Computer Cyclist

Philly

2007-01-12T05:42:00.000-08:00

I figured that I owed you all another post. I'm not the most prolific of writers, but I can do better than once a month.

Over the holidays, I went to Philadelphia for a couple days. My sister lives up about an hour north of the city, and we stopped at her place for a few days. The first day we were there, we decided to drive into Philly. "We" includes my sister, Vickie, her husband, Michael, his son (her step-son), Noah, and me and my wife, Suzanne. Michael and Vickie decided that we'd take Vickie's car, which was an old Toyota with 155,000 miles on it. So, by the time we were all finally up and ready to go, it was after noon. We were going to go have lunch at a place just off the UPenn campus, called Koch's Deli, which I had gone to a few times when I was in school.(http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/outoftown/pennsylvania/philadelphia/west/kochs/index.htm)
Koch's has the best Deli outside of NYC.

It's a little convoluted getting into the city from Vickie's place. First, we took roads to the highway, then we got off that onto the Penn. turnpike. Because of some minor construction, there was a huge traffic jam, and we had to fight our way through bumper to bumper cars going every which way for 45 min. Finally we got past that and everything seemed to be fine. We got off the turnpike and got onto highway 76, the Schuykill expressway. As we went up a hill, the car started making a rattling noise and the check engine light came on. Michael, who was driving, didn't feel to comfortable with this, because the car was leaking oil, and, when questioned, Vickie said that she handn't been checking the oil. At mile 334 (only 10 miles from Center City, Philly) we got off on the shoulder, to check the oil. On checking it, we found that it wasn't even registering on the dipstick.
We called triple-A to have a tow truck come bring us a quart of oil. They informed us that they can't bring oil and would have to tow us. They also told us that 5 of us wouldn't fit in the truck and they'd have to leave 3 of us on the side of the road waiting for a cab. They also told us they couldn't find a cab for at least 2 1/2 hours. The tow truck wouldn't be there for at least 45 minutes. All, in all, we were waiting on the side of the road for about 1/2 hour, when we saw a tow truck go by in the other direction, then 10 min later, it pulled up behind us. It was a Penn. Department of Transit (PennDOT) truck. They just roam the highways looking for stranded cars like us. He had oil, and told us about the gas station 4 miles up the highway. We drove there, and put 4 more quarts of oil in. We were VERY lucky we didn't sieze up the engine of the car while driving before. But now we were back in business. HURAH!
Then we drove on into west Philly and went through the Penn campus. I played tour guide. We got to Koch's, and I was pleasantly surprised that the neighborhood west of campus had gotten quite a bit nicer and safer. One thing I hadn't remembered, was that Koch's had no seating, except for a little table outside. We got our delicious food (with 1 pound of meat on each hoagie) and sat outside to eat. It was great, but we were freezing. It had been rather warm, but the temp had dropped by 10 or 15 degrees. So we packed up and went down to the Penn campus and walked around. We saw the restaurant, Cerality, which we had read about years ago.
http://www.cereality.com/main.php
Cereality is awesome. They just sell cereal (hot and cold). You get a container, and you pick out 2 scoops of multiple kinds of cereal, and 2 toppings. I had corn flakes and frosted flakes, with banannas, and blueberries. Kids can get all sorts of candy and chocolate type toppings too. You can have whatever milk you want from the milk bar. They even have a spoon that has a tube through it, to drink your milk when you are done with the cereal. A straw-spoon.

After hanging out at campus for a bit, we went down to South Street. It's a cool area, very much like Greenwich Village in NYC. Among other places, we went into one of my favorite stores down there, A Garland of Letters, a new age bookstore.
http://www.southstreet.com/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,50/Itemid,40/
We had a lot of fun just walking around.

Then, we headed back, and it only took 45 minutes to drive what took us about 2 hours before.

The next day, Suzanne and I decided to take the train in. When we got back, Vickie and Michael had wasted no time. They had sold the car and bought a Chevy Equinox.

Death Penalty

2006-12-19T11:47:00.000-08:00

This is from a comment that I put on Theory of Thought's blog.

