nancynall.com » On wheels.
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On wheels.

I have a new plan for retire­ment: To live some­where I can ride my bicy­cle 365 days a year (366 in leap years). I know this boils down to “a place that is unpleas­antly hot for a large chunk of that time,” so the plan needs work. But few things make me hap­pier, I real­ized yes­ter­day, than sad­dling up for a quick trip to the butcher three blocks away. If only we hadn’t engi­neered mod­ern life to do away with much of its mod­er­ate exer­cise; maybe the mur­der rate would be lower.

Detroit is a town that, like Los Ange­les, was built to accom­mo­date the auto­mo­bile, and friends, it ain’t aging well. Every few months I feel the need to say this again, but it bears repeat­ing: This is one ugly town. Not just the dec­i­mated city, but also its sub­urbs, and it’s at times like this I’m ever so glad we chose the Pointes, because it was plat­ted before walk­ing was seen as a sign of weak­ness, and at least we have the lake. There’s noth­ing like rolling out one of the big through avenues like Gra­tiot, six lanes or so, flow­ing fast and free because it’s at maybe 50 per­cent of its car­ry­ing capac­ity even at rush hour, while one ugly store­front after another goes past. How does any­one make a liv­ing in vacuum-cleaner repair, you won­der, when just find­ing your store means you have to buck traf­fic and hunt out a five-digit address that may or may not be on the build­ing? You can almost mark the point, as you drive out from the core, when the idea of the strip mall took hold — a lit­tle more set­back in return for eas­ier park­ing out front, six lit­tle shops replaced by three larger anchors, if you can call a chain video store an anchor, plus the inevitable Lee Nails. (When was it decreed that all nail shops be run by Asians? How do these eth­nic con­nec­tions to mar­ket sec­tors get made? Is it the same group that says, “OK, Chaldeans — you got the party stores. Jews? Jew­elry for you. Mace­do­nians? I hope you like restau­rants.” And so on.)

Urban plan­ners point out the inevitable a lot (per­haps to dis­guise how often “plan­ning” doesn’t got as, um, planned), and say the trend toward dense urban cen­ters is real and has legs, and the sooner indi­vid­ual munic­i­pal­i­ties start accom­mo­dat­ing it, the bet­ter. Walk­a­ble, bike­able, parking-out-of-sight — this is the future. Turns out peo­ple want to rub elbows with their fel­low man, after all, prefer­ably in a farmer’s mar­ket. We’ll see. But I sure like my bicy­cle. In about an hour I’m going out to make my cop-shop rounds on it — it’ll be two hours of mostly rid­ing, cov­er­ing 12 miles or so, work/workout all in one. This is living.

(It helps that peo­ple don’t expect reporters to be much more than sweaty and unpleasant.)

So how was your week­end? Mine was fine. We got the boat in the water on Sat­ur­day with no argu­ments or even much yelling, show­ing that it only takes a few years of prac­tice to get the our rou­tine down, plus the help of a cou­ple of able souls at the marina. The lake is a foot higher this year, a happy turn of events that’s been in the news quite a bit of late. A new study by the Inter­na­tional Joint Com­mis­sion (a group vir­tu­ally unknown out­side the Great Lakes) says the dras­ti­cally lower lev­els of recent years are a nat­ural phe­nom­e­non, caused in part by ice jams that scoured the St. Clair River bot­tom — nature’s dredge, in other words. An inter­est­ing the­ory, but at this point all I care about it how nice it is to have a lit­tle more water out there.

And so boat­ing sea­son begins. At least four, effec­tively five, and as many as six months of sail­ing lies ahead. In other words, as much win­ter as I just bitched about. Life really is binary.

Blog­gage? Not much, buth this:

One of Jus­tice David Souter’s clerks reveals the man you don’t know in Slate, a man who would rather read by the last two foot-candles of win­ter light than turn on a lamp. Now I feel bad for hav­ing made fun of him:

Why would a man who can under­stand Grokster read by the win­dow rather than turn on a light? Souter has a char­ac­ter­is­tic New Eng­land thrifti­ness and a dis­trust of lux­ury that verges on the spar­tan. He can keep a suit for decades, and he gen­tly mocked me and my fel­low clerks for wear­ing over­coats in the win­ter, claim­ing that his view was shared by that other great Yan­kee jus­tice, Oliver Wen­dell Holmes. Souter is also deeply unpre­ten­tious. It would never occur to him that because he is a Supreme Court jus­tice he’s enti­tled to waste a bit of the tax­pay­ers’ elec­tric­ity. (He once wrote me a note on a nap­kin I’d left on my desk rather than using a new sheet of paper.)

Souter’s cur­rent posi­tion on the left wing of the court owes much more to move­ment by the court and the coun­try than to any lurch on his part. The cur­rent court, after all, has seven Repub­li­can appointees and has been on a steady right­ward drift since the Rea­gan years. The Repub­li­can Party has, too. I think Souter is indeed in many ways a Repub­li­can; it’s just that his sort of Repub­li­can no longer really exists.

Remem­ber those? I do. I miss ‘em.

OK, off to edit my syl­labus and fire up the News­Cy­cle. Have a great week, all.

ADDED: Because Brian brought it up last week — either here or in an e-mail, I don’t recall — an inter­view with Lenore Ske­nazy, who advo­cates off-leash child-rearing. Interesting.

Posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 10:07 am
in Current events, Detroit life, Same ol' same ol'.

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91 responses to
“On wheels.”

  1. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:26 am

    Nancy,

    You and your read­ers might enjoy check­ing out Walkscore​.com, which will tell you where your neigh­bor­hood stands on a scale of 1 to 100. My ‘hood, Lin­coln Square in Chicago, is rated at 94 and called a “walker’s par­adise.” In con­trast, my father’s old house in an older sub­urb of Cleve­land tal­lied a score of 49 and was ranked as “car depen­dent,” despite its prox­im­ity to numer­ous parks and small lakes.

    I broke out my bike a few weeks ago for a ride to Wrigley Field, more for con­ve­nience than plea­sure because it was wicked cold. But now that things are warm­ing up, I’m start­ing each day with a light break­fast and an hour ride up and down the fab­u­lous lake­front. It’s incred­i­bly ener­giz­ing. It’s also fun to whiz down the bike path while all the south­bound traf­fic on Lake Shore Drive is mov­ing at glacial speed.

  2. MitchAlbomFan said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    “Now I feel bad for hav­ing made fun of him”

    Well, you also mocked Christo­pher Buck­ley based on his parent­age, with­out the six sec­onds of research it would have taken you to dis­cover he was/is an Obama supporter.

  3. nancy said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:33 am

    No, Dwight, I am mock­ing you, now: You’re a fuck­ing moron. How any­one could read what I wrote about Chris Buck­ley and come to that con­clu­sion should pay closer attention.

    (Is it pos­si­ble, I won­der, that Dwight is allied with the Medi­awatch idiots in Fort Wayne? I have rarely seen such obtuse­ness in basic read­ing skills.)

  4. Randy said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:35 am

    Nancy, I hear you on the plea­sures of cycling for leisure and for util­ity. When my employer relo­cated me to the down­town cam­pus five years ago, I decided to try cycling to work in the warmer months. At first it was purely a prac­ti­cal deci­sion, but soon it became one of the best choices I’ve ever made.

    I’ve been lucky to be on a route with slightly wider lanes and rel­a­tively low traf­fic den­sity. But I have enough miles under my belt to feel safe on nearly every street in our city. Last Fri­day I cycled from work to the down­town library, then to a wine store west of down­town, then to a bar fur­ther west for a quick beer with friends, then straight south to home, about nine miles total. I was not much slower than a car com­muter, and I had a much eas­ier time find­ing (free) park­ing. And I felt great when I arrived home.

    This morning’s com­mute: sunny, about 48 degrees Fahren­heit, and a crisp tail­wind. In other words, a per­fect ride.

