I've never made any secret of the fact I enjoy bicycles. I've talked about bikes and bike trips and bike races so much in this space over the years I imagine there are some readers out there who would just as soon I suffered a sudden an inexplicable inner ear problem that made it impossible for me to ever again balance on two wheels.
Fair enough. A little mean spirited, but fair enough.
Still, there are some forms of pedal-powered transport even I want no part of. I've mentioned some of them here before. I think recumbent bikes are silly, and if I ever own a tandem bike I'll consider it a sign I've pretty much given up on life. And don't get me started on tandem recumbents.
Tall bikes, homebuilt contraptions that perch the rider twice as far as usual from the ground, are only for people who didn't get enough attention paid to them when they were children.
Now, I can add another contraption to this list of velocipedal shame. It's called the PedalPub and, as the name implies, it invites passengers to pedal their way around Minneapolis while throwing back a drink or two.
So far as I understand, it works like this: You gather 15 or so of your dearest friends. Ten of you hop onto bicycle seats. The smarter ones choose chairs in the back that don't require pedaling. The rest put their legs to work powering the 2,000-pound, VW bus-sized contraption at speeds of up to five miles per hour through the streets of the Twin Cities. For the rate of $150 per hour you get a driver, a bartender and the right to pedal yourself sweaty while you throw back a few cold ones. Because what's the fun of drinking if you can't do it while running the risk of being run over by a bus?
Oh, and you have to provide your own alcohol if you want to drink. Which, when you think about it, is a little bit like asking first-time skydivers to bring their own parachutes.
Actually, drinking on the PedalPub at all is a relatively new addition. Until May the mobile bar was defined as a motor vehicle and covered under the state's open bottle laws. As of May, the portable patio is in the same category as limousines and party buses. Personally, I'd categorize it somewhere between clown cars and medieval torture devices.
I admit there may be others who feel differently about this contraption. According to a story in the July 17 issue of Vita.mn, a 25-year-old pub pedaler called her group's ride — stocked with coolers of cheep beer, vodka slushies and snacks — "my favorite night of the summer so far."
And who knows? Maybe she knows something I don't. Maybe there's something magical about getting tanked while sitting on an uncomfortably wedgie-inducing seat and working up a sweat under a summer sun. Then again, maybe this news story has helped me identify someone whose idea of fun is so far out of whack with my own I need never worry about meeting her.
Thank you, news media.
----------------
Now playing: Dirty Three - Sirena
via FoxyTunes
Thursday, July 31, 2008
'Round and 'round we'll go
My day-to-day life got just the tiniest bit more annoying this week. Early Tuesday morning construction crews closed Highway 3 to traffic between Farmington and Rosemount to install a roundabout, a traffic feature that is part intersection, part landscaping feature and part carnival ride.
The Town Pages’ office is in Farmington, I spend a fair amount of time in Rosemount. I make the drive up and down Highway 3 several times a week. This is a project that affects me and that I can only imagine will frequently make me dizzy once it's finished sometime around the end of September.
Granted, a lot of people who know a lot more than I do about traffic management are convinced roundabouts are the future of keeping people safe on the road. And, sure, the roundabout concept has a long history. They've been used for decades in Europe, presumably with no significant ill effects. I think the hit Dead or Alive song "You Spin me Round (Like a Record)" might even have been inspired by a roundabout. And if a bunch of people who can't even figure out which side of the road to drive on can make it through in one piece, then why can't we, a nation with the skill behind the wheel necessary to eat a three-course meal, read a map and tap out text messages at highway speed?
Still, I have misgivings. Although they're based on nothing more significant than watching people try to drive through an actual roundabout.
