Super Sic

For two weeks, I have watched videos, read tributes, looked at photos, and I have cried.

He was not my son. He was not my brother, my lover, my teammate or my friend. And, still I have cried.

Not a tear or two, but streams of tears. I have looked toward the sky, and I have asked why.

The day after he died, his mother came out of their home to comfort the dozens of fans gathered in mourning, and she said, "Non piangete, non piangete per lui. Marco non avrebbe mai voluto vedervi piangere."

Don't cry, don't cry for him. Marco would never have wanted to see you cry.

But, Marco never knew we'd see him die, at 24, coming out of a turn on the second lap at Sepang International Circuit. He couldn't have asked us to smile, like he always did, for everything, and he has seen many tears, tens of thousands of fans with tears in their eyes, quiet, silenced, crying.

Rosella, noi piangiamo per lui, per voi, per Paolo, per Martina, per Kate e per tutta la famiglia San Carlo Honda Gresini e MotoGP. Per Vale, e per Colin.

We cry because he was young, and he was joy. Because he had a talent and a drive to use it. He was criticized. He said he was learning, and that he would make mistakes. Jorge Lorenzo told him it was not a problem, until something happened. He said, "Then, I will be arrest," and he smiled that smile that sends problems out of the room, off the track, away from Marco.

And then, there was a problem, and he was not "arrest", he died. Jorge at least had a valid point.

"Maybe the other riders can tell when someone is going to die racing, like we can tell when someone is some guy is going to die on the road," my son mused. We, all of those who ride des deux roues. 

It came too soon, before Marco had a chance to learn more. Before we had a chance to see if you can drive the pace, race aggressively, thread the smallest hole, take the throttle to limits others place somewhere before them and then calibrate a distance from which to observe the consequences. His fans, the whole world of racing, suddenly, it seems, was holding its breath, waiting to see how close you may come to that limit, how real you may make MotoGP racing in the Catégorie Reine, the 800cc bikes, without a problem happening.

The kind of problem that would get you "arrest", or perhaps flirt mortally with your death.

From outside, from a fan's place in front of the articles, all of the reaction on the Internet, the sides form: Marco Simoncelli was too aggressive, he was a problem waiting to happen, he -- maybe -- invited his own death; Jorge Lorenzo was prescient; or, Super Sic was the bright spot, the thrill, the color in a sport that is becoming risk adverse, almost to the point of demanding that the bikes be equipped, as one fan put it, with turn signal lights for passing and brake lights for braking before turns; he was the future of MotoGP's ultimate category, la catégorie reine; he was the natural heir, they said, to his friend Valentino Rossi.

It was "bad luck". It was an accident. Or, it wasn't maybe so much an accident; it was an accident waiting to happen because he flew too high, too fast, without regard for the truth of the consequences, to the thrill of the fans, to the admiration of the MotoGP riders who have retired and watch him from the paddock, and who saw in him one of the greatest future riders, like 1993 MotoGP 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz, who wrote the day after his death in Malaysia, "There were three standouts in the sport, and now there are two. I'm probably going to get under some people's skin saying this, but it's Maverick Vinales, Marc Marquez, and it was Simoncelli."

Marco won't have the future to show what experience in his class, the tempering of time and maturity, would have made of him, but his legions of fans, enough to fill Indy, have had a chance to show him what he meant to them.

Two weeks after he died, on the last race day of the season, the world of MotoGP made a fitting tribute to a young man with a perpetual smile and hair that bounced as joyfully around his head as he raced around a track and bounced through the paddocks and our lives.

Schwantz, his hero, mentor, supporter, and friend, rode Marco's Gresini Honda RCV212 at the head of the memorial lap at Valencia, followed by the riders of all three categories -- the first time all three categories have taken to the track at the same time -- and a minute of noise; his father said it would be more fitting to his boisterousness than a moment of silence. Vale Rossi had a helmet made, a mix of their two helmet designs, and carried Marco's flag. Loris Capirossi, his friend and his adversary on the track, racing the last race of his career, replaced the 65 on his bike with Marco's 58 and finished the race in tears behind his visor; one rider ending his career in retirement rode under the number of another who died racing two weeks earlier.

