I can see the light...

After a few weeks full of unknowns, after being fired from the same company TWICE, after entering into the medical system with a language barrier and a terrifying pain in my...umm... "groin" shall we say, and the crippling depression that occurred as a result of not knowing how to deal with any of it much less all of it at once, I am coming around to feeling myself again.

How did this shift of perspective happen? You ask.  Well I have never been one to misdirect my anger or disappointment, and so starting off with a few well placed "fuck you"'s in the direction of what I will hereby refer to as "that bike tour outfit" certainly was appropos and helpful. What happened after is a strange and classically "me" story... enjoy.

Monday the 3rd I stopped by the garage to take a look at my pile of crap trying to make sence of everything going wrong, Dragoni was home for lunch and I had about an hour to make my acupuncture appointment.  I was depressed, not knowing what I'm gonna do, how I'm gonna do it, or where I will ultimately end up.  With a couple good phone interviews for jobs back in the states I was feeling bummed that I might be leaving these kind friends in Italy, and the community I have here.  Dragoni was sympathetic and has repeatedly said that in the spring there will be a chance to work with him, to learn some new skills in the carbon manufacturing world, and make enough dough to stick around.  Then he offered me food.  I was not hungry.  Then he offered me a beer or tea.  I was not thirsty.  The he offered to smoke me out - which I said yes to before he could even finish the offer!  I was high as shit and basking in the kindness of my friends when I remembered that the reason I was out was to go to my acupuncture appointment.  shit.

Needles in my ass and back and legs, more needles than ever before, but no electricity this time... high as a kite!  It was AMAZING!  And with every stick I could feel the energy moving from painful areas all the way down to my left foot.  No seriously.  It was not the weed either, I have felt it a few other times with the needles, but this time it was intense!  When I stood up to leave, I felt a rush of energy to my left foot that culminated in a knot just behind my little toe that I could feel all the way through my shoes on the ride home.  It felt like frozen peas under the skin.  Home for a bath I tried to message it out in the steaming hot water.   A little relief but when I got out I felt light headed and dizzy.  Sometime after fixing some food I did not eat (or dont remember eating) I fell asleep on the kitchen floor.  To bed early feeling feverish I woke in the middle of the night soaked with sweat wrapped in a bath robe on the floor of the bathroom and barely could get my hair up in a rubber band before the watery nausea turned violent in the most explosive and gut emptying barf session I have ever experienced.  Two days of complaining like man-flu, weak tea, and water, gut cramps and dead people farts and I was starting to feel like being depressed was not the end of the world,much less the wost I could feel.  The physical toll on my body and mind was enough and my body was letting me know that this would be the last three days moaning in bed.  A Three-Bond Flu as it was (three James Bond movies and feeling better) and the process of coming back strong began with the kindness of my friends here in Italy. 

Dinner with friends the following Thursday, and a dinner date with a former colleague at my favorite pizza place, during which it started to snow outside, resulting in frozen hands and snowballs in the face!!  Another symbolic change of the seasons and times ahead.  All of that week followed by a RAGING bike party on Saturday that turned into waking up fully clothed Sunday morning with scrapes and scratches and bruises I don't remember getting, wedged between two rows of shelves in the back stockroom of the bike shop that hosted the rager, a Sunday hangover to top all Sunday hangovers and a drive back home full of silence and chugging water bottles.   A day of comfort food then Monday a ride with some snow still around, more dinners with more friends, sunny cold days and freezing nights with warm drinks, catching up with homies back in the states via skype, making bread, and the BEST bowl of Pho I have ever had not in a Vietnamese restaurant (the secret is in the bone broth!) Top that with TWO free bikes to collect today courtesy of a mutual friend who does not want to pay to have them fixed, things are starting to look pretty good.  I even got invited to help make some Christmas cookies at Nona's house, earning the right to wear an apron in a Romagna Lady's kitchen is no small honour.

