what seems like for-ev-er ago i was at the northern rim of the grand canyon working on an ongoing (eighteen years) research project that studies the behavioral patterns of my mormon extended family, to include non-nuclear aunts, uncles, and progeny. what do they eat for breakfast? why do they criticize the sinners of the family (myself) for polluting their bodies with chemicals/poison (coffee), while midway through taking advantage of a can of "caffeine-free" coca cola [ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, caramel color(?), trihydroxidooxidophosphorus...]? why do they have thirty-two chromosomes like that tang-lovin' lance armstrong asshole? why do they keep giving me shirts for christmas that have red "A"'s sewn onto the left breast? why do they have a picture of joseph smith (the spanish conquistador that romanced/seduced/enslaved pochahontas) above their mantlepiece? why haven't they read "under the banner of heaven" yet? joke...i love my family, but reserve the right to criticize their peculiarities, with examples to include refusing to do the caffeine thing, being lazy on sundays and attempting to allow others to do so by not going "out" all day except to church, wearing strange white undergarments under their overgarments, not bringing their own b to a b.y.o.b picnic, being really into milk, having more children then toes... wait, this guy is mormon also, right? if my extended family represents the far right of the weird and pious, then surely he must be situated at the far left, consequently providing ballast to a ship constructed out of pixie stix dust, microwave ovens, and elmer's school paste by romanian orphans. i have also never considered that perhaps even as christians or jews my family would still be eerie as indiana, and maybe it isn't fair to nail it all under the banner of mormonism. (again a joke, as i am fully aware that mormons too leaf off of the incestuous tree of christian religious denominations).
...?...
oh, i remember...
okay, in reality the project i have been consumed with every summer for the last eighteen years is a study of "how effing great bats are", coincidentally the title of the research paper. in concordance with annual ritual i hike out to the canyon's edge, approximately sixty-four meters south of my cabin, late at night armed with a camera, a pen/research log, a police issue "COPS signature series" flashlight, a large fishing net, and a can of deer mace. only problem with bats is that they are somewhat of a tricky species, due to their nocturnal(werewolfesque) nature. i can't really make out much in the dark most of the time unless i squint real hard in the light of a full moon or make use of the flashlight...and i know what you're thinking, but the whole net thing is to a greater extent rooted in tradition than actual function these days. i managed to capture a bat using the net in the summer of '99, but was quickly bitten in the lower stomach and sent to utah for a series of rabies shots, which also would not have happened in this day and age because since '99 nighttime bat research attire has also changed drastically to now include shoes and a shirt. regardless, i don't need meaningless visual information to study bats, although once in a while it might be nice so that all of the drawings in my research log don't keep looking like pictures of the mothman drawn by richard gere's unhinged wife. speaking of moths, entomologists hate bats, and not for the reason you might think... namely that they are more sexually successful. actually, during my latest eye examination i was waiting for the effects of the dilating eye drops to kick in and was reading this article in some amateur bug collector children's magazine, called "BUGZ RULE", about crime and how adolescent bats have been breaking into entomology departments in universities across the country. the target of these raids? bug collections.
:)
the real fact is that in the last eighteen years my research has yielded less useful facts about bats than the ones in this book, which i read as a child and may have plagiarized heavily in all of those unpublished papers that i submitted to "nature".
passing through flagstaff on the way back from the grand canyon i stopped for a somewhat impromptu bike race and I WON I WON I WON...the category three road race, and i think i placed sixth in the hill climb, which yielded second place in the omnium. yes it was quite neat, and after throwing countless hours and money from my parents (joke) into cycling it was nice to get something back in the form of two checks with a sum totaling two hundred and twenty five dollars, which paid for food and my share of the gas on the car ride home.
weeks later i found myself fishing in alaska with fourteen of my fathers closest colleagues and some of their sons. as one of the only non-fisherman i was unsuccessful in catching fish for several hours, and no joke i made a deal with some sort of benevolent god of the salmon [and the captain of our boat] that i would consume the beating heart of the fish that would grab my line, and in doing so allow its memory to live on and be preserved in my lower intestine for-ev-er. this was dumb as ten minutes later i was eating the pulsating brussel sprout-sized heart of a king salmon.
in order to make some more money, and thusly fund cyclocross and my chemical habits this fall, i agreed to take care of the pets of our family friend about a month ago. in the span of a month i was asked by three other families to do the same thing...all approximately during the same two week period. i have been cleaning up feces, hating animals, and regretting my decisions ever since.
