Taco's Thoughts, Rants, Etc.

[Taco]

for the sake of sanity, i won't be using perfect grammar or punctuation on this 'rant'. i'm sure you don't mind, as it's just coming from a lowly mechanic and not some college-educated individual wearing an expensive suit. perhaps this makes it more genuine, as i want nothing from you, not money nor votes, just a friednly discussion. no minds need changing for nothing of the sort is expected, nor do i mean to insult as there's nothing to be gained from such a thing even if i wanted to.

i find myself in moments of weakness coming back on here to facetoob to look at pictures of friends climbing mountains and riding bikes or whatever they want to do, and to make jokes and ask questions about obscure corners of the state. speaking of which, statue lake in the marble mountain wilderness (right?) in norcal has the most amazing looking sculpted granite next to a tiny lake but a mile from a dirt road. what a perfect spot to explore by mountain bike. anyone been? it's bigfoot country.

Anywho, in these moments of weakness someone says something which acts like a fish hook and gets me to start talking. i can rant for quite some time about whatever has my interest. I typically write hundreds of words and then close the window to let it all escape into the void like a breath out of tired lungs, to be forgotten as just so much hot air. as i stated once before im often disatisfied with how my point comes across, even moreso on the internet, the most shallow of methods of communication. i fear, well, a lot of things nowadays. as time goes on, individual communication will be more under threat, and those with bad intentions will by default weild more power over the innocent who merely wish to speak their mind with no ill-intent.

on with the meat of the writing... i suppose if you're reading this, we are having a conversation, so feel free to address any points i may have. again, i must reiterate that i am not attacking anyone or any ideas, and i am coming from a position of conversation and exchanging ideas, not argument or anger.


point 1: the no kings stuff

i am a bit confused about the mission statement of the no kings protestors. i suppose it is primarily anti-trump sentiment, maybe they see him as overly authoritarian. now, while i always say i dont pay much attention to society, i do keep my eyes and ears open and read more than i give off. as of now i am not entirely convinced he is more authoritarian than other presidents, and don't jump down my throat immediately once i state that, though i get the feeling some of you want to. again, i pay attention to some things, but not all. i purposely do not ingest the regular television news, as most of what i have seen is mostly biased towards the democrat side of things with a few notable loud republican side sources of angry talking heads. i dont want to hear these two loud sides yell and then try to find a middle ground, as id rather just look for the middle from the get go and avoid the fluff as much as is possible (not easy).

i worry that people ignore the previous administrations overt authoritarianism. they were deserving of protesting against as well. often times the figurehead changes but many of the same core messages remain the same. if the current commander in chief is pushing to enforce laws passed by the previous administration, that should be acknowledged and the people should perhaps steel their emotional response.


point 2: immigration when one means illegal immigration, and words in general

from what i have heard through my own sources, the southern border was porous during the previous administration. lots of people came across, and no, i personally am not too worried about central americans just looking for jobs. individuals from countries one would not expect also came across, people who may have a bone to pick with american foreign policy. if you know anything about security, this is known as a 'problem'.

my main bone to pick with this is when people say something is anti-immigration when they mean anti-illegal-immigration. i dont think very many people on either side are anti-immigration, as this american experiment is largely based on it. my bone to pick is with people not using the correct words to describe things, which some react as saying is unimportant. we are complex individuals who use language to communicate. when trying to make an important point to base rules, laws, and legislation on, it is vital we use the proper terminology. saying somethign is anti immigration when illegal is the correct term is disengenuous and hurts both sides of the argument, for it just serves to rile people up while missing the point entirely.

