and rest up for the firewood gathering prior to sundown, when the jewels in the sky come out and I'll have to keep watch against those nasty night-things that want to eat us all.

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Tornadoes in southern Missouri and southern Illinois killed two people whose pickup truck was blown into a propane tank as the twisters flattened homes along a 20-mile path, officials said. Several others were injured.

The worst damage was along a rural stretch Highway 61 in Perry County, about 80 miles south of St. Louis, where the victims had been driving, emergency management director Jack Lakenan said. The force of the wind wedged the truck beneath the propane tank, he said.

The tornado also split a brick ranch home in half, tossed mobile homes, caved in garages and snapped dozens of trees. Several people were hurt; two were taken to a hospital in St. Louis.

Part of my route is a 405-mile stretch from Murphysboro, Illinois to Girard, Kansas that cuts across the entirety of Southern Missouri. I do hope they're done with all their tornadoeing by the time I get there.

In other, less death-defying news, I took the trike out for another ride on Saturday, which wasn't quite as nice as Friday, when I was stuck in a cubicle being irradiated by my monitor while the temperature-measuring devices outside topped 70 degrees. But Saturday put in a a good effort. The stray patches of undissolved salt in the winter-dead grass and the vast bolus of incipient leaf-mulch drying by the curb were the only evidence that municipal plows had recently ground their way down our street, leaving filthy snow and rotting autumn debris mixed together in convenient piles at the end of the driveway.

Whenever possible I'm putting myself in less than ideal riding situations, to see how I can handle them on the trike: narrow or rough shoulders, high traffic, steep downhills with curves in them. So far, the "steep downhill with curve" scenario is the one that gets my heart racing. Supposedly, the increased rolling resistance from the third wheel and the heavier weight of a trike slow it down quite a bit. I don't have a bike computer mounted yet, so I have no real data about how fast I'm going...but when you're barely eight inches off the road, it doesn't feel very slow at all.

The faster the trike goes, the more sensitive it becomes to steering corrections. Johannes, my recumbent dealer, warned me about that, saying that first-time trike riders have a tendency to overcorrect at high speeds, causing a loss of control.

So: I pedaled downhill in my fastest gear until I reached its limit (called "spinning out"), and then clicked the internally-geared rear hub up to 3, which is the trike equivalent of hitting the nitrous button on a car. I was now pedaling with a much bigger gear, and my speed increased substantially...wind hitting my face, the fairing and trailer bouncing and rattling along, my six-foot rainbow Kiri Kard snapping and crackling straight out from the antenna mast.

Every pedal stroke resulted in a slight swerve, because I was gripping the handlebars at my sides too tightly. At any moment I might careen across the road, hit the special hidden jump ramp, then sail through the air in a slow-motion spiral before I crashed into a ditch and exploded. I experimented with a looser grip on the controls, but soon realized that the best solution was to just stop pedaling and coast. Even then: I caught up with an Infiniti SUV that had passed me earlier, and I had to slow down to avoid rear-ending it. This made me angry, so I launched a fusillade from my anti-jerk cannons, and the trucklet swerved off the road, hit the special hidden jump ramp, spun through the air in slow motion, then hit the ground and exploded.

All right, maybe not so much with the "less death-defying."

From what I've read, the portion of my Missouri route that cuts through the Ozarks has lots of short, steep hills...up-and-down sort of riding. Hoosier Pass (11,450 ft.) in Colorado is going to be a different experience - mile after mile of steady downhill, the sort of riding that can make disc brake rotors heat up until the fluid in the brake lines boils and locks the brakes, so that you skid out of control, crash through the guardrail, and tumble over the cliff's edge. Then you have to jettison the trailer and deploy the parasail.

That would suck - all my stuff is in the trailer.

So I'd better hone my mad trike-handling skills now, while I'm closer to sea-level.

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Arkel Overdesigns is a Canadian manufacturer of bicycle panniers. As their name implies, their products are overbuilt, tough-as-nails, and designed for people like me who plan to live out of them for months at a time.

I'm going to be traveling with a number of small, expensive gadgets - a laptop, an iPod, a digital camera, a GPS unit, etc. When I'm off the trike, they'll need to come with me. What you're looking at here in Super 3-Dee Omniview™ is the Arkel Bug. It's a pannier that converts into a backpack, and is perfect for my needs.

