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Two wheeling

Where have I been?

As Laura used to say "Peddling my ass around town."

By which she meant "Riding a bike." Oh, that Laura - what a prankster.

One of my new year's resolutions was to start riding my bike more. It's about time: I bought it two years ago - from an 80-year-old guy who was getting a new, different bike - and it has been sitting in the shed gathering dust ever since.



I was inspired to start riding by two women: Madness Rivera, who loves her bike so much she had it tattooed on her body, and, even though she is a body-dysmorphic daughter of Satan who needs to be pelted with flaming cheese blocks, Tall & Lucky Kristin, who I guess has some good ideas about fitness and hard work and blah blah blah.

Last weekend I took The Sofa Bike to The Bike Depot and they gave it a tune-up, installed my cool bell and adjusted the seat for me.

I rode Sunday and yesterday and today. Here are my rules: I can go as fast or slow as I want. I can stop whenever I want. But I have to go a little farther each day. Just a little.

I've been having fun, even getting *gasp* sweaty. THAT never happens. I haven't gone very far or very fast - Lance Armstrong probably does more mileage before he gets out of bed than I do on a ride, but Lance Armstrong isn't a big fat computer addict with a love of almond croissants, either.

The other day I got laughed at - LAUGHED AT - by a regular cyclist (one with a titanium bike and a Wonder bread colored bike jersey) who passed me on The Sofa Bike and said "Ha. That'll work."

Yes, indeed, Sonny. It will work for me.

Trial period

We got a new aqua aerobics teacher tonight. It was a little rough, but we will break her in eventually.

Her thing is that she yells, a la Jillian Michaels, and she wants us to yell back at her.

"Feeling good?" she yells about every 3 minutes. We are supposed to answer "Feeling good."

"No sweat?" she yelled at least 10 times during class. She got a few feeble "No sweat" replies.

The other thing she loves to say is "Pay attention to your body."

To which I replied "If I had paid attention to my body, I'd be out eating ice cream right now."

All the lovely ladies...

As part of my adventures in newspaper reporting, I spent 75 minutes inside a recycling facility today.

This is the place where everything goes "away" to when you throw it away.

Trash trucks pull up and dump their loads in the middle of a 50,000 square foot warehouse. John Deere skiploaders roar up, scoop the refuse and deposit on a wide conveyor belt.

About 50 young men stand at stations, each one pulling off an assigned kind of recyclable or reject.

One guy concentrates on wood scraps, another on steel cans, and so on. They toss their particular kind of stuff down a chute, where it lands with a loud bang in a gigantic metal bin on wheels.

It was, to put it mildly, disgusting. Noisy, dusty, smelly, with God-knows-what floating through the air from every kind of thing people have tossed in their recycling bins...and believe me, I saw a lot. Car bumpers, toys, Christmas trees, clock radios, on and on and on.

I left feeling like I was covered in a thick film of germ-ridden muck. Nothing that a few hours of soaking in a 10% bleach bath and burning my clothes won't take care of.

I was talking to my old work friend Matt and shared the scene with him, trying to joke away the awfulness. Matt is great for that sort of thing.

He and I have endured much together and usually go down the humor trail of 1) We're totally incompetent 2) We're probably drunk, too and 3) We deserve to be employed in a job that doesn't require much in the way of thinking or responsibility.

I told him about the poor schmucks who have to stand in this environment every day, hand-sorting filthy refuse.

"Oh wow," he said. "Are they hiring?" (For the record, Matt has an excellent job and is good at what he does.)

"Why yes, I believe they are," I said. "In fact, I believe they are always hiring."

"Imagine that," said Matt. "Maybe I should apply."

"And you know the best part?" I said. ""Just think of the reaction when you're trying to impress a woman and you tell her that you're the plastic milk carton guy."

"Oh, I'll bet the ladies are all over that action," he agreed.

Massage School Politics

My 5-day bout of "allergies" seems to have morphed into a cold, so I will leave you with this quick vignette.

College, circa 1984, when Reagan was stupid popular.

I was taking a massage class in the student union. We met in one of the conference rooms, stripped down to swimsuits and practiced our moves while lying on the tables. It was all good oily fun.

The Young Republicans met next door.

One evening after we had gotten down to business, a latenik Alex P. Keaton-type stuck his power-tied neck through the door and gaped at what he saw.

"Ummmm Young Republicans?" he asked unsteadily.

"Oh, this is Young Democrats," someone cheerily replied. "Young Republicans is next door."