A Lock--And A Blockchain?

Until a few days ago, I thought a blockchain had something to do with construction machinery or power tools.  Turns out, it's very high tech. In fact, it is a core component of the Bitcoin.

As I understand it, the "block" is a growing list of digital records linked by using cryptography.  Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp and transaction data.  By its design, the cryptographic hash is a one-way function, meaning that it is impossible to invert, i.e., alter.  

Each of the blocks is linked using cryptography.  The blocks can originate from any number of sources and can be transmitted to others.  As an example, a block can be sent from the owner of an object to the police and an insurance company.

You can see where this is going, right?

IBM is working on a system that will allow a bike's owner to register his or her machine via an app.  That information would also be stored on a "smart" lock that would provide the location of the bike when it's parked--and allow transmission of that data to the concerned parties (owner, police and insurer) if the bike is stolen.

Currently, reporting a stolen bike is a cumbersome process in the US and Europe, as Louis de Bruin explains.  "Many interactions are required to exchange information that all these parties do not have at hand," said the IBM Blockchain Lead for Europe.  The blockchain "simplifies the process," he said, because "all information about the stolen bicycle and owner are recorded on the blockchain and available for all parties to access at the right moment."

That IBM is trying this system first in the Netherlands, via IBM Benelux, is not surprising.  After all, there are more bicycles than people in the low-lying nation, and theft is a problem, particularly in Amsterdam.  But IBM sees the potential, not only for individual bike owners, but for owners of rental or bike-share fleets.  In some cities, such as Rome, bike-share programs were halted because of theft and vandalism.

Of course, such a system could also be used to aid in recovering other stolen items, and in detecting counterfeit items.  But it's fascinating to see that, if such a system works, cyclists might be its early adopters.

The Apple Of A Cyclist's Eye

Bicycle parking racks usually are rather nondescript:  A couple of bars of metal planted in the ground or sidewalk.  On occasion, though, one finds a rack that is beautiful, creative, unusual or funny. Sometimes they are practical, sometimes not so.

This one is on the campus of Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina:

I like the look, though I have to wonder how practical it is.  I mean, if only one bike can be parked in it, it's probably not the most efficient use of space.  Then again, being enclosed in such a rack is certainly a way of giving your bike the "royal treatment", to the extent that such a thing is possible when locking your bike outdoors.

Another Path For The Island

My daily commute takes me through Randall's Island.  It's a bit like riding through a large park, as much of the island consists of athletic fields and gardens.  

One thing about it is frustrating, though.  There are pedestrian/bike paths on the island, but they are not connected.   That means, for example, that when you descend from the RFK Bridge ramp, you could find yourself hurtling straight into the path of a bus or Parks Department maintenance truck because the path at the end of the ramp runs for a couple hundred meters before ending abruptly on the island's street.  And it's easy to miss the turn to get onto the path that leads to the Randall's Island Connector, the bike/pedestrian bridge that links the island to the Bronx.

Also, cycling is not allowed on the fields or, understandably, in the gardens.  So it's difficult, if not impossible, to go from, say, the 103rd Street pedestrian bridge to the Connector.

Well, it looks like at least one step is being taken to make the island more navigable for cyclists and pedestrians.  The Randall's Park Alliance has announced that it's received a grant for a new pathway to connect Sunken Garden Fields with the waterfront pathway by the 103rd Street Bridge.

While this will be a boon mainly to people living in (or cycling from) Manhattan, it is at least one link in what could become a system of paths that will allow more traffic-free access to more of the island.  

What is needed, along with that path, is one that transverses the island and allows cyclists and pedestrians exiting the Queens or Manhattan spurs of the RFK Bridge to access the Connector, and the eastern part of the island, without having to contend with buses and trucks barreling down, or traffic exiting the bridge.

One can hope...

Have You Experienced A Hate Crime On Your Bike?

What do lynching, gay-bashing, rape and child molestation have in common?

The perpetrators of these crimes see their victims as less human than themselves.  That is one reason why lynchings and attacks against LGBT people are classified as hate crimes:  Seeing someone as less human than one's self is, to my mind, a pretty good working definition of "hate".  For that reason, I would also classify rape,child molestation and domestic violence in the same way.

And acts of aggression by motor vehicles against cyclists.

Now, I have long felt this way.  But now a study from Australia could give lawmakers good reason to classify motorists who deliberately run cyclists off the road in the same category as those who harass or assault immigrants.




