The things that stick in your memory. I recall when I passed the 1,000 mile mark on my motorcycle and my car. Now today, on my bicycle. At 9:30 AM and I was passing the friendly place called Gulfstream Park. They’ve tried to spruce it up, but it is still a poker hall that serves alcohol and seems to fascinate mostly those who have never had anything of value in their lives. Take a look at this bench at the bus stop. I’ve already said, but the biggest draw of these places is that the gambling machines dispense cash [instead of chits like on the Indian reservations].
I biked over to Borders to look at some books on Internet Security and actually found a nice one by Cisco. It is also the first book by an “authority” that outright warns people about giving even your name, age or gender information out on the Internet. There was an okay lady by herself and I casually introduced myself, pointing out I was taking the table next to her so I could watch my bicycle. Nothing, zilch. Not even a smile. Probably sour grapes, anyway.On the way back, I bought some ginger in sugar. Thanks to ginger snaps when I was growing up, ginger has not been my favorite. This was quite tasty. Let me explain, not ordinary ginger snaps. I meant five year old, dry, brittle half-moldy rock-like pellets at two-cents-a-pound ginger snaps that say “And there’ll be no more cookies around this house until those are all gone”. Yeah, now you get it, the ones that dunking just ruins a good cup of coffee. What’s with “snaps”, anyhow?
I am now tracking my blood pressure, but more out of curiosity than concern. I have no idea of the frequency this should be done, nor the normal readings. Here’s the first one. 110/67 at 102 beats per minute. Is that good or bad? Knowledge will modify my thinking because right now, I believe that stress is more dangerous by causing an overall rise in blood pressure. Thus, once a day is better than nothing to spot any trend. Later, I see that that pressure reading is actually quite good.
[Author's note 2015-12-06: I used one of those automatic digitalized "cuffs" to measure my blood pressure, but never did trust it. I still have it and compared with my manual sphymanomometer. It turned out to be precisely accurate. Oops!]
It was an unexpected but appreciated day off. I went in to the shop to take care of a month of e-mails. WAMU finally, after six months, got my address right and their savings account interest is coming in at a whopping ¼ of 1%. Your annual interest on $1,000 saved there is $2.50. Before taxes. I put 32.826 miles on my bicycle in nearly four hours but I needed that break. Note here that I’ve burned just under 33,000 calories bike-riding, or 10% of what is needed to succeed at my goal. At this rate, it will take five years. That is how serious weight gain is at a sedentary job, and how difficult it is to reverse it. I rode over to the Thrift with my crash kit and installed two PCI cards on Dicken’s computer. He is dismayed at sales, there was no pickup for the season this year; people who say it will pick up are forgetting it is already December.
At first I felt it might be possible to get bored today, since the time off was unexpected and nothing was planned. However, such a backlog of small items needed tending to that I never thought about stopping long enough to do nothing. Yes, you have to do nothing to get bored. To get bored at your job, you need a nothing job. I never liked the fact that putting in long hours at a day job absolutely prevents you from accomplishing large projects in reasonable time. The doggie wigs has become like a part-time job due to the long hours (relatively) put in every week. Most of my projects have fallen behind. Hey, I mean small projects, not inventing a replacement for diesel fuel.
While typing, I scanned the Alexis manual and thought about contacting Mr. Hansen at Cahoots. It is that time again. Since my pay is a percentage of the advertising revenue, I’d like a few details about that. Compared to his issues I’ve read, my brand of photo-journalism would wholly dominate the other photos put together, yet my photos must be mass-printed to get the desired effect. People need to see eighty or a hundred abandoned shopping carts to get the message that it is a problem all across town.
He also has the final say as to format, but there can be little doubt my project is so novel that the simple announcement that the next issue will target Ft. Lauderdale will be enough to impact distribution. We’ll see how it fares tomorrow. I’ve also got to make up that MP3 disk for Mr. Brian.
Here is a shot of the bike ferry arrangement I tried y’day. This is the prototype and is as close as I could do things empirically. You can see the cutout for the frame bolts and a few mis-drilled holes when my heel hit the assembly as I pedaled. The front tire [of the bicycle being towed] was to slip into the hooks and a bungee cord would lock the handlebars to the seat post. Any other arrangement was too finicky, complicated or took too long. What you see here is a very solid device, bolted right down into place, it does not shift at all. Yet, it was not strong enough to keep the towed bike from twisting itself out of position. A bungee cord that held 60 pounds of groceries will disintegrate towing a 21 pound bicycle. At least I tried.
On a related issue, I have been thinking about the bicycle theft trouble in front of our store. What is needed is a locking bike stand. I saw a parking device from Japan that lifts your car tires off the ground so you cannot drive away until you pay the meter. Fred and I discussed a meter but stalled at how to get the payment. By combining these two ideas, maybe something will work. You pull up, lock your tire in the rack. When you return, you pay to release the tire depending on how long you were parked. True, the thief could still steal parts off your bike, but generally thieves are lazy sorts and will avoid anything that resembles work.
Time to play bass, good-bye.
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