Posts by JackElder
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And fair play Ben - I ride home up the Ngauranga Gorge in Wellington, and _everyone_ rides on the pavement there, from the serious lycra fast-boys to the grannies on shopper bikes. And indeed, cyclepaths aren't always the worst places to ride - I do ride along the cyclepath along the Old Hutt Road, because there's very little foot traffic and a lot of cars doing 100k two inches past your right elbow if you ride on the road. On the other hand, I ignore the cyclepath around Oriental Bay, because there's actually quite a lot of room on the road and otherwise you're competing with a lot of pedestrians.
That's one of the great things about cycling - being able to choose which of the route options suits you at any given point. ;)
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Whoops. things=thighs. Bit Freudian there, sorry. Mind you, the point is the same.
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If it comes to that, Jack Elder should be popping in any moment to tell you that he is a responsible lycra-clad citizen...
Yes, I can't believe that there was a post that featured me being mentioned in the original blog entry, an extended discussion on cycling, and reminiscences of the NZ expat scene in Tokyo in the early 90s... and I completely missed it. Honestly, the only other of my buttons that I can think of that someone could have pushed is if it descended into a debate about carnivorous plants. Mind you, the reason I missed it is that I spent most of Friday in Paekakariki being tattooed, so it's all good.
Cyclists in lycra: because it's a pain in the neck having shorts flapping around your things while you pedal. Plus, you get to pretend you know what you're doing. Plus, it's great for discommoding co-workers while you sit around in the gimp suit waiting for the office shower to come free.
Cycling on the pavement: I've been commuting by bike for, ooh, years. I'd far rather be on the road. On the pavement you get pedestrians, kids running out unexpectedly, fragments of broken glass, cars pulling out of driveways and not looking for fast traffic, potholes, etc. I've seen (and had) far more accidents on shared paths than on the road.
Joanne - I was in Tokyo '87-91, and I'm pretty sure that I remember you guys arriving. We departed shortly afterwards (like, about 2 weeks), though.
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Am I the only one here who likes spiders?
Surely one important differentiator between wife/mother is the power dynamics. Ideally, the husband/wife relationship is a relatively equal one (unless you're very old-school), while the mother-child relationship has an inherent large power imbalance. And as we all know, with power comes responsibility - so I'd say being a mother is harder, as it includes a shedload of responsibility. Plus, becoming a wife doesn't include serious debilitating physical change, hormonal load, possibility of post-event psychological change, or of major abdominal surgery. Although we may just be doing it wrong.
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It's probably also worth mentioning the performance of our cyclists at the track worlds in Beijing; notably because one member of our women's pursuit team had never ridden on a track before about 10 weeks ago. They got gold, against some pretty stiff competition. Go the girls!
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Dick Cheney in a wheelchair.
Yes, I'm guessing that it looked a bit like this.
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I saw Star Trek 2 as a child. The ear-wormy things scared the living hell out of me. I saw it aged about 7 or 8, and I still can't watch the movie. I'm getting quite uncomfortable just thinking about it, actually.
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Didn't we just add a leap second this year? I used mine to take a short, but well-deserved, break.
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What did they water it with, asparagus urine?
Purely out of interest - and possibly to switch tack slightly - how many other people recall being sent outside as kids to "water the lemon tree"? That's not (much of) a euphemism, by the way - as a child I was left with the strong impression that it was perfectly fine to urinate on the lemon tree in the garden, and _only_ the lemon tree. Talking to some friends, this seems to have been a common thread. I don't know if there's any scientific basis for it, or just the yellow connection, but from what I've seen it doesn't do the trees any harm.
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Only humans will persist with it, and then only adults, who have trained inhibitions that they would like to lose.
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tell that to dogsWe used to have a shih tzu who would beg for beer cans at the dinner table. If you gave him one he'd carefully lie it on its side, and lick as much beer as he could from it. He also once drank a large glass of wine at a party (someone had put it on the floor). He vomited most of it up, but still looked pretty ropey for a few days.
As to the arguments about how people have come to like things - two points.
1) Surely it's not a binary decision? There's ground between the two extremes. As with most things biological, it's probably a messy intermediate where there's a combination of your taste buds maturing, subconscious positive reinforcement from the active ingredients of whatever you're consuming, and a psychological association. I know for a fact that one of the reasons I like the taste of Old Speckled Hen is the memories it brings back.
2) Who cares why you like something? If I like a particular flavour, sporting activity, author or sexual position, why on earth would it matter how that liking came about? Maybe someone started drinking red wine because they didn't really mind red/white and their partner preferred red, and they then got a taste for it as a result - so what? Why on earth should the origin of a preference matter in the slightest jot?
Personally, I can pretty easily think of tastes that I've had since birth, that I suddenly realised that I had in adolesence, that I've acquired without wanting to and that I've acquired through sheer bloody effort. I'm just wondering why the origin is supposed to matter.