Showering with Spiders and Other Camping Miseries

During the long winter months in Maine, one of the things that keeps my spirits up is the thought of tent camping, one of my favorite warm weather pastimes.  It’s a fun and relatively affordable way to experience different parts of this beautiful state, and every summer I do it whenever I can, which is never often enough.  Maine is fortunate to have a terrific state park system, many of which are open to camping.  There is also no shortage of private campgrounds in every corner of Maine.  In my experience, they vary widely in quality, but when you find a good one, and there are many, you’ve usually discovered a real gem.

Not every day of camping is wonderful though.  There was one day last summer at a state park campground in southern Maine that stands out as being the very definition of the opposite of wonderful.

It was getaway day, the day when you have to pack everything up into the car and make the long drive back home.  That, in and of itself, is a bummer, but when there is a steady rain on the morning of getaway day, it’s even worse.  Everything that is not already drenched will soon be during the process of tearing down and packing up.  Pine needles, dead leaves, and dirt stick to everything, creating a mess of your equipment and your vehicle.  Upon returning home it’s necessary to unpack everything and lay it out to dry or else run the risk of mold and mildew forming.  Then you have to shake off off the needles, leaves and dirt, and sometimes wipe things down, before repacking your equipment.

This particular rainy day came after I had typically overdone it physically, having hiked up a mountain that was probably a bit over my head ability-wise.  Actually, there was no “probably” about it.  It WAS over my head, but I didn’t discover that until I had made it to the summit.  Once you’ve made it to the top of a mountain, you don’t really have much choice but to go back down again.  My feet were blistered and every muscle in my body was screaming that morning after.  Being a light sleeper, the rain woke me very early, around 5:00 a.m., so I figured I would get a jump start on the day with a hot shower, in hopes of loosening up my sore body before loading the car.  Campground showers are typically pretty quiet at that early hour, so I didn’t expect any waiting.  As is my habit, I tossed my wallet and cellphone into my car and locked it, then headed to the shower with my keys, towel, and toiletry bag.

As anticipated, the showers were quiet.  There were no other campers there, at least no human ones.  

Daddy Longlegs "Pholcus.phalangioides.6905" by o.leillinger@web.de. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

What there were plenty of, were daddy longlegs, a type of benign spider that is very common in Maine and most other places.  You see them all the time when camping, but never in my life had I seen so many in one place at the same time.  It was like something from that 1980s movie Arachnophobia.  I’m not sure if the daddy longlegs were attracted to the shower building because the lights left on overnight attracted prey for them like mosquitoes, or because they were seeking shelter from the rains outside.  Whatever the reason, they were everywhere: in the sink, on the shower curtain, on the walls, and in the shower stalls themselves.  While I am not afraid of spiders, I do draw the line at bathing with them, so I spent the next five minutes or so swatting at as many of them as I could with my sandal.  Defeating all of them was a hopeless cause, I soon discovered, so once the shower stall itself was mostly clear, I thought it best to move forward with my  showering plans.  I was decidedly jumpy by that point, with every slight sensation on my skin causing me to slap at it, thinking it might be a daddy longlegs crawling on me.

Warily, I stepped into the shower and began my routine keeping one eye open for daddy longlegs.  I was at about peak soap suds time, just about to rinse off, when I heard the sound of my pants, hanging on a hook just outside the stall, fall to the floor with a splat into a small puddle of water that was coming from my shower.  To make matter exponentially worse, my car keys were in one of the pockets, and when they fell, the car alarm button activated.  The wail of my horn came blaring across the sleeping campground like Hell’s alarm clock.

Things like that happen from time to time in campgrounds, and I have never failed to curse the name of the people who had awakened me with what I perceived at the time as their stupidity.  Only now, I was that guy.  I bolted out of the shower in full suds mode and rifled through my soaked pants to find my car keys.  Once I got hold of them, I immediately pressed the button to turn off the alarm.  It didn’t stop.  Apparently, I was on the very edge of the alarm’s reception area.  Close enough to activate the alarm, but apparently not close enough to deactivate it.  I could hear angry shouts coming from outside. In the distance, a baby started to cry.  

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to wrap a towel around myself as I dashed outside the shower building with keys in hand, which got me just close enough to shut off the alarm.  The damage was done, however.  It was the height of the summer, and the campground was filled to capacity with now-pissed off campers.  Thank goodness it was my getaway day, because I was now branded with a scarlet A for the day.  Only in this case, the A stood for “alarm”.

I took my time finishing up my shower and getting dressed.  Not only did I have the unhappy task of having to pack all my stuff up in the rain to look forward to, but now I would be doing so under the watch of scornful eyes in every direction.  It was a long perp walk back to my site, and the rain was coming down harder than ever.  Never before or since have I packed my stuff in such haste.  I literally tossed everything into the back of the car without caring about folding, packing, or putting away.  I was on the road within ten minutes, soaked to the skin.  The rain stopped about half an hour later, so I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and proceeded to set about ordering my gear so at least I would be able to see out the back with the rearview mirror again.  I spent the entire afternoon after I got home drying things out and setting them in order again.

I’ve since returned to that campground.  I went back about a month later, actually.  It’s one of my favorite spots in that part of the state, and I figured that the chances of any of the campers who were there that fateful morning still being there and remembering me and my car would be pretty slim.  There were important lessons learned though.  First of all, be sure your pants are secure before stepping into the shower stall, and second, remember to bring some Raid and a fly swatter with your soap and towel.

Carded

In the six or so weeks between late April and mid June of this year, I will have dealt with Mother’s Day (I have both a mother and a grandmother to think of), Father’s Day, my mother’s birthday, my father’s birthday, my parents’ wedding anniversary and my nephew’s first communion.  That is one heck of a lot of cards to buy.

You see, I am still a sentimentalist at heart, and hold on to the belief that buying actual physical cards and either delivering them in person or sending them through the U.S. postal service is a kind tradition worth preserving in our increasingly impersonal electronic-based culture.  Don’t get me wrong. I fully appreciate the convenience of modern communication technologies.  I interact with most of my friends and family through e-mail and text messages for routine correspondence, but those modes of communication just seem hollow for special occasions.  They require something different.  And e-cards just don’t cut it, in my book.  Ever since I saw the first one back in the 1990s, I thought they were both cheesy and pale imitations of the real thing, much like The Munsters were to The Addams Family.

So, I continue to trek to the drugstore when special occasions come up to choose just the right card.  And for those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that there is the rub.  I am the type of person who can handle metaphorical bags of porcupines tossed at him with grace and dignity, but I can also take something very simple like card shopping and turn it into a task on the level of complexity of establishing peace in the Middle East. 

First, there is finding the appropriate level of sentiment in the card.  I am a caring person, but not mushy.  As a kid, I was sad when Bambi’s mom died, but I didn’t cry.  Much of my family is the same way.  A card with too many butterflies and cloying lovey-doveyness would embarrass both the recipient and me.  At the same time, giving one of those joke cards (which I love getting, by the way) for anyone other than a fellow male whose sense of humor arrested at the age of 15 would come across as being overly emotionally defensive.  So the search is on for just the right tone.  Card companies seem to like to go for the emotional jugular, however, and most cards are either too emotional or too cold.

Next, there is a question of cost.  I am a practical guy when it comes to finance, and most of the people I am closest to are as well.  I know that when I get a card, I read it and appreciate it, but then it goes into a drawer somewhere until an indeterminate period of time has passed and I can toss it into the trash without feeling guilty.  And don’t even try to tell me you would never do such a thing!  I challenge you to come up with even one card from two birthdays ago. 

Mmmm-hmmm…I thought so.  My 88 year old grandmother could probably do it, but none of us mere mortals could if our lives depended on it.

