Redbud Ride, 2015

Last year, I did 93% of the Kentucky Century Challenge: three centuries complete, and 72 miles of a fourth.  I did not qualify for the free jersey.  I treated myself to the at-cost jersey.  But, of course, there are problems with that jersey.  Chief among them is that it has three stars instead of four, and it has the "300 Miles" emblazoned on it, instead of the "400 Miles" that I covet.  Now I'm a year older, have slightly more minor orthopedic issues here and there ... but I've learned.  Grayer, but wiser -- or so I claim.  So, this year, I'm going after it again.  And I want the REAL free jersey.  The clean one.  The one with all  the stars.  So, here we go.  Saturday, April 25, my 2015 Century Challenge campaign kicked off, in what has become, in many ways, my favorite cycling venue: London, Kentucky.  I've ridden the Redbud there twice now, and the Thriller Ride, a 65-mile "metric century" (100 km) once.  That whole town seems to really support cycling in a big way, and it's fun to be there.

I lodged at the London Baymont Inn.  As usual, I didn't sleep alone, although I made my roommate lean against the mini-fridge all night.

The weather forecast was unpleasant, calling for chilly temperatures and plenty-o-rain, with severe thunderstorms possible.  The forecast was mostly correct, with some unexpected mercy tossed in toward day's end.  I started at 8 am in a light drizzle.

Pre-ride, at the Farmers' Market in downtown London.  Mechanical SAG support was kindly provided by Mike's Hike & Bike of London.  That's Mike himself, in the orange shirt and professional tool apron.

In what is becoming a Redbud Ride tradition for me, I screwed up my bike computer.  This year, I did it at the very start.  A young man walked up to me just as I was preparing to start and identified himself as a reporter for the London Sentinel-Echo and asked if I'd be willing to be interviewed.  He had a little digital audio recorder and everything, although he was, sadly, lacking the snap-brim hat with a PRESS card tucked into the band.  Seeing my chance to become the biggest cycle celebrity since Lance "Pass the PEDs" Armstrong, I eagerly obliged.  After we chatted a bit, I did indeed start off.  But with my head full of media-star dreams, I sort of forgot to push START on my bike Garmin.  I didn't think about it until I got to the railroad crossing near the edge of town, when I glanced down and saw the blank screen.  So I was already missing about three miles in my official Century Challenge chain-of-evidence that I'd need to show when checking in at the end.  That's what I get for my unseemly ambition.

The rest stops at the Redbud Ride all have fun themes.  I tell you, these people really get into it, and they seem to have a good time.  The first stop was at the Crossroads volunteer firehouse, where they had a Western theme going.

One of the volunteers saw me preparing to grab a cellphone photo, and offered to have a colleague photograph us together.  Hint: she's the pretty one on the left.  The other one, regrettably, is me.

If we wanted to know what the weather was like, it was easy to find out by reading the update board:

Rain, rain, go away!

Or, we could just see what awaited us on departure.

Hey, the sign was correct!  Steady rain!

At the second stop, in the town of Livingston, was probably the best theme: the Blues Brothers.  Many Jakes and Elwoods were present.  Quite a few of them were ladies.  Rain or no rain, they were singing, dancing, and having a good time.

We even had the Reverend ... oh, I can't remember his name from the movie.  Or maybe she was one of his choir.  The weather wasn't dampening her spirits, anyway.

As I was visiting with the Blues Brothers, I discovered that my phone, which was fully charged at the start, only had about 25% of its charge left.  I had it tucked away under my jacket, out of the rain, and I suppose I may have butt-dialed something that uses GPS -- a real battery-eater.  Anyway, the phone photography gets a little scarce after this, as I powered the thing down completely.  I figured that if I found myself crashed out on a steep downhill, writhing in agony on a riprap slope with two broken legs, I'd just as soon be able to use my phone to call nine-one-one.

