Riders On The Storm

Looking back two Sunday mornings ago, I’m not sure I rode my bike the entire 26-plus mile length of the 2011 Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour. I seem to remember doing more swimming than riding.

When I registered to ride the annual event it was an unseasonably warm, early March day. When my wife and I went to the Pasadena Civic Center the Friday afternoon before the event to pick up our swag bags and numbered participant bibs – the sun was out and the temperatures were typically pre-Southern-California-summer-like. However, when my wife, youngest son and I loaded up our bikes and drove east on the 210 Freeway in the pre-dawn darkness May 15, it was not only cold, it was also wet. As in cloudy and drizzling. Sigh.

I should have known. Although this was my first time riding the Pasadena Marathon, a good friend and cycling mentor of mine has ridden it several times now. It has rained every time. Maybe it’s some sort of reverse karma for NOT raining on so many New Year’s Day Rose Parades.  

No matter. To my way of thinking – and to hijack a familiar cliché – even a bad day cycling is better than a good day at work. Or something like that. My wife and I had both had fallen in love with cycling sometime in 2005 and had made one of the best investments ever in our 25 years of marriage by purchasing serious, high-end road bikes (who knew a bicycle could cost more than my first car?!?) At one point, we’d ride well over a hundred miles in any given week and often entered cycling events of 50 miles or more. Over the years, however, having let other time commitments, weight gain (mine, not my wife’s!) and family commitments get in the way, we eventually let our three-to-four-per-week rides dwindle down to none at all.

Thankfully, we both had recommitted to healthier, lighter living at the beginning of this year. Along with that came concentrated efforts to exercise as many days out of the week as we could. We already had the bikes and the funny looking bike clothes and strange plastic shoes – all we needed was the motivation to get back on our saddles (or seats, in this case) and start putting in the miles to strengthen our cycling muscles and build our endurance back up. The Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour was just what we needed.

As we’ve trained the past few months, we’ve ridden hundreds of miles over the streets of Pasadena, including many of the very same roads covered by the 2011 Marathon route. But riding on a weekday afternoon and dodging rush hour traffic is a far cry from the experience of an unobstructed, pre-dawn ride down the middle of Colorado Boulevard past Pottery Barn and the Apple store, blowing through red lights without a care while Pasadena Police and CHP officers keep all motorized traffic out of your way. To say the least, it was a uniquely exciting ride. Helicopters hovering low overhead in the wet, gray skies only added to the strangeness of the experience. In my cold, sleep-deprived thoughts, I could almost imagine what Armstrong, LeMond or Merckx must have felt like riding the Tour. Almost.  

We missed the main 5:45 a.m. start of cyclists by almost 20 minutes, having had to make a frantic round trip dash back home to snag our son’s forgotten helmet (are you kidding me?!) and found ourselves riding the first several miles of wet streets almost entirely alone. Then we began to catch up with and pass the more “interesting” of riders that one always finds bringing up the rear at these types of events – the weekend warriors riding rusty bikes with equally rusty muscles and endurance levels, the riders in fleece animal costumes (don’t ask), those cyclists seemingly more interested in leisurely riding three or four abreast and chatting with each other than in actually completing the course in a respectable amount of time. We even passed several stragglers obliviously texting away while riding. Seriously?

Somewhere between the two and three mile markers, we blew past a rider we affectionately came to call “Butt-Crack Guy.” This rather rotund fellow was not so much riding his bicycle as he was torturing it. He was barely dressed in a way-too-tight tank top, a windbreaker flapping in the breeze and a pair of saggy, soggy gym shorts being dragged off the back of his tookus by the combined forces of rain and gravity. The poor bike squeaked and creaked with every pedal stroke as he strained up a slight incline past some beautifully restored Craftsman-era homes in South Pasadena. Try as I might, it was several more miles before I could get that image out of my mind.

Thankfully, I will never forget the wonderful experience of riding all those miles through a cold, wet Pasadena this month with my wife and son.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly modified version of my column first published yesterday, 5.26.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

if u r rdng ths & drvng pls stp

So where was I? Oh, right. In my column last week (posted yesterday) I opened up the whole driving-while-talking-on-a-handheld-wireless-phone can of worms (Stick This In Your Ear). Since then, it seems that things have gotten worse. Now, apparently, you don’t even need a car to be a dangerous cell phone user.

A few days ago I was heading down my long driveway (several homes share the same driveway) and stopped at the street to let a mom pushing a baby in a stroller pass by. Another young child toddled along beside the stroller. This kid heard my truck coming down the driveway and made eye contact with me. He instinctively hesitated before crossing my path, tugging at his mother’s sweat pants to alert her to my presence.

