Just a note out to those who might wish they’d known this and who I’d feel bad if they didn’t know it because I didn’t say it even though the event is tomorrow night and it’s probably too late anyway….

But…

The Rude Pundit will be performing in Cookeville, TN.

Having been to Cookeville many times (no, really), I can only hope that the Wal-Mart is out of the kind of pitchforks favored by angry villagers.

But it’s a college town. I’m sure he’ll do fine. We hope.

And along those same lines: Beware The Brown Peril!

There’s a moment before the moon rises that’s cold and still. I’m on the shore of the lake, on some steps that lead to a beach. I’m trying to figure out what neighborhood is causing the halo of light over the hills on the far shore. It turns out it’ll be the moon, but I’m thinking Bellevue.

There are some docks here, for those little tiny sailboats the parks department rents out. Some teenagers, two shes and a he, are out on the end of it, are talking about stuff. Stuff of importance to teenagers. The girls seem to speak non-stop, about self-absorbed things. Which is fine. But even they, from time to time, stop to look at the very top of the moon peeking over the hills, the potent cold stillness reaching through to their insides.

It’s really funny when the boy says he was in LA recently, and went to a party at Drew Barrymore’s house. Girl: “Who’s that?” Ouch! I laugh and they hear me. How could they not have noticed me before? Self-absorbed, perhaps. The boy goes back to describing why Drew Barrymore should impress them.

Their noise joins the traffic on the road behind me. I’m absorbed in the moon. It’s almost all the way up. A single cedar tree is sillhouetted. Then just the top of the tree. Then the tree vanishes into darkness. There’s a low, faint fog. The moon is pale and orange and leaves a streak across the lake.

The fog forms a halo most of the way around it. A halo in the shape of an afro. The man in the moon has an afro. Afro-moon from the ’70s. Gimme some skin, white guy with an afro!

I’m laughing again. Teen boy: “What’s your PROBLEM?”

A cheap way to maximize tourism: Make every road a scenic byway. Or close to every road, anyway. Make some signs, print some maps, you’re in business.

By the byway… If anyone wants to invest in a vacation cabin in the Sawtooths…

Free hugs….

plus Where The Hell Is Matt?….

equals warm fuzzy.

Parts arrived today. I sat on the deck with a pile of parts and bolts and gaskets and tools like a kid with a Lego set.

Who knew that working on the exhaust system could be so much fun?

Today’s weather is a lot like winter in Houston, where I grew up. Houston winter is like fall everywhere else (except maybe the Sahara). So my fingers got just a little bit cold manipulating bolts and stuff… Just like when I got my bike for Christmas. I remember the red Fuji 10-speed. I thought it was the best thing ever.

Over time, I’d work on it, fix it, but it never quite came together the way I wanted. The crank always squeaked after repacking the bottom bracket, the shifter levers never quite held their position… It never went back to being new. It was never like that pristine moment of cold winter air pulling all the warmth out of the aluminum-alloy handlebars under my grip, cold tears out of the corner of my eyes as I cranked down the empty suburban streets on a brand-spankin’ new bike.

The difference, of course, was not that used things are always rougher or uglier than new things. The difference is the meticulous quality that makes a real mechanic a real mechanic. A vision, if you will, of a finished product rather than a sequence of procedures.

Mr. Jalopy does a good job of explaining why I drive a 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon (Wolfsburg Edition).

Did I buy the $1 PDF? Of course!

If it weren’t so late in the game, and if there weren’t so much at stake, I’d issue a little fatwah of my own: I’d say that I’d only vote for or support candidates who pledged to reinstate Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift.

TLC Transitions will assist you in packing up your parents and moving them into a retirement home. They catch every angle, too. They’ll even hold the estate sale.

Why is it always the very last bolt that’s the softest?

It’s a 12mm, only now it’s somewhere between 12 and 11. It’s on the exhaust system. It’s in a bend in the pipe, so I can’t get a socket on there straight. I can put a box wrench on it, but it just melts under torque.

Maybe it’s time to get the hacksaw. W00t.

If I unbolt this bolt, everything will be all set for the parts which are supposed to arrive tomorrow. New catalytic converter, new muffler, new tailpipe, and assorted hardware (gaskets, bolts).

I thought about replacing only the cat, but the way the Vanagon is designed, it makes more sense to replace both the cat and the muffler and then not have to mess with it again. Plus the muffler is rusted through, so I suppose it’s due…

Shaking the converter, it sounds like there’s an oversized golf ball inside. I guess the element came loose again while I was removing it… The problem was that the converter element had plugged up the exhaust. They do that sometimes, which means the engine could start springing leaks under pressure. Which it did in this case. I have to replace a valve cover seal, which isn’t such a big deal.

So let that be a lesson, kids: If your exhaust system is rattling, take it to the mechanic. Or learn how to fix it yourself.

I was waiting for the bus. I had ten minutes. Somehow I had read the clock wrong, and now here I was sitting on a traffic barrier next to a busy street.

There was another guy, maybe 19 years old, backpack full of books, ear-buds in place, iPod in the jacket pocket.

Ten minutes. To spend thinking.

He had never worn an iPod before. He was listening to music he’d never heard before. He didn’t feel like making eye contact with anybody, didn’t want to give anyone a chance to say hi.

The backpack was full of old books, some tableware (some plastic cups, flatware, a skillet), a cast-iron novelty coin bank, and two boxes of herbal tea his mother had made him take with him.

He was on his way back to the dorms, at the southern end of the 75 line. His grandmother had died. His parents were, even now, preparing her house to sell. He wanted to keep it, rent out some rooms, live there. They didn’t want the tax burden.

His grandfather, who had survived, had given him the iPod. And grandpa had told him the story of the iPod, though he knew it already.

“I hated her music,” he said. “All the way back to the goddamn war, we’d fight about music. She liked Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, and all these other negros. Negro music. It wasn’t just a phase for her. She’d tell me that she’d rather listen to Duke records than the Gershwins or Tommy Dorsey or whoever. She was like a musical NAACP!

“So when they came out with the Walkman, she saved up and got one and a bunch of tapes. And when there were iPods, I got her one. I told her…”

And this is the bit that everyone in the family could retell, but chose not to, because it was so embarrassing. Even *if* gramps was from another place and time. He’d tell it over and over, to anyone nearby, every time anyone saw that his wife had an iPod.

“..and when there were iPods, I got her one. I told her, ‘I’ll give you this music thing if you forgive me for being a racist.’”

The kid at the bus stop is listening to ‘Blue Ramble.’ I can barely hear it in those spare moments when there’s no traffic on the road. He’s staring off into space. Eventually the bus comes.