But, how to explain why this death hurts so much more than others? The combined effect of his and other deaths, like Shoya Tomizawa's last year and Daijiro Kato in 2003, along with the deaths of other people in our lives? I think of two young women, not yet 20 years of age, who came to the ER when my husband was on duty last year, at several months apart, both of whom complained of abdominal pain, and both of whom had cancers that would certainly end their lives before they got to be another year older. The first died in July. The second just one month ago. My black lab, Baccarat, who at 4 was far too young to die last summer of a tumor in her heart, and break ours.

Is it because of his smile, his infectious happiness that shone right through the television screen and made friends and family of all of us?

The accident was at 10:30 in the morning in France, during the Rugby World Cup. Normally, we would have watched the MotoGP races in the afternoon. For some reason, we did not that Sunday. In the evening, my husband turned his laptop toward me and asked if I remembered the face that grinned from the screen, the glorious mop of soft, curly brown hair as big as the smile.

"Oui."

"Il est mort aujourd'hui." Il est mort. Il est mort aujourd'hui. Mort.

"Comment cela?"

"Un accident vraiment violent dans le deuxième tour à Sepang, en Malaysie."

I don't remember the next moments, but I remember all of them since then, searching YouTube and MotoGP for video of the accident, of the press conference, of the funeral, and searching Twitter and the Internet for the comments of his fellow riders, his family, Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards, both of whose motorcycles struck the upper body and head of Marco Simoncelli after he lost control in a turn and started to skid toward the sand at the outside of the track, hanging onto the bike laid out along the right side. He disappears from the video, and then, he and his bike veer back in frame, the rear tire of his motorcycle apparently having regained traction, sending him back across the track and directly into the path of Edwards and Rossi.

Why didn't he let go? Could he not let go? Was he somehow stuck? Was it, as some supposed, his indomitable spirit of competition that made him want to hang on and try to get control of his bike again and continue the race? Had something happened to him already, as others, completely at a loss to understand how this could have happened, have wondered?

An instant. Edwards and Rossi are fighting to position, coming out of the turn, Rossi on the inside, their bikes practically touching, and suddenly Marco and his bike skid into their path, Marco's back, from the buttocks up, exposed to Edwards' front tire, which hits Marco in the back, spinning him around between their bikes, and in the split second, Vale's front tire hits his head, an impact so sudden and violent that it tears Marco's helmet off and sends it flying, rolling, bouncing behind where Edwards and his bike, cartwheeling from the track and into the grass, come to a stop. It rocks, and it lies still. Marco's body, inert, skids along the asphalt and comes to a rest. His leg, slightly elevated, falls to its rest.

"His helmet never should have come off," my son said. "His face, it was on the asphalt --"

This, too. His face. The animated, beautiful part of him that never seemed to feel the slightest need to restrict your access to his joy in everything. It slid, bare and unprotected, along the rough asphalt. His skin on the rough asphalt. It felt like a sacrilege.

More questions. Why did his helmet come off? Eurosport's commentator Régis Laconi, ex-MotoGP rider, retired himself after a serious accident, reacted at the same time the public was watching live, "Comment ça se fait que son casque se soit enlevé, c'est pas possible? Un casque ne peut pas s'enlever pour un pilote." How is it that his helmet came off, how is that possible? A helmet can't come off a pilot.

Disbelief. These helmets are designed for race conditions, intended to withstand the worst shock in order to protect the head. That the helmet could be ripped from the rider's head is unthinkable. That Simoncelli's cheek should have to touch the asphalt, was the most shocking indication of the truth: the vulnerability of the riders in each race. Race after race, one or more riders go down, sliding with their bikes into the grass, the sand, and most often, they get up, rush to their bikes and try to get them back up, with the help of track staff, and try to make up their lost time, slapping their thigh in fury and frustration when it's not possible.

