Axoplasm

Powell Rangers are superheroes who wear red and blue uniforms. They have wands that turn into jackhammers, which enable them to do Super Fast construction tasks.

They mostly eat NoRoos, small creatures with no mouths. Their main enemies are CheeBees, headless creatures who eat with their necks.

Orion conducts most of his research into Powell Rangers with a special sourcebook, cleverly encoded as a book about firefighters. If you have a question about Powell Rangers, he’ll consult the sourcebook. Some information about Powell Rangers may be gleaned from the 2012 Lego printed catalog.

Powell Rangers may or may not capture dinosaurs from helicopters, although our sources are unclear.

Orion first heard about Powell Rangers from his friend Carson who has a television. But he filled in the details using his own research.

Earlier this week, maybe Wednesday, “Bodhisattva Vow” popped up in my iTunes. I may have listened to it intentionally. Regardless, I hadn’t gone out of my way to listen to a Beastie Boys song in a long time. So Adam Yauch AKA MCA was already on my mind.

And then yesterday.

In 1998, while doing archaeological fieldwork, I was driving across Arizona with a coworker perhaps ten years older than me. But we were people of similar minds, it was easy to lose track of our age differences. We were pretty far out in the sticks and listening to a Mexican Radio station playing a bewildering mix of mostly-American pop. A classic rock song like “Take it Easy” came on the radio, and he reminisced about college in the 70s. Then “Sabotage” came on the radio and he said, unprompted: “can you believe a song like this will be someone’s memory of college?” To which I replied: “yeah, me.” Ill Communication was one of those albums on constant rotation at college parties in 1992 or so.

I didn’t like Beastie Boys — any rap music, actually — in high school. In college I heard some of their early singles on bootleg. They started out around 1980 as a punk band. I came late to the realization that rap in the late 80s embodied the DIY ethos I loved in Punk. I was a convert.

As a child of my generation I relate to the Beasties; they are ours. In this way Beastie Boys are kind of my generation’s Beatles (a band everyone knows and has a favorite song from). I have my favorite Beastie Boys songs. “Bodhisattva Vow” — definitely an MCA vehicle — is one of them. AVClub called Adam Yauch “the George Harrison of Beastie Boys.” George was my favorite Beatle, too.

I never would have thought I’d spent a whole day thinking about MCA’s death. More, maybe, than I thought about Kurt Cobain’s at that time. Adam Yauch was a guy about my age, who lived a good and healthy life (like me). He spent his time creating fun and solidly likeable stuff. He grew from a snotty punk into a man with a sense of integrity, and a duty to spreading compassion. He was relatable. He was the guy I could have been if I were a little smarter and little more ambitious.

I closed the Strava Classic Challenge with a total cumulative elevation gain of 108,423' between March 15 and April 30 — about 3000' past the goal. I did not, in fact, regret it. I’m not a goal-achieving kind of person so I feel pretty awesome.

Along the way I rode the RondePDX about two and a half times, and started another stupid habit that I intend to maintain. I might have lost weight, my jeans feel baggier. But I don’t have a scale so really, who knows. I certainly reset my notion of how much climbing a person can do. (A lot.)

As with riding a bike down the Oregon Coast: this is not particularly difficult, physically. Any healthy person could do this, “training” as you go. Don’t buy upgrades, ride up grades.

No, the hardest part of my usual (8mi, 400') commute is the first five minutes. Which are exactly like the first five minutes of a 14mi, 1400' commute. Only different in your mind.

Yesterday on the way home, I let myself not summit Council Crest. I rode home in my street clothes, up Terwilliger, stopping at the library and Fred Meyer on the way. Like a regular person. This has been my usual route for about eight years now. Rain was falling on the river and east Portland, with rain-scrubbed blue sky overhead and to the west. The air smelled like Rain Forest.

Dropping from Homestead Ridge into Marquam Creek Canyon, an enormous double rainbow appeared in the veil of rain falling over the river to my left. And circling just over the canyon, roughly at my eye level: two bald eagles circling back to Ross Island. This was a thing I actually saw on my commute yesterday: bald eagles flying into rainbows.