State of the author, Wreck-Free Sunday

I have been busy making regular posts and taking care of Dad and trying to keep him active that I have not been doing so good myself. I mentioned I had a pulled muscle that was not healing right, well I also bumped my knee while moving Dad out of the bed and it has not been healing right either. I don’t know what the problem is, because I normally heal up faster than anyone outside of a comic book, and this is not normal for me. The knee injury was over 2 weeks ago, the pulled muscle was back in December, and between the two of them I’m hobbling around like an old man.

Another issue I’m developing is I’m losing muscle mass in my legs. Remember that post a couple of months ago lamenting not having large enough leg holes in my underwear? Well they are plenty large now and can be pulled up in one easy motion without any finagleing the leg through the opening, and my weight is under 190 pounds. This is Not Good. At this rate by the time I get home I will be completely out of riding shape. I still have lots of upper body muscle mass because of lifting Dad in and out of bed, but I’m willing to bet that the loss of muscle mass in my legs and the increased problems I have been having since coming here to take care of Dad are somehow related. Up until I came to TN I was riding almost every day and feeling pretty good after a ride, but it has been more than 3 weeks since my last ride on a bike. Now when I ride I ride in the back of a car, mostly to and from doctor appointments. Did I mention that I miss riding a bike almost as much as I miss my wife? Well I do. I’m not sure how Mrs. the Poet feels about that but she should know that she still beats out riding a bike by a little

Dad is still making more steps forward than back on his road to recovery, but getting him to eat is still the big concern. He’s eating enough to keep alive but I don’t think he’s eating enough to recover. And I sound like my Italian grandmother when I’m talking to him now, constantly trying to get him to eat more. (My grandparent count really deserves a separate post, my family was a little “different” when I was growing up.) So far though nothing we have given him has gotten him to eat much with much of what we bring him getting a single bite and then ignored. He did seem to greatly enjoy the bowl of Senate Bean Soup we fixed for him (made with real Senators) the first time we fixed it, but he hasn’t touched it at all since. And I can’t tell you how much food we have had to throw out because he had a little bit and then turned the rest of it down. With as tight as our food budget has been at home in TX that really hurts me the most. But what really causes me pain is the frozen food that has gone bad from age in the freezer…

Well I’m going to sit on an ice pack I found in the freezer while looking for something to fix dad for dinner yesterday and see if that doesn’t help my hip muscles some. Regular post tomorrow.

PSA, Opus

Some of the problems being a bicycle rider in a car-driving world, Wreck-Free Sunday

I know what some of you might be thinking, but there will be no reports on interactions with motor vehicles in this post. No, not that either. This is a post about… underwear.

OK while you put your heads back on your necks from the psychic whiplash, this post is about white cotton briefs and the problems you can have with them if you’re a bike rider, even if you don’t wear underwear with your bike shorts. OK I just saw heads going the other way, I’ll hold up while you recover from the other psychic whiplash (or the first one after I made that other abrupt reversal).

OK are you sitting comfortably with plenty of neck support? This post is about why men’s underwear doesn’t fit bike riders natural proportions. There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? I have been training for a couple of things I want(ed) to do this summer. You know all about BikeMS, that charity ride I was going to do but that fell through. Well I have another thing that I’m working on, some shorter rides. Real short rides. Of about 1/4 mile each. Very quickly. That would be drag racing for the uninitiated. The current record for the standing 1/4 mile as recognized by the IHPVA is just over 27 seconds. I think I can do better if I make a purpose-built vehicle for this, that I have been working on for about 3 years now trying to make it hold together when I shift from low gear to high. I mention that part because it leads to the issue I got started on at the beginning of this post, underwear.

Anyway part of the reason I can’t get the drag racing vehicle to survive a shift from low to high gear is I make this shift under full power and part of it is I’m working with crap parts that have rather loose tolerances and large clearances and I can’t afford to buy good stuff, and things get twisted out of shape when I apply maximum effort, and I have been training to apply even more effort than what has been breaking the bike before.