Yes, I have no problem with people who are being executed feeling some pain. However, I think we should go back to public, daylight executions, if we are going to keep doing them. If you are using execution as a deterrent, why hide it? You could have firing squads, or public hangings, or guillotines. Or maybe gladiatorial games, a la The Running Man. It's so hypocritical to be pro-death penalty, and then take such measures to hide the execution.

I've tended to be pro-death penalty, myself, because there are some people out there who really are so vile that they are never going to see the light of day again, and they have done some things so terrible that that should die for them. The only problem is determining who they are and getting it right.

You hear about a case where some 18 year old broke into a convienience store and got surprised by the owner and shot and killed him, and, then, 30 years later, he's being put to death. That's crazy. You shouldn't be killed just because you screwed up and that happened to cost someone else his life.
Now, what is someone is a serial murderer who has been kidnapping 12 year old boys and girls from a town and torturing and raping and killing them, for 15 years, having killed several hundred? I think most would agree that this person shouldn't be allowed to live.

Where's the middle ground?

The other big problem is that our legal system sometimes convicts innocent people, as is proven years later by new evidence. If you kill the innocents, are you any better than the criminals?

And then, there's the appeal after appeal, for years and years. Why am I paying tax dollars so that a serial murder can sit in prison and eat and live, dragging out his case to keep himself alive a few more years? But, then we are back to the not convicting innocents again.

I guess the whole legal system needs to refined to take less time, but not get the wrong people.

So, should we be against the death penalty because it can end up killing innocents? I don't know, but I do know that I'm for killing those who are guilty of the most heinous crimes.

Tagged

2006-12-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

I've been tagged by Helen to write 6 wierd things about myself:

1) I can remember all sorts of things with ease, except people's names. I can remember what happened in what tech support call for a customer 2 years ago, or what technical command is necessary to be run, or what flags it takes. However, I have the hardest time remembering people's names.

2) I have memorized Edgar Allen Poe's, The Raven.

3) I have memorized Pi to 35 decimal places

4) As a US citizen, living in the US, I married a Canadian citizen

5) I have started to do my weight workout with a sledgehammer. Check out www.shovelglove.com for more information. It's actually more like going back to how Native Americans would work out with a weighted stick.

6) I am very flexible. I can sit on the ground, with legs spread, and lean forward and put my chin on the ground.

Healthcare

2006-11-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

Hmmmm, there was a very interesting post from http://curmudgeonisms.blogspot.com/ that I liked:

"If you're going to knowingly do something detrimental to your health, maybe you should pay more for insurance. But why limit it to smokers and fatties? Shouldn't drinkers pay more too? Booze is bad for you, is it not? And druggies. Their insurance should be way higher. In fact, everyone should get drug tested on a regular basis, shouldn't they? Make sure they aren't on the verge of killing themselves.How about snowboarders or motorbike riders? Why should they be let off the hook? Chances are higher they'll hurt themselves than someone who doesn't participate in those sort of activities.And players on the local softball team - there's a better chance they'll get hurt than someone watching from the bleachers. Especially if they had a quick cheeseburger before the game, have a beer and a smoke break between half innings, then ride home on their motorbike. See where this is going? Where do we draw the line? "

I think he has a good point. With cities like NYC looking to ban transfat because it's bad for people, so that the healthcare costs go up for everyone else, we need to look at the big picture.

I think we should not be passing any victimless laws, like banning transfat. Educate people so they know what it does to them, and let them make the decision. Big brother doesn't need to watch over everything for you.

A Pledge

2006-11-15T14:15:00.001-08:00

I really liked this pledge:
A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives November 14th, 2006

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.

Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans, I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

Signed,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com

The Election

2006-11-05T18:34:00.000-08:00

Well, fortunately, it's just two days now and all the waiting is over. I have been reading and posting on a forum, www.carypolitics.org. It's very interesting, because the site is run and mostly populated by extreme right wingers, and that is something that I am not. There's one guy on there who really seems to have lost it, but it's kinda fun to beat him up in arguments. I'm just a little worried that I'm going to get a package of white powder in the mail one of these days if I push him too far.
One of their biggest anti-Clinton issues is that they say he gave missle technology to the Chinese. When the latest news about the current administration having had put up a web site with information about how to build a nuclear bomb, and then taking it down because it had too detailed information on it, I posted that and asked them where their outrage was now.
They pointed out that it was Iraqi documents and tried to clain that this justified Bush's war of aggression because here was proof of WMDs. So, an aly and I had to fight that for a while, and finaly ended up pointing out that these documents were from before the first Gulf war when Iraq did have a WMD program, and proved absolutely nothing.
Now I can finaly get them back to the original question of where is their outrage at the Bush administration for posting detailed instructions that probably helped North Korea perfect their nuclear technology.