His vulnerability, his skin touching the asphalt, his body broken, his life leaving him, left him, alone on the track, with Colin Edwards equally alone and untouchable only meters away, bent double, holding his head in his hands in pain, disbelief and shock, the helicopter hovering, sending us these images, Shoya Tomizawa's body projected from his bike last year, hit by another bike and sent skidding down the track, spinning around and around and around before he came to a stop, like Marco now, this vulnerability like the simplicity of his joys, his availability to his fans, and his terrible youth made him vulnerable.

Marco was willing to be vulnerable, and we knew it, and we loved him.

He was only 4 years older than my son, who is the same age as Tomizawa was when he died last year. They are professionals at 16, world champions at 21, and younger. They are dead at 20, at 24; they know what comes next while we look skyward and wonder if they see us still, if they hear our thoughts for them.

If Marco does, then he has heard 91,000 on the MotoGP site's place for fan tributes. He is constantly hearing us and seeing us cry, for nearly everyone who has left a word for him speaks of their tears and of being "gutted" by the news of his death.

"Non piangete, non piangete per lui. Marco non avrebbe mai voluto vedervi piangere."

Marco has to see us cry because we can't help it. Io piango, noi piagiamo per lui, Rosella.

"Il était attachant, avec ses grands cheveux et son sourire," said my husband.

We watch the tributes together, the races now. He is sometimes critical of Super Sic's aggressive style, but maybe like a father. He, motard that he has been these 30 and more years, could never have let his son race like this for fear of losing him, but that is what Marco did, and his parents let him live his dreams.

I like the notion of him being the fastest angel, the fastest star in the heavens now; a perfect racetrack and bike under him, and Tomizawa and Kato, and everyone else who has died racing on a MotoGP circuit, rooting for his friends and colleagues and smiling, always smiling. Life was simple for Marco; it was a single wire, a conductor of happiness and warmth. Marco knows what comes next now, but the rest of us will have to live without him making the races exciting, our Sundays brighter for his grin, his sparkling, laughing, warm eyes, and wait to see for ourselves, with our quieter, tamer lives perhaps less lived, if longer.

RIP, Super Sic. We love you. 58 forever.

Marco Simoncelli highlights of 2011 | RIP 1987-2011 from Beau Nascimento on Vimeo.
...

Frost

Frost-sugared rose

I cannot imagine how the fish comprehend winter. It is a miracle of the minor order to see them below the thin layer of ice that gradually thickens if the weather comes from the east and is not slowly warmed again by the Gulfstream's most northeastern tip, the North Atlantic Drift, as they swim about, very, very slowly. They have no warm coats.

We are, right now, feeling the ebb of the Drift and the grip of the polar temperatures, freezing everything from Finland to Moosesucks, which is a hopeful sign, since I just confirmed the reservation for the hotel in Argentière for January and spent an hour or two yesterday researching collapsible, lightweight and relatively inexpensive travel containers for dogs. Baccarat was 2 months older when she made her first hotel stay at l'Hôtel de la Couronne, and the armchair legs felt her teeth despite her Kongs; the hotel instituted a per diem charge for dogs the next year, although they were still more than welcome. We paid, despite her behaving better than most other visitors and restricting her misbehavior to sleeping on Sam's bed while we were on the slopes. Fia will be just 5 months old, and I will be a wreck if I don't find a way to insure that she cannot inflict damage while we are out, which quite ruins the point of the trip and makes the expense of tolls, gas, hotel and lift tickets an additional gall.

It had occurred to me to make her a bed in the bath or the toilet, but in the case of the bath, she'd very possibly set herself to scratching the door and crying or barking to get out and join Rapide. Besides, housekeeping will want to clean the bath, and they'd have to get her back in again. Not difficult, but I'd have to talk with them, and, besides, why should they have to deal with that? The toilet is out. I read somewhere that small, high-ceiling places make dogs crazy. And, how nice is it to spend your morning and afternoon curled up around the porcelain God?

So, I Googled "crate training" and lazily perused various posts. I also wanted to see if everyone agreed that you really have to shut them up for as long as 4 hours at this age. I miss her.

