Struggling to eke out a living for the past 20 decades, the U.S. populace has supported itself with odd jobs in the fur trade, tinkering, information technology, and pharmaceuticals industries, but has finally succumbed to the mounting pressures of modern life. The nation plans to strike out on its own come fall, when the weather’s cooler, hoping to make its fortune and perhaps find a little patch of soil to call its own in the sprawling wilderness between O’Hare International Airport and the Great Pacific Ocean.

I’m inclined to join them.

Four Cyclists who were wearing smog masks when they arrived in Beijing, have been forced to apologize…I guess for not wanting to breathe the stew of airborne-shit that is the city’s air?

Four US Olympic cyclists who caused an outcry when they arrived at Beijing airport wearing smog masks have today apologised to Games organisers.

The four - Mike Friedman, Bobby Lee, Sarah Hammer and Jennie Reed - said that they were wearing the masks because of pollution fears, a touchy subject for the Chinese authorities.

Not to be a downer, but letsee, the tibet-crackdown thing, the earthquake, yesterday’s terrorist-dumptruck attack, the polution, the torch protests…I think four american cyclists, who might be needing their full oxygenation abilities in the next few days, wearing smog-masks might be the least of this round of the game’s problems.

I was standing neck-deep in Barton Springs yesterday, sweating in 64 degree water, if that’s even possible. It’s too hot to even think straight, and I’ve taken to weighing the benefits of drowning myself  in the cold water vs the inevitable heat stroke if I stay above the surface any longer.

Over on the diving board, near the center of the pool, i hear the starts of cheering and shouting, creeping up through the audible spectrum, slowly gaining momentum. Looking over, there’s this speck-of-a-kid perched on the end of the diving board. It’s only a three-foot drop but the poor little dude has locked up. All around him though, hundreds of complete strangers are cheering and shouting encouragement, and it spreads up-and-down the length of the 1/3 mile long pool, until you’ve got a pretty impressive tumult.

The kid jumps, and the roar turns to rock concert applause. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen everywhere.

Christmas time comes around and my family cuts loose. There’s a food, drink and significant plunges into credit card debt due to totally-exorbitant and highly-detailed Christmas lists. Christmas Eve has big food items on deck, including Beef Wellington also known as steak donuts or bow-tie beef depending on whether you ask me or my sister.

We were into our third round of wine getting said dinner ready, when we got the call—that my godmother Kris hadn’t shown up for dinner with friends, and was she ok?

Kris was technically my godmother, but she’d been around since I was wee. One of those surrogate aunts you read bout in books that I was lucky enough to actually have. She was diagnosed with an aggressive  cancer when I was maybe 12, and was in remission for a long damn time. She never really talked about it, at least not to me, and I imagine if they get the internet in the afterlife, she’ll be upset with me for writing about it at all. But it happened and I hope she can forgive me.

In 2007, while I was dealing with the great-domestic-realignment, her health was also on a bit of downslide again.  At thanksgiving though, she seemed ok and we had a great meal, and some great conversations and one of the last things she said to me was, “I’m going to get better, Wade-O, I’m going to beat this thing.”

As my parents rushed over to Kris’s house on Christmas Eve, to see what was going on Kendra and I put away the food and sat and waited (we also almost inadvertently killed my moms dog, but that’s a story for later). Twenty minutes later, the helicopter roared over our house and ten minutes after that, again the thunder of  rotors. Lifeflight, the local air-ambulance. Such weird thing to think of someone you love thundering over your head at 150mph. We went to Houston that night, and tried to sing Christmas carols on the way, as I attempted to find some moderation in my driving between getting to the hospital before the helicopter and freaking out my mother. We celebrated Christmas the next day in typical Treichler fashion, with presents being opened all day, and multiple toasts with enough food to feed an aircraft carrier, because we needed it after the year our family had, and we felt that Kris, in her ever reticent manner about her illness, wouldn’t have wanted us to make a fuss.

Kris left us a few weeks later.

Fast forward six months—I’m sitting at my computer at work, signing up for the Lance Armstrong Livestrong Ride this October, a quite frankly, I’m pissed as hell. I don’t understand many things about this world, one of them being why the hell haven’t we beaten this god damned disease yet? We can land on the moon, we can build a global communications network, we can crack the atom but we can’t cure cancer?  More than anything though I’m mad that I don’t get to spend Christmas with Kris this year.

So this year in the Livestrong Ride, I’m not riding for the cause, for cancer-funding legislation, or any grand philosophical ideals. I’m riding for Kris, and I hope she doesn’t mind (although she probably wouldn’t like all the attention). Hopefully, some of you kids can pitch a little money to the cause. Maybe it’ll help somebody get one more Christmas with their godmother.

I’ll be putting up a permanent link in the side bar later this week, but for now, click here.

Update: I have to say I’m a bit stunned - I didn’t expect to make my fundraising goals in one day. Thanks so much to everyone who pitched in, it means an incredible amount to me. Your generosity is awesome.

I tend to like apartment complexes that aren’t exactly new. Preferably built after sheetrock was discovered but before the three-prong plug was introduced is ideal. A little bit of character, not one of these acres-long mega-complexes that populate former farm fields on the outskirts of our cities, like some kind of mutant crop.

The Lorrain (sadly not spelled like the song) is such a place. A bit of character, stuck on a hill above Lamar, where, if you crane your head just right, you can see the capitol dome. Unfortunately, the management that owns the Lorraine has been making some improvements to the facilities lately. Did they fix the water pressure? As anyone who’s ever bathed at my apartment knows, when the water pressure drops in shower, it’s best to quickly move out of the stream of water to avoid second degree burn from the liquid magma now issuing forth from the shower head. No, they’ve done nothing about the water pressure problems, but they did pressure wash the walkways (except they stopped  ten feet before they got to my door for some reason).Did they paint the raw plywood that makes up the cladding outside my front door? No it’s still plywood colored, but they did stain the floor in the laundry room with a lovely color of concrete stain. Well, how about the staircase that’s so unstable, I’m pretty sure I”m going to be thundering down it one day with a bike and have it collapse into a pile of splinters, my broken bones and SRAM component. Nope, no word on the stairs - we did however get a letter phrased in questionable grammar asking that we please remove all our grills from the courtyard, as they are making the place look junky. Any grill left in the courtyard would be tossed in the dumpster. Not donated to Habitat for Humanity or Goodwill, no fines or penalites, we’re just going to junk them. In response to this I filed a maintence request asking them to please remove the dumbasses from their office, perhaps placing them in the dumpster with all the BBQ grills. Last i checked it was still pending, but I bet they get to it before they fix my stairs.