Researchers from Queensland University of Technology, Monash University and the University of Melbourne studied 442 people in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.  

The subjects were first asked whether or not they were cyclists.  Then they were shown one of two images:  one showing the evolution of ape to human, or another showing stages of evolution from a cockroach to human.  That second image was designed, according to Alexa Debosc (the study's lead author) because some cyclists reported slurs in which they were compared to mosquitoes, cockroaches or other insects.  The images were given to the subjects at random.



Perhaps not surprisingly, a far greater percentage of non-cyclists than cyclists rated cyclists as not fully human.  Moreover, non-cyclists were much more likely to put cyclists on the ape or insect (depending on which image they were shown) end of the "spectrum" rather than somewhere in the middle.  Whether the subjects were shown the ape-human or insect-human images, the percentages of subjects who saw cyclists as less than fully human was just about the same.

Perhaps even less surprisingly, non-cyclists were far more likely to engage in harassment of cyclists (e.g., shouting or making rude gestures at us) as well as acts of direct aggression such as throwing an object, driving too close or using a car to deliberately block or cut off a cyclist.

In their report, the researchers acknowledge some inherent biases, as young, high-income males were over-represented at least in comparison to their proportion in the overall Australian population.  It's a lot easier for those with wealth or other kinds of privilege to dehumanize those who lack them:  That is why, for example, members of racial minorities and immigrants are so stigmatized.  

That acknowledgment, however, allows the researchers to draw the parallel I've made between the dehumanization of cyclists by motorists and of minority groups, such as Mexicans and blacks in the US or Arabs and Aborigines in Australia.  That is a very important point because, as the researchers point out, it isn't enough simply to "encourage positive attitudes" in order to curb aggression. (Too many diversity programs, trainings and policies do just that or, worse, try to bully, coerce or intimidate people into such attitudes.)  A better course of action, the researchers say, is to put a human face on cyclists:  Just as prejudice against, say, Muslims or gays results from other people seeing them as monolithic, hostility against cyclists comes from motorists seeing us as lycra-clad law-flouting machines that whiz by them.  

And reducing prejudice, and the resulting aggression, against cyclists or other groups of people could also halt a self-fufilling prophecy.  People who are dehumanized and, as a result, experience prejudice and hostility too often feel resentment and even hate against those who dehumanize them. (I plead guilty to that!)  That, in turn, causes victims to act aggressively, sometimes in collective ways, which helps to reinforce the attitudes of their dehumanizers.  In brief, victims of hate crimes sometimes hate back.  

Of course, one of the reasons why the hated hate the haters is that the haters' crimes are too often punished lightly, if at all because they are not treated as hate crimes.  I can hardly think of a better example than the driver who injures or kills a cyclist by running him or her off the road and gets off scot-free.

Bicycles, Pedestrians and Stormwater

When I wrote for a local newspapers, I experienced the same frustration incurred by other journalistic scribes:  I wrote the articles, but someone else wrote the headlines.  So my carefully-crafted creations were cratered by careless hacks who tacked on  non-sequiturs and puns worse than any you've seen on this blog!

So I feel for whoever wrote the Kirkland Reporter article bearing this title:

Bicycle, Pedestrian and Stormwater Improvements on Kirkland's Market Street begin this week.

When I saw that, I wondered:  How does one improve stormwater?  And how does one improve stormwater and a pedestrian and bicycle at the same time?  

For all I know, it might be an idea that changes the course of history.  Or it might be one of those loopy ideas young people are coming up with now recreational marijuana is legal in Washington State!

Yes, You Really Can Take It With You

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I once moved myself from an apartment in one part of town to another on my bicycle.  I still take pride in that, even if it's somewhat undeserved:  I didn't have much at the time.  Still, it helps to reaffirm what I've always known:  You can carry just about anything you need on a bicycle, as long as you pack it properly.  

Anyway, I now realize that I might take too much pride in my accomplishment.  A native of Sacramento-area Roseville towed his house with his bicycle.

Ike owned a local business but got sick and lost it all.  When he became homeless, he decided he didn't want to stay in one place.  So he fashioned a portable home for himself.  It seems to be made from scrap lumber and other materials from an old building.  Whatever its origins, it shows ingenuity on Ike's part.