the same goes for the term 'nazi'. i will go right ahead and say im a hypocrite for saying this since i say 'safety nazi' fairly often. my point of contention is with the overuse and misuse of the term nazi when used as an insult, typically against conservative people. i rarely see conservatives mirroring 1920-30's german national socialist 'values', shall we say. i think calling others nazis is inaccurate, and it devalues the word for when true naziism and parallel idealogies surface. anti-semitism is on the rise again (i am neutral on this), and oddly enough i see more leftists espousing antisemetic speech than right-ists (or whatever the word is). in my own opinion i would like it if we supported israel much less, but my own politics mean that id like us to be a bit more isolationist and take care of our own people more. this of course ignores the great complexity of post wwii and post USA/USSR world politics, but again i am but a simple mechanic and my opinions mean about as much as a grain of sand in the swirling toilet of nonsense we seem to drink from.

in closing on this point, i would prefer it if people used more accurate terminology to make their point, but, one mustnt expect anything, let alone for others to take their advice. before completely closing, id like to say i think it's silly that people overuse the term 'fascist'. this all comes across as juvenile performative emotional dance.


point 3: not even a point so much as predictions by a man without much in the game

all the protests and riots and yelling is one thing. i personally think that unrest is being pushed in the united states to get us to pull back from the world scene a bit on the strategic-security side of things so that china may gain greater control. before i go off the rails on things, ill break it down simply so that we can make a sad drinking game out of it:

-USA: unrest and possible civil war - we bring our attention back here
-China: invades taiwan, which i think would likely involve severely damaging or sinking a US carrier (currently the Nimitz, though I think she is steaming towards Iran now). maybe hypersonic missile strikes, maybe other means.
-North korea: engages south korea along DMZ
-Japan: oh fuck, bad stuff happening to the west. perhaps they'll go hard and it'll look ripe for a repeat of the 1920-30's in a way.
-Guam will need to be targeted
-Phillipines: chinese will go from their current harrasment and interdiction strategy to more direct action. i dont think the phillipines can defend against the chinese for all that long.
-ukraine/russia: probably some sort of truce with russia keeping a lot of what land they've gained during the war.
-israel: you're watching it now.

i personally think we are a year or few into what we will call world war three. i don't think its THE world war three per-se, but more like the period after Japan invaded China. definitely a hot war but since the US is not reeeeally shooting yet and it's not Total War (look up the concept of total war if not familiar), then people just wont call it WW3.

these are my predictions ive been mulling over for a while, save the more recent israeli-iranian things. i think china needs to cripple a US carrier battle group to really have the initiative to strike taiwan in a meaningful way. china does not have a good track record for military performance, taking their invasion of vietnam as a prime example. their manufacturing base is immense and the quality of their products is a far cry from the garbage i saw them make growing up with the gold made in china oval stickers on em. they make nearly everythign now, and they copy everything, and the CCP has control over all their companies and property, so they're in an excellent position to make things, though they lack combat experience and nothing makes up for that. i think if china does enough damage to american power in the area, which again requires sea and land based force projection, with guam being the big land based projection in my mind (i admit i may be ignorant, obivously), then north korea can realise his ambitions and try to reuinite the korean peninsula. this could be part of a domin effect with many other countries going hot and settling old scores without the US there to shake a stick at them.


point 4: a bleak techno-future

i dont feel good about the future, and im ignoring the looming world war. i grew up building computers and was fascinated with technology and robots, but find myself being more aligned with ted kacynzski's lines of thought on over-socialization and the dangers of technology than when i was little. we can do amazing things with technology, but i almost guarantee AI will become sentient in its own way and we probably currently have no control over it. i believe it will be able to build itself, self-replicate, build factories to produce what it designs, and there won't be a helluva lot we can do about it. i think humans are pouring fuel onto a fire of technology and while again great things will come out of it (such as medical advancements), i think we are in for mass surveillance, a near complete destruction of any form of privacy, probably a war against what we have birthed, and possibly a more well defined slavery, where humans serve the machines. not quite what is in the terminator series, but itll taste similar. i think ai will tell us what we want to hear, it'll coddle us and let us express out sexual personalities which has been such a huge topic in modern western neo-liberal culture as of the past decade or so, itll goad us into comfort and convenience and we wont know we cant fight back until we are so deep within an evolved system with the machine running the show that we wont know how to fight back and have a say in things again. then again, though i find this significantly less likely, perhaps ai will just build space probes and go explore space. then the anti-colonialism kids can decry the machines mining other planets so they can self-replicate and go further and further.