There's probably not much point to these debates, but I'd like to think that if I could get just one of these people to think a little more clearly, and a little more logically and see the lies and hypocrisy that we've been given for the last 6 years, I'll have made the world a better place.

Of course, I get my own gains too. Once you have a goal of trying to prove something to others, you do a lot more research, and find out things that you didn't know.
For instance, I ended up in the position of having to defend Kerry's mis-statement. I did research and did find that about 5% of the enlisted in the army had a college degree or greater. About 30% of the overall population has a college degree or greater. Almost 100% of the officers have a college degree or greater. In the army overall, but 19% have college degrees or greater.
Now, I have only the highest respect for the military, and am very glad they are working to defend the country. Also, there are many smart people in the military, and the officers are exceptionaly well educated. The enlisted aren't quite as well educated as the rest of the populace though.
However, what my opponents should have argued, is that most of the enlisted are 'college aged' people, who may have entered the military rather than going to college. And, after 4 years in the military, with the special training that they constantly recieve, maybe they are more educated than your average college graduate.
In any case, it's a moot point, because that's not what Kerry was trying to say, as anyone who listens to his speech would know. This is just another smoke screen to try to turn us away from the real issues.

I'n 2 days, we will see.

Smart Teacher

2006-10-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

This is funny!

Idiotic beaurocracy (Associate Superintendent) causes problems and has no solutions, and the smart teacher finds a solution that works out best for everyone, and gets reprimanded for it.

http://www.wral.com/education/10087115/detail.html

My favorite line is:
"Yandle said if the school had been on an actual lockdown and students needed to use the restroom, she would have encouraged them to think about something other than the bathroom and find ways to occupy their minds."

Hurrah to the teacher. I think it's time for a new Associate Superintendent.

New book

2006-10-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

I've just started reading "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris. I'm just in the first chapter, but so far this has been a fairly shocking book. It's a very though provoking and erudite dialog about religion in the world today. I highly recommend that everyone read this, just based on what I've read already.
I'm really looking forward to getting his latest book, "Letter to a Christian Nation," which has great reviews in the paper, and on Amazon.

Has anyone read much of Sam Harris?

