Dateline
23 October 2014
El Sereno, CA aka University Hills aka East Los aka Hollenbeck (HOBK) Division RD #437.
Destination: Henderson, NV. Lake Mead.
Event: The Pumpkinman Triathlon, a drop in the bucket compared to the usual tri fare: A 1/2mi swim, 12.4 mile ride and 3.2 mile run through some prime NV lakeside real estate. A real dirt and gravel affair. If nothing else, it will be worth the free shirt and post -race feeding trough at the House of Piggery of our choice afterwards. (Well that and the general hedonistic aura this town tends to elicit in those of us with a penchant and history for self -destruction and maladaptive coping mechanisms. I have more history in that waste land than I care to admit. I have flashbacks of being “at” the Grateful Dead at the UNLV circa 1992; I was there for the extracurricular carnival and had no real musical interest. ‘Nuff said.)
Digs: “The Jockey Club,” a Section 8 Production timeshare brick and mortar caper ensconced by the uber hip and the more millennial gangster and hip hop-esque casino and hotel on the strip, The Cosmopolitan. I’d like to think it wasn’t named after its implied name of being worldly and constructed of so many cultures and continents; nor would I like to think it was named after one of those ridiculous high fallootin mixed cocktail drinks that was born of a sitcom about young single painfully perfect elite looking to make it in a big city. Maybe it was too much to call it the Olde English 800 or The 211 or The P.A.L.* Who knows? Stranger things with nom de what-the-fuck have attained infamy. Neither of these places is one of them.
We tooled out of University Hills at noon o’clock high. Charlie was at the helm of the Aryan White Scion cube-mobile which began coughing and idling heavy ever since we hit Barstow. The air in that shit hole is matched only by that of North Platte, Nebraska and Shawnee, Wyoming: it reeks of cordite and formaldehyde and being there brings back murky memories of The World Before This One, when I was 15, omniscient and bulletproof: Visions of a group of us piling into an open bed pickup: Destination BELL MOUNTAIN, with firewood, gasoline, long rifles, dirt bikes and cases of dirt cheap piss water plain wrap beer. I found it odd that the engine started to hesitate and he kept pulling over and popping the hood, taking the vial of vape-juice with him and then he’d return muttering about the high cost of gas and The God Damned Bar exam. Curiously, the level on that elixir bottle never went down. I knew better than to ask questions. He was, after all, going to be a lawyer. Every now and again he chortled and cackled, as I reminded him that we were going to swim ½ mile in a lake where three headed fish live and the DNA of those spawned in Elko, NV likely lingers—amongst other things. He never said anything, he just reminded me it was all my idea and that he’d done next to no training. I ignored him and told him that I was writing it all down.
It was, after all, my duty.
In any case, you have to feel bad for the guy: he had to endure a barrage of stories from the self -proclaimed resident Gen X old bastard who meandered relentlessly passenger-side about a variety of topics: Things like the voluminous “missing/unidentified” files from THE DOE NETWORK” files. I would rattle off deserts, lakes and bogs spanning from Tamarac FLA to Cork, Ireland much like the one we would be swimming in. The brunt of the gasbag soliloquies were about the White Flight from LA County in the 80’s: I reminded him how cities like BackHandcaster, PALMdale, SNAPple Valley and Victimville were like shells of their former village status. How the subsequent housing boom and busts pretty much defined these places as banes and blessings for those who fled there or invested there before we all bailed out wall street to the tune of billions of dollars. I enlightened him about that 50 mile stretch of I-15, where tumbleweeds, thorny swale, rock and Joshua tree tendrils were razed and replaced by KOHL’S, Sam’s Clubs, McD’s, Chevron and those cleverly named strip malls where the fucking chain stores have chain stores in them, and where predator-vans and soccer mom SUV’s roam alike. It has been a steady decline of civilization since, I told him, as the domestic violence and child abuse rates in those cities have pretty much tripled along with the population. Instead of new prisons, I pontificate, the DCFS and county contracted mental health facilities have proliferated to keep up with the demand. Family values is serious business, I say, and business is good. Charlie’s good at feigning interest as he waved his hand in front of the a/c vent as if summoning some gambling djinn from the echelons of the Scion’s mechanical innards.