I know quality when I see it, and this thing reeks of it. It has the same waterproof zippers as my Gore-Tex rainsuit. The mounting hardware is solid machined aluminum. When I pulled it out of the box, I was puzzled by a swatch of Cordura nylon fabric among the various manufacturer's tags, with a slice halfway through it. Was it included for repairs? Then I saw the tag next to it. RIP ME! DÉCHIREZ MOI! it demanded. Do other bags measure up to this test? Est-ce que les autres sacs résistent à ce test? Other bags might, but I could not rip that swatch, despite the slice. The whole bag is made of the same stuff.

Fitting panniers to a trike with 20-inch wheels can be a tricky business, and I wasn't at all sure that the Bug would work. But it fit onto the rack and cleared the ground with room to spare. The lower potion of the Bug's backplate is angled outward so that it won't interfere with the operation of the rear derailleur, which is just plain smart. The straps stow away behind velcro-secured panels when it's on the rack, and they're comfortable when wearing it as a backpack.

The Bug rocks! I only wish it came in black with blue highlights, to match the trike...and my shoes...

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You could get stabbed.

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Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.

From Jonathan Rauch's March 2003 Atlantic Monthly column, "Caring for Your Introvert." Read the whole thing.

[Via Andrew Sullivan.]

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In the building where I work, a building which shall remain unnamed and Ultra Mega secret, there is a restroom. I have found that restrooms are often found in such buildings, because otherwise people crap in their desk drawers and it's generally what we in the trade call a "bad scene."

In this restroom there is a pair of World Dryer Airmax wall-mounted hand-dryers, the kind that save the planet because their presence means that we no longer have to cut down trees and piss off the Druids just to dry our hands. According to the marketing copy, these machines result in cleaner, more sanitary washrooms. They reduce maintenance labor and vandalism. They are always on duty, 24 hours a day (during which they operate for pennies). They are more hygienic than paper towels. They eliminate fire hazards and clogged toilets. They reduce the incidence of AIDS and out-of-wedlock births. They are a gift from God.

I don't use them, myself. What I do is rotate the directional hot-air nozzles straight upwards, on each machine. When I find that someone has turned a nozzle on one of the machines back down to use it, I turn it back up. When someone - presumably a member of the cleaning staff - turns both nozzles down, I turn both of them back up. I do this every time I'm in the restroom, unless there is someone using the urinal who might see me. If someone is in one of the stalls, I'll risk upturning the nozzles if I'm confident they can't identify me.

I've been doing this since late January. Why? Because through a perfectly anonymous random act, I have affected someone, somewhere. I am sure of it. It simply cannot be the case that every person who has access to this particular restroom is so incurious as to ignore this new stimulus. Someone has noticed this. Someone wonders: who the fuck keeps turning these things? Could be a member of the cleaning staff. Might be a fellow office worker. I don't know.

Hopefully, I will not gain certain knowledge about the consequences of my puckish mischief when this person shows up at the office with a Mossberg 500 and sets about on a cubicle-by-cubicle mission to kill all of us, so that those nozzles will stay put.

Or...this person might read this post, identify me, and just kill me in particular.

Who knows?

Me, I live on the edge.

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As of February 22, Astonished Head is four years old.

I forgot.

I forgot last year, too.

I wasn't going to write anything, you know, special.

So, uh...well then.

*cough*

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On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.

-Frank Zappa

Once, back when I was stealing a room from someone I went to high school with, I got this "job" that had to do with setting up an alternative economy on behalf of these two old guys who had rented a townhouse on the outskirts of Princeton for this purpose. It was a barter system: they intended to establish a network of people who sold various products and services, and set it up so that the people in the network could easily connect with each other to trade their products and services without the intermediary use of what the Guvmint calls "money." My job was to cold-call potential network people and talk to them about it. I cut all my hair off for that job. I didn't need to - I successfully interviewed with my freak flag flying - but I was bored with it and my ends were split at an atomic level.

