The Blaſphemous Bicycler

It’s been very hot outside lately, so I haven’t been commuting. But, I just recently found out that my employer does have a shower hidden away in the back of the building. So, I rode in today, and so did 2 of my cohorts in the Technology Department.

Behold: The Technology Department Bicycle Garage

Today: 10 miles
July: 59 miles
2008 Utility Miles: 194
2008 Total Miles: 356 miles

It looks like there’s gonna be a new rail trail up north in my bucolic homeland.

The Lewisburg Area Recreation Authority has agreed to purchase the 11.8 miles of track and right-of-way owned by the West Shore Railroad stretching from Montandon through Lewisburg to Mifflinburg with the intention of converting it to a trail that can be used by walkers, joggers, bikers and cross-country skiers.

View Larger Map

By the way, The chairman of the Lewisburg Area Recreation Authority is running for State Senate, and he’s way cooler then the other guy. If you live in the 23rd district, you should check out his webpage.

Tex infected me with this silly blog nonsense. It’s contagious, evidently.

First, the background.

1. Post the rules of the game at the beginning
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer
5. Create an arbitrary rule to keep with the whole fives theme.

What were you doing 5 years ago?

• 5 years ago, I was smoking 2 packs a day, eating meat, and not riding a bicycle. I associated primarily with crass bar-people. I considered myself a libertarian, and earned my keep by working for evil corporate overlords.
• Nowadays I don’t smoke, don’t eat meat, ride a bike sometimes, and associate with crass bike people. I consider myself politically confused, and earn my keep working for generally non-evil, non-corporate overlords

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Finish this blog entry
2. suggest a Guy Fawkes ride on the HBG Critical Mass blog
3. Figure out how to get to Jazz Under the Stars in Lancaster
4. Ride my bike
5. Read Siddhartha

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1. Troegenator
2. Appalachian Jolly Scot
3. Ace hard Cider
4. Hornsby’s Hard Cider
5. Lancaster Milk Stout

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1. Two chicks at the same time.
2. Buy a shit load of farmland and start my own religious cult. Kind of like the Amish, but replace the Christianity with a Secular Soto Zen Buddhism and get rid of all the farm animals — It’ll be all veganic farming and bicycles instead of horses and buggies.
3. Go to space
4. Donate a little bit to some worthy charities.
5. Sponsor a mission to build 1/6 scale models of Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza on the surface of the moon. When space aliens come to Earth in a million years, that’ll give their archaeologists something to talk about.

What are five of your bad habits?

1. Running this blog
2. Eating too much
3. Using enormous amounts of profanity in polite company
4. Spending too much time in the internet
5. fantasizing about doing cool things someday, when I could be dong them now

What are five places where you have lived?

1. I lived 7 different places during the first 20 years of my life, but none was ever more than 6 miles from where I was born
2. 10 years ago, I moved about 70 miles downstream to the Harrisburg area. I moved 5 times since then, but was always within bicycling distance of work.
3. I’ve averaged 2.5 years per residence
4. I’ve never, in my whole life, lived more than 6 miles from the Susquehanna River, and I think that if I ever move away from it, I will lose all of my supernatural powers, and turn into an asshole.

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1. Paperboy - Milton Standard Journal - Got my first drop-bar ten speed to deliver newspapers
2. Bus Boy - Good Wils Restaurant - Cleaning up after miserable Bucknell Students
3. Burger Flipper - Wendy’s - cooking burgers for miserable Bucknell Students
4. Macintosh ‘Computer’ Salesman - Bucknell University Bookstore (at this point I was a miserable Bucknell Student myself)
5. Network Administrator - various evil corporate masters

I tag:

1. Stankertanker
2. Doc
3. The Donut Guy
4. end pavement
5. analstormtrooper1996

I frequently find myself involved in pointless political debates, where some person begins regurgitating talking points from either Fox News, or MSNBC, and I reciprocate by regurgitating the talking points of the opposing television station.

This is all well and good, but I wondered if maybe there might be room for some original thinking. Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about politics. So, I thought it might do me some good to read more about political philosophy, and thereby baffle my debating opponents with some esoteric piece of knowledge about Locke or Rousseau or some other such person.
To that end, I have been reading a few books.

Introducing Political Philosophy
I picked this one up at the bookstore in direct violation of my new policy to only buy books for my Kindle. It’s not available for the Kindle (I suspect) because it’s essentially a comic book. It’s quite silly, actually. There are cartoons of David Hume and Karl Marx explaining their various theories in speech balloons.

Unfortunately, the introduction is so brief, you only get a one or two sentence summary of each idea, before moving on to the next. Sadly, I do not think that the knowledge I’ve gleaned from this book will be sufficient to win any arguments.

I give Introducing Political Philosophy 2 Jihadis out of 5

Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biography (Books That Changed the World)
This is a very short biography of Paine and his ideas. I’m afraid it’s almost entirely over my head, and it was a bit tedious to get through. I really like Hitchens, though, and I think I may pick up his biography of Jefferson next.

I give Hitchen’s Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man 3 Jihadis out of 5

Speaking of Jefferson, I just (today) finished American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

I am planning to make a pilgrimage to Monticello sometime this fall, and I want to know as much as possible about Jefferson before I go, so I get as much out of the experience as possible. I visited Monticello before; once when I was 2 years old (which I don’t remember), and once when I was 10 years old, which I remember vividly, and I think that experience gave me my hero-worship for Mr. Jefferson.

Anyhow, American Sphinx tarnished my Jefferson-worship a little bit. I didn’t know, for instance, that Mr. Jefferson was essentially bankrupt when he died or that he was kind of a miserable, grumpy old fart towards the end of his life.

It’s a tad more of a standard history book than John Adams, which had more of a storytelling style. Nevertheless, it held my attention for 464 pages, which is no small feat.

I give American Sphinx 4 Jihadis out of 5.

After I finished American Sphinx today, I went down to the Barns and Noble in Camp Hill. I walked over to the biography section, and found the books on Jefferson. In some freak accident of alphabetical order, Jefferson is bookended by biographies of Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy.

Now, I have as much esteem for Ms. Jameson’s work as the next guy, but I think the last place in the world anyone would want to end up is between her and Mr. Jeremy.

Critical Mass was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. There’s sort of a feeling of invincibility when you are in a big group. I finally got to meet fellow blogger Josh after reading his blog for a long time, so that was cool.

I think the ride was about 12 miles total - all flat - with an average speed of 10mph, so it’s definitely within the athletic abilities of pretty much anyone.

The only real law-breaking was running of red lights, which was pretty much necessary to keep the group together.

I didn’t take very many pictures. You can see the ones I took here.

I’m used to being jealous of Portland and Minneapolis for their crazy hoards of bike people. It’s awesome that we have crazy bike people here, too.

_{Photos by recycle bicycle stitched with Hugin}

Today: 17 miles
July: 49 miles
2008 Utility Miles: 184
2008 Total Miles: 346 miles