In one, there was a photograph of just such a travel kennel. Encouraged by my new knowledge that such a thing exists, and not wanting a huge, unwieldy wire cage or plastic Vari Kennel I have no idea where I will store once home, I clicked on the ZooPlus.fr icon on my toolbar and went looking. Et voilà, there they were, at the bottom of the page, under all the dog houses, two collapsible, not terribly expensive travel kennels. I got the tape measure to determine the length of a sleeping, full-grown Lab (Thank you, Rapide), and found that I would need the size L of the more expensive one, the size L of the less expensive one being inadequate. Not that she will actually need it full-grown, but what's the use of buying something I will only ever use a very few times when I travel with the very few puppies I will ever have at my age (Fia will likely pass after my 60th birthday. Isn't that a happy thought?)? Now, I just need to find the courage to order it, and the AC adapter from Dell for my laptop to replace the one Fia bit through a few weeks back.

I am sure she did not do it on purpose.

Dogs are not an inexpensive pleasure for the responsible mistress. Either they fly with you (poor dog), get kenneled (poor, poor dog), or you reduce your luggage to make room for them in the car, having the appropriate vehicle for their size and number, and get everything necessary to insure their comfort and your peace of mind (poorer owner). We like them to have the chance to run and play in the snow, too. Labrador Retrievers might be famous for being water dogs, but snow is another passion. They come, after all, from Newfoundland, and unlike the fish, they do have warm coats to protect them from the cold in the water and the snow. They are, after all, not cold-blooded.

Such a concept. Nature is truly worthy of our amazement.

Happily, I do have warm coats so that I can do the work in the garden I ought to have done when the ground was still in the mud state, and not the frozen state. The real problem is the fingers, which freeze stiff when grasping the scissors to finish the pruning of the lavender, and the pruning sheers for all the shaggy bushes to which I still have not gotten. Ski socks in Wellies are quite effective for warding off frost-bitten toes. Log-splitting may be done in minimal clothing year-round, as it warms you up in a jiffy.

You can see how motivated I am to get the drawings done so that we can get on with our various renovation and construction projects, when I'd rather dress like Charlie Brown and get out in the garden in order to feel I have been of some use, and those projects -- at least one, anyway, have become urgent, if not for my sense of self, then to keep the water out of the "petite maison", which the roof, despite the presence of the construction sheeting, is no longer able to do in the least.

Not to mention the water that has been seeping into a corner of the Summer Room (nice name for a sorry room) and soaking the new sisal floor covering and plaster, ruining both. I discovered that the elbow at the end of the downspout had fallen off, directing the water from the gutter directly at this corner of the building. I had been telling my husband for years that the thing ought to be torn to the ground and rebuilt for all it is weatherproof and solid, but as long as he sees four walls and a roof containing space that presently serves a purpose, he cannot abide demolishing the (inadequate) structure and replacing it with (correct) new construction. This is beyond depressing for an architect or builder who knows anything about building.

Here, imagine this. The original part of the structure in question was a small garage, whose walls are made of a single row of brick.

"Mais la brique c'est un matériel de construction. Il y a plein de bâtiments faits de brique," he complains, when I suggest that it is depressing to think of tearing the roof off the petite maison and bearing a new roof structure on walls that aren't even sturdy enough to carry it.

"Oui," I allow, "mais jamais un seul rang de brique pour soutenir non seulement son propre poids mais aussi celui de la toiture et le poids qu'il doit pouvoir supporter."

In other words, walls may be made of brick as a structural material (in the old days; we'd never do it now), but they were composed of more than one row of bricks, and the bricks were laid in both directions, interlocking, to provide strength and stability. Our wall enclosing the garage is composed of a single row of bricks, laid lengthwise along the direction of the wall. The inside is covered with some sort of cement mix, used like plaster, causing the hopeful to not actually see the truth.

He looks at me doubtfully. I know I have not won. I do not know how to carry the argument, except to tear the whole thing down with my own hands one day, while he is at work -- or on duty at the hospital so that I get the benefit of two --, and suffer the consequences later.

