Send In the Asteroids

Earth-crossing asteroids - objects with highly elliptical orbits that cross the plane of Earth’s more circular solar orbit - are whizzing by us in the dark reaches of space. According to a recent post in Salon.com, "At least three hundred of these potential killers are known, and in the next few decades some of them will pass uncomfortably close."

"A recent survey of how people are most likely to die rated asteroid impacts pretty low - something like 1 in 100,000 . . . . about the same probability as death by lightning or a tsunami . . . . Chances are excellent that you don’t have to worry, nor most likely will any of the next hundred generations. But we can be absolutely sure that another big impact of the dinosaur-killing variety is coming someday, somewhere. In the next fifty million years, Earth will suffer at least one big hit, maybe more. It’s all a matter of time and probability."

Cold comfort, says Miguel. You don't have to tell me twice. Probabilities be damned, if something bad is going to happen you can bet that someone will be around to worry me about it beforehand, over the 50 million years or so before it hits. This is something even the Transportation Safety Authority can't protect us against.

"Get your hands off my cupcakes!"

As the Final Day approaches, perhaps as early as 2029 when a 900-foot diameter rock is predicted to cross Earth's path well inside the Moon’s orbit, what remains of American capitalism will market asteroid survival in climate controlled asteroid shelters, home-brewers' survival kits, post-crash courses, late-night cable reality programs ("Asteroid Wars"), seminars and workshops, two-year associate degrees, certification classes and pre-loaded assault rifles at End Time prices. 

American Protestantism will feature endless Youtube clips of Pat Robertson explaining how this all comes of our forebears' pact with the Devil sometime before the American Revolution; boxed CD sets of Joel Osteen sermons ("This Wasn't Supposed to Happen to Us, Lord," "Why Is This Happening to Me, Lord?", "Leveraging the Asteroid to Realize Your God-given Prosperity Potential," "Thank You for New Marketing Opportunities, Lord"). Not to mention a spate of Final Days bumper stickers.

Astronomy Sucks!

I Uranus

Asteroidal impacts may not occur often, but when they do they take out really big things - every last dinosaur, entire NFL football seasons, white ethnic majorities, Republican prayer breakfasts, African countries and Chinese dams. On the other hand, there's no denying they have their upside: no more marriage equality initiatives to vote down, no more worries about the Violence Against Women Act (since, in the aftermath, violence will be pretty much equal opportunity), no more Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action initiatives, no more EPA. Hell, no more E, come to think of it.

Admittedly there are "asteroid skeptics" among us, and they do raise some pretty tough questions for asteroid alarmists like Miguel - most notably, this humdinger: if, instead of God, it really was an asteroid that destroyed all the dinosaurs, then how did all the other "passengers" on the ark - mammals, white people, unicorns - manage to survive? A stumper, I'd be the first to admit.

 "Head for the big wooden thingy!"

But seriously, what can we expect should the planet suffer asteroidal impact? "If a ten-mile object hits the oceans—a 70 percent chance, given the distribution of land and sea—then all but Earth’s highest mountain peaks will be swept clean by immense globe-destroying waves. Nothing will survive up to a few thousand feet above sea level. Every coastal city will utterly disappear." For all of that, every other city will probably disappear as well - maybe Lhasa will be unscathed but who wants to live there? 

"I thought I just saw Fukushima go by."

Let's face it, if an asteroid does hit Earth there won't be much anyone can do to stop it. "When one of these projectiles is finally observed, it will likely be much too close for us to do much about it. If we’re the bull’s-eye, we may only have a few days’ warning to settle our affairs."

So let's say I have three days warning - probably a realistic estimate - what would I do? Well, for starters I'd probably get myself to Portland's 10th annual "Filmed by Bike," where I could get several items ticked off my bucket list all at once. First, I'd get to visit Portland, a city already renowned for a sort of precious idiocy, just before it's washed off the face of the earth; second, I'd finally get to attend a film festival featuring movies filmed entirely by people riding bicycles; third, I'd get to ride my bike - a ride to the opening night street party no less, led by cycling celebrity Gary Fisher; and finally, dream of dreams, I'd get to meet someone named Ayleen Crotty. After that you can send in the asteroids.

