Another day, another email from the wine place:
It needs a few moments of swirling to unlock scents of blueberry pie, cassis, and preserved plums, eventually giving way to a gorgeous perfume of violets, star anise, cedar chest, and iron ore. The medium to full-bodied palate shimmers with bright, fresh black fruit layers, framed by firm, ripe, rounded tannins and Pavie’s signature tension, finishing very long and very fragrant. This is breathtaking!
Something I learned from these missives: There’s this thing called en primeur, which is when you buy wine that hasn’t been bottled yet, based on early impressions from how it’s developing in the barrel. It’s…wine futures. You say, “my guy says this one has great promise” and put your money down for bottles in 2026, say. And you cross your fingers and hope this vintage lives up to your expectations. Like buying a yearling racehorse at the Keeneland sale.
Rich people. What will they think of next.
So. A sultry Wednesday afternoon in the a/c, waiting on a thunderstorm. Quiche for dinner tonight — Swiss chard, bacon, pine nuts, raisins and gouda cheese. Trying to finish a story I was going great guns on yesterday, but ran out of gas for today. Got most of my to-do list crossed off, and just thinking what I want to do with the rest of my one wild and precious life. Or week, anyway.
One thing I won’t be doing: Going to the great reopening of Michigan Central Station, the Ford Motor Company’s project. NYT gift link to a piece aimed at a non-Detroit audience here, a story I did the first edit on, not that I am bragging — always happy to give a first read to a friend. I interviewed the project leader on this undertaking last year, for a story on adaptive reuse, i.e. giving old buildings new life. The scope of the station project was enormous; Ford is said to have spent $900 million all-in, which included rehabbing a couple nearby buildings as well. I said to the guy, “It’s amazing what you’ve been able to do,” and he replied, drolly, “With enough money? You can do anything.” I liked that.
Anyway, tomorrow is the celebration concert on the lawn out front, with Eminem and Jack White and Big Sean and a bunch of other people. Then even dug up Diana Ross to swing back through her hometown and sing a little, although we’ll see how that goes: I don’t think she’s performed in years, and she’s 80 now. It’ll be streamed on Peacock or Paramount or one of those networks I don’t subscribe to, but they’ll show a condensed version free in a few days. I don’t really enjoy going to shows where you have to stand up for two hours, anyway, and this will surely be one.
Oh, and these guys are back:
The return of the fish flies means summer’s here. No, summer’s here! Let’s enjoy it.
Dexter Friend said on June 5, 2024 at 6:22 pm
I had heard Culver’s fish sandwiches were top notch and the one I had a month ago was. Today I had business in Auburn , finally closing out my late uncle’s estate, and I bought another Culver’s fish, $7.80 because I added a thin slice of tomato for 50 cents. I pulled into an empty lot and bit into it and it sort of exploded downward, tomato, tarter sauce, and fish flesh which slid out of the breading, cascading onto my jacket, one hellish mess. Luckily I am a holdover from panic days and I carry 91% rubbing alcohol and paper towels in my vehicles, so it was an easy clean-up. From now on, just a Butter Burger, which will be a long time, as I only have a burger about once a year.
Hunter Biden’s charges are usually handled by a fine and a recommendation for re-hab, with a short regional jail term of maybe 30 days or less. Yeah, he was a fuck-up like many of my ilk were, but he is not one now.
Marjorie TG…that awful person…attacking Dr. Fauci, and that Matt Gaetz pervert, fond of the teen girls, and transporting them across state lines, refusing to refer to Fauci as “Doctor” at all, saying he was not a real doctor, all this bullshit sickened me yesterday.
Today, an old Chevy full-sized van, driven by a smoking red neck asshole, had a big portrait of Trump in the rear window, and in huge letters , Trump… across the sides and front of the rusty hulk. He was driving like 10 mph to make people stare at him. This is OK here in Trump-land. It also is disheartening.