I spent three days in an upstairs room of this rented townhouse, staring at the phone. Could. Not. Do. It. So I told them that I had a family emergency in Virginia, and had to leave, and didn't know if I was coming back to New Jersey. Ever. Then, I packed up a bag of nuts and two gallons of water, and drove down to the Delaware Water Gap, to Yards Creek Scout Camp (yes, I was a Boy Scout. That's where I learned how to drink). I hiked up to the ridge above Troop 43's now-deserted campsite, and walked a bit along the Appalachian trail. I spent a sleepless night under a tarp, wrote angsty things in a journal, and found an onion on a rock. It was obviously a sacred onion, so I made soup out of it and ate it.

That was in 1992 or thereabouts. One night in 1996, I got myself all hopped down on Xanax, muscle relaxants, and a jug of wine, and shaved my head entirely. The next morning I woke up as a bald amnesiac, so I called up the Major Corporation where I was a Temporary Staff Member and explained to my manager that I'd been under alot of stress and that something "had broken," so I wouldn't be in to work that day. She understood. It's one of my mutant powers - I know how to turn I've lost my mind and can no longer function into phrases that will elicit sympathy and understanding from managers. It generally works better with women (sorry, that's just how it is), and yeah, it's manipulative, but sometimes I have an acute need to weasel out of my adult-style obligations and tend to the freaky morass that is my self.

Which, of course, brings us up to the here-and-now, right on and so forth. Such repeated tending has finally led to the five-wheeled pedal-powered solar-energized freakmobile, upon which I will sit my slightly-thinning ass and head out into wild America, free of most every external thing that doesn't harmonize well with the strange frequency at which I seem to vibrate.

Other than pedaling from place to place, there will be nothing for me to do except think, read, write, and generally get my CREATIVE freak on. This, I think, is a situation much more conducive to harmonious vibratory weedley-wee than, say, working in an office and schlepping downstairs to the cafeteria for the same damn sandwich every day.

And, through your pixellated fishtank glass, all you lovely people get to observe what happens to me as I become unfettered. Will I spin the captivating tale of a bold journey? Or will I be just another wacko on a tricycle?

Watch this space!

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My right knee, which apparently really wants to be all injured like its brother knee was last March, has been subdued with another spike of steroid to the tendon. So, after an evening of knocking over convenience stores and starting fistfights, it's a bit bruised at the injection site and a little achey, but that will pass. The problem, it seems, was a persistent inflammation of the bursa on the medial side of the knee. Not crippling or especially painful, but considering I'm going to be flexing that knee repeatedly for about 5,000 miles it seemed best to knock the inflammation back a bit and give the little sac o'fluid time to calm down.

As the orthopedist's assistant remarked, it's really time to start logging the miles on that Five-Wheeled Freakmobile. I'm leaving in six weeks, and that's just barely enough time to train up a bit. Cold weather and a lack of sunlight after work have made it tough to get out there and pedal. But if my knees are going to explode and shower passing cars with bits of bone and cartilage, I'd rather it happened now instead of somewhere in the Ozarks, because I'd prefer not get captured by mountain people who would cauterize my stumps with a hot poker and keep me shackled to a bedframe in a small dark cabin, where I'd periodically get corn mush, a jigger of likker, and nocturnal visits from Cousin Randolph, who ain't been right since Mama died and the still blew up in his face.

I now have 95% of the items I need to build the electronics pod for the solar batteries and the cellular amplifier...Arkel (because they rock so hard) actually sells their machined aluminum pannier-mounting hardware as a separate kit, so I can use that to mount the pod to the rack. I still have to weatherproof the box and wire the whole thing up, but it's coming together, conceptually at least. The last major hurdle is figuring out a way to securely deploy the solar panels while I'm riding, which is proving to be trickier than I anticipated. The final design may involve some carbon rod, which is always good. You can never have too much carbon rod.

The key is to build something that will be sturd but not too heavy, and won't rely on unique parts that I might lose in the course of a bear attack or tornado. My first idea used many bungie cords, which are multipurpose objects, but proved inadequate. Now I need something that will keep the panels spread out flat atop the trailer, and will stow easily when not in use. So: some sort of lightweight rod. With maybe some hooks. Or hose clamps. Hose clamps are good, too. With hooks, hose clamps, and carbon rod, you can build almost anything.

Except a way to exit a meandering post.

