Rocky Hillside

Image from "A Honeymoon to Remember" by Erin Arnold Barkley and Sam Barkley.

More from Paul Fattaruso's Bicycle:

We arrive at an intricate crossroads. I hand the compass over to the bicycle.

PrideFest Denver

Following up on our amazingly successful Bloomsday entertainment recommendation, here's our super official recommendations for spending this weekend in Denver.

All bikeable. All local. Mostly free or cheap.

• Critical Mass is Friday - Seal Fountain Pool in Civic Center Park.
• “The Play’s the Thing” New Play Festival - Free readings of new plays at 7PM Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The theatre is located at 2180 Stout Street (Stout Street and 22nd Street), next to the Mercury Cafe.
• Cherry Blossom Festival - Dancing, drumming, ikebana and bonsai lectures, and food. There's even a Spam sushi demonstration. Saturday evening, if this year is like earlier years, there's dancing under the lanterns. Many of the dancers wear lovely kimonos. Between Lawrence and Larimer, and 19th and 20th - Sakura Square.
• Starz Film Center - Maybe it's because the Denver French Film Festival is on. Maybe it's a reinvigorated Denver Film Society. Whatever it is, Starz is showing a bunch of intriguing films this weekend. This costs cash, but the Film Society needs it.
• Volunteer to park bikes at PrideFest - BikeDenver needs volunteers. Always more fun to be involved. And even for straight folk PrideFest is a hoot.
• Cowtown Comix Fest - Saturday 1-5 at Tattered Downtown. That's at 1628 16th St (16th & Wynkoop) Downtown Denver. "Meet Denver comics creators that are making unusual, personal, artistic, and/or literary comics outside the mainstream, view their work, and hear them talk." Free.
• The Denver PrideFest Parade - If there's a better Denver parade to watch, we don't know what it is. Sunday, starts at Cheesman at 9:30 AM and then proceeds to the Civic Center.
• La Popular tamales - for a people-watching picnic at Civic Center or at Confluence.

Image by darren webb. Some rights reserved.

When the kids were young, most weekend mornings, I schlepped them out the door early for donuts and a hike or a visit someplace. (Gerty likes to sleep in on weekend mornings.) As the kids grew up, there were games, piano lessons, and birthday parties. Barring a work crisis, I generally drove them here and there and enjoyed standing on the sidelines or drinking coffee until they needed another ride.

The kids are older now. They have wandered off, plan their own days, or enjoy joining Gerty in sleeping until noon. And, I haven't adjusted. I spend too many weekends rattling around waiting to play with children who aren't usually terribly interested in playing with me.

It's odd (and troubling) that it has taken me so long to realize what's going on.

Since I have caught on, I have noticed how many other people spend their time waiting for things that are rare, or at least a long way off. My father waits for his children to visit and for a sickness to carry him off. A friend waits for Sunday and Monday football. Gerty waits for me to retire so we can travel together. Another friend waits for the next big movie release.

• Fake 3D crater designed to slow down London cyclists - seems a creative and amusing way to handle the problem. It's certainly better than speed bumps.
• Environmentalists baffled by Obama's strategy - Hmmmm. Wasn't his appointment of Salazar for Interior sort of a clue?
• Erin and Sam's wonderful story continues - Scroll down for some incredible pictures.
• I was recently introduced to someone who, learning of my interest in cycling, proceeded to rant about how awful her steel-framed, 24-speed Bianchi touring bike is for commuting. She can't wait until her new carbon fiber bike comes in. Made me think of this.
• The Art of the Bicycle is the current exhibition at the curiously-named ArtCentre of Plano. (That's Plano, Texas. If you are trapped there, you might want to look up the Plano Bicycle Association.

• I confess I, too, have forgotten that crucial last step:

  Yesterday I did a quick, successful lunch hour tire change to the non-studded fat-enough tire (since the one from the original Xtra wanted to pop off the rim ’cause it was too skinny), and accidentally noticed the word “rotation” stamped into it… but still actually installed it backwards.  So I deflated and rotated and stuck it back on inless than four minutes (!?!? )  … and came out at 5:00 and the thing was flat.  Methinks, tho’, that I sort of forgot thatlast step of, um, inflating it, since I pumped it up and it’s been peachy since. 

