Today I Was In Court

Today I Was In Court

Traffic court and it was my fault.

Yes – I had an accident and it was my fault.  Nobody was hurt, except me and my ribs.  Seat belts hurt!!

Oh, I’m a rule follower by near obsession.  I can break rules I think are really stupid, but the seat belt law is not stupid AND I wear a motorcycle helmet whenever riding.  Even in states where it is not a law.  Those are odds I do not wish to test and I thank my Angels.  That seat belt saved my life.

Anyhoo … the accident details aren’t important.  I pleaded no contest to loosing my concentration and taking out a mailbox on a ve-hery  narrow country road.  I got a $60 fine and have to take a driving course.  Stupidity.  That was me.

However, I was scared to death.  Fear and panic racked me.  I have never, in my life been in a real American court.  Like everyone else, I’ve seen hundreds on TV.  But never actually, in real life, been in one.  Wait!  I think I got married in one like fifty some years ago.  ‘Nother story.  “Nother blog.

So my appointment before Hiz Honor was – well I was there an hour early.  Rules.  I’m never been late for anything.  Always early.  I take hardcopy books to the movie theater because I’m often way early. 

As I sit there, four rows in front of my wife, the frog in my throat gets bigger and bigger.  Rising higher and higher.  “Water!” “I need water!” Both water fountains in the court hallway had signs on them that said, “Not working.”  Figures.  I have a theory about that.  You can’t take anti-anxiety medication without a sip of water.  Or, any kind of medication I would assume.  Cuts down on the Court Hallway getting stoked or stoned, as it were.

The bailiff calls out, “All rise.  The Fifth County Court of Hambone County of the State of South Panic is now in session.  Judge Hiram Higgelby presiding.  (Not a real name.  In fact, none of the names I will use are real.)”  A tallish Judgelike thinnish man walks in and sits down behind the Judging place. 

Bailiff says, “Be seated.”

There was one young lady and me and five Police Deputies.  Oh and a real frumpy looking older gentleman who looked like a true frumpy southern lawyer should look.  Frumpness wearing a bow tie.  Really?  A bad suit that wouldn’t button over his lifetime accumulation of southern b-b-q ribs and grits and a bow tie?  Stereotype?  Right down to the tassel loafers.

We all sit down.

Hiz Honor calls out, in a very Judgelike manner, but I have to say actually quite calmly, “Joseph Blow”.  Again not a real name.  We all sit there for what seems like nearly five minutes while nothing happens, except the Judge making notes on some papers and generally being very presiding-like.

A door to the side of the Court Room opens and a Police Officer walks in and stands by the door.  Few minutes later a really tall super skinny guy walks in.  He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit and walking strangely because his ankles are shackled together.  Behind him is another Police Officer holding his elbow – with the intent of great authority, I might add.  So now we have seven Policemen, all of them easily over six feet tall, the bailiff, who must be taller than any of them and he’s also wearing a gun and the utility Batman belt stuff all the Law Officers seem to wear.

Uh, cuffs, mace, Tasers, what all?  Swiss Army knife?

And one very short Policewoman, also Batman belt and a very weird hairdo … kind of like a mushroom.  All poofed up on top and razor trimmed around her ears and neck.  Strange hairdo.  She comes up to about the elbows on the other Law enforcement.  Kind of chunky figure.  Did not look mean though, more officially like.

You could tell she’d been on the force for a while.

The Judge waves the orange jumpsuit up to the bench.  Hiz Honor's place is called “the bench”, right?  A person sits down on a park bench and, somehow, I can barely see over this Judge’s bench.  Judge reads off a list of crimes being considered against the orange jumpsuit.  “Grand Larceny this and Grand Larceny that.  Intention to steal to sell.  Breaking and entering.  Possession of gardening tools without the obvious intent to garden. Etc. etc.”  For nearly another five minutes the Judge reads off all the bad decisions this poor schlub has made.

He stand there – orange jumpsuit guy.  Staring at the Judge like the Judge was a concert poster on the wall and he, orange jumpsuit, couldn’t read.  Confused.  Dazed.  Oddly attentive.  I’m thinking, “That poor schlub should’ve stolen a TV and stayed home to watch it.  He’d be in a lot less trouble.”

So the Judge asks the plaintiff (orange jumpsuit #1) some questions about if he has a job or some source of income and what cars he owns and stuff.  This is to determine if he can afford a lawyer.  Which it seems is if he can’t, Bobby Lee Bowtie Esq. will become his Court Appointed lawyer.  Judge asks plaintiff #1 if this is his choice; a court appointed lawyer.  Mr. Grand Larceny #1 nods his head and apparently the deal is struck and they go to finding a new court date to take the next step, which apparently is another trial.

