Kerry's flat tires

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:44:59 GMT, "Claire Petersky"
wrote:

If we're talking about kids -- on Thursday I took my daughter to
her middle school in the car, along with her trombone and my bike. (We are
still looking for solutions to carry the 'bone on a bike....) She stayed
late at school to work on homework, and I rode back to the school from work.
We were loading up the car with the bike and the trombone in the hatch, when
a schoolmate came up to Rose and asked if he could get a ride home with us,
so he wouldn't have to wait for the activity bus. I asked the kid where he
lived -- it was no more than a 15 minute walk from the school. So why was he
waiting for the activity bus? Parental fear? Clearly, walking home would get
him home faster.

Some of it might be peer pressure; perception that cool kids drive, geeks
bike? I was driving my daughter to school the other day, and we saw a girl
her age on a bike tooling down the road at the half-way point (we're about
2-3 miles from the school. Walking it would take 45 min on an average day
(thinking aloud).

I point and go 'grr?, woof?' like 'PiB', or 'doable' (we communicate in
monosyllabic grunts...or she talks so fast I can't understand a word), and
she says "Da-a-a-a-d", like 'I'd rather die than be seen on a bike...'.

Actually I'm not sure what she meant, but that was probably it.

(She's getting her license in a short while, and is now taking the
drive-along with the driver ed coach, so 'car' is on her mind - equalling,
uh, probably freedom...)

The failure to hook up with a physical activity might have been when she
was in 5th grade, as a short, pudgy-challenged kid, tried out for the girls
field hockey team, and couldn't run around the field 10 times in that
summer heat (don't blame her), and they dropped her. That was it for
athletics. In the last 2 years she has sprouted and is now slightly
underweight and 5'8", and has an athletic body, but no athletic endeavors.

There may be a crucial 'time' where if they don't get into some 'favorite
sport' they miss the boat...sometimes?

-B

Hunrobe wrote:

Terry- Your posts usually stay on point but this time it seems
you and gooserider are talking about two separate issues. Your
above post is about the rising cost of health care but it's in
reply to a post about the decreasing availability of health care
brought on by doctors leaving the medical field due to
outrageously expensive malpractice insurance premiums. Apples and
oranges.

That's very possible, my memory's not that good. But I thought the
original thread-drift statement was the cost of health care, not
malpractice insurance. Sure enough, below from Oct 21:

In article ,
maxo wrote:

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 22:06:25 +0000, gooserider wrote:

And if
there is no tort reform nothing is going to happen to reduce the cost of
health care, no matter what Kerry says.

Bull****. Litigation as a percentage of health care costs is around 5%. It
should be dealt with, but it's not the elephant in the room.

So the original statement "health care costs won't be reduced
without tort reform" was made by gooserider and challenged by maxo.
The statement seems a bit nutty, given the dollar amounts.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA http://bike.terrymorse.com/

Badger_South wrote:

The failure to hook up with a physical activity might have been when she
was in 5th grade, as a short, pudgy-challenged kid, tried out for the girls
field hockey team, and couldn't run around the field 10 times in that
summer heat (don't blame her), and they dropped her. That was it for
athletics. In the last 2 years she has sprouted and is now slightly
underweight and 5'8", and has an athletic body, but no athletic endeavors.

There may be a crucial 'time' where if they don't get into some 'favorite
sport' they miss the boat...sometimes?

It's never too late, you know. Don't give up hope on her. My sister
never did anything athletic until she was in her 30s, when she fell
in socially with some local triathetes. In a few short years, she
was winning her age group. Now exercise is part of her daily life.

I was the kid they always picked last when choosing sides. I didn't
exercise regularly until 2 years ago, when my dad's failing health
spurred me into doing something about my fitness. I started cycling
with a local club, and now I look forward to my daily ride. My
year-to-date totals, as of today: 12,141 miles, 1,026,101 feet.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA http://bike.terrymorse.com/

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 17:36:40 -0700, Terry Morse wrote:

Badger_South wrote:

The failure to hook up with a physical activity might have been when she
was in 5th grade, as a short, pudgy-challenged kid, tried out for the girls
field hockey team, and couldn't run around the field 10 times in that
summer heat (don't blame her), and they dropped her. That was it for
athletics. In the last 2 years she has sprouted and is now slightly
underweight and 5'8", and has an athletic body, but no athletic endeavors.

