On World Mental Health Day

I recently started to get treatment for my depression and PTSD after suffering more than 40 years with it. As many posting to Twitter have mentioned about their depression, mine was initially dismissed as teenaged angst, then as “just they way you are” and “being serious for a change”. There was also the problem that more than 40 years ago when this mess started 1) there was no such diagnosis as PTSD 2) even if there was nobody would believe you could get it by changing schools several times at the wrong point in your life. I think that started some time in the ’90s when the DOD noticed that adults who had been military dependents as children had suicide, drug addiction, and alcoholism rates almost identical to combat veterans from Vietnam. I never went through any suicide attempts and couldn’t afford drugs or booze, I think that was the only reason I didn’t join that statistic. There was also the mistaken belief that young people couldn’t get depressed, mainly because at the time nobody knew that depression can happen to people not actually in serious conditions because it is a disease, a disease that manifests as an emotional state, not just “being real sad” all the time. To give an idea about how much I changed from before to after depression I got a “Motormouth Award” at scout camp for being lively and talkative and joking all the time. That was the Real Me (Not Depressed), in the 7th grade. By my senior year in HS, less than 5 years later, I had already had one major and countless minor bouts of depression.

So, several things here: 1) Mental Illness is a category of real illnesses, like heart disease or kidney failure. 2) Anyone can get Mental Illness at any age. Seriously, it’s like childhood cancers or Type 1 diabetes. 3) Having Mental Illness does not mean you have a weak mind or are morally deficient or any other negative stereotype, it means your brain is not functioning within design tolerances. Nothing more, nothing less.

Please share this with your friends.

PSA, Opus the Unkillable Badass Poet.

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Another day spent pounding pavements, and the Feed

This was a rough one as I went to the bank to get some money out of the firewalled account, and then went grocery shopping for the stuff we couldn’t get yesterday because we didn’t have the $ in the non-firewalled account. And I still forgot the yogurt, so no yogurt for me and the poor little kitties. 😦 And I discovered that I really need to get my toes done because my toes hurt like mad from getting the too-long nails pressed against the inside of my shoes as I walked. I really wish I could still get to all my toes by myself to trim my toenails.

And I keep writing about the Sprint-T (both sizes) but many of you don’t know how long this desire has been fermenting in my brain. U.S. Speed Sport “Instant T” T-Bucket History Not quite this long, but not very long after this.

Up first in the bike links is Out Daily Ted. Morning Links: Notes from Neil Storm Stephany sentencing, and update on new Camp Pendleton bike policy

Still in CA is this infrastructure link. They’ve Invented An Ingenious New Type Of Intersection That Could Save Lives The don’t noticeably slow bike or car traffic and protect the cyclists from the cars. Good show.

With SnowmageddonII hitting the entire east coast north of FL this weekend here’s a cheery thought about the road conditions. Why rain is more dangerous than snow

This SC hit-from-behind wreck may have involved excessive speed. Woman Killed While Riding Bicycle to Work The driver had to be hospitalized, this usually means the cyclist caused a spray of glass inside the passenger compartment which requires a fair amount of velocity. LEO are not elaborating on this aspect at the time of filtering.

Meanwhile in NYC. 15-Year-Old Boy In Critical Condition Following Williamsburg Hit-And-Run When I filtered this link there was a bicycle in it, but I can’t find the bicycle now. Just a body in the street, and a red minivan.

Still in NYC a driver moving an SUV at a service garage manages to hit several parked cars in the street and two pedestrians pinning one to the side of a building. NYPD: Gas Station Worker “Lost Control” Of SUV, Ran Over Cop’s Foot, Pinned Woman To Wall I can’t believe they didn’t say “No criminality suspected” on this one. I guess that’s because he ran over a cop.