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Suzanne said on June 5, 2024 at 7:15 pm
I posted this on the last thread, just before this one went up so I am repeating it:
Speaking of performative BS like the GOP House members keep doing, I listened to this podcast this morning in which the guest being interviewed, Hank Willenbank, explains how Trump performs as the star of his own reality theater, the director of it, and the audience as well. Willenbrink has written a book titled “Performing for the Don:
Theaters of Faith in the Trump Era”. The interview is in the second half of the podcast and worth listening to. It helped me tie the theater of Trump to the modern evangelical megachurch where it’s all about the show and the performance of the leaders.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/straight-white-american-jesus/id1441649707?i=1000657455066
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LAMary said on June 5, 2024 at 7:47 pm
I just got out of the hospital. The digestive system crud that started mid October and just got worse and uglier and more miserable is finally being treated by doctors who appear to know what the fuck they are doing. Previous GI guy was doing repeated rounds of antibiotics and telling me to consume massive quantities of metamucil and probiotics. I had the permanent shits. Liquid poop combined with blood and mucus. Then this doc prescribed nitroglycerin ointment to be applied to the nether parts. It nearly made me faint and gave me an instant headache when I applied it. I sort of threw a tantrum at this loser a month ago and he had me set up an appointment with a colorectal surgeon. She looked at my file and my most recent coloscopy info and asked what the hell this guy was doing. She told me to come back tomorrow and when I did, one of her aides wheelchaired me to the hospital across the parking lot. Colonoscopy and a few tests later: Severe acute ulcerative colitis. Treatment? minimal fiber. Also four days on IV everything. Now steroids and potassium. And zero shits, blood and mucus. Not only was that first GI doc not helping. He was making things a lot worse.
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Jeff Gill said on June 5, 2024 at 8:07 pm
Mary, so sorry to hear you’re having to deal with that. May you get back to solid and enjoyable food soon.
Swung through NW Indiana & south Chicago on Monday, and the cicadas were living up to their advance billing.
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Deborah said on June 5, 2024 at 8:41 pm
Sorry LAMary, that doesn’t sound like fun, glad you’ve found some answers to getting back to health.
It’s hot in Santa Fe, 90 today, 93 tomorrow. Our gardening efforts are looking pretty bleak for way too early in the season. This is probably the way it will be this summer again, even worse than last, but until I finally let it sink in, it isn’t going to get better and gardening is going to be a big challenge from now on. Duh.
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Sherri said on June 5, 2024 at 8:57 pm
Josh Marshall wrote this about the WaPo situation, before the news broke that Will Lewis had told Sally Buzbee not to cover his involvement in the phone hacking scandal.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-wapo-blow-up-and-the-on-going-riddle-of-newspaper-decline/sharetoken/giqn4k56Pm4c
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Dexter Friend said on June 5, 2024 at 10:18 pm
LA Mary, I am sad reading of this trouble you are experiencing. I hope you return to smooth sailing through life very soon.
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Mark P said on June 5, 2024 at 10:41 pm
I feel about this country kind of the way I feel about my wife right about now. She has suffered from chronic pain for a long time. Her PCP first prescribed hydrocodone, but my wife took them early and took too many, so her doctor referred her to a pain specialist. Again my wife took them early so she used too many, and her doctor kicked her out of his practice. Her PCP referred her to a second pain specialist, who warned her that if she didn’t follow the prescription, they would kick her out and she would have a hard time finding another doctor to treat her pain. She continues to take them early, despite my repeated (and repeated and repeated) warning that if she ends up short, they will refuse to prescribe any pain medication and she will be without, probably permanently. All to no effect. At this point, I feel like letting her do what she wants and suffer the consequences because I am so tired to trying to deal with it. You may remember that I have mentioned before her early but increasing dementia. She’s just bad enough that she can’t understand what being kicked out of a third pain treatment plan would mean, or she simply refuses to believe me. In any case, I am so tired of trying and getting nothing but shit from her that … oh well.