There is also the question, though, of the slab. You can be sure that it is not haunched, and building appropriate walls and a roof structure directly on it, as is presently the case, would be unwise.

And, then there is the garage we must have. This morning, my motorcycle failed to start, and then so did his, when he tried it afterwards, and he ended up driving a car to work, leaving late and knowing he'd suffer the snaking traffic all the way to the hospital because the battery on my bike can't stand the cold and the damp. I'd kissed him goodbye and started the coffee machine when he reappeared, putting one set of keys on the wainscoting ledge and taking another.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" I knew.

"Ta moto ne démarre pas," he said from inside his helmet. I knew he hadn't left the lights on again; I saw the bike when I returned from walking Rapide just minutes after he had gotten home. "Je vais essayer la mienne."

So, you ask, why didn't he take his in the first place, and why had he taken mine the day before? Because that's another horrendous expense in waiting. His clutch is going and needs replacing. Besides, my bike at half the weight and cylinder is better than his in freezing conditions, where you can take the black ice like Casey Stoner entering a curve. He'd be on his side on the ground with his.

Neither of us seriously thought his would start, either, after several days at rest in the bottom garden in sub-freezing temperatures, but he headed off with the keys, only to return and start the bouilloire for some hot water.

"C'est pour quoi ça?" I asked. I knew this already, too.

"Le neiman ne tourne pas."

The starter. It was frozen. I gave him a kid's plastic cup he could leave down below in the event the hot water worked. Neither of us believed it would. I took my cup of coffee and followed him out into the garden to watch from the edge of the top terrace. He poured the hot water on the starter, got on the bike, turned the key and hit the starter. It cleared its throat. He waited, one-two-three, and I heard it strain again. Silence. I counted, one-two-three, and I heard it go once more, and then nothing. He reached for the shredded scooter cover he uses to protect the seats and controls, and I watched his silver helmet bob across the bottom garden and rise up the steps, praying I had remembered to clean up any dog poop Rapide might have left down there. At least, I thought, it would be frozen, which helps.

"On a vraiment besoin d'un garage," he put me on notice.

"Je sais, mais on ne peut pas faire un garage clos et chauffé," I defended, to which he made a sound of deprecation somewhere in this throat. "My ass," he'd have said, had he spoken in English. As it were, I heard that, even though he said something quite different, like "Attends voir," or You just wait and see.

"Au moins ça protégera les motos de l'humidité," he grumbled, seeming now to accept that really, we couldn't build a proper garage with the possibility of even minimal heat. Do they make electric blankets for motorcycles? "On va revendre la tienne," he added.

This did not upset me. I have been saying it for more than a year. It is the world's most undependable motorcycle. The battery fails more often than it functions, and you usually need to hit the electric starter two or three times to get it to turn over, going a long way each time to drain the battery, which then doesn't have adequate time to recharge if you are only going so far as to the hospital for the day. Add freezing weather and damp, and you are screwed.

"T'as pensé à la coupe circuit?" I asked. I never think of the button that shuts the motor off when I am in a temper, either. Especially given the track record of this motorcycle and batteries.

"Ah, je n'y ai pas pensé." He headed back out toward my bike, where he had left it the night before, up by the telephone booth (how quaint) next to our gate, turning his head to see what was behind him as he stepped onto the slab where the new entry pavement is supposed to be installed, and still hasn't been because the new entry has not been built (are you surprised?). He hadn't expected me to follow. I thought he could use the encouragement.

"Quel est le button encore?" I pointed to the red one by the accelerator. "Oh." He hit it, turned the key -- not a light lit up. Dead. I followed him back into the house, where he reached for a set of car keys.

"Tu as besoin de rouler aujourd'hui?" he asked. No, I didn't need to drive any longer distances today. The Fiat would be fine. Besides, I thought, it has a better radio to sooth the savage beast in the traffic he was about to hit.

"Prendre la BM," I said, and closed the door behind his silver, unhelmeted head, watching it cross the lawn again to the gate.