I stopped to let them pass, or course. But even with her son yanking on her pants to get her attention, she didn’t have a clue I was there. Of course not. Because while she pushed the stroller with one hand, she was otherwise 100% engaged in reading and sending text messages on her Blackberry, or iPhone or whatever beloved device was cradled oh-so-carefully in her other hand. She was so distracted that she didn’t look away from her precious wireless device until she was almost past the grill of my truck.

So apparently, now we can’t even “drive” a stroller without worshipping at the temple of multitasking technology. Scary stuff. Especially since recent studies show that there is 37% less activity in the area of the brain tasked with driving when someone is using a cell phone. The same studies liken using a phone while driving as being equivalent to driving while being two to three times over the legal limit for being drunk. That ain’t just distracted, friends. That’s idiotic. What semi-responsible person would consider knocking back four or five shots of booze, then grabbing his keys and hopping in the car for a drive? And yet, we do worse than that by using that wireless device while behind the wheel.

I’ve received more comments from readers since my first column appeared on this topic earlier this month, than from any of my nearly 150 other columns. I’m not surprised. People are frightened. They’re frustrated. And they’re angry at the reckless drivers who insist on texting or talking on the phone while they pilot thousands of pounds of death-on-wheels around the same streets our family members and friends use every day.

As long as I’m taking batting practice at hornet’s nests, I have to say that I’m not that impressed with all the drivers out there with those goofy Bluetooth thing-a-ma-bobs dangling off their ears so they can careen down the highway while endlessly talking “hands free.” It might make it legal, but it doesn’t make it smart. Also, just between you and me, it also doesn’t look cool or high tech. It looks dorky. And deadly.

I’m baffled as to why as a society we so readily accept this relatively new and ridiculously dangerous practice. We’ve even come up with a nice, safe, inoffensive term for the practice: “Driving While Distracted,” or DWD. Ah, isn’t that nice? Oops, did I just mow down that nice young couple in the crosswalk? So sorry, I was “distracted.” Not reckless. Not stupid or careless. Nope. That’s far too judgmental. Distracted has a much nicer, more innocent, ring to it. Unfortunately, people wind up just as dead.

But maybe things have reached a tipping point. I mean, if even Queen Oprah has become a champion of not using cell phones while driving, as evidenced by her splashy new “No Phone Zone” campaign – it surely won’t be long before Deepak Chopra, Marlo Thomas or Michael J. Fox – heck, maybe even that global guardian of all things wise and good, Al Gore himself, will take up the cause. Yeah, that would turn things around.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the May 20, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Put This In Your Ear

I know you’re out there. I’ve seen you on Foothill Blvd. And Honolulu Ave. And Verdugo, Ramsdell, La Crescenta, and Ocean View. I’ve seen you on just about every street in town, in fact. Who are you?

You’re the in-a-hurry, Abercrombie-attired guy who almost killed me – literally almost killed me – on Descanso Drive, thank you very much. I was riding my bike, obeying traffic laws, and you pulled out in front of me from a side street without blinking an eye. Oh, you saw me. We even made eye contact. But you were so deep in conversation on the cell phone in your hand, you pulled out anyway. Trust me, you would have noticed had I not grabbed two handfuls of brake lever and instead, smashed through your side window at 32 mph.

You’re the lady I watched laughing and throwing your head back as you held a phone to your ear and cut off a mom pushing her child in a stroller across Pennsylvania Avenue just the other day. Thankfully, the mom saw that you were completely, utterly, lethally unaware that she and her baby were in the crosswalk and yanked her stroller back as your 4,000 pound SUV passed a few inches away.

Not to belabor the point, but you’re the moms and uncles and siblings and students I see everyday picking up your kids from Crescenta Valley High or Clark or Rosemont or any other local school. A day doesn’t go by that you don’t come close to mowing down a sophomore here, a freshman there. Here a junior, there a junior, everywhere an almost fatal encounter with a distracted driver.

Can I ask you something? What’s so flippin’ important about your conversation with your spouse, girlfriend, parent, kid, best friend or co-worker – that you would willingly, repeatedly put someone else’s spouse, girlfriend, parent, child, or best friend at risk through practicing your incredibly selfish and dangerous habit? And does it matter at all that there’s a law (granted, a laughably weak and fatally ineffective law) against driving while using a handheld cell phone? Apparently not. Twice already this year I thought I’d seen you break the law – once as a CHP officer, and once an L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy. I’ve since been informed that this particular law doesn’t apply to those professions. By the way both of you officers were driving, however, it absolutely should. Just because you wear a badge doesn’t mean you should be a cell-phone-wielding menace behind the wheel.