I don’t head directly for the 99 cent card rack when I am card shopping, but I do set a limit of $6 maximum per card, even those I get for Gram, who has cards in shoeboxes and drawers dating back to the Eisenhower administration.  It makes little sense to me to spend more money than that on something that will be read once or twice and then be stored away until it is thrown out.

Another rule I have for card shopping is no singing or talking cards.  Those can be tacky, or creepy, or both.  Plus, it is always awkward when people open them in the presence of anyone else.  I believe that there is a special place in Hell for people who send musical or talking cards.  The hottest part of that place is reserved for people who send Disney Channel pop star-themed musical cards.

Cards that people make on the computer are okay I guess, but they don’t quite meet the mark for me.  Knowing that almost anyone could put one together and print it out in the space of less than five minutes just seems like the sender didn’t put forth the same amount of effort as they would have getting a store-bought card.  Now handmade cards are the very best of all, hands down.  To me, they show the very highest level of thought and engagement by the send.  However, I can’t draw straws and my handwriting looks like I hold the pen in my mouth, so that’s not a practical choice for me.

The greatest problem I face when card shopping is finding one that addresses the recipient with the same term that I do.  I call my father “Dad”, as I think most people do, so finding cards for him that say things like “To my dad” is not too difficult.  However, I refer to my mother as “Mum”, and not “Mom”.  After 44 years, it is way too late to change that.  Almost every card you can find for a mother addresses her as “Mom”, and that just will not do.  At all.  That restricts me to choosing from among the cards that use the emotionally-distant, third-person term “Mother”, since I have yet in my life to locate one that uses “Mum”.  With all the above requirements I also have when buying cards, this cuts back my choices considerably.  To make matters worse, I have referred to my grandmother as “Gram” my entire life, and not “Grandma”.  Much like the Mum/Mom situation, one can very rarely find cards addressed to “Gram”, though there are tons of “Grandma” cards out there.  So I am usually restricted to choosing from those distant, third-person “Grandmother” cards.  

Honest to goodness, it took me over an hour and trips to three stores in order to pick out a birthday card for my mother the other day.  Thankfully, this six-week period of intense card-shopping only comes once a year for me.  The other birthdays and special occasions in my loved ones’ lives are mercifully spread more or less evenly around the rest of the calendar.  It’s a good thing too, or else I’d probably have to quit my job and become a full-time card shopper.

Losing It

There are few things that dig at me more than when I misplace something.  When an item turns up missing, whether it be large or small, I simply cannot rest easy until I find it. Unfortunately, I have always had an absent-minded professor kind of brain, where my thoughts can be so occupied with some other issue that I can set something down and walk away from it without even noticing.  It’s not something that has come with age either.  I’ve been absentmindedly setting things down and forgetting them since I was a kid.  Of course age hasn’t made it any better.

My favorite things to lose are coffee mugs.  Every place I have worked, I have unintentionally left half-full mugs of coffee in various locations like some kind of cross between the Easter Bunny and Juan Valdez.  If I was lucky, I’d notice its absence in fairly short order and locate it while the coffee was still drinkable, or someone I worked with would return it to me.  There have been a few occasions where I’ve set a coffee mug down in an obscure location like a storage closet, and it goes unfound for weeks or even months.  

In case you were wondering, coffee can become a solid if given enough time. A nasty, blue-green solid.

Another common item for me to lose is, disconcertingly,  paychecks.  For most of my working life, I have been able to have my paychecks deposited directly into my bank accounts.  I haven’t had that option with my current place of work.  Over the years I have been working there, I have lost at least three paychecks.  Thankfully, our accountant is a kind and forgiving soul (not to mention endlessly patient) and has been willing to issue me a new one in each case.  Typically, I cram it into my pocket when I get it, and take it out as soon as I get home, where it safely stays in a secure spot until I am able to take it to the bank for deposit.  On all three occasions when I’ve lost a paycheck, I have literally torn apart my home, my car and my workplace looking for it.  I’ve also scoured my garage, yard, and the parking lot at work in my searches.  Having sent paper through the laundry process on numerous occasions, I know that I didn’t leave it in my pocket and destroy it in the wash, since the evidence left behind when I’ve laundered paper in the past has always been pretty clear.

Oddly enough, no trace of those three missing paychecks has ever turned up.  No one has tried to cash them, and they haven’t been found underneath a piece or furniture or under a melting snowbank.  It’s like there is some kind of Bermuda Triangle designated especially for my paychecks.

My most recent tragic loss, and the one that inspired this post, was the tiny little USB plug that goes with my wireless mouse.  I have a corded mouse that I use when I am on my laptop computer in bed, and a wireless one that I use when the laptop is downstairs in its usual place.  Last night, I briefly needed to use one of the USB ports for something else, and since I was in bed at the time, I took out the USB plug for my wireless mouse, which I was not using at the time, and (I thought) set it down on the bed next to me.  One thing lead to another, and before long I forgot all about the tiny USB plug I had set aside.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t miss it until the next morning, when I got up for my coffee and internet news fix.  My wireless mouse was not working, and the USB plug was nowhere to be found.

I immediately knew what had happened to it, but when I went upstairs to look around, I couldn’t find it.  Knowing better than to tackle a full search prior to having had coffee, I grabbed the corded mouse and went back to my caffeine and news.  I didn’t enjoy it though.  While I could very easily replace my wireless mouse, the principle of the thing bothered me.  That USB plug was somewhere. I just had to find it.  And no, I couldn’t wait until later to do it.  So I tore that room apart.  Bedding, mattress, box spring, hamper full of laundry, overloaded desk, everything was overturned.  All the books and whatnots I shoved underneath the bed came out.  Finally, after making a holy old mess, I found it.  It was right where I typically put it when I need to use a USB port, on a shelf next to my iPod and various earbuds.  I remembered taking it out of the port last night, but didn’t remember putting it in its usual place last night, so I didn’t bother to check there until last, for some reason.

Yes, I am kind of a dope, actually.

There’s a delicious irony in this post, which I promise you I am not making up.  Before I started writing this, I went back over previous posts, because I could have sworn that I had previously written one on this topic of my habit of losing things.  Even the title of this post “Losing It”, seemed like one I had used already.  So I looked back over nearly three years of posts.

Guess what?  I couldn’t find it.

The Annual Winter Whine Post

The winter season trudges on unabated here in Maine, despite the fact that the calendar flipped over to March not long ago.  Our friendly local meteorologist tells me that today’s high temperature is going to be 12 degrees.  12 degrees fahrenheit, not celsius.  That’s cold for this time of year, even by Maine standards.  There’s at least a little comfort in knowing that a good chunk of the North American continent is experiencing a harsh winter as well. There are few things left that we all go through together in today’s culture, but the weather is one of them.

If I had a dime for every time I’ve either uttered or heard “I’m sick of the cold” and “I’m sick of the snow” lately, I could probably settle the national debt.  While freezing temperatures and snow are the most common subjects of complaint, I’d like to offer a list of ten less-often-heard but equally valid concerns about winter, as my annual “winter whine” blog post.  (See here and here for past examples of winter whines.)

10. I’m sick of those buildups of slush in the wheel wells of my vehicle.  If they freeze solid, they can seriously damage your tire by rubbing against them, not to mention cause you to break a toe if you give it a good kick to remove it.

9. I’m sick of taking the garbage out in the cold.  Taking out the trash is an odious task under the best of conditions.  Having to do it when the snot in your nose is freezing every time you inhale just adds insult to injury.

8. I’m sick of getting more heating fuel.  Lugging in another ton of wood pellets or another cord of wood in mid to late winter because you are running low is no picnic.  Writing a large check for another tank of heating oil you didn’t budget for isn’t either. 

