Minneapolis: are you kidding?
It’s the best recreational bicycle city but it’s mediocre for commuters. The mass transit needs vast improvement and outside of the dense center (downtown, uptown), biking with drivers is dangerous.
The light rail should be an icon of a shift to shared transit and green commutes. It’s a symbol of shared mobility and clean travel. (more…)
There are a few things we’ll need. Enough food for two meals and a few snacks (nothing crazy but enough to counter roughly seven thousand calories burned). Some pedal shoes, lights and an iPhone or Android with bike maps are helpful. (With 120-some turns, I don’t want you getting us lost.)
We’ll want to get racks and panniers for the supplies. No one wants to be hauling weight over our shoulders for almost ninety miles. Well, maybe you do, but I’m not an idiot. Where are we going, you ask?
The Small City, that’s where. If you’re a huge wuss, maybe we’ll stop at a friend’s place (that’s only eighty miles, weakling) for a break, some water and to slap the crying girl out of you. (His young son would be happy to oblige.) (more…)
You may or may not know of the move in our very near future. The T.C. staff is off to the northern end of the Windy City. It’s a big change. (Mainly because CHI is considered a city even outside of the regional area.)
The relocation is only part of it.
Girlfriend and I are reducing our television consumption to three hours per week for the summer. What better time to start than after a one-way trip with a sixteen-foot truck?
I’ve gotten into bicycling-as-transportation. (Stifle your applause, hippies; I still shower often.) CHI has more on-street lanes and paths. We’ll also have nearly all of our staples (including ice cream) within two miles.
We’re moving to a residential neighborhood. There won’t be any drunks yelling after midnight. There won’t be the seventeen roaring past every fifteen minutes (or planes every hour, for that matter). I won’t sleep well for a bit.
Tired of all the gradients on this site? Want a splash of one other color? (Do you even read it here?) You’re in luck, because T.C. is getting an overhaul in the near future. (S’bout time, right? ‘Get in your car’ was the 800th post!)
Most importantly, Girlfriend and I will live in a place people actually want to visit. My sunny disposition is adequate but that’s with friends only threatening visits every two years or so.
It’s been awhile since there has been so much flux. I’m excited.
Photo courtesy Mikeyexists on Flickr
The idea is sound: when there are too many cars on the road, setting ramp entrances to set intervals maintains the flow of traffic. It decomposes in practice (read: “free” market).
Why? (People are stupid, impatient dolts?)
Most are on their way to Very Important Things in their Very Cool Cars texting in their Very Smart Smart Phone. Someone inevitably prematurely accelerates.
Some Guy smarter than most of your family spent weeks away from his, in front of a humming set of circuits. He calculated when the light should stop blinking yellow and how long between each flash of green.
Then boom! some dim hits the wrong pedal or can’t be bothered to wait. The next person (like Pavlov’s mutt) can’t help but jolt forward when faced with the splash of green.
Too many of these renders the meters useless and proves to Some Guy his life is worthless. Which is a shame, because he seems nice.
Similar happens when a lane closes on a freeway. Some Very Important Douche has to wait until the last fifty feet to merge. More do the same and traffic slows to intermittent stops.
Of course, these law-abiding observations come from someone who recently got another speeding ticket and would rather bus an hour than drive twenty minutes. Take them with a grain of salt.
Dear ladies. You’re adorable and you smell nice and your hair looks great that way. That said, go away. Seriously, I’m about to toss down some wisdom you want no part of. If you remain, I take no responsibility for your opinion of me thereafter (it’ll still be outstanding).
Valentine’s is a frightening time. The pressure from those that profit on it is immense. The strongest of women, independent, free thinking and confident, are reduced to sappy sods mid-February, ready to lash out at any lapse in what commercials tell them is love.
Guys. If you’re lucky enough to have a better half, most of you know the perils of the fake-smile slathered near-gift you tried to hand over. You probably know the “thought over cost” save that your fathers passed on, as theirs passed to them. Here I’m talk to leaving work the Friday before Valentine’s without an earful of gush or, probably, guilt.