For that, you need tape of some kind.

And baggies.

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Man, I got nothing. So...I dunno, talk amongst yerselves or something. Me, I'm hitting the sack.

THRILLS

A D V E N T U R E

Fresh Fruit!

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It's harder than you think.

[Via boingboing.]

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Now I've got them in my knee and in my nose. That's because now is the time on Astonished Head where our sinuses explode. Or soon will be; I'm trying to get ahead of the pollen curve by starting on my anti-exploding-sinus spray before the season gets underway, rather than suffering from cannonball-head for a few weeks before deciding that this year, too, will be an allergen-filled festival of swollen nasal cavities.

But enough about me.

Actually, more about me:

At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons. At New York Fashion Week last month at least a half-dozen designers turned up with furry faces.

"This is some sort of reaction to men who look scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed," said the designer Bryan Bradley, who stepped onto the runway after his Tuleh presentation looking like a renegade from the John Bartlett show, at which more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy.

"It's less 'little boy,' " Mr. Bradley said. "For a while men have looked too much like Boy Scouts going off to day camp."

On city streets, too, trends in scruff have reached new levels of unruliness, a backlash, some beard enthusiasts say, against the heightened grooming expectations that were unleashed with the rise of metrosexuality as a cultural trend. Men both straight and gay, it appears, want to feel rough and manly.

I don't know about the whole "rough and manly" bit, but I so rarely get to say things like this: I had a beard before it was cool.

Buncha poseurs.

[Via verb-ops.]

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Awhile back, Rick was quite concerned that I follow through on the promised installation of a beet farm on my trike. Plans for a scaled-down beet pill dispenser have, alas, been scrapped in favor of bringing along luxury items like a tent, a sleeping bag, and a brewery.

However: over at treehugger, they've got a bit about a trike that you could use to harvest beets, if you were so inclined.

Technically, it's a "non-motorized field cart for harvesting strawberries." But it's got three wheels, so close enough. It was created by the Healthy Farmers, Healthy Profits Project at the University of Wisconsin, which aims to "help farmers prevent pain and injury so they can keep farming, perform daily household tasks, and enjoy life."

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I thought I could stop it! I thought I could resist! But man, the creamy cheese, the oily graham cracker, the poppy bubbly French bastard wine with its cork and its cage, god damn, how could anyone resist! And now it's all over, man, we're all fucked!

All because I am so weak.

I suck.

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UPDATE:
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In retrospect, it wasn't the cheesecake that did us all in. It was the frozen cream puffs. Little nuggets of chilly dairy death those are...like .45 Thompson slugs, only without the lead.

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UPDATE II:
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Actually, it was the bacon-wrapped barbecued pork loin. In keeping with the metaphor, that was like one of those radar-triggered artillery shells that pops at twice head-level and mows down everything meat-based, except that you can put its leftovers in Tupperware.

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UPDATE III:
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The bucket of ice cream covered with miniature pies is what really put the whole thing over the top, though.

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If it weren't for the fact that I'm shortly going to be getting several months' worth of great riding, I'd say that I'm really going to miss the riding around here.

Today: a ride down onto the floor of the valley, with the trailer hitched up, a couple of folded solar panels in it for weight, and my new fiberglass antenna mast which, although bright ANSI yellow, is much too tall and needs about a foot and a half sawn off of it.

I also gave the troublesome shoes another test. I ordered them in December of last year, which should have been plenty of time for a May departure. But they've been back to the manufacturer twice to correct a problem with the arch casting in the right footbed, which caused the same foot pain that I got custom shoes to avoid. I got them back (again) on Friday, after they had shaved another 1.75 millimeters off of the top of the arch. Just standing around in them, they felt better. But on Saturday: more pain while pedaling.

Today, though, my foot seemed to just give in. The bones in the arch relaxed, and by the end of the ride both shoes were showing signs of an incipient glove-like fit. I'll have to put more miles on them, to let the leather stretch and the foam compress, before I'm sure. If necessary I can always fall back on a new pair of the Cannondale mountain shoes I've been using for the past couple of years, knowing that they'll fit well until the plastic soles warp into painful curves after 1,000 miles or so. That will mean acquiring new shoes on the road, and logistical hassle. So I'm hoping for continued good signs from the Rocket7s.

