The Blasphemous Bicycler

I’ve been too busy to blog lately, and the things I’ve been busy doing aren’t interesting enough to blog about, even if I had the time.

I should be able to resume my normal volume of inane drivel in a week or two.

If you even think about taking his wool blankie, he’ll scratch your fucking eyes out.

When my dad was 14 years old, he bought himself a new bicycle to commute to his after-school job. His commute was about 3 miles down dirt roads to a neighboring farm. His job was to call the cows into the barn for the evening.

Anyhow, the bike has been sitting in my Grandpa’s barn for almost 40 years. I was home for Easter yesterday and asked him about it. So we got it out, put some air in the tires, and rode it around the yard.

The gears shift, the tires hold air. The brakes are pretty much non-functional, and the dynamo-lighting is not working. I hosed it off and sprayed it down with bike lust, and it looks like it will be a perfectly serviceable bicycle once I get the brakes fixed.

Sadly, it’s a touch too small for me. It will probably fit Brandi OK. I’ll keep it around in case short people drop by and want to go for a bike ride.

Look-it what I found going through old church stuff.
Here’s the church in 1898. Almost exactly the same as it is today.

Back in those days, a man really knew how to wear a beard. Note that he wears no moustache.

I have some relatives buried out back who were in Rev. Clouser’s congregation.

My great-granddad is in this picture. (back row, second one in from the right) He died three years after this picture was taken and two years before I was born. I think this is the only picture of him I’ve ever seen.

So yeah, I just got a scanner. Now I can bore the whole world with old photo albums and whatnot.

When I was a little kid, my parents took me to this church for my weekly dose of Christianity and out-of-tune hymn-singing.

Many years have gone by since then, and now almost everyone who went to this church either stopped going, moved away, or got old and died.

The church is a few months away from total fiscal collapse unless someone can think up a good way to put some butts in the pews.

It’s too bad, really, because the building is very cool. It was built in the mid 1800’s on the site of the original log cabin church that was built in the 1700’s (supposedly, the first church in the Buffalo Valley).

There are still a few little old ladies who go to church here, and if their church goes kaputt, they are going to be very sad ladies indeed. So, I’ve been trying to help them come up with clever ideas for how to keep it going.

As you might expect, church stuff is really not my area of expertise.

I suspect that at least some of my readers are church-people. Do any of you have brilliant marketing/recruiting ideas, or know of websites, etc where such ideas might be hiding?