Saturday morning cycling.

Tour deTroit. Over 6,000 cyclists. Fun.

tdt

Posted at 12:28 pm in Detroit life, iPhone |
 

27 responses to “Saturday morning cycling.”

  1. alex said on September 21, 2013 at 12:51 pm

    So is that Tour de Twat en francais?

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  2. Sherri said on September 21, 2013 at 12:59 pm

    For anyone who is interested, I just posted a long report from trip to London in the last thread (because I didn’t notice there was a new thread, I’m jet-lagged and a little slow.)

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  3. beb said on September 21, 2013 at 1:00 pm

    rotflmao

    I was makingn that same joke to my daughter before opening up to comments. alex you make me lol.

    And the background to Nancy picture is a wondrous old train station that has been slowly rotten to ruin because it’s too big, abandoned too long and too far away from the downtown to be viable. But it’s such a gorgeous building one wishes something could be done with it.

    A follow on to that two samurai in the rain story Nancy linked to yesterday. One of the men has a concealed carry permit. He lost it in 2007 for a DUI but got it back in 2010 when his 3 year suspension was over. However when he was pulled over for the DUI in 2007 he had the gun jammed between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. This could have been added to his DUI resulting in a lifetime suspension of his CCW. However prosecutors determined that he gun wasn’t involved in the drunk driving…. Typical. And six years later he’s dead from a car-related gun-fight.

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  4. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 21, 2013 at 1:44 pm

    Sherri, thanks for the tip, else I would have missed it. Matins at Westminster . . . that sounds like a poem title, and had to have been lovely. And other than ghosts, I’m not sure what Hampton Court Palace has going for it other than the hedge maze from what I’ve been told. You all have been helping me work on a list for that blessed day yet to come when I get to visit what my ancestor deserted from (the ur-Gill left the British army without leave during the fall of 1777 in the neighborhood of Saratoga, spent the following winter at Valley Forge, then went on to ply his Yorkshire trade as blacksmith after just missing arrest in the Whiskey Rebellion in the Pittsburgh area). I’d love to have the time and latitude to get up to York & Thirsk and trace those generations across the Yorkshire Dales.

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  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 21, 2013 at 1:54 pm

    Beb, you are so right: we keep helping people to death in the court system. The problem is that if we use an iron standard, with the current laws, we’d triple our already crowded jail populations. So we’re always working any angle the law and prosecutorial discretion allows to keep people out of stir, knowing that there’s a persistent percentage that really needs us to apply the full consequences.

    One answer would be to increase our ability under the code (Ohio Revised, that is; your state may vary) to mandate and order behavioral health interventions, and reduce greatly our mandatory minimums and other incarceratorial mandates . . . but as expensive as jail is, treatment often costs more, except I think a socially-conscious calculation would show that over a year you might spend $16K to lock a schmo up, or $28K to treat them for their anger/addiction/compulsions, but during that year if they can earn an income, pay their child support, and contribute taxes to the common weal, they actually are cost effectively treated. Politically, the problem is when a schmo in treatment willfully drives drunk, assaults a partner or random citizen, or does something worse, you get a huge public pushback due to “if Politician X hadn’t let the schmo out of jail, this wouldn’t have happened,” and there’s precious little concern about what jail is doing to the entire schmo population . . . 97% of which is coming back to live in our communities.

    So the pols push lock-up and pass sales tax increases to build more to relatively little public outcry, while if we court-order treatment we create an obligation to cover costs by the county, and those outlays are cried out against with great regularity. And there are few good answers to “if that released felon harms YOUR child, how would you feel?” but that unanswerable rhetoric still doesn’t make for good policy.

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  6. brian stouder said on September 21, 2013 at 2:12 pm

    Jeff, the last time a statistic floored me was just a few days ago that 1/3 of male blacks have had felony convictions, anymore mostly for drug-related crimes

    http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/19/rand-paul-one-in-three-black-men-served-time-time-to-re-enfranchise-ex-felons/

    and of course, this is hugely expensive…but also, it often means political disenfranchisement – in many states you permanently lose your right to vote.

    And thus, there is a very strong impulse to do things like “stop and frisk” – probable cause be damned and also to continue what is otherwise a plainly ridiculous ‘war on drugs’ including marijuana, which could otherwise be legalized and taxed

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  7. Sherri said on September 21, 2013 at 2:42 pm

    Matins at Westminster was indeed lovely, Jeff. I love the sound of a choir in a large cathedral like that; it’s just gorgeous. We wanted to attend Matins or Evensong at St. Paul’s, too, but so many things to see, we just didn’t make it.

    Brian, we’re trying to move to the legalize and tax model on marijuana out here in Washington; hopefully, we can set a new direction for the rest of the country. For now, the Feds have backed off enough to allow us room to work on setting up a system; we’ll see if they continue.

