The Blasphemous Bicycler

Pure comedy genius. After a rough week (sinus infection and a dead car) this made me laugh.

Click the link if you don’t understand the pun.

After 8 years and 150,000 miles of faithful service, my trusty Volkswagen has abruptly shit the bed. It’s going to cost me almost a month’s wages to get it back on the road.

Bummer. But, it’s still cheaper than buying another car. They say it will take at least until next Wednesday to fix it, so I’m back to being a bicycle commuter for at least the next several days.

I’ve kind of been all obsessed with hiking and backpacking lately, and I’ve been neglecting my bikes, so this is as good an excuse as any to get back on the bike.

This is another book you can download for free from Manybooks.net

Pretty much everybody I know who is into the woods / outdoors / nature scene loves this book.

If you don’t know the story, the author goes into the woods, builds a cabin, and lives kind of like a hermit for a while, an writes down his observations on how nice it is to be in the woods, and why being a farmer or a merchant in town is a waste of time.

Everybody knows a thousand and one famous quotations from Walden, but here are a few of my favorites.

For my fellow curmudgeons and misanthropes:

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Perhaps of interest to vegetarians:

I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.

Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals.

And, my all time favorite:

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

I give Walden 5 Jihadis out of 5

Studious people may also want to read Ken Kifer’s analysis of Walden. It’s a little over my head, but maybe you are smarter than me, and will enjoy it.

I spent the past week battling an evil cold / flu thing. I was just starting to feel better Friday, so Saturday, Klinutus and I set out to hike the section of the AT from PA325 to Swatara Gap. The weather was supposed to be warm and pleasant.

The weatherman was somewhat misinformed. We found the trail covered in a sheet of ice. It took us all morning to slip and slide our way to the top of the mountain, and then it started to pour icy rain on us.

The snow started to melt into a steamy, icy fog, and ice-covered tree limbs were crashing to the ground all over the place.

After a bit of calculations, it became obvious that we were not going to make it to Swatara Gap without some night hiking, and I really hate night hiking, especially on ice-covered rocks.

We bagged the hike, and walked back down the mountain. It’s probably a good thing, because I’m sick as a dog again, and I probably would be worse off if I had spent the night under a tarp sleeping on the snow.

Juniata, River of Sorrows is two stories in one. One of them is about the author’s 100 mile fishing trip, where he floated the whole length of the Juniata River in a Jonboat. The other story is about all the grizzy conflicts between white settlers and the Indians who lived along the river in colonial times.

The stories are interwoven every other chapter, so you don’t get too bored. I personally don’t much care about how many bass the author caught on his fishing trip, but it helps to cut away to the fish stories when you can’t stand anymore talk about the Indians disemboweling settlers and burning people alive.

I think it’s really cool to hear about how much crazy stuff went on around here, where most people think nothing exciting ever happens. I grew up not far from Sunbury, so I had heard about Shikellamy, but I didn’t know he was such a badass.

I live only about 10 miles from the confluence of the Juniata and Susquehanna rivers, so this book is perhaps of more interest to locals than to the general public, but if you like to hear exciting stories about Indians and stuff, you might like it even if you live way out someplace in the Louisiana Purchase.

I give Juniata, River of Sorrows 4 Jihadis out of 5

You can read a free chapter online, if you want to get a feel for how it goes.