He's also built a few others, he says.  He hopes to interest people who might help him build more by donating building materials or bicycles. As he sees it, his bicycle-towed home could be an alternative for other homeless people.

You might say that Ike is turning into an evangelist for his idea:  As he travels, mainly in and around Natomas (just north of downtown Sacramento),  he holds a small ministry.

Reverend Ike on a bike? You gotta love it!

(When I lived in Washington Heights, my daily bicycle commute took me past Reverend Ike's "Palace Cathedral."  It was housed in one of those beautiful or grandiose, depending on your point of view, Art Deco-with-Egyptian motif movie theatres from the 1920s.)

Wearing A Sign To Send A Signal

Most of the time, cycling is good for your health.

There are moments, though, when it can raise your blood pressure, especially if you ride in traffic.

In such a moment, you might be riding as far to the right as you can in the traffic lane because there's no shoulder or bike lane.  It's night, and someone drives close enough to tear off the back of your glove.  Oh, and that car has it's high-beams on.  And the driver honks repeatedly.

If the driver acknowledges you, it's usually with a gesture they don't teach in etiquette classes or words they don't teach in basic English or Spanish or whatever-language classes. 

If Dani Motze hasn't experienced that exact scenario, I am sure she's experienced something just as scary and irksome.  The 28-year-old Reading, Pennsylvania resident says she's been harassed, followed and run off the road in 11 years of pedaling her city's streets.  Oh, and she's been hit by a car.  Another time, she was "grazed"--ironically, when she was on her way to a meeting about cycling.

So, a year ago she took to wearing a sign:

"May Use Full Lane--Change Lanes To Pass"

Her objective, she explains, is not to crusade for the right to ride in traffic. That's already canonized the laws of Pennsylvania, as in most other states.  Moreover, the Keystone State has a "four-foot rule", designating the berth drivers must give cyclists when passing them.  What she wants, she says is to "educate" motorists as well as cyclists.

Motze, who is a social worker and online magazine editor as well as a cycling advocate, says that what she wants is to take the lane in cities and towns, not on highways with 60 MPH speed limits.  That, really, is about as good as we can hope for in the absence of physically separated bike lanes with provisions for turning and crossing intersections.

She sometimes drives a car she shares with her husband.  But most of her commutes and errands are done on her bike, and she sometimes rides for pleasure.

How have drivers responded?  Some well, some not so much, she says.  But, for them most part, in the year Motze has been wearing the sign, "people have been passing me with no issue," she says.   

Test Rider’s Remorse?

If someone were to steal your bike and bring it back a week later, what would you do?

If you are a bike shop owner and the machine came from your inventory, you most likely would call the cops, which would be understandable—and what Anthony Karambellas did.

He is the manager of The Cyclist shop in Costa Mesa, California.  A week earlier, Paul Verdugo Jr. took a $5000 BH Ultralight Evo Disc for a “test ride,” leaving only an ID card.  Apparently, Verdugo built a rapport with shop staff based on his knowledge of bikes.

But Verdugo decided to return the bike, not out of any sense of guilt, but because he was “tired of being recognized,” as he told Karambellas when he called the shop. He took the bike because he’d been a “bike geek” all of his life but couldn’t afford the bikes he wants.  That revelation, not surprisingly, helped the authorities to connect him to other thefts from area bike shops.

Karambellas gave the call to shop owner John Marconi, who arranged for a Lyft car. He also assured Verdugo that there weren’t any police officers at the shop.

Marconi, of course, fibbed. Officers hid in the bathroom and in a delivery van outside the shop.

Verdugo faces charges for stealing, not only the bikes, but the ID card he gave when he took the BH for a “test ride.”

What We Came From?

Being a writer and English teacher, I'm irked by overused (and often inappropriate) words and phrases.  It drives me crazy, for example, when a literate, erudite interviewer asks a good question and the interviewee begins his or her response with "So."  

Another annoying language tic is the use of the word "evolution" when "development" makes more sense.  I even heard someone talk about the "evolution" of medical devices.  Trust me, if you've ever had a mammogram or been treated with a vaginal device (I know that at least half of you haven't!), you know that some medical devices haven't "evolved" much!

And so it is with bicycles.  Writers facing deadline will refer to the "evolution" of the bicycle when they're describing how the Draisienne became today's computer-designed machines.

Then again, they might not be too far off the mark:

Hmm... Maybe the bicycle has "evolved" more than humans have--or, at least, more than humans ever will if we don't get rid of war.