There are two roundabouts I travel through on a semi-regular basis. The larger of the two is located between me and the Target and Home Depot stores closest to my home. In the weeks after I bought my house I went through it something like 16 times a day as I discovered basic necessities of life I was suddenly lacking. The other is on a route I occasionally take either to or from work. In recent weeks, as I found myself contemplating what will soon become of the main route between the two places where I spend the majority of my working life, I found myself on several occasions wanting to shout what we'll refer to here as helpful instructions to people who would come to a full stop at the entrance to the traffic circle when there were no cars approaching or slow dramatically while going around to let in someone trying to enter the circle. Sometimes I felt the urge to use what I'll call a friendly pointing gesture to accompany my instructions.
I should point out, the speed limit on both of these traffic circles is less than 35 miles per hour. I'm sure everyone will get it down when they're driving 55, though.
There are some reasonable-sounding reasons for installing more roundabouts. Roundabouts, the theory goes, do a better job than stoplights of both calming traffic speeds and keeping cars moving in an orderly fashion. After watching a parade of brake lights come on in front of me recently I can't argue the first part of that, though I might take issue with the second. People slowing for roundabouts (assuming they don't choose to simply throw their SUV into four-wheel-drive and go through the middle) also means the accidents that happen there will be less severe than what would happen if someone ran a red light.
And, who knows? Maybe that's all true. I just think we might need to spring for a roundabout instruction course for everyone before we open this sucker up to traffic.
The Town Pages’ office is in Farmington, I spend a fair amount of time in Rosemount. I make the drive up and down Highway 3 several times a week. This is a project that affects me and that I can only imagine will frequently make me dizzy once it's finished sometime around the end of September.
Granted, a lot of people who know a lot more than I do about traffic management are convinced roundabouts are the future of keeping people safe on the road. And, sure, the roundabout concept has a long history. They've been used for decades in Europe, presumably with no significant ill effects. I think the hit Dead or Alive song "You Spin me Round (Like a Record)" might even have been inspired by a roundabout. And if a bunch of people who can't even figure out which side of the road to drive on can make it through in one piece, then why can't we, a nation with the skill behind the wheel necessary to eat a three-course meal, read a map and tap out text messages at highway speed?
Still, I have misgivings. Although they're based on nothing more significant than watching people try to drive through an actual roundabout.
There are two roundabouts I travel through on a semi-regular basis. The larger of the two is located between me and the Target and Home Depot stores closest to my home. In the weeks after I bought my house I went through it something like 16 times a day as I discovered basic necessities of life I was suddenly lacking. The other is on a route I occasionally take either to or from work. In recent weeks, as I found myself contemplating what will soon become of the main route between the two places where I spend the majority of my working life, I found myself on several occasions wanting to shout what we'll refer to here as helpful instructions to people who would come to a full stop at the entrance to the traffic circle when there were no cars approaching or slow dramatically while going around to let in someone trying to enter the circle. Sometimes I felt the urge to use what I'll call a friendly pointing gesture to accompany my instructions.
I should point out, the speed limit on both of these traffic circles is less than 35 miles per hour. I'm sure everyone will get it down when they're driving 55, though.
There are some reasonable-sounding reasons for installing more roundabouts. Roundabouts, the theory goes, do a better job than stoplights of both calming traffic speeds and keeping cars moving in an orderly fashion. After watching a parade of brake lights come on in front of me recently I can't argue the first part of that, though I might take issue with the second. People slowing for roundabouts (assuming they don't choose to simply throw their SUV into four-wheel-drive and go through the middle) also means the accidents that happen there will be less severe than what would happen if someone ran a red light.
And, who knows? Maybe that's all true. I just think we might need to spring for a roundabout instruction course for everyone before we open this sucker up to traffic.
Bike racers can be exciting, too
The Tour de France, the world's most popular rolling drug test clinic, got under way Saturday and sports fans across the United States found themselves asking the same important question: "Which one is Lance Armstrong, again?"
Armstrong, of course, is not in this year's Tour. The seven-time champion who in the later years of his career inspired Americans everywhere to at least pretend to understand things like time trials and blood doping, has retired from competitive racing. These days he's mostly known for raising money for cancer research, dating a string of increasingly hot celebrities and hanging out with Matthew McConaughey and his pecs.