The third stop was at the Letterbox Baptist Church, where they again had a Western theme (I'm guessing they don't coordinate mutually).  A big banner over the food area suggested that we "Cowboy Up for Christ," and it cited Matthew 18:5.  Didn't have my Bible with me, but I thought that must have been pretty freely paraphrased ... I don't recall any scriptural uses of that "cowboy up" figure of speech.  When I got home, I checked, and found that the subject verse says, "And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me."  Hmmmmm.  I'm left mystified about what that has to do with cowboying up.  Still, they were nice people, and seemed to be having a good time with things.  It's all good.

Approaching the fourth stop, 77 miles in, I looked down at the pavement and saw something that terrified me: my shadow!  Uh-oh, six more weeks of rain!  A quick check of the sky revealed that the cloud cover was breaking up, and the Yellow Face ("it burns us, Precioussss!") had appeared.  I was emboldened to repower my phone at the stop to document this apparition.

A tiny bit of Jackson County, Kentucky.  That is some pretty country around there.  And a little sunshine was most welcome.

The predicted return of the rain did not happen -- much less any thunderstorms.  In due course, I followed enough route markers to arrive back at the Farmers' Market in London.  There, I explained my Garmin at the Century Challenge check-in table, to a nice lady who waved off my story and marked me down as complete.

Yes ... next time, I'll probably forget to start it once again.

I took a little relaxation time before loading up my bike.  Entertainment was being provided by a band called "Kites."  Actually, I think it might have been more like "kites."  They seemed quite proficient.

The bass player has a nice voice.  Not hard to look at, either.

I was reminded of an important fact before leaving:

In case you're ever on "Jeopardy," and the answer that Alex gives is "The Cycling Capital of Kentucky," the question is, "What is London / Laurel County?"

I bet I'll be back.

Dueling Bumper Stickers on Just One Car

So, I'm on the road Friday and I'm passed in traffic by a young woman driving a smallish car.  On the back, driver's side, is a sticker saying "War Is Not the Answer."  True dat,  think I.  On the passenger side: "I'm Ready for Hillary."

Wow.  Just wow.  Make up your mind, young lady.  If there's anyone who's any more convinced than Mrs. Clinton that war is  the answer, almost no matter the question, I can't think who it would be.  Not that it matters, of course; any opponent she has, primary or general election, who has a ghost of a chance of getting within shouting distance of the US presidency, will also be an eager servant of the corporate welfare / warfare state.  Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

Gee, maybe the War Party will decide to stage another Bush vs. Clinton show, with just a pair of different first names.  You know, for old times' sake.  Craptastic.  Can't wait.

There's Lives, and Then There's Lives

The current Murderer-in-Chief is waxing pensive.  He's deeply troubled by the moral ambiguities involved in drone murder.  He's furrowing the brow and contemplating the many paradoxes inherent in his role as Caster of Thunderbolts From Mount Washington:

He looked down at his text, but seemed to drift away from it. He had planned to say something about the drone strike that killed two hostages by mistake, about how the tragedy would be reviewed.

Then President Obama paused and recalled that someone had just asked him how he absorbed such awful news. “We all bleed when we lose an American life,” he said. “We all grieve when any innocent life is taken. We don’t take this work lightly.”

A day after announcing the deaths of the hostages, an American and an Italian, Mr. Obama found himself on Friday at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in McLean, Va., and he was in a ruminative mood. “These aren’t abstractions, and we’re not cavalier about what we do, and we understand the solemn responsibilities that are given to us,” he told the intelligence professionals.

“And our first job is to make sure that we protect the American people,” he said. But, he added, “We have to do so while upholding our values and our ideals and our laws and our constitutions and our commitment to democracy.”

Rarely has a president wrestled with the grim trade-offs of war as publicly and as agonizingly as Mr. Obama has over the last six years. He wanted to get away from the messy ground wars that his predecessor waged in Iraq and Afghanistan and institute a seemingly cleaner, more exacting form of war, one waged only when there was “near certainty” that civilians would not be hurt.