Summer in Kansas: Tour de Goathead

Spring has come early to western Kansas, as it has to much of the West - temperatures in the low 80s, gentle breezes at about 20 nautical miles per hour, gusting to 35. Nothing to keep an old man off the bicycle - quite the contrary. If you can't rack up elevation gains during the daily bout of cycling, wind resistance is the next best thing - if, that is, you can master the irritability that comes of riding section lines along sandy roads on a windy day.    

I don't actually reside in Kansas, but it's the wind out here that brings me down from the Colorado highlands and gives me my daily bread in this Martian landscape farther east. I'm spending my days in a field office, set among greening fields of winter wheat alternating with corn stubble, making daily forays on a mountain bike of venerable years and aspect just to keep my tone up and my native affability in some fettle. Not a bad life for a geezer, if like me you prefer solitude and the company of curlews to that of commissioners, counselors, clerics, counts, cardinals, carpenters, cornhuskers, contortionists, confidence men, costermongers, curates, commercial travellers and constables.

Long-billed Curlew (J.J. Audubon)

Rural Kansas does have its drawbacks. For one thing, the place is carpeted from one end to the other, town and country, with the dreaded Tribulus terrestris. In the spring the new plant is benign enough in aspect, if a bit stringy.

But "tribulus" is a dead giveaway. This is a branching, flowering, low-growing plant, one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt along with frogs, locusts, boils, hyperactive children, surveillance satellites, installment funerals and robocalls. Like the Evil One, its names are legion - bullhead, burra gokharu, caltrop, cat's head, devil's eyelashes, devil's thorn, devil's weed, goathead, puncturevine, tackweed. A caltrop is one of those three-legged pronged thingies that an unsuspecting enemy is intended to step on and be disabled from further combat, thus:

The Romans, who used them in antiquity, called them "tribuli," - hence the name of the plant. I've always known it as goathead, all the while acknowledging it as the Devil's own handiwork. The flowers give way to fruit . . .

 . . . which dries in the summer sun to an incorruptible, indestructible, everlasting, omnipresent hazard the size of a small pebble with the half-life of plutonium. The thorn never decays, never disintegrates, never entirely dissolves its substance into something organic and benign. It litters fields and farm tracks, piling up generation on generation; farm machinery drags it into roadways on its tires; the county road grader pulls it into roadways while grading the verges. The work of Satan is everywhere to be found, lying in wait, seeking the unwary whose bicycle tires it may devour.

Several weeks ago, on an unseasonably warm February day, I ventured out on my old bicycle across the rural landscape, found myself about seven miles from the field office at a dead end. The only reasonable course, short of simply backtracking the way I'd come, was a two-lane farm track that cut along a half-section to the next county road a mile to the north. I took the farm track and in a quarter-mile of careful riding both my tires were fuzzy with goatheads. 

I pulled one, heard a slow sussuration of escaping air, so I pulled the rest. It took me 15 minutes to clean both tires of them, by which time both tires were flat. Midway through the operation it dawned that my tire pump was still in the office. But the insides of the tire casings bristled with the broken ends of countless spines - even the tube I carried in my pocket would have been flat in a second. After a five-mile walk and within two miles of the office a school bus driver heading back to the bus garage finally gave me a lift.

Today's ride was uneventful. Even riding along a clean, packed dirt road, I picked up an occasional thorn. But I had taken care to replace my standard inner tubes with "Goo Tubes," tubes filled with some sort of green slimey polymer that immediately flows into a puncture. So far, so good. 

I was a scant mile from returning to my start point, thorn free, flat free, when I passed a final farmstead which I knew to be the residence of two charming little Mennonite sisters and a pair of  overly zealous and prosecutorial dogs. Sure enough, there were the sisters tearing across a field on a tiny red motorized four-wheeler, waving madly, long gowns aflutter. And there were the dogs, at a disadvantageous distance to be sure, but eager to close on me, which they promptly did to the futile remonstrances of their small mistresses. The larger dog was a bit lugubrious about the pursuit, not wishing to run quite so hard for his sport but spurred on by his partner in crime, a miniature schnauzer whose demeanor seemed considerably less . . . predictable. Summer is returning to Kansas.