I’m Not Crazy About Their Steaks—Or Bicycle Infrastructure

I have never been to Omaha, and I have met only two people who hail from O.N.E. (Omaha, Nebraska) in my life.  So I won’t make any generalizations about it.  I will say, however, that the seem to have made the same mistakes in bicycle infrastructure planning and construction countless other places—including my hometown of New York.

While city officials are congratulating themselves for stringing together a “network “ of bike lanes that will allow cyclists to get around in the city, local cycling advocates are making the same justified criticisms one hears all over this nation.

From what I can see, local officials think that all you have to do to make a bike lane is to paint lines on the side of the road, and all you have to do to “connect” them is to install a few signs.

I’d protest by boycotting Omaha Steaks, but It wouldn’t change their thinking.  Besides, I’ve never ordered Omaha Steaks before and very rarely eat steak at all.  I’m not a vegetarian, but—I know that this will seem like heresy to some—I’m not so crazy about steak.  Or most bicycle infrastructure I’ve seen.  And I probably won’t like Omaha’s infrastructure, either.

Night, Rain And The Ocean

Yesterday I did something unthinkable for a blogger:  I went for a ride that stretched from the afternoon into the evening, and didn't take any photos.

So why did I do that?  Well, it wasn't intentional.  In fact, the ride itself wasn't intentional.  Oh, I got on my bike because I wanted to.  I didn't, however, plan my route or destination.

And I decided not to take my phone with me.  No phone, no photos.   In this day and age, not carrying an electronic device seems like a radical idea, or simply unimaginable:  My students, especially the younger ones, tell me they simply can't imagine being without their devices.  I, of course, explain that being without electronic gadgets was the normal state of affairs because, well, we didn't have those things.

So, perhaps, it was inevitable that while riding the way I rode in my youth, I would take roads to destinations that were part of my younger years.

So I pedaled to the World Trade Center and took a PATH train to Newark, on a lark.  From that city's Penn Station, I rolled and bounced the rutty streets of industrial and post-industrial urbanscapes down to Woodbridge, where New Jersey State Route 27 meets State Route 35.  Once I passed the stores, take-out restaurants and professional offices that are just as utilitarian and charmless as they were when they were built--but imbued with more character than anything that might replace them--I rode into an enclave of pickup trucks and "muscle" cars with their actual and implied "Make America Great Again" bumper stickers.  On one of those streets, a guy who looked like he'd just been released from the nearby Rahway prison danced with a skeletal (including her teeth) young woman in full-goth mode and black spike-heel pumps to death-metal music blasting from a car.  I applauded; they smiled and waved to me.

That was in a town called Sayreville.  Next town down the road, Old Bridge, a buzzard buzzed just over my head to something lying on the side of the road.  The town after that, I skirted Lake Matawan along Monmouth County Route 516 to Keyport--where, depending on whom you ask, the Jersey Shore begins.  From there, I took a series of side roads to another lake--or is it a pond?--and turned by a firehouse onto State Route 36 at Airport Plaza, where I used to get on or off the bus to see or leave my parents when they were still living in the area.

Although Route 36 has three lanes in each direction and a speed limit of 45 or 50, depending on which town you're in, it's really not a bad road for cycling.  For most of its length, it has a wide shoulder and drivers don't pull in and out to pick up or discharge people, or double-park, and trucks don't idle in them while making deliveries.  In other words, it's safer than almost any bike lane I've ridden in New York.  Plus, it's interesting to see the landscape change from something that wouldn't look out of place in The Deer Hunter or Silkwood (funny, that Meryl Streep was in both of those movies) to farm stands and, finally to the Highlands, where you climb a long (but not steep) hill, then descend, to the bridge that connects the "mainland" with Sandy Hook and the narrow strip of land between the Shrewsbury River and the Atlantic Ocean. It's sort of like like the strip between the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and the ocean in Florida, with colder weather and without palm trees.

In the "Deer Hunter" part of Route 36, there's a store that sells hunting, fishing and scuba-diving gear, and offers lessons.  Dosil's is owned by one of my high-school classmates and the sign looks as if it hasn't been painted since he took over the store.  I am sure he and his family are doing well, at least financially, but he was one of those kids of whom you knew that he would never leave North Middletown.  He wasn't a bad kid, and I rather liked him, even though he was very different from me.  Perhaps having been wrestlers during our first two years of high school had something to do with that. (After that, we both played football--he, the American kind and me, the kind the rest of the world plays.)