Brian

2006-10-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

Here's one of my favorite pics of Brian

Denel

2006-10-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

The first week or so, it looked like Denel living with us was going to work out well. I had the smaller bedroom, so I still had the bedroom to myself. Brian had a huge bedroom, and his bed had 2 mattresses on it, (I don’t know why he had 2 mattresses on top of the box spring), so he pulled off one of the mattresses, and they set up half of that bed room for Denel.
Denel spent a few days cleaning up the place and Brian and I bought a bunch of groceries. Since our usual stores of food in the house consisted of milk, soda, taco chips, and Berry Berry Kix, having real food was exciting. Brian got off work at 2 or 3, so he would help Denel to prepare dinner. I’d come home at 6ish, and had a nice clean apartment and a good dinner. This was great.
Unfortunately, this didn’t last very long. After the first few weeks, Denel stopped cleaning, and decided to get a puppy. She got a Scottish Terrier puppy from a breeder in upstate NY. She named the puppy Sambucca, or Bucca, for short. Also, Brian realized that he was doing all the cooking and stopped. Bucca wasn’t really potty trained, and would bark through the night, and loved to shred newspaper. We also found out that Denel had a boyfriend living in Philadelphia who she had kept secret from us. So now, we had a filthy apartment, no meals, and an extra person living with us not paying for anything, who neither one of us was going to date.
We were coming up on Thanksgiving, and I had tickets to fly to NC, and Brian was going to Connecticut to be with his family. Denel decided that she was going to go to her family in Pennsylvania, but not take Bucca. She told us that she was expecting us to pay 2/3 of the kennel costs for her dog. We informed her that this was not going to happen as it was her dog, not ours. Also, by this point, Denel and Brian had used up all his dance lessons at Arthur Murray, but they were in desperate need of female instructors, so she was getting free lessons in exchange for a commitment to teach for at least a year there. Brian had signed up for more lessons on his own.
There was one day when Brian and I came home and found a plate of cookies. They were pretty burnt and misshapen, and not that good, but we appreciated that she had made that effort. However, soon after, Brian found a cookie tin up on the top shelf with a note to her boyfriend taped on it. He opened it, and there were perfect cookies in there, all lovingly packed. She had taken cookie dough from the groceries that Brian and I paid 100% for, and given us the rejects and was sending the good ones off to her boyfriend.
Now, Denel was using my UNIX e-mail account, and, one day, I was checking my mail, when I noticed a dead.letter which comes from being disconnected or canceling when you are e-mailing, or from a bunch of other causes. I opened it up to see what it was, and it was a letter from Denel to her boyfriend. My favorite line was, “I don’t know why I moved in with them at all. I never really liked either one of them.”
This was the final straw for Brian and me. We informed Denel that we were canceling the previous offer of room and board for cooking and cleaning, because she never did either. She could either pay 1/3 rent and utilities, or move out. She got quiet and wouldn’t really talk to us, but the next morning, there was a letter addressed to us on the refrigerator. She basically said that it wasn’t fair that she should pay 1/3 when she didn’t have her own bedroom or privacy (things which Brian had, but lost when she moved in). She claimed that we didn’t seem to want the apartment clean, because it was dirty when she moved in. This was an odd claim given that we were asking her to clean. The reason it was dirty when she moved in was because we were lazy, and cleaning wasn’t our highest priority, not that we didn’t want it clean. We wrote a response to her, and it went back and forth for a while. She tried to bargain to pay less, but we pointed out that this was not a negotiation. We offered her 2 choices. 1/3 or the street. (not exactly, as we were giving her over a month to find alternate housing) She never really told us what her choice was, but it became clear when her brother and father came to move out her stuff.
Ironically, this was great for Brian and my friendship. We were unified against a common enemy. All the petty disagreements went away. We were great roommates until a year or so later, when he moved in with Maria, who later became his wife.

What happened to Denel? She declared bankruptcy and defaulted on the thousands of dollars of credit card debt she had from buying tons of stuff. Her grandmother put her up in a swanky apartment in Manhattan for free. Later, she moved back to Philadelphia, which she loved. She defaulted on her commitment to Arthur Murray, and got a job helping to teach dance at a place in Philly. She fell in love with guy who owned that studio, married him, and now lives outside Philly, doing exactly was she wants: teaching some dance, teaching some aerobics, and living a nice well off life.
I just hate it when people don’t really face consequences for their actions and just kind of skate through life.

Brian - part 2

2006-10-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

After I graduated from university in ’92, I finally found a job in NYC. Coincidentally, Brian also got a job there, so we decided to be roommates. He was living in a NYU dorm room, which they rent out over the summer, so we split that for a few months. When the school year started, we moved to a tiny place in alphabet city on the lower east side. There were drug dealers out front, and the fire escape had a metal grate over it, with a few broken bars where someone had broken in before, and a bullet hole in the window. Brian had the tiny bedroom and I had a futon in the living room. After a year in this, we found a much better place in Brooklyn on 12th street, and 5th ave, in Park Slope. That was a big 2 bedroom in a nice safe area, and it still only took me ½ hour to take the subway to work in the morning. We lived there for a couple years, but were starting to have disagreements and getting annoyed with one another, very similar to if you were living with a sibling.
Now the year before, Brian had been dating a girl, Karen, who was into jazz dance, and for something cool for them to do together, he signed up for a package of beginner ballroom dance lessons at Arthur Murray. Unfortunately, he and Karen broke up before they could take more than one or two of those.
That summer (’97, I think), Brian and I took a road trip to Montreal with Caroline and Denel, two friends from university. Brian was looking for someone to use his dance lessons with, so he tried to get Denel to come stay with us and take the dance lessons. Eventually we worked it out where she could come live with us and we would provide room and board, and she would do all the cooking and cleaning. Of course, it helped that she was 3 years younger than us, blonde, pretty, and an aerobics instructor.
So, to avoid friction, Brian and I worked out ahead of time that neither one of us would try to date Denel, because that would cause very bad problems, and a lot of resentment. So of course the moment she moved in that went out the window.
more to follow…