But the strike that killed Warren Weinstein, a 73-year-old American aid worker, and the Italian hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, in January underscored that there is no such thing as near certainty in war, even one waged with precision instruments like the drones swarming the skies of places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The only near certainty of war is that innocents die and that presidents have to live with the consequences.

  It's curious, how the Great Nobel Laureate picks his spots for being all contemplative and disturbed and sensitive and whatnot.  Was El Presidente racked with doubts every time another wedding party or funeral or picnic among the wogs of the Near East got blown up?  Maybe, but, if so, we weren't told about it.  So what's different now?

Oh, yes.  The dead this time are an American, and an Italian.  Take away the American, and you have to wonder: would a dead Italian, by himself, have haunted the dreams of our oh-so-compassionate prexy?  I don't know, but speculation is fascinating, no?  Still, one thing's for sure: another few dozen dead Moooslims don't even show up on O'Bomber's radar screen.  I may as well admit that, miserable cynic that I am, I doubt that our current First Sociopath genuinely gives a rip about even the American victim.  Do you suppose that, as a child, Little Barack enjoyed torturing kittens?  That's the classic pattern, isn't it?

Grigg on the Difference Between Us and Our Rulers

I'll just move over and let William Norman Grigg illustrate the important distinctions:

Biden Family Values: Leniency for us, stern prohibition for the mundanes

William Norman Grigg

 

Asked by Time  magazine last February about the possibility of decriminalizing marijuana nation-wide, Vice President Joe Biden insisted that “smarter enforcement” of federal drug statutes was a better idea.
For “smarter” he apparently means “selective and self-serving.” If this weren’t the case, Biden’s pampered and dim-witted son Hunter would be facing the prospect of prison time.
In 2012, Hunter Biden decided he wanted to join the US Naval Reserve as a direct-commission public affairs officer. Because of a drug-related incident in his background, he was given a special waiver. Last year his dilettante military career was ended when he was discharged after a drug test turned up evidence of cocaine use. A few months later, perhaps as a consolation prize, Hunter was made a board member of Ukraine’s largest oil company, an appointment that doubtless had a great deal to do with the fact that the company is owned by the U.S.-installed regime in Kiev.
Biden, who does not face prosecution, told Fox News that he was “moving forward” with the support of his family. That includes his sister Ashley, who was arrested on drug charges in 1999 but never prosecuted – and is now employed as a “child welfare” bureaucrat in Delaware, where she is probably involved in stealing children from parents who occasionally use proscribed substances but aren’t part of a politically protected clan.
During his decades in the U.S. Senate, including a long stint as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Vice President Joe Biden distinguished himself as among the most militant drug warriors in Washington. He proudly recalled to Time  that he is “the guy who did the crime bill and the drug czar.” He also promoted the widespread practice of asset forfeiture, the use of the RICO law to turn petty drug offenses into federal conspiracy prosecutions, and supported military aid to wage the drug war overseas.
Biden obviously does support decriminalization of drugs, but only on a case-by-case basis. He has done more than his share to ruin countless lives in the name of drug prohibition. Thanks in no small measure to Joe Biden’s efforts, millions of people who have done no harm to anyone but themselves have been fed into the prison and parole system. Hunter and Ashley Biden would be among them, were they not the glorious outpouring of privileged loins. 

Be sure to vote, now.  Voting changes things.

For No Particular Reason

From the end of Chapter 30 ("The Old Doctor") of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward :

He saw her out, came back into the dining room and sank into a rocking chair of black bentwood and yellow wickerwork, its back worn by the years he had spent in it.  He gave it a pushoff as he sat and let the movement die down.  He did not rock it any more.  He was sitting in the odd position peculiar to rocking chairs.  It was almost off balance but free.  He froze like that for a long time, completely motionless.