And I feel that way about this country. You can warn people forever about what a Trump regime would look like, but they say to bring it on. I will probably die before it happens, so I won’t have to see the innocent suffer, but I sure would like to see the guilty suffer.
The only thing that keeps me here right now is my dogs.
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Ann said on June 5, 2024 at 11:13 pm
LA Mary, Mark P, that stinks (literally, in LA Mary’s case). I’m so sorry.
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Jeff Gill said on June 6, 2024 at 7:02 am
Mark, that’s a terrible situation, and I hear your parallel loud and clear. Medically, I can’t help but wonder: is her health such that she might qualify for hospice care? That’s one zone where the doctors’ anxiety about prescriptions is greatly muted by a different set of protocols. That’s not a small decision, but it may be medically appropriate from what you’ve said, though I may be missing some key facts. Just something to take counsel on if you can talk privately with the doctor.
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Suzanne said on June 6, 2024 at 7:16 am
LAMary and MarkP, I feel for you both. Having gone through some medical stuff in the past few years, I have learned that there are no clear and simple answers when dealing with health problems. There are so many moving pieces at all times that it’s difficult to manage.
We watched a D-Day special on CBS last night which would have been quite inspiring if I wasn’t wondering the entire time how many of those brave survivors of that day now support the orange turd and his brand of fascism? And wondered how they could after seeing what they saw?
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4dbirds said on June 6, 2024 at 9:14 am
Mary and Mark, I hope both your situations improve. I can’t imagine the pain and inconvenience of your situation Mary. I hope with the correct treatment you are eating normally again soon. Mark, I hope you find the right balance for your wife. I had major back surgery last September and I KNOW they don’t prescribe enough pain relief. We went from overkill to underkill with pain relief.
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FDChief said on June 6, 2024 at 9:36 am
While I get the whole 80th D-Day party thing I would be remiss if I didn’t drop a note for us Westerners to look up “Operation Bagration”, also known as “the destruction of Army Group Center” than also occurred in June 1944.
Specifically because we tend to forget the horrors of the Soviet Union’s war. The Russian people don’t. The Soviets suffered horrifically and did the heavy lifting to destroy Nazi Germany and that left a wound that still drives Russian policy today.
Wonder why Putin keeps claiming Ukraine is a nest of Nazis? Look at the history. It’s all there.
Sometimes the past isn’t prologue.
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Julie Robinson said on June 6, 2024 at 9:39 am
Mary, what misery for you, and I sure hope you’re feeling a little better now. A complaint to the medical board about Doc #1?
Mark, I hope you can also find some answers. Hospice might be it.
Deborah, we’re in the same boat with the heat; today will be 97° and later this week it’s going over 100°. It’s too hot to work outside, much less plant anything.
Native Floridians can’t remember a year so hot.
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Jeff Gill said on June 6, 2024 at 10:16 am
For what it’s worth:
https://open.substack.com/pub/knapsack/p/hearing-good-news-80-years-ago
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tajalli said on June 6, 2024 at 12:09 pm
Mary, I’m glad your new physician has found the path back to health for you. I concur with Julie about filing a complaint to the CA Board of Medical Examiners and would add making it a CC to your medical group (Kaiser still?) who’d do a review of his records to determine if this instance of ineptitude is a part of a larger, long-standing pattern.
Mark, I’m sorry to hear your wife’s troubles seem to be worsening. Pain management protocol review is a pretty standard continuing education requirement for primary care and internists, with a huge licensure liability for not complying regardless of their personal level of compassion.
Last week I attended a library-sponsored zoom with the founder of https://www.caringinfo.org/ which discusses advanced directives and end of life options as well as communicating with family and professionals. Lots of free forms available and links to state specific information.
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Scout said on June 6, 2024 at 1:19 pm
LAMary, I feel for you. 5 years ago I went through a horrible bout of diverticulitis and simultaneously, gallstones. There were times I wanted to die, it was so excruciating. I’m so glad you found a more competent Doc to get you through.
Mark, my heart breaks for you and your wife. I think you got some good advice here.