There is also the fact of that Big Secret Purchase that I have advertised on FaceBook - for which you wont get any clues here, but needless to say it has had a huge impact on my ability to focus towards the future, and the adventure at hand.  Here are some pictures from the last few weeks.  None of me barfing, although between the bad Chinese food, the flu and over consumption of a liquorice grappa late in the evening, there has been a fair amount of that.  Gotta stay slim for my constituents I suppose, and the Christmas cookies have begun to appear, so the downhill slide to my winter weight has officially begun.

See you all at Fat Camp 2013!  And Thanks for your support...

pictures in reverse order...

shoe covers and hounds tooth wool...toasty

thin sliced beef to make the pho perfect.  made my own broth with a few veggies and some beef bones from the butcher.

greased walnut shells to make the form of a cookie shell to fill later.

before earning the apron...

after...with Nona

after baking, you pull the shell out, and then later fill two halves with creme filling and return together...a new cookie trick from the kitchens of Romagna

oh yeah, and I ate some bunny rabbit...or cat, there was no head to verify, but it was GOOD!

first snowfall of the year...

Dragoni's team is run out of a shop that was destroyed in the April earthquake.  This was the grand re-opening party in which we all tried to destroy our livers with endless vino and mountains of food.

customs here include a drunken tandem relay race.  Notice that the rear rider is facing backwards, and also pedals backwards in the race, two laps, then switch riders and directions.  I dont remember steering but I woke with plenty of bruises and a scab on my nose...

before... the warehouse, and shop dog enjoying the silence

roll in off the bathroom roof...trouble with a capitol T

I think the carpeted landing was responsible for the carpet burn on my arm when I woke in the morning

notice the top of the bathroom, two giant jugs of vino, hooked to a gravity fed system of tubes in which one can serve themselves at the table via spigot...genius and dangerous

that was a pig...and there were two

started to feel like this....

Dragoni vs pig

dinner at the warehouse ramp party, classy view

some grappa and a tandem spells trouble.

I dont remember much after this point.  Thats Dragoni riding the tandem down the landing ramp of the jumps, the DJ was pounding at this point, and the booze was at an all time high, there were joints and grappa and I dont remember what happened next.  the perfect ending to a few weeks in the dumps.  Nothing like falling down to remind you of the real gravity of living.

the view I woke up to...

I slept alphabetically... Scapre...Scotito...Selle... in the shelving of the warehouse

More to come... maybe a clue or two as to that big purchase....
S

choking on my pride...

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this that swallowing my pride is a genetically ingrained difficulty that I sometimes have varied success with.  Lately its more like varied failure.

Between not having health, not riding bikes, not having a job, or any fucking idea when or what I will be doing next, not having rich parents to pay for my language school, not having language school to get a proper visa, not smiling as a result of all of the above, and having to bear my ass for more than one peer group I have swallowed enough pride to be full for a while.  Its been only short glimpses of normal Scott and a whole lot of shitty negative depressed Scott lately.

I actually tried to make a list of the things I have going for me here right now so that I could change  my perspective a little.  It was not a very fruitful exercise.  But one of the things I do feel I have here right now is community.  I have friends.  Really good friends.  friends who despite the language barriers are there to listen and to add a little uplifting insight or another solution, or just to go sit in a quiet museum as the rain starts to roll in again.  I have friends to hold my hand when I feel a breakdown coming on, and I have friends who have opened their homes to me in my time of need.  I have friend who are certified to push acupuncture needles way into my ass, hook them up to car batteries and zap my nerves back to health.  And all of this is great... but its starting to feel like a band-aid on a cut artery.

Not having work, not making anything with my hands, not riding my bikes or ANYTHING physical for that matter (doctors orders) not seeing the sun, not playing outside, and not being able to see a time when those things will resolve themselves is getting to be a heavy cross to carry around.  A trip to the beach, a found bicycle, a movie to escape for a bit, a couple joints, a drink when the sun goes down, a fucking bath for Christ's sake, a walk, some art, space to write, and all the time in the world to chisel away at that list of things I cant do in the summer months due to a lack of time, is no match for the crippling depression of being fired from work, waiting to find out what is next, and feeling like the language and cultural barriers are too great for whatever is next to happen here in Italy.  Will I get to meet Livia's Baby?  Will I get to see Tony Dragoni running around the beaches of Marche next summer?  Will I get to do another mountain bike ride with Santo Claudio?  Will I have to settle on skype and email and FaceBook with the friends I have made here as my only form of communication like I have to with the friends back in the States?  Am I losing my community again?

