The Blaſphemous Bicycler

Airport on one side
City on the other side.
neither is nowhere

I went for a little cruise around Marysville this evening, gathering GPS tracks for OpenStreetMap. I rolled up to a stop light, and no sooner had I put my foot down, when a viscous, evil, snarling hell-hound sprang from the bushes and made like he wanted to eat me.

I jumped off my bike the tried to keep it between me and the fell creature. We must have circled each other - dog-fight style - a dozen times before his owner came out to see what all the fuss was about.

She seemed to be of the opinion that by keeping my bike between us, I was instigating her mutt’s aggression. She even went to far as to grab my handlebars a few times to try to make me stop.

As soon as I saw an opportunity, I wrested my bike free, jumped back on, and fled with all haste.

Today: 5 miles
August: 70 miles
2008 Utility Miles: 224
2008 Total Miles: 426 miles

The local news ran a story this morning about a man who built his house right next to 14,000 acres of protected game lands, and now he’s shocked and amazed to learn that bears live there.

_{Interactive Map}

The Yellow arrow on the map shows the approximate location of the housing development in question. The green areas are the game lands.

He wants the game commission to ‘relocate’ the bears. I’m not sure where they would relocate them to, since the game lands are where the bears are supposed to live in the first place.

In the north country where I come from, everybody has bears in their yard, and nobody runs crying to the game commission about it. Bears really aren’t all that dangerous, and they generally make better neighbors than most people do.

The “Sylvania” part of the word “Pennsylvania” is Latin for “forest land.”

Bears live in the woods.

Deal.

Our forests already are suffering the affects[sic] of both our national over-reliance on fossil fuels, and the urgent threat of global warming. Only by taking our head out of the sand and looking for creative solutions will we fully understand if our assets can be used wisely to address the nation’s energy crisis and the astonishing perils of global warming

– A message from [DCNR Secretary] Michael DiBerardinis

Bone’s Summary: Let’s build windmills in the State Forests to combat global warming!

Michael DiBerardinis today announced that the department is issuing a position on natural gas
development on state forestlands that favors deep and medium drilling for future lease sales.

– DCNR Press Release (PDF) 4-1-2008

Bone’s Summary: Fuck global warming, there’s oil in them thar hills!