7. I’m sick of changing from shoes to boots to shoes.  While boots are great at helping one’s feet stay warm and dry, they tend to go on hard and come off even harder.  I’ve fallen on my keister several times this winter already doing the footwear changing dance when coming in or going out the door.  With small puddles from the snow melting off your boots, you don’t want your socks to touch the floor, after all.

6. I’m sick of being snow-blind. Yes, I am actually complaining about the sunshine here.  Don’t underestimate my whining skills.  The sun reflecting off the snow almost has the same effect as an allergy on my sensitive eyes: watering, sneezing, squinting, headaches.  Sunglasses help, but spring helps more.  Less white, more green!

5. I’m sick of these crazy cats with their cabin fever.  I am an animal guy, and enjoy watching the birds, squirrels and whatnot gather at the bird feeders outside my window in the winter.  Trouble is, so do the cats, and it makes them absolutely insane.

4. I’m sick of stale air.  Sometimes one of the cats drops a bomb in the litterbox.  Sometimes I cook things that have a lingering smell.  Sometimes I raise dust when I am cleaning around the house.  During the winter, one can’t just open up the windows and air things out.

3. I’m sick of tall snowbanks and narrow streets.  I drive a relatively high-profile SUV, and yet I’ve still had more than a few times this winter where I’ve had to stick my nose so far out into and intersection to see if anyone was coming in either direction that I’ve nearly had it clipped off.  Just a bit of a thaw to shrink those suckers down is all I ask.

2. I’m sick of not being able to make travel plans in advance.  Any out of town appointment or event at this time of year is a crapshoot, contingent upon travel conditions.  A concert you’ve been dying to see for months finally comes to a nearby city, you have tickets and hotel reservations, and then BOOM, an ice storm hits.  Epic bummer.

1. I’m sick of my feet always being cold.  My feet are almost perpetually cold anyway.  I tend to wear wool socks from October until April.  Even then my feet are chilly, only slightly less so than if I didn't wear them.  If there is such a thing as electric socks, I would seriously consider them.  I’d probably need a very long extension cord though.

Even though it seems impossible now, the temperatures will warm up, the snow will melt, and spring will arrive, just like it always has for as long as the seasonal wheel has turned.  

Of course then I’ll need to find some new things to whine about. 

I Don't Shop Well...Or Do I?

I’ve been told that I shop like a hunted animal.  It’s bad enough online, where I compare prices at various sites and read reviews ad nauseum before I pull the trigger on the purchase days (or weeks, or months) after first starting.  But get me out shopping in person, in an actual store, and it just becomes sad.  I dither, contemplate and generally wander aimlessly around the store for much longer than a normal person ever would.

Typically, I’ll pick up an item that may or may not fit the bill, and proceed to carry it around the store a while as I think about it.  The whole thing is an exercise in rationalization.  Suppose, for example, I pick up a shirt that I think I might like.  I’ll start walking around the store with the shirt in hand, and start talking myself out of it.  There’s the price.  If it is a bargain, I’ll wonder if there is something wrong with it.  Is it low quality and prone to shrinking the first time I wash it?  If it is not a bargain, I’ll wonder if I really want to spend that much on it.  Maybe I can find it cheaper somewhere else.  Even if the price is fine, I might find another reason to talk myself out of it.  “It’s a lot like another shirt I already have,” I might think, or “It’s not really the kind of thing I will wear very often,” or maybe even “How many Rick Springfield tour t-shirts does a guy really need anyhow?”

And so on and so forth.  Nine times out of ten, the item I have taken for a walk around the store ends up back on the shelf from whence it came, I pick up something else, and the whole cycle begins again.  It doesn’t matter if it is a major purchase or a minor one.  It’s always the same.

Needless to say, precious few of my friends and family ever volunteer to go shopping with me.

For that matter, there are not many people at all who want to be caught up in the epic clusterbumble that tends to be my shopping.  I am unfailingly polite and sympathetic to retail salespersons, whose jobs I know can be trying at times.  Nonetheless, I am usually part of the problem for them, though not on purpose.  I have a tendency to pepper them with endless questions when shopping for something specific, typically only to decide I need to sleep on it, and then walk out of the store without making a purchase.  I’m sure they hate people like me.

My dysfunctional shopping habits are especially problematic for me at this time of year, Christmastime.  Not only do I have to do a lot more shopping than usual, but there is a deadline attached to it all.  Granted, I find it easier to shop for other people than for myself, but that is like saying it is easier to swim across the Atlantic Ocean because it is not as wide as the Pacific.

This year, I have cut myself some slack in the Christmas shopping department, though at the possible expense of some sentiment.  I am giving everyone on my list two things: a gift card and a charitable donation in their name.

Gift cards are widely available in almost any amount for almost any place of business.  They always “fit”, meaning that the recipients are guaranteed to get something they want and/or need, because they will be getting it themselves.  No risk of getting someone a gift in a color they don’t want, a size they don’t fit into, or that they already own.

The downside is that a gift card does not show the same degree of thoughtfulness that a specific gift might.  Getting Uncle Louie that one Miles Davis CD that is missing from his collection might be a great gift, but I would argue that getting him a gift card to his local music store so he can get it, or something else, himself still shows a level of thoughtfulness that a gift card to the Fabric Mart for him would not.

Another downside, at least as far as gift cards and young kids are concerned, is that in most cases, it isn’t something they can enjoy as soon as they open it.  Few kids dream of waking up on Christmas morning, running to the tree, and ending up sitting in the midst of a stack of plastic cards after everything has been opened.  Taking that into account for the youngest folks on my list, I do pick them up something else as well.

The charitable gift giving is the part of this whole thing that I like the best.  Most of us have no shortage of “stuff”, and adding unnecessary things to it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially given that many people in the world have very little or none of the basics in life.  This year, many of the people on my Christmas list are getting a donation made to Heifer International in their name.

Photo from http://www.heifer.org/

Heifer International, if you haven’t heard of it, is a well-established charity that does work empowering the poor around the globe.  Theirs is essentially a “teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” philosophy.

Here’s how it works: In their catalogue, you can “buy” gifts that are given to families in need.  The gifts are of the type that allow the family to lift themselves out of poverty.  For example, for $20, Heifer will provide a flock of geese, along with education and training in their care, so the family in poverty can raise them for their eggs, meat and down, which they can use themselves and also sell.  For $30, Heifer International will provide a needy family with a hive of honeybees, along with the education and training to manage the hive and produce honey that they can in turn use, as well as sell locally to provide for themselves.  Gifts such as these are also good in that they are living things that can multiply, and therefore can be passed on to empower other poor families nearby.

Heifer International has gifts that range from as large as a camel to as small as a basket of chicks, all of which can be given to a poor family on behalf of the person in whose name you made the donation.  If you want, Heifer will send a card or e-mail to that person explaining the donation made in their name and the good that it does.  For my young nieces and nephews, I got each a stuffed toy to represent the gift given in their name.  My niece in whose name the gift of a flock of ducks was given is also getting a small toy duckling along with her donation card, to help make it more concrete for her.

A gift donation to Heifer International is easy, fits almost any gift-giving budget, and really fits the spirit of the Christmas season a lot better than a pair of pajama jeans.

Please don’t get me wrong in my intentions in writing about this charitable giving.  I am not trying to give myself a pat on the back by any means.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t originally going to even include it in this posting.  However, I’ve decided that by making mention of Heifer International, their philosophy and my personal experience with them, it might nudge some others to do the same thing.  I didn’t take the plunge with them myself until someone I knew told me of her positive experience with them.

One thing that may particularly interest you is that Heifer International does not just help families in far away places.  Families in the United States, even right here in Maine, have benefitted from their work.  Poverty is not just a far away thing.  Half the world’s population, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 USD a day, and 80% live on under $10 USD daily. (Source)

So here’s to hoping you and your loved ones have a happy and peaceful Christmas season.  And if you see me in a store between now and the 25th, it is probably best if you just steer clear.