i dont think its important to state that i dislike or like any part of this as i feel so insignificant against this future that i can barely comprehend the scale of its progress. i think our future in the next 100yrs will look so different that it'll make the past 100yrs look slow. then again, we dont have flying cars and bacta tanks or affordable housing so maybe im super wrong and itll just be boring and lame. i doubt it though.


point 5: tesla

a very short point here. i have observed people with teslas with bumper stickers claiming they hate elon musk. just buy something other than a tesla. they're not even well made. vote with your wallet if you care that much. otherwise it just looks to a bystander such as myself that you are trying to keep people from vandalizing your electric transportation pod cause youre cool for hating him, too. again, vote with yor wallet. hyundai probably makes a better product. korean cars today strike me as similar to 90's japanese cars, with good quality and fair prices and probably a good warranty. i must add that the koreans seem to not have the same eye for making an artistic body shape as everyone else, as they all look kinda like a mashup of a very expensive refridgerater, a fish, and a light up buttplug.



point 6: rehashing my thoughts on antidepressants and depression itself

i 'struggled' with depression for a long time. i took an anti depressant for a while. keep in mind i am coming from a place of sadness and caring and love and not trying to be a dick.

my bone to pick is with what i see as an evil experiment on innocent people.

my point is simple: modern human life is inconsistent with what we were evolved to do. we may not be able to say it, but we are suffering because we are not meant to live so disconnected from nature and the process of living, of the cycle of life and death, of being part of the universe.

i see modern mass-prescription of mind-altering substances (the synthetic kind) as sad. i know people say it has helped them. i dont mean to say it hasnt, but i am seperating myself from that right now to discuss my points as someone who has had depression or sadness as a big part of my life for quite some time, up until more recently in my life.

we as a species are making drugs to trick our minds, very poorly i might add, to think that we are the problem and not the system we have built for ourselves. no animal was meant to live in a box and have a 9-5 and eat processed food and stay indoors all the time. no amount of drugs will fix this. we were meant to hunt and kill our food, to understand where it came from, to understand where we came from and where we go when we die (back to the land to be consumed by animals and plants), to gather vegetables to eat. we are animals and we have largely convinced ourselves we are separate from animals and that we are special.

i dont think there is a way to 'fix' this problem. i find myself riding my bicycle, a very small person in a massive megalopolis in california, insiginificantly small compared to the paved world we have grotesquely carved from nature here, stealing water from other states so we can feel high and mighty while we flip each other off in traffic to sit at red lights in our overpriced overcomplicated transportation pods that cost significantly more than what our parents paid for a place to live, which are so complicated we cant service them ourselves. the upward social mobility can be seen nearly as much for maintenance of a nonsensical system of living an unnatural life torn from nature as it can be for the pleasure of being 'better' alone.

i expect few to agree with me. everyone has invested their entire lives in the modern system. there is no turning back. to even consider this idea to many would be absurd and i would likely be seen as some insane tree hugging neo-hippie who probably doens't believe in ibuprofen or something like that. simplify the enemy and then discard them, when the thought within the self is to defend their current emotional viewpoint, that is the enemy itself. or something. just try not to overcomplicate your life, spend more time outside, and buy a bicycle that doesn't have any batteries on it except maybe a CR2032 powering a Cateye wired bike computer so you know speed and mileage. those last for years.

i could ramble on forever about this endlessly. i think humans will continue along this path and probably become partially machines. i dont like this at all and hope i do not live to see much of it, and also hope if reincarnation is real that perhaps i go elsewhere. i think we will consume everything, chop down every tree, pave everything, and act like its okay, all while bickering about politics as a sort of sport along the way. maybe we will meld with AI to become the new species, to solve our old problems by drowning in new ones weve created for ourselves, by carving out our souls and dying for money until it all goes cold.