Can you see where this one is going yet? Large amounts of power and working to be able to make more power? And just where would that power come from? You in the back doing the Horshack impression, stop waving your hand, you’re right, it’s from leg muscles. BIG leg muscles. No, bigger than that. BIG leg muscles. Are we getting the picture yet? Or are you still wondering what the heck this has to do with my underwear?

I had to get new underwear recently because the center seam in my shorts has been sawing a split down the center of the seat of my underwear. I got the size that fits my waist just fine, but it takes me a few minutes to get the leg holes over my thighs either pulling them on or taking them off before I go to bed as I have to work then gently around the quads and hamstrings until I can pull the underwear up over my waist. The waistband is comfortably snug, the leg holes likewise after I get the underwear completely on. It’s just the getting on part that is a pain in the tookus. Car drivers rarely have big quads, unless they have a 4BBL carburetor on the engine, so they don’t need to have big leg holes or lots of elastic on the leg holes in their underwear. Bike riders on the other hand do have big quads and hammies and hip adductors that require big leg holes in their briefs. I think the only other group that has a similar problem would be professional body builders. I’m not quite to those proportions yet, but with this drag race training program I might be soon be in those levels of development.

Now part of the problem is where I have to buy my underwear, the local dollar store. China-made underwear is not built for people like me, they make underwear for people with fat butts and big waists and skinny legs that only get used walking from the house to the car, from the desk to the refrigerator, and from the bedroom to the kitchen. IOW hardly at all. These people need underwear with waistbands that are much larger in proportion to their leg holes than people that ride bikes as transportation, and those people vastly outnumber people like me.

So, you see my dilemma. I can buy my dollar store underwear to fit my legs, or I can buy it to fit everything else underwear fits over. For the moment I buy it to fit my waist, because they don’t mark the packages with the size of the leg holes and I haven’t figured out what waist size would have leg holes big enough to get on easily. Probably by the time I got leg holes that big the underwear would just fall off if I stood up too quickly anyway.

PSA, Opus

Back online, with Wreck-Free Sunday

I was off the Internet involuntarily for 3 hours when I got back from church today. With both my son and I working to get first the router back up, and then getting my computer to connect to the router after it got back up. That’s what can happen when you have a piece of equipment that stays on 24/7 for a couple of years now, almost 3 years.

I don’t mention politics that don’t affect bicycles during the week, but that doesn’t mean I ignore politics. You may have heard about a certain overweight political commentator who went deaf from his addiction to prescription pain pills making the statement that a college student that was tired of having to buy her birth control pills at retail because her student health coverage wouldn’t pay for it unlike other medications, was a slut and a prostitute, and should be making sex videos for his amusement. Well he made a mealy-mouthed retraction of that statement that did not go out to the majority of his listeners. Limbaugh apologizes for insulting law student I don’t like the idiocy of national politics, because I think it’s a distraction from the mission of this blog, keeping cyclists alive and in motion, but this is just over the top. No matter what your position is on mandating birth control be provided just like any other medication (if you have a plan that covers most medications, it has to have birth control coverage too), calling a woman a slut and a prostitute because she thinks her BC should be covered too if required for medical reasons, or to prevent a possible abortion if she gets raped, is not acceptable. Several advertisers have bailed on Rush, including one that has been on the show since shortly after they came into existence.

On the BikeMS front, the church had to bail on me because our major spring fundraiser collapsed because of a lack of vendors. The economy is the reason most of the former vendors gave for not coming this year as they just are not making any money. Well that really puts the brakes on my participation in BikeMS, because I don’t have the money to donate on my own and the brain damage makes doing the asking for the money really hard for me. This is really disappointing, because I have been working really hard to get ready for this ride, trying to find extended rides to harden my backside and get some miles into my legs, while getting as many rides as I can.