  5. Gasman said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am

    nancy,
    If it’s good bike rid­ing you’re look­ing for, New Mex­ico should be high on your list. The North­ern part won’t give you year round rid­ing, but you’d get prob­a­bly an addi­tional 3 months. If you like ski­ing, those few weeks that you just can’t ride, you can be on the slopes. Here in Los Alamos I can go from my door to being on the slopes in less than 30 min­utes. About the same goes for those in Santa Fe and Albu­querque as well.

    The cli­mate and ter­rain is such that the pro cycling teams come down here to train in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. Lance Arm­strong and two of his team­mates just raced in the Tour of the Gila in Sil­ver City. For the record, Armstrong’s team­mate Levi Leipheimer won and Lance got second.

    The only prob­lem is that the best rid­ing often involves Tour de France cal­iber climbs. And, our alti­tude is higher than most of the Euro­pean climbs. ABQ is a lit­tle lower and flat­ter, but it is begin­ning to feel more like a big city, albeit on the smaller end of the scale.

    Los Alamos is unusual, I will admit, but we have just about the low­est crime rate in the coun­try and the high­est median income. How­ever, the Rio Grande will def­i­nitely not float your boat. There is Ele­phant Butte lake down south, but it would have to live down there and it is about a 4 hour drive. It is also so incred­i­bly lame for boat­ing and you com­pete with every­one in NM that wants to boat in the desert.

    Don’t cross us off your list just yet.

  6. Gasman said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:44 am

    nancy,
    Just read Dwight’s post; had to com­ment. Dwight relies on that thread­bare con­ser­v­a­tive standby, the red her­ring. Not mat­ter what com­ments you might have made about Buck­ley, Dwight will ignore them and char­ac­ter­ize what you said accord­ing to the argu­ment he wants to make. When I read what he wrote about your Buck­ley com­ments I scratched my head and then I remem­bered that it is Dwight we’re talk­ing about.

    He reg­u­larly does the same with nearly any­thing that I write. It is amaz­ing the things his fever­ish brain concocts.

  7. brian stouder said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Well, I gotta say, I’m still chuck­ling over Nance’s slap-down of Dwight; made the morning!

    Ske­nazy is of course right, but this morn­ing there’s this -

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​0​5​56290/

    (which I post, despite think­ing that the par­ents are some­how, some way ‘in’ on this — whether they angered the wrong per­son or whatever…or maybe I’ve been watch­ing too much Coen broth­ers lately!)

  8. Michael said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:46 am

    Love the Ske­nazy link, and think it was in these very pages, a year or more ago that there was a link to sta­tis­ti­cal research defin­ing the ever short­en­ing radius of unsu­per­vised wan­der­ing by chil­dren over the last 5 decades. While crime against chil­dren remained rel­a­tively con­stant over time.

    The inter­view was fas­ci­nat­ing and got bet­ter the deeper it went, is that a sign of good journalism?

  9. nancy said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:51 am

    Brian, the missing-kid story has much to sug­gest major parental involve­ment, includ­ing this: Threat­en­ing young chil­dren is a hall­mark of the Mex­i­can drug-gang vio­lence we’ve been dis­cussing here off and on. Given that the gangs are now push­ing well past the bor­der, this sort of behav­ior is turn­ing up reg­u­larly in Ari­zona and south­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and yeah, this sounds pretty fishy. Not long ago, the NYT had a story on a gun­man who broke into a house and put his pis­tol into the mouth of a three-month-old infant in front of the par­ents to make his point.

    Of course, I could be wrong. As Dwight will be happy to echo!

  10. LA Mary said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    Den­ver is a good bike town, snowy win­ters notwith­stand­ing. The snow melts quickly, and you can get 60 degree days in Feb­ru­ary. The city of Den­ver is pretty flat, and there are neigh­bor­hoods that have bik­able shop­ping and errand des­ti­na­tions.
    My lit­tle cor­ner of LA is not sprawly. From my house it’s an easy bike trip to Trader Joe’s, the post office, the bank, the dry cleaner. Eagle Rock, a neigh­bor­hood get­ting more inter­est­ing by the day, has all those attrib­utes as well as good restau­rants, both old and eth­nic and new and hip. Not all of LA was built in 1959 or later.

  11. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    Poor Dwight.

    A shriv­eled, sour yet silly soul, inca­pable of accept­ing the real­ity of his own insignif­i­cance within the with­er­ing husk of an even more insignif­i­cant polit­i­cal move­ment. The world has changed, but Dwight can­not cope. He’s one of the yes­ter­day peo­ple, poor fel­low, and he’s never going to catch up.

  12. moe99 said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am

    Nancy,
    Seat­tle is bike heaven. You can bike almost year round if you don’t mind the rain (ignore our record snow­falls of last win­ter, I’m hop­ing they were an aber­ra­tion). Com­ing up in July is the STP or Seat­tle to Port­land ride. One of my friends from church (we call our­selves the caf­fi­na­tors because we meet at the local espresso house after ser­vice b/c Pres­by­ter­ian cof­fee is not very good) is mar­ried to one of the guys who started the STP lo, these many years ago, and she’s back train­ing for it again. From what I under­stand it’s quite the event. You can stay with me when you decide to do it.

  13. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:33 am

    Dang, i thought life was hexadecimal.

  14. coozledad said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    We’ve had some peo­ple out to help work on fenc­ing the prop­erty, and flat­ten­ing some land that had been rowed and hilled for tobacco. 25 yards appears to be their cut­off point for walk­ing: any far­ther, and they will walk 10 yards back to the truck, to pull it up where they’re work­ing. If we decline a ride, They shake their heads at us.
    “Y’all sure like to walk.“
    I keep want­ing to tell them it’s not so much that I like walk­ing, but I would like for my heart to con­tinue beat­ing for another thirty years, and I like eat­ing fatty starchy foods. If I warmed the seat on that truck as much as they do,I wouldn’t be able to eat any­thing but cel­ery and radishes.
    I used to have a job where you drove all day and it was mis­er­able. One of my uncles warned me that I would soon cease to have any­thing med­ical sci­ence would cat­e­go­rize as an ass­hole, and judg­ing from the war sto­ries the fel­low mail car­ri­ers told, it was espe­cially grisly return­ing to work after your sec­ond or third tuck.
    Plus, Miller, from Repo Man, is right, “The more you drive, the less intel­li­gent you are.”

  15. MichaelG said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Davis, CA, about 10 miles down the road, is rated as the #1 bike friendly town in the coun­try, for what­ever those rank­ings are worth. Sacra­mento works well for bik­ing too. It’s flat and there are plenty of side streets where one can ride par­al­lel to main streets with­out being exposed to heavy traf­fic. Also even the main streets have bike lanes. It can get warm here in the sum­mer. All right. Not “can get warm”. It will get warm. Prob­a­bly even hot.

  16. Joe Kobiela said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Just pass­ing thru, but with the Lake Going back up now being called a nat­ural phe­nom­e­non, and Seat­tle hav­ing record snow, along with the late snows in the Dakota’s and the guy that started the weather chan­nel tes­ti­fy­ing along with thou­sand of other mete­o­rol­o­gist, that our weather is cycli­cal, can we finally agree that global warm­ing is not a CRISIS. Yes we need to be good stew­ards of the land but for heav­ens sakes it was get­ting a lit­tle out of con­trol.
    Ya’ll prob­a­bly didn’t see it cause it was on Fox’s, but if the Cap and Trade goes thru, uncle Al Gore stands to make Mega bucks. He is play­ing us all for fools.
    Pilot Joe

  17. Jim said on May 4th, 2009 at 11:58 am

    As long as your sweat glands are in work­ing order, North Florida isn’t bad, and actu­ally cold in the win­ter. I see a lot of cyclists around and tiny Tal­la­hasse sup­ports a cou­ple of seri­ous bike shops.

