Morning Commute Photos

It's been a while since I've had the camera out. This morning was fun.

Never Again--On Delta Airlines

I'm sure lots of people have seen the video of the Trump supporter being a disruptive asshole on a Delta flight. Now Delta Airlines apologizes for not ejecting him from the plane, is refunding every passenger's air fare, and is permanently barring the guy from flying on their airline.

I don't condone the guys behavior but that's kind of harsh. He was being a disruptive asshole. But so are extreme sports fans and other people with strong feelings for one thing or another that they feel they need to make public. You get one of those people on a flight every once in a while. You see people like that in public all the time. Usually all it takes is a crew member to tell the person or persons to stop or they'll be removed from the aircraft and then remove them if they don't comply. End of story and everybody gets on with their life.

The disruptive asshole in this case was removed from the aircraft and given a talking to. He was allowed back on the plane and he stopped being a disruptive asshole.

Then the video of the guy being a disruptive asshole went viral and everybody is outraged. This guy is being a disruptive asshole! Yes, he was. And he stopped being a disruptive asshole after the crew pulled him from the aircraft and talked to him. But that's not good enough so the airline overreacts and makes sure the guy is not going to be recorded being a disruptive asshole on one of their planes again.

Everybody's blood lust is satisfied now.

AVID BB-7 Fun

I've been taking some of the mystery out of bike maintenance by figuring out the disc brakes on my Elephant NFE. Thanks to the University of YouTube, I found some tutorials on replacing the pads of my Avid BB-7 disc brakes. The rear brakes went smoothly. I thought the front did too, until a couple miles into my test ride and the left pad fell out.

Fortunately, I heard the pad clatter onto the pavement so I was able to retrieve it. I went home, put the bike back on the stand, and reinserted both pads.  I was okay for a short while until I took the NFE on a trail ride on Thanksgiving morning. On the way back my front brake made an awful noise as I slowed while on a long and fast descent. Sure enough, the left pad had fallen out. I had no idea where it was so I limped on home. The nasty noise I heard was the piston hitting the disc.

I put in a  new set of pads while paying careful attention and finally figured out what I had done wrong. The pads were not completely inserted into place. I used a small screwdriver to apply pressure and they finally clicked in tight. The rear brake pads did not need as much convincing. So I'm happy I fixed it. But now the front brake surges when I pull the brake lever. I probably damaged the disc when I applied the brakes with one pad missing.

Go Outside And Play

About 20 guys showed up for a "morning after the morning after" ride that started way out on the South Hill. I rode the Rock Hopper, which looks so much better after a well-deserved make over.  I rode to the ride taking Perry straight south. The map showed three gaps in the roadway on Perry but it looked like there were connecting paths so I wouldn't have to divert to another road. Two of the three gaps do have connecting paths. The third was a huge flight of stairs. So I shouldered the bike and did some stairmaster work.

The trail ride started at High Drive and 57th and headed north. Everyone was headed to Riverside State Park but I had to peel off early to get home in time to do some house hunting. I still got plenty of miles and elevation gain in.

Don't Spread This Image Around The Internet

Apparently our president-elect doesn't care for it. So please respect his wishes.

A Contributing Factor To The Misinformed Electorate

NPR did some snooping and tracked down one of prime creators of fake news web sites, Jestin Coler. Coler owns a company appropriately named Disinfomedia.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. 

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it.

One site, nationalreport.com, is still active. I've seen it before and you don't have to look at it for more than two seconds before realizing it's obviously fake.

During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says. "It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election." 

I noticed. Hence I stopped following a bunch of people on Facebook who kept parroting this crap. On the bright side, my news feed doesn't get me riled up any more.

Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

There's little comfort in knowing that many people didn't fall for the fake crap when you consider how many did.