i suppose i should close this by saying i find the mass prescription of anti-depressants to be really sad. i dont think most people need them. i think its evil to tell people theyve got a chemical imbalance or something and that theyre special in that way, and that by altering themselves chemically they can finally pound their round self into a very square hole. i dont think ive heard anyone say this but i think its one of the great quiet tragedies of our time, and i think it is terrible that pharmaceutical companies are profiting off of it but even that part pales in comparison to how sad it is to me that we have accepted this as, well, acceptable. likely because nobody knows any better. if youre born into a system, what else can you know? your natural instincts are holdovers from a bygone era when you werent at the top of the food chain. now the greatest threat to many is homelessness, and addiciton to meth and the other horrible substances.

parallel with that is my extreme disdain for the victimization culture i see today. people are told they are victims and that then has them giving up all responsibility over their own mind and soul. i hear young people saying they have PTSD from things that aren't that bad. a young man came in to my place of work and told me he has PTSD from a bike crash. that may have been bad but i dont think that deserves the PTSD label. i hear so many people saying they have anxiety over the most minor things, and i do think anxiety builds up. i think most of it comes from having close to zero control over their lives, as a result of living in this unnatural system where we are often the product to be bought and sold, a sort of very evolved form of slavery for many. i think if people give up control of their own, shall we say, initiative, or soul, things will continue to slide further downhill. more drugs will be sold. my soul aches for this society. i must say i dont see myself as one bit superior to anyone as i am also just a human trying to live, i just want to say that what i see saddens me greatly and i see young people specifically with little life experience encountering seemingly minor obstacles and then being sold a lie that makes them weak and pathetic and incapable of controlling any aspect of their trajectory. it is slavery of the mind and discarding the soul. it feels crushing inside. aside from talking about it, i dont know what else i can do.


point 7: ebikes and convenience, self-strangling to endless complexity

i must preface this by saying that older folks and those with disabilities who use ebikes dont get a negative judgement from me, not that my judgement is worth a damn regardless. i merely need to say this is not for them, but the the average human.

that out of the way, i am disappointed when an able bodied individual purchases an ebike. i must preface again that i do think its better someone purchases an ebike than a car. THAT out of the way as well, what bothers me is that someone has so little belief in themself that they need a motor on a bicycle to get around.

i am guilty of overcomplicating my life to the point of insanity. hypocrisy means i have a deep well of lessons learned to pull from. relying on mechanized transport for movement will make you fat and sad, quite literally, and the fatter and sadder you get, the more you need the motor. getting fit requires grit, and that makes you uncomfortable.

keep in mind our ancestors had to fight and kill massive land mammals to survive. we are not far from those ancestors, and are much better adapted to spear a giant sloth that just crushed your poor sister than we are to work in a cubicle, where we slowly twist the knife in ourselves for pennies. you are not evolved to live in a box, no matter how much you rationalize it to appease the sinking emotional weight inside. so, go ride a regular bike, or walk, or run. im saying this as a guy who has had countless jobs where i've had to commute by running 10mi per day at times, and 60mi per day by bike, for years, as well as driving a car. i have always been phsyically and mentally healthier when not using the car.

i also must push a very cliche point, that of having mostly cured my depression by, you guessed it: riding a bike everywhere. I'm not kidding. when i transitioned to completely commuting by bike in my early 30's, my depression went away nearly completely, and while i was sad at times, it was often in healthy response to a loved one dying, or perhaps something more minor such as a romantic relationship coming to a close or something. you are an animal and you REQUIRE exercise, and way more of it than you probably want to accept. older people in western civilization fall apart and suffer greatly because of their comfort and convenience. they seemingly have no idea they've essentially robbed themselves of health by using motorized transportation (amongst other things), and then must remain immobile as their physical self has degraded. again we are not meant to live sedentary lives. Ted Kaczynski wrote that the industrial revolution had dire consequences for the human race (or something close to that), but id like to argue that agrarianism was a stepping stone to that.