The idea of community is one that strikes a strong chord with me.  Last year I read a book that was given to me by a friend who has come along way mentally and emotionally since I met him back in 1997 that characterized me (based on qualifying questions) as a "communal tool user, independent thinker, and emotive nostalgic communicator" a definition I have to agree with and one that spells disaster for my current situation.  I have community here.  Its helping me as much as it can, and yet I am haunted by my past, and retreating into an oppositional frame of reference that is screaming at me to RUN!

Run before you ruin these friendships with your bitching, before you get busted for being here illegally, before you alienate those who really do love you, before you fuck things up like you always do.

This is how my overactive mind wakes me up in the morning.  And I don't know what to do to fix it.  Cause that's what I do - I fix things.  I fix bikes, I make it look easy, I explain it so you can do it too next time, so you feel more self sufficient, so you don't have to be dependant on others to do what you love to do.  And yet here I am, dependant on others, with no foreseeable path to fixing what is broken. 

Except the WAIT.  Waiting for email responses, waiting for the doctors ok to ride a bike, waiting for job offers to come through, waiting to be told to fuck off, waiting for the rain to stop in this cafe, waiting for sleep to be less fitful, waiting for permission to live, waiting for an answer... or at least a question I know the answer to.  Waiting for that lump in my throat that is certainly my stubborn pride to go down.

waiting...
waiting...
waiting....

S.

let me explain...

Before anyone goes and calls the international red cross and gets me busted for not having proper paperwork all cause they were scared that I have not responded much to emails, nor posted here on the bloggity blog, or been on (gasp) facebook very much in the last 26 days, let me explain....

I returned home from the Sicily tour a very happy and excited fella.  It was awesome and I was really excited to talk to the bosses about the transition from mechanic to tour leader next season, a transition that would help me with my 4 year plan to get out of debt and yet change my role and do something new.  So did the bosses...but not quite in the way I had imagined.  The very next day a meeting was called, in town at a cafe where monica and igor met me to tell me that they were restructuring the position of mechanic and I was not going to be invited back for the 2013 season.  (Even typing this right now still makes me turn cold and sink for a second)  They did however "promise" me 4-6 weeks of tours, a flight credit back in the spring, and at least half of one big 30 day expedition trip cause they always need a mechanic on those.  When pressed for other alternatives (like helping with the transition, informing them of my plan to live elsewhere next season and letting them in on my 4 year plan - none of which they knew about even though I had mentioned it to my manager on several occasions) they produced a cut and paste email of quotes from my blog as proof they they are not only making the right decision based on my "attitude" and "moody nature" but that it has become a matter of safety and security to the other people at the farm.  I of course called BULLSHIT! and proceeded to spend the last 10 days of my contract being questioned about my work ethic, second guessing myself and my grasp of reality, making sure I didnt owe someone an apology, feeling paranoid and defensive, avoiding eye contact and lunches, sleeping elsewhere, having people walk on pins and needles around me and treat me as though I was going to act violent or volatile at any minute.  Not unlike a situation of domestic violence around mental abuse.  Of course I felt trapped in that if I did act out any of the betrayal, mistreatment, distrust, or hurt that I felt I would only be proving to them that they were right and that I should not be invited back at all.  They have successfully painted an erroneous picture of who I am based on an email of cut and paste quotes from my blog, that everyone admits to not having the time to read, but who also will not tell me who wrote it.  I was not about to give them what they wanted.  I stayed professional, stayed busy, and defended myself where i felt my integrity was being questioned with a host of real life examples from the last 3 years.