Getting Rattled

I've been a “car guy” ever since I was a little kid.  Not a car guy in the sense that I could tear down and rebuild an engine, but a car guy in the sense that I have always enjoyed driving and admiring them.  When taking a trip in my car, half the fun for me is the journey to and from the destination.  An antique auto or any kind of unique vehicle on the road will almost always turn my head, and I find it impossible to just drive past any kind of car show or display.  One of the highlights of my summer excursions around Maine this year was a day spent at the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum in the town of Owl’s Head, just outside of Rockland.  I could have made it several days, actually.

Because I place such a premium on the car experience, it makes me kind of edgy when something interferes with that pleasure.  You may recall that I addressed this here in this blog a few months ago when my Hyundai Santa Fe developed a mysterious knock which seemed to be coming from the undercarriage that I could not track down no matter how hard I tried.  It turned out to be some manner of rod near one of the wheels, according to my mechanic, who is also likely certified to fly space shuttles.  I think this “rod” was actually part of the flux capacitor or something, and I never would have ferreted it out by myself in a million years.

Because my Santa Fe is nearing seven years old, I know that it, like me, is not getting any younger and is bound to develop more frequent health quirks.  Much as I do with my own health, I sometimes get concerned that the other shoe could drop on my car’s well-being at any time.  Also much like my own health, I am not so much worried about some major crisis as much as a series of irritating little ones. 

Take, for instance, the plastic covering for the fuse panel, on the side of the dashboard.  It has a loose fit nowadays, and occasionally falls out onto the ground when the door opens.  If it ever gets lost, I would probably also lose at least a piece of my mind.  On the other hand, there is no good way to secure it in place short of duct tape, the sight of which would bother me just as much as having to constantly watch to make sure the covering doesn't get lost.

And then there are the various and sundry pieces and parts that are rolling around inside the back door.  When installing a new license plate a few years ago, some washers and little plasticky things fell inside it, and now rattle around in there whenever I lift open the door or take a sharp corner.  Taking the door apart myself to retrieve the errant pieces would just be a recipe for complete and total disaster, and taking it to a mechanic for something so foolish to someone else would likely be both embarrassing and expensive.  So, I just put on my big boy pants and deal with it.  Not happily, mind you.  Not. At. All.

About a year ago, I got a pen wedged inside the ashtray, preventing it from opening.  I don’t smoke unless someone sets me on fire, so it seemed at first like a good place to keep a pen.  I often have need of one while on the road and can rarely locate one quickly.  And a good place for a pen it was, for quite some time actually, until one day I went to open up the ashtray/pen receptacle while at a drive-through ATM with a line of cars behind me.  It was well and truly jammed.  No amount of jiggling, finagling or cajoling could get it to open, and the line behind me was growing longer and more impatient.   I left without completing any of my banking tasks and immediately pulled into a nearby parking spot.  I spent nearly an hour on every strategy short of explosives to get it open.  At long last it did pop free, with no damage to the ashtray/now-former pen receptacle.  It’s a good thing too, because if I had to look at a broken ashtray every time I got in the car, I’d probably have to sell it immediately, probably at a loss, just to get it out of my sight.

My latest potential vehicle crisis emerged a few days ago.  There was a tiny but highly irritating rattling sound coming from somewhere inside the cabin whenever I drove over rough roads, which are not unusual things to encounter in northern Maine. 

Rattles belong in playpens, not in Hyundais.

Source: http://www.2carpros.com/

First, I checked the storage compartments, of which my Santa Fe has more than a herd of kangaroos. I store plenty of stuff in most of them, like CDs, charging units, my GPS, manuals, a small rubber lizard that came with a great drink I had in the Old Port in 1996, as well as the typical flotsam and jetsam that accumulate in a vehicle like paper clips, receipts, gum and the like.  I secured anything and everything that looked like it might be loose and headed back out on a bumpy street.

The rattle was still there!  Drat.

(Yes, I really did say "drat".)

Perhaps some part of the vehicle itself was loose, I thought. Since I could only hear it when I was driving, which is a less-than-ideal time to be crawling around looking, I recruited a friend to drive while I attempted to pinpoint the problem.  The thing was, when I was in the back seat, it sounded like the rattle was coming from the front, and when I was in the front, it sounded like it was coming from the back.  We switched places, and I had my friend try to find the source of the rattle.  Nothing.  After exhausting my friend’s patience as well as half a tank of gas, I concluded that it wasn’t a loose part either.

By this point, I had endured the phantom rattle for three days and seemed no closer to locating the source.  I was within inches of deciding to sell the car for scrap when fate, as it so often does, led me to Dunkin Donuts. Treating my friend to coffee was on my agenda, and as I got to the drive-through window, I went for my wallet in the glove compartment. 

You see, once in a while I keep my wallet in there, along with the vehicle manual and other car-related papers.  Nothing loose though.  It’s a pain to fish anything out of there when driving, so the glove compartment doesn't accumulate nearly the amount of stuff that the other ones do.  I was so sure that there was nothing rattle worthy in there that I hadn't even bothered to check it thoroughly. 

As I shut the glove compartment, I heard it.  The rattle.  Thankfully, no one was in line behind us, so I asked the coffee guy to wait for just a second, as I unbuckled my seat belt and reached over to pull everything out onto my friend’s lap.  Under the manuals and paperwork, I found a quarter, which had likely slipped out of my wallet.  It had to be the culprit!

I gave a fist-pump of victory accompanied by a loud “Yussss!”

The coffee guy looked at me as though I had lost my sanity.  My friend knew that particular train had left the station a long time ago and just rolled her eyes, a reaction I tend to get a lot, especially from women.  Regardless, the latest rattle crisis was resolved.  I have driven in rattle-free bliss ever since.

Winter’s coming, and no doubt new rattles and knocks will be popping up in my car.  Cold weather seems to foster them.  So if you see me pulled over on the side of the road frantically fishing around the vehicle, don’t worry.  Probably something has come loose.  Whether it’s in the vehicle cabin or in my head is a matter of debate, I guess.  

What A Drag It Is Getting Old

According to legend, I was born in 1970, so a little arithmetic will tell you that I am 43 years old.  And lately, the “old” part of being 43 years old has been particularly evident.  As I write this, I am propped up in bed with an ice pack strapped to my swollen right knee, dealing with a bad case of bursitis.  Yes, bursitis!  Bursitis, if you don't know, is a painful inflammation of the cushion between one’s joints, and something up to now I always considered as a condition for people who are, for lack of a better word, OLD.  I've never had it before, don’t know why I have it now, and hope to high heavens that I don’t have it again anytime soon. 

I am only 43, I tell myself.  I am not supposed to have things like bursitis.  My grandmother is.  She’s 88.  That makes more sense.  Not that I am wishing ill upon her by any means.  It's just that I am too young for this!  After all, I know who Imagine Dragons are and wear cargo shorts on a regular basis!  I’m not old!

And a booming voice comes out of the clouds above: “Wrong, Grandpa!”

Okay, I am pretty young at heart, but my body...well, maybe not so much anymore.

Source

I've always joked about aging and the passage of time at milestone birthdays, like my 18^th, 21^st, and 30^th, but truth be told, those came and went and not much really changed.  My 40^th, on the other hand, was like passing through some kind of gate into a new land.  That was when I really started to notice that, physically at least, I wasn't as young as I used to be. 

First, there is the noticeable change in stamina.  My health has been pretty consistent over the years.  I am overweight for my height by about 20 pounds, but otherwise suffer from no chronic problems like high blood pressure or diabetes.  In my forties, however, I've found that things are different.  I've been placed into the body of an old guy.  

