Easy Rider

Just back from taking my new set of wheels for their first spin. It seemed like the right time to replace my old bike, considering a) I bought the old bike nearly thirty years ago and b) it was stolen last fall. After looking at several models I decided on a 7-speed Kent Glendale. (I was eying up a lovely 21-speed Schwinn for a bit more money, but since I'd never figured out what to do with three speeds back in the old days, it would have just seemed like a waste of good machinery.) I actually bought the new bike last week but today was my first opportunity to inflate the tires, adjust the brakes, attach the water bottle and the dorky reflector stickers and, most importantly, figure out if there really is anything to that expression about how something you never forget how to do is like riding a bike.

Happy to report it went great. I live near the bottom of a moderately steep hill and, as a young man, I was generally unable to bike to the top of the hill without stopping to rest. Having now advanced to the age when I have children who are older than I was in those "can't do the hill" days, it was no small triumph to make it to the top, slowly at times but without stopping. (I admit reading the manual about how to use speed settings helped some.) It ended up being a three and a half mile round trip along a main boulevard. I felt so good about my newly-restored healthy lifestyle I stopped along the way for a celebratory hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut. (The garlic in the sauerkraut is, after all, very good for you.)

Everything went so well that, upon my return, I felt compelled to pose for a photo. (It's amazing what you can accomplish nowadays with some photo editing software and a camera-phone propped up on a trash can.) After taking it, though, I did start wondering if it was uncomfortably close to another "take a picture of me posing" photo...

Unrelated Topic: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel from an Airplane

"No administration in America's history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today. It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.' (Sarah Palin on Sean Hannity's Fox "News" program, April 7, 2010)

What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle?

All together now: "Lipstick!"

As much as I don't want this journal to be reduced to a series of "Sarah Palin Says the Darnedest Things" essays, sometimes she just makes it too easy. (For my readers across the pond, Sarah Palin is something like our version of Prince Harry.) Palin, who still insists that interview debacle was Katie Couric's fault (as opposed to those hard-hitting questions people like Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Fox's other Palin-lapdogs throw at her), and who is considered to have done well in her VP debate simply because she avoided saying anything too laughable, is now the republican party's elder-statesperson on nuclear proliferation as it relates to foreign policy.

I'll pause a moment while you finish laughing.

The treaty which, according to Palin, has us saying "go ahead and do what you want to with me" calls for both the US and Russia each to reduce their nuclear arsenals from 2,200 deployed warheads to 1,550 over seven years, and their long-range missiles and launchers to 700. If she thinks those numbers leave us unarmed, it makes one wonder about a number of things, not the least of which is how large a weapons cache is stored her garage.

Perhaps my starting this by comparing Palin to Dan Quayle wasn't fair. At least Quayle eventually caught onto the fact that he was coming off like a fool and stopped issuing public statements.