Ruined. Utterly. Totally. Ruined.

So, at lunch today, I got to hear my second favorite David Allen Coe song. The one where he's having a conversation with the devil. Compliments him on his fiddle solo being better than Johnny's. (A song ruined for me by a trip to Wurstfest last fall.) And says he never really liked cocaine, just the way it smelled.

ANYWAY, I flipped the station and got treated to a new Willie song. Really dug it and totally forgot about it until tonight, when Zac brought up seeing Willie's Picnic this summer.

So, I bust out the Google for this new Willie song. Come to find out (brace yourself) it was written by Kristofferson. Who I am a big fan of ... if for no other reason than he put out an album titled Jesus Was a Capricorn - a copy of which used to hang on me and Brooke's Wall of Men We Admire. (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Robert Plant and Bea Arthur)

So, the song comes up on YouTube and there's a clip of Kris doing it. He starts off by saying, "I want to do a song for John and June now." That's a good intro.

And then?

Well he opens his mouth to sing.



Oy vey.

But wait. There's more. Like this guy. (The only one of these clips I couldn't get all the way through, for the record)



Seriously. If you make it all the way through that, I'll give you a dollar.

But wait. There's more. Like this one. The only clip I could find with Willie doing the song with decent audio. I direct your attention to the 1:40, 2:15 and 3:15 marks.



It's like Zac said, "Thank you YouTube and every slapdick with an Apple thinking he can edit videos."

I'd like to think I taught him the term slapdick.

I got id (and also ego and superego)

We got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
-- Jerry Reed

It's the MS 150 this weekend. Which is actually 182 miles in length. Go figure. Imagine my dismay the first time I road it, hit 150 miles on my bike computer and was still in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Heartbreaking.

Then, we hit the Austin city limits sign. Not only was I still not done. The worst fucking climb was still in front of me. You know who you are, you mountain on MLK.

Soul crushing.

No matter how you slice it, that's a long way. On a tiny bike saddle. With very, very little padding. Even in the lucky cycling shorts, which, unfortunately: 1. were under the suit in Richmond, and, therefore, might not be lucky anymore and 2. clash horribly with this year's spiffy Wheels of Love jerseys.

I used to take long road trips to get my head screwed on straight. I've figured out a lot of life between Austin and Hereford. I figured out way too much driving from Austin to Eugene, Oregon via San Francisco.

Then, I found road bikes. Then I found myself clipped on to 19 pounds of aluminum. Then I found myself on my first climb. Trying not to fall. Mashing the gear shifts.

And then.

It clicked.

The exact right gear at the right speed and time. Man and bike as one.

Being out on the road on my own makes me feel closer to God. Total enlightenment rolling down the road on 115 psi. And that's the way several rides I've done are. Solitary, lonely rides for long stretches. Forty five minutes without seeing a soul.

You can get a lot of shit worked out in your head that way.

But the MS 150 is different. A much more social ride when you put 17,000 cyclists on the road at the same time. It slows down the pace. You have to get along with each other. It's really a beautiful, organic thing. Like a flock of birds.

And, if you're fortunate enough to ride with a team, it brings you closer together. Whether it's your first ride together or your hundredth. You always pick up something. I've even started rides with teammates I didn't think I could stand. By the end, you're brothers and sisters. Without fail. Every time.

A couple months ago, someone asked me how I got into cycling. "How'd I get into the greatest sport ever?" I ask/plied. Only I understated it. It's more than that. It's sport and church and community and camping and beer.

You can get a lot of shit worked out in your head that way.

Unexpected

Lots of unexpected finds today.

1. If you're not on anywhere.fm you should be. You can upload all your non-DRMed music to their servers. Then, you can access your entire music library through their flash-based player at any computer with an internet connection.

They also have some free tunes on there. Which is where I stumbled onto some totally popped out group called busbee and a track called "A Little Bit." Totally not my style, but I must have listened to it 20 times today. Then I bought it. Unexpected.

2. I got news today I have been waiting a month for. I got it when I wasn't supposed to. A key player/news bearer is on vacation this week. I resigned myself to not hearing anything and pushed it out of my mind. And then I got an e-mail. I did a double take. I actually thought to myself, "This looks like the type of message that would contain the big news."

Pause.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IT IS WHAT I THINK IT IS!"

I'm not going to jinx it, so I'll just say I am flying from Austin to Memphis, then from Memphis to Richmond, Virginia later today on a plane, that when Google image searched, yields the following result:



All sorts of unexpected there. I also get to fly from Chicago to Austin on the same model of plane Wednesday night. Spinning the gun barrel three times in this fiery game of gravity roulette.

3. Two hours and forty-two minutes later, and I made it the two miles to my driveway. Thank you, very much.

PS. Big hill by my house? Suck me, beautiful.