If you accidentally knock something off your 4th floor balcony on to
the sidewalk below never, ever peak over the rail to see the
consequences of your stupidity. Unless you’re willing to toss money down
after your mistake there’s no way to undo what you did so don’t try;
it’s sort of the apartment life version of a hit and run.
I over-watered my plants one morning and looked down on this angry mob queuing up to enter the supermarket. And as far as what happened today replace “over-watered plants” with “dumped a whole bunch of potting soil over the balcony.”
Valenbisi, the best idea in city living since running water.
Not bad for only 5 days
My New Giant Roam
I live in Valencia, Spain and literally 1K from my
front door (in the city center, sort of) I’m in fields with gravel and dirt
roads. To get to the mountains it’s a bit of a hump (about 18K, minimum) or a
short train ride. I can understand why so many cyclists choose road bikes here
but it’s a 50/50 split between road and mountain bikes. Seven days a week you
will see dozens, even hundreds of cyclists out on the bike paths on mountain
bikes.
Mountain bikes make no sense unless you are doing a
lot of really rough trail riding. I’ve owned a full-suspension bike before and
it was great but I was riding in the American Pacific Northwest with LOTS of
huge mountains with tortuous trails. Valencia lies on a flat coastal plain so a
mountain bike makes little sense here. A hybrid or a cyclo-cross is the best
way to go in Valencia if you don’t want to go with a racing bike set-up.
My first bike here was an Orbea Eibar which is
(was? I don’t know if they still make this model) a hybrid bike with 700c fat
wheels and with front suspension. It was a great bike that served me well until
it was stolen from the store room of my building. My next bike I picked up on
the cheap from a friend, a Trek. This was sort of a mountain bike with
26 inch wheels. I swapped out the knobby tires and put on street slicks so it
would be faster on the road. It was an OK bike but slow. I still have it.
Now I have my new Giant Roam, another hybrid with disc brakes and 700c
wheels. It’s a lot like my old Eibar and a much better option for the type of
riding I do.
I’d say that about 90% of my riding is on pavement,
either the street of paved bike trails. I also ride on a lot of gravel or dirt
roads out in the country. Sometimes here in Valencia you have to make an
unexpected detour across a grove of orange trees or sprint through a sandy
trail at the beach, things that would be all but impossible on a racing bike. I
keep asking myself if I should have bought a cyclo-cross bike, and specifically
this model.
This sort of crap isn’t news to
anyone who lives around here but I like to post weather forecasts so that in
preceding years I can look back and see how the winter played out. I have an
electric blanket (Thanks, Puri) this year and that will help me through the coldest
days of February. I have enough winter cycling clothing to get me through the
worst of it as well. My house is completely comfortable, even on the coldest
days unlike my last ancient apartment that was like camping in the winter. By
the end of the month we will see spring temperatures.
Let’s face it, some of us put on a
little extra weight during the holidays. Granted, that was months ago but those
aren’t the only holidays. Maybe I’m just more festive than most people but I
cook a turkey and a ham to celebrate Flag Day (see our free color supplement
for the recipe for my Star-Spangled Deep-fried Lard Nuggets). And who has time
to go to the gym when there are leftovers to eat? Not me. There are two paths
to take when dealing with holiday overindulging: either lose weight or cover
up. It’s the classic “less ass or more pants” dilemma.
If you’re still reading this instead
of…I don’t know, training for a marathon, then you simply want to look
thinner. The easiest way to pull this off is to wear dark clothes, and when I
say dark I mean pitch black everything, even underwear that people can’t see.
You need to find clothes as dark as any intergalactic black hole in which all
light is trapped and killed mercilessly. Wearing black clothes obscures the
contours of your body. Then you need to stand next to a black background to
further extinguish your contrasts. To take this one step further you should
only leave home on nights when there is no moon.
Any magician will tell you the
importance in misdirection when hiding anything. If David Copperfield can make
the Statue of Liberty disappear I should be able to disguise my little “muffin
top,” although an ex-friend recently described it as a “mushroom cloud.”
All you need to do is distract people from noticing your bulges by
creating a diversion, and by “diversion” I think you need something a little
more powerful that shouting “hey, is that Elvis Presley?” every time you need
to move around in public. Check out our free color supplement for how to induce
a devastating earthquake using normal household cleaning products.
Or maybe it’s not me? Maybe it’s you,
you judgmental body image bully, and by “you” I mean every aspect of our
popular culture that screams out for everyone to be young and thin…at least
those who dare to appear in public. If only all of our flaws were
apparent to the world like a weight problem. What if every time you left your
house people could see that you were among the shameful group of 23% of
Americans who haven’t read a book in the past year? Or what if we gave everyone
a map of the world, made them try to write the name of each country on the map,
and then made them wear it around their neck for the rest of the week? Maybe
then we wouldn’t be so hyper-critical of those who are carrying a few extra
pounds. Seriously, you can’t find India on a map?