Never asleep, never on a leash

The Land of Moab

And the Lord God raised up a mighty host of tourists, and caused them in their numbers to depart into the land of Moab and to sojourn there in the land of the Moabites. And I was among them, and I went among them and sojourned there with them in the land of Moab a full two days, and rode my bicycle in the midst of the Moabites. And the hearts of the Moabites were gladdened and the Lord God did not smite them, neither did He smite their firstborn nor their cattle, nor did He lay waste their gold and silver. And the Moabites prospered and were glad.

The Land of Moab

It was a charity bicycle ride that brought me to the Beehive State over the weekend. If you remember the "Nicknames of States" category from your 1972 edition of Trivial Pursuit (what state is known as the Empire State? the Keystone State? the Lethal Injection State?), you'll recall that the state symbol of Utah is the beehive, memorializing the industriousness and social cohesion of Brigham Young's followers to the Mormon state of Deseret. The Mormons being the very devils of irony, they chose the beehive, a polyandrous matriarchy, to symbolize their polygamous patriarchy. It's a terminal form of sociosexual dyslexia. Or something.

Be that as it may, I went cycling in Moab with four friends who, had God and Brigham Young not already seen to matters, could have turned a wilderness into the land of milk and honey. But as with any wonderful time, I took it as an opportunity for a bit of self-reflection. In the midst of these heady exertions, in the midst of a gorgeous landscape, I felt an odd sense of . . . well, of oddness. Of looking at my situation at a distance and finding a thread of weirdness in its warp and weft, if you see what I mean.

Let me be more specific. There are certain pursuits which I enjoy, until I realize that I am in a large group of people who are enjoying the very thing which I generally prefer to enjoy either in solitude or in a more select group. And large groups of people doing the same thing fervently impart the unmistakeable veneer of strangeness to whatever it is they're all doing in a group.

One example that springs to mind is that rather peculiar activity called "birding." I enjoy being at one with nature, alone, binoculars in hand, spotting various sorts of chats and gnatcatchers, tits and titmice, goatsuckers and sapsuckers. I can freely whisper odd little descriptors in my own inner sanctum - green-tailed or yellow-breasted, yellow-bellied or sulphur-bellied, and so on - so long, that is, as no one else hears me say them. 

But when I find myself, as I have on occasion, doing this in a pack of people laden with exotic optical equipment, cameras with lenses as long as an elephant's dong, with assorted books, pamphlets, sesame-based snack foods, plaid bermuda shorts or overstuffed Dockers, raptly whispering the same things to one another, then I must draw the line and betake myself to another quarter of the great outdoors. I am embarrassed for myself and for them.

"En fin, madam, have you no decency?"

On one such occasion I was out with a wildlife biologist doing environmental due diligence -  looking for prairie chicken leks at the site of a proposed wind farm. We were alone on the predawn prairie in a chill April wind, creeping about in the dark, listening intently for a telltale booming, when the biologist whispered, "I just heard a Sprague's pipit!" Bless his heart, thought I. The ministering angel blushed for the poor chap's dignity.

And so it is when I find myself in a large group of cyclists, many of whom are at least my age, bulge and sag in roughly the same places, wear a similar disarray of stretched and worn stretchy fabric, depend on vigorously strong eyeglasses not to lose their way, and in general wear all the fool's motley of the senior citizen. This is not universally the case. But charity rides seem to attract an outsized representation of the types I have just described. In a perverse moment, I took photos of un petit dejeuner au canyon.

In the first place, the median age of the charity-ride bicycle culture is well into the Medicare-eligible range. I include myself in this category. So our clothes don't fit, we're too cheap or too indigent to buy new ones, which also wouldn't fit, and as a consequence we're always losing something down our backside.

(Lost an entire set of bicycle tools)

Since many of us no longer have very much hair beneath the abstracted phrenology of the bicycle helmet, and what hair remains in situ is an attenuated feathery gray halo, we affect exotic and outrageous headgear much like the pirates of the Caribbean or the Somali Coast.

