The Last Cruise of Itaru Maru

Saturday, Thanksgiving Weekend

It’s one of the last few lovely sunny days left of this year before drearier or winter-like weather slams the door shut on this autumn. I was awake since 3:00 AM for some crazy reason, so I phased my paperwork and other chores of the day in much earlier, so I now have the liberty of the rest of this Saturday to chill and maybe nap before catching a ride for a road trip to be with family for Thanksgiving later. One of the things done today was to have Ella accompany me for a car ride to my other errand stops, as it helps to pacify her before I trick her into having a bath. Ella, loving car rides as she does, fancies this car almost as much as I do, so I couldn’t let her miss out on having the possibly the last cruise in Itaru with me. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment. I try not to be either sentimental about cars I have had, or covetous about the ones I’d like to have, but I realize that today was special in that it probably is one of the last drives, if not the last drive with my current vehicle. This is the only car that I’ve had enter my life that I’ve truly appreciated.

If there is one thing I am thankful for during this Thanksgiving season is that I can officially put an end to the hell of shopping for another vehicle. I sure as hell don’t want to be bothered with it when winter comes. As much as this one has delighted me, my needs are changing, and rather than having to contend with another round of maintenance for this one, I decided to front up for an investment into another one. Another has been found, and I’m acquiring it this weekend. The hell of car shopping, and my spiel of kicking tires yielded to me three choices: a nice little VW Golf (but with lots of kilometres racked up on it), a sweet gently used older Volvo S60 (one of the reliable ones made in the factory in Gothenburg, Sweden; not one of those inferior ones assembled in a Ford plant in America), and the one I ultimately purchased (keeping this private). It beat the other two out because of the lower mileage and price, and cheaper future maintenance costs. I got practical instead of lustful, but now not disappointed with going that route. I’ll just say that I got lucky.

I don’t often admit that I’ve given my car a proper name, but it has been christened Itaru. I don’t see why there should be any weirdness or shame in admitting that. Before we drove cars, we named the horses we rode, and ships we sailed have been somehow given more animacy through christened names for millennia. Hence, where is the wrong in giving one’s own personal vehicle a name? We go so far as accepting that the model is a distinct name (like Tiguan, Mustang, or Renegade), with the exception I suppose of the blander series numbers of some European makes (like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo*), and in that case, they sound like names for Star Wars droids. Why not go further in naming the vehicle as a distinct individual apart from its other cloned brethren manufactured models?

The practical side to giving my car a name is that it’s a convenient mnemonic device (though a cryptic one) to help me remember things like my plate number and some other VIN info and spec details. It’s a proper Japanese name assigned to a Japanese make of car. It’s a complicated story of how and why I chose the full name, Itaru Maru, for my current car; only that I noticed that many Japanese sea vessels** are christened with “<some Japanese name> Maru”, and Itaru was conveniently an authentic Japanese name that suited my other mnemonic purposes, and sounded quite lyrical along with Maru. As silly as this all might sound, in that name are 16 other mnemonically tagged pieces of information about the vehicle that I can have instant access to should there ever be an accident or incident to report for my car. Out of curiosity, I researched why many ships hailing from Japan have Maru in their name, and it still isn’t clear to me why that is so. The Japanese word Maru itself means “circular” or “round”, and another meaning of the word is for “excrement”. When referring to my car, the round pieces of shit that the word Maru may directly be describing is probably the state of my tires. With crappy malfunctioning tires, my car might as well be a drydocked boat. Just when I was ready to put it up for sale, it came to be my typical luck with tires (bike or car) that one should be irreparably flattened before that could happen. Thankfully, I found a good deal on a suitable replacement. As much as one tire has given me grief lately though, I still love the car itself, it makes me a little sad to have to part with it.

This next car I believe will be named Kikuchiyo; I’ll probably drop the Maru this time. Because again, it’s another Japanese make and model, and the name accords well with some of the specs I want to tag and process mnemonically. If you have seen the classic Akira Kurosawa movie The Seven Samurai, you may remember that Kikuchiyo (played by Toshiro Mifune) was the wild, undisciplined, impulsive and rambunctious bugger of this septet. Those qualities (I hope) won’t be seen in this next vehicle.