Brian - part 1

2006-10-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

Brian:
For the first week of my Sophomore year of University, we noticed one of the Freshmen had his father staying in the dorm with him. The dad also was wearing a winter parka with a fur lined hood. That would be fine, but it was 80-something degrees out. This was our introduction to Brian.
Fortunately for him, his dad soon left and we could really get to know Brian. Kim and Ari and Brian and I became great friends. Brian and I were of roughly the same physical strength, so we’d have great wrestling matches in the dorm, much to the detriment of the walls and doors of the building. Once, we were in his dorm room, and we were practicing flipping each other over our shoulder. I take him by the arm, and throw him over my shoulder into the wall with a great crash, and he’d land on his bed. Then he’d do the same thing with me. After a little bit of this, his next door neighbors, 2 girls we didn’t really get along with, came over screaming. It seemed that all their pictures and anything else on the wall had come crashing down as well. We stopped for 10 or 15 minutes to rest, then did one or two more, and left before we could be yelled at more. Sure, in retrospect, we were being obnoxious, but that’s university for ya.
We’d follow these gladiatorial contests with eating matches of a similar magnitude. Brian was one of the few people who actually got his money’s worth from our very expensive all you could eat dining service. The pizza place and the convenience store next to the dorm got a lot of business from us, as well, that year.
Brian was also a big walker. We walked pretty much everywhere in Philadelphia. One time, we walked over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the side with a pedestrian walkway. Then, we got to one of the cross bars with the lights on it to indicate which lanes are open and which are closed. The other ones had a locked gate preventing access, but this one was open, so we crossed over the bridge, the wrong way. That was pretty cool until we tried to get back. Unfortunately, the pedestrian walkway stopped part way back. We had to climb up on some cement traffic barricades to stay out of the busy lane of traffic. After a little bit of this, some police came along. The car at the street down below the bridge got on its megaphone and told us to get off the bridge. We yelled that we were trying to. The police car came up and blocked our lane of traffic, so that we could get to the part where the walkway continued, up ahead. We waved our thank you.
Then, there was the time that we went to NYC with Kim, and we came out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Brian wanted a Snapple, which weren’t that common in those days. He knew a store down in the east village which had it and got us to start walking there. Had we known the city well, we would have taken the subway, but he talked us into it. 4 miles later, we finally got his Snapple.
When Melissa and Brian and I went to London over our spring break, we were down visiting the Tower of London, and we wanted to go to Greenwich, so we asked someone what direction it was to get there. They told us the direction, but suggested that we really should take a cab. We said we were fine and headed off. Every time we asked directions, they told us where to go, but suggested we take a cab. After about an hour, they stopped suggesting we take a cab. And I’m sure we made it in under two hours. We saw some parts of London that no one else would see. We had some great fish and chps wrapped in newspaper. It really turned out to be a great walk. However, we took a cab back.
Greenwich was great. We were happily sitting on the Prime Meridian, with one cheek in one hemisphere, and one in the other, when a middle-aged fellow walked up and started chatting with us. He was joking with us that it wasn’t that sensational a monument for how important it was. He figured that in America, we’d have lasers and a light show around it. He asked where we were from and we said that University of Pennsylvania. It turned out that his son went there as well. It also turned out that he was the curator of the Greenwich Museum, and he gave us a private tour! Very cool!
So Brian’s long walks generally turned out for the best, and helped to keep us nice and healthy. Even our walk to Patsy’s Pizza in Spanish Harlem, from the lower East side, crossing Central Park 4 times, turned out ok in the end…It was good pizza.

coming soon

2006-09-29T05:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long delay. I've been very busy. Pretty soon I am going to give you a few nice long posts.