"J'ai du être à l'hôpital il y a 25 minutes déjà," he muttered, not grumpily at all and not turning his head. Merely stating the fact that a garage would be the best way to insure that no one had to wait for the doctor, or that he'd be forced to start the day in the worst possible of ways: behind schedule.

I knew this already, too.

It's time to pick a project, any project.


....

Today, in the garden

the Saxifragia blooms

ps: saxifragia can grow on toits végétaux

Spring arrived, and the temperatures fell. 10° C this afternoon, partly overcast now, after some rather unexpected sunshine. Audouin pointed out as we drove home from the gym on Saturday morning that it is always this way; our spring comes in the month of March, and as soon as spring officially arrives, the weather craps out.

He's right.

"J'espère -- sans fond de raison, seulement l'espoir -- que le fait qu'on a eu un vrai hiver voudrait [note the use of the conditional tense here] dire qu'on va avoir un vrai été."

"Moi aussi." I resolved to appreciate the day, for as long as the blue skies beyond the brilliant yellow forsythia branches hold. Not long. That evening, having a dinner in the 15th arrondisement, we were all dressed to take a car, and I had a crisis of faith in our ability to find a parking space and arrive before desert.

"Il y a surement un parking dans le coin, non?" It's a lot to say that there is certainly a parking garage near her house (excuse me, that's how we talk here in Moosesucks, I meant building), more to say that it will be open when we'd need to recuperate the car after midnight. I have begged on interphones to be let in to get my car after closing at as early as 11 pm in parking garages in the 15th. The worst is that the interphones at McDonald's drive-thrus are nothing next to the clarity of communication with the (usually) immigrant (no offense intended; I am one) attendent on the other end of the line. Incomprehensible, and they get cranky about it! We decided to take the motorcycle, which turned out to be a very bad choice, apart from allowing 5 minutes of conversation upon our arrival. It's cool to arrive by motorcycle.

I knew that the chin strap on my helmet was too loose, but I thought it would be alright. As soon as we hit the highway, one hand was employed in pulling down on it under my chin to keep my helmet more or less in place. My eyes watered. It felt like I was receiving a particularly aggressive acupuncture treatment on my left cheek, and as though my head were being stretched up into the sky, pulled right off my shoulders. I could feel the tendons strained all the way down into my chest.

I bore up until I spied the first sign for the exit for the rest stop at Morainvilliers, and pointed in a very decided manner from the fast lane so that Audouin would understand that he was to get over and off there, in 2 km. 500 meters later, I repeated the gesture at the next sign. He signalled, shifted right and slipped into the exit lane. Relief. Pure and immediate relief.

"Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" he asked. I never ask to stop.

"Mon casque. C'est pas assez serré, et il tire péniblement." That's when he explained that the problem with the windshield forced him to set it at its lowest position. It was creating turbulence I had never felt behind him. I couldn't even keep my lips closed. At least there was a reason. We struggled with my chin strap, which afforded some relief when we took off again, but I also had to ride with my head stuck out past his, turned like an Egyptian. The turbulence is less when you are not directly behind the pilot.

It was hell.

Home was worse. Far, far worse because to add insult to injury, the temperature had dropped from 8° to 2° C, or just above freezing, at speeds of up to 160 km per hour. My toes warmed up sometime around dawn. So much for not taking time to put on my thermal socks. Never, ever again will I be too hurried not to go retrieve them.

I felt fluish today. We leave for Morzine - Avoriaz Wednesday evening. I cannot be sick. I cannot be sick.

Yesterday was Audouin's birthday. His parents came to celebrate his advanced age (désolée, mon chéri!) and the most extraordinary thing happened.

I made him a fondant au chocolat to serve with a crème anglaise and chantilly (nicer than "whipped cream"), and then it occured to me that I might not have place on the cake for 54 candles, and one for good luck. Sam went and got the camera and joined me at the kitchen counter, where I listened to the conversation and crammed candles from the bowl of once- and twice-used birthday cake candles onto every centimeter square of cake surface available.

