The tale of the Z and the Materazzi...

“Taxi”; I heard someone yelling. I am not a cabbie but for some enigmatic reason I slowed down. I must have heard it as that rhyming S word and perceived as a compliment to my new Z. I was at no terminal velocity so the deceleration took no time. The windy street of Van Ness with downward trajectory was enough for the rubbernecked Hakkinen to rear-end my Z. Thud! My heart sank and hit the crooked street winking at me like an IM smiley.

Did Coppola feel the same when Godfather III fell? Did Dean Kamen feel the same when Segway lost track? Well, to me it certainly felt like Zidane being head-butted by Materazzi.

I opened the door and leapt out as if St. Peter was just about to close the doors of heaven and I could see the zip code of hell written all over the rear bumper. There was a trough on the lips… of my Z. I fell on my knees like a knuckle-dragger. The passenger of my car, tried to pacify me in one of those high frequency, low wave length female voice, “R, it is just a car, it is OOOK”. HUG. Cliché!

Is it just a car? Or is it that a person should not be attached to anything which consisted of matter and atoms? Am I being naïve? Is it that heart is meant to be broken and sunken?! I was at rendition.

Well, at least my Z is still mine. Never did it eventuate that the Z called me or text me saying it liked the Materazzi and wanted to be with it! I exchanged facebook IDs (yes the era of insurance exchange is blow) with the Materazzi and sent it on its way. I crawled back into the Z.

The dream of Z was always there; for heptads of years. I betrayed the dream by adopting a Subie. Was it the right thing to do is what the world ponders. Well, the Z was unreachable and was not ready for adoption. Now that I finally had the Z, the Materazzi sun-burned it.

But St. Peter was now smiling. He had just thought outside the bun and had closed the door of heaven for a quick quesadilla snack. It was not a permanent foreclosure! I felt the perspiration disappear; felt my knuckles are no more being dragged; felt serene! ZZZZZzzzzzz …

Just then the passenger, with the same high frequency, low wavelength whispered. “R, are you ok? Wake up. Will you please make coffee and pancakes? I have to leave in 10 and you have to drop me to ...” The dream of Z. Cliché!

A tale of an Ostrich turning into Pelican

It sounded like the war chants of the Norse gods in Valhalla. The wind swept through the ears and reverberated the cerebral tissues like a symphony of Beethoven. Life suddenly seemed surreal.

Yes, it was the experience after the sortie from the underbelly of an aircraft. The day was clear. It was not a day supposedly at the Le Mans for an endurance test. It was a day to just fly like that apple which fell on Newton’s head (read Isaac not Becki), except that I was at the mercy of a Savior who would defeat the fourth horseman of the apocalypse by deploying the chute. For those mere mortals: it was a day of Sky Diving. And yes I’ve Acrophobia.

50 seconds of free fall felt like that FTP connection lingering without being able to get through to port 21. The compression ratio of the heart had to be within the threshold limits. The chute was still not deployed; my prayers to those gods of wars and love was from the newest testament out in Beverly hills bookstore; love thy neighbor’s chute skills. Earth from 13000 feet looked like Hitler’s moustache which slowly turned into Stalin’s stature and then Churchill’s belly as I descended with gravity pulling me down.

My tandem jump instructor yelled “банан банан”. I felt I had forgotten everything mama had taught me singing lullabies. Little did I know that he is descendant of the Cossacks and банан meant banana in Russian. To perform this shape when skydiving, arch head up and your feet back to make the shape of a banana.

I must have said Grace before my dinner some day during spring ’08 and the chute deployed alright. The glide after the chute opened was like how the leaves wither from the trees during fall season, an experience I did not want to end unlike the FTP linger before. The 5 minutes assisted fall ended with a landing a la the “Great White Egret”. I thanked god a gazillion times for inventing the parachute forgetting that I should actually thank HIM (or HER for the feminists out there) for blessing me with 150$ to pay for the battle of the Spartan.

Was I scared? Hell yes. Do I still have Acrophobia? Of course (My insurance does not cover psychiatrist). Would I do it again? Swear on Olympus; I would definitely.