Anyway, whenever I go over the bridge, I know I'm headed to Sandy Hook (if I turn left) or to Sea Bright and Long Branch (if I turn right). I chose the latter, possibly because it had begun to rain lightly around the time I saw Dosil's and the showers came and went as I crossed the bridge and started down the isthmus.  Even though McMansions have replaced the bungalows and cottages Sandy destroyed on some stretches of the road, I like seeing that stretch of beach and ocean under gray skies, especially with a light rain or drizzle.  When I was younger, I sometimes felt that it was a reflection of myself in some invisible mirror.  I still feel that way--or, at least, the memory of feeling that way is still very strong.

After eating my "lunch" by the beach in Long Branch, it was more like dinner time and I knew I had, perhaps, an hour of daylight remaining.  And the light showers had turned into full-blown rain. Still, I continued riding, along the shore.  I thought I'd go to Asbury Park and either take the train home, or turn back toward Long Branch.  Instead, from Asbury, I continued along boardwalks and streets called--what else?--Ocean Avenue.  You might say that I was hypnotized by the streetlamps, with their penumbras of mist, and buoy lights that faded--or was the darkening horizon over the sea so strong that it became the ambient light of that evening?

Finally, in Spring Lake--after 105 kilometers (about 65 miles)  of riding from Newark's Penn Station, I turned around and rode the 20 kilometers back to Long Branch.  The rain seemed to lighten as the skies grew darker, until the rain stopped just before I reached the station.  Maybe it seems like child's play to a racer in training, but I'd say that at this point in my life, riding about 80 miles on a ride that began around two in the afternoon isn't bad.  But, more important, between that ride, and not having my phone, I was doing something I needed to do, though I didn't realize it until I was on the train back to New York's Penn Station.

Gardens Of Memory

Rain fell in the wee hours of yesterday morning. But the day dawned bright and clear, if windy.  So, of course, I went for a ride--to Connecticut.

When I got to Greenwich, I parked myself on a bench in the Common, where I munched from a packet of Kar's Sweet 'N' Salty Trail Mix (I see how that stuff can be addictive!) and washed it down with a small can of some espresso-and-cream cold drink.  

That combination of caffeine and sugar can make you feel as if you're ready to burst forth--like the flowers I've been seeing during the past few days.  The weather is warm for a day or two, and the flowers just seem to appear, in gardens, on trees (oh, the cherry blossoms) and in public monuments. 

It's sadly ironic to see flowers growing around a memorial to military members who died in combat.  Those soldiers, sailors, airmen and others--almost all of them young-- are gone, long gone.  Who remembers them, or the cause--whatever it was--for which they fought?  And who will remember, in future generations, the ones who die fighting for basically the same reasons and impulses as the ones who survive only as names on stone?

But the flowers return, whether on their own or because someone planted them.  It does not matter whether the monument they adorn commemorates people who gave their lives in a just or unjust, constructive or futile, reasonable or fallacious cause:  Those flowers will return, and grow, just the same.

Will The Idaho Stop Come To Oregon?

Until recently, I was a disciple of John Forester's "bicycle as vehicle" philosophy.  It's explicated in his "Effective Cycling" book, which--along with the C.O.N.I. manual (which has, possibly, the most beautiful cover illustration of any cycling book)--were my touchstones for cycling.

I haven't looked at the C.O.N.I. manual in a long time.  I'm sure it's still valuable, though some of its specifics might be dated. (To my knowledge, no new edition of the book, at least in English, was published after 1972.)  But I still check out Forester's book on occasion.  Some of its information is dated. That is inevitable, of course:  The book came out about 40 years ago, and, for example, much of the equipment he mentions is no longer made.  But I think his notions about how to cycle in traffic are just as dated.

But they were needed at the time.  As I've related in other posts, many was my commute or training ride in which I would not encounter another cyclist.  Most motorists--which is almost the same thing as saying most adults, as defined by law--didn't ride and regarded the bicycle as a kid's toy.  And if they saw an adult riding, they thought it must be for a bad reason, such as loss of driver's license or inability to afford a car.  The "car is king" attitude was, I believe, even more prevalent than it was now.  Forester was, I think, trying to establish the bicycle as a viable and valid means of transportation for grown-ups in the US.  Four decades ago, that meant cyclists asserting themselves themselves on the road and behaving exactly like drivers in the ways we took lanes, made turns and such.