  18. Peter said on May 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

    Re: David Souter: You miss those kinds of Repub­li­cans? So do I; I AM one of those kind of Repub­li­cans. Friends, it’s so lonely out here (how lonely is it?) that I hope Obama wins a sec­ond term because maybe (MAYBE) the GOP will get it. Or maybe not.

    Re: Urban plan­ners and bicy­cles: Wrong. Take it from an archi­tect, ubran plan­ners want bike friendly cities SO bad they’ll look for any shred of affir­ma­tion. I hate them with a pas­sion, but those McMan­sions aren’t going anywhere.

    Re: Dwight: Nancy, was that your inner Tot­ten­berg com­ing out?

  19. Hexdecimal said on May 4th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Re: Jeff TMMO — The cor­rect phrase would be “Life is Hexdecimal”.

  20. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Pilot Joe,

    Pay no atten­tion to the founder of The Weather Chan­nel. John Cole­man was a weather fore­caster in Chicago and Good Morn­ing Amer­ica. He is nei­ther a sci­en­tist nor a mete­o­rol­o­gist, but a shrewd enough entre­pre­neur to see that every­one always talks about the weather. I’m not sure of the details, but he was aced out of any own­er­ship or man­age­ment posi­tion within TWC, which has left him an under­stand­ably bit­ter guy.

    My point is sim­ply that Mr. Cole­man is prob­a­bly far less qual­i­fied to speak on global warm­ing than you are given your train­ing as a pilot. Mr. Cole­man was a weather per­son­al­ity, period.

    Joe, we can talk all day about what is caus­ing global warm­ing, but to deny its exis­tence is to deny real­ity. Whether it is man’s activ­i­ties or a peri­odic adjust­ment by Mother Earth, the evi­dence is there for the naked eye, whether it is the vir­tu­ally snow­less peak of Mount Kil­la­man­jaro, or the col­laps­ing glac­i­ers at the North Pole.

    Regard­ing Al Gore, he’s already very, very, very wealthy. So, he’s going to manip­u­late cap and trade leg­is­la­tion to get richer? And he’ll do this how? Last time I looked, he was no longer an elected offi­cials or even a lobbyist.

    Why I am not sur­prised that this bril­liant reportage is, so far, lim­ited to Fox News? And why do I sus­pect it will remain there? My God, between the hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing over the bailout pack­age and the loony talk about a global cur­rency and what kinds of shoes Michelle Obama wears, do they ever find time to actu­ally report news over there?

  21. Sue said on May 4th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    Are any of you sus­pi­cious of Mitch/Dwight? His voice keeps chang­ing, some­times very wordy (22 words for “dirty mex­i­cans”, etc.) and some­times short and stu­pid. I decided last week that Dwight is not legit, that he’s a fic­tional char­ac­ter, part of a paper called some­thing like: “Trolls in our Midst: Oppo­si­tional Implan­ta­tions in Inter­net Dis­course and Sub­se­quent Com­men­tary Path­ways”, being researched by some col­lege stu­dents tak­ing turns piss­ing peo­ple off on blogs. Here’s the sce­nario, minus of course a lot of profanity:

    Stu­dent 1 wan­ders into liv­ing room of apart­ment, past a Guin­ness poster, a poster of the back­side of a plumber with the words “Say no to crack”, and the “col­lege” poster of John Belushi from Ani­mal House. Stu­dent 2 is on the floor typ­ing. There is a thick layer of dust on every­thing except the most recent pizza box.
    Stu­dent 1: Break­fast?
    Stu­dent 2 pushes the pizza box toward Stu­dent 1.
    Stu­dent 2: Make us a nutri­tion shake, will you?
    Stu­dent 1 opens a can of Red Bull and one of Ensure and mixes them, divides them and hands Stu­dent 2 a glass.
    Stu­dent 1: Ok, let’s get to work. Who are you today, con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­eral?
    Stu­dent 2: It’s my turn to be con­ser­v­a­tive. I’m Dwight today.
    Stu­dent 1: Ooh, he’s a tool. I hate it when I have to be Dwight.
    Stu­dent 2: Yeah, but he’s an effec­tive tool. His Response Rat­ing is in the 200’s. But I’ve been think­ing about the Response Rat­ing. It needs to be tweaked.
    Stu­dent 1: Why?
    Stu­dent 2: Well, the for­mula might not be right. We set up the ini­tial com­ment and then fig­ure the rat­ing by total num­ber of reply words divided by num­ber of com­men­tors, sub­tract­ing the num­ber of times the word “ass­hole” is used.
    Stu­dent 1: Yeah, “ass­hole” was skew­ing the num­bers for sure.
    Stu­dent 2: We need to fac­tor in one more thing, I think. Along with “ass­hole”, we need to add “Ted Kennedy”.
    Stu­dent 1: Wait, are you on…
    Stu­dent 2: Yeah, I’m on Nancy Nall.
    Stu­dent 1: OH COME ON! I thought we decided not to use that one! Those peo­ple can’t shut up. And they keep going off on weird tan­gents! No won­der Dwight’s Response Rat­ing is so high! … Hey, I thought Dwight got kicked off of that one.
    Stu­dent 2: Well yeah but I keep bring­ing him back with dif­fer­ent names. His essen­tial “tool­ness” does not change.
    Stu­dent 1: Hell yeah.
    Stu­dent 2: So who are you today?
    Stu­dent 1: Jane.
    Stu­dent 2: The Hillary-Cougar?
    Stu­dent 1: No, that’s Sarah-Palin-Evil-Twin. Jane is the les­bian who tricked a man into get­ting her preg­nant so she could hit him for child sup­port while openly liv­ing with her part­ner.
    Stu­dent 2: One of our bet­ter cre­ations.
    Stu­dent 1: Back to the Response Rat­ing. Where’s our sta­tis­tics guy?
    Stu­dent 2: Is that the guy asleep in the tub? I can’t tell, I just cov­ered him with a blan­ket.
    Stu­dent 1: I hate group projects.

  22. Gasman said on May 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    jeff bor­den,
    Joe and Dwight are two peas in a pod. Joe trots out the con­ser­v­a­tive trope of try­ing to imply that there is actual sci­en­tific debate sur­round­ing global warm­ing when there actu­ally is not.

    You’ve seen the tac­tic on FauxNews; have one per­son on each side of the issue to illus­trate the debate. The prob­lem is, if they were going to rep­re­sent the actual sci­en­tific con­sen­sus, they’d have about 99 sci­en­tists advo­cat­ing man made global warm­ing and a sin­gle sci­en­tist — bought and paid for by big oil — against it.

    They con­sis­tently use the same tac­tics in their advo­cacy of tor­ture, their xeno­pho­bic immi­gra­tion para­noia, gay mar­riage, etc., ad nauseam.

    If you rec­og­nize you argu­ment is weak you sim­ply change sub­ject or mis­rep­re­sent your opponent’s posi­tion, or stack the deck against all com­pet­ing argu­ments by imply­ing your posi­tion is more valid than it actu­ally is. An intel­lec­tu­ally weak and dis­hon­est approach to debate that Joe and Dwight trot out with tire­some regularity.

  23. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Oh, let’s just call him a sem­i­nar caller and leave it at that.

    Peter, i feel your pain.

    Hexdec­i­mal, noted.

  24. Hoosier said on May 4th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    moe99 for­got to men­tion all those ‘Alp-like’ hills in Seat­tle. The Seat­tle to Port­land, the Ride around the Sound & the Ride around Rainier are for the phys­i­cally fit, seri­ous rid­ers. How­ever there are some rel­a­tively flat bike trails in the area.

  25. John said on May 4th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    Too funny Sue!

  26. moe99 said on May 4th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    Hey Hoosier – you’re right, I for­got about the hills. Liv­ing here for 28 years will do that to ya. But the Burke Gilman trail is pretty flat and the route around Lake Wash­ing­ton is too. The real ‘Alp-like’ hills are out in the dis­tance – pretty for look­ing at on days like Sat­ur­day past.