To everyone, we are all reasonable, compassionate people and it is harmful to the collective psyche to have to experience the rolling disaster that is the current GOP/Trump cult. What they did to Dr Fauci is criminal. Meanwhile, Alito and Thomas continue their reigns of terror on the rule of law while the Dem Judiciary committee sends strongly worded letters. I just can’t even some days.
It’s hot here in Phoenix too. Excessive heat warnings today, we’ll be at 109 at 3pm.
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ROGirl said on June 6, 2024 at 2:07 pm
LA Mary, I’m glad you are on the right treatment and recovery path. Mark, sorry for the troubles your wife is going through, and your frustrations.
Karma can’t come soon enough for all those republican f–kers.
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LAMary said on June 6, 2024 at 4:00 pm
Your Mary Oliver poem made me think of this Joy Harjo poem. I’m on a Joy Harjo binge lately because the biggest part of my soon to end American Indian Counseling Center job has been doing the county newsletter. I try to include a Native American poem or story in each one. Here’s this one:
Redbird Love
BY JOY HARJO
We watched her grow up.
She was the urgent chirper,
Fledgling flier.
And when spring rolled
Out its green
She’d grown
Into the most noticeable
Bird-girl.
Long-legged and just
The right amount of blush
Tipping her wings, crest
And tail, and
She knew it
In the bird parade.
We watched her strut.
She owned her stuff.
The males perked their armor, greased their wings,
And flew sky-loop missions
To show off
For her.
In the end
There was only one.
Isn’t that how it is for all of us?
There’s that one you circle back to — for home.
This morning
The young couple scavenges seeds
On the patio.
She is thickening with eggs.
Their minds are busy with sticks the perfect size, tufts of fluff
Like dandelion, and other pieces of soft.
He steps aside for her, so she can eat.
Then we watch him fill his beak
Walk tenderly to her and kiss her with seed.
The sacred world lifts up its head
To notice —
We are double-, triple-blessed
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Mark P said on June 6, 2024 at 4:00 pm
Tajalli, I have tried to explain to my wife how seriously the government takes opioid prescriptions and how physicians are at risk if their patients abuse them. Her own PCP, when she was prescribing, told my wife that she (her PCP) could go to jail. Unfortunately, my wife seems to have progressed beyond the point that things like that make any sense to her. This is especially hard for me to deal with because she seems so much closer to normal most of the time, and she says she wants us to talk about things. So we talk, and I eventually realize that she is not connecting with anything I say.
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Mark P said on June 6, 2024 at 4:08 pm
Jeff Gill, my mother and father used to talk about their experiences during WW 2. I eventually convinced my father to write his memoir. Some time after he died I read what he had finished. It covered his training, which lasted about three years, and ended just as he was getting ready to go into combat around September 1944. I regret that I didn’t try to get my mother to write about her experiences, following my father from Army post to Army post,
Colorado, Arizona,
Oregon, how hard it was to get a seat on a train because military people were constantly traveling and had priority, and what it was like to work for a high-ranking civilian in Washington. So much history, so many personal experiences, all fading and mostly gone now.
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brian stouder said on June 6, 2024 at 5:12 pm
I hear you, Mark. You’ve gained a tremendous insight – the realization that we cannot know more than hints and/or indicators, when it comes to how individuals experienced their part of major historical events
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Dave said on June 6, 2024 at 6:49 pm
ROGirl, you’re so right, karma cannot come quick enough for these lowlife people, every time I think they can’t get lower, I’m wrong:
https://www.aol.com/news/republicans-pennsylvania-boo-walk-jan-181110755.html
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Deborah said on June 7, 2024 at 6:58 pm
We took a 3 mile hike up in the mountains yesterday and had lunch at an amazing overlook view where we could see 60 miles. It got up to 93° in the city but cooler up there. It was a spectacular hike too, lots of wildflowers and interest, only saw a cute little chipmunk as the wildlife representative, plus heard lots of birds.
