A Snake in the Grass

A young man was walking along in the woods one chilly spring day when he suddenly came upon a snake laying motionless in the middle of the dirt path.  He gently prodded it with his hiking staff to see if he could coax it to slither aside.  "Please, young sir", implored the snake, "I am but a cold blooded animal and I cannot gather the strength on this cool day to crawl back to my nest to guard my young.  If you would but pick me up and warm me for a few minutes I could summon the energy to wriggle home and check my brood".
The young man was taken aback by the snakes odd request.  "What kind of fool do you take me for?" he asked the snake.  "You would most assuredly bite me".
"Oh, no.  I am way to weak to even think such a thing.  I am only interested in my young.  Please, please.  I beg of you.  My children may themselves be killed by a hungry mammal if I am not there to protect them".
"I don't know", replied the man, obviously beginning to soften to the snakes pitiful circumstance.  "Do you promise not to bite me if I help you?"
"Of course, of course.  I would never bite the hand that helped me".

So, perhaps against the young man's gut sense, he knelt down and extended his hand for the snake to crawl onto his arm to be warmed.  And just as he opened his palm, the snake struck out and sank his fangs deep into the soft flesh of his hand.  "Ouch!" he cried out in pain and astonished disbelief.  " Why did you do that?  You gave me your word".
"You knew what I was when you reached out to hold me", hissed the snake as he slithered away.  "You should not have expected me to be something I am not".

I Asked For It

Careful what you ask for.  I asked to be pissed off and boy did Connie Waterman of Narberth, PA oblige.  She is a fellow letter to the Editor writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Here is the link to her letter. I will paste it here as well, in case the link is ever broken.  I don't ever want to forget it.

Here is the link to the letter: Thou shalt not hate. Scroll down to "Threat to Military Readiness"


I have pasted the letter here as well:

Threat to military readiness

I do not claim that there is no sexual misconduct in the U.S. military. However, I believe Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and other Democrats are encouraging any misconduct claim from women in order to destroy the military accomplishments of men ("For U.S. military, an enemy within," June 13). Since the 1960s, liberals have loathed the military. Liberals destroyed the institution of marriage, Judeo-Christian values, the family unit, work ethics, personal responsibility, and respect for life in the womb. The military is next.

Connie Waterman, Narberth, PA
______________________________________________________________________
My response:
Dear Connie,

I am very disappointed in your letter.  The military isn't next.  It's already dead.  The day they allowed a gay Marine to defend his country is the day the military died.  It is already too late for our brave men in uniform.  No, the next American institution the liberals are going to destroy is healthcare.  Our sacred right to spend 80% of our precious healthcare dollars on the last five years of our life is in jeopardy.  Liberals want equal access to healthcare regardless of ability to pay. Preposterous!  How dare the social misanthropes who call themselves liberals allow someone with a preexisting heart condition to get affordable healthcare. Those chronically ill malingerers have no one to blame but themselves what with all that cigarette smoking and Big Mac eating. And what about their 25 year old kids? Why do they deserve to leech off society? No one gave me health insurance when I was a young adult. If I was careless with a knife and accidentally sliced my finger off, my mother sewed it back on. Out here on the prairie we take care of our own.

And speaking of the prairie, those damn liberals are systematically destroying the farmers way of life. They especially hate, hate, chicken farmers. What did Frank Perdue or John Tyson ever do to harm a chicken? Those men were church going saints. They do those chickens a favor by squashing them in like invertebrate sardines and providing free hormones and antibiotics. Chickens can't fly anyway. The liberals want to create an entire generation of entitled chickens by messing with the Farm Bill. Liberals care more about chickens than they do another woman's womb.  Pure evil.

Evil?   I'll tell you what's evil. The woods. Absolutely no good can come from allowing trees to proliferate any where in America. The forest is the devil's home. Where do you think Satan tempted Eve?  In the woods, that's where.  A snake in a tree.  The liberals want to preserve our forests! They just hate mankind that much. Imagine favoring trees over strip malls. There are no snakes in the Kohl's parking lot. I can assure you of that.

I agree that liberals have destroyed the sanctity of marriage.  Have you ever heard of a God fearing Christian cheating on his wife?  Only a self centered, lazy atheist would split up his family over another woman.  I can't think of a single hard working atheist that ever did a single thing for this country.  Well, except for Thomas Jefferson.  He might have been Agnostic, though.  I'm not sure.  He was so busy providing for the slaves on his farm, especially that Mrs. Sally Hemings, that I don't know how he had time to rewrite the entire Bible leaving out all the metaphysical passages.

Speaking of Thomas Jefferson, I don't think there is a single liberal that knows the first thing about our founding fathers.  Men like John Adams, George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.  They weren't a bunch of wealthy intellectual elitists.  No, they were just like you and me.  Hard working, God fearing, blue collar laborers.  If it wasn't for those nice slaves keeping the plantations running, those selfless men never would have had the time to meet in Philadelphia.  Now that I think about it, it was a bunch of liberal abolitionists that wanted the slaves freed in the first place.  The plantation masters were certainly conservative church going men.  Where do these liberals get their crazy ideas?

