L'esprit d'escalier

It's been an interesting week in the world of bicycle commuting. A week ago today I left work early to go meet some people who were doing work on our house. I was enjoying the lack of traffic on the 1.8 miles of non-bike path road I have to travel in order to get home, zipping briskly down a small hill near our house, when the door to a Suburban flew open about six feet in front of me. The door hit the right side of my handlebars jackknifing and sending me over them. I flew a good 8 feet, executed a perfect shoulder roll, and got up without a scratch, despite being a bit stunned. I'd like to credit my catlike reflexes but in reality I just got pretty lucky. The fact that it's cold and I was wearing a jacket and cords helped as well. I had a pretty decent bruise on my calf the next day but all in all it was a best case scenario. The guy in the Suburban was pretty cool about it, although it occurred to me later that he never explicitly apologized and I suspect he may have been more concerned about me suing him over any bodily harm than the actual bodily harm I might have sustained. My bike was even unharmed, which didn't really matter since I have been riding my old one since my good one was stolen from outside work month or so ago. I hope I at least damaged his door. I have since been leaving a bit more space between me and parked cars, although being farther out in traffic is not really much better.

Anyways, l'esprit d'escalier is a French phrase for which we desperately need an English equivalent. Literally "staircase wit," it describes the situation where you think of an awesome comeback after the conversation is over, e.g. "The jerk store called and they're all out of you."

Example 2: A woman, to me, yesterday, after I slammed on the brakes to avoid running over her dog which had run out in front of me on the bike path at the last minute:
"Slow down, Jesus, you almost hit me!"
Me: "You're on the bike path, lady."
Her: "I don't give a shit!"
Me: "Ummm, yeah, I can see that!"
Ride off, shaking head.

A much better exchange, however, would have been:
"Slow down, Jesus, you almost hit me!"
"You're on the bike path, lady."
"I don't give a shit!"
"Well, then I guess I don't give a shit whether or not I run your dumb ass over. Sound fair?"
"Ummm, no!, sputter, sputter...you're a stupid head!"
"Yeah, go home and have sex with your dog you ugly old bag."
Ride off, triumphant.

But that wouldn't have been very Christian of me, now would it have? Some people.

Deercamp Blog Post #3

Elvis has left the building. And by Elvis I mean most of a large deer, and by left I mean entered, and by the building I mean my freezer. It was the culmination of nine very interesting and nearly oppositely spent days.

Part two started when I literally jogged out of a poster session at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting in D.C., sent off a grant application from the hotel, and caught a train and a plane to Atlanta, from where I flew to MSP, where I caught the light rail to my dad's car that he'd left at Fort Snelling. From there, I made good time to Goodland and arrived at five of eleven. Mark, Tom Stoltz and Dad were waiting and deer camp was on.

I got a decent night sleep thanks to daylight savings time and got out to my stand before sunrise. I crawled up in it to find it partially broken but was able to sit on one side. Here's Liz helping me carry the wood to build it circa 2000.



I didn't wait long before I heard footsteps and then thrashing to my right in some small alders across a small slough. I stood up and turned so I could see through the scope and saw a huge rack scraping on the alders. I though about shooting it straight down through the neck, but held off. It might have sensed or heard I was there, because it turned around and quartered away from me. It was through a little brush but I got a shot off at about 50 yahds and it felt good. The deer disappeared, however. I sat for a bit, packed up and went to have a look. To my great relief, it had dropped where I shot.

As all deer hunters know to varying degrees, that's when the "fun" stop: walk back to cabin for a knife since I couldn't carry one on, walk back to deer, gut deer, walk back to cabin to wait for dragging help since it was a lost cause with me alone as I found out when I nearly herniated gutting it, wait for Mark and Tom, bring my dad a knife with which to gut the deer he'd since shot since he'd forgotten one too, drag deer across the slough through which I'd shot, meet dad with 4-wheeler, drag deer #1 to the sight of deer #2 which had expired mercifully close to the trail, drag both deer back to cabin for hanging and tenderloin removal. Whew.

And then we rested while I experimented with making the deer I'd shot's heart. I simmered it for a few hours in several changes of lake Cropless' finest, then gave it a final simmer in a glaze I'd improvised out of whatever was at the cabin (soy and ketchup based if I recall). I then sliced it thin, salted, peppered and seared it quickly in a scorching hot cast iron frying pan. It was delicious in my opinion, and everybody else at least pretended to like it. Waste not want not I always say. I'd brought the liver back too but decided one organ was offal enough.

Tom shot a nice eight pointer in the late afternoon, so we repeated the process with it. Then we had fun, card games, visits from Eddie and his young entourage, cousin Jason, and uncles Dale and Denny. I made small drives to Mark the next day, who'd only seen one deer and several timberwolves exiting a den. Separately. That was it for my hunting. We then again rested, enjoyed the unbelievable weather, received a visit from one Dave Strand, and steeled ourselves for the animal to meat conversion travails to come.



On Monday morning we got up and loaded the deer onto cars and tied them down, drove them back to Mark's house and hung, skinned, and butchered Tom's deer. I returned to the world of the presentable at my mom's, got fed, and slept soundly. The next day my dad and I got to work on my deer shortly before noon with the help of a sweet, newly purchased deer hanging pulley system from Fleet Farm. We made relatively quick work of it since I do my fine cutting at home. We took a quick break to head over to Vinafera Wines and Ales, where through an exceedingly unlikely series of events we found Westrum talking to our friendly neighborhood wine shop owner Nesh on his first visit to the store. We had a chat, bought some lovely wines, ales, and spirits, and headed back to Mark's to wait for his and Tom's help on the third and final deer. We made quick work of it, and it was again off to mom's to wash off the gristle.

Wednesday was deer-free, and I helped my mom prepare for a nice dinner at Alli and Niko's for Mark's day before birthday. We had a lovely meal and I got in some face time with Josie, who is babbling regularly and hilariously, and Nathan, whose arm has only gotten better.

I stayed on the couch at my dad's that night and got up around four to head to MSP. I was soon tentatively hoisting my weighed-to-slightly-over-fifty-lb-by-a-luggage-scale-of-unknown-accuracy cooler (to account for the ice pack within) onto the much more accurate airport luggage scale where it weighed in at an eerily accurate 50.0 lbs. I was given no further troubles, which has not been the case in one of my three attempts at flying with raw meat. Still, I can't really overstate the feeling of relief I felt when the cooler of hard earned venison came off the belt and made it into the trunk of our car. The relief of seeing Liz was pretty great also.

Later that day, I got my first ever massage at the salon where Liz used to work. I was a bit nervous and I froze and said yes when the girl asked me if I'd ever had a massage before. Although this was technically true, my previous massage (foot) was from an old Chinese man in a Chinese bath house/brothel. She said, great, then just get under the covers and I'll be back. Realizing I might have missed out on critical massage-getting information and that the etiquette for this massage might be profoundly different from my last one, I just used common sense. When in doubt, keep undies on, I figured, so I just laid down and thought about what I was going to tell her about the cuts, bruises, and serious burn I'd obtained while stumbling through the woods procuring meat. It turned out she was from Maine and familiar with deer hunting, and at least had the decency not to treat me like a leper. It was very relaxing. I made tenderloins that night and slept well.

Today, I re-trimmed and vacuum sealed the haul. It was substantial. Which is good since it was in some way lifted by, dragged by, or splattered across me on the majority of the previous five days. Backstrap carpaccio tonight!