At least lighting them should be a cinch, I figured. There were so many they'd autocombust from the heat of those lit close by. At last, there wasn't the possibility of another and I started to light them. Sam took a match and helped finish. We didn't need a flash for the photo, although it occurred to me that we might need les pompiers.

I sang "Happy Birthday", lustily, in English, my in-laws joining in bravely, adding their French voices to my heartfelt song. The French love to sing "Happy Birthday" in English. It's the one bit of English they know.

Audouin tried to look brave, faced with such a lusty display of birthday fire, and puffing up his chest, he exhaled forcefully, achieving the exhaustion of a little more than half the candles and the dispersion of as much as half the powered sugar on the cake, disappearing behind a cloud of smoke and powdered sugar, while he took another breath to attack and Sam clicked away.

"Bon, je suppose que je peux compter les bougies en les enlevant maintenant," and I did, counting two by two. We got to about 38, and Audouin and his parents remarked that it looked like it might be pretty close to 54. I continued.

"40, 42, 44, 46... 48... 50 -- oh!" There was the silence of wonderment all around the table, and one after another face looked up at me in disbelief: 4 candles remained on the cake, next to the one I had gone to get for good luck. Everyone started to laugh at once.

"C'est pas possible."

"Mais ça alors là, je suis vraiment impressionné," dit Audouin, rising to take hold of my head and give me a kiss of recognition and gratitude from across the table, as I blushed in something resembling delight and pride for something undeserving of the latter.

How I did that, I will never know. That I did that, I will forever be grateful for a magic moment.
....

Ladies and gentlemen who lunch

Heading out today

Lunch today at the Café des Musées on the rue Turenne and the rue du Parc Royal in the Marais with my two favorite fellow progressive Democrats in Paris. My ladies-who-lunch jacket is leather with a fake fur detachable collar, à la my motorcycle leather (No, that's not I. I only wish.). Taking my bike, like I did last night for the Barnard book club meeting in the 16th. Happiness. For once, it wasn't below freezing. The sun is even shining today for the ride. See? God favors Democrats.

OK.

I know.

This is the age of bi-partisanship, letting those Democrats and those Republicans capable of reasoning with themselves and one another work together to do our nation's business. I was listening to Obama during the campaign, I really was, even as I was impatient that we weren't necessarily going to get the programs I want, like single-payer health care.

The truth is that if we do get them, we'll get them because we did it right. We made the case on its merits and won conservative support for a progressive ideal that provides economic benefit and social justice. We'll have avoided the Clintonland of partisan hatred and Rovian politics-as-usual. As my friend Q points out to me, Democrats clinging to single-issues and their pet programs and ideas can be as despicable and harmful as Rove over on the other end of the political spectrum. Such a bitter taste in the mouth to say that, but true.

The alternative is to risk growing another Gingrich in the hot-house of congress.

Yes, Barack, I was listening, even when I wasn't perfectly happy to hear what I was hearing. I pretty much get it. Really.

Anyway, hacks and wonks or not up there on the heights, I do prefer the idea that the president sets the agenda from the executive and the representatives work it out in the legislative. Everyone is happier when he or she gets to do their job and get some credit for it. We behave better then, too.

So, time to take the doggers for a 15 minute walk and then get ready to leave. I don't want to be late for this lunch, no way.

Ciao!

PS: A second perfect day for the workers, so you can be sure they won't be here again today. End of February. I laugh.

Bitterly.

I leave you with Barack -- "I urge all of us not to make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary" -- and Keith Olbermann...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ah, Keith, that we didn't need you, but since we do (we do!), glad you're there.
....

Not on your life, but is it worth a pinkie?

You bet.

I hope I won't have to tell you what it's not worth.

....

My new tool

That's my new tool, with the yellow handle and green head. Thierry, at Florosny, of course, said they didn't have any gasoline powered chainsaws, when I raced in before they closed for lunch today. "It's not the season," he said, giving me that look, and asked me what I wanted it for. I had just officially killed the electric chainsaw, although I think Audouin might be able to mess with the cord and make it work.