Now, I’m probably the last guy to support so-called “nanny state” laws and regulations that – while enacted with all good intentions – only serve to further restrict our freedoms. I think those hysterically health-conscious Santa Clara county officials that passed a law banning toys in McDonalds’ Happy Meals should be chased out of town by liberty loving citizens wielding flaming Big Macs and Filet o’ Fish sandwiches. Shame on them.

As one who loves motorcycles, I complained loudly and often when the California helmet law went into effect. I still ride without one when I’m in a state that allows it. But it’s my life, and doing so doesn’t endanger anyone else. In fact, by not wearing a helmet I can better hear other vehicles, pedestrians and other dangers that can be more easily avoided than if I had my ears covered. But that’s a topic for another time and a different blog.

There’s no denying that seatbelt laws have saved countless lives. I’m thankful my kids grew up having learned to automatically put on their seatbelt whenever they get into a car. When I was a child, seatbelts were a novelty, so I still have to remind myself to buckle up. But I have a few otherwise sensible adult friends who still rail against that law when driving alone, even though they’ve received enough tickets to make their behavior financially painful. And yet, by not wearing a seatbelt they’re not going to endanger other drivers, cyclists or pedestrians.

As often happens, I’ve run out of space before I’ve run out of thoughts on this subject. So let’s pick this back up where we left off in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, the next time you’re behind the wheel, please – I beg of you – think about whether that call you want to make or text you need to send is more important than someone’s life.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the May 6, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Rat Tale – Part 2

Last week when we left our tale (tail?) of the uninvited Mother’s Day visitor (A Mother's Day Tail), my wife and I continued on with brunch preparations for our human guests – thinking that we had trapped the crafty critter (a big, hairy rat, in case you didn't read the story last week!) upstairs in our bedroom behind closed doors.

But no-o-o-o. As I would soon find out, the wily, long-tailed terrorist had sneaked out of our bedroom while I was tearing the room apart trying to find it. Somehow, unbeknownst to us, Osama bin Rat had already made it downstairs into our family room and was hiding behind some cabinets.

As our guests arrived and my wife and I prepared brunch in our kitchen, I was standing where I could see down into our split-level family room. Just as I happened to look in that direction, a dark, stealthy shape skittered across the floor from one side of the room to the other. It took every ounce of restraint not to fling the carving knife in my hand at the intruder. Well, that and the fact that my mother-in-law was sitting directly in between me and the rat. 

I don’t remember the exact words I blurted out upon seeing the beast, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t appropriate for either the mothers present or for a Sunday morning conversation. But holy cheese-eating, pellet-pooping intruder, ratman! – the dang thing had escaped our bedroom and was now even closer to our food and family.

However, not wanting to throw too much of a hissy fit in front of guests, and seeing as how brunch was moments from being served, I convinced myself that the rat would be too frightened of all the people to come up into the dining room/living room while we ate. Of course, I was wrong.

No sooner had the salad been tossed did the wretched rodent ran out from the family room, through our dining room, across the hearth in the living room and under the sofa.

And so, while my hot brunch slowly cooled on my plate, I proceeded to search under and behind the couch, the easy chair, the piano – you get the idea. Of course, no sign of the rat could be seen until I sat back down to eat my meal. Then it would come out and taunt me with its ratty ways. This would continue until the rat made the fatal mistake of climbing up my wife’s delicate, sheer curtain panels where I could see its shadowy progress even though it most likely thought it was hidden from view.

I don’t think I said anything as lame as “I’ve got you now!”, at least I hope I didn’t, but I quickly grabbed a metal-handled broom we had bought the day before, got a two-handed grip on the thing, cocked it back like Hank Aaron at home plate and swung for record books. Whack! The shape behind the curtain dropped to the ground. Unfortunately, it was only stunned, and briefly at that. To save our family (and my dignity), I went at the poor thing like that kid on the car commercial whacking away at the VW-shaped piñata. The more the doomed creature tried to escape, the faster I played the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on it. It wasn’t a proud moment.

As I swung the broom again and again, the classic western scene played in my mind where a panicked gunslinger has already killed his adversary and emptied his revolver in the process, but can’t stop pulling the trigger. “Click! Click! Click!” I expected my wife to put her hand on my arm and say something comforting like, “It’s over honey, you can stop now. Please. Stop.”

When I called my son (the hunter/fisherman/University of Montana student) later to brag of my heroism, he was so proud of his old man that he suggested I etch a “sniper’s notch” in the broom handle to signify my kill. I’m leaning more towards painting a rat silhouette on it. My wife wants to burn it.

