I know, I bet you’re all wishing Amy would come back (or at least you will by the time you get to the end of this post which somehow became a lot more political than it was meant to be)! But I have two things to mention today. The first is I had an interesting experience today in the computer lab I work in. A young black lady came in for some help (I use the word black because I find the term African-American to be offensive for 3rd+ generation black people. The term almost implies as if they are somehow less American than I am, that they are first African, and then American. The phrase also implies that only black people live there which is equally false. So now that you know why I use the word “black” instead of “African-American” I hope you won’t find it offensive). And I notice that she’s wearing this shirt that has a dramatic picture of Obama and Martin Luther King.
I must admit I was stuck with the irony of the shirt. As I’ve mentioned before (or at least as I think I have) I have a great deal of respect for MLK and the fact that he desired genuine equality for all people regardless of skin color. That he desired a future where his children and my children would not be judge based on the color of their skin, and as a victim of racism, I find his ideals inspiring.
So it is that I find the fact that anyone would commend the election of 2008 as shinning beacon of race neutrality ironic at best, and hypocritical at worse.
According to CNN 95% of Black people in America voted for Obama. While historically Black people have voted Democratic ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and no Republican supported the measure, 95% is still an unprecedented high since 1968.
More than that, further research has shown that while white voters remained stagnant and with only a slight sway in favor of Obama, all other racial groups made a radical transition, one that would supersede natural political transition from one group to another following the end of an unpopular election.
Additionally, polling said racial groups revels a complete lack of knowledge in what policies Obama actually stood for. When a policy McCain supported was attributed to Obama they would adamantly support it and when a policy Obama was support was attributed to McCain they would say something like “that’s exactly why I couldn’t vote for him!”
This election was painfully racist! Which is why I find it ironic/hypocritical of people to pair up Obama with MLK. Honestly, I think MLK would be heart broken to see people throw away their votes because of the color of a man’s skin.
I must again state the fact that while I have no problem with a black person being President, I am not a supporter of Obama largely in part to his stance on abortion and his appropriation of tax payers money to support non-essential things to low income families such as digital TV tuners and abortion as well as a great deal of his other policies. See that? That’s judging based on policies not race ;)
The second thing that happened today was as I was leaving the kitchen and heading for my room my eyes fell on a curious little panel on the wall about 7 feet up. On the bottom it read “Fire Alarm Device Do Not Paint”. While that alone is kinda interesting what really caught my eye was this:
Maybe you’ll notice what I did from a different angel.
The past few weeks I have been in the midst of a hard debate with myself. I have long loved bike riding, just a year or so ago I would go on 20 mile bike rides for the fun of it. Up here at DBU, however, there aren’t really what you could call safe bike routes. So I’ve been searching for a nice bike rack that I could put on my car and get back into the habit of bike riding.
The only problem here is that the bike rack I really wanted would cost $500 just for the bare bones. The basic gist of the idea is that I have no runners on the roof of my car. Runner, of course, meaning those things that you see on mini-vans. But this awesome company named Thule makes runners to install on cars without actually ripping up your roof to do it! They just cost the afore mentioned $500. Then it would cost another $100 for the bike adapter so I could carry around the bike on the runners I just bought. So that idea was a no go.
The second option was a hitch mount. Only, again I have no hitch on my car. I could get it installed but that would put me right back up in to the $300 range and then another $100 for the bike rack.
The final solution is what is called a trunk rack. It uses cords that attach to your trunk to keep it from swaying around. It’s a great idea, and some are as cheep as $40. The downside to this being that it usually causes paint damage to your trunk! I finally decided that this was, however, the only viable method and bought a bell 2 bike rack from Wal-Mart. It took me 10 minutes to set it up the first time and I realized, “Wow, that’s horrible.”
It was a cheep design, it lacked the straps necessary to prevent horizontal movement on the trunk, and it looked kind gaudy. Plus, it lacked proper fasteners to secure the bike in such a manner that the bike wouldn’t hit the bumper of my car all the time. I realized quite quickly that I could use this bike rack, but that it would demolish my trunk in the mean time.
Fortunately, earlier today, Amy and I had stopped by this wonderful (albeit slightly inflated prices) bike shop called Bicycles Inc. A nice older gentleman showed me the pros and cons of the different trunk racks and after hearing the price tag, I politely turn him down.
Having set up the Wal-Mart bike rack, however, I quickly removed it, and sped with all haste back to the bike shop before it closed. I arrived with mere minutes to spare, purchased the bike rack (which while being worth it still pained me to pay).
It’s a Saris Bones 2-bike model. It was a little difficult to set up the first time, but that was mainly because I was unfamiliar with trunk bike racks in the first place. Once everything was in place, I tried to give it a little jiggle and was EXTREMELY satisfied when not only did it not move an inch, but it actually caused me to jiggle the car!
Here are some pictures I took after driving it back to DBU. You can see in the bottom picture that it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of room for a second bike to be placed without bumping the bumper, but I’m not sure if that’s reality or just a trick of the photograph.
Ironically, After all the work I did getting this set up and making sure my bike was in shape, I forgot my helmet! Oh well, I played some ultimate Frisbee for the first time since I got a grade 2 sprain of my ankle (playing ultimate Frisbee a year ago) and needless to say, my leg muscles aren’t too happy with me right now. It didn’t really help anything that it was about 30-40 degrees outside from what weather.com says, but it was a blast none the less! I look forward to getting to drive out to some bike trails in the area and start biking again!
