my sometimes-skeptical social commentary

Archive for the ‘bicycling’ Category

Instead of making resolutions, I’m writing down plans…well, not plans exactly, but stuff that I want to do.

I think most of these ideas are feasible. What do you think?

1. Finish the house we started in 2009. I’d like to incorporate green technology, but we’ll see.
2. Get back to running my favorite seasonal business, The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co.
3. Go to more pro baseball games than we did in 2009. I’d like to see my first major league game. In Toronto. I know what you’re saying…someone my age has never seen the MLB in person? Nope.
4. This one is related to #2 above. I will lose a little weight and continue to improve my cardiovascular health. Riding The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co, it would be nearly impossible to gain weight.
5. Do more writing, even if it just more-frequent posts on this blog. I do want to get back to real writing, though.
6. I’d like to learn to speak another language. I studied French in high school and college, so I remember some of that, but “Quiero aprender a hablar español de este año.” (Without having to use Google Translate.)
7. I have a bunch of audio cassettes that I want to convert into digital files, so that I can actually listen to that music. (Younger readers may want to ask their parents if they have any audio cassettes in the basement that they could look at.)
8. I say this every year, but this year is different (partly because of the divorce). I want to spend more time with old friends. I have not ever visited my friends Jesse, Rich, Craig, or Greg at their houses.
9. I’d like to buy an electric car. A Tesla Roadster would be nice, but I would “settle” for a a hybrid Fusion.
10. We live near a lot of water, so I’d like to make sure we get the canoe wet a lot this summer. The Buffalo River is a lot more scenic than you’d expect.
11. Another thing I’ve wanted to do for years, but somehow haven’t found the time to do, is ride my bicycle across New York State. The Erie Canal is a great way to go.
12. I want to take the boys camping, somewhere that they’ll never forget. I think the Adirondacks would be great.
13. We’ve been attending church more regularly, but this year, I would like to make it such a standard part of our life that the boys don’t resist going, when they are at my house on a Sunday. But here’s a problem I haven’t figured out how to resolve: I like three different churches, but I can’t go to all three on the same Sunday morning. Ultimately, I think it will be better if I am more actively involved with one of those three churches, doing things besides just attending morning church services.
14. Many of these things can be done, and some should be done, with family. Baseball, bicycling, and church, for example. This year, I would like to have time to visit my family members at their houses, but also to make the house we’re working on large enough for everyone to gather here for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

What about you? Will you be doing any of these activities?

The boys and I rode down the side of the Erie Canal, on the wall that separates it from the Niagara River, to the end of the sidewalk. On the way back, I snapped this sunset photo.

For the ride home, I took off my sunglasses, and that’s when I really noticed how many little bugs are flying over the river and the canal. I kept getting bugs in my eyes, and so I tended to keep my head down a little to avoid direct hits. It also felt like little bugs were inside my bike helmet, biting my scalp. Yuck.

I hope I’m always capable of seeing the bright side.

Last night, when I was riding up Delaware Avenue, I overhead two men greeting each other from opposite sides of the street. The first one must have asked the other guy to join him, because the answer I heard from the second man was “No, I’m on my way home, I had a great night!”

The second man was pushing a shopping cart down his side of the street, and as it hit each crack in the sidewalk, the bottles and cans rattled. The cart was full, and he had a couple large plastic bags full of more bottles and cans that were hanging over the sides of the cart.

It made me think of how often people ask me how the bike taxi business is doing. My definition of a “great night” varies, because some nights are great for different reasons. Sometimes it’s a great night because I earn a decent amount, but some nights are great because the weather was perfect, or because I met good people, or saw old friends, or made a new contact with a future customer or potential business partner.

I know the cynical among us have already dismissed my comments above as sentimental and lacking any real social commentary. Bah to them.

The cynical among us need to take a moment to think about the fact that the two men I saw last night are real men, not something made up to tug at the heartstrings of the liberal and sentimental. If the cynics can’t step outside of their postmodern grumpiness long enough to think, just think broadly and considerately, then they are stuck in a rut of recycled, ready-made conclusions, and aren’t living a real life themselves.

I think most intelligent people agree that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. A cynical approach to everything may seem like they’re examining life, but if they’re always coming to the same grouchy conclusion, is it?

I made a trailer to pull our canoe behind my bike.

Unfortunately, it took longer to put it together than I expected, so we didn’t actually go canoeing.

Here’s how I did it: make your own canoe trailer to pull behind a bike

Here’s a quote from the “suggestions” page I wrote after I was done.

What I learned from this project is that, while you can build just about anything with scrap wood if you can manage to fit it into your project, sometimes it is better to purchase new wood and follow a design for the project you’re doing.

If this hitch breaks, or if I decide to redo it just because, then I’ll definitely do it differently. You can see in the photo in Step 10 that there are several smaller pieces of wood attached to each other. Based on my experience with this so far, a better design would be to use pieces of plywood instead.