On Feb 28, 4:27 pm, Bill Baka wrote:


SNIP


I just can't picture Hitler as a Catholic.

How about Goebbels as an altar boy, too? And a PhD, no less, from
prestigious Heidelburg U!

Or how about "Jewish" (as per Nuremberg Laws, not rabbinical ones)
Field Marshals and privates in the Third Reich? It's one of them
crazy believe-it-or-nuts! things in "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" from
Kansas U Press, which won some military history book award.

Should I mention that heavy traffic around here is not as bad as big
city traffic but we have worse drivers. The reason I go sidewalk
sometimes is that I have been almost flattened by drivers turning right
in front of me, mostly the ones going to Wal-mart. Playing pedestrian
and getting off the bike to walk across the intersection is the safest
thing I can do there.

Well, do take care, then. Would hate for you to become another
statistic for the helmet nazi crowd!

Yeah,
I ran into 2 kids with a pit bull bigger than both of them combined.
Fortunately it realized it was on a leash so it didn't try to come after me.

I had a pit come after me once, and the most amazing thing: it either
didn't bite or didn't get the split-second chance to! For I felt its
clenched teeth pressed on my calf, and it's either just doing the bad-
dog-intimidation-thang (an aggressive Akita once went after a kitten,
and held it in its jaws, but didn't actually bite down; perhaps even
more luckily, the dog's owner intervened), or by the Grace of God I
was moving fast enough that it missed the split-second opportunity to
open its mouth and clamp down!

So, you see, after experiences like that, I can only laugh at the fat
old slobs in fluorescent-gay frozen-turkey-wrapper tights and helmets
and other assorted gee-gaws who ride ten miles an hour and still wind
up bloody (happens every year at the 5 Boro Bike Tour, amazingly
enough. People break bones, lose teeth...absolutely amazing!).

If it's a charity ride like the one I have there is not only a pit stop
every ten miles but also 3 or 4 county sheriffs riding around to make
sure that everyone is OK. I stopped and sat on a little bridge over a
creek and a sheriff came up and asked me if I was OK. I just said yes
and pointed to my stash of juice in the back racks and a "Thank you" and
he was on his way.

That's very cool. I think the NY rides are just too big for such TLC
-- but that particular ride I'm talking about was just a regular
weekend club ride, may fifteen folks, though with plenty of stops, no
more than every twenty miles IIRC.

Well, if he was fat and probably only in marginal cycling shape you
could have left him in the dust.

No, this was another ride leader on another ride. Word must have
spread about my anti-helmet views throughout the club. Very snarky
folks, people who give themselves a mission in life, you know. So I
just ride on my own. They hardly go anywhere I haven't been, there
ain't no chicks on these rides (you get widows and garden tea party
kind of ladies), and it's a bunch of fat old guys or skinny wieners
who like to play amateur lawyer (actually, I think some of them are
lawyers). Someone must have told them to get a life once, and they
decided on the 5BBC. =)

That should be interesting.

Oops! The plot thickens! The competing Montauk ride just about-faced
and changed its date to June. I wonder what happened now?? Likely
lost the support of the LIRR, the suburban rail system that goes out
there (Montauk).

SNIP