Image by Dustin DeKoekkoek. Some rights reserved.

I am speechless. Drunk, speeding, killer. Thirty fucking days?

From AP:

Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte' Stallworth began serving a 30-day jail sentence Tuesday for killing a pedestrian while driving drunk in Florida,

From the Cleveland Browns:

A statement from General Manager George Kokinis: "The Browns are very conscious of the seriousness of the charges to which Donte' Stallworth plead guilty to today. We are continuing to evaluate the situation and will make the decisions that we believe are in the best interest of the Cleveland Browns."

That's the problem. What's best for the Cleveland Browns. How about the rest of us? How about the rest of society? What an immoral shit.

Stallworth, prosecutor Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Dennis Murphy, and the Cleveland Browns - absolute assholes.

What could they possibly, possibly be thinking. Are they human?

. . . I think I'm slowly, surely, turning into Yehuda. . . .

-- baudman

Thanks Rick!

Image by jenni ripley. Some rights reserved.

I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Official Rocky Hillside Bloomsday celebration suggestions:

• Have someone you like murmur the above passage in your ear.
• Imagine Marilyn reading the lines above. (The passage above is at very end of the Ulysses. Looks as if Marilyn's reading them in the photo!)

• Hop on tonight's special Bike Denver ride.

  The ride leaves from Thatcher Fountain in City Park at 6PM, passes through the Botanic Gardens - garden, bloom, Leopold Bloom, Ulysses (get it?) - and heads down to Wash Park for a free picnic (and a New Belgium beer.) Afterwards stop for a Guinness here (on the way back) or here (if you stop at Wash Park) or here (if your way back is south) or there (if you're a Nobel Prize winner or one isn't enough.)

I saw one of these yesterday. Took me a while to figure out what it was. It's an electric-powered, smaller than a Smart, American Electric Kurrent

American Electric's website copy is a kick. Above a banner that says "The Anti-Muscle Car," the website makes this pitch:

[Q]uirky Kurrent is practically a moving billboard that says, One Very Interesting Person Owns This.

And then there's the list of standard features:

STANDARD FEATURES: Unlike other neighborhood vehicles, Kurrent comes standard with doors, a windshield, windshield wipers and a roof.

A windshield AND a roof.

• Paul Krugman spent the day cycling and the evening drinking beer. You can do that if you've won the Nobel Prize. You can do that if you haven't won the Nobel Prize.
• Local entertainment is like local food. Generally the taste is better, but even if it's not, buying local makes where I live better. (And where I live isn't just where I plant my feet.)
• The "door closes on [whatever]" metaphor is getting tiresome.
• Colorado still suffers from the mad idea that every public service should pay for itself, except all that stupid stuff we took for granted in the 1950s. (We have an inalienable right to all that stuff.) That, and an unwillingness to lead that seeps into the marrows of our public officeholders.
• Mental health . . . one is responsible for one's own. It is not an excuse or even vaguely okay to say "I didn't feel like getting up today." "You made me [mad|depressed|a jerk]!", isn't any better.

• Bicycle Diaries has fascinating commentary about a 1922 Chicago Tribune article: "Every 19th cager driving the streets had killed or injured a human being in 1921."

  (Bicycle Diaries found the article on The Hope Chest.)

• Marry someone who loves to camp. Gerty loves to camp. Six days of rain and her happiness hasn't flagged.
• Marry someone who rides every day. Even when it's raining. Even when she's camping. (It's when she writes her poetry.)
• Marry someone who settles a quarrel by leaving a haiku in your teapot. Gerty does that, too.
• I am so lucky.

Image by Tom Page. Some rights reserved.

My first glance at the news today informed me: "Penguins World Champs!" Made me laugh. I assumed some curious new penguin behavior had been discovered.