    Oh, and the term global warm­ing actu­ally means chaos in weather pat­terns, so a place like Seat­tle, famed for its mild win­ters, can suf­fer a hor­ren­dous win­ter and it is part of the global warm­ing pattern.

  27. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Hills are char­ac­ter build­ing. A few weeks of rid­ing in a hilly envi­ron­ment and Nancy’s breath would no longer be rat­tling in her chest … she’d be in shape or dead. Gawd, that bike video you posted a while back was funny. Some of you were not so kind. Heheh.

    Nance, San Diego has a lot of char­ac­ter build­ing hills. And for 365 rid­ing, all I can say is, most of the triatheletes train here, not Seattle.

    You can work out with me and I’ll get to do most of the talk­ing as I can be quite con­ver­sa­tional even on hills {yawn, bicep flex­ing stretch}.

    You can stay with JC’s sis­ter. And the server.

  28. paddyo' said on May 4th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    re: Ske­nazy and “… a sign of good jour­nal­ism?” Yes indeed, Michael, and there’s another sign that’s more than 20 years old:

    The Den­ver Post in 1986 won the Pulitzer Prize for Pub­lic Ser­vice with an inves­ti­ga­tion that debunked the hys­te­ria (which seems to re-arise about every gen­er­a­tion, doesn’t it?) about abducted/missing chil­dren. It found that 90-some per­cent of cases were run­aways or kids in cus­tody fights, not snatched-by-strangers, the night­mare sce­nario that dri­ves the hype …

    Speak­ing of Den­ver, I’ll sec­ond LA Mary’s endorse­ment of it as a very good bicy­cling town, with miles and miles of excel­lent paths along the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, and lead­ing into the foothills for those in search of huff-and-puff climbs. The tourism slo­gan always touts it as The Mile High City, but an ear­lier, less-known title is geo­graph­i­cally more descrip­tive, not to men­tion eas­ier on bicy­clists’ knees (espe­cially mine):
    Queen City of the PLAINS

  29. JRG said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    Re Seat­tle and hills: I lived in Seat­tle for sev­eral years dur­ing my mis­spent youth and had the same reac­tion that Hoosier did to moe99’s state­ment re Seat­tle being a good place to bike. I had a book called Bicy­cling the Back­roads Around Puget Sound, which described pos­si­ble rides and cat­e­go­rized them as to hilli­ness. Oddly enough, the authors’ under­stand­ing of hilli­ness didn’t com­port w/ the under­stand­ing I’d acquired grow­ing up in North Dakota.

  30. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    Hey, I’m happy to hedge my bets on that global warm­ing exists and it’s ori­gin pos­si­bly being man-made (though solar activ­ity seems a stronger cor­re­la­tion). It’s good to con­serve energy and pol­lute less. No prob­lem here.

    The prob­lem is with the adher­ents that use it for polit­i­cal and fis­cal gain. Some politi­cians like keep­ing the planet in a con­stant state of triage that only the ever-loving embrace of their par­tic­u­lar brand of “lead­er­ship” can assuage.

  31. Dorothy said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    I think we all agree we are a fam­ily (of sorts) here, those of us who hang out at Nancy’s place, and Dwight/whoever he is today/MitchAlbomFan is the cross we all have to bear. The maiden aunt with the faint mus­tache who has to kiss you each time she sees you, and then lec­tures you on what a sorry-ass per­son you turned out to be.

  32. Jolene said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

    Whoops! I have both JRG (my real ini­tials) and Jolene (my real name) in that lit­tle drop-down win­dow, and some­times I hit the wrong one. JRG = Jolene

  33. nancy said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    You can talk shit about Dwight all you want, but please be nice to Pilot Joe. He always waves when he passes over Lake St. Clair.

  34. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Oddly enough, the authors’ under­stand­ing of hilli­ness didn’t com­port w/ the under­stand­ing I’d acquired grow­ing up in North Dakota.

    Ya, you can wit­ness the cur­va­ture of the earth in North Dakota, n’est-ce pas?

    That reminds me of when I first learned to ski as an adult in the “moun­tains” of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and then went to try my new skills in Park City, Utah. “Hey, why not do a black dia­mond here in Utah ‘cuz I was doing them all the time at Big Bear?” HA! I fell and slid down most of the hill, not being able to stop, regard­less of what posi­tion I ori­ented my body or what extrem­ity I tried to dig in with for braking.

  35. moe99 said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    An alarmist cul­ture that we live in per Ske­nazy? I don’t dis­pute that at all – look at the swine flu pan­demic fears these days. But you know who flogs these fears? Our media! It sells. Read­er­ship, view­er­ship. And given the kinds of crises we have had in the past 8 years, it takes a fair ratch­et­ing up of the fear fac­tor to hook the public’s inter­est. So the media have to really flog it these days.

  36. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    Whoops! I have both JRG (my real ini­tials) and Jolene (my real name) in that lit­tle drop-down win­dow, and some­times I hit the wrong one. JRG = Jolene

    Crap, we all liked this “JRG” per­son bet­ter than you, Jolene. Now, we feel duped!

  37. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    Moe,

    Unfor­tu­nately, you are quite cor­rect. Scare sto­ries sell and drive rat­ings. Last week on NBC Nightly News, I saw the most amaz­ing thing: a doc­tor telling peo­ple to chill out about the swine flu. She was pic­tured rid­ing the sub­way in NYC, order­ing a BBQ pork sand­wich from a ven­dor and a vari­ety of other activ­i­ties. None of these activ­i­ties put her at any risk, she reported. Her rec­om­men­da­tions were so very com­mon­sen­si­cal. Wash your hands a lot. Sneeze into your elbow instead of your hands. Get plenty of rest. And if you do feel poorly, stay the hell at home.

    It was, hands down, the best report I’ve seen on deal­ing with the flu. BTW, please do not let our Mexican-hating com­padre, El Dwighto, hear this, but Mex­ico is get­ting some very high marks for its han­dling of the swine flu sit­u­a­tion. A gov­ern­ment not exactly known for its effi­ciency did an excel­lent job in this case.

  38. Jolene said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    Crap, we all liked this “JRG” per­son bet­ter than you, Jolene. Now, we feel duped!

    Sigh. I’ll try to mea­sure up to JRG’s (and Danny’s) high standards.

    Later.

  39. John said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

    At first blush, I thought we had picked up another soul from the key North Dakota demo­graphic. But I soon guessed (cor­rectly), that JRG was our own Jolene.

  40. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

    John, “another soul” or “THE other soul.”

    Snort, com­edy gold. I kill me.

  41. LA Mary said on May 4th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    When I lived in Philadel­phia I tried to use my bike as my main form of trans­porta­tion. This ended when, on a cob­ble­stone sec­tion of street, my front tire slipped neatly into an old trol­ley track. It was like hit­ting the front brake sud­denly. Total over the han­dle­bars face­plant. I’m lucky I only got a black eye and a lot of bruises.

  42. Joe Kobiela said on May 4th, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    Thanks Nance,
    I’m not mean spir­ited I just have a lot of ques­tions.
    Yea I lis­ten to Bill O, most nights when I fly, but I don’t agree with him 100% but at least he seems to let the oppo­si­tion speak. May not agree with them but he lets them talk. Al Gore has invested in company’s that stand to make a huge profit out of Global warm­ing. He came out of the pres­i­den­tial race worth around 2,000,000.00 and now his esti­mated worth is around 100,000,000.00 He is either mak­ing rich on this or maybe he got some good tips from Hillery on cat­tle futures. You might check out last Friday’s edi­tion of O’Rielly for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, the report was in the last half hour.
    I bike, run, recycle,and mulch my yard I try to do the best I can not to pol­lute. Tonight I will fly into a dying sun­set at 8,000ft and thank the good Lord for let­ting me do this. I want to hurt no one and want no one to hurt me. I will fight when I have to to pro­tect my fam­ily and coun­try. you can’t label me con­ser­v­a­tive or Lib­eral, if you don’t like me I will shed no tears, life is to short to worry about things I can not change. Tonight over Detroit I will wig­gle my wings to Nancy.
    sign­ing off,
    Pilot Joe

  43. Jolene said on May 4th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    John, “another soul” or “THE other soul.”