A case in point was when I climbed Mt. Megunticook on the coast of Maine recently.  It was the sole physical activity of the day for me.  It took me the better part of the afternoon and several bottles of water to hike up the 1,385 foot elevation and then down again.  When I reached my camp at the bottom, I had to take some aspirin and a long nap, and was terribly sore for three days.  And don’t even get me going on the blistered feet.  The climb took all the wind out of my sails, and then some.  I actually checked my cell phone’s reception to make sure I’d be able to dial 911 if necessary.

Back in my mid-20s, several other teachers and I climbed that very same mountain with a group of nearly 80 third and fourth grade students.  The weather was iffy, so I didn’t even dress for the trip, thinking it would be cancelled.  Nonetheless, I climbed that same mountain in a shirt and tie, in half the time, with no blisters, barely breaking a sweat, and without any water.  I then went back to school with the students, taught all afternoon, attended a long committee meeting after school, ran some errands in town and then mowed my lawn after dinner that evening.  If I had aches and soreness afterward, I don’t remember them.

Next, I've found that piddly little things are causing me pain.  All of a sudden, the motion of raking the lawn for an hour or so causes my shoulder to ache for the next day or two.  Getting down on the floor with a sick animal at work can easily tweak my back if I am not careful about how I do it, and once about two years ago, I literally threw out my back while bending over the bathroom sink to spit out toothpaste.  Seriously.  If I was in an old-time covered wagon heading out west, my companions would be completely justified in leaving me alongside the trail for the coyotes.  And if that same party became stranded and had to resort to cannibalism, there is no doubt who they'd eat first, despite the fact that I would probably be quite stringy and gristly.

Of course its not a discussion of male aging without a mention of hair.  I am fortunate to still have lots of it, on my head and elsewhere, just as I always have, and the vast majority of it is still the original color (brown).  Based on the photos I saw of my 25^th high school class reunion, many of my male peers are not so lucky.  It still blows my mind when someone my age or younger has male pattern baldness.  Luckily, that is one thing I don't have to get uptight about.  It's nowhere to be found in my family tree.  Gray hair is a different story.  I found my first gray hair when I was 24, just after I closed on the mortgage for my first house.  I figured I earned that one.  Since then, the gray has been oddly slow in coming.  Very, very gradually it is becoming noticeable in my temples, especially just after I get it cut, but I am still below average in the gray hair department compared to most men my age.  Thankfully, the same lack of grayness applies to the hair that is not on my head, of which I have more than my fair share.  I truly think that having the hair on my chest or arms go gray will bother me much more than the gray on my head.  Once in a blue moon a stray gray will make an appearance there, but I swiftly vanquish the interloper.

Interesting side note: people sometimes ask why I do not grow facial hair or allow more than a day’s growth of stubble.  The fact of the matter is, all the gray hairs I have seem to have come in on my face.  If I go more than two days without shaving, it becomes very clear that my mustache and beard would be heavily streaked with gray.  That’s not a look I could pull off gracefully especially with a shock of thick brown hair upstairs.  Maybe someday I’ll grow some facial hair when what I have on my head matches, but until then, no thanks.

For me though, the worst parts of getting physically older are the surprises.  You know, like the food or drink you've enjoyed regularly over the course of your entire life that suddenly gives you screaming heartburn.  (I’m talking to you, hot tea!)  Or the sudden back spasms that literally knock you off your feet at work and cause your coworkers to think for a moment that you've been struck from behind by a pygmy dart.  Or the nights when you may as well sleep in the bathroom, because you are making so many trips there to empty your apparently pea-sized bladder.  Oh, and waking up one morning with painful bursitis in the right knee, for no known reason. Those are the kinds of surprises I mean.

It bothered me when Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield retired from baseball in 2011, because he was the last player on my favorite team that was my age.  As of last season, there were no major league baseball players my age or older.  That was a milestone I didn't care for at all.  It still bothers me when I read an obituary in the paper of someone my age or younger dying of some health malady.  And I don’t think I will ever get used to the idea of people I went to school with being grandparents now, but a couple of them are.

I know what they say: “You are only as old as you feel, ” and I have no doubt that age is relative.  To my nieces and nephews, I probably am seen as old.  To my parents and their generation, I am seen as pretty young.  To my grandmother’s generation, I am still practically a kid.  There are people old enough to be my parents running marathons and swimming from Cuba to Florida (not on the same day, mind you), so I guess I just need to keep setting my sights high.

I could go on and on about this topic of getting old, but I had better stop here.  It’s 4:00 in the afternoon, and the early-bird dinner special is starting at the diner downtown.  Plus, I need to restock my bowl of hard ribbon candy.

A video for Mother's Little Helper by the Rolling Stones, from YouTube.

Post-script: There’s no small amount of irony that the title of this post is borrowed from the first line of an early Rolling Stones song, “Mother’s Little Helper”.  The Rolling Stones are now quite old, no matter how you slice it, and yet their most recent songs and footage from their live concerts this past summer prove that they have still got it going on.

Confessions of a Total Coffeehouse Rube

As someone who comes from a rural area, I am rather sensitive to the “country bumpkin” label, especially when I am traveling.  Not all of us from out in the boonies just strolled off the set of the Beverly Hillbillies.  I am perfectly capable of driving in multilane traffic, ordering in a fancy restaurant, and taking buses and/or trains from one end of a city to another by myself, among other things.  I don’t exclusively wear flannel shirts and jeans, nor have I ever once referred to a swimming pool as a “cee-ment pond”.

Overall, I’m pretty comfortable with life in urban areas, with one notable exception: coffeehouses.

How I'd like to come across in a coffeehouse.

Source

How I actually come across in a coffeehouse.

Source

As someone who rarely experiments when it comes to food and drink, I’ve always stuck pretty close to my “usuals”.  In the realm of fare commonly found in a coffeehouse, that would be plain old caffeinated hot coffee with just cream for me.  Sometimes I get all wild and crazy and try a flavored coffee like hazelnut or, if I am feeling especially daring, maybe even an iced coffee.  Someday I might even try a flavored iced coffee, but I will have to work my way up to that.

When I am on the road, I find that most coffeehouses make for comfortable places to meet with friends, get a little writing work done, or tweet a little.  The staff and clientele are usually friendly and considerate, and there is not an expectation that you will simply consume your order forthwith and quickly move on in order to free up a table for the next customer.

There is, however, the perfectly reasonable expectation on the part of the coffeehouse staff that you will actually buy something while there.  And that something should be more than a 30 cent cup of ice.  Therein lies the rub.  When confronted with the menu board in a coffeehouse, I freeze like Bambi in the path of a freight train at midnight.  If there are other customers waiting in line behind me, that freight train becomes more like one of those Japanese bullet trains.

Source

At this point, you are probably asking a very simple question: Why not just order what you normally drink, a regular coffee with just cream?  To that, I respond with another question: Who does that in a gourmet coffee house?  It’s akin to going to an award-winning Chinese restaurant and ordering a cheeseburger. I may as well show up at the coffeehouse on a camouflaged ATV wearing a flannel shirt without sleeves and a backwards Mack Truck ball cap if I order “just a plain old coffee”.

Let me backtrack a bit.  I am currently working on a collaborative project with a writer from Connecticut, and we were recently planning on meeting halfway between our locations for a summit on the project, which put us in the Portland, Maine area.  We would need a place to do some work on a hot summer afternoon, and an air-conditioned coffee house near the water fit the bill almost perfectly, as long as I was prepared.