In fact, there are evidently no bounds to the fashions we are willing to sport while in cycling mode - clothing we frankly wouldn't be buried in or bequeath. Jerseys purchased at other charity rides seem to be in favor, a way of counting coup for all the 65-milers you've suffered in the heat and cold and chalked up as a "metric century" (which is only 65 miles, no matter what you call it.)

(Jersey from the Retired Clowns for Abstract Expressionism Century)

This soul looked so forlorn that I simply borrowed an iPhone from my friend Bobbie and dialed 911.

Still, there I was, telling myself that I was among them but not of them. Whatever works, I suppose - I was there, nonetheless. The collar helps me keep my head high enough to see over the bars. And you'll note I never cycle without my little helmet. In case I should hit my head and forget what I was doing.

 Miguel "Le Cycliste"

Do It 'til It Hurts (Pt. III): The Tour de France

I'm guessing that the Tour was decided earlier today on l'Alpe d'Huez, when Andy Schleck, coming off yesterday's "epic" stage victory, translated a 15-second deficit into a 53-second adavantage over his brother, Frank, in second place. Thomas Voeckler finished three minutes down at 20th in the stage, and is now more than two minutes off the lead. In a reprise of his 2004 Tour, Voeckler kept the yellow jersey for 10 race days.

 Schleck in the lead, Col du Galibier (Stage 19)

The only thing that might change the outcome now is the third man, Cadel Evans, who at just under a minute off Schleck's pace, could pull off an amazing time trial and unseat the evident winner. Frank Schleck and Evans are both within striking distance of the yellow jersey, but Frank will not be the man to take it. His official role is as Andy's domestique, the lesser of the Schleck duo - even though his showing in this race had been stronger than his brother's until stage 19, which as I said was epic enough to get Eddy Merckx onto the podium with Andy in a rare appearance.

I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet on the family dynamics here (were I a betting man I'd have bet on Thomas Voeckler, but mainly out of sentiment rather than good sense, which is why I never gamble for money). The results to date are amazing - Andy made history with his attack on stage 19, 60 km remaining in the stage and two climbs beyond categorization left to go. Equally epic has been his determination on the descents, where he left his trepidation behind, reversed a pattern of timid descending to gain four minutes on the field at one point in the stage. It was mainly Evans, in a nearly solo effort to pursue, who saved the small pursuit group the embarrassment of having been so badly outpaced.

Still, we like races to go to the final stage (meaning tomorrow's time trial, not the ceremonial ride into Paris). We don't necessarily want to know in advance that the guy in second place won't suddenly jump and go for first. Drama happens only when blood is at stake, as when Saturn devours his own children . . .

"Don't watch."

 . . . or when we think Cain is at least willing to clobber Abel (even if he doesn't). If the Schlecks were Italians and Verdi were a modern-day journaliste du sport, there might be an opera in this Tour (maybe "Cain e Abel").

The Counterfactual Schleck Brothers
(Think about it, Frank)

Thomas Voeckler, Cadel Evans and the Schleck brothers have made this a memorable Tour de France. And though it's probably all over but the shouting, I for one am glad that Cadel is still in it. Any one of the three has shown enough grit to stand on the top step of this year's podium in Paris.

UPDATE July 23: Cadel Evans did indeed ride a strong 42.5 km time trial today to take the yellow jersey from Andy Schleck, allowing him but a single day to wear it. Cadel finished 7 seconds behind Tony Martin's best time and leads the field by over a minute and a half. At the end of tomorrow's (largely ceremonial) stage, Cadel will have won the Tour. CadelMageddon is upon us.

Do It 'til It Hurts (Pt. II): The Tour de France

Let me begin with apologies by plunging your heads into a cold cliche: this is turning out to be a Cinderella Tour. 

Meaning that Thomas Voeckler has worn the yellow jersey since Stage 9 (stage 17 ran earlier today). Riding safely through the crashfest in stage 8, he changed the race from a one-second duel between race leader Thor Hushovd and Cadel Evans that had lasted over several stages, since nearly the July 2 start of the Tour. Coming from 19th place, a minute and a half behind, Voeckler established himself nearly two minutes ahead of his nearest competitor and another half-minute ahead of Evans in third.