As I quickly dug a hole in our flower bed outside, fueled by my leftover adrenaline buzz. I tossed in the vanquished beast and covered it over with dirt and couldn’t help but pause a moment to think about what had just happened.

A life had been ended. By me. What if that stupid rat was a mother of little baby rats? Or the father of a litter of little rat children and all he had been trying to do in our house was to find food for his family. I try and do that on a daily basis. (And I have to say, in this economy I often feel like a big giant is after me and swinging a broom for all it’s worth!)

Maybe I’m just getting soft as I get older. But now you know why I’m not a hunter.

On the other hand, as bad as I feel about offing the terrified creature, I have to admit I also felt more than a bit of testosterone intoxication at being called upon to successfully protect my maiden and castle against the intrusion of such a nasty beast.

And in my defense (lest you think I’m a heartless, ruthless rat eradicator), my wife and I had opened various doors to the outside world in hopes that the rat would see an obvious escape route and take it – leaving our house relatively unscathed (except for the damage to its eardrums from my wife’s initial scream upon discovering its ratty presence). For whatever eason, it chose to ignore these obvious paths to freedom. But we certainly tried less lethal ways to resolve the situation. So, please – no PETA pickets outside my house, okay?

There’s a life lesson in here somewhere, I can feel it. What only minutes earlier was terrorizing a houseful of people would now be fertilizing a rose bush. The circle of life. Kumbaya. Hakuna matata. Whatever.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a longer version of my column first published yesterday (5.19.11) in the CV Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

An Elevated Sense of Menace

I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning about new elevator technology that allows company management to “redirect” any employee they choose to a different floor than the one that employee thinks he/she will be going to.

In other words, if the boss wants to chew you out for whatever reason and you think you’re going to sneak into your cubicle in the morning before anyone sees you, he can program the elevator to take you directly to his floor without stopping at yours. It can even alert the executive suite that you have entered the elevator and are on the way.

How spooky is that?

This same technology (offered by two of the larger US-based elevator companies) groups employees onto different elevators in the morning (or afternoon) rush hour traffic in the service of efficiency in moving personnel to their respective floors more quickly.

Maybe it’s the dark side of my imagination that makes me wonder how long it will be until some nefarious CEO (of a BIG OIL or tobacco company, of course!) uses the new technology to make an adversary disappear down an open elevator shaft. Oops, I have no idea why he walked through those open doors! What a tragedy. Death by Otis.

All in all, it’s just one more reason to take the stairs. 

Pampering Diaper Divas

In yesterday’s post I wrote about being overwhelmed with too many choices while shopping for baby paraphernalia at a specialty store in Glendale. Who knew there had been so many leaps and bounds in toddler technology since my own kids were certified curtain climbers a couple of decades ago – give or take a gray hair or two?

For example, when our daughter (for who’s baby shower my wife and I were gift shopping when we were in the mega-baby-stuff store) was herself a mini-person way back in the early 80s, we were thrilled with the brand spanking new technology available in strollers – an ingenious design breakthrough popularly called the “umbrella stroller.” It was so-called because these instantly popular umbrellas with a curved handle could be folded up into a skinny bundle that easily fit into almost any car trunk. When collapsed for storage, they looked very much like an umbrella. Hence the name. Clever, right?

These innovations in stroller technology held a squirming baby securely, were blessedly lightweight (compared to all the other Sherman tank-like strollers available at the time) and they featured something even macho dads loved – dual wheels on all four corners. Oh yeah, suddenly Dad could look semi-cool pushing a stroller.

And so it began. New parents or those shopping to buy baby stuff for new parents had a choice in strollers – traditional clunky kludge, or sleek and modern umbrella stroller. Flash forward to today and the choice in strollers can make anyone prone to indecision sit in a corner and blubber. Today’s strollers aren’t just strollers. No way, now they’re “systems” that can include (but are not limited to) features like removable seating pods that convert from stroller to car seat with the flip of just 97 levers and catches. When fully ensconced inside these wheeled wonders of engineering and ingenuity, a child can be protected from the elements from above, front, back and both sides. Standard features include cup holders – a fact that gets under my skin since most of the strollers I saw had more flippin’ cup holders than my car.  

Where was I? Oh, right. Features. The seating/pod/whatever can be turned to face either forward or backward, there are protective front bumpers available, as well as places for mommy to place her wireless phone and/or MP3 player. (Not that any self-respecting parent would ever do anything to distract him or herself from the responsibility of taking care of a young child. Never.) I saw strollers with all-wheel suspension and something called a “centralized brake cable” on the rear wheels. There were even units with (I’m not kidding) integrated side impact protection. Again, not that I’m envious or anything, but none of my own cars have that integrated side impact protection, for crying out loud! I wonder how long until voice-activated GPS systems are included in the contraptions?