    Hey now, there are many such souls. If you don’t believe me, check out the sub­urbs of Phoenix in February.

  44. Gasman said on May 4th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    Danny,
    I live in what is arguably the sci­en­tific cap­i­tal of our nation. You don’t hear any debate hear about global warm­ing being man made. Why? Because some of the sci­en­tists here at Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory are some of the same ones that have helped quan­tify and prove that link.

    I dis­agree with your assess­ment that, “The prob­lem is with the adher­ents that use it for polit­i­cal and fis­cal gain.” Who has prof­ited from this sci­en­tif­i­cally cor­rect por­trayal of global warm­ing? What is the finan­cial motive?

    Joe,
    It is laugh­able to see a finan­cial motive by Al Gore but not by global warm­ing deniers. Add up all of the cash being thrown around in financ­ing ad cam­paigns and all other forms of pro­pa­ganda. I would argue that the real money being thrown around has been by the other side. Big oil, nat­ural gas, and coal are spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars try­ing to make every­body believe that Al Gore invented global warming.

    Danny & Joe,
    If in your view a finan­cial motive dis­counts the cred­i­bil­ity of an argu­ment, why are not the man-made global warm­ing deniers even more sus­pect? Are they not heav­ily financed by big oil, nat­ural gas, and coal indus­tries? Why would those whor­ing for big energy be more pure of heart when pro­mul­gat­ing their fic­tional mes­sage based wholly upon their finan­cial self inter­est? It is too con­ve­nient to over­look data which does not sup­port your claims.

    I don’t think that either of you have made your point very convincingly.

  45. Scout said on May 4th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    I’d like to point out that being right about some­thing and also being a wealthy per­son do not have to be mutu­ally exclu­sive. Al Gore has devoted his life to the issue of cli­mate change. Funny how the right piles on when a lib­eral is per­ceived to have a vested inter­est, but is strangely silent when Exxon Mobil pays off 1% of sci­en­tists to deny the real­ity that the other 99% have proven.

    Oh and here’s me pil­ing on — Dwight, you’re an ass­hat and an embar­rass­ment to your­self AND Mitch Albon.

    on edit — I see that Gas­man has made the point I was try­ing to in a more com­plete and con­cise way, but I’ll let my com­ment stand.

  46. Jolene said on May 4th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Joe: I have to dis­agree about O’Reilly let­ting peo­ple he dis­agrees with talk. I don’t watch his show reg­u­larly, but I’ve watched it enough to won­der why such peo­ple agree to go on. They seem to mainly be there so that O’Reilly can inter­rupt them and yell at them.

    I’m not Al Gore’s accoun­tant, but I think a lot of his wealth came from invest­ments in Google, ven­ture cap­i­tal­ism, and the like. I don’t think he’s opposed to mak­ing money. He’s just opposed to crap­ping up the planet.

  47. mark said on May 4th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    Fly safe, Joe.

    Thomas Kuhn wrote a book a few decades ago called “The­o­ries of Sci­en­tific Rev­o­lu­tion”.
    One of the points made was that a dis­ci­pline becomes a sci­ence when those prac­tic­ing in the field have agreed upon first prin­ci­ples which must no longer be proven, but are accepted as a point from which less agreed upon mat­ters may be debated.

    That water is two parts hydro­gen and one part oxy­gen is a sim­ple exam­ple. The First Law of Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics is a more mean­ing­ful one. These things are the begin­ning of instruc­tion for aspir­ing sci­en­tists and the required stuff the rest of us get exposed to.

    Kuhn did not sug­gest that an area of study becomes a sci­ence when its adher­ents shout loudly “There is no debate” as an excuse for avoid­ing debate.

    So for all of you in the “There is no debate, only attacks on those who dare to ques­tion” crowd, what we be some of the agreed upon first prin­ci­ples of man influ­enced global warming?

    Ear­lier, moe wrote: “the term global warm­ing actu­ally means chaos in weather pat­terns…” Is that uni­ver­sally under­stood to be true by those learned in the field?

    Danny raises the per­ti­nent point. The truth of thr crises, and it’s mag­ni­tude, will be used to leg­is­late behav­ior, just as the truth of second-hand smoke sci­ence is being used to jus­tify greater restric­tions on smoking.

    So if all think­ing peo­ple under­stand the truth con­cern­ing global warm­ing, what are a few of the accepted prin­ci­ples that we all under­stand? That should be very easy to answer.

  48. moe99 said on May 4th, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    From wikipedia (because it was the quick­est route):

    “Some effects on both the nat­ural envi­ron­ment and human life are, at least in part, already being attrib­uted to global warm­ing. A 2001 report by the IPCC sug­gests that glac­ier retreat, ice shelf dis­rup­tion such as that of the Larsen Ice Shelf, sea level rise, changes in rain­fall pat­terns, and increased inten­sity and fre­quency of extreme weather events are attrib­ut­able in part to global warming.[63] Other expected effects include water scarcity in some regions and increased pre­cip­i­ta­tion in oth­ers, changes in moun­tain snow­pack, and adverse health effects from warmer temperatures.[64]”

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​G​l​o​b​a​l​_​w​arming

  49. mark said on May 4th, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    Then I guess I would wel­come some chaos in my sex life.

  50. LA Mary said on May 4th, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    Cit­ing a snowy win­ter in Seat­tle as proof that global warm­ing does not exist reminds of some­thing my neigh­bor said once dur­ing a down­pour. We had four years of drought, and when it finally rained, he said, “well I guess the water com­pany is going to have to take back those car wash­ing restric­tions.“
    One rain­storm doesn’t end a drought, one cold win­ter does not dis­prove global warm­ing. The cli­mate is chang­ing. Cli­mate and weather are not the same thing.

  51. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    So if all think­ing peo­ple under­stand the truth con­cern­ing global warm­ing, what are a few of the accepted prin­ci­ples that we all under­stand? That should be very easy to answer.

    Ummm… “Four legs good, two legs bad!” Sorry, free-association-Monday is my excuse.

    Gas­man, Big Oil def­i­nitely has a stake in this as they are clan­des­tinely fund­ing some of the so-called “skep­tics.” But that is not the whole story with the skep­tics as I think there are some of them who are gen­uine and unteth­ered to dubi­ous “research fund­ing” sources. And cli­ma­tol­ogy is a suf­fi­ciently young and com­plex field that it is still dif­fi­cult to say what is going on and why.

    Wher­ever this set­tles out, the sci­en­tific debate is cur­rently being sub­sumed by the polit­i­cal debate and the issue has become a polit­i­cal foot­ball of global pro­por­tions. And there are vested inter­ests on both sides as the extent to which any polit­i­cal inter­est is win­ning in the court of pub­lic opin­ion tends to enhance their abil­ity to stay in power, gar­ner finan­cial sup­port and direct redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. Unfor­tu­nately, it is this polit­i­cal aspect that pumps up the rhetoric to a point where it has become anath­ema for an actual sci­en­tist to dis­agree with the com­mon wisdom.

    We’ve all heard the term “global-warming denier” used in recent years, this, of course, being an allu­sion to the term “holocaust-denier.” Quite provoca­tive lan­guage for some­thing that should be a sci­en­tific debate.

  52. moe99 said on May 4th, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    Danny: Could you please pro­vide names and CVs of gen­uine skep­tics of the global warm­ing phe­nom­e­non? It would be nice to get some facts on the ground here, so to speak.