The other bit of good news is that the winter weight training really seems to have paid off. The knees are good, the muscles are loose and responsive. Usually, getting back in the saddle after a winter's hibernation is fairly painful; not so this year. So I'm not nearly as concerned as I would be if, say, I spent all winter on the couch at the bottom of a bag of Doritos.

The challenge is going to be fitting back-to-back higher mileage days in between now and departure day. Fortunately, I don't have to do consecutive centuries or anything extreme on this trip. If I want to do thirty-mile days for the first few weeks, I can do that. If I want to take several days off to give the legs time to rebound, I can do that too. I'm leaving early enough in the year that weather won't be a problem if I take my time - I'll be crossing the Rockies at some point during the summer.

Riding the trike is an altogether different experience than riding my upright or my two-wheeled recumbent. With the seat about eight inches off of the road, the perspective is different: instead of the details of overhanging tree branches, I notice the architecture of corn stubble in the fields. The road surface is a more immediate sensory input. And with the fairing, the wind is much less adversarial. The gusting headwind in the valley was neatly shunted aside by the tinted polycarbonate, which made me grin: no endless grind into Kansas prairie winds for me!

At the turnaround point, I paused for a few minutes, stepping off the trike to take in the quiet road, the fields, the swatches of browning snow still clinging to the hillside, and the distant sound of a flock of geese.

I will miss this place. But I'll have one new place after another to take my mind off it.

Read more from the On The Road: Getting Ready Archive
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Which isn't necessarily a good thing. Valerian is a plant, not at all related in any way at all to Valium (not even a bit: valere, the Latin root from which it derives its family name, refers to its potent odor). It makes a funky-smelling tea, good for quieting the heebie-jeebies, getting some sleep, and driving off houseguests.

I use it infrequently - I've had the same tightly-wrapped foilpaper bag of Alvita valerian tea for at least six years, and it's just as stinky as ever. And I've had it so long because the morning after I drink a cup, I'm rested, but about two hours into the day I turn into a dizzy valerian zombie. Very odd.

The fog would be fine if I didn't have to think, or work, or remain upright, which is probably why I keep the stuff around - for Fridays and weekends.

And the occasional weekday, once I've forgotten what a valerian hangover feels like.

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We're starting to get into the nitty-gritty rush of details that accompany a house sale and a move - well, Pea is; my set of details is the one that accompanies a house sale and a long-distance cycling trip. She has to find a new place, I have to set myself up as an off-the-grid style person, which means hiring a secretarial staff and PR people to act as my home base while I'm out being attacked by mosquitoes and disgruntled loggers and getting footage for my Discovery Channel special.

The acquisition of spare derailleur cables and the process of arranging finances without a fixed address doesn't really make for the most exciting reading, and sleep is also vying for my attention.

But: this weekend I must make my first attempt at wiring up the sidepod with all of its batteries, charge controllers, converters, amplifiers and switches.

Which, if you're not into solder and wiring and toggle switches, won't be that exciting either. But if you are, it will be. In either case, I'm going to document the build process, because that's what you do when you've got a website and you build stuff.

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No, actually, no, I do not "have a minute," or a second, or an hour, or any other unit of time.

For the obvious reason.

Don't make me explain myself.

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A: I don't know, I'm hooked on the powder.

B: Yeah? You like the powder?

A: You get used to it.

They were talking about non-dairy creamer, apparently.

I'm trying very hard to avoid letting everything that I've got to make happen in the next four to six weeks overwhelm me, and I'm meeting with some success. Chamomile tea seems to keep the medicine ball in my gut to a somewhat manageable five pounds or so. Crossing things off of my To Do list helps as well. I expect, at some point, that bursts of furious activity will provide even more distraction.

Yesterday, I heard from an old friend who's now living in China. He reminded me that the last time he saw me, I was preparing to "sell my car, put my stuff in storage, and move to Mexico." That was in 1994.

So, it seems that every ten years or so, I uproot myself. Of course...twice isn't really a pattern. Could be bookends. Check back when I'm sixty; then we'll talk about patterns.

This will be yet another miserly squirt of verbiage, because that's about all I can muster, so sorry. See you Monday.

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