Orange is the New Brown...

"If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

—Charles Darwin

Damn. As if the improbability of my bike trip going down this year isn't bad enough, Salsa had to come out and twist the blade. The second generation Vaya is now available, and it's not only new, but arguably improved. First, the clever bastards have added a replaceable derailleur hanger. That's a "nice-to-have" (more so on a mountain bike), but obviously not lust worthy in and of itself. The real bite in the bully bag, to me, is that they changed the color from butt-coffee brown (okay, it's not that bad of a color) to opulent orange.

I love orange frames, never mind the fact that I've never owned one (which just makes this accidental near-perfidy that much more difficult to stomach). And damn, that appears to be a really fine shade. To add invective to injury, to make me rue my unruly impatience, they even improved on the graphics, with edgier down- and seat-tube logos and the substitution of a new chain-stay catchphrase, "Adventure by Bike," for the slightly less apt, "Ride & Smile" that adorns the rear quarter panels on both my Vaya and my Casseroll frames.

This is my luck. I think the Mayans might have been off a year in their eschatological estimations. Twenty-eleven just ain't cutting it thus far and seems poised with outstretched arms and open heart to embrace the apocryphal apocalypse and bring this hyperreal horror-show to its ineluctable end. But, of course, there's still plenty of time left in the year to turn things around, to salvage the sordid seconds that have already slipped past, to betray the banal, to ditch the diabolical diorama of everyday life, to make a prison-break in a blurred-legged beeline across the gallows grounds, to dart past the Dule trees (index finger tugging absently at a necktie already nixed), to ditch the Maxwell's demon who manipulates the script, casting doubt, causing questioning, pulling me back into the mold.

The days drag on, but this ever-present me is homeomorphic to the man on the bicycle pedaling ever toward the west. I am changing, becoming myself, almost him already.

No word on the new job yet. Got my fingers crossed in a counter direction.  Soon the verdict. But right now, the bottle over the bike...

I claim proneness to exaggeration
But the truth lies in my frustration
The children of the night, they all pass me by
Have to drench myself in brandy
In sleep I'll hide
But however much I booze
There ain't no way out
There ain't no way out
I don't care what you say, boy
There ain't no way out
* * * * * *
And the night comes down like a cell door closing
Suddenly I realize that I'm writin' now more honestly
While sitting here all alone with a bottle and my head a-floating
Far away from the phone and the conscience
going on at me and on at me
And I don't care what you say
There ain't no way out
—The Who, "However Much I Booze", The Who By Numbers