1979 Schwinn Stingray (red)

Man, from age seven to age fourteen or so, there were few things more important to me than my bicycle. It was everything.

It was transportation to school (occasionally), the swimming pool (all summer long), friends' houses, relatives' houses, stores, and movies. If I wanted a pack of gum or some kind of novelty from the drug store, I didn't ask my parents for a ride or for money. I used my own money, and I got myself there.

It was freedom to head out at 9:00 a.m. and not come back until dinner time during the summer.

It was ownership. . . ownership at a time in my life when I held supreme authority of very few other things in my life. My bike was MINE. . . not my sister's and not my friend's. Dudes had to ask before they could just pick up my bike and ride it.

It was responsibility. . . a maintenance responsibility prefiguring the responsibility of owning a car later in life. Keep the tires inflated, keep the chain lubed, maybe consider tearing it apart to install a double goose neck or a new seat or a hand break or something cool. And lock it up or it'll get swiped. Big, important decisions and responsibilities for a kid.

It was speed, too. . . the kind of speed a kid without a driver's license can't get any other way. Buzzing down a long residential hill as fast as the cars usually traveled gave me a kind of speed that almost seemed illegal. Speed AND danger. Something happened almost every day on that bike that surprised me or scared me or made me really take notice of things. A wobble at 30 mph. A rock in the road that almost sent me sprawling. A near collision with friend or a neighborhood dog. Riding my bike everywhere was the only thing my parents knowingly allowed me to do that routinely threatened my life. No helmets. No pads. Screw it. Just ride.

It was pain, too. . . the impetus for countless bruises, abrasions, serious cuts and full-on head injuries. My bike taught me to live with and play through pain, while also teaching me the finer points of scab care and maintenance. Bike riding, like life, was sometimes painful.

Perhaps most importantly, my bike was a lesson, as simple as it was profound. Getting where I was going required genuine effort on my part. No one else would help. As soon as I identified a destination, my mental GPS calculated the obstacles and risks involved. Getting to the movie theater meant tackling that huge hill on Lindbergh Blvd and that frighteningly narrow stretch of Mattis Road that had no shoulder. Before I started any trip, I weighed its benefits against the effort and risk involved. . . a cost benefit analysis as comprehensive and honest as anything I work on today.

And in the end, the benefit of a bike trip always seemed to outweigh the effort it would take. I learned that sweating up the hill to get there always promised a breezy, effortless return trip. And there was nothing sweeter to a sweaty 11 year old boy than coasting down-hill with hot summer wind pushing his hair back.

I loved my bike.

Eclipses. . .

When we experience a perfect, full solar eclipse here on Earth, the moon is directly between our line of sight and the sun. The result is that the sun is perfectly hidden by the moon, looking to us like a pitch black spot over the sun. Just a fraction of the sun's corona is visible around the outside edge of the moon. . . enough to really screw your eyes up if you look up at it with naked eyes sporting dilated pupils.

What are the odds that the Earth would come equipped with one (and only one) moon whose size and distance from earth make it perfect for eclipsing the sun for us?

Keep it the same size and move it farther from or closer to the Earth a significant amount, and you change how much of our view of the sky the moon occupies. This would change how much (or little) of the sun it blots out during a solar eclipse. Similarly, keep its distance from Earth the same but make it a bigger or smaller moon, and it stops being the perfect solar eclipse tool.

I know that the Earth's distance from the sun differs depending on its location along an elliptical orbit. And I know that the moon's distance from the earth fluctuates. Overall, though, I think the tolerances in those two variables are tight enough that full eclipses look very much the same here on planet Earth from year to year.

I wonder if there are any other planets in our solar system that have such a serendipitous combination of lunar and orbital factors?

Dunno. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.

What if it doesn't work?

The Republicans in Congress wouldn't approve a bail out for automakers. So Bush and the Democrats in Congress did an end-around and gave up on trying to find fresh money for Detroit. Instead, they filched 14 of the $700 billion that was already approved by Congress to bail out the financial system and directed that to the automakers.

The $14 billion is purportedly being given as secured low interest loans. We are told that the money will be paid back and tax payers may even make a little money off of the deal.

So what happens if the big three automakers take the money and STILL go bankrupt?

Fixing Comments Functionality

New posts should be comment-able now. Bummer that the last few weren't.

To Love the Country or the Countryside

How about this for getting to the root of the problem?

The Chevy Volt (an electric car) is being pushed by General Motors as the first production electric car, to hit the market in 2010. GM unveiled it at a NASCAR event, and they're understandably trying to drum up excitement about the car. But GM has to be careful about pushing the Volt too hard as a patriotic, pro-American car that can help free us from our dependence on foreign oil. While they want to take advantage of the desire by nationalists to see the US become energy independent, they're reluctant to get to stars-and-stripes with the Volt.

Pete Lewis, who works in program operations at GM, puts it this way.

"There is a fear that if we position this as a 'pro-American' car, it will upset some of the environmentally conscious crowd, and we want it to be embraced by everyone."

Mr. Lewis is justified in his concern about offending the green-ers by becoming too pro-American, but I find it tremendously sad.

The most "green" or "environmentally conscious" among us are, by definition, the most anti-American. Take a look at Hollywood, PETA, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club (sorry Steven), and any other such organization if you disagree with me.

And the flag-waving, America-loving nationalists among us tend to be decidedly less concerned about environmental issues. Take a look at any NASCAR event across the country for further proof.

How has it come to this? How have we gotten to the point where, to care about our environment, we must hate our country?

Hubble Repair?

Over the last several years we've seen article after article about how the Hubble space telescope is a dinosaur and not worth repairing. Space geeks get all up in arms when talk of giving up on Hubble surfaces, and NASA officials always calmly explain why Hubble isn't worth maintaining at this point.

Each time this happens, I check Hubble off in my mind as a done deal. It's over. No longer being maintained. Fine.

And then I see stories like this. . . about a planned shuttle mission to repair the Hubble telescope.
I don't get it.

Is the United States Behind. . . or Ahead?

With Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president, critics of the United States talk about how our country might just finally catch up with the rest of the civilized world and elect a non-white president.  The implication, of course, is that the rest of the world cleared this discriminatory hurdle decades ago.  

I got to wondering, though. . . has the United Kingdom ever elected a non-white Prime Minister?   I don't think so. And it goes without saying that they've never had a black king or queen.

Have the Germans ever elected a non-white Chancellor?  I'm pretty sure they haven't.  How about Italy?  Or Spain?  

For that matter, how about Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, or Sweden?  Have any of these countries ever had a black national leader?  

I'm not an expert on the history of any of these countries, certainly; to tell you the truth I can't even name the current leader of half of them.  I guess there may be one in there that has elected a black person as their national leader at some point, but I can't think of one off hand. 

Do we still have discriminatory hurdles to conquer here in the United States?  Sure.  But is the US really so far behind on this particular issue?  Or might it just be out in front on this one?