On Riding a really old bike and stress

As I have already documented my Coppi is getting a repaired. There is a crack in the rear drop out. I just spoke with the place that is doing the job, what they are doing is:

1. Remove, saw off, the old drop out at the chain stay and seat stay.
2. Weld on a new drop out.
3. Repaint.

Except for one itty bitty little detail, the new drop out has to be shipped from England and will not arrive until Friday. So I have two choices, ride Erin to work or take the Street Car. I have decided to wake up a half hour earlier and walk! (Not a snowball's chance in hell I'd dare risk hurting Erin in this crappy weather.)

Hey Brian, if you are reading this, that offer on your old Rocky Mountain still stand? (Insert sobbing nosies right here.)

Alright here is a totally unrelated thought. Lately I've been thinking a lot about what Georg wrote on my Blog. (For those of you who missed that exchange, count yourself very damned lucky - according to Lesley that was some of the most entertaining reading she ever got from my blog actually. If you really want to read it, see here, here and here.) For myself I cannot bring myself to re-read those posts, it is too painful for me. I think back to what I was trying to say and it occurs to me, I still do not believe that my fundamental message was that unreasonable. A sport, that I used to participate in has some very serious issues, unless those issues are resolved that sport will continue to contract and wither. (I went on to be quoted by Peter Doucet in Speed Skate World, when I said that frankly the momentum to keep things crappy is so great that I just do not see these issues ever being resolved.)

That Georg was upset is certainly his prerogative. Perhaps my language was harsh or in some other way I was a jerk. (I know I can be a rude and abrasive prick even when I don't mean to be and I know it comes through in my writing sometimes.) What got under my skin though was the whole anonymous posting bit. Georg was offended because of what I wrote, I was pissed because someone called me names without have the balls to put sign a name to their writing. (Later by examining the web logs I was able to confirm that every one of the anonymous posts were from Georg. The joys of being a computer security analyst by day.)

Anyway I bring all this up because I often wonder why Georg wrote what he did. It just was not like him, was I that offensive? One person actually wrote to tell me they agreed with what I said, so could I really have been that mean? It just did not add up. Since then I have speculated at no end to the cause of that angry anonymous outburst. I have figured on a few possible explanations. One theory I like is that Georg, like the rest of us is stressed over the economy and dumped on me - I like that theory because it relieves me of being such a monster of bad writing that I am responsible for his tirade. Since I cannot exactly go up to the guy and ask what inspired it I guess I'll never know for sure.

Since then I've had more economic stress, no my job is, so far, pretty secure, but a number of Lesley's co-workers were just downsized. Needless to say, she feels awful for her friends. How do you go about comforting someone who is feeling stress at the thought of loosing their own job, concern for friends who lost their jobs and guilt for having a job, all at the same time?

I read recently that a very decent man in the BCC recently lost his job too. What do you say to someone in that position?

I often think about economic downturns. I have a stupid question, when did we as a society decided conservatives were better at running the economy? Look at the American example, in the last months of every long term (i.e. 2 or more presidential term) Republican administration since World War I there was a major economic contraction. At the end of the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover period (1920-32) the depression, after eight years of Ike a mini recession. By the middle of Nixon's second administration the seeds of stagflation were already sown. Regan/Bush Sr. had the recession of the early 90s. Now Bush Jr. has given us subprime disaster. Here is the best part, every single one of these disasters can at least to some extent be blamed on the presidential administrations I just listed. (Well maybe not so much Ike, but then he was a moderate conservative, had a moderate policy and resulted in a moderate recession, unlike say, Bush Jr.)

Here is another scary thought, I did not once look up Wikipiedia, or anything else for any of the above paragraph. I need to get outside more. A challenge, if you are bored, name all the presidents of the United States since Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt that is, yeah I really need to get out more, I got them all, even, Taft.