Anyway I have done a couple group rides since my last post. Friday morning my neighbour and I went for a very short ride, we had to work after all. But we got to climb Brimley out on the bluffs and that is a brutal climb, 20% at times - so nearly as bad as Rattlesnake point. Here is the route or see below.
My neighbour wants to do a 40km ride this Friday, which will probably mean waking up at some insane hour like 3:30 or something... argh!
Saturday I helped my uncle cut lumber at the cottage, they have a wood burning stove for winter heat and no connection to the grid for water or electricity. My brother brought his neighbour up, who had a little too much fun with the chain saw - every dead tree for miles - is now under the cottage in a size suitable for the wood burning stove.
Sunday I went on a BCC group ride, here is the route we took, or see below.
It was a beautiful ride, except for Vivian road. Truth be told, I would tend to think we would be better off turning on Aurora Rd from Leslie and then taking Woodbine north to Vivian. Around Newmarket Vivian (or Mulock as it is called there) is an ugly road, so is Leslie actually, too much traffic. But the ride down 9'th Concession made it all worthwhile. There was a massive wind from the North, made the ride that way pretty hard, but coming south I literally was not even turning but when I looked at my GPS I was clocking in a steady 45km/h. When I started turning I managed to hit 60km/h. The spin around Musselman was a blast, there was a sharp turn that I had to brake for, the posted limit was 20km/h and I was doing over 40, then I started to push, hard and was quickly up over 40 again and had to tilt way over to follow the curve in the road.
On the ride home I was talking with someone and I mentioned to him that there were an awful lot of Stupid Ugly Vehicles. He liked the acronym and pointed out that with the rise in gas prices SUVs were particularly stupid, but at least global warming would be good for us cyclists in Canada - with all the rain climate change has caused, I am not so sure. I came up with a new acronym, it occurs to me that I have a Sport Utility Vehicle, I used it to commute to work, to buy groceries, so it is a utility vehicle and I use it for sport because my SUV is a bicycle I call Erin! Hey she's even black just like the big behemoths that turn our roads into potholed disasters.
What ride would be complete without pictures, sadly most of the ones I am in I look like I was in the middle of being stung by a bee.
I really was not in that much pain. (Actually I was not in much pain at all.)
Okay here is a story that happens to be true. Republican, or at least conservative columnists have found a way to blame the latest banking crisis on the democrats. It seems some minor legislation passed in the late 1970s which required banks to consider making loans to black people is the cause of the multi-hundred billion dollar subprime loan fiasco. In other news, Jews now being blamed for World War II and the bubonic plague! (Damned neo-conservatives, in another time or place they would be call holy inquisitors. You know the more I think about it the more truth their is in that remark, the Inquisition did not care for facts, did not have a problem with torture, believed they were doing gods work...)
Anyway I posted a response on an American political cartoonist blog where one such column was printed, my post is below. (Spelling and crammer mostly fixed up here.)
Someone just forwarded me a column by a Massachusetts 'conservative' (I use quotes since there really isn't very much that is conservative in the batch of neo-cons running DC these days) columnist. The talking points, in fact the entire article was virtually identical to this one. Holy smokes, do Republicans have only one modus operandi?
The problem is greed, pure and simple. Everyone wants more, the $400 million executive bonus, to the subprime loan for a new car (or to pay medical bills?) Regulation to put a check on greed and prevent bubbles, such as the Glass-Steagall act repealed by the Republican congress of the late 1990s is critical. There is in a word blame enough for all, but truly a lot of the blame can be placed squarely on the shoulders of those who drafted banking law over the last ten or so years (the banking lobby) and those who embolded them by enacting these laws (the Republican congress.)
Anyway would republican columnists just shut up. They (the Republicans) destroyed this country's standing in the World. They destroyed much of the military capacity of this country, they are destroying the economy, what can they possibly do next? Just shut up and move to Beijing please!
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