Meanwhile, concave-chested men with thighs the size of maple trunks continue to pedal their way over the Alps each year in hopes of getting to wear a yellow t-shirt.
This year's Tour is filled with questions, chief among them whether any of the sport's major figures will get tossed out on his spandex-clad backside for using performance enhancing drugs or injecting himself with goat blood or whatever else it is cyclists do in hopes of making it to the finish line first. Cycling's doping problem hasn't gotten the same attention in this country as drug problems in other professional sports — apparently no legislators believe they can score points with voters by going after scrawny Europeans competing in a sport most Americans gave up on around the time they took the baseball cards out of their spokes.
It's too bad the Tour doesn't get more attention, really, because there's just as much off-the-road drama in professional cycling as there is in any of our more popular sports. Last year several pre-race favorites were booted during the race for using illegal substances. Michael Rasmussen was leading last year's Tour when his own team booted him because they discovered he'd lied about his whereabouts when he missed a couple of drug tests. There were also reports he asked a former teammate to bring him a delivery of synthetic blood that was inexplicably packed in a shoebox. Which is kind of like the Yankees pulling Roger Clemens in the middle of a no-hitter in game seven of the World Series because he lied about taking his kids to Disney World.
And we're getting excited about what songs Alex Rodriguez has on his iPod?
Floyd Landis, the American who won the Tour two years ago, had his title stripped because he was found to have used synthetic testosterone on a stage in which he made a major comeback. But he didn't go down without a fight that involved a hearing in which one of his cohorts casually mentioned that Greg LeMond, another American Tour champion, was molested by a relative when he was child. Let's see you try that on Capitol Hill, Barry Bonds.
Alberto Contador, winner of last year's Tour, and Levi Leipheimer, the American who finished third, are both out of this year's competition because they joined a team that has been linked to doping, even though none of the current riders ever has. Tom Boonen, one of the sport's biggest current stars, is also out this year because he was busted for cocaine use.
A few football players take a boat trip and it's all we can talk about for months. How badly do cyclists have to behave to get a little attention around here.
Even if cycling never catches on here as a sport, you'd think it might at least win some viewers for its court proceedings.
----------------
Now playing: The Black Keys - Give Your Heart Away
via FoxyTunes
Armstrong, of course, is not in this year's Tour. The seven-time champion who in the later years of his career inspired Americans everywhere to at least pretend to understand things like time trials and blood doping, has retired from competitive racing. These days he's mostly known for raising money for cancer research, dating a string of increasingly hot celebrities and hanging out with Matthew McConaughey and his pecs.
Meanwhile, concave-chested men with thighs the size of maple trunks continue to pedal their way over the Alps each year in hopes of getting to wear a yellow t-shirt.
This year's Tour is filled with questions, chief among them whether any of the sport's major figures will get tossed out on his spandex-clad backside for using performance enhancing drugs or injecting himself with goat blood or whatever else it is cyclists do in hopes of making it to the finish line first. Cycling's doping problem hasn't gotten the same attention in this country as drug problems in other professional sports — apparently no legislators believe they can score points with voters by going after scrawny Europeans competing in a sport most Americans gave up on around the time they took the baseball cards out of their spokes.
It's too bad the Tour doesn't get more attention, really, because there's just as much off-the-road drama in professional cycling as there is in any of our more popular sports. Last year several pre-race favorites were booted during the race for using illegal substances. Michael Rasmussen was leading last year's Tour when his own team booted him because they discovered he'd lied about his whereabouts when he missed a couple of drug tests. There were also reports he asked a former teammate to bring him a delivery of synthetic blood that was inexplicably packed in a shoebox. Which is kind of like the Yankees pulling Roger Clemens in the middle of a no-hitter in game seven of the World Series because he lied about taking his kids to Disney World.