What hits me at the moment orange jumpsuit #1 and his new lawyer raise their hands to swear the oath to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” is that, yes, in fact, this is real.  This person is not a TV criminal, he is a real life criminal.  Until proven otherwise, he is innocent.  It would seem though, that maybe there is an apparent good reason to believe he actually did break into somebody’s property and steal stuff.  That actually if you ran into him on the street and he felt the need, or simple desire, to hurt you, he would do that.

And the huge tall Officers of the law, and the little one with the mushroom hairdo, would, and could, with possible force, up to and including – shoot bullets, attempt to stop him. 

This is a tiny backwater, backwoods town.  People tend to not lock their houses and to leave the keys in their cars.  Actual crime occurring never struck to me as even being possible.  That only happened within the little magic box of my television and only for 47 minutes at a time. 

Plaintiff #1 shuffles out, anklets clanking.  Mr. Judge calls out, “Larry Jimmy Doowangie” (not a real name or even possibly close to a real name).  We wait another five minutes and in shuffles, also with ankle bracelets, plaintiff #2.  I am not a tiny person, but this guy and nearly everyone else in the courtroom, with the exception of mushroom hairdo, are making feel as though I may just be the only citizen of Lilliput here.

The same scenario as plaintiff #1 is carried out.  The main difference being that this guy has apparently never been caught before, because he keeps asking the Judge what the Judge thinks he ought to do.  And the judge keeps telling him that he, the Judge, won’t do that and that he, the plaintiff, must decide.  And he, the plaintiff is simply not getting the message.

Finally bow-tie frump steps up and whispers to plaintiff #2, they all raise their right hands, sign some papers and #2 clanks and shuffles out.

The Judge calls out the names of several more people, who are apparently no-shows.  I would never in my wildest dreams consider not showing up to court when I am told by a Police Deputy to show up.  And I show up an hour early!  And some people don’t even bother to show up.  One thing I have learned in life is that if you ignore problems they tend to become bigger problems.

Finally I go up to the bench.  My own attending Deputy reads off his findings and observations and his citation.  The Judge asks me a few questions, in a very kindly fashion I might add.  He pronounces judgment and it’s over.  For two months I have been deeply and profoundly dreading this moment and in less than five minutes, it’s over.  In my mind “I have won”.  The judgment could not have been better and more in my favor.

I had not made a decision; I had just been inattentive and stupid.  It’s just that the whole experience left me drained.  Limp.  I could have, in an instant had my whole life screwed by the decision of one person. And there are truly – truly true ­ - people who truly true decide to do some really dumb shit and get caught and are forced to wear really ugly orange clothes and walk around with chains on their ankles.  They have to spend days in a small confined space with big guys carrying real guns staring at them, just waiting for them to make another stupid decision.

That going to school, learning to read, following the rules, being honest and productive does seem to have its rewards.  Breaking the rules can be a really really bad decision in the real world.

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Nobody ever makes a Mistake? (??)

A new Art lesson first.

Nobody ever makes a Mistake?

Once again, television and movies.  I’ve just got some of this strange silliness on my mind.

How is it that on television and in the movies the computer techie geeks never make a typo, mistake, that is hit the wrong key by mistake?  I’ve been typing for nearly sixty years.  I learned in High School.  Took a yearlong course in typing.  Used to be called Blind Typing or Touch Typing.  You were not allowed to even look at the keyboard and the ones we had did not have the little letters and numbers marked on them.

I know how to type, or qwerty keyboard.  A whole year and I got to nearly seventy words a minute – when I was fourteen years old.  100% accuracy and 70 wpm.  That’s a good typer (typist).  I was so good that when I got drafted during the Viet Nam War and all the draftees, or shitheads as we were referred to, were tested, I moved right up into communications.  Big deal?  Well, it immediately cut me out of the Infantry Pool, which meant no rice paddies in the jungle and having to shoot at people.

That was a good thing.  Right?  Well, for me it was.

Then because I was so fast at typing, I got moved into telecommunications.  That meant even more training and put me on a Teletype machine inside a big truck thing.  Even farther from the jungle shooting.  AND then, because I was a college man, a topic for a completely ‘nother blog, I got moved into cryptology – or o-o-o coding – secret James Bond type da-da-dum-dum High Security bullshit.

The upshot was that I could type without any errors (at that time, I am not nearly that good now).  Hardly any errors.  Hardly never, hardly ever.  Typing good kept me out of combat and getting dead.