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  8. brian stouder said on September 21, 2013 at 3:02 pm

    Sherri – I loved your update on the UK trip at the end of the last thread; marvelous stuff

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  9. Jolene said on September 21, 2013 at 5:00 pm

    Indeed, a great travelogue, Sherri. Really interesting. Did you investigate restaurants too or, given, your extensive sightseeing, eat what was nearest?

    Definitely a great way to enter empty-nest-hood.

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  10. prospero said on September 21, 2013 at 5:21 pm

    Next time a GOPer espouses Christianity, feel free to snicker maliciously, and to wish eternal damnation on the bastard. They do exactly What Jesus Would Not Do. Scumbags should all be impeached.

    Richard Branson is seriously creepy, but I’d sure like a ride in this sucker.

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  11. prospero said on September 21, 2013 at 5:22 pm

    Next time a GOPer espouses Christianity, feel free to snicker maliciously, and to wish eternal damnation on the bastards. They do exactly What Jesus Would Not Do. Scumbags should all be impeached.

    Richard Branson is seriously creepy, but I’d sure like a ride in this sucker.

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  12. Deborah said on September 21, 2013 at 5:27 pm

    Sherri, your trip seems even more fabulous after your description in the previous thread. To the commenters here: it’s worth the clicks to go back and read her report.

    We’re still in Tempe, I wish we were back on the road but I already paid for the second night here as part of the Orbitz deal. Well, actually it’s in Mesa a few blocks outside of Tempe. I continue to be astounded by how wide the streets are here. Every street is a fricking freeway with 8 to 10 lanes. The car is certainly king, but why would you walk when it’s over 100 degrees? We went back to Ikea and were able to get everything on our list and then some, in fact way more than I expected to purchase, but that’s how it is at Ikea, you walk past the displays, the prices seem astonishingly low so you fill up your cart, then you get to check-out and faint from the total.

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  13. Jolene said on September 21, 2013 at 6:07 pm

    Deborah, if you are looking for Phoenix-area entertainment for the evening, try Pizza Bianco (supposed to be great) or have a drink at the Phoenix Biltmore and check out the Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.

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  14. Kirk said on September 21, 2013 at 6:42 pm

    Damn, there’s an echo in here.

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  15. beb said on September 21, 2013 at 6:52 pm

    Jeff @4: So was the ur-Gill French? Because he took French Leave from the British army.

    Jeff @5: The problem with incarceration is difficult but I wasn’t talking about that in my comment @3. I think a lot of the imprisonment for drug possession should be dealt with through fines and community service instead of jail. And there’s a real trap involved with private prisons. There was one case in PA where a privately owned prison was caught bribing a judge to send more juvenile offends its was. But in the case I was referring to, of the two men who killed each other, there was no question of jail time. Rather the DA by going lenient to the man with the gun with driving drunk let him recover the right to carry a gun whereas if he had been prosecuted for having a gun while drunk he would have lost his carry license and wouldn’t have been in a position to kill someone years later. Taking a policy that carrying a gun while doing something stupid is grounds to remove the carry permit seems like a public good and not a violating of the 2nd Amendment.

    I’m still confused how selling a gun to a blind man is a good idea.

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  16. Sherri said on September 21, 2013 at 7:29 pm

    Jolene, we didn’t do much investigation of restaurants. By the time we were finished sight-seeing for the day, we were pretty exhausted. Close to the South Kensington tube station, which was near where we were staying, were a number of reasonable take-away places, including Paul, a French bakery chain with good sandwiches.

    We also got together one evening with friends who have just moved to London and they took us to dinner at an interesting restaurant in Notting Hill called Notting Hill Kitchen. It’s a Spanish/Portuguese restaurant that just recently opened, and it was quite good.

    Lunch we tended to just grab something at the cafe of whatever museum we were visiting, which weren’t bad: pretty good choice of salads, sandwiches, soups, etc. We only ate one meal at a pub, and decided that the food isn’t the attraction of a pub. Since I don’t drink and my husband doesn’t like beer, we didn’t bother with pubs after that.

    I should also mention the other thing that made this a good start in empty-nestedness: my daughter seems to be happy at college. There were no crises to resolve from 4700 miles away, we exchanged some emails and texts, but she’s settling in well, from what I can tell. I thought she would, but I did have some concern about leaving the country so soon after dropping her off, and it was nice to be able to let go of that worry.

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  17. Deborah said on September 21, 2013 at 7:35 pm

    Jolene, I have been to the Biltmore and Taliesan West before, both great FL Wright places to see. This time I’m taking it easy at the hotel resting up for tomorrow’s all day road trip back a different way, more southern through the El Malpais in NM, which are the interesting lava flows. Our hotel has a pool that we’re going to use as soon as it gets a wee bit cooler this evening, and we brought all of our own food, some great pulled pork for sandwiches (thanks to Michael G) and some other tasty bits from the Santa Fe Farmers Market.

