Riding and Random Thoughts

My First Bicycle

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. H.G. Wells

One of the genuine benefits of physical exercise - that goes beyond developing excellent glutes - is how walking, running, or biking stirs the thinking process. Excess oxygen to the brain or something. Somehow I always get my best ideas or solutions to problems when doing something at least semi-aerobic.

This Labor Day weekend the LWW, her daughter, her daughter’s SO, and I bicycled the beautiful Cannon River trail from Cannon Falls to Red Wing and back to Cannon Falls. An easy 20 miles in each direction. Plenty of time for a bit of musing.

Idle Thought #1
Bicycles are one of the best technologies ever invented. I remember reading once that a bicycle is the most energy efficient form of land transportation. I believe it. It’s incredible how improved the technology of bicycling has become since my earliest bike riding days as a kid, proud of his new one-speed $30 Coast King bike, to today with my 21-speed $300 Cannondale velocipede. The Cannondale, now seven-years-old, weighs half of what the Coast King did and can be geared down to the point it will nearly climb trees. I do believe it it’s no more physically demanding to ride 20 miles on it than it was to ride the mile or so to my cousin’s farm when I was a kid.

I was reminded once again that one way to look at technology is that is simply a device that amplifies and extends a natural human ability. The bicycle amplifies the leg; the telescope, the eye; the telephone, the ear. I am still trying to figure out what exactly the computer and Internet amplify.

Idle Thought #2
Can’t we pass a law that would require that any mandated state test must first be passed by the legislators who voted for it?

Idle Thought #3
I rather pride myself in that I almost never watch television. But I may have to rethink this after watching some of the footage of the impact and tragedies of Hurricane Katrina. The realization that the majority of the horrors that came after the storm have fallen mainly on the poor African-American population simply wasn’t apparent to me until watching the evening news. While I read two daily newspapers, scan Newsweek, and listen to NPR, there was something about the television images that illuminated this heartbreaking story in a way no other medium could. Maybe I better watch the TV news more regularly.

Idle Thought #4
Each year I set as goal more regular visits to the buildings in my district. Each year, it seems, my desk exerts greater magnetic pull. While that can be explained in part because I can solve more problems and communicated effectively with folks throughout the district via e-mail, I am not sure it is the complete answer. Whatever the cause, I plan this year to really demagnetize myself and get out and talk to my media specialists, teachers and principals on a regular basis.

Idle Thought #5
The Onion continues to be the funniest and smartest satire going. While LM_Net alerted everyone to the “story” about Google destroying all information it can’t catalog, their piece, Intelligent Falling, is even funnier (and more pointed).

Idle Thought #6
Increasingly, I’ve been having what I call “charmed life” moments - a sudden realization just how incredibly lucky I am to have the life I have - wonderful family, decent health for all of us, a beautiful home in a beautiful state, some financial security (working wife!), a job and profession I love, and a bit of leisure time to simply enjoy life. I once believed that the truly lucky people were those born to great wealth. I was wrong.

The most recent of these moments came while sitting outdoors eating breakfast at the St. James Hotel in Redwing yesterday morning eating delicious rye toast with strawberry preserves, watching slow traffic moving up and down the Mississippi, and enjoying the company of my lovely wife and two bright and funny 20-somethings. If I ever sound whiney or ungrateful about anything, somebody please dope-slap me. Thank you.
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3 Comments »
the computer and the Internet amplify my tendencies towards ADD…

Comment by SaraKellyJohns — September 6, 2005 @ 10:22 pm

 
I’ve had my own random thoughts lately, several of which parallel yours…the legislative tests, for example. But I just sent this quote to my friends and colleagues: “If I ever sound whiney or ungrateful about anything, somebody please dope-slap me. Thank you.”

Thanks for expressing it so well.

Comment by Donna — September 7, 2005 @ 12:08 pm

I’ve had reports that some folks don’t know what a “dope slap” is. I hear it regularly referred to on NPR’s Car Talk. Maybe it is a Boston expresssion. BUT it has universal applications.

From The Urban Dictionary

Dope Slap: A light “whappp” to the back of the head, done with an open palm in an upward motion. The physical equivalent of the phrase, “Whatta you, a moron?!”

Someone oughta give that damn Illinois driver a dope slap for driving like an idiot!

Comment by dougj — September 7, 2005 @ 2:16 pm

And I quote…

I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I assume, that like many readers, I am a hopeless quote collector. Like spice in a soup, a memorable “bon mot” thrown in an article or presentation drives a point home. And while I don’t always read e-mails as well as I should, I always check the signature line for a good pithy statement.

I’ve made a collection of probably close to 200 of my favorites available at
www.doug-johnson.com/quotes.html . No order, no theme, and no great effort at ascertaining the authority of any quote. These come from heaven knows where. If you were to judge a person’s personality based on the quotes they collect, I’m afraid I’d come up a bit on the cynical side. How surprising.

I started collecting quotes as a building librarian for my “Quote of the Day” sign in my library media centers. Amazing how many teachers would drop by just to read it!

Oh, one of my favorite Internet sites is The Quotations Page - sort of a mega-search engine of lots of collections of quote pages on the web.

Anyway, enjoy. And please, add your own.

Cell phones and the benefit of the doubt

I really dislike cell phones. They seem to have enabled a good many people a convenient way of letting other people know they will be late along with other ways of passing problems on. This is why I never give my cell phone number out - I only use the phone to harass others.

A cell phone rings during nearly every workshop or presentation I do. Despite the admonitions and the availability of phones that vibrate rather than ring, at least one person either accidentally or purposefully leaves the phone on and off it goes.

Yeah, such interruptions are annoying, but an incident a few years ago changed the way I react them. The session was rolling, the phone warbled, and an embarrassed looking lady scrambled for the device deep in her purse then quickly hurried from the room. My standard quip in such cases, which on reflection probably sounded pretty darned sarcastic, was, “Hmmm, must be a very important person.” And then went on with the talk.

After the session appeared, the lady came up and apologized. As it turns out, her husband was having serious health problems and she was scared to death it was him (or the hospital calling.) On hearing this and remembering my snide comment, I shrunk from 6’ 3” to about 2” in a heartbeat.

Since that time, I’ve decided to give people the benefit of the doubt regarding calls received in public. Doubtless there are plenty of bores out there who receive calls that no sane person would regard as important or urgent, But I guess we all gave different measures of important and urgent.

This afternoon outside Baltimore, a phone rang in the session I was going for BCPS librarians (who are about as nice, dedicated, smart and involved group as anyone hope to work – led by the very able Della Curtis.) The lady apologized, It was her son. His pet hamster had died and he needed to talk to his mom about it. In the greater scheme of things, whatever that mom said, I’m sure, were more important that I had said all day.