And we're getting excited about what songs Alex Rodriguez has on his iPod?
Floyd Landis, the American who won the Tour two years ago, had his title stripped because he was found to have used synthetic testosterone on a stage in which he made a major comeback. But he didn't go down without a fight that involved a hearing in which one of his cohorts casually mentioned that Greg LeMond, another American Tour champion, was molested by a relative when he was child. Let's see you try that on Capitol Hill, Barry Bonds.
Alberto Contador, winner of last year's Tour, and Levi Leipheimer, the American who finished third, are both out of this year's competition because they joined a team that has been linked to doping, even though none of the current riders ever has. Tom Boonen, one of the sport's biggest current stars, is also out this year because he was busted for cocaine use.
A few football players take a boat trip and it's all we can talk about for months. How badly do cyclists have to behave to get a little attention around here.
Even if cycling never catches on here as a sport, you'd think it might at least win some viewers for its court proceedings.
----------------
Now playing: The Black Keys - Give Your Heart Away
via FoxyTunes
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Heavy lifting
I am not built for manual labor. The kind of burly build necessary for jobs such as highway construction or ditch digging just isn't in my genetic makeup. Anyone who's seen me in a t-shirt can tell you that.
I'm OK with that. I've found ways to make my living that do not require me to lift heavy things. Tromp through fields, yes. And climb fences occasionally. But nothing that requires any degree of plain, brute strength.
Even in my personal life, I rarely have need of bulging biceps or rock-hard abs. Outside of moving things for my parents, who seem to have gone out of their way over the years to accumulate some of the heaviest, most ungainly home decor items available to the public (Honestly, a life-size chainsaw carving of a cowboy? Why don't I just carry a mature maple down to the basement?) I've always been pretty well able to get by with the underwhelming upper-body musculature ensured by Hansen family lineage and a general lack of interest in any formal weight training program.
There are exceptions, of course. And I assume that owning a house — and having to do home-related chores — means those exceptions will pop up at least a little more frequently.
Last weekend, for example, I might have wished, if only for a second, that my upper body was more Arnold Schwarzenegger and less Tom Arnold.
One of the less appealing features of the house I bought last November was a decrepit-looking swingset installed in the back yard. Judging by the rust on the main structure and on the metal seat of the swing it was installed sometime shortly after the Civil War.
The swingset had to go, but getting rid of the thing was a bit of a challenge. The structure was simple enough — just an arch of steel pipes braced by two more pipes angled up against it. But it was designed to stick around longer than Hillary Clinton.
The support pieces weren't too tough. Once I'd separated them from the main structure it was as simple as digging out around their bases and rocking them out of the ground. The main structure was another matter altogether. Anchored in two places, it didn't want to move no matter how much I dug.
Eventually, a neighbor loaned me a sledgehammer. Heaving a heavy piece of metal over my head was a challenge — I'm fairly certain one of my biceps ruptured — but I have to admit: breaking up concrete with a sledgehammer is about as much fun as you can have swinging a giant hammer without police officers getting involved. There's just something satisfying about shattering stone into tiny pieces.
There was plenty of stone to break up, too. I'm pretty sure they built Soviet-era apartment buildings with less concrete than I pulled out of my back yard. I don't know the kids that thing was built to support, but I'm glad I'm not responsible for feeding them.
I spent most of my Saturday breaking rocks and pulling at the aging play structure. Nothing. Ultimately, it took my neighbor and his truck to pull it up. The thing bent nearly double before the crossbar finally broke off. After that, we were able to pull the remaining pieces out of the ground without too much trouble.
I woke up sore all over Sunday morning. My arms responded only grudgingly to any request to lift anything and my hand seemed mostly unwilling to grip things. But at least I got the job done, underwhelming musculature and all.
Now, I just have to get the other one out.
----------------
Now playing: The Hold Steady - Southtown Girls
via FoxyTunes
I'm OK with that. I've found ways to make my living that do not require me to lift heavy things. Tromp through fields, yes. And climb fences occasionally. But nothing that requires any degree of plain, brute strength.