This southern Maine summit was an ideal excuse for me to take a mini-vacation, so I was already in Portland the day prior to the meeting with my co-author. High on my to-do list was some reconnaissance at the coffeehouse where we were planning to work.  It was a hot summer afternoon, and I had spent the first half of it in the sun-drenched bleachers at Hadlock Field watching the Portland Sea Dogs play baseball.  Not wanting to give up the great parking place I had found prior to the game, I decided to walk the five blocks or so to the coffeehouse.  By the time I arrived, I was pretty parched.  The idea of getting something hot to drink was not very appealing, but I wanted to sit for a bit and see how the place was.  So I stepped up to the counter.

First, I had to parse out from the mass of choices on the menu board something that sounded at least somewhat cold and refreshing.  I was looking for terms like “iced”, “frozen”, “arctic” and the like.

Next, I had to figure out what cold thing I was actually going to get.  There were lattes, café au laits, chais, cappuccinos, espressos, and all manner of other things, some of which I don’t think were actually real drinks, but just decoys put up there to weed out the weak like me.  I was getting a bit shaky in the knees, but I did not run screaming out the door.  Instead, I continued to stare glassy-eyed at the menu, letting one customer after another behind me in line go on ahead.

In time, I reached the conclusion that I was going to get an iced cappuccino because it sounded appropriate, yet somewhat safe.  Then it was a question of flavor.  There were choices like Mexicali Cream, Jamaican Me Crazy, Jazzy Java, and Streusel, all of which are probably terrific if you know what they actually are.  So I let more customers behind me go by.  Frankly, I cannot recall what flavor I eventually decided upon, though I do remember that it was vaguely chocolate-ish and quite tasty.  I think “Bavaria” was part of the name.  The experience is mostly a blur now.

Feeling good about my selection, I stepped up to the counter, where I was greeted by a very pleasant young person who just exuded coffee house know-how.  Undaunted by the presence of this fountain of java knowledge which would make my own seem like a Dixie cup in comparison, I rattled off my order in what I thought was a confident tone of voice. I was going to ace this.  Then…

Order-taking person: “What size would you like?”

Me: “Huh?”

One would not think this to be a tough question, but for someone like me, in an actual coffee house, it is.  The sizes are not “small”, “medium” , “large” and “extra large”, but “tall”, grande”, “venti”, and “trenta”.  In my world, “small” and “tall” are just not the same thing.  If someone says “Gee, you sure are tall”, they do not mean that you are a small person.  And if something is “grande”, it sounds like “grand”, which is a variation on spectacular in my mind, like a grand finale.  It doesn’t sound like it would be just medium.  I panicked a bit.  For fear that I would say the wrong thing and end up with my drink being served to me in a bucket of some kind, I sheepishly asked for “whatever the middle size is”.

Now in a reputable coffee house, which this most certainly was, one’s order is not just thrown together.  It is constructed like a piece of fine art by a highly trained person known as a “barista”.  I believe that is Italian for “young person who is more hip that you will ever be”.  My barista, who was already busy with some other orders, was given mine on a slip of paper while I dutifully stepped aside and admired the various pithy mugs and bags of what I think was coffee beans for sale.  They were labeled with names like “Cappadocia Supreme”, and could have been magic beanstalk beans for all I know.

After a few minutes, I was handed a small cardboard cup that was very, very hot, and confusion immediately set in.  I had purposely ordered something cold because it was such a warm afternoon.  This drink was lava-like in its temperature.  Such was my confidence, or lack thereof at this point, that I was convinced that I had done something wrong or was missing something here.

I looked around the coffeehouse, hoping to see someplace where I was supposed to pour crushed ice or something into this volcanic liquid in order to create the frozen cappuccino I thought I had ordered.  Aside from a napkin dispenser, there was nothing like that anywhere.  I literally froze in place.  What was I supposed to do?  I considered just walking out with the hot cup and tossing it in the trash, hoping maybe my co-author and I could just do our work on a park bench or picnic table the next day instead of a coffeehouse.

Instead, I manned up and audibly cleared my throat to get the barista’s attention.  Being careful not to affect a “tone”, which I have been known to have and which is perceived as being sarcastic, I meekly said “I’m no expert on coffee-related things, but is this what I am supposed to be getting?”

The barista, probably young enough to be my daughter, looked at me sympathetically, as one might at a lost child in a shopping mall, and asked “What did you order?”   I mumbled something about having ordered a cold drink, and she swiftly swooped the hot little cup from my hand, gave it to the elderly gentleman next to me who had been reading a book of poetry whilst awaiting his order, and handed me a plastic cup of frosty, caffeinated goodness, complete with a yellow straw.

Relieved, I found a seat, fired up my iPad, watched funny cat videos, and sipped my frozen something-or-other, which was actually very good.

The writing summit with my co-author at that same coffeehouse the next day went very well.  He ordered some manner of something that wasn’t even coffee I found out later.  It was some stuff in a cup, but he also got a bottle that he poured into the stuff in the cup.  For fear that learning about this would cause part of my mind to blow a fuse, I chose just to live in ignorance of whatever it was. 

As for me, I chickened out when I made my order the next day.  I went with arctic lemonade, which I figured would not elicit any awkward beverage-related questions, and even mentioned the size I wanted (grande).  I was feeling pretty smug, having not looked like a hillbilly in the coffeehouse in front of my co-author.  That is until the order-taking person asked, “Do you want whipped cream on that?”

Wait…what?  On lemonade? Is that even a thing?

I need to take a class on coffeehouse fare before our next writing summit, I think.  Either that or I’ll just go with a regular old coffee with just cream, like a total rube.

Source

***CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE: I would like to thank the staff of Coffee By Design on India Street in downtown Portland, Maine for their patience and graciousness as I struggled with the language of coffeehouses, and for their allowing my co-author and I to take up space in their wonderful shop for the better part of a Monday afternoon while we went over our project together.

A Drinking Problem

I drink a lot.  Of water, that is.  I always have.  I’m just a water-drinking kind of guy.  Oh sure, I’ll have some coffee in the morning, and an occasional soda or alcoholic beverage when watching sports, but water is the mainstay of the liquid side of my diet.  I keep a bottle in the car, have one going at work, and usually have a glass nearby at home.  As habits go, it is probably one of the better ones I could have.  Beats the heck out of sticking silverware into electrical outlets, which is a habit no one sticks with for long.

Okay, maybe I don't drink this much, but close.

Source

Water drinking is not a habit without its downsides however.  Off the top of my head, I can think of two negative side effects, one minor and one not so much.

The minor one is when I go out to eat at a restaurant.  I always order ice water with my meal, since that’s just what I like.  It’s what I drink with meals at home, so why wouldn't I have it when I am out? The thing is, I can’t help but feel like the server, deep-down, must think I am just another cheap bastard not ordering something for which I would have to pay.  I’m sure that if I had a few beers in me, I’d probably get up the courage to address this perceived issue with my server, maybe going to far as to encourage them to stop by my home any evening at mealtime to see that I really do indeed have ice water with all my meals.  Of course, if I had a few beers in me, the whole point would be moot. So I just leave a generous tip, more for the sake of my own conscience than anything else.

Source

The more problematic side effect of drinking a lot of water involves making trips to the bathroom.  The human body can only make use of so much water after all, and what it does not need has to come out at a certain point. Biology 101, right there.  Fortunately, I am rarely in a situation where I am not able to make a quick trip to the restroom.  There are, however, times when I really don’t want to, like in the middle of attending a live event or while trying to sleep.  It’s that latter issue that really causes me problems.

As I get older, I find that nocturnal sojourns to the loo are a more frequent occurrence.  On a good night, I don’t need to go at all or maybe only need to go once, but sometimes it can be more.  It wouldn't be so bad if I was a sound sleeper, but alas, I am not.  It always takes me a long time to fall asleep, and I do not sleep very deeply when I do.  If I get up to go to the john, it wakes me just enough so that it can take upwards of an hour for me to get back to dreamland. If I've stubbed a toe, tripped over a cat or two, or run into a door, all of which are not infrequent happenings, it can be even longer. 

