Ode to Power Steering

Three girlfriends on holiday,
Oh! what a treat,
Four days without makeup,
flipflops on our feet.

Eight hour drive,
but nothing to fret
We'll take turns at the wheel
No crisis', yet

Straight-shot 'cross the desert
Me on second-shift,
Permanently in 5th gear,
Not a finger to lift

Soon upon comes our exit,
just a gentle arc
But wait! no power steering!
My heart goes bizzarck!

Their lives in my hands
as I muscle the turn,
If I screw this route up,
in Hell I will burn!

We round out the turn
just shy of the divide
Intact, in one piece,
our mouths gaped awide.

Just a simple caution,
when splitting the drive,
Check for power steering,
if you hope to survive!

~TGOV

(a small homage to a road trip made with two friends, wherein I discovered that not all cars have power steering, and learnt, first hand, that traveling down the road at 70 mph is, indeed, a challenge to the laws of Physics. Thank goodness we didn't learn, first hand, about Pure Elastic Collision.)

Tomboy

I'm planning a fall camping trip to Yosemite in a few weeks, with S. I'm an avid camper and hiker, but HE is a HARDCORE backpacker, so I've got some expectations to live up to. And that means being prepared.

I spent my lunch hour at REI today, completing what has been a several-months-long process of selecting new hiking boots. My trusty decade-old pair had been sequestered into long-term storage during the move to California, and with all the technological wonders in the current offerings, I just couldn't resist upgrading to a new pair.

Now, I'm girl who does my research. I have checked the specifications, read consumer reviews, and had my mind made up down to three options when I walked into the retail outlet, my no-nonsense attitude apparently written all over me.

She's already honed in on the top two, says one of the salesguys, I think she knows what she's doing.

She's got SmartWool socks in the basket, says his compadre, she doesn't even need us.

I grin at the innocuously flirtatious manner of these guys, and request to try my three choices. Over the next 20 minutes we talk polyurethane shank, newbuck uppers, Gore-Tex liners and my avowed loyalty to the Vibram sole. The Vibram, it turns out, is the deciding factor between two fine specimen of hard-duty hiking boots, and they fit me for insoles to offset my slight pronation, and let me test-drive them while I impulse shop through the rest of the joint.

While testing the fit scrambling up the faux-boulder feature, we share stories of great hikes through the Pacific Northwest, of fabulous vistas off Hurricane Ridge in Washington and Mt. Hood in Oregon. Of cavern crawls through the lava tube caves surrounding Mt. St. Helens. I earn their respect recounting a tale of trekking across an icepack spanning a spring stream on Mt. Hood, and snowshoeing to Alpine Lake in the HammaHamma wilderness. I leave them nodding wistfully, reflecting back on their own Into Thin Air episodes, while I pick out snazzy red laces to accessorize my new purchase.

I head to the check-out stand with the boots still on (breaking in begins immediately) and for a second, realize I must look a fool - stylish business suit over hefty newbuck hikers - then realize that in THAT environment, I was a backpacker's dream: a tomboy chick in lipgloss, trading her Franco Sarto heels for hiking boots.

Mathematics and Sex

I heard a piece on public radio yesterday evening, an interview with an Australian mathmetician who wrote a book on the mathmatics of relationships. Clio Cresswell lectures in math (or maths, as the Aussies say) at the University of South Wales and is the author of Mathematics and Sex. Her book cites that, statistically, couples who compromise the least last the longest, and that out of 100 possible partners, you're mathematically likely to make the right choice if you pick the most attractive person who's left after 37 dates.

Now THAT is a theory to test out.

Let's look at me as a case scenario: historically speaking, I've been dating since age 16, with a 8 year haitus for the time I was married - that means I've had 14 years of dating, and I'd say I've probably averaged, oh, 3.5 dates per year (that number has definately fluctuated over the sampled years, but as a rough guess, it's sound). So, in round numbers, I've probably had 50 dates - more than enough to test the Cresswell Theory.

Things being as things were, an alarmingly high number of those 50 never made it to a second date; fewer still made it to date #5; relationship-wise, only 7 made the cut.

It seems illogical to state that the current relationship is the 'most attractive', as the others have shaken out for various reasons - some my choice, some theirs - and if you put all 7 of those guys in the same room (a nightmare just waiting to happen, I'm sure, now that this psychological seed has been planted), who would come out as 'most attractive'? I think I'd need to generate an attribute scorecard on each before I could possibly come to a conclusion.

Good heavens, this math(s) stuff is a lot of work.

Good thing I have that 'compromise less' thing down pat. *wink*