We found out that no such djinn existed. Things got ugly around State Line when he demanded I turn off the Elliott Smith and crank up the House of the Rising Sun and began to recount the horrific execution scenes during the final 10 minutes of Scorsese’s CASINO and how that movie really made him love that song—the backdrop to so many whack jobs culminating in Nicky Santoro’s welcome and brutal demise in a cornfield involving baseball bats and carefully delivered blows to ensure that said sociopathic scumbag would be alive long enough to be buried that way. Then he muttered about all the holes in the desert, maneuvered the cube off the I-15 and into the Primm Valley shit hole casino, where he promptly yanked a stack of 100’s out of the cash machine and started betting roulette with no real concept of the game, the odds or the scam. The scene was horrific and I felt responsible. I kept telling him we had a race to run and this was not going to reflect well on his future ABA standing if he was hauled off by the Clark County Sheriffs for causing a scene and attempting to assault the sweaty Louis CK meets Bubba from DELIVERANCE pit boss who was no short of fucking advising Charlie about placing inside/outside minimum bets. I was in a tight spot. He had the keys and I had the level -headed wherewithal for this excursion. I made a game time decision.
“Charles!” I implored, “Get a hold of yourself. What about the god damned PONIES?”
He got that $10,000 stare in his glazed eyes and whispered: “Seabiscuit.” Then we were off again, the smell of popcorn, vomit, cigarettes and industrial strength carpet cleaner hanging in the air behind us. It was past two sets of double paned tinted doors as we enter the inferno of the October desert.
We made it to the Jockey Club at about 1700hrs and he was hell bent on finding the nearest slot machines to try his luck at. We spent no less than 3 hours at the WHEEL OF TORTURE slot machine, feeding that thing bills and swiping credit cards frenetically as it mocked us unto the last spin. It was an omen–the first of many on this doomed foray into machodom. It became apparent that the swim –bike- run- competition would quickly decompensate into a flounder, flail, crash, burn and collapse- onto -a- rescue- golf cart fiasco. It was inevitable. I warned Charles about this, but he refused to listen to my naysaying preaching of doom and gloom, waved his hand at me like he did the a/c vent. I would not be Jedi Mindfucked into not telling the truth. I demanded he provide me with a tincture of his vape elixir, but he declined. All fun and games until the meat wagon shows up tomorrow, I said.
I don’t remember the first time I met Charles or how we became friends, really. I know his wife because we have the same kind of job where we go out into a kind of battlefield wearing no armor and with tools and weapons whose efficacy remains ambiguous at best and we go to war with the kinds of monsters not often seen in the movies or what passes off as popular fiction. In a manner of speaking, anyways. I was honored to have been invited to their wedding and made a big deal out of buying a summer suit with a bowtie for the affair. It didn’t work; I went home alone and cringed at every picture of my scowling bearded mug I saw after that. Such are the hazards of not dying–you get to see the progressive deterioration of yourself and cringe when you see the photographic evidence. These days I was more Brother Moulzone than Sam “Ace” Rothstein. Anyways, me and Charles got stories. Stories that will curl your toes. Stories that will make your parents wonder why you’re even digital friends with us. I have bad ideas and worst ones have made it to paper—where they’ll remain unsaid and unpublished, let’s leave it at that.
He was right about the first indictment: This was all my idea. It’s what old guys do as they get older. The attempts at training for the event were pathetic at best. We’d suit up in our uni-tard clown suits and do belly flops in the kiddie section of the Richard Alatorre Pool (compulsive “Social” Media check in: CHECK!) maybe throw a pool noodle around and do some high intensity dog paddling. Eventually, we’d wind up at Twohey’s restaurant stuffing our faces with pork sliders, french toast and artery arresting fried logs of carbs and animal grease. Then we’d call it a day and go get giant cups of heavily creamed and sugared coffee. And then, of course, brag on social media about our WOD and go back on forth on the check in comment thread about the breathers, sprints and miles we’d logged in the pool and on the track. The truth was, neither of us had any idea what horrors awaited us. We were in it for the panache, the bragging rights and the ineluctable feeding trough afterwards. We had been schooled well on the internet, where everything is exactly the way you portray it and nothing is as it seems because no one bothers looking any further than their hands. We would be legends–gods–stallions–inimitable badasses.
“Like” this, motherfuckers.
But first, we had to kind of get through it. This was our warrant and mission.