As for today, we only had some elderly friends visit us and that was a little depressing because they’re looking so frail now, and we did a few errands, this heat is wearing me down, so that’s not fun, since this is our future.
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Jeff Borden said on June 7, 2024 at 8:08 pm
FDChief,
I admire your knowledge of history. It’s heresy in the U.S. to suggest any other narrative than America saved the world. But read enough historical accounts and you realize it was the USSR that ground the Nazis into dust. Soviet casualties were staggering, but a ruthless prick like Stalin never wavered and Germany was bled almost dry. Imagine the fury of the full might of Nazi Germany aimed west. The carnage would have enormous and success would not have been guaranteed. Even so, the Allies faced fierce resistance every step of the way enroute to victory. But the Allies delivered the coup d’ grace and thank dog for it.
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Sherri said on June 7, 2024 at 9:04 pm
I’m in Atlanta for an ACLU conference, and got a tour of the MLKJr National Historic Park today, and got to sit in the original Ebenezer Baptist Church, and then we had the kickoff in the current Ebenezer Baptist Church, which included hearing stories from a 92 year old Andrew Young. (His daughter Andrea is the current executive director of the ACLU of Georgia.) Tomorrow kicks off two days of all day learning!
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brian stouder said on June 7, 2024 at 9:10 pm
Sherri – sounds like a superb day, indeed!
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alex said on June 8, 2024 at 9:20 am
I was always aware of the Russian role in WWII because my dad, a native Hungarian, has never forgiven Roosevelt and Churchill for ceding all of Central and Eastern Europe to Stalin as a thank-you gift, and has never forgiven Eisenhower for failing to step in to assist Hungary in its strong but ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against Soviet occupation in 1956.
Steeped in stories about the horrors of totalitarianism when I was growing up, I’m terrified of the current moment. Reporting like this gift article that I’m sharing isn’t reaching those who need to see it, people who would probably react with disbelief even if they did see it, because our media are not covering this election with the seriousness it deserves: https://wapo.st/3VyftdG
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FDChief said on June 8, 2024 at 9:31 am
The thing I meant to point out is that we tend to view others through our own lenses, and that the popular ignorance of events like the Soviet offensive of 1944 means we don’t get how stuff like that shaped today’s Russia in very different ways than D-Day shapes us today.
It took all the Allies to destroy Nazi Germany, and the summer of ‘44 was critical to that. Remembering the day the Western Allies’ role changed is good. Remembering what ALL of Germany’s opponents had to do to do that, though? Is even better for understanding how those events shape our modern world.
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Dexter Friend said on June 8, 2024 at 9:36 am
I finally found a contractor to patch the hole in my roof. Oh yeah…he went on top, took photos with his iPad, and reported I need an entire new roof…the proof was in the photos. Here’s the wierdest: my share of the final installment of my inheritance from my uncle will pay for half the job. Then my number came up on the ping pong balls last night but in a box, and I always go for broke and play it straight. So I was out the $1,600 I could have won had I played the odds and bet box, not straight. Such miniutiae pales to more dire situations; Mark, your last words above need focussing on:
“And I feel that way about this country. You can warn people forever about what a Trump regime would look like, but they say to bring it on. I will probably die before it happens, so I won’t have to see the innocent suffer, but I sure would like to see the guilty suffer.
The only thing that keeps me here right now is my dogs.”
I don’t think I’d stay here if I didn’t have 14.5 year old Pogo Labbie still, to care for. I have been invited to move in with either daughter, one in Findlay (basement apartment…not my thing) or into a “grandma’s room” in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. I am 74 and I like to cook my own meals and watch my streams and move about as I wish. I dread the time I am shuffled off into a care facility and have my car keys confiscated. To be very blunt: fuck that shit. I know, it happens to thousands every day. But I have this feeling just like before I was drafted…they will never send me to Viet Nam. They did, and a care facility? They will, unless….
