Monday, February 19, 2018

Read this First!

This Blog has moooooved! Please follow your fellow Advanced Humans to Angus’ Patreon page!  There is a LOT to look through there, so let’s get you situated. There are 6 levels of patronage, plus a bunch of Open (Free) Posts. Take a look at some of those first, and see if you and I will get along. 
(The McMansion was short on furniture and long on Irony.)
Here are the Open Posts right now. Check ‘em out: Here is a video of me WRITING. Here are my top 20 CHRISTMAS SONGS. Here is a dream I had starring Annette Funicello. (No, not that kind of dream.) And this is what happened when I took a CPR ClassAnd here are a couple of posts that used to be up in the 1 dollar section, but then I freed up: Witness the fascinating carnage of a weekend spent in a McMansionAnd here is the background, script and tons of photos from my epic Samhain ritual last year. And as a special treat - here is the most popular column I ever wrote, turned into a Podcast (With photos!). 
Yep, rode that sucker twice. Sober.

The first level is $1.00 a month, which is hardly anything, right? Folks who sign on at this level get the newest big, unique, stand-alone story that I’ve just finished. Here are some the recent “Hot off the griddle” stories: My Dinner Party with History, in which I choose 10 people (+ two chefs!) from all points of human history and we all meet at Stonehenge for a lovely supperA Weekend in 1927, in which I use my time machine to visit every single cool thing in the world that happened in one wild weekendAnd the history of my life-long obsession of playing with Lego. Next is the $3.00 level, and those folks get the latest chapter in whatever book I am writing that month. Plus, folks at this level also get everything at the $1.00 level, which applies to all the other levels. (If, for example, you pledge at $10, you’ll get that PLUS the $5, $3 and $1 posts.) Recent chapters include my love affair with Disneyland. The wacky adventures of teenaged me and my First CarAnd the wild, wild, 5 weeks I spent in the hospital for a simple tonsillectomyUp at the 5 dollar level you’ll find the “Blast From the Past” posts, featuring post from various
columns I’ve written for publications who went down in sudden and fiery flames. Each one features a new introduction. 
Climbing up to the 10 dollar level one is confronted with “It Came From the Filing Cabinet” - I’ve done LOTS of different types of writing over my life, from search-a-word puzzles to Sports Reporting. Here is where the experiments are revealed. At the summit you will rewarded with my monthly “Gentleman of Leisure” reports, detailing every weird thing I’ve done the previous month, with lots of photos! And for you heady slices of glorious deity, there is the $50.00 pledge, will net you all of the PODCASTS, plus everything else listed
above. The whole kaboodle and kit. And my love. And my thanks. And my firstborn.
That’s a lot of stuff, right? I think so. But I’ve never been happier (or more productive) as a writer. Join me, won’t you? Let us journey through this strange and lovely land together. Thanks for reading, welcome aboard, enjoy the Patreon site, and please comment on anything you enjoyed! Comments are second only to ‘shares’ as the lifeblood that keeps us creative-types in the saddle. 
Angus McMahan 
AngusMcMahan@gmail.com 
https://www.patreon.com/AngusMcMahan 

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Bicycling through Glenwood Canyon

I grew up in the 1970’s, the time of NIXON, Ford and carter. It was a time of polyester, smoking, wide neckties and shame at our perceived strategic reassignment of our objectives in Vietnam. 

“International” was on the back burner for America, and when my stupid older brother wanted to quit the Air Force after 18 months, they shrugged and said: “Sure. Okay. Thanks for stopping by.”

Domestic Achievements were the order of the day, and the crown
First road thru the canyon, 1903
jewel of our vast nation was our Interstate Highway System. We had been diligently linking up all of our nations regions since 1956 and it was all done by the late 70’s! Yay!

Well, almost done. There was one teeny, tiny 16 mile stretch of road that stubbornly defied all attempts at fourlanedom. 16 lousy miles out of 47,714. And that’s where my family vacationed every year.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

“Round and Round She Goes…..”


June 13th, 1986. 4 miles west of Ogallala, Nebraska.

A crappy place to have a rest day.

An average week on the Great Peace March, the rhythm that had been established on the West Coast and would be maintained all the way to Chicago, New York City and then down to Washington, D.C., was for each marcher to walk 4 days, work at their camp job for two, and we all rested for one.

That’s the way it was supposed to happen, at any rate.

What actually happened was that we were delayed almost 3 weeks in Barstow, California, as the original, legal peace march fell apart. This put us considerably behind schedule. Utah helped this situation by unceremoniously busing us across their state and throwing us across their border with Colorado. Fortuitous intolerance. But we were still a week behind schedule and had a big date in Omaha on July 4th. So the schedule was changed and we upped our daily mileage from 18 to anywhere between 20 to 25 miles.

And now we only rested every 10th day. Our last rest day had come in Denver, our reward for making it across the Rockies and the 12,000 foot Continental Divide. But now, 10 days and 214 miles of marching later, we were camped alongside Interstate 80 in the panhandle of Nebraska. Well, the locals called it the panhandle. I, for one, know the shape of the state, and where we were could only be described as the asshole.