The conditions at the time also meant that almost no policy-makers were cyclists.  So, whatever laws and policies were created in the name of "safety" were wrongheaded, if not flat-out malicious.  Thus, while folks like Forester advocated for more enlightened rules, they knew that they would be a long time a'coming, if they ever came at all.  Cyclists asserting their rights as operators of vehicles therefore seemed like the best way to "establish" cycling, if you will, in the US.

Now, I'm not sure that drivers' attitudes toward cyclists have changed much.  If anything, I think some have grown more hostile becuase they feel bike lanes are taking away "their" traffic lanes, and because they have the misinformed notion that we use roadways and other infrastructure without paying for it. In fact, a driver parking in Brooklyn (at the formoer site of the library I frequented in my childhood, no less!) made that accusation as he shouted other fallacies and epithets at me.  I waited for him; he probably expected me to punch him in the nose.  But I calmly informed him that the only tax he pays that I don't pay is on gasoline.  I don't know whether he was more surprised by what I said or my demeanor.

Anyway, while drivers might be hostile for different reasons than they were four decades ago, there are some changes in the wind.  There are, at least in a few places, a few policymakers who cycle to their offices, and perhaps elsewhere.  And at least a few of the drivers I encounter have ridden a bike, say, within the last month.  So there is a small, but growing recognition, that while bicycles aren't the lawless hooligans some believe us to be, we also can't behave exactly like motor vehicles and live to tell about it.

That bikes aren't the same as cars is a point made by Jonathan Maus, the editor/publisher of Bike Portland.  In an excelllent article he published the other day, he uses that point to advocate for something that has become one of my pet causes, if you will, as a cyclist:  the Idaho Stop.

As I've mentioned in other posts, the Idaho Stop is when you treat a red signal as a "stop" sign and a "stop" sign as a "yield" sign.  In essence, it means that you don't have to come to a complete stop at an intersection unless traffic is crossing. That improves our safety immensely because if we can cross before the light turns green, we get out in front of whatever traffic might approach from behind us, as well as oncoming traffic--which keeps us from being hit by a turning vehicle.

Maus wrote his article because a similar law is up for vote in the Oregon state senate.  Governor Asa Hutchinson recently signed a similar law in Arkansas, and Utah is considering something like it.  A few municipalities in the US as well as the city of Paris have enacted similar policies during the past decade.  But it's called "The Idaho Stop" because the Gem State has had it on the books since 1982, and for about a quarter-century, it was the only such law in the United States.

Let's hope that Jonathan Maus's words move the legislators of Oregon.  Let's also hope that as Oregon goes, so go New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and...well, you get the idea.

Tunnel Vision

We’ve had a lot of rain during the past few days.  It is April, after all!

I’ve gotten in a bit of cycling, though not as much as I had been doing.  Now I’ll confess that I actually took the subway yesterday.  My excuses:  The  curtain of rain precluded visibility, and I was carrying something that, perhaps, I could’ve hauled on my bike.

Heading home, I entered the York Street station in DUMBO. (I remember when the neighborhood was, well, not a neighborhood:  All of those self-consciously trendy cafes were warehouses and factories!). There, I remembered why I so prefer cycling!

Not Offensive. Really!

In the times and places in which I've lived, saying that something is "completely inoffensive" is not a compliment.  I mean, what would you think if you'd heard it in CBGB back in the day, or during a ride with the sorts of guys who used to add gin to their water bottles?

Anyway, I have used that phrase only rarely (which itself sounds rather unflattering) in my current life.  Most recently, I uttered it when someone asked me what I thought of Taylor Swift.

I am no fan of hers, but I still don't get that so many people hate her, or say they do.  I mean, really, do you hate a marshmallow?  I may not get excited about them, or eat them very often.  But what is there to hate about something that's overly gooey and sweet?

Anyway, I may have to say something slightly more complimentary about her. (If I actually start listening to her music, check my vital signs!)  What I never knew, until the other day, is that her preferred mode of transportation is cycling.

And she posted this on Instagram:

It's not offensive at all.  Which is not the same as "completely inoffensive."

Ride With A Good Egg

I'm going for an Easter Sunday ride with a friend:

From the Bastardi Gruppeto Cycling Club's website

Enjoy the day!