Some nights, I can totally relate.

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Getting back to sleep is usually a real challenge for me.  During those late night hours, my mind functions with all the calm reason of a teenage girl in the front row of a Justin Bieber concert.  It turns every little problem into a big one, and regrets from the past, particularly the ridiculous and trivial ones, are dredged up and amplified.  One night not long ago, for example, I tossed and turned and fretted for what must have been over an hour after a bathroom trip because I felt bad about taking a regular college English course my senior year in high school instead of the accelerated course my teacher desperately wanted me to take.  Did I mention that I graduated from high school a quarter-century ago?  And that I got into the college of my choice and the program of my choice with no problems, despite only taking regular college English?  In the dark of the night, not taking the accelerated course seemed like such a deep regret of which I should be eternally ashamed.  Come morning, it seemed like a monumentally stupid thing to waste my energy thinking about.

In the 80s, the Australian pop band Men at Work even wrote a hit song about this middle-of-the-night phenomenon of exaggerated thinking.  The song is called “Overkill”, and here are some of the lyrics, as written by lead singer Colin James Hay:

I can't get to sleep. 
I think about the implications 
Of diving in too deep 
And possibly the complications. 

Especially at night 
I worry over situations that 
I know will be alright.
It's just overkill.

(Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC)

Video of "Overkill" by Men at Work from YouTube

At least there’s a little bit of comfort in knowing that it’s not just me who suffers mild temporary insanity in the middle of the night.

If dawn is approaching soon and my bladder is urging me to take a trip down the hall, I have been known to try to “ride it out” until I have to get up anyway, especially if things are not too urgent.  This rarely works.  First of all, I can rarely get comfortable when I have to go, so I toss and turn and generally destroy the bed.  Then, if I do manage to achieve some semblance of sleep, I almost always have the most outrageously stressful dreams, often involving being chased by something horrible and nasty, or being extremely late for something extremely important, like my presidential inauguration or something.  I have no doubt that these dreams are triggered in my subconscious by my body’s need to take care of business, and waking up after them is like returning home from a particularly violent war.  And of course, as official wake up time draws close, a cat or two always manages to make its way into the room in hopes of rousting me for their breakfast, and will invariably sit, if not pounce, directly on my bladder.

They know.  I’m not sure how, but they do.  This is no accident on their part.

I’m a solution-oriented person, but I don’t think there is a solution for this.  Stop drinking water after dinnertime?  Been there, done that, didn't work.  Talk to my doctor? Did that too.  Not enough of a problem to require medical intervention, I’m told.  And don’t even suggest wearing a diaper or some sort of contraption. NOT an option!  Not even maybe.

I guess I should be grateful that I am a light enough sleeper that I am awakened to deal with these requests from my bladder, otherwise I’d be doing a lot more laundry and probably not writing about this particular issue publicly.

It would probably generate a ton of blog hits though...

Hmm….  

I Hear You Knocking

A "glamour shot" of my vehicle that I found somewhere on the Internet a long time ago. (From www.autonet.hr, I think)

My car has a knock and it is driving me just about out of my mind.

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog already know that I am notoriously fussy about some things.  One of the things about which I am most fussy is my car.  I like it to be clean, comfortable, and in excellent working order at all times.  Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how I like to be too.

If a dashboard light comes on, I immediately stop and look into it.  If something is spilled inside the car, I will pull over to the side of the road wherever I am and clean it up.  While it is impossible to keep the exterior spotless during a Maine winter, I do hit the automatic car wash as often as I reasonably can during the winter months, and can be seen washing and waxing almost every weekend once the weather gets above freezing.

So, you can imagine my horror a month ago when a strange sound started coming from what sounded like the passenger side of the undercarriage whenever there was a slight side-to-side motion of the car.  Given the pothole quotient during spring in these parts, and the fact that my car is an SUV with a fairly high profile, I was hearing it quite a bit.  It was a gentle knocking sound, as though something dangling underneath was bumping up against something else.  The car, a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe with about 70,000 miles on it, has had very few problems in the two years I've owned it, so this was cause for concern.

Frankly, I did not want to shell out a bunch of cash to a mechanic if I could solve it myself, which I hoped was the case here.  My vehicular mechanical skills are much like my computer troubleshooting skills: intuitive.  I don’t really know how to explain what is wrong or how to fix it, but I can generally dive right in and take care of it myself in many situations.  If I had to teach someone else how to do it or describe what I just did to fix the problem, I’d be totally lost for words (which would be really something for me).  I instinctively knew that this sound from below the car, while irritating, was not something serious that would impede operation of the car in any way.  The only way the knock would knock was when influenced by a side-to-side motion.  It was not, for example, a faulty CV joint, since I've been there before with a prior car, and my bank account has the scars to prove it.

I did the most obvious thing first.  I went through the interior of the car to see if something was loose and knocking around.  I crawled under the seats and looked in all of the storage compartments, finding nothing that would be prone to movement.  I don’t tend to store a lot of “stuff” in my car anyway.  Just to be sure, I took every single thing out of all nooks and crannies of the car, from the papers in the glove box to the spare tire and everything in between.  Then I went for a quick drive around the block.  The knock was still there.

So much for Plan A.

The next step was to jack up the car and crawl under.  It was still mud season at the time, so this was a miserable thing to do.  There wasn't really enough room in my garage to easily jack it up and have room to get underneath, so I had to do it outside in the wet, muddy driveway, where there were likely earthworms and God knows what else.

I didn't use the small emergency jack I carry in the car, since it was both flimsy and also neatly packed away again after the failed Plan A.  Instead, I got out the allegedly heavy duty hydraulic “SUV jack” (note the quotation marks), which I kept in the garage.  I had not actually used it on this particular vehicle before, though it had always worked fine on my previous vehicle, which was a lighter car.  There was no reason to think it wouldn't work on this one, since it was supposed to be a jack capable of lifting SUVs, and my current vehicle is indeed one of those.

Wrong.

I positioned the jack carefully and started moving the handle up and down, up and down.  This went on for several minutes, and I was starting to get a bit winded.  “Wow,” I thought, “the suspension on this thing must be terrific if it takes this long to get the wheels off the ground!”  Come to find out, the jack couldn't handle the weight of my vehicle, and all my jacking was for nothing.  I proceeded to cram the car, the jack, and myself into my tiny garage and tried the whole process again on a cement surface, but still nothing.  This “SUV jack” was just not going to jack my SUV.

Moving the car back into the driveway, I shimmied underneath it without benefit of a jack.  The undercarriage does sit fairly high off the ground, but it was still a tight squeeze for me to get underneath to inspect things and commune with the earthworms.  Every move required contortionist-like skill, which is no easy feat for a guy like me.  The idea was to muckle onto a few things underneath and gave them a gentle shake to see if I could replicate the knocking sound.  After slightly burning my hand on a still rather hot exhaust system, which had been the primary suspect, I concluded that it was not the problem.  It moved a little bit, but made more of a metallic sound. 

Every shake dislodged a winter’s worth of dirt, most of which landed on my face and in my hair.  Nonetheless, it seemed like most everything under there was pretty solid.  I was just about to crawl out from under, pick the squished earthworms off my back, and go shower for several days when I tried one last thing.  There was a conduit for what I believe is a brake line that seemed like a possible culprit. Sure enough, it did have a side-to-side movement and bumped slightly into some other thingy nearby.  It sounded like the knock I had been hearing, and so I thought I had found it.  With much effort, I maneuvered my way out from under and went to get some plastic ties to secure the conduit in such a way that it wouldn't bump the other thingy.  After doing so, I took a quick spin around the block in the car.