The preparations for game day amounted to boondoggling and fooling ourselves that we had something to do beforehand when in all actuality the die had been cast and our fate sealed. We had to get some swimming necessities and then pick up our Race Day packets somewhere on the outskirts of Vegas proper. We were on the strip less than 15 minutes before bellying up to a variety of one-armed bandits and green felt tables full of stoned faced dealers and laconic degenerate gamblers from every walk of miserable, doomed lives–and those were just the dealers. It was atrocious business. At every corner lingered a Wheel of Torture slot machine, craps table or blackjack table beckoning with easy riches, elimination of student loan albatrosses and the promise of endless nights wandering the South of France while hopscotching beach huts and sidewalk cafes. All of them were glass pipe dreams as the cash flow went from wallet to table and down the dealer’s black hole chute —where many a dream, family and savings account had most certainly entered. We were chased out of the casino after attempting to barter a shipment of Catahoula and Tuxedo Cat steaks in trade for a $10,000 marker. It was close but we made it: Our hasty, peripatetic getaway into the CAFÉ AMERICA was a success.
It was there that we weighed our options over steak, eggs, and lomticks of toast. There weren’t many. Charley demanded a bloody steak, raw eggs and a side of bacon with a bowl of vanilla ice cream, which he used as dip. The truth of the matter was apparent: We’d come to compete in a race and the gambling was supposed to be secondary. That could not have been further from the truth. Defeated, I suggested we just follow through and get our race packets and at least make some half-assed attempt to see this thing through. Charley wasn’t paying attention and was playing the numbers on that electronic sudoku like bingo racket they have on the TV screens.
The check came. It was $326.00 for two plates of swill. I started to say something when Charles smacked me and then slammed an Amex Black Card on it and told me, “I got it.” again, the urge to ask questions was stifled as I saw the name on it: Yusef G. Vindalooski.
“I gotta a take a piss, man. See you outside.”
He grunted and waved me away again, his hand like this claw wand. I was starting to get nervous. What had I gotten myself into?
We made our way to the Cube Mobile as I punched in the location of McGhies bike shop–the rallying point to get our Race Day packets and Lo Jack anklets-into the GPS. We were there inside of 30 minutes, weaving in and out of the I-15 traffic with expert precision. My cohort had a preternatural sense of direction in these parts and was able to navigate us with almost rain man precision with only the coordinates…whereas most people would ask for a step by step direction, my driver asked for coordinates…..and I was learning very quickly not to delve too far into the nuances of who what when were why with this guy.
We made it there within 20 minutes. He pulled the suicide machine Scion into the parking lot, where we were met with a mob of tri-athletic college kids passing around flasks of whisky, puffing blunts and dancing around in an MDMA fueled orgy of pre-race anticipation. The line snaked down about 4 blocks and there was talk that anyone over 30 with a BMI more than .05% would be disqualified immediately. We had to think quickly. I removed my shirt and began growling as Charles warned the little fuckers to back off; he calmly advised that I had ingested 4 packets of what I thought was GOO but was turned out to be a synthetic hash oil laced with Russian bath salts that he’d bought at Schiphol airport from some guy wearing a MONSANTO shirt. Said I found it in his luggage and he woke up to me sucking them down. By the time he socked me in the gut to get me to throw it up it was too late: I was already nude in the hotel pool and he rescued me from a certain death from a retired- cop- turned -hotel- security goon who appeared to have an Anton Chigurh cattle prod oxygen tank contraption he was about to use on my face. The ploy and story worked and the little bastards backed off in horror and began murmuring something about Krokodil, Ebola and flesh eating disease being airborne.
We melded into line about 10 paces from the registration tables near the $5,000 road bikes and $98.00 space age neoprene swim caps. We raided the free sample jars: Ibuprofen, pain gel, ice packet cucumber goggles, earbuds (that doubled as automated external defibrillators) and headbands saturated with the military grade steroids. There was some confusion at the registration table as Charles had to change up his registration from SEASONED STALLION STATUS to BELLY FLOP BEGINNERS and then threatened me within an inch of my pathetic life if I mentioned a word about it to his wife. I was all mum and requested only that we “Carb Load” at the nearest In N Out as it was our duty to have an appropriate amount of carbs, protein and fat grams stuffed into our pieholes before Game Day. He agreed.