More news on Blue, I bolted the new version of the Honkin’ Huge Taillight™ on the back of Blue last night. The battery still isn’t ready for prime time as the charger is still not built up as I haven’t finished taking it apart yet from it’s previous incarnation as a trickle charger for a car battery. The way it’s going to go back together is as a CC/CV charger, using a 7805 voltage regulator as a current source running from 23.6V at the output from the bridge. So 14.4V is a full charge on the battery plus the 5V overhead from the regulator, plus a few 1N4001 silicon diodes to add up to the 23.6 V from the wall wart gives me a charger that I can leave on for a full day and not overcharge the battery too much because at some point there can be no more charging because the voltage drop exceeds the voltage available and the current source can’t source any current. No current equals no charge.

I’m going to kick back now and veg a few before evening service, you go have a good evening, day, or whatever diurnal period you are reading this post during.

PSA, Opus

I mangle an old Internet meme, Wreck-free Wednesday morning

You have to go way back into the depths of Internet history to find this, but there used to be a big thing about a bad Engrish video game. The Game itself was not so bad, decent mechanics and replayability, but the cut scenes were so bad, because the dialog was badly translated subtitles, that people actually plugged quarters in it just to see the cut scenes. The game was Zero Wing…

Someone slipped us the car! Main screen turn on channel 4.

All of your roads are belonging to us!! Ha, ha, ha!

You have no chance to survive make your time. Your puny bicycles are no match for our motor vehicles.

We take to the roads for great justice!

If only real life was like video games, all bicycle riders would at least have something to shoot back with. We would probably still die in the same numbers we do now, but we could take a few cagers with us when we went.

PSA, Opus

Got hit again, still on an adrenaline rush, and the Feed

Um, yeah. I had to go out on the bike today, and some numb-nuts in an older model pickup truck ran into me passing on the right pulling up to a red light. I don’t mean “as we approached the red light”, I mean less than a truck length from the light he hit me from the right (almost) passing in my lane. If I hadn’t been riding bicycles in the street since LBJ was sworn in I would have been seriously injured or killed, because there was no place for me to go if I got knocked down except under some trucks, either the guy passing me or the guy in the left turn lane on my left. This makes twice this year I have been hit and managed to stay upright only because I had mad bike skillz, and twice I have been hit on that street this year. The ironic thing is I was hit on a through residential street, one of the few here in the suburbs of Hell, with a speed limit of only 35 MPH (in TX the minimum speed limit is 30, so a 35 MPH street is considered slow and quiet). The ironic thing is because I have been training for drag racing I was using that particular stretch of road as a speed workout and was pushing 18 MPH into a slight headwind (remember I’m riding a bike with the riding position of a Dutch city bike with 2 40 pound capacity kitty-litter buckets on the back, about as aerodynamic as a parachute). I know I was putting out some serious watts at the time. And any minute now I’m going to have an adrenaline crash that will be monumental in its intensity. [SLUMP]

In spite of my experience today there were very few links to actual bicycle wrecks in the Feed today, but there were lots of motorcycle wrecks mostly by racers on race tracks testing new bikes with new tires or new tire compounds for old bikes, the state of the art never being stagnant. There were also a few people getting hit riding skateboards in the bike lanes.

Up first is a cyclist hit by a stop-sign running driver in San Francisco. Cyclist In Critical Condition Injured After Collision With Postal Service Truck [Updated] The facts are in, the driver rolled the stop and ran right into the cyclist as she passed the intersection. Anyway, intersection protocol might have prevented this one if the cyclist had any time to react to the Postal truck, otherwise at some point you have to be able to depend on drivers following the laws and not running you over as you ride in front of them. More Cyclist hurt in S.F. crash with mail truck Interesting how many people in the comments for that article blamed the cyclist for the wreck because she wasn’t wearing a majik foam hat. Intersection wreck, not avoidable by a human cyclist as you have to be able to assume the driver is going to obey the law, but using intersection protocols might have prevented some of the injuries.

A little east of that (and south, too) a cyclist is hit and killed in mysterious circumstances. Cyclist hit and killed by car at Ft. Apache and Flamingo I think the mystery is that the driver was at fault and they can’t figure out how to blame the cyclist for being there, so until them we get nothing. Anyway, intersection wreck, use intersection protocols to avoid.