These are the people I surprised with gelato and treats for the past three seasons when things were overwhelmingly busy.  These are the people who call me "Uncle Scott" to their children, these are the people who were supposed to get my back in trade for the over 1500 hours I put in every summer at a seasonal job. 

I have spent the last 26 days floored, scared, terrified actually, bummed, really upset and angry, and only mildly encouraged to continue my relationship with them in any way whatsoever.  I have been freaking out about the fact that I am less than a year away from financial freedom through my debt consolidation program (which I now have to quit and go into collections before filing bankruptcy for a mere 6 grand), I have been overwhelmed with sadness at the fact that I might not have a choice but to leave behind the friends and connections I have established here in the last 3 year, that I would not be able to stick around and see Livia's baby born in January.  I have been saddened by the feelings of abandonment to the point of an absolute bed ridden melt down of sobbing and panting a week ago.

I have been terrified to the point of not enjoying any of the activities that keep me alive, like cycling and jerking off... and last week it all collided (as it does for me in times of crisis) into my feelings of guilt and health collaborating in a massive amount of pain that I can only describe as lower abdomen and testicles.  Yeah thats right, on top of all that I was freaking out about the strange on and off hip and abdomen pain that I have had since May that spent three very distinct days last weekend radiating pain not from my hip, but from my left nut - a fear that landed me in the hospital, on an exam table, pants down, two-inch flaccid baby-cock flapping around in the overhead lights while a crooked doctor prods my crotch, lifting my sagging ballsack out of his way, while his nurse looks sideways at my tattoos, and a friend translates while holding back laughter.  When I got up from the table there was a pool of sweat where my lower back had been.

smells like coffee but hey, no blood!

yes, that is half a roll of duct tape holding the cushions down to the exam table...

ancient castle walls built into the architecture of the hospital underground.  Classy huh?

I was originally just going to post this photo as the next "Photo Caption Contest" and freak everyone out that the reason I have not been in communique lately was of a gestational explanation...but thats just not funny now is it?

its not "fat" its just "big boned"

Not the way I had thought I would end the 2012 season in the least bit!


Good news is... its not cancer, or kidney stones, prostrate malfunction, a perforated bladder, hernia, or even a malformed hip socket...although my liver needs to go on a diet I'm told... information that spawned a few jokes and the following bar room art later in the week when I celebrated my health the olde fashioned way - with a pint of ale...

thats my liver, dreading the stairs and late for a meeting.

my liver and its bad habits, worst fears, and redemption plan...

...its something called lombocruralgia (in Italian medical circles anyhow)... a strained nerve in the back that radiates pain from the back up and over the hip joint down the f.u.p.a. and, if unchecked for a long time or after heavy lifting, the pain moves right down the gootch and into the nuts.  Surgery?  I think not... Stretching, Yoga, Message, Pain Management, Herbs, a week off the bike.... Sure.  Point is - Im fine MENTALLY and can begin trying to figure out what the FUCK Im going to do between now and next spring when the empty promise of 4-6 weeks of tours turns out to be a big joke and I throw a match and a can of gas into the windows of the Farm. 

JUST KIDDING.....Dont go forwarding that on to the bosses now...which brings me to my next order of business.


The Blog has been SHUT DOWN to outside visitors.  Which is why you got that invite in your email the other day.  Please dont forward it to anyone, and if you dont have a google email account, WAKE UP!  Its 2012 and despite not having the flying cars we were all promised - there is NOT REASON to be using that SHITTY HOTMAIL or MSN account anymore!  Seriously.


Im going to stay busy with some stretching, yoga, pain meds, and clearing my head on walks in the woods.  Im looking into some language classes and the possibility of being legal next season while I wait to meet with the boss again for a FORMAL written offer of work next year.  Needless to say there is way more to this story and I dont trust ANYone there right now but what can I do?  In the meantime send me a note.  Im fine.  Tell me about you.  And dont ask me when Im coming back to the states - I have NO IDEA!

S.