There may be a crucial 'time' where if they don't get into some 'favorite
sport' they miss the boat...sometimes?

It's never too late, you know. Don't give up hope on her. My sister
never did anything athletic until she was in her 30s, when she fell
in socially with some local triathetes. In a few short years, she
was winning her age group. Now exercise is part of her daily life.

I was the kid they always picked last when choosing sides. I didn't
exercise regularly until 2 years ago, when my dad's failing health
spurred me into doing something about my fitness. I started cycling
with a local club, and now I look forward to my daily ride. My
year-to-date totals, as of today: 12,141 miles, 1,026,101 feet.

True. No giving up, here.

Funny story from today...your high mileage made me think 'Does Terry ever
get off his bike..', and I remembered:

I'm driving to the new climb, (wasn't safe at my level of bike handling to
ride one stretch along Interstate access area, imo), and I come upon a guy
on a yellow and black sharp looking ride, bike jersey matches the bike,
very lean, and he's got his dog on a leash.

I'm imagining..."wow, fast dog...", thinking that guy is a top club or even
pro racer, and he's gonna pick up speed on the straightaway...

But, no, he's still riding slowly...and huh, he's on the wrong side of the
road, a narrow section near a trailer park, parking already lined up along
one side of street, woods on the other, he's on the wooks side wrong way
riding...with the dog...and...slowing down...then I realize!

He's out on his bike (now going like 0.5 mph), in full racing gear -walking
the dog-, who has pulled -him- over to the woods side, the dog is looking
for a place to go or smell the leaves at road level. The guy is trying to
be really courteous pulling way over, but I only had about 20 feet to hit a
wide clear section so I didn't pass him.

I started laughing b/c he reminded me of 'biker guy who -never- gets off
the bike'; walks the dog, picks up the paper in the front yard, hell, cuts
the grass, eats, brushes his teeth..on...the...bike.'

Just...like...Terry. (teasing).

-B
Terry is, in fact, thinking, yeah, I've done that, heh-heh chores on the
bike.

"Mike Kruger" wrote:

There's only one state that has mandatory physical education
grades 1-12. That's Illinois, and it has been required for
many years. Illinois physical education teachers inevitably
mention this fact during school visits, and point out how
they are trying to teach lifetime habits. So does this
particular government intervention work? Does it encourage a
lifetime of good habits? No.

I dunno - worked for me (I grew up in southern Illinois).

How's THAT for a meaningless anecdote? ;-)

I think the best way to fight obesity would be to destroy every
computer on earth. It would save time going through the newsgroups,
too!

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame

In article ,
Badger_South wrote:

I started laughing b/c he reminded me of 'biker guy who -never- gets off
the bike'; walks the dog, picks up the paper in the front yard, hell, cuts
the grass, eats, brushes his teeth..on...the...bike.'

Just...like...Terry. (teasing).

-B
Terry is, in fact, thinking, yeah, I've done that, heh-heh chores on the
bike.

Funny, one of my riding buddies recently asked me if I ever walked.
I told him, "I'd like to, I just don't have the time." There are
others who are worse off, though:

http://www.bikeaholics.org/

These folks are truly over the edge.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA http://bike.terrymorse.com/

"Terry Morse" wrote:

"The primary reason health care costs are rising is that most
spending on health care is done with someone else's money rather
than the patient's. As a result patients avoid making tough choices
between health care and other goods and services. The most wasteful
kind of health insurance is insurance for small medical bills. These
are the expenses over which patients exercise the most discretion
and for which opportunities for waste and abuse are greatest.
Moreover, by the time an insurance company gets through processing a
twenty-five-dollar physician fee, the cost will be fifty
dollars
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/HealthInsurance.html

Interesting article. I wrote earlier that I thought malpractice payouts were
the primary cause of increasing malpractice premiums, but I agree that they
don't come close to being the primary cause of increases in health care
costs as a whole. On the other hand, I can't find where Goodman supports his
conclusion that the "primary reason" for rising costs is the third-party
payment system. Granting that this distorts consumer decisions, there are so
many other causes for rising costs that I don't know how we would isolate
the effect of this one. The two causes that seem most serious to me are two
that we really cannot do much about. First, we continue to develop new and
better methods of diagnosis and treatment, many of them expensive. Second,
the population continues to age. I suspect we have to reconcile ourselves to
the inevitability of continuing increases in overall health costs for a long
time, no matter what we do to ease the impact of these increases.