UPDATE: Tuesday evening, the day after Thanksgiving

Itaru Maru was sold tonight, to a guy who works as a mechanic specializing in Volvos, oddly enough. We had a great chat, and reached a deal that was mutually convenient and satisfactory for us. I am grateful that Itaru will be well cared for in the hands of somebody who will appreciate him as I did.

*- If I had bought the Volvo, I was going to name him Ingvar: the combined characteristics of the car being Swedish, and the owner being notably frugal and thrifty, like Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA. The Volvo I could have been driving away would actually have been newer than the Volvo that Kamprad, as multi-billionaire, drives for himself ( the cheap old bastard . . .). If the VW was purchased, Heinrich was going to be its name . . . long story there.

**- Including fictional spaceships, like the Kobayashi Maru, mentioned in Star Trek.

My View on Roadtripping

I attended a family wedding this past weekend. It was a good trip for the most part. Though I was under-prepared for the cooler than seasonal night up there, I managed. It was good to see many of my relatives again; I just wish I was better adapted for this sort of social environment. I don't have a physical problem with my hearing; but I don't know if it is because I'm just getting older, or because I'm too accustomed to a more introverted lifestyle: I find myself having a brain that's more diminished in capability in filtering out multiple conversations; so being in a crowded, noisy community hall is sensory overload for me.

I was also invited to another family member's wedding in Banff in late August of this year. Sadly and regretfully, I won't be able to attend that one. I do like Banff; I've been there three times already, but the last time was there was around 20 years ago. Thinking back for each of those times, it was a miracle that I've made it in and out of there with the less than road-worthy vehicles I had to use at those times. This subject, plus reviewing my last entry, prompted me to think about making road trips within this country, as some more holiday time is coming my way. As like with many Canadians, I am one who has been blissfully ignorant about just how huge our country is in comparison to others, and just how skewed our notions are about what 'big' and 'small', or 'near' and 'far', are in terms of distance and scale in relation to those preconceptions from those of other nations; and what we consider is 'normal' for our needs/challenges to travel around, even just within our respective home provinces.* I was doing this after reviewing the time, distance I covered, and the amount of fuel I used, just to go the destination of this last wedding, which was within the province. I was further sobered up to this fact upon realizing through another conversation that the province of Saskatchewan alone is about 15 times the size of Denmark. I'm imagining that the whole scene of the sparseness of our population, distances between towns, and the expense of some rail and air fares for even trips within this country that are greater than some international flights, must appear so grossly inefficient to someone from someplace within, let's say, western Europe when it comes to the subject of travel.

I'm coming around to really disliking long road trips for the sake vacationing now, especially given that the price of fuel is constantly rising. If I have to do more than six or seven hours of driving just to arrive at one destination then I'd rather just fly. It's the fact that you start off (from here) with having to go a ridiculously long way just to get out of territory and scenery that you are already familiar with. The only advantage of it is that you can drive through it relatively quickly, but it still makes for a long drive. I would dread having to live any further south of here. I'm at an age and a place where I pretty much got the general concept of what prairie looks like, and driving through it more doesn't make it look any more exciting or appealing. To put it in perspective for the benefit of my international readers: from my city, you have to drive through what amounts to half the length of England just to escape prairieland, before you just start touching the closest fringe of what is the decent natural parkland and woodland north of here. It may have been OK to do back in the days of my youth, but for me now, it just sums up to more wasted time on the road. I would probably have a different attitude altogether if I were touring another continent with a sparse population on the road, like Australia, because that would be a totally different place I've never seen before. Then again, I would tire quickly of it if it were desert land I was traversing.

I've come to realize that each day I'm allotted less and less time on this Earth, so when I am lucky enough to get time off, I want to get wherever I want to go as soon as I can, and spend less of that time staring down a highway lane and driving. I have only three days to use of my five days off**, and a drive within my six hour radius/comfort zone doesn't really bring me close to anyplace I really want to explore in depth. A sore knee, neck, and back is making tenting and sleeping on the ground up in the bush country not too appealing, as I am trying to recover again for marathon training. Like with the last stint of time off, I might have to be content with creating an adventure at home.

