GreenEye Wire

If you look closely, you will see a silver V patch on the white part of the frame. Look above and see the crank is touching the frame of the bike. Thankfully, only a $10 repair. If the $100 pedals were bent, I'd be much more pissed. The only damage to me was a minor scratch under my left knee.

Here I thought I’d take a nice bike ride in the cool of the morning before the horrible heat of the day. Less than a mile from my house, when I was crossing a driveway in front of a car, I lost the battle with a grill. Thankfully, other than the bruise you see in the picture, I think I’m ok.

See, here in the state of Texas, we don’t have bicycle lanes. I’m not sure why this is, but basically, my choices as a cyclist are to bike on the sidewalk (illegal) or bike on the road and take my chances with car drivers who hate cyclists. I was actually on the sidewalk cruising along when I came to a driveway where a car was waiting to get onto the street. No big deal, her window was open, so I started screaming

“Hey, Hey HEY HEY HEY!”

She proceeded to ignore me right as I was in front of her car. IN FRONT OF HER CAR! I honestly believe that there could have been a troop of stark naked Hawaiian fire dancers juggling their fire sticks while wearing neon stripes on their bare bodies and she would have paid no attention. Hell, I could have been accompanied by an entire MARCHING BAND and she would have claimed not to see me.

I can only imagine the dialog she had with herself as she got up this morning:

“Hmmm. Ya know. I’m feeling kinda spacey today. What should I do?”

“Hmmmm. Maybe I should stay at home and watch some TV. Nooooo. That’s too easy. I KNOW! I’LL GET IN THE CAR AND DRIVE! That way, EVERYONE can share my spaceyness!!”

The Delta Airhorn: 115 Decibels of SCREAM

She was, actually concerned, though, and she *did* help me get the chain back on the crank. I’ve had another incident where a driver actually was more concerned with his car than he was with the fact he might have killed me. Ah, Texans.

But, no fear. I’ve decided to be more prepared. I’ve invested in a neat little contraption that should give me a little more voice should a situation like this happen again: The Delta Airhorn. Considering most people in Texas drive only with their windows tightly shut and their air conditioners blasting and radios turned on, I have to wonder if even that is enough to get their attention.

I do know what *would* get their attention for sure. I am going to invest in some used golf balls and put them on my handlebars. If I think someone is *not* paying attention, I shall throw the golf ball onto the windshield. Nothing gets a Texan’s attention more than an object thrown at their car.

Though, if I do this, I’d better be willing to pedal fast. Reeal fast. Texans are also known to carry guns on them, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they would shoot to protect their car from being damaged.

1. On each person’s yearly anniversary with the company they receive a card signed by all the employees congratulating and thanking them for being there another year. Your yearly anniversary comes and goes with no acknowledgment.

2. The other person in your department who has the same skill set and experience that you have is paid $30K more.

3. The person who is paid $30K more than you do leaves. The boss looks outside the company instead of asking you if you want to assume his position.

4. You aren’t asked for you input, or asked to even see the resume of the person who is ultimately hired to take over the position even though you are supposed to work closely with this person.

5. You negotiate an unpaid vacation so you don’t eat into your PTO time. After you leave, your boss tells the HR manager to dock your PTO time anyway.

6. You suddenly find out most of your coworkers (at least the ones in equivalent or higher positions) have annual reviews of their job performance, accompanied by raises, promotions, etc. You’ve been there over a year, and never heard of any such thing.

7. At Christmas time, your ‘appreciation’ card has a $20 gift certificate to the pizza place, instead of a $100 check.

8. At Christmas, you’re the only one who’s “Secret Santa” forgets to buy them a gift.

9. You request vacation time four months in advance, and get turned down after bugging HR for two months. Later you find out the *new* guy requested time off during the same month, but he was approved, even though he put in his request only a week before you got turned down.

I really really hate directions. I hate when I call someone to ask for their address to plugin into a map tool and their reply is “Where are you coming from.”

Because the thing is, NOBODY can give good directions. Unless you know exactly where I’m coming from, the directions will always be wrong. Always.

Being the damn Yankee American over in Europe is bad enough with all the Anti-American crap going around, so as a guest to my German family, I’ve tried to be as low maintenance as possible. I figured an early morning trip to England from Germany would be no big deal and was pleased to find an airline deal with RyanAir. My family is located in a town outside of Dusseldorf, so I figured a flight from any Dusselsorf airport would would be similiar in distance.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that Dusseldorf Weeze NRN airport is a full 70 KM outside of Dusseldorf in a place the Germans refer to as “Pampa”. (Americans would call this BFE — for Butt F*ck Egypt.) Literally, Weeze is a tiny town nearly in the Netherlands — in the middle of nowhere, and absolutely NOT close to Dusseldorf, and outside of any train or bus access in the wee morning hours — save for one train in the middle of the night that takes 6 hours to travel the necessary distance.

So here’s my rant: how in the f*ck can RyanAir say their terminal is in Dusseldorf when it ain’t even close? What kind of pot were they smoking when they named the terminal “Dusseldorf Weeze NRN”? It makes no sense.

The only way to make my flight was to ask my friend K to drive me. At 4AM.

So much for being low maintenance.

After a search, I found that I’m not the only one who thinks RyanAir is full of crap.   One has to wonder why, a full 4 years later the name Dusseldorf is still being used to describe Weeze.

So, I finished a triathlon the other day. My first one, and I was excited to get the images.  (Though sad they didn’t get a picture of me out of the swim.)  Here I am in the Bike and Run:

Bike

Run

Thrilled, as it was a big moment for me. I’ve never competed in anything in my life. Of course, I want pictures of the event.

Come to find out, they *only* come in prints. So, I wrote asking for the digital version. Yes, one could purchase the digital version, but one must send a *check* in order to get one. I asked about paypal — for god’s sake, my MOTHER has a paypal account. NOPE. No paypal.

I am appalled at how some people have not evolved past 1992. If you have a website, HAVE AN ONLINE PAYMENT METHOD.

Jeesh.