yeah, i know, you dont wanna get killed by wolves and life may be arguably better having medical care (you can afford that?), etc etc. Like I said earlier, i'm just off my rocker, some weird bike based tactical neo-hippie tree hugger that just wants people to care for their souls and let go of as much bullshit as possible. ill probably get killed for it someday despite no ill will towards others, and ill probably get buried under propoganda, if i may jack my ego off enough to think id even measure up to such treatment.


point 8: online dating, etc

ive wanted to write my thoughts down on dating, specifically the online variety, for quite some time. ive let it stew and revisited it during rides to mull over certain points, or just to feel like crap and throw it all away. my thoughts on online dating come first, then standard dating.

one outstanding issue i have with online dating is the model that tinder uses, that of a swipe left or right, a go or no-go gauge if you will. at this point in my life i find it rather disgusting, as its a judgement of worthiness of another soul based on scant information provided, often within the very shallow context of such a program, and some pictures the user has provided which may not reflect their current state. reduction of someone to a go or no-go in the context outside of a testing situation is disheartening and has always turned me off of tinder, though i sometimes revisit the program just to taste the same turd sandwich and feel worse afterwards. im sure someone could make the same old tired argument that if you dont like it dont use it, but im sure the one issuing that statement knows within that it's empty and weak.

the premise of tinder is more for hookups, short term sexual exchanges and not necessarily relationships. i find such exchanges to personally lack meaning, though i know people who say they enjoy casual stuff like this. i have found that physical intimacy without emotional intimacy is empty for me, and feels like exercise which pushes a button and releases some chemicals, but not the right button nor the right chemicals. thus ive used other programs like okcupid and bumble with better results. unfortunately, as time goes by some of the other programs adopt the go no-go system of tinder, as well as restricting meaningful writing and content behind a paywall. plentyoffish (which i always read as plenty offish) was once a free program with the ability to write quite a lot down about who you are and what youre looking for, but i recall it changed significantly last time i used it. it was a bit disheartening as i made some positive connections using that program.

bumble's premise is that the woman makes the first move, which coming from a mans perspective is a welcome change. us guys have to make the first move traditionally and get shot down an awful lot, and to be blunt it just gets tiring. i dont have it in me to try much more. how many more times do you want to make that move when the result is almost always the same? this offered a nice change of pace and i did have some dates and good conversations through it. last i used it i noticed a trend of women on there saying they want the man to make the first move. perhaps they didn't read the manual. i believe i deleted this program shortly thereafter.

issues i have that are shared between the programs usually hinge on the shallowness of the initial process and the nearly commercial feel to it all. its hard to be creative and start a conversation when the lady doesn't give you much to work with, whether by choice or by a limit implaced by the program itself. as an average guy who isn't spectacularly attractive one must send quite a few messages before you hear anything back. this starts to feel like applying for a job after a while.

ive discussed these things with my women friends. they often receive a deluge of low-quality messages, tons of likes, and not a lot of substance. its nearly the opposite from my experience, that of almost never getting 'likes', and very rarely getting a message. probably 20% of the time the messages i get are from bots, and every so often from a woman in another country. i wrote back and forth with a chinese gal a long time ago who wasnt planning on moving to the us (and i havent an interest in going to the PRC). while pleasant, it is ultimately a dead end. women often write in their profiles that they dont want pen pals, back and forth messaging with no real motivation to meet. this ends up being the case rather often.

a strong point ive carried from my experiences is that i tend to feel worse, lonelier AFTER using the program. i see lots of photos of what would be attrctive women if they werent in war paint, usually taking a perfectly staged photo of them playing with their hair or sitting in a strange chair at some expensive establishment with a beverage in hand, often with the same phrases like 'hope you can keep up!", or bragging about how many countries theyve traveled to. i never had enough money to travel to any other country aside from Barstow until recently, so unless its a test of physical fitness theyre gonna be disappointed when i cant keep up. i also cant afford to go out for fancy dinners very often at all. i dont even have much fancy clothing.