*- And vice versa . . . I heard more than one story of various people in this province who've had guests arriving (I've heard from Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Australia, Hong Kong, and even the United States) who landed in Toronto or Vancouver, and were expecting their friends or relatives to meet them there in something like a couple hours to greet them. Rule # 1 of travel: LEARN SOME FUCKIN' GEOGRAPHY!

**-Two claimed by other appointments.

Decision Deadline, The Body Politic, New Wheels

It has been a very busy week, and I'm glad that it's over. I'm outside tonight, enjoying this magnificent full moon, having a midnight snack of some piquant leftover Moroccan beef tagine recipe I was experimenting with, and listening to the loud crowds exiting Prairieland Park from the Top of the Hops venue. I'm regretful that I couldn't go this year, and I was reminiscing about the past ones I went to with my cousins, whom I'm beginning to miss.

Sitting down to write this has been my only moment of leisure throughout this week. Today, I feel like I'm back to normal physically, but I claim this reluctantly, as not to jinx myself with some other impending upset. I felt and thought the same thing earlier last week, and on that same day of that conclusion I ended up acquiring and suffering perhaps the worst case of food poisoning I ever had in my life. It resulted in the most unwelcome way to have a ten pound drop in weight overnight (I'll spare the graphic details). I've been carless for a long while, and after running short of food and supplies; toting full backpack loads of groceries (up to an extra 20 kg in weight) on long bike trips was beginning to take a toll on my knees as well through that week, so that has been no help either. It has been so long since I've felt or functioned anywhere close to normal, I suppose I've become estranged for so long from what "normal" feels like. It goes without saying that given the circumstances, the commitment to training has faltered badly. I ran three times this week, and my heart rate and breathing were much better.

In a previous entry I gave myself until May 19th to decide as to whether or not to hold my race slot in the Saskatchewan Marathon. The torment I was feeling throughout that week was swaying me to consider the decline option, but ultimately I decided to hold on to it and participate. I definitely won't be breaking records: my goals are simply to start and finish the thing in one piece. To endure this 10 km race, in the current shape I'm in, I expect that I'd have to hold my pace between 7'00" and 7'30" per kilometer. That's somewhat abysmal in my mind, but pushing harder would only wreck me for the rest of the year. I wish my body could govern itself better than it seems to be doing now.

If the human body's functions were controlled by something analogous in terms of a political system it sure as hell would not be a democracy. The body isn't controlled by the some ruling majority of strong healthy organs and tissues that you do have functioning: rather it is controlled and corrupted by the few minor (or just one) tissue(s) that aren't working well. It's always being dictated and limited by the worst of what you have going on, like a banana republic dictatorship. If that isn't enough, there are always foreign terrorist sleeper cell networks . . . most of which are literally single cells, that are trying to take over, like cancer, bacteria, parasitic protozoa, fungi, yeast, viruses, and other such gollywobs that don't even weigh a single gram when numbered in the millions, waiting to strike and dominate when conditions are right. You can bring yourself to your best through training, but your bodily empire can still be conquered by an invasion of something as simple as flu or salmonella (what I suspect I was afflicted with previously).

I finally found a vehicle last Sunday. Its older than I wanted it to be, but it's within budget, has been well maintained, and of a reliable make and model. It has more power, and more luxury options, than my last one. It's a pimpin' machine (for me anyway); so far the best vehicle I've had yet. Its colour is a deeper, darker, more intense tone of red than that of my last car: somewhere between that of a sophisticated oxblood pottery glaze, and a sluttier-looking shade of cherry lipstick: not too low-key, and yet not too gaudy and ostentatious, just the right mixture of the sacred and profane . . . I like that! I wasn't able to get my hands on it until two days ago, and I'm still exploring the bells and whistles. It's good enough for me as one who is driving a car on a more and more infrequent basis.

Zen and Car Shopping

This morning is close to feeling frosty, but I still troubled myself to make time very early this morning to drink coffee on the deck. It's probably the only real moment of peace I'll be able to find today. Some co-workers lately have commented to me on how stressed I look. Sure, I have some weighty issues to contemplate, but it's mostly due to lack of sleep, because I am still having a challenge in being able to settle myself where I'm physically comfortably enough to be free of my remaining aches and pains. I notice how badly I've been dragging myself through the latter half of each day for the past week as a consequence of it.