We made it up to the room at the world famous Jockey Club with about 8 hours to spare. Every time we got on the elevator though it was a gamble: No telling whether it was going to be some atavistic meth head Floridian asking what floor he was on or the proverbial ETOH dependent pre-dementia retiree drooling and cackling maniacally and swinging their canes at us as we tried to board. The elevator was clear and we made it to the room in one piece. In our room, the idiot box was rife with reports of mayhem, imported disease and worse tragedies: a veritable circus of halfwits, thieves, hypocrites and junkies giving their impressions and odds for the biggest swindle and gamble in town, The Upcoming Election. It was difficult to discern between the recent paranoia about viral infections, school shootings, celebrity titty -slips and video du jour nonsense, so Charlie solved the problem by sinking his fist into the plasma big screen and ordering room service from the local pizza hole. We gorged on pepperoni pie, cookie dough and diet coke. Dawn came too soon as the alarms sounded in the pre dawn hours. Las Vegas at that hour is a serious affair and bearing witness to it while not torqued out on heavy pharmaceuticals and 151 Bacardi is not advisable. The streets at that time are vacant and littered only with prostitutes and zombified shadows, stumbling around with their toofless, rotted mouths agape: wallets empty, claws outstretched, eyes rolled back into their vacuous skulls. The day of reckoning had arrived. We were doomed as the minimal training we had completed sank in. Whereas in the World Before This One, I was prone to waking up amidst a sea of beer bottles, cans and tin foil scraps peppered with ash and resin, this was an altogether straight edge tsunami of cookie boxes pizza crusts, empty ice cream cartons and Ben Gay tubes–and we’d made the commitment of apparently sober, sound mind and judgment. We quaffed instant coffee and handfuls of vitamin pills, donned our spandex neoprene clown suits and headed off into the sunrise on a prayer and whim.
The staging area at Lake Mead was a dustcloud of SUV’s, Prii and light pickup trucks adorned with bumper stickers and memorabilia from triathlon events far and wide. The University of Colorado kids we’d seen the day before eschewed vehicle transport and came running and cycling in while tossing back Nalgene bottles full of vodka and Red Bull, chuffing clouds of blunt-smoke, hooting and hollering. Charlie swerved the Aryan Cube Car expertly next to one of those tall European box car serial killer vans, where two females who looked like Tri veterans were eating soy cakes and kale chips. They regarded us coolly as we made our way out like sluggish turtles spooked by gunfire. The inside of their van looked like a Tour De Force locker room: ACE bandages, race jerseys, sweat shirts and equipment lay strewn about the inside along with maps GPS trackers and sphygmomanometer cuffs. All manner of workout attire hung from a makeshift laundry line stretched like a garrote across the inside of the van. I thought I spotted a scaly, viscous thigh or appendage of some sort under a pile of sports bras and syringes, but the predawn light was misleading. A high- end blender was bolted and rigged to a crude wet bar, a mixture of green foam spilled out from the top. They quaffed tall plastic tumblers of the concoction and murmured amongst themselves, completely oblivious to us. We began to pull our bikes out of the back as the U of C kids came tear-assing down through the parking lot, kicking up Pigpen clouds of dust and laughing at us with our pathetic equipment. They were riding like Cirque Du Soleil gods stacked 3-4 deep on each other’s shoulders like maniacal trapeze artists while manning $5,000 road bikes. They guzzled Coors Light like it was water and screamed like banshees in heat at the lowly amateurs ruining the landscape of their beloved proving grounds. The girls next to us were stretching now. Both appeared to be double jointed at the hips and neck. They stood back to back, bent over but facing each other while bent over, ears to ankles. They were almost kissing.
“Oh yeah, you mean the guy that died last year during the swim?” one said, and then they both started laughing. Another augury. I thought I heard thunder. The whole place suddenly transformed into a nightmare circus and sideshow–where we were the freaks. It was only a matter of time. The jig was up. I would be This Year’s Casualty or worse: laughed out of the venue within minutes of the starting gun. Charley sucked at the vape stick as I popped a Rock Star and meditated on the upcoming shamefest that was soon to unfold. The sun crept up on the Martian landscape. Being in Nevada is an interplanetary space travel. Most of the time it’s unreal there. It’s subhuman, not quite a way you would always want to be. It’s a place to say you’ve been but not a place to call home.
There was no backing out. Charley kept saying he was paralyzed with a fear about wanting to take a shit once he was 80 yards out; I envisioned a flat tire while negotiating a 5% grade and flying face first ass over teakettle into the scrub and cactus needles, my eyes gouged out, my tattoos scraped off, and one of those clown carts scraping me off the asphalt with gigantic neon colored beach shovels, zither music and monkeys leaping around and shit. The nightmares were short lived as they sounded the 15 minute alarm for GO TIME. There was a rush of movement as the battalion of finely tuned, tanned, well muscled rippled bodies floated past us. That was the first wave–the Olympic Triathlon. The beginners stood shivering and moaning in their wake; that’s where we were, where we belonged.