  53. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:09 pm

    Mark Twain:
    “Cli­mate is what we expect. Weather is what we get.”

  54. Joe Kobiela said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Try going to nein​di​anaweath​erblog​.blogspot​.com. Greg is a mete­o­rol­o­gist in Fort Wayne. his last post is on Global warm­ing.
    Just because some one dis­agrees with you doesn’t make them a bad per­son.
    Time to avi­ate.
    Pilot Joe

  55. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    Sure , Moe. I’ll get right on that so that you can then Google some left-leaning web­site that accuses said skep­ti­cal sci­en­tist of being a total wanker or some such thing and then you could pre­sum­ably go back to feel­ing “okay” about your­self again … All the while ignor­ing the quite rea­son­able and mod­er­ate state­ments I have made con­cern­ing this issue.

  56. Gasman said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    Danny,
    If you scan my post care­fully, you will note that I did not invoke the specter of the holo­caust at all. In accus­ing me of that charge you expose your rather pro­found igno­rance of the sub­ject and my famil­iar­ity with it. On both counts, what you did was extremely stupid.

    Are you imply­ing that because the term “holo­caust denier” is com­mon, all use of the word “denier” is for­ever linked to the holo­caust? To do so is to cheapen the impact of the Shoah and the mil­lions who died in it. That is some­thing that I did not do, that is some­thing that I will not do.

    The holo­caust is a very seri­ous sub­ject for me. Much of my pro­fes­sional and aca­d­e­mic exis­tence has been devoted to hon­or­ing the expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries of those who per­ished at the hands of the Nazis. I take great offense at the mer­est sug­ges­tion that I am in any way try­ing to dimin­ish its seri­ous­ness by link­ing it to any other issue.

    I am espe­cially con­cerned with the expe­ri­ence of the chil­dren who were vic­tims of the con­cen­tra­tion camps. My dis­ser­ta­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of North Texas was exclu­sively on that sub­ject, a cham­ber orches­tra & choir work based upon the poems, prose and art­work of the chil­dren in the Terezin con­cen­tra­tion camp. I also wrote a solo gui­tar work based upon the same sub­ject that was com­mis­sioned by the Pro­fes­sional Music Teach­ers of New Mex­ico and pre­miered in 2006 at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico. I am cur­rently writ­ing a string quar­tet which will incor­po­rate much of the same children’s art­work, poetry, and prose. That was com­mis­sioned as a fac­ulty grant by the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico — Los Alamos. Does this sound like some­one who would mock the holo­caust as you suggest?

    I have toured the camps. I have met with the sur­vivors. I have lived with their sto­ries and I take them all very seriously.

    Don’t care­lessly hurl such seri­ous alle­ga­tions around. You have no idea of which you speak. I have devoted more than a decade of my life to try­ing to make sure that we do not for­get or min­i­mize the holo­caust. In your thought­less, base, and hurt­ful accu­sa­tion toward me, you cheapen the solem­nity of the Shoah.

    Damn you and go to hell. Try and be less of an ass­hole when con­fronting those who don’t agree with you. This cheap shot back­fired in a very big way.

  57. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Umm, Gas­man, what are you talk­ing about? Please scan my post care­fully. A lit­tle read­ing com­pre­hen­sion on your part is required. I wasn’t say­ing that you EVER used that term or even think about it in those terms. I was say­ing that the term has made it into pop­u­lar par­lance and that it is used as a reg­u­lar pejo­ra­tive by those mak­ing polit­i­cal hay.

    Fur­ther­more, I was agree­ing with your ini­tial assess­ment of the argu­ment not being con­vinc­ing. Hence my inclu­sion of Big Oil’s mon­e­tary involvement.

  58. Dexter said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    http://​www​.rail​sto​trail​son​line​.com/

    I nom­i­nate the Inver­ness area of Florida for 12 month cycling…also Bonita Springs. Beware of Florida armadil­los in state parks like Myakka River…I damn-nearly hit sev­eral armadil­los there .

    Seat­tle and Davis always lead the pack in cycle-city vot­ing, Madi­son and Chicago, too…but we want hot weather , not Madi­son winters.

  59. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Gas­man, sorry, but using the term “global warm­ing denier,” which is exactly what you said, can be fairly said to push some but­tons. Say­ing “damn you and go to hell” only is try­ing to avoid account­abil­ity for using a loaded term, which is all Danny called you on.

    Said a char­ter mem­ber of http://​350​.org, but some­one who out of respect for the Shoah does not use the term “denier” for even the most men­da­cious of oil indus­try apol­o­gists. Your rant doesn’t even try to jus­tify why that’s a use­ful, let alone help­ful label. Take a deep breath and let it go.

  60. Dexter said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    but…it’s sum­mer (almost) — -some sum­mer cycling delights:

    http://​www​.capecod​bikeguide​.com/​t​r​a​i​ls.asp

  61. Dexter said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Any­body else have a huge ban­ner pro­mot­ing Ann Coul­ter at the top of the Com­ments section?

  62. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Wow, I stand cor­rected after I saw what Jeff posted. Hon­estly, I was not refer­ring to Gasman’s ref­er­ence to “global-warming denier.” I had scanned his post and missed that completely.

    Gas, I was not insin­u­at­ing that you felt that way. In fact, I did not see that term in your post. I was using it as an argu­ment to detail how polit­i­cally charged the whole debate has got­ten with the actual sci­ence tak­ing a back seat.

  63. Kirk said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    Yes, that lying, cretinous hag is star­ing at me, too.

  64. LA Mary said on May 4th, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    I’m so old I read denier as Dehn-yer, as in the mea­sur­ment of sheer­ness of hosiery. I was won­der­ing what the heck they were talk­ing about. I come from another time in some ways.

  65. Gasman said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    Danny & Jeff (tmmo),
    The word denier is not exclu­sively used in the man­ner you imply. Jeff, it was Danny, not I that trot­ted out the loaded term. I would never demean the holo­caust by triv­i­al­iz­ing its use. My vocab­u­lary does con­tain the word “denier” inde­pen­dent of all ref­er­ences to the holo­caust. It was a word. Period. Talk about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. What other words may I not use? An item­ized list would be most helpful.

    Danny, you lev­eled a cheap shot at me and you know it. You don’t debate, you seek to wound peo­ple with your words. You igno­rantly toss out ad hominem and slurs with­out regard as to whom you are attack­ing. You’ve over­stepped the bounds of decency and you are not even man enough to admit it.

    You know, the tire­some lit­tle prick act grows old very quickly. I think that I am within the bounds of mod­esty to refer to myself as a holo­caust scholar. I’ve devoted more than a decade of my life to that cause. For you to trot out that charge is sim­ply offen­sive. That is a new gut­ter snip­ing low, even by your already abysmal standards.

    That sort of tac­tic, how­ever, appears to be the only arrow in your rhetor­i­cal quiver.

  66. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:20 pm

    Wow, I must be lucky. No such por­trait of Bony Maroni con­fronts me when I visit.

    Does any­one pay any atten­tion at all to Ann Coul­ter these days? And, if so, why?

  67. MichaelG said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:23 pm

    Ter­rific job on Dwight, Sue. You made me laugh.

    Dex­ter, you’re wel­come to try Inver­ness, CA for bik­ing, although what they adver­tise is moun­tain bik­ing. Inver­ness is in West Marin. Marin is a real hotbed of moun­tain bik­ing. If you want hot, Sacto and Davis in the sum­mer will fill the bill. Danny is right that San Diego is a won­der­ful town.