Depending on your chosen (or forced) occupation (or how you occupy your time), you may heed none of this. Those of you in IT or repairing radiators don’t really run into the fairer sex often. Others must tread lightly.
For those sharing cubes with hopeful-flower-recipients, here are a few tips.
Pretend it doesn’t exist.
This may seem simple but you’ll be reminded in every meeting, every chat around a microwave and any other encounter. When asked, make it seem as if you’re blind-sided. I don’t care if you have to do it fifteen times through the day. Each time you’ve never even heard of the idea of Valentine’s.
Avoid feminine flocks.
Just this afternoon, I entered the lunch room, grabbed a sandwich and noticed a table nearly filled with some women I know and others I don’t. I sat to the corner by myself and enjoyed (sort of) my meal. Walking into a roundtable interrogation like that is hazardous to your health. (Fox News wishes Guantanamo were as intense.)
Make something up.
Maybe those first two didn’t work and you’re roped into some long-winded discussion with a women who’s filling your brain with all her PG fantasies. Here, you make something up. Tell her you’re taking your girlfriend to Vegas because she loves sadness and blown savings. Tell her you’re proposing, whether you plan to, never will or already have. Tell her you bought her ten grand in diamonds because she hates Africans and loves manipulated markets. It doesn’t matter.
Above all, make your ladyfriend happy.
Do the ladies at work really matter? No (unless of course you work with your girlfriend). Then nothing said here will help you in the least. Mostly, just make your girlfriend glad she’s with you.
If you’re not doing that all year or have to be reminded by terrible commercials and a deluge of Facebook ads for flower delivery, you’re a dick. You deserve all the girly grilling you get and much worse.
Brandy (the liquor). Somehow, this delicious distilled wine has (for reasons I can’t figure) been given a bad name. As the least possible qualified, I feel I should defend this fantastic fermented marvel.
Recently I’ve reacquainted myself with the burnt wine bliss and the following defense is entirely selfish and based on this assumption: if you understand the beauty of brandy order my new favorite for yourself (or me, because you’re so cute and your hair looks great and you smell like sexy flowers).
Let’s start near the beginning.
I haven’t drank Coca-Cola, by itself, since high school. Outside of the occasional Mountain Dew (err, Mtn Dew) to stave off fatigue or a root beer now and again, I avoid soda (“pop,” for my four-year-old or misguided Midwestern readers). Only when commingled with booze do I regularly partake in the sugary mess most of you hold dear.
If you had run into me freshman year with a 20oz bottle of Coke, you could be 98% sure it was heavily mixed. Brandy made for a reasonably priced drunk. As my tastes refined (used loosely), beer (“beer” then beer, if you get my meaning) took over.
Recently, I’ve realize the error of my ways. It started a few months ago. I forget the name, but Porter and Frye has a drink named something like the “Ginger or Mary Anne.” The mix of Hennessy, ginger beer and others is amazing (go try it, if you have $10 to spare).
Then, on the aforementioned trip to Duplex, I dabbled in the distilled delight again. When Girlfriend and I made our last trip to the drink store, I grabbed a bottle of Korbel and later some ginger ale, inspired by the Porter and Frye concoction. Back home, I mixed my first Brandy Ginger Ale, which is the “favorite” mentioned above.
It’s simple (as much brandy as I damn well please, thank you, and the rest ginger ale), refreshing and not filling (more drinking!). It’s cheaper by drink than most imports (it’s considered a rail drink). A flask and two cans of ginger ale can make an evening, so it travels incredibly well. And best of all, I’m saving the planet.
That’s right kids, my taste for this luscious liqueur has lower impact than near anything. With our preference for better beers, Girlfriend and I toss more glass than dragon chasers. This way, a bottle lasts weeks (days?) instead of… uh… an hour? (None of your business.)
I guess I’m really just asking you to buy me a drink. Save the planet!