When I realized that the story wasn't about birds, I laughed even harder. There's a sport that has a team called the "Penguins"?! From Pittsburgh!?

Penguins. "Go Penguins!" "Rah Rah Penguins!" Love it.

Image by James Gaither. Some rights reserved.

It's just so hard to keep up with Denver's bike program. You've got to check its website nearly every six years or so or to catch all the wonderful new stuff that isn't happening.

Denver has finally (we are talking years and years here) updated its Bike Program website. The embarrassing "Share the Sidewalk" focus has faded a bit - there's now a picture of sharrows on a real street. The street might even be in Denver.

A January 2009 press release brings the bicycle program press release list up to date. There's now a total of 3 in 6 years. The pace may be picking up.

The "new" one announces that Denver's bike sharing program will begin this summer. It won't, though it was supposed to back when the release was written. (But even if it's wrong, it's at least intelligible. Check out number one!)

Who knows, in a few more years we may even see some photos of cyclists using city streets. At the pace this baby is rocketing along, anything is possible.

Image by Jon Tucker. Some rights reserved.

Earlier this week, I wrote about a NYTimes article by Jonathan Glater entitled "College in Need Closes a Door to Needy Students."

The gist of the article is that, because of the recession, Reed College dropped more than 100 needy students from its next class and gave their places to wealthy students who Reed wouldn't otherwise admit.

Glatner's article gives the impression that this was a disturbing change for Reed:

The whole idea of excluding a student simply because of money clashed with the college’s ideals, Leslie Limper, the aid director, acknowledged. “None of us are very happy,” she said, adding that Reed did not strike anyone from its list last year and that never before had it needed to weed out so many worthy students. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this.”

I now think the article (and most of what I wrote based on it) is wrong, but I am not entirely sure. (I deleted my original post.)

=> Read more!

Everyone who pledges to KGNU, Boulder/Denver's community radio station, during the Summer Mini-Drive will be entered in a drawing to win a vintage, candy apple red 1970's Schwinn Suburban five-speed. KGNU will plant a tree in the National Forest for every pledge, too. (The bike was restored and donated to KGNU by Community Cycles!)

The fundraiser ends June 14.

Part of my distress during the Bush years was the feeling that nearly everyone else in the country was blind or nuts. KGNU was a lifeline. I didn't (and don't) agree with everything I heard on KGNU, but listening to other, non-mainstream voices made me feel less isolated.

An excerpt from "Infatuation" by Stephen Dunn:

. . . there she was—at my door.
Let’s go somewhere, she said,
and it didn’t matter that the wind
had come up or that the cold
we were about to walk into
was certain to sting and burn.

- Stephen Dunn

"Infatuation" appears in Stephen Dunn’s 2006, Everything Else in the World.

Green M&Ms are green on the outside and brown on the inside. Image by Heidiiscrazyaboutsoc cer. Some rights reserved.

More coastal drilling? Sierra Club's against it. Oceana's against it. Mark Udall and The American Petroleum Institute are for it.

I can't wait to hear the explanation for this one. (What is going on with Mark Udall?)

From the NYTimes:

=> Read more!

Image by P/\UL. Some rights reserved.

For many years my grandfather has spent clear nights in the backyard, trying to pick out the constellation of the silver bicycle.

-- Paul Fattaruso

Most pages of Bicycle by Paul Fattaruso contain only a few lines. Sometimes those lines seem to really be about bicycles. Sometimes they are reassuring. Sometimes they are like popping a Zotz candy into one's thoughts.

From Community Cycles: Park(ing) Spaces Boulder Colorado:

On June 12th, Park(ing) Spaces Day, businesses and individuals will occupy and transform parking spaces into places where visitors can stop, visit and benefit from many different types of activities.

Visitors to the Park(ing) Space locations can participate in mini-exercise classes, be a guest at a beach party, play games, kick back and read a book, lounge on some rolled out grass or patio furniture, practice yoga or just hang out and chat with other visitors in overstuffed chairs for a little while to take a break.