They were chanting frat and sorority songs to the tune of indiscernible pop music nonsense. The stench of Red Bull, vodka and Fat Tire ale mixed with the eau de Colorado River: gasoline, mud, urine and sunscreen. They launched into it ahead of us. We made our way down the red carpet that lined the beach. It was apparently wired to trip the lo jack contraptions affixed to our ankles. They told us it was going to clock us in and out of the transitions. But what we both agreed upon was that it was some kind of electronic tagging system for the Clark County Coroner. It was like the UPC code for the morgue: some guy in scrubs would be scanning our bloated, pathetic carcasses from the meat wagon to the steel locker: bagged, tagged and gagged for easy dispatch and release. We both stared nervously at the horizon of a rising sun as we trounced the makeshift gravel beach and into the 78d degree cesspool of zero visibility. They said someone drowned here last year…but what if he still remained down there, in the depths. What if? Charley? He was mute, suddenly in the zone, apparently ready for the challenge. I cursed his young carcass and all it represented; which is to say everything I once was…
I couldn’t breathe. I forgot how to swim. I was suddenly terrified.
It was time.
We waded in waist level, the energy from the Beginner’s Leg a wave of terror and confusion. I kept asking everyone where the course began and ended but no one answered. It was kill or be killed. No mercy. The mud at shore’s edge was warm and peppered with small jagged boulders; footing on it was tenuous and slippery. We were practically holding onto each other. The scene was reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator: people vomiting, begging for their mother, murmuring religious incantations of the god of their choice, pissing themselves. We had no leadership, no 11th hour pep speeches, nothing to rely upon but our own bad judgment for getting here in the first place. The swim course was mapped out visually; we’d be swimming in a rectangle pattern around 3-4 buoys. Atop each buoy were really pissed off mongoloids, purported to be rejects from the Psychiatric Special Olympics. They held long harpoon-like poles and were instructed to discourage us from grasping onto the buoys for respite. There were a smattering of kayaks and lifeguard posts around the perimeter of the swim course. These were your lifelines should you start to slip under we were told through the bullhorn. They looked like Wal Martians. Stuporous bovine humanoids with an interest in doing as little as possible. A few were swatting flies and eating them. One of them looked preoccupied with the contents of the ice chest each kayak apparently came equipped with. None of them looked like they knew bow from stern or that they would be able to row anything other than a bottle of piss to their lips. A few of them had ‘binos and were glassing the beach, where a parade of family members cheered on the participants. And then all of a sudden the starting gun went off and a horn blew and a mushroom cloud of terror and anxiety came washing over me.
I stepped into the warm slime and then everything went black.
I remember nothing except limping across the finish line, both quads exploding in fiery cramping pain. A ten-year old was jumping up and down mocking me. He tossed my “PUMPKINMAN FINSHER” medal at me from 10 feet away and it landed on me like a horseshoe rung. I grabbed a bottle of water and a banana, as my mouth was a desiccated vortex of sand and salt. Charley sat on the grass about 50 yards from the finish line in a lotus position with piles of chocolate milk cartons and banana peels strewn about him. The vape appeared to have tripled in size. Now it was the size of a fucking Benelli shotgun as clouds of that sweet smelling synthetic vape-slop ca me pouring out of his mouth and nostrils. He looked like a Nordic Cheshire cat. He was fucking levitating. Smiling. Beaming. The kids are crowded around him cheering him on, taking the signature millennial autograph with him, the selfie.
“What took you so long,” he asked and then burped a cloud of chocolate banana smoke leaked out of his mouth.
That was when I projectile vomited and passed out.
As Charley told me the story later, he chased the ambulance personnel away when they arrived: told them he was my lawyer and knew exactly what I required for a speedy recovery. He threw me over his shoulders like the lump of shit I was and into the Cubevan. I came to at the local St. Arbucks as he wafted the steamy goodness of a red eye under my nose.