Now we come to television and movies.  First off, if these productions are even remotely current, why are they always using keyboards anyway?  Why don’t they ever use, and they never seem to, use a mouse?  You never see them use a computer mouse.  Why is that?  Any real computer user will tell you that using the mouse cuts down on massive numbers of keystrokes.  The old command line DOS commands are like hieroglyphics to a computer geek.  Forget it!

Even so, let’s say they are like using wa-ay advanced C Basic +++, the commands don’t even vaguely resemble what they seem to be typing.  Plus the fact that these actors seem to be typing at like 120 strokes per half minute.  “blam-didee-blam-blam-didee-blam-blam-blam” “tickety-tickety-tickety-tick-blam (we assume last emphatic blam is the Enter key).  And no freakin’ typos!  Not ONE mistake!

There is an old computer saying – “Garbage in, garbage out”.  In computer code, in command line computer tasking, if you get ONE character wrong, if you hit ONE wrong key, it don’t work!  AND, not only does it not work, it can do some serious shit you don’t really want it to do.  Like if I made a mistake in my cryptology coding of messages when I was in the Army, one stroke wrong - the bomb lands on our guys, instead of the enemy guys!  Or – your own head!!!  Not something you want to have happen!

Or, you can code in a loop, which cause the computer to just run and run and run and never conclude anything and eventually just freeze or worse, crash.  And crashing means … whoops … you loose everything.  Sometimes that means EVERYTHING!!!  Like the entire eastern seaboard of the United States looses power.

Assuming you are operating on the super-high end-maxi-dual quad-icky-dicky computer in the fourth sub-basement of the fifth quadrangle of the Pentagon, below ground behind triple sealed lead and cadmium doors and walls.  Like a spy type dude.

Or, you just sent two hundred super-drones to take out South Pickerel Corners, Vermont.

Also not good.

Now with touch screens the size of full wall murals, no-ho-body at that level uses a keyboard anyway.  If you are not typing a Blog, like this one, or like writing a novel, it’s useless.  A keyboard is tits on a bull.  A keyboard is cork duct-taped to Styrofoam.  Once again, the time it takes to key in a command line versus the time it takes to click, or touch, on an icon that activates a pre-programmed object macro (or Menu Option), is just a waste of time. 

Bearing in mind the possibility of the single typo creating a disaster!  Sorry … take it out of the script. It’s stupid.

“Ah darn it!  Simon, (the computer geek) you just blew up South Pickerel again!!!”

“Oopsy-doopsy.  Sorry.  Well … let’s go meet the gang at the club (hand out bar) ‘n get a beer.”

“Oh, okay.  But ya gotta learn to type better.”

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300 Miles on a Bicycle in 24 Hours - Part Two

I Ride 300 Miles on a Bicycle in 24 Hours

(I Meet Myself In Person)

Well … things don’t always work out like you think.  Nope, they don’t.  Being together and sharing headlights and camaraderie riding bicycles on a desert road in the middle of the night IS the way to go and despite the challenge, it was kind of a neat experience.  I must say.

Side note: other than the sag wagon, support van, we never saw another car, truck or anyone else, for that matter, during the entire night.  It was just the coyotes, and us, which we heard nearly all night, but never actually saw.  Another side note is that it is nearly impossible to fully understand how un-night like the night can be, a hundred or so miles from any kind of city or town.  With even a sliver of bright moon and quadrillions of stars in a cloudless sky and no human-made ambient light to water it down, it really doesn’t seem all that dark.

With no cars, at all, coming at you from the front to make your pupils shrink every couple of minutes, your vision – night vision – can get pretty darn good.  It’s amazing really.  I felt kind of like a cat.  For a long stretch of that desert night, we even turned our headlamps off and just rode in the natural light of the moon and stars.

If you have never been in a true desert, a real desert, not just a plain open space like say … Oklahoma, but a genuine it rains like 2” annually, you ought to visit one.  Without man made, or man installed, conveniences – like water – a real desert can truly support an ecosystem of one plant every square mile or so and maybe one lizard (or snake).  That’s an exaggeration, but that’s what it seems like.   Oh, I forget, in some places that might include a zillion prairie dogs.

End of side note: :::

Leaving Phoenix and getting past all the outlying strip mall towns, there is nearly nothing until you hit the outlying strip malls of Tucson.  I mean nothing. Saguaro cactus, some barrel cactus and other less than friendly plant life – spaced football fields apart.  Out in the huge western states, these outlying strip malls can run for twenty or thirty miles.  Tucson is one of those cities.  And a lot of those strips malls can be quite seedy, that is rundown bars, drive-in liquor stores, adult book (?) stores (yeah, like they actually sell books), gun stores (generally right next to the liquor stores – now that’s not a good idea, is it?).  Not scenic and not pleasant.