2006-09-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here are some more pictures. On the left is Doug. I don't remember the name of the guy in the michigan jersey (he's one of the 2 who joined us on the road). I the middle is Kathy, and next to her is Bonnie, then Libby is in front and me. There's also picture of me and Libby.

MS-150

2006-09-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I rode in the MS-150 bicycle ride in New Bern, NC. The minimum to enter was to pay $35, plus to raise an additional $200 toward finding a cure for MS. There were multiple length rides you could do on Saturday and Sunday. I wanted to do the max on each day, 100 miles.
I started the day with a few of my coworkers who had come down to ride. (that's me on the right) They tend to ride a little bit faster than I do, so I wasn't going to spend the whole ride with them, but I would ride with them to the first rest stop.
We started out pretty fast, and made it to the rest stop, 12 miles out at just under 19 miles per hour. I let them go on when they were ready, so that I could wait for my friends Bonnie and Kathy, and the people they were riding with.
They showed up pretty quickly and we headed out 12 people strong. We formed a paceline, and took turns fighting the wind at the front. We planned to average about 16.5 mph, and that's about what we did. I was feeling good, so I took several many mile pulls at the front of the line. After the 2nd rest stop, the 75 mile route and the 100 mile route split, and we lost half our group to the 75 mile ride.
By the time we got to the 3rd rest stop, at around 35 miles, we had picked up 2 more people along the way. Basically, you get about a 1 or 2 mile per hour increase in speed, because you are in the paceline and all drafting off each other. If someone is riding alone, a little slower then the paceline is going, then, when the paceline passes them, they just duck in and draft off the last rider in the line, and join the line, if they want.
By the way, what is at the rest stops? At each rest stop, they have water and gatorade and several different kinds of food, like bananas, orange wedges, cookies, granola bars, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. On a big ride like this, there's a tent from a local bike store with a mechanic at each stop as well. There are also porta potties. People get there, and leave their $1000+ bikes off on the ground, or propped against a tree, or standing against the curb, and go get more water or food. The honor code runs strong, and no one messes with anyone else's bike, or not so that I've ever heard.
Between the 3rd and 4th rest stop, we had a few people who were a little enthusiastic pulling at the front, and they were going about 18+ mph. It was also a long ride to the 4th stop (16 miles) and we were getting pretty tired by the time we got there. Fortunately we were past the 50 mile mark. This was a lunch stop, where we got some wraps and a bag of potato chips instead of the other stuff. It was a pretty pathetic lunch stop. A ride I did back in early June had a lunch stop where you had pasta, and salad, and baked goods, and cans of soda, and lots of good food. We talk about the speed and realized that most of us didn't want to go that fast and agreed to rachet the speed back to 16.5.
When we got to the 5th stop, Libby saved me. I was starting to overheat, even though I was drinking plenty of liquid, and not going too hard. It was about 85 degrees. Libby is a personal trainer, who runs a spinning class. She went and got a bag and put some ice in it, and put that on the back of my neck, and on my head and forehead, and temples, and all over. After a few minutes, I was feeling much better. She also had me put some more sunscreen on my face, so I started calling her mom.
There was another 12 mile ride to the next rest stop, but I dragged it out. Everything starts to look the same, and you just keep peddling. It was all flat, so you never really get a break coasting down a hill, but you never have to slog up a hill. I would stay in a gear a little higher than then the rest of the pace line and peddle 3 or 4 times, then coast, and repeat many many times.
Rest stop 6 was at around the 78 mile mark. After we passed the 75 mile mark, we all knew that if we had chosen to just ride 75 miles, we'd be done by now. Oh well. You live with your choices. I iced myself down again, and was feeling a little better. Libby was trying to help a woman who had rotator cuff surgery 4 weeks before, who had decided to ride anyways, and was in amazing pain, but wanted to finish the ride. Once you really decide to do something, it's amazing the lengths that you will go to finish it.
Of course, I was going through a similar thing. I was very hot, and tired. My hands and feet were getting numb every few minutes, and I wasn't really able to maintain a steady cadence of peddling. I would have loved to have stopped right then, but I had never completed a century before. I tried to ride one about 10 years ago in NYC, but stopped at 92 miles and just took the subway home. I was on a mountain bike with big knobby tires, and had also worn a hole in the side of my seat. I had also tried to do a 75 mile ride in early June, but I got overheated and the hills just got to me, and I stopped at 58 miles. I was going to finish.
So with much relucatance and determination, I rode the next 8 miles to the last rest stop. Now I had to finish. After icing down again, we started out again. At the 90 mile mark, they started with signs telling us that we had 10 miles to do. They counted down each mile. 1 mile can seem like an eternity at that point. I just kept telling myself that I really wasn't feeling that bad and that I could finish the ride. I was focusing on how good it would feel to have acheived the goal of completing a century. We started coming back into town, and out of the countryside. We were getting close.
We were on the last highway, that went over a big bridge. We had the final hill up the bridge. We were over the bridge. just the drawbridge section left. Then, we all got stopped about 1/4 mile from the end, while someone went through the drawbridge. That wait was nice, because we rested so we could make one last sprint in to the finishline, where my wife and 2 friends were waiting for us.
After taking pictures, my SI joint in my lower left part of my back started stiffing up. It seems that being in a bike position for just over 6 hours isn't good for backs. (we took 6 hours and 10 minutes - averaging 16.2mph for the ride) I decided that I had achieved my goal of riding the century, and didn't need to ride on sunday. That'll be a good goal for next year.