Showing up just to gape can be awkward if there aren't many other people around. Community Cycles has taken a whack at overcoming this by giving us a reason to visit these little oases. Cyclists can take along a Bingo card, get it stamped at each designated Park(ing) space, and enter a drawing for prizes.

[Via It's Just A Ride] If poetry is too high-brow, here's a PSA that isn't.

Why haven't I seen this before?! You can buy one at lowercase tee.

Image by Dustin DeKoekkoek. Some rights reserved.

Unbelievable. [Via today's sermonette.] How do you kill two people and get less than the minimum sentence for killing one? Simple: Use a car.

A woman with a long history of irresponsible behavior and an outstanding hit and run warrant drove her pickup into an group of cyclists, killing two of them. She was intoxicated (more precisely, drugged), not wearing her required glasses, and on her way from shoplifting.

In Colorado, the minimum sentence for vehicular homicide while intoxicated, a class 3 felony, is four years. C.R.S. 18-3-106(1)(c) (vehicular homicide); C.R.S. 18-1.3-401(1)(a)(V)(A) (sentencing). The maximum sentence is twelve years. Aggravating circumstances can double the maximum - here that raises the maximum to 24 years. C.R.S. 18-1.3-401(6).

Because Ms. Thomas killed two people - that's two felonies -- she was facing a minimum sentence of 8 years and a maximum of 48 years.

The judge gave her only three years. Less than the minimum for one killing. One sixteenth of the maximum sentence. (She will probably serve only around half of the three year sentence.)

The judge didn't even give the killer the six-year maximum sentence allowed under a plea agreement. (Why the state would agree to cap a potential 48-year sentence at six years is beyond me.)

What exactly would it take for the judge to give her more time? What else could she possibly do?

=> Read more!

On June 16th at 6PM take an unusual ride with Bike Denver.

Riding through the Botanic Gardens usually gets a fellow arrested. On June 16, it gets you a picnic dinner:

Join BikeDenver, Denver Botanic Gardens and Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) for a Summer Park-to-Park bicycle ride from City Park, through the Denver Botanic Gardens, to the Dos Chappell Bathhouse at Washington Park. . . . Refreshments and a picnic will be provided by VOC and Denver Botanic Gardens at the Bathhouse. This is a community ride open to the public. The ride starts at 6pm and leaves from Thatcher Fountain . . . .

"It was [the] rickshaw drivers who slowly pedaled out toward the troops to collect the bodies of the dead and injured. Then they raced back to us, legs straining furiously, rushing toward the nearest hospital." AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing image from http://cryptome.cn/tk/tiananmen-kill.htm.

The NYTimes' Nicholas Kristof describes the heroism of bicycle rickshaw drivers during the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989:

It was night; the gunfire roared in our ears; and the Avenue of Eternal Peace was streaked with blood. Uniformed army troops massed on the far end of the square, periodically raising their assault rifles and firing volleys directly at the crowd I was in. . . .

Then the volley would end, and in the deafening silence we would stop and look back. In the hundred yards between us and the soldiers would be kids who had been shot, lying dead or wounded on the ground. . . . none of us dared to go forward to help the injured as they writhed. . . .

Troops had already opened fire on an ambulance that had tried to collect the injured, so other ambulances kept their distance.

Finally, some unlikely saviors emerged — the rickshaw drivers. These were peasants and workers who made a living pedaling bicycle rickshaws, carrying passengers or freight around Beijing. It was those rickshaw drivers who slowly pedaled out toward the troops to collect the bodies of the dead and injured. Then they raced back to us, legs straining furiously, rushing toward the nearest hospital.

One stocky rickshaw driver had tears streaming down his cheeks as he drove past me to display a badly wounded student so that I could photograph or recount the incident. That driver perhaps couldn’t have defined democracy, but he had risked his life to try to advance it.

Jesus being passed a bottle by Mary. Image from bicycles-for-humanity

There's a patron saint of bicyclists, Madonna del Ghisallo.

Who knew?

• Bicycle Diaries posts a frightening and extraordinarily well-made video depicting the failure of official efforts to make the streets of Paris safer for cyclists. Hypnotic (and compelling.)