After a pit stop at the hotel to wash the grime and slime off, we hit the buffet at Seizure’s Palace. The scene was a massacre: piles of crab legs and prime rib gristle lie in heaps all over the table like an abattoir. The waitress was horrified and kept bringing napkins and lemon wedges. My fingers were caked in BBQ sauce. Charley was playing JENGA with a mountain of Kobe beef sliders. She started to say something about a time limit and another surcharge for–“Don’t worry about us, Charley barked, just bring me another hot coal for the hookah pipe!!!” I had to remind him we weren’t at Zephyr and the girl was likely going to call the cops if we didn’t behave ourselves and that there did appear to be some kind of time limit. I was slowly gaining my senses, if for no other reason than self preservation. I had no juice or clout in this town, I advised, and we may wind up in the Clark County Jail or worse if we continued to play our cards wrong–irony and puns being what they may.
“What’s worse than jail?” he scoffed, tossed a slider up, caught it in his mouth and swallowed it with minimal chewage like a rabid dog.
“Well,” I said, “the Clark County Psychiatric fucking Emergency Room, for one.”
“Good point,” he said. He was quiet after that. Rest assured, he’d been briefed on the drive over here about the Tenth Circle of Hell aka The State Hospital. I trusted that visions of de-gloved testicles, piles of filthy roach infested laundry, showers administered with hoses by surly overpaid burned out psych techs and having a son-of-a bitch like me as a social worker. It was my job to provide clarification and education.
I lapsed into an endorphin and carbohydrate coma after that and when I came to again we were on the I- 15 slaloming the asphalt snake Southbound towards L.A. I had finally learned to stop asking questions. Charlie pulled up to my house and shoved me out of the cube with a grunt, absconding with my instant coffee, cookies, bike and proof that I was a FINISHER. I was speechless.
It’s been 2 weeks since we’ve returned and things went from bad to worse. I was back on hallowed LA County soil for 4 days when I was plowed into by a Ford F150 in front of the San Marino police station, throwing my back out and transforming me from a multi sport soldier into a prototype of one of those leviathan lumps of human debris you see careening around Disneyland and various superstore aisles in one of those fatbody scooters. I require physical assistance to wipe my ass, tie my shoes or to go from a sitting or lying position. Charlie has since ignored all my calls and as of this writing, his phone is disconnected. Noncom. B.O. Out of Order. Not appearing in this picture. Vaya con Dios. Fini. All my hopes and dreams of becoming a two time contender have gone up in a synthetic vape cloud. My McDoctor (employed by a large moneymaking corporate entity called an HMO) put me on limited duty, so at work I sit on the sidelines as the good calls get dispatched: jumpers, cutters, barricades, and all manner of bleating, babbling, drooling maniacal word salad schizophrenic wise men and women of the night and predawn hours. I am regarded with utter disdain when I show up to roll call. They call me Soap, Gimp, Useless, Old Lackluster, The Workman’s Comp Wannabe, they do the finger quote thing when they say oh Barraza, he’s a “Triathlete.” I chew Robaxin and Aleve like M&M’s and have had to lug around one of those lumbar pillows, which may as well be a hemorrhoid donut. The abuse is relentless. My coworkers are not empathic; they’re worse than cops, most of them.
“I used to be a contender, “I lament.
“Oh cry me a river of blood,” one of my colleagues says last week. “I had a clusterfuck the size of Gibraltar: Siamese twins. At a private school. The parents were lawyers. And one of them had Benjamin Button’s disease. One met criteria for a W&IC 5585** and the other didn’t I had to fucking call APS and DCFS and then as we’re waiting for the cavalry, one of them starts making allegations of sexual abuse against the other. And where were you?” she shoots this look at me.
“I was, umm, collating TPS reports!” I start bawling. Pop another Aleve. Wild laughter ensues.
I have my strategy mapped out though. I can swim, if nothing else. I’ve been showing up at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center with buckets of mud, chunks of concrete and blacked out my goggles. I’ve been thrown out 4 times already and none of them seem to understand me when I tell them it’s imperative to emulate the conditions of competition if I’m ever to compete again.
It’s my destiny to compete again. In Las Vegas, naturally. I’ll be more prepared next time. I’ll be sharper. Plan better. I’ll come decked out in SCUBA attire and a real bike. Legal steroids. Dressed for battle.
And I’ll find that rat bastard Charles yet.
After all, he still has my god damned cookies.
*Parolee At Large
**California Welfare & Institutions Code 5585 The Children’s Civil Commitment and Mental Health Treatment Act of 1988
Difficult To Cure 
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