logistics associated with starting a new riding group?

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

On Feb 28, 3:16 pm, Bill Baka wrote:



I do support the NRA, but not hunting. If Bush had his way (I'm taking a
long shot here) he might ban any and all people outside of government
having guns. That would signal the beginning of an Orwellian government.

I'm no hunter myself, but I don't see anything wrong with it right now
as it's being regulated. After all, the population needs to be kept
down, no?

I'd be surprised at Bush going against the NRA, despite his fascist
tendencies. Between them and the American Taliban -- a.k.a. X-tian
fundies -- that's the Repug party right there! Oh, okay, Log Cabin
repugs, too, out and not.

I hear you there. I mean who would want to trek through Turkey,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, etc.......?
Those people are the nut jobs to me.
I would much rather prefer falling off a bike doing a stunt than get
shot or beheaded just for being an American.

Ah, well, it seems most of the folks with those really hard third-
world adventures on CGOAB are European, and Continentals at that.

I wish I were a tougher guy. But I can't imagine being in the middle
of nowhere, totally depending on the kindness of strangers as well as
my own wits. NY muggers are scary enough. I don't need some bored
Mongolian teens on horseback harassing my tent at night (as related in
Cope & Hatherly's "Off the Rails").

Bill Baka

Prisoner at War wrote:
On Feb 28, 3:16 pm, Bill Baka wrote:


I do support the NRA, but not hunting. If Bush had his way (I'm taking a
long shot here) he might ban any and all people outside of government
having guns. That would signal the beginning of an Orwellian government.

I'm no hunter myself, but I don't see anything wrong with it right now
as it's being regulated. After all, the population needs to be kept
down, no?

People do, especially some of gun toting red necks. The huntees are only
getting out of control because people keep moving into their place and
bitching about the mountain lion who has liver there all his life.

I'd be surprised at Bush going against the NRA, despite his fascist
tendencies. Between them and the American Taliban -- a.k.a. X-tian
fundies -- that's the Repug party right there! Oh, okay, Log Cabin
repugs, too, out and not.

Bush might try something since he can't be un-elected at this point and
he knows it. It should be obvious that he can't just turn over the job
to Cheney. Nixon quit and we got Ford, which wasn't that bad a compromise.

I hear you there. I mean who would want to trek through Turkey,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, etc.......?
Those people are the nut jobs to me.
I would much rather prefer falling off a bike doing a stunt than get
shot or beheaded just for being an American.

Ah, well, it seems most of the folks with those really hard third-
world adventures on CGOAB are European, and Continentals at that.

I wish I were a tougher guy. But I can't imagine being in the middle
of nowhere, totally depending on the kindness of strangers as well as
my own wits. NY muggers are scary enough. I don't need some bored
Mongolian teens on horseback harassing my tent at night (as related in
Cope & Hatherly's "Off the Rails").

Bill Baka


I don't know how 'tough' you would have to be to bounce bullets off your
chest, but I can tell that anyone who actually wants to trek through a
hostile zone isn't quite all there.
Bill Baka

Prisoner at War wrote:
On Mar 2, 2:41 pm, Bill Baka wrote:


We have given up our manufacturing base, so if we get into it with China
we're screwed. And yes my grandfather had a huge lot in Chicago and my
grandmother tended the garden. There were always fresh veggies and
fruits when I went to visit.

So now you go to the supermarket for them. Big deal. I'm sure they
used to do their own laundry by hand, too. So what?

They don't anymore. Both dead and since my aunt just died in the house
that's the end of that chapter.

The country's only screwed if there's nothing to replace that
manufacturing base. And who the heck wants to be a cog in the
machine, anyway? You thank your lucky stars that this economy is
moving more and more towards an information economy where it's design,
not manufacturing, that's the order of business.

If you mean everyone in the US sitting in a cubicle then that is
negative progress and bad for the workers as well. Pushing IT is not
good for this country.

What, I'm registered as a Democrat but that doesn't force me to vote for
an idiot who happens to be a Democrat.

Yeah, but you seem to think Ahnold is super duper....

Not super, but way better than the guy who ran against him. I voted
democrat on all the other candidates, since they were all about the same
anyway.

Yeah,
I can't imagine ANY republican candidate wanting Bush associating
himself with their campaign. Bush is poison these days.

I don't understand how so many people could have ever voted for him.
The way he blinks and smirks tells you he hasn't a clue but is still
going to try to put one over you...you know what I'm talking about?
He has that mannerism, the facial gesture that goes, "holy ****, he's
got me -- but I didn't get where I am today by letting facts get to
me...."

You pretty much got that one totally correct. The first time I think his
brother was able to manipulate just enough votes to squeak his brother
into the white house. The second time just showed that Kerry was too
non-photogenic. He did go to Viet nam and serve in the military, which
seems to be an almost requirement these days. I don't see anything
intelligent about signing up knowing you are going to go to a lose-lose
kind of war and is just a meat grinder for American troops.

S.F. is the land of the strange, where half the people are queer anyway.

Makes you wonder why all the conservatives were ranting about Red
Chinese landing there, then, during the '60s.

The 60's were so hazed over from LSD and pot I'm surprised anyone can
remember what happened.

In that respect, I found it amusing how the rest of the country
rallied around New York, Sodom-on-the-Hudson, because of 9/11.

We do have bicycle police in the cities, just not a whole lot of them,
but they are in far better shape than their car driving, donut dining
counterparts.

I haven't seen an NYPD officer on bike patrol in the longest time. I
used to see them biking around doing patrols on bikes, but now the
only time I see them is at a parade or something like that.

They do exist in certain cities, but I don't know which.

BTW, I'm acquainted with a bike cop and he was telling me how they get
trained to do stunt-like things, such as biking down stairways.

I watched him a few years back where he bent down and looked under his
desk and said "Nope, no WMDs there." He has no presidential dignity and
came off as a total buffoon.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to.

It may be the postmodern reader in me, but I don't find anything
particularly undignified about that. I understand why some do, and
why there was a ruckus over it at the time, but I think it's good for
us not to take the Presidency too seriously. Heck, that's how we got
into the WMD mess in the first place. I think great evil is able to
happen in part because folks want so much to believe in the "dignity"
of the office that they will allow all manner of silliness, like the
undermining of many democratically-elected governments over the
decades.

????????
Bill Baka

On Mar 3, 12:00 pm, Bill Baka wrote:


People do, especially some of gun toting red necks. The huntees are only
getting out of control because people keep moving into their place and
bitching about the mountain lion who has liver there all his life.

I definitely agree with you about human overpopulation.

Bush might try something since he can't be un-elected at this point and
he knows it. It should be obvious that he can't just turn over the job
to Cheney. Nixon quit and we got Ford, which wasn't that bad a compromise.

I doubt he'd want to expend any political capital he has left on an
effort that, even if successful -- which is extremely unlikely -- will
only be overturned soon enough.

I don't know how 'tough' you would have to be to bounce bullets off your
chest, but I can tell that anyone who actually wants to trek through a
hostile zone isn't quite all there.

But, of course, that depends on what you mean by "hostile zone." Some
folks think New York north, south, east, or west of certain points
after sunset is hostile.

I had a coworker who saw the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan when he
was a college guy back in the late '70s. This was when the country
was heading fast towards collapse. I envy him his memories of these
now-shattered relics.

Bill Baka