Overheard in the local coffee shop this morning

Two moms complaining about how often their private school kids are off school. "It's like, the more you pay, the less school you get." Talk about your First World problems

Dumpster Diving

I'd never truly understood the term until our longtime neighbor passed away, quite unexpectedly and very young (from our point of view), a couple of weeks ago. Her grown children, who live a time zone away, have the sad duty of cleaning 35 years of life out of the house they now need to get rid of. They did the sensible thing and rented a dumpster. In the past few days we've seen no fewer than four different couples--dumpster divers--standing inside the contraption, picking over furniture, clothing, books, knickknacks, and what have you. I suppose they fulfill an economic function since they are presumably paying the survivors for what they take. Even if they're not, they lighten the load so that it's cheaper to dispose of the remainder. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Thoughts on riding a bike in Howard County

I'm probably wrong, but i remember it as Ernest Hemingway who said that one day you understand you're going to die and nothing is the same afterward. I think that's why I don't ride as much as I'd like: when I'm just sitting around thinking about it, riding in suburban America is scary. Once I get on the bike and go out, though, it's not all that bad. Doesn't mean I'm not still gonna get run over and die, but being on the bike is not as scary as just thinking about being on the bike. Most people around here give you your 3 feet, and then some, and are generally alert to cyclists. Thanks, HoCo drivers. And the roads in my part of the county generally have a bit of shoulder to ride on. The storm grates are the ostensibly bike-friendly kind, too, though I do not take my road bike over them.

That said, it would be better for bikes and cars both if the roads were better maintained and we were all less careless about what falls off or gets thrown out of our vehicles. Cracked pavement, potholes of various sizes, metal scraps, broken glass, wet leaves, low-hanging tree limbs, shoes, bottles, cups, and overgrown brambles may annoy us when we're in cars, but all of them can cause serious damage when we're on bikes.

I don't expect bike lanes. I know money's tight and there are better things to spend it on than weekend cyclists (I have no illusions about our car-crazy populace suddenly biking to school and the grocery store, myself included), but come on, county administration. Why do you tease us with 200 feet of bike lane that disappears into a narrow piece of road with no shoulder whatsoever? I suppose that's the bike equivalent of the sidewalk to nowhere, with which we're all too familiar around here.