Even in my personal life, I rarely have need of bulging biceps or rock-hard abs. Outside of moving things for my parents, who seem to have gone out of their way over the years to accumulate some of the heaviest, most ungainly home decor items available to the public (Honestly, a life-size chainsaw carving of a cowboy? Why don't I just carry a mature maple down to the basement?) I've always been pretty well able to get by with the underwhelming upper-body musculature ensured by Hansen family lineage and a general lack of interest in any formal weight training program.
There are exceptions, of course. And I assume that owning a house — and having to do home-related chores — means those exceptions will pop up at least a little more frequently.
Last weekend, for example, I might have wished, if only for a second, that my upper body was more Arnold Schwarzenegger and less Tom Arnold.
One of the less appealing features of the house I bought last November was a decrepit-looking swingset installed in the back yard. Judging by the rust on the main structure and on the metal seat of the swing it was installed sometime shortly after the Civil War.
The swingset had to go, but getting rid of the thing was a bit of a challenge. The structure was simple enough — just an arch of steel pipes braced by two more pipes angled up against it. But it was designed to stick around longer than Hillary Clinton.
The support pieces weren't too tough. Once I'd separated them from the main structure it was as simple as digging out around their bases and rocking them out of the ground. The main structure was another matter altogether. Anchored in two places, it didn't want to move no matter how much I dug.
Eventually, a neighbor loaned me a sledgehammer. Heaving a heavy piece of metal over my head was a challenge — I'm fairly certain one of my biceps ruptured — but I have to admit: breaking up concrete with a sledgehammer is about as much fun as you can have swinging a giant hammer without police officers getting involved. There's just something satisfying about shattering stone into tiny pieces.
There was plenty of stone to break up, too. I'm pretty sure they built Soviet-era apartment buildings with less concrete than I pulled out of my back yard. I don't know the kids that thing was built to support, but I'm glad I'm not responsible for feeding them.
I spent most of my Saturday breaking rocks and pulling at the aging play structure. Nothing. Ultimately, it took my neighbor and his truck to pull it up. The thing bent nearly double before the crossbar finally broke off. After that, we were able to pull the remaining pieces out of the ground without too much trouble.
I woke up sore all over Sunday morning. My arms responded only grudgingly to any request to lift anything and my hand seemed mostly unwilling to grip things. But at least I got the job done, underwhelming musculature and all.
Now, I just have to get the other one out.
----------------
Now playing: The Hold Steady - Southtown Girls
via FoxyTunes
The people in my neighborhood
I've lived in my house for a little over six months now. That's half a year of making mortgage payments, fixing leaks and paying gas bills that at points during the winter threatened to go from merely unreasonable to Scrooge McDuck's money bin-level ridiculous.
All in all, it's been a good experience. It has not, however, been a particularly social experience.
In the more than half year I've owned my house I've met just three of my neighbors. Four if you count the conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with the neighbor who never actually told me her name. I don't, though, because the conversation consisted mostly of passive-aggressive questions about whether I planned to mow my lawn. In my defense, I did.
There are some legitimate reasons for this lack of interaction. For one thing, I closed on the house in November. We had our first significant snowstorm before I ever packed a box. I was shoveling sidewalks at my house before I lived there, and through the long and snowy winter there was never much reason for neighborhood residents to congregate outside.
Still, would it have been so hard for people to welcome me to the neighborhood with a cake or a pie or a four-course dinner? I don't think so.
I've started to meet the neighbors since spring weather started to show itself in the Twin Cities. And they've started to fill me in on a little bit of my new home's history. Mostly, they seem eager to tell me my house was used once upon a time as a practice house by the Minneapolis SWAT team.