Of course, I’ve only begun to describe the basic strollers available today. Once you determine the “need” for a specialized jogging or all-terrain stroller, you’ve opened up a whole new world of specifications and features. And cost.

Get the idea? Now apply this same depth and breadth of available models and features to other categories like diaper bags (dad-specific, haute-couture, multi-function, camouflage, skull & crossbones, pro sports or college team-themed, backpack style vs. over-the-shoulder, etc.), baby room furniture, bathing accessories, child proofing/safety items, cleaning products, baby monitors, potty training, crib toys, bouncers, rattles and teethers, bedding, and on and on and on.

How crazy has it gotten? I’ll sum up by simply telling you that it’s possible today to buy designer-made holsters for pacifiers. And leashes for pacifiers. And pacifiers with nipples sized by the silly millimeter to more closely match mommy’s own. Seriously. Even practical products like baby wipes have not escaped the marketing magic of today’s multi-billion dollar baby industry. While shopping, I saw an entire shelf dedicated to – hold on to your debit cards – baby wipe warming units. I wanted to cry – like a (you guessed it) baby.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an updated version of a column first published in the CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on June 10, 2010.

This version: © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Oh Baby, How Things Have Changed

Our daughter and son-in-law had their first baby, a beautiful girl, a little less than a year ago. Although she was my wife’s and my fourth grandchild, she is the first to live within an easy drive from us. Our other three grand-munchkins live heart-wrenchingly far away in Hawaii. My dear wife and I are not extreme swimmers, we don’t own a boat or have stock in an airline, so that means we get to visit the grandkids in Hawaii far less often than we would like – an understatement if ever there was one.

Suffice it to say that our newest grandchild has so far had no shortage of time or attention lavished upon her cuddly little self. In fact, the fun had already begun with the pre-birth celebration of a baby shower that was thrown last year for our daughter and her soon-to-arrive child.

Now, I was told that it’s bad form to show up for a baby shower without a large gift in hand (apparently providing chicken salad, croissant sandwiches, a big honkin’ fresh fruit platter and homemade gourmet cupcakes wasn’t enough!) So that’s how my dear wife and I found ourselves a few days before the shower wandering the aisles of a super-baby-warehouse store in the Los Feliz area of Glendale, California.

I have to tell you, the visit to the store was an eye opener. Granted, it’s been quite a while since my kids were babies (there’s a joke here, but my kids swear they read this column at least occasionally so I’ll refrain), but I simply wasn’t prepared for what I saw wandering the aisles of this store. I mean, I remember that when there were only a few basics one had to have as a new parent. You needed a crib, possibly a bassinette to have near your own bed when you first brought the baby home, a relative gave you a hand-me-down dresser for the baby’s clothes, and you got a big spongy pad thing that you put in the kitchen sink and laid the baby on to bath it. If you really wanted to equip a baby’s room, you got one of those rickety changing tables with the cheapo foam pad on top and a shelf for thousands of diapers underneath.

New parents also needed half a dozen or so baby bottles, a couple of pacifiers, a stroller and a car seat. That’s pretty much it, unless you truly wanted to spoil a kid with one of those swings guaranteed to put even the most colicky kid to sleep in minutes. (But seriously, weren’t those blessed wind-up-baby-sitters invented for parents more than babies?) Oh, and you absolutely, positively needed a diaper pail of some kind. A big, easy-to-empty diaper pail to contain all the little neutron stink bomb bundles of joy, each with the power to instantly bring a fully grown, testosterone-soaked man to his knees begging for mercy and fresh air.

By the time our fourth child was born, the list of have-to-haves had grown to include a portable play pen (you know, the kind that never, ever fold back up as neatly and compactly as when you first take it out of the box). You also needed some sort of electronic baby monitor to eavesdrop on your spouse as they wrongfully whined to the baby about what a slacker you were for not getting up at 3 a.m. to check on him/her even though you did it already at 1:30 and your wife slept soundly through the entire incident and you didn’t get any “what-a-good-dad” credit like you deserved. Not that this happened to me. Much.

Anyway, that’s the sort of equipment we needed twenty or so years ago in order to bring up baby. Apparently, today’s babies need a whole lot more stuff. So much more, in fact, that I’ll need another post to discuss the catalog of goodies it apparently takes to be a parent in 2010. Hang on to your wallet, and check tomorrow’s My Thoughts Exactly post. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an updated version of a column first published in the CV Weekly newspaper (www.cvweekly.com) on June 3, 2010.

This version: © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.