I’m having back issues on Grocery Day, and the Feed

One of the problems I have been dealing with besides the thing growing on my neck has been walking around with both shoes the same, like a person who doesn’t have 17mm missing from one leg. Well that didn’t work after the wreck, and it doesn’t work now. I can withstand not having the lifted left shoe for a few days, but we are coming up on a couple of months since I ruined my old shoes coming back from the property hearing on Blue. The results are quite predictable, I have been walking around with a sever pelvic tilt and the part of my back on the up side of the tilt had been trying to go into spasm more and more frequently, and it gets worse on days I spend more time walking or standing, standing being much worse than walking. I have had to take several breaks today from filtering the Feed to lie down and let the spasms settle down a bit, then get back to work. In fact I should probably take a break right now as my back does not take kindly to sitting hunched over the laptop either.

Up first is a memorial for a cyclist killed down in Austin. Multiple communities mourn cyclist’s death Another left-cross with idiot LEO dilly-dallying about filing charges. This is another reason why I don’t do wreck analysis these days, because stuff like this just raises my blood pressure to no good ends.

Next because this has been burning up the Internets, multiple links to the Russian cyclist sideswiped by a tanker truck making an illegal pass. Unbelievable helmet cam footage shows the moment a Russian cyclist is struck by a 40ft lorry and LIVES and Cyclist riding down middle of road wiped out by truck very misleading headline, that, and Watch moment cyclist is thrown from bike in horrifying motorway crash with lorry The driver in this wreck was driving in the exit-only lane as the cyclists rode in the furthest right through lane, then the truck drove straight through passing on the right after crossing the “do not drive here” markings for the exit-only lane.The cyclists (all of them) are very lucky to have survived this one.

Great minds think alike? Don’t make bicyclists more visible. Make drivers stop hitting them. How many times have I posted exactly the same words here in my blog? I have lost count.

And to top that off, the VERY next link in the feed is about the glow-in-the-dark spray paint mentioned in the WP link. Volvo launches Life Paint initiative to improve cyclist safety in the UK This is like mandating women wear ever stronger chastity belts to prevent rape without ever prosecuting rapists. Except chastity belts have a finite chance of actually working to prevent rapes, making cyclists more visible won’t work unless there is someone looking for a cyclist out the front of the car in the direction the car is going. That would require LEO to file charges and prosecutors to actually prosecute them. More on the reaction from Oz. Volvo LifePaint: cycling safety trial product causes controversy

Some good news from NYC for a change. 2014 Was The Most Popular Year For Bicycling In NYC Now to do something about the door-zone bike lanes before they kill again?

And this little tidbit makes my heart all a-flutter. Bike Theft On The Rise In NYC Palpations are the same as “all a-flutter”, right? Anywho, the proposed enhanced fines for stealing bikes are a step in the right distraction. And yes, I spelled that right… My take is remotely detonated bike frames keyed to the owner’s cell phone. Pull up the app, enter the detonate code and the bike frame turns into a pipe bomb.

And rare unanimity between cyclists and the NYPD. Cyclists & NYPD Agree: A Cell Phone Bike Ban Is Dumb Aside from last year’s statistical outlier of 2 fatal bike/ped wrecks bicycles are very safe around pedestrians, and even if all you went by was last year they are still very safe around pedestrians, by a ratio of 50:1 in favor of cyclists. Best line from the article: “There isn’t a mandatory class for motorists who kill and maim New Yorkers. Why should we start with cyclists? It’s motorists who need a reeducation.” Amen.

I was not the only person who thought this sentence was grossly out of whack. Prosecutor appeals sentence in fatal cyclist crash Kudos to the prosecutor.

Why does the driver waste everyone’s time by pleading not guilty? Grief follows cyclist’s death as suspect charged They pulled him from the weapon vehicle with the victim’s blood still on it, and his BAC was 0.108 81 minutes after the wreck. You’re guilty dude, admit it and take your punishment.

Another ad for on-board video recorders for bicycles. Man seriously injured, but sheriff’s office doesn’t know how “They just didn’t think he would have all those skull fractures just by crashing his bike” Apparently the injuries were in a part of the head that would be hard to injure in a fall-off-the-bike wreck?

Another ad for getting better reports on bike wrecks. Make This Woman’s Cracked Bicycle Helmet Count The broken helmet was enough property damage to trigger the report, but how many wrecks don’t get reported? The one where I knocked the mirror off the truck with my elbow sure as hell didn’t. It would have been nice to have a name to put to that driver and compare it to the name of the guy that sold Blue to the pawn shop.