I told him. If I thought the look was bad, it got worse, "That's not the tool for the job. Nothing eats up a chain like dirt."

"I dig around the roots first," I sort of lied because I sort of dig around the roots.

He told me that I don't want a gas chainsaw for this job. I believe in Florosny. They (sort of) believe in me. He is at least willing to discuss the right tool to remove a stump, asking why I didn't just devitalize it (because I want to remove them, that's why) with a woman, even if he thinks I am nuts. He knows me, though.

The tool is a something or another that's halfway between an ax and a mallet. It even came with a wood splitter (which is now stuck in the stump... I might explain later. Let's just leave it at an expression of my severe frustration for now), but he said you only use one in the company of another one. I bought, of course, another one (it is not stuck in the stump; I was not quite that frustrated). It also came with a pair of protective glasses. I did not use those. I am not that smart. Besides, what I needed was a pinkie protector.

I have dug around one of the last three remaining. That's enough fun for today. Time for a shower and a ride on my motorcicle to the gym for a little relaxing work out.

Ha!

One thing is absolutely certain: tearing out the conifers, brambles and overgrown, out of control ivy back behind the fir tree really helps punch it out against the blue sky. That is a big plus, since it is a nice tree.

Before, it just got lost against the tangle of green and ropey ivy.

See what I mean?
....

Elle est à moi, my motorcicle!

BMW F 650 CS
2004

I am about to head out to Viroflay for dinner at Anne-Sophie and Gilles' with friends, my first solo ride outside the bounds of Mantes la Jolie, et ses environs, since I picked it up yesterday. The clouds are parting, taking the morning's rain with them, so I will take advantage of the opportunity to go show it off this evening.

I'll have helmet hair, but that's not worse than the perpetual bags under my eyes I have acquired in the last couple of years, along with the gray hairs that stick straight up, lightened very expensively chemically or not.

Oh well, they say that riding a motorcycle at least gives you a positive image in the eyes of the youth, even if it can't return your own.

....

Bonne route!

....

My "Ma", who took me to see Alice's Restaurant in Syracuse, NY in 1969 when I was 8 years old and singing Suite: Judy Blue Eyes to myself when absolutely no one was listening to me, reminded me of this song in her congratulatory email to me on my motorcicle.

Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now. Bring back '69.

Keep on dreamin' and... GOBama!

Tell everyone, and let's take back what they took away in their fear, the lock and laughter the key to your heart, a great United States of America that was heading places we were just beginning to imagine, from all with which we began, and everything which generations of soldiers fought to protect. We can make the country great again, we can provide universal affordable health care to all Americans, bring our soldiers home and work with our international partners to bring peace and find the solutions to power our grids, businesses, cars and heat our homes and baths, respecting our tiny, beautiful planet, reaching out between the races, the sexes, the religions to the common point of humanity that makes us one, laughing in joy together.

At 3 liters/100 km at a sustained 90km/h and 4,1 liters/100 km at 120km/h, I am making one small contribution.

And I am full of joy riding in the night, almost alone on an open highway, the sky above, the pavement below and the smells all around in the wind.

And I am full of joy exchanging emails with all kinds of people I have never met, who tell me now about their disappointment at a job not offered, the fear of continued unemployment, the hope of another interview the next week and a baby, a black baby, a great-niece born to a young couple, the father nervous, but didn't faint.

And I am full of joy making a contribution to the Obama campaign on the site of a black woman in California who has never met me, to show my support for hers.

And she is full of joy to have another friend in our effort to make a better country for all of us.

And we are full of joy, and there is enough for the world 'round and Love is coming to us all.

It was OK to say that in 1969, and maybe again in 2009.



From Youtube member jguth3:

"Arlo put together a benefit festival in the fall of 1975 for The Worthington Clinic. He invited friends to join him and it was a great time! Steve Goodman was there, Arlo's band Shenandoah backed him up for the first time. Someone asked for "The Motorcycle Song" Here it is!"