Pedals to People

Yesterday I helped out the P2P folks at the West Central Community Center during the West Central Neighbor Day Festival. It was awesome. A great crew to work with and a great thing to do. Lots of kids brought their bikes in for a wide variety of repairs.


The gang got this young lady's bike all set because she was going to ride without training wheels for the first time. And she succeeded quite well. The look on her face was precious.

I repaired a flat tire for one young man. Afterwards I looked the bike over and discovered he had no brakes. "Oh, I stop with my shoes," he says. So I turned him over to one of the real mechanics who fixed him up. His bike came off the stand and he rode around the parking lot to try it out. He kept Fred Flintsoning even though his Dad and I were reminding him he had brakes. I hope he breaks that habit soon.

This is both fun and worthwhile if you ever want to volunteer. Even if all you can do is fix flats, which is pretty much my skill set, you'll be busy. I worked on a lot of tires.

Marathon Training Weeks 11 and 12

Not doing too bad. Last Saturday I did 17 miles. Today I was supposed to do 19 but I had to cut it to 16 since I had to be someplace by 10:00. It seems I can run forever if I stick to a ten-minute mile pace. As it is, I'm looking forward to the marathon on June 1--so I'll be done.

Magical Mystery Meat Tour

When it rains, it pours. I stumbled across Mystery Meat Macrophotography showing close-up shots of various meat food products, salami, sausage and hot dogs, you would never find in my house. It's pretty disgusting stuff.

It's Not My Job?

Interesting occurrence this morning on my bike commute to work. I stopped at the 4-way at Lincoln and Standard. To my left, westbound on Lincoln, was a car with an iced up windshield and a 4x6-inch clear spot the driver was looking through. To my right, eastbound on Lincoln, was a Spokane police car. "Alright", I thought, "Someone is going to get pulled over." The blinded driver sat there and didn't budge while cars in all four directions pulled up and stopped. He flashed his lights, I believe for me to go ahead. He probably didn't see that I came to the stop after he did. I looked at the cop. He had a disgusted look on his face and he wasn't moving either. So nobody moved and I thought, "Alright, someone is going to get pulled over." Finally the blind driver went through the intersection. The cop was shaking his head and then he went through the intersection. I thought, "Hey wait--Shouldn't you?--Isn't he?--What if he?--Well, damn!"

The Spokane Police Department recently announced they would be emphasizing the enforcement of jaywalking violations in the downtown area for the next couple of weeks. Presumably they've had a lot of pedestrians getting struck by cars with iced up windshields. Or something.

More Food News

Have a look at this article in Vanity Fair. More reason to support local farmers and have a garden of your own.

Marathon Training Weeks 9 & 10

My total mileage for each week is still short, but I'm getting longer runs in. Yesterday I did 13 miles in 2 hours. I'll have to start bringing something along to eat and drink now. I started flagging during the last mile because I got really hungry. That's to be expected, but going through the experience helps you remember it better. I saw plenty of cyclists yesterday. I wanted to join them so bad.