--
Paul Turner

Bob Hunt wrote:

"Paul Turner"

wrote in part:

No, I don't think I missed the point. I don't understand why you are
saying that it is a mistake or a distortion to say that Kerry volunteered.
Kerry's acceptance into officer candidate school carried an obligation of
three years active duty -- not as a reserve, but in active service in the
navy.

Since we are discussing service in a war zone, I'm sure that you *do* miss
my
point.
I give both men credit for voluntarily joining branches of the armed
services.
I'll even give Kerry the greater credit for his enlistment since it
included
the obligation you point out. What I give *neither* man credit for is
volunteering to go to Vietnam since neither volunteered for that duty.
Neither Kerry nor Bush *volunteered* to serve in a war zone. They
voluntarily
put themselves in positions where they risked being ordered to do so. That
risk
materialized for Kerry but not for Bush.
I notice that Kerry himself doesn't claim to have volunteered for Vietnam
so
why do some (not necessarily you) claim he did?

I see your point, and I'll certainly grant that becoming a naval officer
wasn't the same as enlisting in the army. Still, your argument would apply
to the latter situation as well, since you could equally well say that
someone enlisting in the army wasn't volunteering for service in a war zone
and might not be sent there. But someone who marched down to the army
recruiter in 1968 and joined up would legitimately expect that he probably
would go to Vietnam, even if it wasn't inevitable, while someone who joined
the Texas Air National Guard would legitimately expect not to go. My strong
recall of the era was that the latter was precisely the kind of thing one
did in order to minimize the chances. While the navy was in some sense in
between the two, I think someone with a three year active duty commitment at
the time Kerry joined would expect part of his service would be in a war
zone, although for most (other than aviators) it was likely to be in the
comparative safety of a ship.

In addition, I think a good case could be made that Kerry did volunteer for
Vietnam. His duty recommendation form on leaving OCS says, "Desires Swift
boat billet," and I think implicitly that meant Vietnam. He asked for it and
eventually he got it, so that could fairly be characterized as volunteering.
Again, I grant that a Swift boat wasn't infantry, but it was "in a war
zone.". (The duty form can be found at
news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/jkerry/dutyrcmmnd.pdf , which is not a partisan
source.)

Bob, I know you were reluctant to get started on this earlier in the thread
and so was I. What gets into us? I promise not to pursue this to ridiculous
lengths. It's just that I'm out of town and can't bike.

--
Paul Turner

"Paul Turner"

wrote in part:

--- well reasoned semi-political statement snipped)---

Bob, I know you were reluctant to get started on this earlier in the thread
and so was I. What gets into us? I promise not to pursue this to ridiculous
lengths. It's just that I'm out of town and can't bike.

This is the only NG I read with any regularity and when I do it's most often
either after a ride or at night. As for why I broke my resolve not to get
dragged in, there are two reasons. First, to compensate for what seemed to me
to be a weird near-canonization of a political candidate (I say weird because
when's the last time a candidate was being boosted by liberals based on his
*war record*? Odd, that.) and second, I'm just contrary enough to enjoy reading
the complaints of sometimes off-topic posters that the discussion is OT. ;-)
BTW, that contrary streak is also why I sometimes use smileys in my posts.
Smileys drive some NG regulars up the wall. Are you listening, Zoot? :-)

Regards,
Bob Hunt

(Hunrobe) wrote in
:

This is the only NG I read with any regularity and when I do it's
most often either after a ride or at night. As for why I broke my
resolve not to get dragged in, there are two reasons.

Man, am I ever going to be glad when the US elections are over.