Too Little Butter, Too Much Bread

Tubby keeps getting thinner and thinner. She's desperately hungry. She grabs greedily for raisins, nachos, and critter crackers, but after one or two wincing attempt at mastication, she throws the food onto the floor and stares at me, begging for something that won't hurt her mouth. When I touch her, she feels like a chick--just a thin layer of down over a pile of bones. Tomorrow morning, she has her appointment with Dr. Kevorkian.

Squire will miss Tubby as much as f00dave and I will. He hates being alone.

In much happier news, I accomplished much today. I finished a beautiful dance belt made of bronze, Botswani agate, hematite, and rose quartz. It took me three days of work to put it together. Each dangle ends with a bronze spiral, and it catches the light wonderfully. The whole belt shimmers and dances at the slightest movement. I'll try to get f00 to take pictures.

I also worked out a deal with Reverend Monty Lewis. He's the bigtime crack dealer for jewellers and rock hounds in the area. Today, he pulled up in his van, and we clandestinely went through his big box of beads. I'll be doing some work for him, and in lieu of cash, I chose some beads in payment. I got a labradorite arrowhead, and strands of rose quartz, sodalite, and lavender jade. The lavender jade is both rare and very pricey. I could normally never afford it, so I was happy to do some bartering for it. For the next couple of days, I'll be making two moulds for a knife handle.

Monty gave me a strand of smoky topaz for my birthday last week, and I'll be using those and the labradorite arrowhead to make myself a headpiece. I think it will suit me very well.

To top it all off, I made a deal with Marty Ladds for a ring he'd made for the ring competition. It's a huge and bizarre sterling silver ring with an enormous double star sapphire cabochon. It will look spectacular on stage, but is far too ostentatious to wear on a regular basis. Marty is a wiz with carving, and you can find his rings and paintings for sale at Rising Artisans.

Tonight's kung fu class was the easiest one I've attended in months. I'm guessing it's partially because Sifu Danny hurt his thumb pretty badly last night in a hammering mishap. The first half of the class was devoted to a particularly vicious blocking, throat-tearing, and nad-crushing combination. Then I spent the rest of the class working on my sword form. I keep getting hopelessly lost in the last third of the form. I'll remember four or five moves in a row, blank on the next couple, and remember a move every now and then. One or two combinations are still not working for me. There's one low sweep with the sword where I slash my opponent's Achilles tendons, and then I'm supposed to come out of it into a downward circle of the sword, but my natural reaction is to do an upward circle. I need a LOT of work on that one part alone, let alone the rest of the form. I just hope I can get it all together soon.

Next month, I'm supposed to go to Grand Falls for a parade and kung fu demonstration. I have no idea what the Sifus have in mind, but I have no doubt that little sleep and much alcohol will be had that night. Eep!

My Bike

I was six years old when I first learned how to ride a bike. My bicycle was bright yellow and had chopper handles and a shiny black banana seat. It was a pretty standard bike for the mid-seventies, and it was given to me by a woman my family was visiting in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. When I finally learned to ride the bike, I was living in a trailer park in Saint John, New Brunswick. Riding the bike was tricky. You see, all the roadways were covered with crushed gravel. It's not the most forgiving surface to learn on, especially when it comes to falling down, and I did a lot of that.

Nonetheless, the roads were fairly level, and I made pretty good progress.

A month or two later, we went to Newfoundland. I don't even remember exactly where in Newfoundland we were, or who we were visiting, but I do know it was along the north coast. Newfoundland's coasts are corrugated with steep graded hills. The people we were visiting had a little boy the same age as I. Like me, he had just learned how to ride his bike.

He asked me if I'd like to go bicycling in the cemetery behind his house. Eagerly, I said yes, and Dad got my bicycle out of the truck. I hopped on, and together, the little boy and I pedalled our ways up the steep hill of the graveyard.

Once we panted our ways to the top, we decided to zoom back down the hill.

This is where my lack of hill-training caused my first major wipe-out. Going faster than I'd ever gone before, I ended up with some very serious wobbles. The same thing happened simultaneously to my new friend, and we slid down the last gravel-dusted third of the hill on bloodied knees and elbows. Our bikes lie unattended on the hill while we, spraying tears and oozing blood, squalled our ways back to the house.

I don't think I attempted another hill for several years.

After such unauspicious beginnings, it's pretty hard to believe I ended up becoming a long distance cyclist twenty years later.