Lots of pick-up trucks.  Lots of Highway Patrol.

Not a sort of place where you want to find yourself at night.  We happened to hit this fun spot just as it was getting dark.  Early night.  We got through it just as night happened.  Wheh! 

The next 150 miles were in the desert, up over the mountain (?), which as I said we never found. Down the other side, in the early desert morning, which, by the way, is the time to be in the desert.  Early morning in the Saguaro Desert is gorgeous.  Cool, dry (really dry), incredible blossom perfumes.  This beauty and the whole chi of being there, right there, on a zen quiet bicycle – seemed to zap away all the muscle aches and sore butt of all the riding up to that point. 

And then – slowly it began to get hot.  The Phoenix Valley sun began to find us.  As we, honestly, crept into the suburbs of the city, all 300 of those miles also began to find us.  We began to split up into two groups.  The ones who let all those miles slip into their consciousness and those of us who apparently were too stubborn, or stupid, to notice them.

Tiny gymnast, Benny, and myself were in the front group.  So, speaking only for myself, as we got closer and closer to our starting point.  To success.  The clock had begun to run out.  We had averaged close to twenty miles an hour, up until that point.  This is, or was, an excellent pace for simple non-professional, run-of-the-mill bicycle nuts, like us.  However, no matter what we did, lowering gears, standing up (honking) on the pedals, we started to loose our pace.

We had about twenty miles to go and one hour to get there.  Our pace slipped to eighteen, then sixteen.  No way we were going to make it.  My left hand went numb and became useless.  (No it wasn’t a heart attack symptom. Just numb from leaning forward on the handlebars.)  Then my right knee started to jab me like an ice pick and I could no longer tolerate pushing down on the pedal.  It just simply hurt too much.

At ten miles to the finish, we were cooked, totally cooked.  None of the three of us were even completely awake any longer.  I was operating on mere habit.  A thousand miles or more of training and survival brain reactions.  I felt a glance of subliminal thought from the other two guys.  The same thought.  “I am not riding a 24 hour 300 mile race to loose!!!”

Our need hit some place inside each one of us.  The pace began to pick up.  We found ourselves racing flat out through those faceless, endless city suburbs.  I was standing up on my pedals, gripping the right handlebar like the claw of an eagle trying to lift off with a really fat lamb in his claw.  Skewed way over to the left side, trying to balance on my one functioning leg.  My vision a razor slit of one single purpose – do not stop!

When I saw my car in the parking lot of our start, I saw myself standing there in my bike clothes getting ready to leave to begin the ride.  “What?” I thought.  But there I was, all chipper and goofing around with the other guys.  Further my mind said, “That guy is insane if he thinks he can actually do this.  Ride 300 miles in 24 hours!”

I looked at my watch.  That guy, the one I saw standing there getting ready to start, had done it!  And … he had done it with ten minutes to spare.  Twenty-three hours and fifty minutes.  As the two of us blended back together, me and the idiot my mind had conjured up, the rest of the team pulled in with less than a minute to spare. 

That was my only out of body experience in my life.  Ever.  Before or since.  I learned one thing from that experience – I then knew, and have maintained the true knowledge, that if I set my mind to something, I can do it.  A person, any person, who truly wants to do something, to get through the impossible gate, they can.  I got to my point of collapsing, went through it.  I got to another place of complete collapse and went through that.  Past the next and the next, until only a single string of thought, focus, remained and I had remained upright and gotten across that string.

I learned that it is a person’s mind that controls their destiny.  The body can ache and hurt to the point where it is possible to simply ignore it.  The brain can become confused and overwhelmed with boredom and seek any manner of excuse to quit, but the mind can overcome that.  This knowledge has saved my butt more times than I can count.  Through tropical storms – with lightening – when I been caught out on my motorcycle.  Through high seas, huge waves breaking over the bow and directly into my face, when I have been miles out in my sea kayak.

At the bottom of ski racecourses where my quadriceps felt like someone was holding a branding iron on them.

Lastly, this is more than survival.  Surviving some nearly intolerable condition, in which a person finds themselves, is a natural reaction.  We will if we can.  And sometimes, we just can’t.  That is that.  Survival is more of a kharma thing.  Circumstances can totally prevent simple survival.

But purpose is something entirely different.  Purpose is a choice.  And the capacity to make sentient, intelligent or find the necessary moral options, is what makes us humans.

Sometimes to choose to test ourselves to go past our absolute limits allows us to find who we were before.  If accomplished, we see ourselves in a totally new way.  After this test, if successful, we meet ourselves as we were with person as who we are now.

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