One Big Pancake

2006-09-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

I was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA in the fall of 1991. The campus is in west Philadelphia and quite urban. It was a Saturday night and seven of us wanted to go get dinner somewhere, but we needed to pick a place. Now 6 of us didn’t really care where we went, as long as we ate. Unfortunately, there was also Olga.
Olga was Jewish, but had not been religious until she got to university. Just a few months earlier, she grew even more religious, and had decided that she would keep kosher as well. Not, completely kosher, where you had different sets of plates and cutlery for meat and milk, or couldn’t even have meat and milk in the same kitchen, or where you could only eat specific Rabbi blessed meat, but kosher where she wouldn’t eat pork or shellfish, and wouldn’t eat meat and milk together.
Now, our friend, Melissa, had been Kosher all along, and she had always found something perfectly acceptable at the restaurants that we would go to without there being a problem. However, that didn’t seem to work for Olga. She would always have some issue with finding a place to eat, mostly just to get herself some attention.
So, here we were coming up with some places, and she kept vetoing each place. To keep the peace, and knowing no one else cared, we asked her where she wanted to go. She wanted a place that was cheap, close, had good food and would meet her kosher dietary requirements. We started suggesting places, that met these needs, but none of them were acceptable. She, then, decided that she wanted a place that served breakfast 24 hours a day.
We all thought hard, and we came up with a diner that was cheap, close, had good food, would be kosher, and served breakfast 24 hours a day. Then, she wanted to know if they made pancakes. Kim had eaten breakfast there before and she said that, yes, they did have pancakes. We were all getting excited, because we had been taking about going out for about an hour now, and now we were finally going to go get something to eat.
However, Olga had another question. She wanted to know if they served one big pancake or 6 little pancakes. We told her that they have 6 little pancakes. She, then, announced that this wouldn’t work for her. She wanted one big pancake, like her grandmother used to make.
Olga decided that she would just microwave a Hebrew National hotdog in her room instead of going out. The rest of us groaned in complaint and went out to eat. I don’t remember where we ended up going, but that’s not really important…. now is it?

Corporate America

2006-08-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

First, a picture of a 8 week old Raven and her big brother from about 4 years ago...

And now, on to my topic:
Corporate America really needs a shake up. There are far too many management positions out there that don’t need to exist. I worked at 6 different companies now, and this is the first one where I have actually had respect for the management of the company.

