Ahh, Sunday.

A time to relax from busi-ness and getting-things-done and goals and the horse whip.

A time to take a break, ideally take a break, from it all.

At least, I should be able to realize this ideal given that I have no responsibilities, etc.  Of course, since I'm not really settled in yet, that's not entirely true; I'm not yet past the stage of budgeting a few hundred dollars each month for household improvements.  I'm trying to transition, with varying levels of success, from "poor college student status" to "low-income but independent from food stamps and social security" status.

What are Sundays for such a one?  Well, to date, all the housework I neglect during the weekend in which I go out and about to supply myself for my needs in goods and gear.  And if I have time left over from that, to peer up at some vast intellectual mountain with its jagged peaks covered in mist, shift my feet, and wonder which of those trails leads to the top.

I decided not to continue Hegel; I think I've gone as far as I'm going to get with him.  The book open in front of me now is Wojtyla's "The Acting Person". Yays: more phenomenologies!"*

It's raining peacefully, the wind is tearing through it like a three-year-old through TP and messing it all up.  Thomas Tallis is radiating equally peacefully from the pandorabox.** 

*"Glutton for punishment", the library gnomes snicker as they disappear round the corner of the stacks.

** When am I going to get off this filler kick?  It's not that things haven't been happening, it's just that my Muse seems to be gagging on something....

Real problem, real solution

I found pants.

They are custom made, according to measurements you send Cycleport in the mail. Cycleport is a UK based company making gear for bikers in Northern Europe, and by all accounts pretty good stuff.

As it ought to be; these retail for $289.99, approximately three times what I paid for my freaking JACKET and twice what I paid for my helmet.

Now all I have to do is convince myself that this is money I should spend right now instead of buying a second pair of $49.99 rainpants from Sport Chalet and living with the wet crotch problem.

Earlier this afternoon I set off from work wondering if I'd still be dry when I got home.  According to my experience the more complicated and patchwork any solution is, the more likely it is to fail.  And my solution to how to stay dry on a motorcycle in the pouring rain is patchwork indeed.

First, there's my helmet and jacket and gloves.  

The full-face helmet design keeps out the water.   It works.  Nuff said.

The jacket is waterproof.  It works too.  I just have to remember not to put anything in its pockets because the outer carbolex layer to which the pockets are attached gets soaked through instantly.

My $50 Alpinestars waterproof gloves are not waterproof.  They keep my hands dry for about an hour and then some pinhole leak on the throttle glove begins to soak the goretex lining.  Then I have one gooey cold hand and one dry warm hand.

The pants are superlight and superthin rain pants by Sierra Designs.  They are designed to literally pack into the hip pocket of your jeans.  Quite a feat if you ask me, but they're not durable, they're only 33 inches on the inseam and they slowly leak at the crotch.

To address the fact that the pants aren't nearly long enough, I have gaiters.  These things sit down around my ankles and have stirrups that hold them firmly atop my waterproof hiking boots.

The assembly keeps me surprisingly warm and dry.  For the most part.  But I am in a perpetual quest for some decent 36" inseam rain pants so I can dispense with the clumsy gaiters.  If any of you know where such a thing may be found please let me know.

Filler

filler.

annoyed.frustrated.com

Such a thick barrier of polyester, smoke and cheese between my mind and the blue winter wind. When will summer come again? Will I still be free when the summer comes or will I be held prisoner by $5 gas?

Word of the Week

"Whooptefriggindoo." - interjection; a slang term used as an intensifer of "whoopdedoo", normally in the context of extraordinarily overdone statements of fact or observation of excessive and unnecessary means.

I just discovered yesterday that Suzi has a cross-flow cylinder head design just like the old sixties Chrysler Hemi's and some BMW engines.

The deeper I dig into the background of this particular model of motorcycle, the more fascinating it gets.

The Metzeler Curse

Yesterday I found the THIRD nail in my rear tire I've had since buying new tires less than 1000 miles ago.  THIRD NAIL.  This begins to disturb me greatly.  Either I'm riding on the wrong roads, the tread pattern is such as to embed rather than reject bits of metal, or The Elephant just has taken a dislike to me.

Whatever it is, I'm losing patience. 

www.metzeler.com

Milestone

The Blue Wedgie Thing ticked over 15,000 miles today. The digital display blinked over in the gray light and water drops of a rainstorm over the 210 Freeway.

15,000 miles on a motorcycle is like, oh, 40,000 miles on a car, or whatever magic number it is in the automotive world when a vehicle goes from "new" to "used". Whatever mileage it is that's right after the first major service. So now I own a used bike. Another used bike.

Well, that's ok, because it has scratches on the side from being blown over in the wind, it has a couple of modifications that I have no intention of reverting and I intend to make more when I have money. And besides it's just a good kind of bike to own because it can do everything. It's gone across the country, it's scrabbled up horseback riding trails, it's forded streams and I ride it back and forth to work every day, rain and shine. It shields me from the pains of having to spend money on gas and insurance, and it's pretty to look at.

And it's still almost new.

"Spirit is knowledge; but in order that knowledge should exist, it is necessary that the content of that which it knows should have attained to this ideal form, and should in this way have been negated." On Religion, "Revealed Religion" - GWF Hegel.

The existence of spirit, or truth as abstract, and its subsequent negation by its being made determinate is the one of the few things I've been able to identify as a consistent thread in Hegelian dialectic.  The whole exercise has been very, very frustrating. I can't stand up and summarize this work in any kind of order, besides perhaps the three elements of religion he defines midway through the work.  I am really in over my head.  Way in.  This does not bode well for my future understanding of modern (post Vatican II) theology, and I'm not getting any encouragement from anyone.  "Why waste your time with this naturalist crap when you could be educating yourself on Newman or Thomas?!"

Oh yes. Naturalist.  That brings up another thing.  Jargon.

According to the dictionary on my Mac, the Oxford American Dictionary:

rationalism = The theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge

existentialism = A philosophical idea or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of will.

empiricism = The theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience

naturalism = a philosophical viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.

humanism = an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.

personalism = a system of thought that maintains the primacy of the human or divine person on the basis that reality has meaning only through the conscious mind.

phenomenalism = the doctrine that human knowledge is confined to or founded on the realities or appearances presented to the senses.

Have I missed any?