The car still knocked.

Dammit.

I crawled back under, carefully avoiding the now very hot exhaust system, and saw that the ties had come off somewhere on my short drive around the block.  Still convinced that I had pinned down the problem, I got some more plastic ties and fit them more tightly than the last set.  I didn't want to make it too tight, for fear it would damage the conduit.  Another trip around the block, and still the knock persisted. 

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result.  In spite of that, I crawled under the car yet again and readjusted the plastic ties in such a way that there was no possible way the conduit could knock against anything.

People were starting to look out their windows as I drove around the block for a third time, probably wondering if I was stalking them.  The crazed look on my face as I continued to hear the knocking sound in spite of my efforts probably only heightened their fears.

So apparently the brake conduit was not the culprit after all.  I was done for the day, and decided to just keep the radio turned up loud to drown out the knock until I could get a second opinion.  I was going to dinner with my brother not long after that, so I figured we would take my car and he could hear the sound for himself.  He didn't.  Claimed he didn't hear a thing.  Of course, he has two young children and a large dog, so his cars are constantly rattling, clanging, and bumping from all manner of detritus left behind by the youngsters and the pooch.  My car probably sounded like a sailboat on a glassy sea in comparison.

A few weeks have passed, and my delusion that the knock would just resolve itself miraculously has long since fallen by the wayside.  I've crawled under that damn car at least three other times in hopes of finding that which has eluded me for nearly a month, but to no avail.  The knocking persists.  As much as I hate to admit defeat, I think it’s time to make an appointment with my mechanic.

I can almost see how it’s going to go:  He’ll call to say the car is ready.  I’ll stop by to pick it up, and he’ll hand me an empty bottle of Ibuprofen or something similar he found rattling in some compartment I missed in my previous searches.  Then, with a smarmy grin, he’ll hand me a bill for several hundred dollars, and I’ll wish that bottle of Ibuprofen had a few tablets left.

I still have one plan left, although it might have a few flaws.  Since the knock can only be heard when the car is in motion, I am thinking that I can get someone to hang suspended by bungee cords underneath while I drive around on some rough streets.  The aforementioned “someone” would thus be able to pinpoint the source of the knock, and will then tell me what it is as soon as they are released from the hospital. 

Any volunteers?  Might be a free beer in it for you.

YouTube Video: A live version of the classic "I Hear You Knocking" by the incomparable Dave Edmunds. You have no idea how much I hate this song now.

Oh Good Grief, It's Spring Charlie Brown

“Charlie Brown, you're the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.” ~Linus Van Pelt in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

If you take the word “Christmas” out of that quote and replace it with “spring”, then Linus could have been talking about me.  The snow is melting, the sun is warmer feeling, and yet I am in the midst of my annual anxieties about spring. 

My spring uncertainties are not the same as those I usually get around the holidays.  I almost wish they were.  At that time of year, I get caught up in more specific concerns: finding the right Christmas presents, finding the money to afford aforementioned presents, attending parties without making a fool of myself, making time for everyone and everything, and the like.   No, the anxieties that creep into my head around springtime are lower-level and less-pressing, but no less stressful.

Some of them are not highly defined.  When it is 35 degrees, windy, and ice pellets are falling from the sky in April, I admit that at some deep level I begin to doubt that winter is really over.  Given the five months of snow and cold that have just dragged past at the speed of continental drift, one can’t blame one’s psyche for not fully buying into the idea that it really is over.  After all, there was 1816, the “Year Without a Summer”.  Temperatures were well below normal that year all around the world due to a volcanic eruption in Indonesia causing unheard-of weather and crop failures.  There was snow in Albany, New York and Dennysville, Maine on June 6 of 1816.  Even within my lifetime, in 1990, we had more than six inches of snow fall on May 23 here in northern Maine.  Winter in Maine can be like that shark in the Jaws films.  Just when you think it’s safe, the damn thing comes back to bite you.

The general appearance of the outside in early spring is just a mess, which adds to the anxiety.  We have to pile the snow high here after storms, so while most of it has indeed melted, there are still huge dirty snowbanks in nearly every yard, slowly turning to water.  Even in a good year, some of the larger snowbanks can survive into May or early June in this part of Maine.  Trash, sticks, dog droppings and various other surprises lie around on the ground, left behind during the winter and now exposed by the melting snow. 

Where there are no snowbanks, everything is brown.  The grass and leaves have not dared to sprout yet, so the remains of last year’s dominate the view, dead and mired in the mud that is impossible to avoid.  Trees are still bare, and seeds under the ground have only begun to think about getting started.  It seems hard to believe that very soon, with some spring rains and warm sun, the green grass and leaves will soon burst forth, and flowers will be blooming.  At least, that is the plan.

One of my more specific worries this year includes the fate of my old riding lawnmower, which was literally limping toward the end of the mowing season last fall.  It had been giving me trouble all last year, and my only hope at the time was to nurse it along until the end of the season.  The old rustbucket threw a belt during the last mow in October, but it made it to the finish line.  Now I have to consider my options, none of which are good.  I can try to fix it myself, but frankly I am not very good at that kind of thing and will probably make things worse instead of better.  I could take it to get serviced, which is the most likely thing I will do, though that can be expensive, and loading a powerless riding mower onto a truck is a heavy job.  I suppose I can go without and just use my trusty push mower on the whole thing this year.  While the exercise would certainly be good for me, the extra time and work involved would be a real hassle, especially when it gets hot.  Sweating ranks right up there with cholera on my list of things to avoid.  Or, I could buy a new riding mower.  Let me know if you see the money fairy flying near my house, and I’ll flag her down and do just that.

I’m also worried about what I’ll find when I wash my car for the first time this spring.  My beloved chariot, as I refer to it, is caked in at least an inch of dirt and mud.  It has been showered with gravel and sand from driving on the interstate after storms, and was buried under snow several times this past winter.  I am bracing myself for the sight of the new dings and scratches in the paint job that I’ll uncover after that first wash.  Cars, like people, can’t stay new-looking forever, but I am going to do all I can to try to keep this car looking as close to how it did when I drove it off the lot two years ago.  I've got a bottle of touch-up paint on standby, and got a full kit of car cleaning supplies for Christmas just ready to crack open.  That chariot is going to shine, I hope.  Right now, it looks like something salvaged from the bottom of the Mississippi River, so it’s got nowhere to go but up.

My warm-weather wardrobe needs a serious update as well, since most of my best clothes from last year are really only suitable for use as rags when cleaning the aforementioned car or for dressing as a homeless person.  I've been milking them for a few years now, and they just don’t have another season left in them.  That means I need to shop for new clothes, which is easily one of my least favorite things to do.  I just don’t know what a guy my age (43, for those of you just joining us) is supposed to wear.  I do know what I am comfortable wearing however.  The former and the latter don’t always seem to coincide, unfortunately.  Plus, it’s getting harder and harder to find Nirvana tour t-shirts these days.  When I win the lottery, the first thing I am going to do is hire a professional fashion consultant.

In ancient times, the new year started in the spring, not midwinter like it does for us now.  That makes more sense to me, because a lot of what’s nagging at me at this time of year is the result of transitions, the new beginnings that are the hallmark of spring.  The old has passed, and the new lies ahead with all the uncertainty that comes with it.  All the little concerns I've mentioned here either falls under the heading of fear that the old has not really passed, or that there might be complications with the unknown new.

I know on an intellectual level that of course the hard months of winter are over and the beauty of spring is looming, but it still seems impossible at this point.  But it happens every year.  There will be robins.  There will be crocus.  There will be temperatures that allow us to leave our jackets at home.  It’s just a matter of hanging on and letting nature take its own time.