You’d like to think that the managers, directors, VPs, and General Managers of the companies would actually have some skills that make them better at guiding companies than your average person, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Most people who want to manage seem to get a lucky break, be in the right place at the right time, or get a fancy piece of paper, like an MBA. It usually seems that those who are really good at their job are deemed too valuable to loose, so they get to keep doing their job, while those who do an average job but have a little drive get promoted up. Then, they make sure they kiss up to the right people, take credit for anything good that happens near them, and wear Teflon armor for anything bad that happens. Thus, they move up through the ranks of management.
Once they get to be something like a VP or CEO, they are pretty much going to hold that position or higher no matter how incompetent they are. Why? The reason that we are told is because of experience. Companies hire for experience. If you have 5 years experience as CEO of Widgetworks, you will be taken seriously you apply for a CEO position at another company. It doesn’t matter that Widgetworks almost went bankrupt under your steady guidance. Any half-whit can make it sound like all the good things were his initiatives, and all the bad things were from factors outside his control, and he ,now, has learned from those problems, and can prevent them in the future. Why if you are good enough at driving companies into the ground, you can even go as high as President of the United States.
What’s the real reason that once you get a manager position, you stay at that level or higher, no matter what? Management empathy. They recognize that they could be in the same boat as you someday, because there really are factors outside anyone’s control, and anyone could be looking for a new job someday. They figure that, “There, but for the grace of god, go I.” It’s basically a big good ole boys club.
This ends up locking down the class structure. Look at any very rich person’s kids. Chelsea Clinton, George W Bush, Aerin Lauder (the daughter of Estee Lauder, with whom I went to University). Chelsea is now working at a 6 figure job and will probably end up wherever she wants. George W Bush never proved himself, or earned his way up the career ladder, yet he ended up CEO of multiple companies, before he even got into politics. Aerin Lauder is being put in charge of a large division of Estee Lauder, Inc, and she never “worked her way up.” There are countless other examples.
America is called the land of opportunity, but it’s getting very hard for the standard rags to riches story to come true anymore. The rich get richer. The poor stay poor, and the middle class becomes poor.
Why are tax breaks and other incentives given to companies by the US government? Companies aren’t pro-US. They are pro-profit. If they ruin the US, but make huge profits, and end up just moving to another country, that’s fine with most corporations. The reason they get incentives, is because they give donations and jobs to the Senators and Congressmen , and have powerful lobbies.
It’s all inter-twined. How do we fix it? I don’t know, but something needs to change.

Claim to Fame

2006-08-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

This is my wife, Suzanne, and me, with Jimmy Creegan, the basist for the Barenaked Ladies.
Jimmy is Suzanne's 2nd cousin, and they grew up visiting each other every now and then. When they come on tour in our area, we try to go see them and catch up with Jimmy. He usually gets us backstage passes.
The coolest time was a few years ago when they played at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill. We were taken to a big back room, and all the friends/family/groupies of each band member was taken to a corner of the room with it's own couches and chairs, and when the band came out, each person came to see his own fan group. Then, they all rotated around to each group, so you got to meet each member of the band, and get autographs if you wanted.
It really seems that Jimmy has not let fame go to his head. He's always been very friendly and laid back when ever I've seen him. But anyways, that's my claim to fame.

2006-08-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Bermuda, visiting friends on July 4th, 2006.

Here are some more pics, too...
Laying down is Keeper. He is about 8, and a black lab mix. Looking up to the left is our adorable dog, Raven. She's a 4 year old black lab.

Random musings

2006-08-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

If we are in a war against terror, how will victory ever be declared? It seems Bush has granted himself all the powers of a war president without any time limit.
Congress should immediately recind any war powers until he defines the exact conditions necessary to declare victory. Then we will be able to determine if those are achievable. Instead, we end up with this theocratic dictator who is attempting to sieze more and more power.

By the way, everyone should read Kingdom Comming by Michelle Goldberg. It's an excellent discussion of how the Christian Right is trying to turn the US into a theocracy. It was interesting how she was talking about how they are using home schooling to try to create an alternate history of the US in which the framers of the Constitution meant for this to be a Christian nation, which, if you read any history, you will clearly see was not the case. Then, right after I finished reading this book, Katherine Harris in Florida, whom even the Republican party can't support because she's basically unelectable, was quoted saying how the Founding Fathers wanted this to be a Christian Nation, and if you vote for anyone other than a Christian, you are "legislating sin."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501640.html

Very interesting...

#1

2006-08-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

This blog will probably be mostly empty. I'm mostly creating this so that I can comment on other people's blogs....