A drunk driver gets ready to plea after nearly killing a sailor from about as far west as you can get and still be under a US flag… UPDATE: Suspect accused of striking cyclist in drunken crash is negotiating plea This woman was old enough to be legally consuming alcohol at the time of her wreck but is now too young to drink after a change in the laws in Guam. Anyway, the wreck was a hit-from-behind, use the protocols for that to avoid a similar wreck.

Another motor vehicle on bicycle wreck is under trial in Enn Zed. Driver felt impact but had not seen cyclist To use the local vernacular this is a SMIDSY wreck (Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You) and as such is 100% the fault of the driver of the weapon vehicle. The cyclist had the right of way and was in a clearly marked bike lane.

In the previously mentioned (in another post) trial, the driver was found not guilty of dooring the cyclist killed when a car door opened in her path. Waterfront bike death: the ‘fall guy’ Apparently the road did grab the driver’s hand and force him to open the door into the cyclist’s path causing her to fall in front of a large truck.

And in Infrastructure! news from the UK, everybody is safer except cyclists. Road accident statistics: how safe are our roads?

And that’s all I have for you today. I’m going to put some techno music in my new MP3 player and meditate on my brush with Death today.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

The year of the DUI/hit-and-run driver, and the Feed

I’m not going to do anything “personal” in my opening paragraph today. In my review of the past year I have found that a huge number that made the media were either DUI or hit-and-run/presumed DUI. As a rough estimate about 45%(+/-) of the reports fell into this category, especially if I include the media reports from the UK which I normally don’t post in my blog. Part of that is the media, wrecks with no known perpetrator are “news”, and DUI wrecks are “news” as well. But part of it is just that there were that many people killed by/while DUI (a large number of wrecks were when the cyclist was above the legal limit for BAC%), and there has been an uptick in hit-and-run wrecks of all kinds, not just against cyclists. This is a documented phenomena, more and more people just don’t give a poop, or are not licensed or insured and don’t want to be caught without those. In many cases where they catch the driver, they left the scene because they just didn’t give a poop about hitting another human being who wasn’t in a car, if they were actual real people they would have been driving a car is the rationale.

First link today is a 5YO killed while riding her new bike. Shreveport child killed while riding bike The unlicensed driver backed out of a driveway into the street and right over the little girl. Normally at this point I would tell you that every driveway is an intersection, but hey. First of all the victim was a 5YO girl, second she was riding within sight of her home. I lay this entirely on the driver who did not have proper lookout when he pulled out of the driveway in a residential area with kids in the street. If you look at the picture you don’t see any sidewalks or other areas for pedestrians or kids riding tiny bikes, so there will be kids in the street there. Driver’s fault, even before considering the lack of a valid license…

A SWCC wreck in OH. Cyclist Hit In Late Night Accident I’m not going to state categorically that this cyclist wasn’t trying to cross the road as I don’t have any access to the physical evidence, and it was at an intersection. I wonder if there was a traffic light that was controlled by a loop sensor in the pavement, most of those will not change for a cyclist unless the cyclist knows where to put the bike for greatest sensitivity from the sensor, and a high percentage of those will not change even then. By law you have to treat those as failed traffic controls and act as if you were at a stop sign and proceed when the traffic on the cross road is clear.

And last links are form Oz as cyclists do not escape the holiday carnage. SA cycist dies after Christmas Day crash and National holiday road toll at 38 Note that the 5YO was hit on private property and won’t be counted as a road death.

And that’s all I have this year. Next year will start out with a Wreck-free Sunday post.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Two-part Weck-free Sunday, part two: the speed-sensitive mine

I was debating if I should do this second part of the pair of Wreck-free Sunday posts I had planned. I mean after all making mines is not the most legal thing to be doing. But I’m not going to tell you how to make the explosives, I’m not going to tell you how to build the detonator, all I’m going to tell you is how to make a timing circuit that can be preset to trigger all that other stuff.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER!