Voeckler is an Alsatian, a Frenchman with a German name pronounced (at least by the eternal race announcer Phil Liggett, a bellwether of how not to pronounce anything) 'Voh-kler.' I would have said 'Veh-kler,' but I only know three German words as it is - Schloss Vollrads, spatlese, auslese and trockenbeerenauslese. Well, four German words. Oh, and riesling. So I'm no authority either, except I can pronounce 'Liggett,' which I think is Australian for something you do after you've burglarized a beer warehouse. (The French say 'veau-clair.')

Voeckler is the Cinderella of the Tour on several counts. For starters, the Tour, which in France is something equivalent to the Super Bowl being played on the Fourth of July, has not been won by a Frenchman since 1985, when the great Bernard Hinault won his fifth Tour (the following year he stood second on the podium to Greg Le Mond, the first American ever to win).

Bernard Hinault

Voeckler, in the Zen-like tradition of Jacques Anquetil, leads the field without having won a single stage in this race. Unlike the stolid Anquetil, however, Thomas is known for his stigmata, the visible signs of his suffering, most notably a magnificently beefy tongue springing like the Holy Spirit from his visage.

'Je souffre.'

He has worn the yellow jersey before, in the 2004 Tour, when he became a minor hero of the French public. Expected to hold the lead for only a day against the all-devouring Armstrong, he held on for a remarkable 10 days before surrendering the jersey to the eventual victor.

This time around, Voeckler has dazzled a field of cautious riders, using his instincts as an animateur - the one who attacks, breaks up the rhythm of the peloton, strings out the leaders with unexpected sorties, keeps the field unsettled and watchful - to maintain his lead.  Still, he defies the American ethos of Stephen Covey's highly effective and therefore habitually happy people. "I don't believe for even one second that I can win the Tour," Voeckler told the cycling press after a few days in yellow. "I think my chances are zero." How could you hate the guy? The French aren't listening, of course, but I'm sure someone tried to warn them before the Battle of the Somme. Which could be Cadel Evans, or it could be Alberto Contador.

What makes Voeckler's current ascendency even more compelling is that it upsets the dispensation of the world according to the cycling media. No one could have predicted his sudden jump from 19th place to the front of the standings - better yet, he doesn't look or sprint like the brash Mark Cavendish (four stages in this Tour to Voeckler's zero, but two hours back in slot 124), he is neither of the Schleck brothers who get a lion's share of attention in race coverage. He doesn't think for a minute that he'll win this Tour, he never probably thought much about standing on the podium before last week. He just rides his bike.

Contador has already won three Tours and this year's Giro d'Italia. His fortunes in the early stages have been poor (crashes, mostly) but he is coming back stronger. He could win it again, which would be fine with me. And Voeckler already knows that he faces a tough time in the remaining mountain stages. He gave up over 20 seconds today over tough climbs, so his margin has slipped to about 80 seconds, with five stages remaining to ride.

But right now I'm voting for the Frog.

"Cheri, 'ev you seen may glass sleepurz?"

UPDATE, July 21: Stage 18 is the hardest stage of the Tour with three climbs beyond categorization. On the final climb, Andy Schleck attacked early on the Col d-Izoard, held on over Col du Galibier to win the stage, and leaves Thomas Voeckler with a scant 15-second lead. Thomas himself rode amazingly to hold onto the yellow jersey. The standings have been shaken up considerably - Andy's brother Frank Schleck is in third, Contador is a distant seventh place, more than four minutes off the leader. No chance for Contador this year.

Do It 'til It Hurts (Pt. I): The Tour de France

July is the only month in the year when I wish I owned a television; it's the month of the Tour de France. The Tour this year is 21 stages of finesse and bedlam in pretty much equal parts, some of the bedlam occuring in yesterday's stage 7 when a cluster of riders bunched and crashed about 25 km before the stage finish. A couple of riders abandoned the race with broken clavicles and the usual minor injuries; the 40-year-old American Chris Horner rode across the finish line in a concussed daze, nose broken, having no idea how far he'd ridden nor for how long.