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  18. prospero said on September 21, 2013 at 8:43 pm

    Brian@6: Mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws may be the most reactionary and misguided steps backwards in the history of human jurisprudence. Dumber than grunt. Let’s just try the Code of Hammurabai and cutting off the hands of shoplifters.

    Sorry about that double post. I can’t fiigure out what’s going on with the site. But I do mean what I said about Satan’s party the GOP and what they are doing to the poors in this country in the name of Christian responsibility. Fuck the bastards.

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  19. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 21, 2013 at 9:31 pm

    Intercourse the penguins!

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  20. brian stouder said on September 21, 2013 at 10:37 pm

    Pros, not to sound like a grumbly old man, but I’m becoming convinced that the mandatory sentencing thing, especially with regard to drugs, far from being ‘misguided’, is a specifically targeted (and hard-heartedly guided) effort to specifically disenfranchise people who are not white.

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  21. prospero said on September 21, 2013 at 10:57 pm

    It’s painfully obvious that mandatory sentencing and three strikes are applied far less equally to minority defendants than to whites, but I’ve long thought part of the intent of these unconstitutional laws is to provide a steady supply of fodder for the growing privatized incarceration mills. Of course, they also remove judges from the business of judging, although there are too many GOPer judges pulling shit like blaming that CO 14 year old for her own rape and giving the teacher/rapist 30 days in the hole.

    Mike Lupica is every bit as much of a clueless dickhead as Mitch Albom.

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  22. prospero said on September 22, 2013 at 3:53 pm

    Avid Bookshop news. This novel has an intriguing premise, but it sounds more like Charles Portis than Kurt Vonnegut to me. This could make a great movie, along the lines of Little Big Man. And if you haven’t read the hilarious Charles Portis, I’d recommend Masters of Atlantis as a good introductory point.

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  23. brian stouder said on September 22, 2013 at 3:55 pm

    Somebody around here has patented the phrase “dumber than grunt”….and that was the very first thing I said out loud, when I read this article

    http://www.wane.com/news/national/girls-bleeding-from-shooting-mistaken-for-period_39885171

    the lead:

    HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California couple didn’t report that their 10-year-old daughter had been shot for more than five hours because they mistook her bleeding for a period, police said Friday.

    and the kicker:

    Ormsby said when she woke up for school and was still in pain, her parents inspected her bed and saw bullet holes.
    The girl’s doctor told investigators the bullet’s entry wound was small and could have been easily overlooked if the family thought she was menstruating.

    So the sleeping little girl gets shot, wakes up, and mom and dad say ‘no biggie’ until they look closer the next morning? What?

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  24. prospero said on September 22, 2013 at 5:51 pm

    First Loins win vs. Redskins since 1939 (when the Skins were in Boston. Another monster game for Stafford. Van Patrick is smiling in Broadcaster Heaven. Raising a toast with Sonny “Idiot” Eliot. End of a very long dry spell.

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  25. prospero said on September 22, 2013 at 6:17 pm

    Brian May, Queen guitar player extraordinaire has a doctorate in astrophysics. I hope somebody has brought this String Theory according to Brian and Freddy to his attention. Very well done.

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  26. Deborah said on September 22, 2013 at 7:59 pm

    We are back in Santa Fe, thank goodness. It rained a lot through much of Arizona and the twisty hairpin mountain pass roads with slick asphalt was treacherous. There were a couple of moments with semis barreling behind us I honestly didn’t think we’d make it out alive. I was white knuckling it and was so focused on the road I missed some breathtaking scenery.

    The Malpais in New Mexico is spectacular, had driven through it before some years back, it was great to see it again. I think elk hunting season started recently, saw one on the back of someone’s pick up. Didn’t see much in the way of wildlife on the whole trip except a rattlesnake that I thought was a stick in the road and ran over it because when I realized what it was, it was too late.

    I love road trips but it’s good to be done with this one. My cat was being cared for by the tenants upstairs, some St. Johns College students. Of course the cat had revenge puked on the floor before we arrived and has been letting us know how displeased she was that we left her for a few days. But she survived as well as we did from the ordeal.

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  27. prospero said on September 22, 2013 at 8:36 pm

    The most disgraceful thing about the GOPer cuts to SNAP programs is that the self-proclaimed spending hawks left all of the farm subsidies on which these government programs are based in place whole. A bunch of these bastards actually benefit directly from the farm subsidies. I’m pretty much certain none of them rely on SNAP to put food on their families. How do voters feel about GOPer action guaranteed to ensure that kids go hungry in exceptional America, and some may starve to death? Kinda Third World, ain’t it? This guarantees that the government will be paying Big Farm companies to let food rot in warehouses while Americans, including a few million kids, go hungry. It was marginally funny to call Ryan Granny-Starver, but now the GOP is making that a reality. People that vote for these bastards should feel deep shame.

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