Dogs

My last post, just before my ride home on May 8, led to a dog bite. It was not the way I wanted to end that day. It was a perfect ride, a little on the cool side when I started, but I soon warmed up. I had just crossed the last major street of my ride and was relaxing when suddenly old Sport ran at me and took a hunk of flesh out of my right leg. We spent the evening at the Insta Care, where, fortunately, I didn't need stitches.

Now I'm sitting here at the end of the day looking at my trusty steed ready to take me home, but today it's near 90. Unseasonably hot for May. Hopefully I will neither faint from the heat nor be attacked by a dog again.

Bike Commuting

I'm sitting in my office at the end of Friday, looking at my bike. It's a beautiful day, mid-60s, sun shining, and I rode to work. Unlike last Friday, I won't need a pickup to get home because it's raining. This is perfect biking weather; too bad it won't last and in two months I'll be facing a 30 minute commute in 90 degree temps.

Last Saturday I attended the first ever Salt Lake City Bike Summit. A bike summit is a sort of convention for bikers. Not racers or even touring bikers, but those who promote cycling as a way of life. It was interesting to hear all the work going on behind the scenes to make cycling a legitimate form of transportation. In other countries, biking is "what we do". That was the theme repeated by several of the speakers who had interviewed cyclists in Europe, Asia and other countries where biking is the norm, not a fringe element. One day maybe the U.S. will be there, too.

Cycling

The weather is on again, off again. Today is gorgeous, tomorrow will be in the mid-60s and Wednesday we are back to rain and probably snow even in the valley. It's making cycling very hard. Next Saturday is the Salt Lake Marathon bike ride, that I have done every year since they started it. I'm signed up, but it's weather dependent whether I ride. If it's raining or snowing, forget it. I need to get out a ride more because I'm supposed to be a bike commuter columnist and it's hard to write about commuting when you haven't really started commuting yet. I did, however, drop my mountain bike off for a tuneup. That should really be my commuting bike, since it's a beast and more or less immune to potholes, gravel and other road hazards that can destroy a road bike.

I'm really enjoying my gig as a columnist. I don't yet have a stiff piece of cardboard with "Press" written on it to stick in my fedora, but that might come. Every March there is a national bike summit in Washington, D.C. Maybe next year I'll have to cover it as part of my duties. I could write the trip off as a business expense. The great thing about being a writer is you can deduct almost everywhere you go as research for a story.

Spring Break

Our family is at the tail end of our combined spring break. Last Saturday, March 14, we arrived in sunny California for three days at Disneyland and a week in a beach house at Newport Beach. The whole family was here: Courtney and Robert (though they had to leave on Monday because Robert started school again on Tuesday), Brad, Melanie and Chloe, who left today to return to Missouri, Steven, Cathy, Maddie and Isabelle, who just walked in from riding the Balboa ferry, Jeff and Holli, Melinda, Leah and mom and dad. We've spent our days at Disneyland searching for hidden Mickeys, riding Space Mountain, Indiana Jones, Thunder Mountain, California Screamin', Maliboomer and all the other rides until we were sick, and shopping, adding more to Disney's empire. Courtney figured that they take in over $100,000 a day just in parking.

In getting ready for D-land, as the fam calls the Kingdom of the Mouse, we traded Disney trivia (well, mostly Steven provided it for us), but I discovered there are dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs and websites devoted to to Mouse-dom. That got me thinking about the Disneyland cult. Clearly old Walt was on to something nearly 60 years ago when he conceived of a theme park in the middle of a bunch of orange groves 65 miles from LA. It seems a no-brainer now, but back then I'll bet the bankers thought he was crazy. It also got me thinking that we baby-boomers are the first Mickey generation. We had the Mickey Mouse Show, Annette and all the Mousketeers. When Disneyland opened in 1955, our parents were the ones who took their kids and made it what it is today. Hooray for the old folks.

Square Root Day

Today is Square Root Day (3/3/09), where the month and the day are each the square root of the last two digits of the year. The last square root day was February 2, 2004 (2/2/04) and the next one will be April 16, 2016 (4/4/16). In the last nine years, we've had three (10/10/00, 1/1/01, 2/2/04 and now 3/3/09). Now they start to spread out. I know, this is very left brain, tending to geekiness. But it got me thinking of how many more square root days I might have left and that was kind of sad. I doubt I'll see 7/7/49, because I would be closing in on the century mark by then. I hope to make 6/6/36. Put this way, in three months, I could be gone. Anyway, enough doom and gloom. 6/6/36 is still a long ways off. Enjoy square root day.

My son mentioned to me that coming up is Pi day (3.14). Way to go Steven.

Spring

There 's a definite feel of spring in the air today. The sky is clear, the south-facing slopes of the mountains are bare and I've even seen a few people in shorts and flip-flops, though that's rushing things just a tad.

It's time to start thinking about cycling, especially with the Tour of California going on this week. I spent some time the other day surfing the net for bicycle rides this summer, and found quite a few potential ones. I'd like to be up to at least a 60-75 mile ride by the end of the summer. There are several around the valley and in the Heber Valley, beginning with the Salt Lake Marathon ride in April and ending in September. Of course, last week was the St. George Century and next month is the Skinny Tire Festival in Moab. But the weather hasn't quite been good enough to get outside much yet.

Other Blogs

Today I stumbled across two blogs that are interesting. The first is the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. It's a blog devoted to the increasing and incorrect use of quotation marks around just about anything, whether they need it or not. You can view it here: http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/

The other, which is nearer and dearer to my heart, is the blog of Apostrophe Abuse. This is for all those people (myself included) who grate their teeth when we see a word ostensibly made plural by the addition of an apostrophe. "Toy's", for example. Or a sign in a supermarket advertising "peaches, pears and apple's". You can view that blog here: http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

At the other extreme is the propensity (maybe caused by laziness) to leave out apostrophes where they are really needed, as in contractions. I recently read a book called The Road, which is now a movie, about a boy and his father in a post-nuclear explosion world. It was a great book, very dark and somber. But it was hard reading because the author refused to use apostrophes. He would write "cant" for "can't", didnt" for "didn't", for example. The only time he used an apostrophe was when it was necessary to differentiate, such as "its" or "it's". And he did not use quotation marks for any conversation. Similar to that is Cold Mountain, but at least he offset quotations with a dash.