 Bradley Wiggins, stage 7 and out

Consecutive early stages of narrow, sinewy roads, high winds, the flattish terrain encouraging sprints - all have combined to unsettle the field and keep a scant four second margin between the top three riders. Still, mild stuff compared with last year's edition, which had long stretches of the infamous cobbled pavé that caused several serious crashes. The cobbles were wet from summer rains. This has been going on for over a century.

Lothar Friedrich out of the Tour, 1957

A hilly stage today begins the mountain stages and the standings should change over the next few days. The sprinters will fall back in the standings for a while and the climbers will ride for the polka dot jersey, the King of the Mountains points.

 Fausto Coppi leads over Puy de Dome, 1952

To appreciate the traditions of the Tour you have to accept certain intractible facts in this uneasy marriage of concentrated, strenuous sport conducted within a barely contained donnybrook. It is beyond mention that riders get hurt every year in crashes; there are occasional fatalities, most recently in the Giro d'Italia in May, when a young Belgian fell 65 feet over a bank while descending in the mountains. Collisions with spectators are infrequent but not rare occurences, and more than a few errant souls have been sent on their Eternal Way by team vehicles (see Tour update below). Even the motorcycles of the press corps have been known to sail over an embankment, carrying the motorcyclist and a journaliste du sport into the same Abyss. But in France, to be numbered among the faithful means to be a cycling fan anyway, so there is a certain canonical propriety in such a demise.

There's a 'Jesus' to root for in every Tour

It isn't "Sturgis on Bikes," but crowd etiquette is not always quaint - and there are crowds

everywhere. International travel being what it is, the difference now is between the occasional cooling douse from a well-meaning voisin wielding a bucket . . .

Louison Bobet gets a dousing, 1955

and countless economy-class tourists from Brisbane, Boston, Bozeman, Barcelona, Bogota, Bucharest, Buenos Aires and Bora Bora . . . 

Adding to the press of the crowds is the press of numerous team vehicles following the riders, dispensing food, water and instructions. In the rowdy 1990s, the team cars were often virtual arsenals of pharmaceutical aids. Nowadays, keeping your drugs in the team car is like hiding your money under the mattress. Tom Boonen is currently sitting out the Tour for a positive cocaine test earlier this spring. (I thought coke was legal in Belgium, but the Grand Tours are their own countries.)

Doping has been a Tour staple almost since the first Tour in 1903. It seems to be on the wane these days, particularly with some high-profile trials pending, though as I've remarked before there have always been drugs in the Grand Tours, from a little champagne in the water bottle to pure rocket fuel. It's one topic that doesn't merit any further moralizing - if it is a vice, it's only because of the money that the Grand Tours have attracted.

The water handoff in former days was a literal moment that also gave a temporary boost to the local economy. Toss the empty, holster the full one, keep pedalling . . .

All the riders wear helmets now, but the mandatory helmet rule was not enforced by the UCI (the governing body) until 2003, when a Kazakh rider, Andrei Kivilev, fell and died in the Paris-Nice that year. The last Tour fatality was also a head injury - Fabio Casartelli fell while descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet in the 1995 Tour. The requirement for helmets (to my mind, at least) also marked the death of Tour fashion.

Ferdi Kubler, hot day, 1950

So here's to another July and another Tour. May it roll on forever.

Leave the kids, bring the wine.

 UPDATE: 07/09/2011

In Saturday's Stage 9, Alexandre Vinokourov, always a podium contender, American Dave Zabriskie and two Belgian riders crashed out on a turn, Vinokourov going down the embankment and ending his professional career by fracturing his pelvis and thigh. In another incident, 2010 Tour winner Alberto Contador went down after catching another rider's wheel in a crowd. And finally, a French television car took out two riders, Flecha and Hoogerland, swerving to avoid a tree along the roadside. Both were able to continue, Hoogerland only after extracting himself from the barbed wire fence into which he was unceremoniously flung. It even hurts to watch it, but enjoy it here with French commentary.

The Suspect Also Rises

Hemingway's biographer and friend, A. E. Hotchner, has an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times chronicling the depression and paranoia of the writer's final year. Hemingway was convinced, against his friends' remonstrances and assurances, that he was being watched by FBI agents, that his home and hospital rooms were bugged, his telephones wiretapped, his movements followed. Decades after his death in 1961, the FBI released his file to public scrutiny, revealing that "beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his [final] confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his [hospital] room was tapped after all."