I've healed up enough though, and now physically mobile enough where I can finally get on with wrapping up the sordid business of settling my insurance claim, so I can finally ditch my old wreck of a vehicle instead of still relying on it to get around. I'm grateful that I'm finally made it to a state where I can walk almost normally, and can endure a prolonged biking trip at least halfway through the city and back. I'll have to manage with doing more of both walking and cycling; since as of today, I'll be carless for an indefinite period of time.

Running, however, still has been too physically demanding and problematic. I still can't push my pace or breathing anywhere near to the intensity I used to do: not without risking more damage. The inner muscles surrounding my lower leg bones are super-tight; my tibia and fibula feel like they are encased in steel pipe. My chances for racing by month's end are looking really hopeless.

Along with that, I've been frustrated and disappointed with so many other things during this week. They range from car shopping still being a bothersome gong show, to discovering the deceptive means that our province's social services use to screw over care aide workers and those they serve, all with the attitude of: "you're just pawns in this game". It's an ongoing adventure in discovering how ignorant, corrupt, and stupid people are, and the lengths they'll go to try to shaft you. I don't mean to get preachy, but it's a good moment to reflect and examine some of the past-goings on, and to put them in a Zen context.

I think of the example of dealing with the matter of car shopping alone to illustrate this. I have been delaying car shopping for quite some time. Procrastination? Maybe, perhaps a little of that . . . but there was also a strong, nagging, instinct in me telling me that I wasn't ready for it yet. In Zen Buddhism, there is the teachings of the three unwholesome roots, also referred to as "the three poisons". They are: hatred, greed, and delusion. On a more primary level, they in turn are generally connected with ignorance, attachment, and avoidance, which are the components and sources of all suffering. In car shopping, while trying to heal myself, it's inevitable that I'd be confronting and clashing with those three elements within myself and in others. The (incomplete) breakdown is as thus, with crossovers and connections between each point:

• Hatred (Avoidance) - hating getting injury irritated by moving around, to appointments that could turn out to be just a pointless waste of time; more negativity and distrust of the sellers, frustrated by misrepresentation in the ads; frustrated by limited mobility; hating not having a work schedule that accommodates me to look at cars at the times when most are available for viewing; dealing with insurer and the idiot who rammed me; I dislike shopping most of the time to begin with, and it's now worsened by feeling pressured to do so out of necessity; ultimately wanting to avoid the feeling of being deceived and cheated; new debts, higher registrations fees, etc.
• Greed (Attachment) - Sellers assigning too much value to a high mileage/older car; me being strict and inflexible with a personal budget; me wanting to use time to rest rather than kick tires; wanting/liking a car and then finding out too late that it has been sold; feeling a lack of options, and forced to buy something out of some duress; buying more than I can afford in the long run.
• Delusion (Ignorance) - my impatience for wanting to heal faster, yet still forced to do things that are counterproductive to allow for it; seeing a person not acknowledging the flaws I detect when I examine a vehicle, and/or flat out trying to bullshit me about them; not having the right senses to detect the real performance of the car and poor/rash decision making (being on pain-killers); failing to ask the right questions/missing details; lacking a consumer confidence in making the right decision for myself; the clash between the reasoning about what is practical need, and what I find more sensually appealing; having too high a standard on things that matter less: having too low of a standard on things that matter more.

Along with healing to get better mobility, delaying (procrastinating) was one way to mentally detox, to clean some of these poisons out of the mind, if I really wanted to put a champion's effort into wisely buying a vehicle, but it's important to limit it before it turns into another form of avoidance.

So today, I face the reality of trying to crack open the trunk for the first time since the collision*, to clear out and salvage my vehicle's contents, and load my bike in there to permit myself a means to ride to the bank with my settlement afterward, and return home. My car served me well enough, but I'll be happy to finally rid myself of that little beast, and move onward. I have no special sentiments attached to it: no regrets, no tears. It just gave me lots of lessons (and repairs) to process for the time I had it.

Back to a more intensified effort toward walking, biking, and hopefully running, better . . . for a little while hopefully.

*- It doesn't matter if it can be shut again, since the car is heading to the scrap yard after I drop it off at the claims centre. Addendum: as expected, the damn trunk didn't close once I dropped it off there.