    All the “yeah, buts” and “who­ev­ers” aside, the whys and where­fores aside, global warm­ing is real and it’s com­ing to your house. We’re not talk­ing about rad­i­cal rises in temps. A cou­ple of three or four degrees will wreak havoc on ice caps and cli­mates. Ani­mals and plants will migrate toward the poles. I’d advise spec­u­la­tors to buy some of that great new wine coun­try com­ing up in Wash­ing­ton and B.C. Some coast­lines will get wet. Chang­ing ocean temps likely will seri­ously affect the gulf stream. London’s weather will resem­ble Moscow’s. Sell your North­ern Euro­pean resort prop­er­ties to finance your Wash­ing­ton vineyards.

  68. nancy said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    What I find amus­ing is that I start the day say­ing, “I like to ride my bike,” and we end it fight­ing over global warm­ing. I’m just the open­ing act at this joint these days.

  69. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:32 pm

    Gas­man, you are funny. I mean, I seri­ously did not see that you had used that term. I explained that. Frankly, I often just scan your posts because I count the moments of life as too pre­cious to waste on your fre­quent flights of acri­mo­nious rhetor­i­cal fancy. I’m too busy for that.

    Now it seems you are upset because I inad­ver­tently hit close to home, hav­ing bless­edly missed that lit­tle nugget of incen­di­ary verbage in your post.

    Hey, just because the prover­bial shoe fits, don’t be mad at me for being right.

  70. Danny said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

    Hey, Nance, I tried to stay on topic by invit­ing you to per­sonal train­ing ses­sions with moi and invit­ing you to stay with some­one else here in San Diego!

  71. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    With all due respect to Gas­man, we clearly should not speak of gl*%4! w4rm!%g because it appar­ently algo­rith­mi­cally evokes the ad ban­ner of (gulp) She Who Must Not Be Named.

    No, really, don’t feed that troll.

  72. LA Mary said on May 4th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    http://​www​.slate​.com/​i​d​/​2​2​16890/

    Off topic.

  73. jeff borden said on May 4th, 2009 at 7:26 pm

    LA Mary,

    But worth the read. Sheeeesh, we need some fresh blood in the pun­ditry corps.

  74. basset said on May 4th, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    I live about two miles from the Natchez Trace, a very long, very skinny national park along much the same lines as the Blue Ridge Park­way — a scenic road and a lit­tle land along each side. Very pop­u­lar cycling route if you’re one of those hunched over and real seri­ous spandex-pants types, but they are not always real tol­er­ant of the rest of us; the next time I hear “outa the way, fatass!” they bet­ter not stop, that’s all I can say.

  75. Jean S said on May 4th, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    back to the open­ing act … Nance, you know you need to visit Port­land. Yes, it’s rain­ing right now – but that’s how we weed out the riffraff.

  76. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

    Cleve­land has a won­der­ful Tow­path Trail from Can­ton to the Lake and back, and it only snows and sleets and freez­ing rains and thun­der hails for six, maybe seven months of the year. Of course, there’s cold fronts and severe flood­ing those other five, but the autumn at Black­wa­ter Falls is beau­ti­ful … as long as it doesn’t start snow­ing too soon in October.

    But the cycling is really good.

    If you want to go south, here in Lick­ing County, Ohio we’ve got a won­der­ful rails to trails sys­tem that goes thirty miles east to west and soon will run south almost ten to US 40. Win­ter is five months here, tops.

    You wanted nine, ten months of spring and sum­mer, didn’t you? Ah, try Arkansas. And i sec­ond the Natchez Trace, although i’ve never actu­ally been there — it’s on my list, and NPS friends speak highly of it (Nevada Barr wrote a cou­ple fun mys­ter­ies based on it).

  77. coozledad said on May 4th, 2009 at 9:25 pm

    LA Mary: Sheesh,the cof­fee achiever lifestyle finally caught up with old Bowie…Sorry. That’s the griz­zled look of three packs of Win­stons daily and more cock­tails than wee­nies on the Richard Cohen cavalcade.

  78. brian stouder said on May 4th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    Bas­set — my lovely wife and I went to Nashville for our hon­ey­moon, many moons ago, and I talked her into motor­ing down the Natchez Trace park­way, so as to visit the Shiloh battlefield.

    It was a very lovely drive, but when you get to Shiloh, you are exactly nowhere; a very well pre­served and beau­ti­ful spot, on the banks of the Ten­nessee River; one can imag­ine the Indi­ana boys down there, pushed back to Pitts­burg Land­ing and with their backs to the river, feel­ing about as far from home as a sol­dier in Iraq in 2009 might.

    Any­way, we spent the night at a small hotel in Corinth, Mis­sis­sippi (from whence Albert Syd­ney John­son came, when he sent his army crash­ing into US Grant’s), and the place was re-tarring their roof…the oppres­sive petro­leum aroma from that was a mood damp­ener, even for newly-weds. But that jaunt is still a source for laughs down to the present day…

    PS — another mar­velous park­way is the one that runs between Williams­burg and York­town; and when you get to York­town you get a beau­ti­ful view of the Chesa­peake Bay

  79. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 4th, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    Brian — i’ve been in three dif­fer­ent archives on three dif­fer­ent rab­bit chases through the mys­ter­ies and won­ders of the 19th cen­tury in Amer­ica, and stum­bled across let­ters from poor Lew Wal­lace, ask­ing yet another offi­cer who had been at Shiloh to defend his good name. Writ­ing “Ben Hur” wasn’t enough to take the taste out of his mouth of blame and ashes … and even Grant on his deathbed could only offer half-hearted abso­lu­tion, but a full throated affir­ma­tion of his stand at Monocacy.

    Wal­lace never stopped look­ing for vin­di­ca­tion, to the end of his life, and i’ve read enough of his side of the story to want to go to Pitts­burg Land­ing some­day and ride down the back­roads myself, as Wal­lace must have hun­dreds and thou­sands of times in his memory.

  80. beb said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    You know, I thought Nancy was talk­ing about liv­ing some­place where she could ride her bike to do shop­ping year-round, not nec­es­sar­ily a place with great trails for biking.

    I vis­ited a friend in Toronto many years ago. His house was like 3 feet from his neigh­bor on one side and 8 feet on the other. The wider dis­tance was for a joint dri­ve­way for two houses to garages in back of the house. Two blocks down the street was a thor­ough­fare with lots of retail shop­ping — gro­cery stores, etc. It was an incred­i­bly liv­able space.

  81. brian stouder said on May 4th, 2009 at 10:54 pm

    Shiloh is beau­ti­ful, and very remote. One can only won­der at how well the rebs did in their 1st-day attack.

    One can­not help but admire Grant’s wheel-to-wheel con­vex gun line just before the bluffs (still there, near the present day NPS Vis­tor Cen­ter), and Don Car­los Buell’s timely arrival from across the river that night, so as to turn the tables on the rebs on the sec­ond day (what was Grant’s com­ment to Sher­man after the hor­ren­dous First Day fight? — something like “Not beaten by a damned sight” and/or “We’ll lick ‘em tomorrow”)

    But Prentiss’s doomed, grand and ter­ri­ble stand dur­ing the worst of the Con­fed­er­ate attack on the first day — at a spot that became known as the ‘hornet’s nest’ — until he finally was cut-off and sur­rounded, and had to surrender…I never under­stood Grant’s antipa­thy for Pren­tiss. That guy — as much as US Grant, I think, ulti­mately saved the Union army’s bacon that day in south west­ern Ten­nessee. And yet he gets the back of Grant’s hand in Grant’s mem­oirs, and his­tory treats him rather badly, I think.

    Wal­lace — meh! A non-factor (for what­ever rea­son) at the first day’s near-run fight at Shiloh. He turns up as a mem­ber of the panel of judges at the mil­i­tary tri­bunal that tried, con­victed, and con­demned to death the con­spir­a­tors in the assas­si­na­tion of the pres­i­dent (a process that took all of 6 weeks, from begin­ning to bit­ter end!) — and one learns in Amer­i­can Bru­tus that Wal­lace spent a lot of his time at that pro­ceed­ing (with ulti­mate suc­cess) lob­by­ing JAG Holt for appoint­ment to another mil­i­tary tri­bunal — this one being the one which tried the com­man­dant of the CSA prison camp at Ander­son­ville, Henry Wirz — who was also con­victed and executed.

