R.I.P. Mom

For the past couple of days, I've been in denial.  Yesterday, I took a ride to Connecticut on a beautiful late-summer Sunday.  Today it has rained.   I spent time with Mildred and did some work that engaged my hands and, occasionally, my mind. (It's somehow appropriate to Labor Day, isn't it?)  Among other things, I built a wheel and did some maintenance on Arielle, my Mercian Audax, and the Fuji.

There are other things I could do.  But I can't use them to escape because, at the moment, escape doesn't seem possible.

On Saturday night, just before midnight--and the change from August to September--my mother passed away.  

She had health problems, mainly stemming from her diabetes, for a number of years.  Last Tuesday night, however, she woke, her skin clammy and her breathing labored.  My father brought her to the hospital and after diagnosing her, installed a pacemaker with a battery would be "good for ten years."

I talked to her on Thursday night.  She complained about one thing and another in the hospital.  Based on my admittedly--and thankfully-- limited experience with such facilities, I can't say I blamed her. (Hospitals really do have the worst beds!)  But she seemed in rather good spirits, given what she was experiencing.  

On Friday, I called her cell phone.  She didn't answer, I thought that she might've gone home.  So I tried the landline.  Still no answer.  I tried each number again, later in the day and that night.  No response.

Finally, on Saturday morning, I heard from my brother in California.  Mom was heaving deep, guttural snores that seemed to come from deep within her body and, when my father tried to wake her, she didn't respond.  

She was hooked to some machines.  The doctor and my father watched intently.  After what must have seemed like an eternity, the doctor said there was nothing more that could be done.

My mother had a DNR on file. (So do I.)  Still, my father said, giving consent to remove life support was the hardest decision he ever had to make.  I tried to reassure him that he was following Mom's wishes.  Most important, he probably spared her a lot of suffering:  Within minutes, she had no brain activity.

Dear readers, I am sorry if I am burdening you with onerous details.  What I had been trying to avoid is happening:  I am replaying the conversation and exchanges of texts about something I was absolutely powerless to change.  My father, my brother, Millie and others I've talked to have reassured me that the fact I wasn't in that hospital was not a reason why she passed just before midnight on Saturday.  Even with her medical issues, none of us could have known how close she was to the end of her life.  Perhaps she knew; if she did, she didn't let on.

Anyway, I am writing this because I have posted every day for the past five years and most days for about four years before that.  I might not post for a while, but I am not abandoning this blog.  If nothing else, though she saw only a few posts (She never learned how to use a computer; she saw things online only when my father showed them to her), I think she'd want me to continue:  She knew how important cycling and writing are to me.  They've helped me, as she did, through some difficult times in my life.  I don't think that will change.

Nothing To Lose But Our Chains

Today is Labor Day in the US.  Some leftist historians and economists invoke the spectre of Karl Marx, although he had nothing to do with creating the holiday.  He died a decade before it was first observed, and several years before the first International Workers' Day, a.k.a. May Day.

Still, his name is invoked by some, mainly on the left, who see the erosion of workers' and unions' power in the globalized economy.  And, one of his most famous rallying cries is used to promote all sorts of events that have little, if anything, to do with honoring the contributions of working people:

From the Reno Bike Project

Preparing For The Season

Whether you think Labor Day or the Autumnal Equinox signals the season's end, it's still Summer, at least for today.

But, since Fall is rapidly approaching, I find myself thinking about cycling through falling temperatures, not to mention rain and possibly snow.  When people ask how I keep warm, I say, "Dress in layers and keep pedaling."

Perhaps there are other ways:

Wisdom Through Wheelies

As an educator, I've always been in search of ways to keep my students' attention--especially when it's late in the semester or the weather outside is nice.

If I were younger, I might try Chris Poulous' methods:

In 1991, when he was 20 years old, he won the Bicycle Stunt World Championships in Denmark. He also was victorious in a number of other competitions until injuries sidelined his competitive career.

Now he's a motivational speaker, with a particular emphasis in encouraging the young to lead positive lives.  Kids, as you might expect, are a natural audience for him, though I must say I enjoy his presentation, too.

Recently, he visited a summer recreation program in Northborough, Massachusetts.  He said his show was a "special treat" for kids 3 to 5 years of age because they don't get to go on field trips, as the older kids do.  From all accounts, however, everyone present--kids and adults--loved it.



I mean, what's not to like about someone who use backflips and bunny-hops to teach important life lessons?

"They're Trying To Take Our Guns. Why Not Their Bikes?"

"Bicycle Accidents Kill More Children Than Guns, But You Don't See Calls To Ban Bikes."

That is the title of an editorial Dean Weingarten wrote for Ammoland.  According to statistics he cites from the Center for Disease Control's Database, there were 2467 "unintentional pedal cyclist deaths"--for a rate of 0.18 per 100,000-- of children aged 0 to 17 from 1999 to 2017.  During the same period, according to the CDC statistics Weingarten uses, there were 1994 "unintentional firearm deaths" of children in that same age group, for a rate of 0.14 per 1000,000. 

To be fair, Weingarten reports that both figures are dwarfed by the numbers of children who died unintentionally as occupants of motor vehicles, in "unknown situations, motor vehicles," or from suffocation, drowning or a half-dozen other causes.  Still, he uses the disparity between the unintentional deaths by bicycle and by firearm to try to make the case that guns are unfairly blamed for children's deaths.

He may be right about the burden of blame borne by firearms, in part because the numbers of children accidentally killed by firearms has been trending downward.  But he is using that fact, and the greater number of deaths by bicycle, to rail against proposals to require gun owners to keep their weapons locked and unloaded.  Such a requirement, he claims, keeps gun owners from using their weapons in self-defense.  

Whatever the validity of that argument, using bicycles as the "straw man," if you will, does nothing to support it.  For one thing, a child isn't going to hurt him or herself by finding a bicycle in the attic or garage, as he or she can by finding a loaded gun in daddy's desk.  

This image was included with Dean Weingarten's editorial.  

More to the point, though, is this:  Even though guns outnumber people in the US, an American kid is more far more likely, at any given moment, to ride a bike than to chance upon a gun.  When that kid is on a bike, he or she will spend more time riding than he or she would in the presence of the firearm.  And, finally, it's harder to control where and in what conditions a kid rides than it is to keep a child away from a gun, or to ensure that the gun can't be fired accidentally.  

So Weingarten's argument that bicycles are more dangerous than guns to children doesn't hold up.  Even so, he tries to use it to bolster an even flimsier--and blatantly sexist--argument that lawmakers (Democrats, mainly) claim that they want tighter gun regulations "for the children" to pander to non-gun owners, "most of whom are women," according to Weingarten.  On the other hand, he says (probably correctly) that most gun owners are men.  

He ends his article with an even clumsier attempt to appeal to emotion:  "But the real elephant in the room is why are we not calling for bans on bikes?" (sic) Of course, that piles yet another fallacy onto an argument full of fallacies:  How in the world can he, or anyone, compare banning bicycles to keeping guns locked and unloaded?