Not done with the city yet, here’s some infrastructure bad news. Say Goodbye To Jay Street’s Vital Bike Lanes “Do any of these lane designers actually ride bicycles in the city? Or is “bicycle lane” just a button in their CAD program?” j44ke. He (she?) said it better than I could. Making the street more dangerous so that cars had easier access to the BQE. (SMH)

Over in SD they are trying to force cyclists off the roads. Bicyclists Belong in the Traffic Lane

They finally got around to charging the driver in this case in MI. Suspect charged after hit-and-run death of cyclist in Ann Arbor At least they didn’t wait until the driver killed himself in another wreck like in my case. October to January…

Up there in West Canuckistan they gots an attempted killer on the loose. RCMP seek hit-and-run driver who injured cyclist in Willowbrook They turned the Mounties on him, and you know what they say about Mounties and suspects.

Still up there in the Great White North. Killer of LaSalle cyclist sentenced to nine months in jail I don’t think there is an “m” in years. There is a serious disconnect between the seriousness of the crime and the severity of the sentence.

When the building used to store your bike gets condemned, while you’re recovering from a severe chronic illness they might lose the bike. Disabled woman’s lifelong dream of cycling across Canada dashed after bike vanishes Woman has a relapse of the disease that left her riding a hand bike and had to put the bike in storage while she went home to recover and then the bike turns up missing.

In Jolly Olde a cyclist is stopped for having a flashing light 10 years after the law was changed to allow flashing lights. Police mistakenly stop cyclist for flashing rear light “We Googled it and we were wrong.” Really, the law changed in 2005 and you’re just now finding out about it?

Good news from the UK. Yeovil cyclist who suffered head and leg injuries thanks mysterious Good Samaritan When you’re hurt don’t try to “tough it out” like this guy. He had serious injuries that needed attention from medical personnel, not a home fix-up.

Rider down in Malta. Cyclist, 79, seriously injured in Birzebbuga traffic accident and Cyclist, 79, hit by car in Birżebbuġa And that’s about all LEO are saying about the wreck.

A bus hits a cyclist and takes out 3 more and leaves the scene in Oz. Gold Coast bus hits cyclists, one injured The hit-and-run is barely mentioned. “It is believed the Surfside Buslines driver was unaware he clipped the cyclist, with the bus continuing after the incident without stopping.” Seriously, WTF?

Useful art from discarded bike parts. These Awesome-Looking Chandeliers Are Made From Salvaged Bicycle Parts Used chains and wheels and a few eectrical bits, et voila! Let there be fashionable light.

Old post just brought to my attention today. So I Went Automobile Shopping… What if car buying was like bike buying? How many cars would get sold?

As the weather gets colder your e-assist bike (and your EV) will lose range because batteries don’t like cold> There’s a worrisome problem with electric cars that no one’s talking about For cars there are a couple of things you can do, pre-heat the car interior while the car is still on the charger so you are using grid rather than battery power to do the heating, and switch over to seat heat rather than cabin heat while on the road to stay warm without using as much battery power. On an e-assist bike you provide the heat inside your clothing, but the battery losing range because of the cold slowing down the chemical reactions inside the battery still applies.

Last link, this is why I have to take so many mental health days from this blog. Feeling More I know to some it seems like I can report on some serious $&(^ and it doesn’t phase me, but I have to take a lot of breaks and go read comics or other stuff between making links on this blog.

And on that note I’m going to throw a couple tags on this post and try to unwind a bit before bed.

Things are weird again, and the Feed

Things are back to what passes for “normal” here at WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. In anyone else’s this would be slightly out of kilter, but for us it’s “just life”. Except for being out of coffee. I haven’t been this low on caffeine since the Great Coffeepot Meltdown of 2013, when we had 2 coffeemakers expire 2 days out of warranty each and I had to go without coffee for almost a week after the second one died. Now that was truly horrible…

Up first on an uncharacteristically light Monday Feed is this hit-and-run outside Houston. Pasadena PD investigating after cyclist found dead in front of bank I’m still trying to grasp what makes a broken bike, dead cyclist, and no driver remaining at the scene an “alleged” hit-and-run.