Here’s yesterday’s Daily Ted. Morning Links: Driver arraigned in death of Matt Liechty; ribbon cutting planned for bike-friendly PCH in the ‘Bu There is a link to one of the people working the second edition of Finish the Ride that is really inspiring.

And here is today’s Daily Ted. Morning Links: El Monte rider victim of vicious attack, hit-and-run rewards passed, and why sharrows don’t work Sharrows are the abstinence-only sex ed of bicycle infrastructure, never proven to work, but they still keep getting thrown out there like they do.

And still in CA a little lifestyle as a bridge is named for a cyclist. Humble Cyclist Memorialized

This monstrosity is from the son of the man who gave us the C5 and the doorstop computer. Crispin Sinclair Innovation Launches World’s Safest Bicycle, the Babel Bike I would say this bike is lacking a few things, but the steel tube cage would be a handy place to mount a coroplast body and a string of Christmas tree lights. People I know who have crashed a coroplast faired bike tell me the bodywork goes a long way in preventing injury when sliding over pavement and spreads out impact somewhat, especially compared to Spandex shorts and a jersey.

The UK’s professional traffic engineers are starting to revolt over bad infrastructure. Profession reacts: make London safer for cyclists I still think that the people who back in 2012 voted down fixing the intersection where the cyclist was killed this year need to be charged in the death.

And I’m out of links.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

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OMG the DM is killing us!

That headline deserves an explanation, and I’m the only guy that can provide one

The new RPG group met today with two sessions, one early, then a second after a dinner break. The first session was Not Good for the party, as our Ranger player was unable to attend leaving the Rogue, my Warlock, and the NPC Bard who is still a level one character. After the second encounter we had a TPK, again. The monsters the DM keeps throwing at us don’t attack our HP, they deplete or damage attributes, which means that additional encounters are at significant disadvantage to the party, leading to frequent Total Party Killed results. These are interesting encounters, and fun to play, but the party is just so weak that we can’t handle attribute damaging monsters. It doesn’t help that under this gaming universe every other encounter is like a hentai video with all the monsters wanting to rape us.

The first encounter of the day was with flowers that depleted our Wisdom stats, which caused serious problems with the next encounter with spot and listen checks, which in turn caused our Rogue to botch Find Trap checks. This is something you don’t want, because the squishies can really get hurt when the trap is set to trigger on the second person to pass. Fortunately our squishy was third to pass that particular trap and the second character had a lot of hit points.

The next encounter was with a Giant Spider, which my character took out because he is arachnophobic and went into panic mode and fired shot after shot of Eldritch Blast combined with Orgasmic Blast, an attack that causes the victim to have an immediate full-body orgasm and be paralyzed for one round and reduced attack and defend for caster level rounds or 5 rounds for my character at this time. This is the most devastating attack my character can use at this level, and it was used over and over. This lead to a quick and decisive kill and overkill as not only did my character repeatedly blast the spider it blasted every last one of the eggs it discharged as it died until they were nothing but ash.

The next encounter was only a few feet away from the spider as we ran into a Mimic pretending to be a door. As our Rogue was checking it for traps it captured her with adhesive skin. This meant that everyone with any kind of ranged attack needed to use the Precise Shot feat to prevent hitting the Rogue. Eventually the Warlock was able to kill the Mimic and then we used her Everflowing Mug to dispense enough pure alcohol to dissolve the adhesive which remained active after the monster died. This was accompanied with yelps of pain from the Rogue as every cut and scratch she got in this encounter was flushed repeatedly with a mixture of the corrosive adhesive from the monster and the alcohol.

The next problem was trying to get through the hidden ceiling hatch over the wall area where the Mimic attacked us, as none of us were tall enough to reach it. We ended up cutting the spider apart and stacking the bits up high enough that the Rogue could find the trap door, only to have to blast the lock off the door to get it open. Doing this was Not Quiet, but the repeated blasting noises alerted monsters that there was a BAMF or two on the way that had enough power to blast through doors or walls and not worry about it.

After getting in the chamber we found on the other side of the door we encountered a slug like creature with tentacles that also turned out to be pretty vulnerable to the Eldritch/Orgasmic Blast combination but not before doing significant damage to the Rogue. After doing some minor repairs to the Rogue we found another creature locked in one of a wall full of prison cells, which ended up with all of the party PCs unconscious and the NPC flagging down another character to rescue us.

All in all, a fun afternoon/evening, if somewhat dangerous to our characters.

PSA, Opus the Poet