Today’s post begins with a prologue: Monday, I was sitting down at my desk getting ready to start my day when my boss strolled by. He pointed out that I had an excessive number of vacation hours, and only 80 hours would be carried over to 2006. I’d need to use three or four days or they would be lost at the end of December. He advised me to use the vacation days as soon as possible. That was great, because I wanted to go snowboarding the next day. I did the paperwork to take the day off and it was promptly promised to be approved.

The story: There were snafus with getting the transportation arrangements, but at the last seconds my friends Amy and Michael did some accounting and discovered that they had a financial windfall of about $500. They had been hesitant to go snowboarding, but this changed their minds and it was decided that we’d leave in the morning. We piled into the van and departed on Tuesday with high hopes, watching the rain become colder and icier as we ascended the mountain. Only a few short miles after we passed the last major town, fat snowflakes were falling lazily as far as the eye could see. We started to get excited.

Approximately three miles from Government Camp, the trouble started with a hint of burning plastic. The smell grew more and more powerful, and it was obvious that something was wrong. This suspicion was punctuated with the warning light for oil, and the warning bell. We stopped. Michael and Amy hesitantly popped the hood and got out of the car. This was followed by Michael excitedly throwing snow on the engine. More burning plastic smell, and steam, emanate from the open hood. It was a moment frozen in time as I sat in the back, powerless to do anything but watch the snowflakes falling around us. The oil was checked and found not to exist in sufficient quantity to actually lubricate anything.

They jumped back in the car to warm up and plot our course of action. We collectively breathed a sign of relief, thankful to have cell phones. We decided that the problem was probably, hopefully caused by overheating related to the lack of oil. A quick call to a tow truck should allow us to get enough oil delivered to refill the oil pan and send us on our way. Hopefully. As an added bonus, it should be covered under the insurance’s towing plan, and not even cost any cash out of pocket.

We made calls to friends to find a phone number for a towing company. I told Amy about Google’s SMS: send a search phrase to GOOGL (46645) and Google will reply with a short, “I’m feeling lucky” response. We searched with “Government Camp towing” and within ten seconds, Google responded with the phone number for Mount Hood Towing. We love you, Google. Thirty minutes later a friendly tow truck driver was handing us four quarts of 10W-30. All seemed well. We started the car. The tow truck driver congratulated us for catching it in time, as it appeared we had a fully working vehicle on our hands. Shortly thereafter, the tow truck was driving away and we were sitting in the car getting excited about snowboarding again.

The tow truck had been gone for about two minutes when the oil light and accompanying bell were again informing us that all was not well. After turning off the engine, Michael ventured out and looked under the van. Oil was covering the ground under the van. A check of the dip stick showed that once again we were out of oil. Sixty minutes later, we were piled into the cab of the tow truck, headed for a garage thirty miles away in Sandy. At $4 per mile, as Michael put it, it was an expensive cab ride. The ride never seemed to end, like a church sermon when I was ten years old but with more running of red lights.

At the shop, the friendly mechanic invited us in and the receptionist offered coffee while we waited. Another hour passed, and the mechanic returned to inform us that the after-market oil pressure gauge in the van had an oil hose which had burst. The hose had been run close to the exhaust manifold, heated up, and showered oil onto the manifold. The oil covering the manifold ignited, and started a fire in the engine. We cringed, afraid to hear the estimate for repairing the damage. Not as bad as we feared (we’d been silently assuming the worst), the damages came out to be about $180. When it was all done, and the bills had been paid, Michael and Amy’s $500 surplus (not so much a surplus as a ‘less broke’) had been eaten up by the combined towing and mechanic’s fees.

It would’ve been depressing enough without the postscript: On the way home, the oil warning light and accompanying bell went off whenever the van was stopped or going around a corner with sufficient g forces. Checking the oil revealed that it was at normal levels, so we rode home and tried to ignore the hypnotic ringing at each traffic stop. We arrive back in Portland with a kind of giddy resignation that was beyond description. To have fate turn on us so fiercely that we couldn’t even by upset was shocking. I feel really bad for Michael and Amy, since they’re paying for the catastrophe so much more dearly than I am. However, I arrived at work today and found that my time off request, promised to be approved by my boss, has been denied for some reason. The plot thickens, but with the new and incredibly punitive attendance policy, I might be fired for what would conceivably be a n0-call, no-show absence. It would be right in line with yesterday’s line of bad luck, but the real misfortune would be working all winter, not getting on the dole and snowboarding for the next six months. We’ll see.

Update:Everything worked out well with my time off request. I’m not in trouble at work. I’m certainly not fired, and I won’t be on unemployment and snowboarding every day . I’m still going to ride on friday.

On this wonderful thanksgiving holiday, I’m thankful for my college degree. Although it came easily, it was well worth it.

Without it I’d probably be:

• Stuck in a cubicle farm on Thanksgiving
• Working for a faceless multinational corporation
• For approximately half as much hourly pay as I’d make as a waiter

Yessirree, thank goodness for my degree.

