I went bicycle riding in one of the local parks a few days ago. It's a trail called a"singletrack", because it's mainly a single track through the trees, very narrow, with trees close in on the sides. It's quit possible to hit or clip a tree with only a moments distraction. There are plenty of scars on the trees to demonstrate this. Here's a bit of stream-of-consciousness dialogue from my last ride:

Yesterday morning I went for a ride on the singletrack path in my favorite city park, lots of trees on each side, you have to pay attention, very twisty trail. I'm normally thinking about what direction I'll dive off the trail into the trees if someone zooms up from the opposite direction (I don't have a history of dismounting gracefully in panic stops). That morning, my thoughts went something like this:

Oh, boy, there were a lot of cars with bike racks in the parking lot... maybe I should keep ringing the bell on the handlebars... nope, keep your hands on the bars, you wobble around enough as it is... this is nice, another half-hour and it will be too hot... whoa, nearly caught the handlebar end on that one... what's that in the middle of the path ahead... can’t quite make it out... it's a squirrel, why is he staring at me like that, get out of the way... GET OUT OF THE WAY... oh, great, now he's trying to outrun me down the twisty trail about two feet in front of me... I go right, he goes right... I go left, he goes left... I think he's toying with me... he looks back, I'm not sure if he is really trying to get away or checking to make sure he hasn't lost me... I'm beginning to suspect this wasn't an accidental meeting... wow, he sure can corner better than I can... he's got the whole forest to play in, why pick here and now... he dives right off the path... aaiieee, there's that nasty root drop, anchors out, pay attention... I come to a stop and swear I hear high-pitched squeaky laughing from back there.. maybe more than one.

Initiation rite? Maybe. For all I know, they even have a secret handshake. But if see a squirrel on this path next time I'm riding, I'm not slowing down.

Back after a while

It's been around two years since the last entry. Obviously no one is reading this, as there are no comments. In the interim, I've taken up mountain biking and had a car totaled (not my fault).

I go riding in Walnut Creek Park, a five minute drive from my house. I don't ride on the city streets, too much car traffic. Also, no shade.

I hiked this park for a few weeks and then decided to get a bike. I'm 68 and needed to do something for a higher level of exercise to recover from surgery, and this seemed to fit the bill. I find I like it a lot and will continue now that I'm recovered.

This park is interesting. It has 12 miles of trails, and the majority of the bike trails (the twisty parts with lots of shade) were constructed by a local mountain bike club, if I have my facts right. The city wanted some trails, and the biking community stepped up and designed and built the trails themselves, under the nominal supervision of the park staff. Two or three times a year, the club members get together and spend a day or so doing maintenance... drainage, trash removal, etc.

A fun place to ride.

Gecaching

I took up geocaching in January. Partly to get some exercise, I've been hanging around the house way too much since I retired. I bought an inexpensive DPS receiver and got some locations from geocaching.com, and I was on my way! There are dozens of greenbelt parks around Austin, and near as I can tell, all them have one or more caches in them. So far I’ve been lucky and haven’t run into any snakes or other nasty creatures while bushwhacking. I've found 256 caches since the first week in January, which pales in comparison to the 16,000+ that have been found by one of our local women cachers.

I'll probably taper off a bit during the summer months, since I'll only go out early in them morning.

My iPod quit working last week so I got a new one. I'm now on my third one in six years. Now I'm wondering if they have a lifetime of about 3 years. My first one died of a broken FireWire socket after three years, the second of a hard drive failure after three years.

I don't listen to music a lot on the iPod, it's mainly for the 6 or 7 podcasts I routinely follow. So it's not a case of missing the music. Still, I guess it wasn't all that bad, I bought it as a refurb from the Apple store, and it gets used a lot, both while I'm driving and when I'm walking various places around the city.

It's replacement is a nice shiny iPod Nano. I calculated the thing could hold pretty close to a month's worth of podcasts if I got a bit behind. It's nice not having to worry about a hard drive going out. The Nano is wonderfully small and light, and has a much improved interface over the 3rd gen iPod I had before.

I use an iPod because of the tight integration with the iTunes store (although I haven't purchased many things from the actual store). I can set iTunes u to automatically download the podcasts I'm interested in and auto load onto the iPod when I plug it in once in a while. I’m not aware of any other MP3 player that can do this so easily.

The Kindle

I've had my Kindle for about 3 hours now. First impression: It pretty much lives up to the hype. It seems to be exactly what I need for reading. It's legible, light, and can download books from Amazon in 1-2 minutes via wireless (no extra charge for the wireless connection). I bought the entire Sherlock Holmes collection for something like $3.50. You can get all of Shakespeare's works for around $4.50. Same for all of Mark Twain's works. New best-seller hardcover can be purchased and downloaded for $9.99, about a third of the hardcover price from a bookstore.

This thing holds 200 books (with an option for increasing memory with an SD card). And all of them are searchable. And bookmarkable. And it has a built-in dictionary. And web browser. And it can display Google maps of your location (not tried yet).

What's not to like? Well, it's $360, but I calculate the payback is around 2 years for me. And I don't have to worry about paper dust from old books making me sneeze.

I downloaded around 90 books from Project Gutenberg and the like, all in Kindle format. I think it's a winner. It may not make sense for many, but I think it does for me.

UPS strikes again

I ordered a Kindle from Amazon yesterday. Within a few minutes of pickup from the ship point, UPS and Amazon were both insisting that the device had been delivered 18 months ago to a city 150 miles away. Turns out the UPS tracking numbers are re-used, although it's not clear if it's UPS or the shipper that is at the root of the problem.

I called UPS and got someone who wasn't surprised (and not concerned, either) and checked and said the package was on schedule. If they could tell this, why couldn't their web service?

Very strange.

More later.

The Death of Profanity

There has been a trend for years for more and more profanity to enter casual conversation. When I was a teenager, I remember hearing profanity only very occasionally. When you did hear it, it caught your attention. Profanity is almost used as punctuation and an all-around adjective these days. My question is: what do we now use as profanity? What do we use as an emphasis? I suspect that profanity has ceased to be very useful any more in its traditional sense. It no longer serves as an indicator of strong emotion or a disturbance.

Pity.