Hotchner was wrong, a depressed and paranoid Hemingway was right. Nor must we suppose that it is only name recognition, celebrity, notoriety that can get you a black sedan and a mug with a walkie talkie parked at your curb. It can happen to the meanest of His children. Which raises a question: what might I be doing that would warrant my surveillance by the FBI? Or is it just a lottery, like being hassled by the TSA when you're flying from Wichita to Hamtramck? (Which I believe involves layovers in Lodz, Poland and Christchurch, NZ.)

Don't get me wrong - I don't think I'm being watched by the FBI. (And how would I know if I were?) No, this is more in the way of self-exploration, an inventory of my "lifestyle indicators" to suggest that I might be worth watching, might somehow register on their radar, make a tic on their barometer, blow the agency's organizational skirt up like a floosie on a steam grate. After all, what am I, chopped liver?

(Miguel de Montaigne, second from left)

For starters, I ride a bicycle as a means of transport whenever feasible. It just seems to make sense to travel this way as much as possible, although it does entail that I buy less than my annual allotment of fuel.

 (I'll admit - I'm nuts about alternative transportation.)

Not that I don't enjoy riding bicycles, but I regard them as more than mere instruments of entertainment . . .

 (Don't call it 'croquet.' It's 'dicks on bikes.')

. . . death wish fulfillment . . .

(Has most of her teeth.)

  
. . . or just another item of conspicuous consumption.

Bicycling, as one political genius has been forward to bring to the national attention, is but one pincer movement in the worldwide jihad of Islamofascist socialism that was conceived in the basement offices of the United Nations and predictably spread its sick agenda to the manacled fist of power in Denver. Any measure private or public that results in the conservation of resources such as fuel is collectivism naked and unvarnished - in a word, socialism - and you don't need Glenn Beck to spell that out on his squeaky chalkboard. (Whatever happened to him, anyway? I guess your "Andy Warhol 15 Minutes" is up when circumstances force you to get your own TV station.)

Anyway, I could be placed under surveillance on suspicion of "collectivist sympathies" and "evincing socialist tendencies in selection of mobility options." I'm starting to feel the rosy glow of perp-hood. Anything else that might be laid at my clay feet?

One other thing comes to mind: I've never owned an American flag. I guess I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did own one. In fact, owning one would probably have already recommended me to the agency's attentions for malfeasance and desecration of the flag - purely out of ignorance rather than malevolence, mind you, since the protocols for flag management are pret-ty strict and pret-ty complex. (Did you know, for example, that "the flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling"? It is a singular instance in which 'flogging the janitor' is not a euphemism for anything else.)

Find the janitor!

In my own defense I would hasten to point out that I am a patriot in refusing to own a flag, since I have instituted a one-person, private embargo and domestic blockade of all Chinese goods. 

(Never owned a single one.)

 

Apparently my lonely fervor is hitting the wily Asian floggers of Old Glory right where it hurts, since sales of Chinese flag imports have fallen from a record $51 million in 2001 to mid-decade sales in the $5 millions, to the current low of $3 million in annual flag revenues for the Chinese.

A final count against me would be that I do not have a regular place of worship. Not my fault, and not entirely true - I had been attending worship at a congregation where faith and practice took an unexpected turn . . .

I tend to be more conservative than not in theological matters . . . 

. . . and felt constrained to find fellowship in a group with views that were more congenial to my beliefs and where I felt the Holy Spirit ministered better to my needs:

But I had to face the fact that attending evangelical services was clearly getting me nowhere nearer a coveted spot on the FBI's "Not Wanted (Yet)" list. So I found a little out of the way chapel that I felt should garner me wider notice and recommend me as a proper candidate for surveillance, along with the frisson that comes from being in good company. First service at 4 a.m., five services daily, Friday Nite Fatwa and a Saturday sharia refresher.

And failing all else, a good keyword search should bring the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover to my curbside in about a week.

"Have we been a naughty boy?"