  Thom's reaction should be read by Denver's mayor: "It takes more than rental bikes!"

• David Byrne is in El Salvador. Why aren't I?

  I’m staying at an Auto Hotel. The room has an attached garage. At first I thought she said it costs $40; but it’s just $14, and two cold beers come with the room.

• Anatomy of a Car Crash - Podcast:
  

  Tracing the profound physical and emotional toll on all those involved in the wake of a single collision on a road.

• Can't say that I think there will be a lot of demand for this:

  Have you been running or cycling . . . and someone passes you aggressively without a word, honk or ding? Dave Kuhlman and Steve Lutz had this experience as runners and they realized that the “polite” people on the path call out “ON YER LEFT!” The idea to create a running and cycling apparel company came out of their desire to coin a phrase that everyone should use as a friendly way to overtake someone on the trails.

  Seems as if those who should be saying "on your left" hate saying it constantly; those who are supposed to hear it either can't (because they have headphones on) or hate hearing it.

• A new Joe King (and Yehuda) comic! - Yehuda's official return date is June 17:

  

• How To Read The WSJ For Free Online

• Enviros debate climate bill - Mainstream enviros have a nauseating tendency to be cheerleaders for anything the Democrats do. Is their support of the climate bill an instance of this or not?

  Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen and Dan Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council debate new climate & energy bill.

  Video and podcasts from Democracy Now!

From the LATimes:

The Interior Department on Tuesday said Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and 144 other national parks would offer free admission on three weekends this summer: June 20-21, July 18-19 and Aug. 15-16.

At Yosemite, that can save $20 per car, or $10 per person for those who arrive by foot, bicycle or motorcycle.

"During these tough economic times, our national parks provide opportunities for affordable vacations for families," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said . . . .

A good idea, though it should be for 365 days a year, not 6.

Perhaps this is a step toward a rational and honest policy discussion about the value of our public lands and their purpose. Access to our public lands should be free. As a society, we are better off if our citizens spend time outdoors in a natural environment. If we need to ration that experience, we shouldn't let the richer in and the keep the poorer out.

In the 1980s national parks were allowed to increase their fees and to keep more fees in the individual parks. Other public land agencies were encouraged to require fees for things once free. The new and increased fees were sold to the public as the only way to maintain the parks they loved. That was a lie.

=> Read more!

Image by M J M/Mike. Some rights reserved.

From a comment by Val masquerading as Anonymous on a Bicycle Diaries post:

Random Stranger []: How far do you ride?
Me: Just until I get where I'm going.
RS: Oh...you're going somewhere...

Image by Jim Frazier. Some rights reserved.

A comment by Erik Sandblom on Copenhagenize.com [via Urban-Champaign Cycling Ventures]:

Where I live, they have a critical mass for cars. Every day at 4 pm, motorists congregate for hours at particular places on the road network, stopping traffic. They call it "traffic jam" and use it to pressure politicians to improve conditions for the hapless motorists. Ambulances and fire trucks have been known to get caught in the "traffic jam", but the clever motorists claim this only underlines the need for more asphalt.

And they have been very successful. The newspapers buy into the message and write about expanding motorways for cars. They even have whole sections of the newspaper encouraging people to buy fast new cars.

During the campaign, Obama promised to double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011:

"Barack Obama will double the Peace Corps to 16,000 by its 50th anniversary in 2011 and push Congress to fully fund this expansion, . . . ."

What Obama actually did:

This morning President Obama released . . . his Fiscal Year 2010 budget . . . which includes a funding request of $373.5 for the Peace Corps.

This request represents a ten percent increase in spending above the current $340 Million funding level for Peace Corps.

There is, of course, still time. And, of course, Obama has lots of things to worry about, but will next year's budget really include a 90% increase from last year? I doubt it.

The Peace Corps had 15,000 volunteers in 1966 and now has just over half that number. Twenty more countries want volunteers but can't get them.

The Peace Corps is our most effective foreign aid, and it's cheap.