Apparently this is one of the things that goes along with buying a house once owned by the city. On the positive side, I don't owe any property taxes this year. On the negative, on more than one occasion men in riot gear stormed through my house practicing R.T. Rybak knows what kinds of emergency scenarios.
At least I know if I'm ever taken hostage by Finnish terrorists demanding herring and sun lamps in exchange for my freedom my potential rescuers will know their way around.
I've learned a few other things about my neighborhood in recent months. I've learned, for example, that it's a pretty decent area, and that the problems my neighbors had a while back with people breaking into their garages is pretty much done now. I've learned that my neighbor to the south addressed the break-in problem in part by buying a pit bull.
I met that particular dog before I ever met a human neighbor, back before I'd even moved in. I was checking out the shed in my back yard when the dog lunged halfway into my yard with hate in its eyes. I've since learned from the dog's owner that the miniature Cerberus displays those kinds of face-eating tendencies only when its in the house or on the line in the yard. By my count that leaves "when it's asleep" and "in Milwaukee" as the only places this particular beast would not immediately try to disembowel me.
What a relief.
I'm sure I'll learn more as the months go by and I meet more of my neighbors. Maybe I'll discover my neighbors to the north have an unhealthy fascination with whether I've washed my windows. Or that the guy across the alley has a mutant parakeet just waiting to peck out my eyes. Or that Army Special Forces units still plan to use my basement as a practice facility for defusing bombs.
On second thought, maybe I'll just stay inside.
----------------
Now playing: Mason Jennings - Little Details
via FoxyTunes
All in all, it's been a good experience. It has not, however, been a particularly social experience.
In the more than half year I've owned my house I've met just three of my neighbors. Four if you count the conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with the neighbor who never actually told me her name. I don't, though, because the conversation consisted mostly of passive-aggressive questions about whether I planned to mow my lawn. In my defense, I did.
There are some legitimate reasons for this lack of interaction. For one thing, I closed on the house in November. We had our first significant snowstorm before I ever packed a box. I was shoveling sidewalks at my house before I lived there, and through the long and snowy winter there was never much reason for neighborhood residents to congregate outside.
Still, would it have been so hard for people to welcome me to the neighborhood with a cake or a pie or a four-course dinner? I don't think so.
I've started to meet the neighbors since spring weather started to show itself in the Twin Cities. And they've started to fill me in on a little bit of my new home's history. Mostly, they seem eager to tell me my house was used once upon a time as a practice house by the Minneapolis SWAT team.
Apparently this is one of the things that goes along with buying a house once owned by the city. On the positive side, I don't owe any property taxes this year. On the negative, on more than one occasion men in riot gear stormed through my house practicing R.T. Rybak knows what kinds of emergency scenarios.
At least I know if I'm ever taken hostage by Finnish terrorists demanding herring and sun lamps in exchange for my freedom my potential rescuers will know their way around.
I've learned a few other things about my neighborhood in recent months. I've learned, for example, that it's a pretty decent area, and that the problems my neighbors had a while back with people breaking into their garages is pretty much done now. I've learned that my neighbor to the south addressed the break-in problem in part by buying a pit bull.
I met that particular dog before I ever met a human neighbor, back before I'd even moved in. I was checking out the shed in my back yard when the dog lunged halfway into my yard with hate in its eyes. I've since learned from the dog's owner that the miniature Cerberus displays those kinds of face-eating tendencies only when its in the house or on the line in the yard. By my count that leaves "when it's asleep" and "in Milwaukee" as the only places this particular beast would not immediately try to disembowel me.
What a relief.
I'm sure I'll learn more as the months go by and I meet more of my neighbors. Maybe I'll discover my neighbors to the north have an unhealthy fascination with whether I've washed my windows. Or that the guy across the alley has a mutant parakeet just waiting to peck out my eyes. Or that Army Special Forces units still plan to use my basement as a practice facility for defusing bombs.
On second thought, maybe I'll just stay inside.
----------------
Now playing: Mason Jennings - Little Details
via FoxyTunes
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