Texting while driving is another of the long list of driver distractions that are dangerous. Why have a law against texting without covering all the other distracting activities? We should consider a law against Driving While Distracted: DWD. We drivers are all guilty on occasion. (more…)
CHAPTER ONE
Amour Perdu (Lost Love)
He should be happy.
Six months earlier his colleagues of twenty-five years had honored him for outstanding performance in running the engineering department.
He stood in front of almost one hundred fellow workers and their spouses like a blond Viking in a tuxedo. They had lavished praise on him to send him off to the great retirement airship in the sky. He and his team had helped design the latest fighter plane for the Air Force, the YF-16. But what now?” (more…)
Every single Sunday morning for the past twenty-five years the Half Fast Bicycle group has met for breakfast. Somewhere in the Fort Worth area. And after breakfast, we may ride somewhere. Steve keeps us on roads with no traffic. The title ‘half fast’ was my wife, Marlene’s title for the bunch. We have no formal organization papers, although the name appears on some of the gang’s custom carbon fiber bicycles.
The wise guys in our bunch say that we have no by-laws only by-suggestions. If a new person shows up, one of us will declare “I am in charge of new members. Just give me fifty bucks and you are in.” But if we start getting too many showing up (more that ten riders), Cinco just calls only the core group on Sat. night at 6 pm to let us know where we will meet the next morning.
Cinco (Edward Phillips, the Fifth) calls each of the interested bike riders at 6 pm Saturday and leaves a cryptic message, such as “The Guys at Eight. The Guys at Eight.” If Marlene and I can make it, we will show up at the designated breakfast place. In this case, the cafe on the square in Weatherford at 8 am.
The group has about ten interested riders. All may not show up–vacations, illness, etc.–but for all these years we have met for breakfast. The location varies, but even if it is raining, snowing, sleeting, freezing–no mater the weather, we’ll meet for breakfast. Afterward we may ride our bicycles somewhere. ‘Where’ is not decided until we are rolling and someone says “How about to the golf course?” or some other direction.
There are dozens of bike routes around Weatherford that have little traffic. Sometimes the wind or the temperature influences our decision. As we are getting older, the routes are getting sorter. Now, most are about forty miles. That’s about my comfort limit.
Two of the younger riders were State Mountain Bike Champions in their age groups, and one woman has won gold in World Track Racing. The group is kind and, at times, waits for me or another slow, old rider to catch up.
Good exercise and friendship.
Gege’s family in Paris during the German occupation (1940-1944) used public transportation (subway & trains) or bicycles throughout the four year occupation. No gasoline was available for automobiles, even though some private and commercial vehicles were converted to gazogene. The engines were converted to burning charcoal or compressed natural gas.
Gege went everywhere which her bicycle but locked it up if she left it parked on the sidewalk. One evening at a concert she didn’t lock her bicycle and it was stolen. Bicycles were rationed like everything else, so a replacement was expensive, if available.
Her father’s bicycle had replacement tires made of wood blocks wired together. Imagine how it would be to ride with wooden tires on cobblestone streets. With leather in scarce supply, shoes were made with wood as well.
ENGINEER’S GUIDE TO PERSEVERATING
Perseverating. A few years after the accident, a doctor taught me a new word: perseverating, with accent on the “sev.”
Steve, my many years’ bicycling friend, and I were into our 24th hour of a bicycle ride to qualify us for the Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) marathon bicycling event. This is to cyclists as the Boston Marathon is to runners.
The sun was just up, shining on the mist which drifted under the trees along the road. We rolled down a long hill at twenty miles an hour. A perfect morning that made bicycling such a pleasure. We were about 300 miles into the 375 miles to complete the event.
In the corner of my eye I saw a brown streak flying along the grass coming into our line. It hit Steve’s front wheel, jamming it and throwing him into the air. (more…)
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