Setting land mines to blow up cars, even cars that are being operated dangerously around people that could be hurt or killed by cars, is totally illegal and will probably result in long prison terms or worse. This is only a hypothetical musing on how it could be done IF it was legal.

OK with all the warnings and disclaimers out of the way there are two basic ways to do this, first is with discrete components. What you would need is something to drive the detonator at the end of the system, this would be entirely dependant on the style of detonator you use. The stuff I used to use back in the day isn’t even made any more, so unless you have a stash of MIL-spec electric detonators from the late 1960s don’t even ask. If you do have a stash of those things get rid of them fast before they go off on their own because they would be seriously unstable by now.

OK I’m going to assume you know how to set off the detonator, but need to set it off at a certain speed and above. What I would do is use photo transistors charging a resistor-capacitor pair until placed in shadow by the passing car that would connect the capacitor to ground through the resistor to get the r/c discharge curve with the second photo transistor set to trigger if the voltage fails to decay below a set voltage that sets off the circuit that fires the detonator. To adjust the speed at which the detonator is triggered use a trim pot in the resistor side of the circuit and an O-scope to set the decay slow enough that a car going faster than the speed limit will trigger the mine. This would be best for using the minimal number of components that could be traced back to the builder. The bad part is this circuit would have to be built and tuned for only one set speed unless you disassemble the mine and reset the trim pot for each new speed limit. The best place to use something like this would be a large number of roads that had the same speed limit.

The other major way to do this would be to use a simple uC with a timer register or a general register that can be decremented. This takes a little more planning, but you can use a BCD coded wheel switch to set the time or the speed (you can use a look up table or do the math to convert the speed to the counter setting in the timer register). The way this works would be the photo transistors again as the trigger devices with the first transistor starting the timer countdown, and the second stopping the countdown and moving to a decision sub-routine in the program that sees if the timer had gone to zero and triggering the detonator if the counter was greater than zero. The advantage of this setup would be if there were several different speed limits in the area and you needed to be able to place the mine on the one with the biggest problem with speeders, as an example one that had a main road that when traffic was light had lots of speeding drivers, with residential streets in parallel that had lots of cut-through traffic at speed when the main road was full.

OK again let me remind you that this was just a intellectual exercise for me to get rid of some mental aggression, not a suggestion that you go place speed sensitive mine in places where there are lots of aggressive drivers that drive too fast too close to you. Setting explosive devices on the road is an act of terrorism, unlike using a car as a weapon against a cyclist which is just something that happens because you ride a bike. So don’t actually build a speed-sensitive mine, you’ll go to prison, unlike 99% of the drivers trying to kill you even if they succeed.

PSA, Opus

A major milestone for my blog, my 1000th post, and the Feed

Yep, this is the one-thousandth time I have sat here, reading through megabytes of data and text, blowing pictures up to ridiculous levels, running descriptions of wrecks through my mind trying to “see” the wreck. In the nearly 3 years I have been at this blog host I have read more than 9000 articles about bicycle and motorcycle wrecks, seen more than 1000 cyclists die in the name of just getting from one place to another, read about a lot of really stupid things people do while riding their bikes, coined one acronym (SWCC), been asked to assist in at least one investigation of a fatal bicycle wreck, ranted and raved as drivers who used their vehicles as weapons to kill or maim cyclists are not even charged with a traffic offense, and generally had a one-sided conversation with my readers. For that I must thank you, because without readers this blog is just dust in the winds, a lot of noise and fury that signifies nothing, me talking to myself in a more sophisticated way.