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Dorothy said on June 8, 2024 at 6:13 pm
My heartfelt wishes for better days ahead for LA Mary and Mark P. You have had way more than your share of bad days lately and I hope you’re not too far from good days soon.
Dexter I understand how you feel, but try to shift the way you think about the ‘have my car keys confiscated’ situation. If someone loves you enough to do that, they are trying to protect not just you but other people, in case you’d have an accident. I still remember a terrible car accident that happened on the grounds of South Park in Pittsburgh where a driver had some kind of medical issue that caused him to lose control of his car. He and his wife were killed, and some folks who were near where he crashed. I hope for your independence and pride you can drive for a number of years, but it’s also important to realize our own limitations and be mature and thoughtful about such issues. Getting old sucks. But if you have a good attitude, you might have a happier demeanor as a result. (I just found a link to the article)
https://archive.triblive.com/news/five-killed-in-accident/
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Julie Robinson said on June 8, 2024 at 6:36 pm
Yes, it does. I saw obits for two old friends, both with Alzheimers. This day can just take a flying f***.
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FDChief said on June 8, 2024 at 8:20 pm
Alex: I get how he’d feel that way, but there was no way in Hell that the Western Allies were going to war with the Soviets over Poland and Latvia in 1945 or Hungary in 1956, and that’s what it would have taken.
The bottom line for not just Stalin but millions of Russians was that they had just been savaged by a bunch of Germans and they wanted strategic depth. If that meant effectively enslaving Eastern Europe? They were okay with that.
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Jeff Gill said on June 9, 2024 at 7:54 am
“[Eisenhower] thought that, should the Red forces “beat us to Berlin,” the British forces ought to be pushed northward to take the Hanover area and the ports around Hamburg and that Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s forces should seize part or all of the Leipzig-Dresden area “depending upon the progress of the Russian advance.” [7]
In the fall of 1944, Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery pressed repeatedly for a single Allied thrust toward Berlin, northeastward from the Rhine, preferably by his army group aided by an American army under his command. In discussions over the “broad front” versus “narrow front” strategy, General Eisenhower made clear that for the moment he was more interested in the Ruhr than in Berlin. Germany, he believed, had two hearts: one, industrial (the Ruhr), and the other, political (Berlin). He wished to concentrate on the Ruhr on the theory that if the industrial heart stopped, the political heart would also die…
“Even if the Allies reached the Elbe before Zhukov crossed the Oder, the British and U.S. forces would still have to cross fifty miles of lowlands marked by lakes, streams, and canals to get to Berlin. When asked by General Eisenhower for an opinion, General Bradley estimated that a breakthrough from the Elbe would cost 100,000 casualties. “A pretty stiff price to pay for a prestige objective ,” he told the Supreme Commander. And, remembering that the Allies had already agreed that the Russian occupation zone would run within one hundred miles of the Rhine, he added, “Especially when we’ve got to fall back and let the other fellow take over.” He says candidly of his thinking of this period:
I could see no political advantage accruing from the capture of Berlin that would offset the need for quick destruction of the German army on our front. As soldiers we looked naively on this British inclination [the desire to go on to Berlin] to complicate the war with political foresight and non-military objectives. [10]
With these arguments in mind and fearing that the enemy might successfully establish his redoubt in the south, General Eisenhower concluded near the end of March that he should push his main force from the Kassel-Frankfurt area to the Elbe, split the German forces, cut off Berlin from the National Redoubt area, and then turn his forces directly to the north and to the southwest of the Elbe. These maneuvers would enable him to seize ports on the North Sea and the Baltic and also clean up the area to the south before the enemy could assemble a force there.”
https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_22.htm
Jeff: IMHO, this is a fairly neat refutation of Patton’s claims that Ike stopped at the Elbe purely out of political considerations. You can debate whether there was a cold calculation of “our” 100,000 casualties versus “theirs,” but I don’t think he saw it quite that way: the Russians were rolling on mostly open roads at this point towards Berlin from the east (recall the grim cinematic scene about Steiner’s non-existent forces), and Ike just wanted to ensure Hitler et alia didn’t shift from Berlin to the Alps and western Austria to fight it out into the summer.