More on the left cross wreck of a driver turning through a paceline of 8 cyclists hitting 5 and now the death toll has risen to 2. 2nd cyclist dies 7 days after crash in northeastern Ohio I keep reading the cyclists were all well past the intersection and that the driver had crossed over into the oncoming lane of travel, but so far I have only seen one crime scene picture that corroborated that. I linked to that picture last week.

First of a long series of links from CA. Woman identified in crash involving bike, car People keep saying the teen driver in this case was not “distracted” and that he was a “good driver”. If that is in fact the case, this “good driver” deliberately ran into the back of a plainly visible cyclist in bright sunshine.

Cyclist hit during a time trial. Bay Area cyclist struck, killed near Esparto during event Nothing from this article on how the wreck happened.

I don’t know what to say about this wreck. Bicyclist Killed on the Milpitas-San Jose Border Cyclist was riding salmon at night, with no lights or reflectors. What was he thinking?

Our Daily Ted has Ted taking a Mental Health Day. Let’s call it a sick day Since I have done these a time or two (and eventually decided to take Saturday completely off and Sunday as a no-bicycle-links day) I can’t say as I disagree with the sentiment.

And of course you can’t make the dog quit hunting… Sidewalk cyclist killed in Cathedral City

Daily Ted, part 3. San Diego bike rider killed in foggy, early morning Mira Mesa crash after allegedly running red light

And just to show how poorly that Mental Health Day is working, part 4. Unidentified woman killed in Orange collision while riding in crosswalk

They’re still killing cyclists in FL. Ghost bike replaced to mark fatal date How bad are drivers in FL when a bike chained to the side of the road gets hit?

Drivers in KY miss the days when driver’s licenses were found in the bottoms of cereal boxes. Bicyclist Dead In Hit-And-Run Crash I’m sorry, those days are still here…

Another reported wreck where the cyclist was not paying full attention to the roads? Cyclist dies 4 days after being hit by bus That sounds an awful lot like a SWSS. I wonder if anyone reviewed the forward-facing camera footage? Because this sounds an awful lot like that wreck where the bus ran over the cyclists in CA, and the driver said she pulled over to pass and the cyclists “swerved in front of her”.

Serious wrecks outside of NYC. Bicyclist killed in Yonkers; arrest in Garrison crash Apparently Yonkers PD is no more competent than NYPD to their south. But at least in the second part of the story they arrested another driver for hit-and-run on a cyclist.

More from CA of a not-so-bad nature. Bike ride honors EMS personnel, stops in Vallejo

You know what would make this cool for the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell? Having enough bike lanes to make having a closure policy. Trail closure policy for construction and special events We have trails, but all they do is loop around whatever park they are placed.

A CT infrastructure demonstration. New bicycle tour of New Britain attracts 250 According to the guy who sent me this link they managed to hit almost every foot of bike infrastructure in the city with this tour.

A near-tragedy in far West Canuckistan. SUV crumples bike Sidewalk cyclist narrowly avoided getting hit by a driver not looking where the car was going.

Another ghost bike means another dead cyclist. Ghost bike left in memory of Montreal cyclist I hate Ghost Bikes. Not because I hate the sentiment behind them, the sense of loss, the casual waste of human life they represent. I hate the fact that every one that goes up means another cyclist has died by motor vehicle…

And we get another cyclist hit by a train on the same crossing as one was killed earlier this year. Edmonton police investigate collision between bicyclist and LRT train I have posted many, many times about how to not get hit by a train, but the simplest and still the most effective is the “don’t be there” method.

And now I’m out of links, thank [$DEITY].

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

Mental Hygiene Day

Your Ol’ Blogger had to make a choice of losing his mind or enjoying his vacation, and keeping the mind and vacation won out. More posting later.

PSA, Opus