Up first I have 2 links to a situation that makes me glad I have this blog, but extremely angry I need to have this blog. DA: No felony charges in injured cyclist case and cyclist reaction from the west coast Sadness in the South: Mississippi crash spurs anger, activism and the blog that tracks the victim’s recovery, Get well, Jan! Synopsis of the wreck: driver on cell phone hits cyclist from behind causing cyclist to ride up over the hood of the vehicle and into the windshield. Driver hits brakes and cyclist falls off hood and back to the road. Driver exits truck, sees cyclist sitting up on (shoulder, road?) and gets back in vehicle and runs cyclist over again, then attempts to flee. Weapon vehicle is blocked from leaving by bystanders who also corroborated the assault on the cyclist. Fast forward to the events recounted in today’s links where the DA sees no laws broken except maybe the 3-foot passing law, but they can’t even write a ticket for that because the offense was not observed by a LEO. I had been planning (for a long time) on making a trip through MS by bike to ride the Natchez Trace National Bike Route. I don’t think I’ll do that now.

Another report on the Ride Yellow wreck. RideYellow cyclist hurt Interesting how the LEO put it, “The cyclist just got too far out in the road, but it wasn’t a serious injury.” Umm yeah, it was serious as a broken arm and leg. And the car that hit her was driving on the wrong side of the road.

A horrific wreck between a motorcycle and a bicycle in MI. Riders skid 150 feet in bicycle-motorcycle crash that injures 2 The description of the wreck is somewhat confusing. The bicyclist was riding north in the northbound lanes when his hat blew off. He then made a U-turn to retrieve the hat and was hit by the motorcyclist in the southbound lane, causing both riders to slide 150 feet down the street. Two bad decisions on this wreck, the first and proximate cause of the wreck was the bicyclist’s U-turn without clearing oncoming traffic. The second and contributory cause was the motorcyclist’s decision to travel at an unsafe speed, which then caused the wreck to continue for 150 feet.

FDOT doesn’t like reminding drivers that bicycles belong on the roads. State DOT removes ghost bike in Bonita “We do not allow or permit homemade crosses or ghost bikes in state right-of-ways,” said FDOT spokeswoman Debbie Tower. “If we see them, we remove them.” No sense in reminding drivers that they kill more cyclists and pedestrians than any other state in the US, that would just make them feel bad.

A bizarre wreck in Copenhagen. Bicyclist killed in police chase The pursued car flipped onto the cycle track at a speed of about 110MPH when it hit the cyclist. That’s a speed that even a glancing impact is deadly, and this wasn’t a glancing impact. I find it interesting that they know the impact speed with such precision (181 Km/hr).

Transit-hating developers are using the recent cyclist walking his bike in front of a train after going around the crossing arms as a weapon against the train operating company. Developer: RTD Ignored Warnings At Railroad Crossing Umm, no. This is not an RTD problem, this is an idiot problem. The idiot is now dead, no more problem.

Infrastructure! in Canuckistan. Arab: Auto-crats should start pedalling in right direction Cyclists in Calgary have been trying to get bike lanes longer than my oldest child has been alive. All they are asking for is a little paint on the roads that marks where cyclists go (and cars don’t) and it has taken almost 35 years to get nothing? That’s some serious car-head thinking on the part of local transportation planners.

And that is my 1000^th post, and all the Feed that had to do with actual bicycles and stuff. Now I’m going to go read som comic strips so I can clear my mind of this.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

Running at a snail’s pace, the Feed

Well, I clicked to pull this page up at 1748, and it’s now 1943, and I just got the headline up. To say that my computer has been a bit sluggish would be an understatement. I’m greatly looking forward to getting that replacement computer soon.

Up first is an update on the man that rolled a stop sign into a pickup truck doing the 55 MPH speed limit. ID released of cyclist killed in Corning I still don’t understand how or why this happened, but to avoid, stop at stop signs leading to major arterials. It really is as simple as that.

A man from NY state is killed on a Memorial Day weekend ride to honor veterans. Cyclist killed in Plumstead hit and run This was a hit-from-behind wreck, so use the hit-from-behind protocols to avoid, or since this happened at a pay ride that was supported by LEO perhaps roaming snipers…

A wreck in NJ that is being kept under wraps as far as LEO releasing any information is concerned. Bicyclist struck, critically injured in Burlington City I seldom see a wreck where there is this much secrecy unless there is some kind of criminal activity on the part of the driver at fault. Actually I seldom see a wreck with this much secrecy in the US, period.

