Wednesday Potpourri

Over on Pickled Beef, Tink asked for a little help in restoring her faith in humanity. I don't get out much and so didn't see any continuum-altering opportunities for good deeds, but I did what I could.

About half a mile from our house is a nice recreational park. It's mostly an open field used for kids' soccer practices and the occasional Sunday morning cricket match (seriously.), with a splash park and a couple picnic shelters plonked down in the middle.

The park also has a 1.55 mile long walking/jogging/biking path that runs all the way around its perimeter. At several points along the path, the city of Allen has provided permanent stations for dispensing doggie poo mitts and receptacles for the disposal of any such collected during one's walk around the path. Neat idea, huh? I think so, but the local pet owners apparently don't agree. Maybe it's in our nature to rebel against doing what someone else wants us to do (pick up after your pony-sized mastiff, in this case), or maybe it's just too much to ask people to hang up their cell phones so they'll have a free hand for a doggie poo mitt.

Either way, when Turtle and I went out for a ride this past weekend, I was dismayed to find a couple large piles of poo on the path. Not next to the path, in the grass. On the path. Instead of spending the rest of my ride fuming, I thought of Tink's post, rode to the nearest poo station, and grabbed a couple poo mitts.

“I'm going for another lap,” I called to Turtle. I held up my poo mitts and waved them. “I got doody duty!”

I discovered a few things over the course of that lap:

• The poo mitt is really simple to use. Just put it over your hand, pick up the poo, and (!important) turn the mitt inside out so that your hand is outside the mitt and the poo is inside.
• I intensely dislike [the behaviors of] lazy, self-centered people.
• Riding around with a couple bags of dog crap in the pockets of my cycling jersey makes me giggle. I even made up a song, to the tune of The Pretenders' “Brass In Pocket”. (I leave the lyrics to the reader as an exercise.)

It was easy and fun (almost). From now on, when we do the park loop, I think I'll grab a couple poo mitts and police the area as we go. No charge.

Other recent randomness:

• Turtle wouldn't let me buy her anything for her birthday or for our anniversary. Instead, she's had me testing my somewhat limited home improvement abilities. First, we rolled the dice on some decorative painting technique. Not a big deal, on the face of it; I'm proficient with both brush and roller. The risky bit was where I had to use a brown glaze and a rag to attempt an antiqued effect. The result was… acceptable. Then came the energy-saving window film. I've done two windows so far, with not too many bubbles but no small amount of cat hairs embedded like flies in amber. The jury is still out regarding the film's effectiveness at blocking heat.
• Last month, Turtle's hairdresser friend from St. Louis was in town and we got to meet them for dinner. During the course of their conversation, the two of them concluded that I needed a new haircut. Turtle's friend gave me clear instructions, which I passed on to my barber yesterday. After I'd signed the waiver, he went to work on me with the clippers and #2, #3, and #4 guides. The results? Well, it's comfortable; it will save some money on gel and electricity I would have used to run the hair dryer; it shows quite clearly where I'm going to go bald first; and it makes Turtle look really young.
• I had a really nice ride Sunday afternoon with the Recumbent Bicycle Enthusiasts of North Texas (RBENT). We met out near the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport and did a loop around the perimeter of the airport for a total of about 23.5 miles. It was a really good turnout, and it was great fun seeing such a large variety of recumbent bikes and trikes rolling down the road and turning heads. Oh, and the dinner at Hard Eight BBQ (Coppell, TX) afterward was really yummy, too.
  

We ride. Again.

Donate Online!

Last May, I rode in my first ever Sam's Club MS 150 (Frisco/Ft. Worth). Along with the rest of my team, I rode a little over 150 miles over two days. Thanks in large part to the support of the blogging community, I was able to raise $500 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Well, I'm back for more, and I hope to do even better this year.

On May 3-4, I'll be riding with The Wheeler Dealers, an MS 150 team founded in 2005 by my friend Bob. I'm pleased to be riding with them again this year, not just because they have so much fun and because a couple of my recumbent buddies have joined the team, but because I've seen firsthand the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. You see, Bob's wife, Gerry, has secondary progressive MS and has been confined to a wheelchair for the past eleven years.

Turtle and I first met Bob and Gerry in 2002, and each year we've seen Gerry lose a little bit more of her mobility and strength to the effects of MS. She's a lively, outgoing woman who handles her disease with grace and courage, but it's tragic to see her increasingly become a prisoner of her own body.

Then there are our friends Barb and Joe, another couple who both suffer from MS. Joe was diagnosed first, and was already using a motorized wheelchair to get around, by the time we met him. Barb is able to walk using a cane, but has an entirely different set of symptoms than Joe's.

MS is a wasting disease that presents itself differently in each of those afflicted with it, and it takes away dignity and mobility. If I can do a little something to help by just riding my bike—because I can ride my bike—then I'm in.

But I need your help. If you feel, as I do, that finding a cure for MS is a worthy cause, I hope you'll help me to meet my fundraising goal by sponsoring me in this year's MS 150. It's easy to make your donation online, and it's tax deductible. It doesn't even have to be a lot of money. $10? $5? Every little bit helps. And if you know others who might be interested in helping out, please refer them to this posting or to my official MS 150 donation page.

Thanks, and God bless you.

'Tis the season

...to try and bag yourself a cyclist to strap on your hood. Apparently.

Let me set this up for you: 70 °F, sunny, and I'm off work. Turtle tells me I'd be a fool not to go for a bike ride; I can't argue with that kind of logic, and off I go.

Madness.

You: The school bus driver in the next neighborhood over.
Me: Wondering how it is that you have no qualms about sitting with your stop sign stuck out, holding up traffic while you socialize with one of the riders' parents; but you're in such a rush that you have to make your right turn across my path rather than wait for the additional five seconds it would have taken me to pass the side street on to which you turned.

You: The high-and-tight mouth breather who parked his fire engine red monster truck in the middle of the road while he chatted with the guy in his front yard.
Me: Flattered that, after my appraisal of your choice of parking spots, you cared enough to hunt me down, pull up next to me, and lean across the seat with your middle finger out the passenger window. Boy, you sure put me in my place, and I'm touched that you spent half an hour of your life to make sure that you found me and delivered your message.

You: The lady crossing guard who saw me coming, marched out in the middle of the street, and held up her sign to stop me—the only moving vehicle in sight.
Me: Glad to know you're out there keeping the neighborhood safe. If you hadn't stopped me for the full minute that it took for the stroller-pushing dad reach your crosswalk, it could have been blood and entrails all over the road. And I hope you choked didn't choke on your wad of gum while you were snickering.

Merry freakin' Christmas to the lot of ya.

Nutcracker? Sweet!

Last season, my favorite holiday music came from a video of a home light show that would have been the envy of a Las Vegas casino. This year, it's a video over at Specialized featuring as its soundtrack "The Nutcracker Suite" played entirely on bicycle parts. And it sounds great! I just wish the clip were longer.

There's a bit more about the project and slightly different version of the performance at Peter Kirn's Create Digital Music blog, if you're interested.

The music is the work of Flip Baber (a.k.a., "Johnny Random"), who's pretty darned amazing, as you can hear from this sampling of his work. It's enough to send a fellow Googling for a full-length CD, but I have paying work to accomplish.

Update

I've also discovered that Peter Kirn has posted an entire entry devoted to bicycle music. Who knew?