He had to take frequent rests nowadays.  His body demanded this chance to recoup its strength and with the same urgency his inner self demanded silent contemplation free of external sounds, conversations, thoughts of work, free of everything that made him a doctor.  Particularly after the death of his wife, his inner consciousness  had seemed to crave a pure transparency.  It was just this sort of silent immobility, without planned or even floating thoughts, which gave him a sense of purity and fulfillment.

At such moments an image of the whole meaning of existence -- his own during the long past and short future ahead, that of his late wife, of his young granddaughter and of everyone in the world -- came to his mind.  The image he saw did not seem to be embodied in the work or activity which occupied them, which they believed was central to their lives, and by which they were known to others.  The meaning of existence was to preserve unspoiled, undisturbed and undistorted the image of eternity with which each person is born.

Like a silver moon in a calm, still pond.

I'm not sure, but I think that might be the best passage I've ever read in a novel.

And now, back to this world's madness ... and my own foolishness and triviality.

The Government Wouldn't Mislead Us ... Would They?

So, the Ebola guy in Dallas has died ... and one of his nurses has it.

So far, that is.  We don't know yet how many people from the hospital have it.  Soon, we may know more.

The above-linked CNN story has a cute little animated video with it.  The video tells us that of course you can't acquire Ebola through "casual contact" with someone who's sick with it.  Oh, no, of course not.  You need direct contact with "blood, saliva, mucus, sweat, tears, semen, vomit, urine, feces."  And those icky fluids have to directly contact your cut or abraded skin, eyes, nose, mouth, etc.

Hmmmmm.  Saliva?  Mucus?  Ever hear of ... a sneeze?

This guy's sitting next to you on a bus, or train, or airplane.  If he has something that's transmitted by his saliva or mucus getting into your nose, eyes, or mouth ... you're what is technically known as "screwed."

Now, I'm nothing but a retired physicist.  I don't know how difficult it is to contract Ebola from someone who has it.  It's well outside my tiny little field of so-called expertise.  But the thing is: whether it's easy or hard to transmit Ebola, I'm quite sure "my" government will tell me that it's hard.  They will tell me that because they don't really care the proverbial rat's ass whether I live or die.  What they do care about, a little, is that I, panicked, will be more difficult to manage than I, complacent, would be.

Meanwhile, the Great White Father is asserting, with perfect dogmatic certainty, that this poor sick nurse HAS to have violated protocol  to have gotten sick.  And this disease is so hard to catch ... I guess we're supposed to assume that she foolishly passed the time by making mud pies, barehanded, out of her patient's feces.  Well, like all the rest of you, I don't even know her name, but I'm already pretty angry on her behalf.  I really doubt that she's stupid.  I tend to suspect that Ebola's fairly easy to catch.  I tend to suspect that we're being lied to.  Again.  So what's new?

What course of action am I urging on "our" government?  Well, nothing in particular.  If Ebola transmits easily, it's probably already too late to head it off.  Myself, I wasn't planning on getting out of here alive anyway; I'm pretty sure I'm going to hand in my lunch pail at some point or other, from some cause.  Ebola's probably a bad way to go, especially since, if it becomes widespread, we aren't going to die in modern, antiseptic intensive-care circumstances, attended by a host of spacesuit-clad medics, because they'll all be dying too.  If I were among our rulers, it might occur to me that shutting down air travel, both into the US from foreign lands and within the US, until the situation becomes a little more clear would be a modest and prudent precaution.  That won't happen, because there's money to be made (and lost).  Still, it's instructive to consider a regime that cheerfully slaughters swarthy foreigners by the hundreds of thousands, on the laughable premise that otherwise, Radical Islamists  will take over Peoria, Illinois and start beheading Sunday School students.  This same regime would never jeopardize a few weeks' worth of corporate profits for a small reduction in the chances that 50 to 90 percent of the American people might die hideously from an African hemorrhagic fever.  It's not as contradictory as it might seem; after all, in both cases, there's money to be made (those "defense" industry CEO bonuses won't pay themselves, you know).  Sure is ugly, though.