    A few years ago, when the young folks and I were com­ing back north from Mickey Mouse land, I pre­vailed upon them to stop at Ander­son­ville, Geor­gia, and I’ve never been to a more heart­break­ing National Cemetary and memo­r­ial site. They have a rel­a­tively new national museum there, ded­i­cated to the Amer­i­can pris­on­sers of war from all our wars, and I’ll never for­get how many men — older and younger — that I saw cry­ing in that place.

    But you go to the actual town of Ander­son­ville, and right in the cen­ter of the town, lit­er­ally in the mid­dle of Main street — is an obelisk and memo­r­ial to the “mis­un­der­stood” mar­tyr, Henry Wirz! I got out of the car and stood star­ing at that thing for a long sev­eral moments

  82. CrazyCatLady said on May 5th, 2009 at 1:08 am

    We have lived in this house on the far east side of Detroit for over 20 years. This neigh­bor­hood at one time was walk­a­ble. There was a 7 – 11 and a Baskin Rob­bins within 4 blocks of our home. I took almost daily walks with my baby in her stroller. And there even was a cool book­store too. Then, the name stores moved out and the book­store was gone. I felt the hood chang­ing and have felt less safe on the street to take walks any­where around here. There have been break-ins here. Car thefts and rov­ing groups of teenagers. My elderly neigh­bor next door was car­jacked dur­ing broad day­light while I watched help­lessly from my din­ing room. There are now,for the first time ever, boarded up homes on my block/street. I’m scared and my world seems to be shrink­ing. But I know we can’t go any­where else. So we just mud­dle along and try to take care of our­selves. And be cautious.

  83. Dexter said on May 5th, 2009 at 1:27 am

    brian: I posted this about a year ago but it has come full-circle, I guess…Fort Wayne men as well as DeKalb County men fought at Shiloh under Buell, and my great , great uncle Joshua Eberly is the same man men­tioned in this story; he died at Chicka­mauga, Sep­tem­ber 19, 1863, age 24 years.

    http://​www​.ingen​web​.org/​i​n​d​e​k​a​l​b​/​s​o​l​d​i​e​r​s​/​c​w​_​3​0​i​vf.txt

  84. Dexter said on May 5th, 2009 at 1:29 am

    crazy­cat­lady: Be safe.

  85. Dexter said on May 5th, 2009 at 2:07 am

    Blago­je­vich ruled the state from his home, refus­ing to gov­ern from either his Chicago offices or Spring­field. His staff had to force him to leave home for manda­tory appear­ances.
    He was being urged by staff and loved ones to seek psy­chi­atric help in the months before his fall. His brash nar­cis­sism was allegedly a cover up for help­less­ness and low self-esteem.
    This was a report I heard on WBBM News­ra­dio 780, Chicago.….

  86. brian stouder said on May 5th, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Dex — it always used to amaze me that you could go to any of the big ACW bat­tle­fields, and see large “Indi­ana” memo­ri­als on the Union side of the field. I once read a melan­choly lit­tle book about an Indi­ana reg­i­ment raised out of the Indi­anapo­lis area, writ­ten by a non-professional his­to­rian, and you could see that the author really did do the home­work of painstak­ingly going over the muster records and so on; as was gen­er­ally true, the arc of the story was that the reg­i­ment went east, went into camp, drilled and drilled, and lost about half their num­bers to sick­ness before they ever went into a battle.

    Another fine book is one about the son of the fel­low who started But­ler Uni­ver­sity (Ovid Butler’s son, whose first name escapes me); dad kept all the let­ters they exchanged, and it makes for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing. The kiddo ends up in the new Sig­nal Corps and fights all through the west, includ­ing at Chicka­mauga, and comes home to live to old age, run­ning the uni­ver­sity in Indi­anapo­lis into the 20th century.

  87. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 5th, 2009 at 8:57 am

    JeffB — liked the walkscore​.com web­site in prin­ci­ple, but i did my house and most of my fam­ily, and the data misses quite a bit. We have a twenty year old bike path right across the street from our house that’s not listed, and a half mile down the road it links over a cou­ple blocks to the county rail-trail net­work that’s twelve years old, giv­ing us bike con­nec­tion with a gro­cery store that’s thirty plus years old … none of which showed up on the map.

    So i like the idea, but their data­base is more than a bit skewed.

  88. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 5th, 2009 at 9:08 am

    Brian — the book was the awk­wardly named “Affec­tion­ately Yours” and the son’s name was Scot. Ovid was a lead­ing light in the early days of my denom­i­na­tion, tak­ing a much stronger anti-slavery/abolitionist stance than the founders would have, try­ing to keep the south­ern con­gre­ga­tions in the fold (who later mor­phed into the non-instrumental/a capella Churches of Christ).

    Great set of let­ters for read­ing, under what­ever title.

    My dad’s Civil War her­itage soci­ety is cur­rently on a kick of going around Indi­ana, now that they’ve re-registered most of the GAR mon­u­ments to pro­tect the can­nons and such from auc­tion­eers and greedy town­ship trustees, putting up mark­ers for the “last Civil War sol­dier” in each area, since the GAR records are remark­ably clear on that score. And they still place mark­ers for unmarked graves of Civil War sol­diers wher­ever pos­si­ble, but the last thirty years they’ve pretty much got­ten the job done, at least as far as know­able unmarked gravesites go.

    http://​www​.suvcw​.org

    This is the group that also took care of the last three Civil War wid­ows, all of whom died in the last few years (do the math; it’s an “ewwww,” but i’m told they were fas­ci­nat­ing and feisty old ladies in their eight­ies and nineties), and always invite to their events “True Sons (and daugh­ters, occa­sion­ally)” who are the elderly sons of Civil War vets — you’d be amazed how many there still are. And spry!

  89. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 5th, 2009 at 9:19 am

    For those still inter­ested in this odd con­cept of chil­dren of Civil War vets still among us:

    http://​www​.suvcw​-wi​.org/​t​r​u​e​S​o​n​s.html

    http://​find​ar​ti​cles​.com/​p​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​m​i​_​q​n​4​1​7​9​/​i​s​_​2​0​0​4​1​0​0​3​/​a​i​_​n​1​1​8​21059/

    (sorry for the link slop, rush­ing out the door)

  90. brian stouder said on May 5th, 2009 at 9:20 am

    Jeff — yes! And the author of “Affec­tion­ately Yours” was also a direct rel­a­tive of Ovid Butler’s (great grand daugh­ter, or some such) and she gave a lively talk on her book at the late Ft Wayne Lin­coln Museum, so I have a signed copy on the shelf. Since then, we took the oppor­tu­nity while in Indy to search out and visit the But­ler home, which was walk­ing dis­tance to the uni­ver­sity back in the day; it is in an ornate old neigh­bor­hood which is now hemmed in by ele­vated expressways.

    LA Mary — that Slate slap-shot into Cokie Roberts’ grill was just no fair at all! (Funny! — but unfair!!)

  91. basset said on May 5th, 2009 at 10:54 am

    Nashville is a great place to pur­sue CW his­tory — used to work with a guy who moved down here from Detroit because he was so into it, started research­ing a book on the CW army unit from his wife’s home town in East Ten­nessee, and found that not only had they par­tic­i­pated in the Bat­tle of Nashville, they’d camped right about where his house was.

    let­ters… I would rec­om­mend “We All Must Dye Sooner or Later,” the col­lected let­ters of the Alford broth­ers from Daviess County:

    http://​civil​warindi​ana​.com/​b​o​o​k​s​/​b​o​o​k​s​_​o​t​h​e​r.html

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