Moving down the coast from there, a cyclist is also mysteriously hit in SC. Bicyclist hospitalized after being hit by deputy cruiser Not much I can say about this one except, why was a 76 YO working as a LEO?

There were 2 wrecks in this link from Oz, the cyclist was the one clipped from behind, not hit head-on like in the headline. Man dies in head-on crash Since this was a hit-from-behind wreck (which seems to be the theme for the day) use the hit-from-behind protocols link at the top of the page to avoid a similar wreck.

Infrastructure! of a legal variety in FL, the most deadliest place in the US to walk or ride a bicycle, Little awareness of Florida’s 3-foot law for cyclists From the comments it seems rather obvious that many do not agree with the law, or having bicycles on the roads at all.

Cyclists in OH demonstrate how to drive around cyclists in this video and article. Bicycles, motorists sharing the road (with video) Again, bad commenters, no cookie for you. If you keep it up, no driver’s license either… Do you know that some of those statements could be considered terroristic threats?

Infrastructure in the Great White North. Bad weather doesn’t slow Laurier bike-lane work Plus there’s some good advice on how to ride legally in Canada.

LifeStyle and advocacy in OH. Cleveland: Cyclists raise awareness by riding in ‘Critical Mass’ When you have idiots running the show in your local transportation department, sometimes you need to do idiotic things to get their attention. Or you could just stage a mass ride that obeys every rule and law and ignores the imaginary ones which will bollux up the traffic flow something awful… And in reply to the only comment to this link, there is no “right” to pass a cyclist, unless and until there is room to do so safely.

More LifeStyle from AZ. Friends create fundraiser CD for injured cyclist For those not connecting the dots, this is for the cyclist that was hit from behind in the bike lane last month by a hit-and-run driver more busy texting than driving. Even if it’s a crappy CD you should buy one to help the cyclist, because it doesn’t look like the cyclist will be getting anything from the driver, who had no license and no insurance. Maybe he can get some money by auctioning off some of her organs, I bet her brain is hardly used

Final link a radio program in the great White North promotes violence against cyclists. Radio show gives bike riders the gears more hate and stupidity in the comments again…

And that’s all I have today.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

I wasn’t Raptured, no surprize

OK so the Witch on a Bicycle wasn’t brought bodily into heaven, not that I’m astonished at this. I was reading the rapture manual (written 110 AD) and it seems that the rapture will be limited to 144,000 Jewish male virgins, which means that when the rapture comes only a very small percentage of the population will vanish. If there isn’t a significant Jewish population near/around you, you probably won’t notice when it does/did happen. People keep acting like when the Rapture comes all the Really Good Christians® will suddenly vanish from the face of the Earth, when according to the Bible it will be Male Christian Jews that keep kosher and haven’t had sex but are physically capable of doing so. Now there might be 144,000 of those among the 7 billion or so humans on this Earth, but I don’t see them as being in any kind of concentration, you know what I mean?

But, on the good side, there were so many Really Good Christians® that couldn’t RTFM that were crying into whatever they cry into not on the roads this morning that it was a very pleasant ride into church this morning. Between that and the traffic signals actually being able to detect my bike I was able to get to church in under 20 minutes in spite of the headwinds. And because the winds got significantly stronger for my return trip my trip home was even better, except for the fool that decided to pass me 50 feet before a 4-way stop almost hitting me to get in the lane before the stop sign, while I was doing over 20 MPH. And naturally this was a very large, very black SUV.

I mentioned it was windy out today, well it’s also pollen-ey out today so I’m a bit sneezy and drippy, but after I take my allergy pill I will be a bit drowsy. I would rather be drowsy without sneezing than sneezing and as alert as I am with allergies.

So, I’m going to take a pill and a nap, and then go to evening services at church tonight.

Billed @$0.02, Opus