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Suzanne said on June 9, 2024 at 11:09 am
The Indiana Capitol Chronicle does some wonderful work.
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/06/04/reasonable-doubt-for-trump-is-elusive-even-in-the-post-truth-era/
“ Pundits and partisans tried to make the New York case complicated. It wasn’t. None of his other criminal cases are either.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon, a criminal, and reasonable doubt about it no longer exists.”
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FDChief said on June 9, 2024 at 11:52 am
Jeff: I recall reading about Monty’s “we must drive a thrust to Berlin!” thing and thinking “this guy learned nothing from the failure of his Market-Garden fiasco, did he..?”
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Mark P said on June 9, 2024 at 12:22 pm
Montgomery was a vain, petty, and resentful man who never got over having an American as supreme allied commander. His lies about the American reaction to the German attack in the Battle of the Bulge are partly, maybe largely responsible for the perception that it was a general rout. It was no doubt aided by some America correspondents’ reports when they saw some units retreating, not seeing the other units advancing towards the enemy. Montgomery’s childish, transparent political maneuvering was an unnecessary obstacle to the Allied advance.
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Dexter Friend said on June 9, 2024 at 12:28 pm
I was cycling 25 years ago when a local business man passed out with a diabetic condition , almost hit me, and crashed into a double-pump at the Marathon. 20 years ago Uncle M drove to Fort Wayne for no reason and was lost for hours. When finally he was returned home, my cousin B took his keys and grounded him, which was hard as he lived way out in the sticks, alone. Then my other living uncle became his driver, which was all could happen. Most of we adult mature folks here can relate…personally, the one thing I can do better than when I was young is drive. I used to get speeding tickets eons ago; I have not had one in 26 years, and even that was a Waterville speed trap ticket that Ohioans know about: when in Waterville, drive 5 mph under the posted limit. 20/20 vision and experienced in all phases of climate, I can’t predict when I will have to cave and surrender the vehicles. Not a pleasant thought. I do miss cycling, man that has changed; only athletes ride real bicycles these days. The people with no helmets and cigarettes on their lips all ride e-bikes. Even toddlers have motorized bikes with training wheels, I swear I saw it. In Defiance, damn, man! Those e-bikes are everywhere. Not very many obey the rules of the road, either.
Maybe I should get an adult tricycle, a new folding, light weight one. That would be fun. Bicycling is out for me…balance issues.
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David C said on June 9, 2024 at 12:48 pm
The older people I see riding e-bikes are at least pedaling for the most part. That’s good. They’re still getting exercise. The younger people I see on them use the pedals as foot pegs and nothing more (you kids get off of my lawn). I don’t ride my road bike anymore. Four or five years ago a bunch of people from Kalamazoo I was acquainted with from a cycling over 50 forum were run down and killed by drugged up guy in a pickup. I gave up road cycling right there. Knowing I’m living in one of the drunkest cities in the drunkest state helped my decision. I have a gravel bike now and stick to the trails. Boring, but safer.
I have no doubt you’ll know exactly when to hang up the keys, Dexter. You seem like a level headed guy. Have a look at an e-trike too. I think you’d like it.
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Dexter Friend said on June 9, 2024 at 1:01 pm
David C: Twice I was attacked on roads, once while cycling to Ann Arbor’s Burns Park from M Stadium, when youthful drunks pelted me with a sack of empty half-pint glass whiskey bottles and empty beer cans ( glass bottles hit harder than empty aluminum cans)…the bag glanced off me with no harm, and the funniest one was the asshole who thought he could ruin my day by “dooring” me and having his pal throw hot coffee on me. I had a mirror, I saw the door open, veered right, and the coffee reached me but was air-cooled by the time it hit me. I sometimes wondered what coffee drinkers were thinking when usually it would be drunks who would try to injure a cyclist by dooring him.
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