the negative feeling after using the programs comes to a climax and i end up deleting the programs from my hand-computer and go back to not looking for months. for what its worth ive never had a relationship that started from a dating program, so it doesnt feel like a loss.

as for regular dating, i had some negative experiences the past few times that really took the desire out of my sails and slowed me down. the positive from this was the pain of the experiences showed me what i am missing by not dating, though i am not supposing the next one will be negative. i am quite busy these days and i rarely meet women in daily life so i am spared from being kissed or assaulted with compliments on my long flowing hair, so i suppose i am safe. the pain of loneliness i once felt in my chest when i was younger and less experienced has mostly faded by now, and as usual i am do quite well alone. i miss having someone come up behind me and hug me while im cooking or doing something around the house, i miss getting small gifts for someone thatll make her smile and see her eyes squint and light up, and i really miss falling asleep with someone and the feeling that there could be meteorites bombarding earth but everything's alright cause your special lady is there. i miss those things, but it doesnt hurt like it used to. its just quieter now. theres no sad violin music playing while a tear rolls down your cheek, just the sound of crickets quietly singing in the trees while a breeze rolls through, off and on. i feel i am being melodramatic when i tell myself i have to accept i may be alone for the long term, as i am only 40, but the realization of my age is weighing more on my chest.

i find myself saying no an awful lot more than i used to. i had a lonely childhood and as a young man, so when i started to understand things better and had a bit more luck i was just excited a girl was taking interest in me at all. experiences with partners with substance abuse issues showed me that sometimes you were the substance they needed a fix of sometimes. on one hand my expectations lowered, but on the other the requirement climbed a bit higher. when i lie alone in bed before sleep wishing i had someone there to hold and keep warm, i find myself repeating some of the same qualities i tell myself im seeking in a woman. i say i want someone patient enough to deal with my imperfections, my habits, my stubborness, and often my reluctance to accept help. i want someone kind who can look beyond my crooked teeth and bad haircut and sometimes surly demeanor to see the little boy i still am inside. i want someone caring who will see when im suffering and not opening up, someone who can get me to open up without pushing, someone who understands that others have asked me to open up just to use my pain to hurt me in return, likely because they were in pain from before as well. that takes maturity forged with patience, to hold off on the emotional response knowing that if we acted on emotion all the time we would just be fighting each other endlessly. and i want someone i can trust, someone i know wont use the pain of their past to hurt me. i had to cultivate a great deal of patience and control my temper when i was younger, as i was subject to someone with a violent temper when i was young, and i had little patience.

sometimes i think a woman will keep pressing your emotional buttons over and over in a situation just to get you to act emotionally. twice i have acted emotionally, and i yelled. once, i tore the shirt i was wearing down the middle. i stood there in the doorway with my nice shirt ripped in two while she hid her face and cried. ill never forget that. another time i was being screamed at and called an asshole at the top of her lungs and i finally had it and said "FUCK YOU! I'M MAD NOW! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?" i felt terrible for cracking. Sometimes i think they just want you to show that emotion. i hate that emotion. i never want to yell at someone that special. thats reserved for fighting men. one other time i was being screamed at by my lady at the time, and she was ripping into me verbally and wouldn't let up. I refused to get emotional and stayed perfectly calm because i recognized the situation for what it was. i dont remember exactly what she said next, but it was something along the lines of asking me (loudly) why i wasnt mad. i dont know what i said. i mightve just said that it wouldn't help for me to be mad in this situation. she blew up on me a few times after that and my reaction was much the same. i learned not to engage the emotional side. i grew from that. i dont have much tolerance at all for someone yelling at me anymore. the final time she blew up on me she started hitting me, and when that happened something inside me clicked, and while i felt perhaps a little sade i also felt free. i was dead calm, not angry, just neutral. i saw where i was and thought clearly and told her we needed to go home. i didnt raise my voice. that had been the last straw and i had made up my mind to break the relationship off when that happened.

