I posted a few months ago about a two-line blurb I had read in the Christian Science Monitor regarding the proposed embracing of cycling by the City of Dallas. According to this story that ran in the Dallas Morning News on November 19, these plans are no myth. Alright! Good for us!
But bigger problems persist.
Trails not lit.
No racks anywhere to lock to.
Broken glass on every street. The worst is downtown & in South Dallas.
A noticeable percentage of motorists who are either drunk, retarded, or on the phone while driving. It is often difficult to distinguish the nature of their impairment.
Also, when I hear urban rednecks yell, “Git th’ f**k owt th’ road,” to me it demonstrates ignorant hostility toward cyclists which I can’t help but think may be caused by…
The fact that I hardly ever see any adults riding in the city.
There are so many places to ride, yet most everyone restricts their riding to White Rock Lake because of its uninterrupted loop. Unfortunately, when people don’t ride anywhere else, it does nothing to enrich cycling culture in Dallas.
I suppose I’m hoping for a day when people start using their bikes to run simple errands or to commute to work/school. Hey guess what: You don’t have to be a racer or a triathlete to be a cyclist. Just look at places like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Portland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, even Austin, and you can see that thousands of people have discovered how riding a bike is a viable mode of transportation.
On Saturday I raced against approximately 20 other people in an alleycat. In Dallas! I couldn’t believe it either. The checkpoints were all historic locations related to the Kennedy assassination. Fun and educational. I never, ever got a tour like this the whole time I went to elementary/middle/high school as a young lad in Big D.
I didn’t do very well in the race. I still don’t know the streets and I got lost pretty quickly. It was no surprise when I came in last place (my first DFL ever). A few of the checkpoint workers had even abandoned their posts before I arrived. For this unremarkable feat I received a brand new pair of wool socks for my unremarkable feet. I also got a cyclocomputer to tell me how slow and not far I’m going. It has a clock too, so I can stop staring at the sun to determine when I need to turn around to get home in time for Dancing With The Stars.
I asked around and gathered that unfortunately these events only happen 2 or 3 times a year in Dallas. It seems that all the elaborate planning (execution was a different issue) and all the money spent on prizes would factor into preventing more races like this from occurring here. If I had my way, there would be more short distance, low entry fee, low production value alleycats between the bigger races like this one. I talked to some folks about this later that night but no one seemed very enthusiastic. Oh well. I wouldn’t be excited either if some kid from out of town showed up and began suggesting good ideas.
In the spirit of Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, Bullion has released a mash-up album that swirls The Beach Boys with J Dilla. The very idea of it turned me off, as do most mash-ups, but I’ll admit I enjoyed this somewhat when I encountered it piss-drunk the other night. Trying to identify the sections of the original songs kept me entertained. In that regard, I could see Pet Sounds: In The Key Of Dee as suitable background noise for someone who is cleaning the house, making dinner, reading the newspaper, solving a puzzle, or doing laundry while drunk. The samples seem to be well utilized enough or whatever it is you’re supposed to say about this kind of thing.
However, I must say that I’m really tired of hearing stuff like this. It’s like if you own a laptop and pirate a copy of abelton live, you too can be a music sensation by co-opting the work of others! Right? WRONG! See kid, your mashed potatoes are of the prepackaged variety and are severely lacking in the spice and butter departments. To its credit, PS:ItKoD is definitely one of the better albums in its genre melding genre, but that said, I’ll probably never listen to it again unless it pops up on ’shuffle’ before I delete it from my hard drive.
Ah ha! If it offends me so much, why have I not deleted it already? I must secretly love this, right? No, I just have other things to delete first. Like much of today’s less-than-stellar media output, it’s worth experiencing one time, after which you critique it harshly on the internet, and then one more time by accident to confirm or deny your prior assessment before permanent disposal. If I decide I actually love it next time, this post will magically disappear in a cowardly act of eating my words and cleaning my plate. The whole album is available via free download from Bullion’s myspace.
Upon review, this is only funny for the first minute or so.
For optimum enjoyment, I recommend watching the first 30 seconds then turning it off. Of course that is unless you are among those who revel in the beating of dead horses. If you are a dead horse beater or if you support such acts, go ahead, watch the whole thing over and over again. The joke won’t change and neither will your enjoyment of the video I’m guessing.
I know what many of you are saying: “Geoff, I don’t have all day to laugh at this. Believe me, I’d love to, but I have other mediocre jokes to ingest & regurgitate to my friends.” I understand your concern. Maybe you are of the shorter attention spanned variety of dead horse beaters, or maybe you are just simply pressed for time. For you I’ll prescribe the aforementioned initial dose and further recommend multiplying those thirty seconds in your delicious mind to satisfy your big undesirable heart’s desire.