Update: Gosh, that sounds depressing. In reality, my thanksgiving wasn’t all that bad. My general disposition isn’t what I’d describe as moody, and it’s funny how listening to The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips is sufficient to cure any of the days’s melancholy feelings.

Finally! A treadmill bike!

This is a bicycle for people who never learned to ride a bike, or for people who hate pedaling. It could also be for people who can’t decide what kind of pedals to get. Or cranks. Or saddle. I don’t know, but this is awesome. Hopefully it won’t end up as a big disappointment like those Specialized prototypes.

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Woohoo!!! My first trip to the mountain this season was a blast. The snow left something to be desired, but I’ve seen worse and overall the conditions did nothing to prevent my colleagues and I from dissecting the mountain thoroughly. The previous week had been nothing but sunny days and cold, snowlesss nights. However, the conditions on the slopes were still good enough to allow for good carving. On only a single occasion did the iciness result in me taking a hardcore, head-over-heels-repeatedly spill. Nonetheless, three days and a half bottle of ibuprofen later I’m ready for more. I did some serious soul searching last night before finally deciding not to skip work this morning to ride again.

My girlfriend’s roomate, Laura, has worked at Timberline Lodge in the past. Laura and her friend Bridget were kind enough to be my ride to the mountain, and once there showed me the ropes. Somehow my binding stance got itself into a crazy +25°/+36° setup. I can’t recall having set them up like this myself, and I can’t recall them being like this in the past. C’est la vie. The’re fixed up now, and I’m looking forward to riding switch with my bindings dialed in this way.

Some of the top facts about Chuck Norris:

Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

Some facts about Mr. T:

Mr. T invented fools. Realizing the magnitude of his folly, he then created Pity.

Who let the dogs out? Mr. T did, that’s who. What the hell are you going to do about it?

Mr. T made his van go twice the speed of light because he wanted to prove that quantum physics was a bunch of jibba jabba.

Finally, we round things off with some facts about Vin Diesel:

Vin Diesel coined the phrase, “I could eat a Horse” after he ate every last unicorn in existence.

Vin Diesel is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.

Vin Diesel was the hunter who shot Bambi’s Mother. He then wore her carcass like it was a coat while he made his rounds at the local children’s hospital.

Vin Diesel can set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.

One need look no further than the famed Dogs Playing Poker (which sold for $590,000 earlier this year) to know that dogs secretly love two things more than man, and that’s poker and alcoholic beverages.^*

This fact crossed my mind immediately when I stumbled onto Beer for Dogs! (via quonsar’s blog). It’s one step in the direction of making a real life Dogs Playing Poker, with actual dogs. The hard part, of course, will be enabling dogs to actualize their intrinsic fondness for poker. The final coup de grâce would naturally be to have a monkey butler serving the dogs manhattans, but we simply don’t have the technology yet to make this happen. Still, I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Never underestimate Pavlov.

I suspect that this possibility fits into the greater grand unification meme involving Mahir, All Your Base, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I’ll continue to research the connections, and submit the findings for peer review.

*Disclaimer: This is a lie, don’t feed your dog booze. They will puke everywhere. In particular, Beagles simply can’t hold their liquor.

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve gone for anything resembling a ride. Most of the time has been spent indoors, draped in wool and cackling with glee as I watch the downpour. The downpour means, of course, that it’s snowing on the mountain and enhancing the value of my Timeberline pass, but it also means that riding a bike in Portland is less than comfortable. This will be changing now that I’ve completed my wardrobe with a pair of completely waterproof shoes (replacing my worn out gore-tex running shoes). I’d really like to get back into riding (a healthy fraction of the way) to work, rain or shine. It will be much easier this week since it’s looking to be predominantly ’shine’ (”Nooooooo!” my inner snowboarder howls, eyes permanently attached to the ski report). I keep meaning to get myself up early on the last Friday of the month in order to tap the free Breakfast on the Bridge, but compulsive snooze button-pusher that I am, it has never happened. This month it’s on! Now it will definitely happen, and may the blogging gods strike me down with overwhelming comment spam if I don’t.

I just polished off Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. After reading the monsterous epic that is The Baroque Cycle, this book appeared as an hors doeuvre in my hands, so thin and frail. It took a surprising amount of time to finish the mere 259 pages, and like Stephenson’s The Diamond Age it left me looking for the missing chapter. It’s really frustrating to have a character-driven plot with so many loose ends. It’d really be asking a lot to expect Dick to produce a massive tome given the state of affairs he was probably in when writing this book, but the story was rich with possibilities. Then again, maybe not. IANAW (I am not a writer), and it’s hard to say where this could go and for how long before the idea got stale. When all the cards are on the table, I’d recommend this book as a good read, with robust characters and a compelling story.

I think my next venture will be The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb. That, and I’ve also got The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch to absorb.

Ok, that’s a lie. I never intended to track down the 100 greatest internet moments, but at least someone did. Check it out, you’ll get all misty-eyed with the intense nostalgia that flows fourth with each mouse click.

These critters are back in my life again. They’d like you to know that they particularly like the moon.