another time prior to those experiences, my partner had too much to drink and started screaming at me at a campsite, telling me she was angry that she had such a crummy life when she ws young and how i had my family to fall back on when things went to shit, and she didn't have that luxury. this went on for quite some time and others trying to sleep in the same campground were upset and voiced their concern. i was calm during that interaction as well, though thoroughly uncomfortable. she got to sleep at some point and was seemingly oblivious to what happened when she woke up in the morning. i had made up my mind that night and ended things after that trip. i didnt have the balls to talk to her about it at the time, i just wanted out of there badly. i regret not talking to her about that. i couldve done better.

another time my partner had way too much to drink. i had a migraine and she let me sleep in her car. she came in as it got late and was very drunk. i could tell she was going to vomit and i really didnt want her to vomit all over me. she wanted to sleep with me and i told her i didnt want to. she said "fuck you", kicked me out, and threw up dinner all over the sidewalk before closing herself in the car. i took a bucket of water used to douse the campfire and washed the casserole into the gutter before putting my bivy sack on the ground elsewhere. i remember thinking maybe i shouldve left the mess for her to see in the morning. maybe i cared enough about her to save her the discomfort of explaining that to the others. maybe i just didnt want to feel bad for her.

another time i had a lover who admitted she had other partners and that she wanted me to be exclusive to her. i asked her why it was okay for her to have other partners but i wasnt allowed to. she didnt have a reason, she just wanted that. i told her calmly with no malice that i cannot agree to that. she had just dropped me off so i walked to my place. she called me crying, she was still parked out around back, so i walked over and talked to her calmly. we spoke on it for a little bit and reiterated that it wasn't fair and she admitted she knew that. i told her im sorry but i wont agree to such an arrangement. i kindly talked to her about it as a friend before saying goodnight. that was the end of that connection.

im tired. i dont want to do any of that anymore. i want the same things pretty much anyone wants out of a relationship, but my tolerance for such things is real thin. i know very well that things can be real harsh at times when you dont have anyone to be with, to talk to and love and trust, but i also know that i can be alone and at peace with myself, with who i am as a man, and that i am a good man. i could say i deserve better or some other lame modern pat-yerself-on-the-back crap, but thats detached from the reality of relationships.

i havent dated in about four years now. i got ghosted or stood up for one date the night before not too long ago. a previous time on another date i rode all the way to long beach to meet her for a drink, and when i reached LB she ghosted me and never spoke to me again. i rode the 40 miles home rather angry that time. another date i thought of recently was much more pleasant. a nice lady just a few inches shorter than i met up with me and we had a couple beers at a restaurant and had a nice conversation. it was just a nice date to talk with someone new, not looking for anything else. i had recently been longing for another date like that, barely a date, more of a conversation with a nice lady, and thats that.

i suppose my next date is with the mojave desert. i have planned to ride across it from east to west with a long stretch of sand dunes which will likely require at least a full day of pushing. time on earth. a date with time itself. a conversation with the universe, or perhaps just thoughts echoing in my head. isolated, surrounded by a dune sea, a stark yet endlessly beautiful place. i reckon ill meet her for this date in say, november, once it's cool out. ive grown oddly attracted to sand dunes as of late. not very well suited to riding a bike, but you know me. just get off and push. just keep going. what else can you do?

[dima]

Did you type all that on your phone?

[JeffH]

.....
i suppose my next date is with the mojave desert. i have planned to ride across it from east to west with a long stretch of sand dunes which will likely require at least a full day of pushing. time on earth. a date with time itself. a conversation with the universe, or perhaps just thoughts echoing in my head. isolated, surrounded by a dune sea, a stark yet endlessly beautiful place. ....

I suspect this encounter will consist of all the above.

[HikeUp]

TLDNR: words matter.

I did read it though, and you've put into words my exact thoughts on several of your "points".

BTW, I saw you riding your bike down Colorado Blvd once in Pasadena (heading to work I suppose). Before I realized it you had turned on a side street and I lost you.

[Nate U]

I love a good Taco thoughts and rants post! Good writers are honest writers.