One more thing.  The American family was way better off before we had; The Family Leave Act, a minimum wage, The Americans with Disablities Act, Medicare, Social Security, The Clean Air Act,  unemployment benefits, and work place safety rules.  Liberal ideas, every last one.  How dare anyone believe we are all responsible for each other whether they worship in our church or not.

Dear Woody

The team here at "Cabin in the Catskills" is always looking to provide additional value added services to our loyal followers.  So we are pleased to announce a new interactive feature entitled "Ask Woody".  An advice and help column dedicated to the proposition that all people have equal access to get themselves lost or seriously disabled in our public wild lands.

Herewith the first column.  The names have been changed to protect the hapless:


Hi Woody

Tanya, my wife, and I plan to go camping/backpacking this week.

Do you routinely carry a tarp?  What kind?  (How big/where did you get it...) and what length of rope/how many pieces of rope do you carry?

If it is easier to talk over the phone, I will be free most of the day tomorrow.

Thanks.

Darren




Dear Darren,

1.  I do not use a tarp.  I like to sleep in a full tent with four walls and a rain fly.  That way I feel a little more protected from the axe murderers roaming about in the woods. The idea that they will have to first hack their way through two layers of nylon makes me feel that I will have at least a few more seconds to grab the 12" Bowie knife-that I definitely do carry no matter the weight-to defend myself.

View of axe murderer through tent door. 

2.  I do routinely carry fifty feet of standard parachute cord, preferably camo green.  This is available in every outdoor store across America.  It is used primarily to fabricate a trip wire perimeter around your tent to further delay said axe wielding psychopath.  But if you plan on climbing a few cliffs, then pack 60 meters of 10mm dynamic climbing rope for sure.

Regards,

Woody

P.S.  Unfortunately due to the high volume of letters we are not able to reply personally by telephone. 

The More Things Change......

I am 53 years old and riding my carbon fiber bicycle with racing geometry and a stiff frame is like going a couple of loops on the Cyclone.  The adrenaline rush is great but the numb hands, neck, and shoulders?  Not so much.  So, I just bought a new touring/cyclocross/city bike with a relaxed frame geometry for a more comfortable ride.  I feel like a kid on this bike and I have already begun to dork it out just like the old days:  contrasting red reflective tape (because it is all black), rear rat trap carrier (ok, so it's not an original Pletscher but I still call my sneakers, tennis shoes), a front light (no, it does not have a generator that is activated by a gear rubbing on the front wheel) and a rear tail light for extra safety. It even came with a bell. Here are a few pictures:

Headlight, bell, odometer, reflective tape.

Rat trap, bungee cord, tail light, saddlebag, reflective tape.

Here is a photo Tammy took of me with my new bicycle:

Black Beauty II (The bike, not me).

After Tammy said, "It looks like your old bike," I found this picture, taken exactly 35 years ago in June of 1978 with the bicycle I built from scratch in 1977:

The Original Black Beauty.  Complete with reflector tape and rat trap.

You can't make this stuff up.  The only thing that has changed in all this time?  The size of my bank account and bicycle technology. Which brings me to the point of this blog.  People don't change.  Only resources and technology change.  Who do you think is buying all those Chargers, Challengers, Corvettes, and Camaros?  Sixty-five year old men trying to relive their youth that's who.  When is the last time you saw someone under the age of forty riding a Harley?  The biker bar full of Hell's Angels drinking shots of Old Grand Dad has been replaced by a bar full of old granddads drinking Blue Angels.  (That doesn't really prove my point but it seems like a great line).

Sure, some forty year old will wake up one day and decide to do a thru hike of the Appalachian Trail even though they never backpacked or even camped before.  But I'll bet you a hundred dollars that they are the type of person who was always intense in whatever activity they were engaged.  They probably spent a year at an ashram in India staring at their belly button.  I hope they never find whatever it is they are looking for, by the way, because for them, the pursuit is the product.

Lucky for me, I have always been fond of bicycles, backpacks, and bonhomie.  OK.  So one thing has changed.

Somebody, Please, Piss Me Off.

Yo, very sorry.  I haven't been inspired by much lately.  That either means I am uncharacteristically content or pathologically apathetic but here is something; I just had my third letter to the editor published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I guess I got pissed off enough to come out of my writer's block to fire off a letter.  I am pretty psyched they accepted it.  Here is the link to the article I chided:  Democracy's Challenge by EJ Dionne.

And here is the link to my letter; Heat Can Shed Light in DC.  Scroll down to the letter with that title.  The Inquirer came up with the title, not me.

On a different note, it was suggested that I blog about a recent medical procedure/test I underwent this past Monday.  Unfortunately for me it went very smoothly so I can't come up with an angle.  I hate when that happens.  Perhaps next time, the gastroenterologist will accidentally leave a gauze pad up there and then I'll have something to bitch about that will amuse you.  If everything in the world went smoothly there would be no great writing.