stardognine

Maybe I fixed the weather, by talking about it, lol. 🤔😉 I just checked AccuWeather, and it's 74°F, at 12:00 high noon. 😲 Plus it sprinkled a bit of rain earlier, for maybe 2 or 3 minutes. No effect on the drought. 🙄😉

Korina

Nice! And here the marine layer has been beaten back by the sun, so it may get all the way up to 65°!

Korina

Hey, Shannon! Quick question for you. I've been discontented and whiny since GreenWheels went away; do you think, with all the changes happening around the Bay, that we'd benefit from a bike advocacy organization? Do you think there'd be any interest?

curbtender

Tracy? My parents would ship me out of Oakland in the summer's to hang with my cousins. Spent many a day at McKinley park and fishing the irrigation ditches out in the sugar beet fields...

stardognine

Aha!!! Something in the back of my brain vibrated a bit, when I saw "Tracy" mentioned, but I couldn't get a handle on it. @gugie mentioned turkey vultures, in another thread, and that made me remember. 😁

A couple/few years ago, I did a San Diego to somewhere ride, and Tracy was where I decided to cut across to the coast again. I zigzag, sometimes.
I had no idea they put all those mountains in the way, lol, heck, I'm from Pennsylvania. 😁

But anyways, that's where I met a couple of ranchers, in a Jeep in those mountains, who told me about turkey vultures. I had a huge feather stuck in my handlebar area, and asked them about it. They said if it wasn't an eagle feather, like I hoped, then it must be a turkey vulture feather.

That feather had to be 18" long, so I knew I ought to be careful, about getting very close to the whole bird. 😁😉

gugie 

Did someone say turkey vultures?

stardognine

Oh no,no,no, yes. 😁 Those guys aren't just big, they're ugly too. You know, big & ugly. 🤪😁

Korina

@stardognine, nothing wrong with turkey vultures; they're part of nature's cleanup crew. Also, if you've never seen them soaring in the thermals, barely twitching a feather for hours, they're amazing.

rjhammett

I have owned a half dozen Bridgestone bikes including a RB-1, a RB-T and a Mile 112. They never did much for me. I'd pass on the rusty XO-2.

stardognine

You're right, of course. It's like that old Ray Stevens song says, "Everybody's beautiful in their own way". Some are just less beautiful than others. 🙄😁😉

Korina

Or, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' Mind you, they are butt ugly to behold but, as with most of us, their looks are the least important thing about them.

squirtdad

I hoed a lot of sugar beets in Montana, in fact my high school team mascot was the sugarbeeter

jdawginsc 

I actually think they are quite cool looking! Red head/beak and beautifully variegated plumage!

stardognine

For those too lazy to Google it themselves, lol, better late than never. Shamelessly "borrowed" from Wikipedia. 😉

Beauty, ehh? 😁

rustystrings61 

Under the Vulture-Tree

BY DAVID BOTTOMS
We have all seen them circling pastures,
have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own backyards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,
every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old
who have grown to empathize with everything.


And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.

David Bottoms, “Under the Vulture-Tree” from Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems. Copyright © 1995 by David Bottoms. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Source: Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1995)

jdawginsc 

@Korina

Did you end up getting the bike?

curbtender

Had a "committee" of vultures that would sun on my neighbors steel roof. One had punctured a wing bone and was hanging in my backyard. I called a local rescue that came and rehabilitated him. Well, they brought him back here and released him but the rest were long gone. He hung out on a telephone pole for months in my front yard until he finally hooked up with another bird. Thought it was cool other then when he took off he seemed to always find my car to take a dump on. Nasty stuff, lol.

Korina

By the time I'd decided to get it, it had already sold. If it had been one size smaller, there wouldn't have been a question. Now we're talking turkey vultures!

ShannonM

The single most bike advocate-y thing any bike advocate could advocate for would be to FIX OUR DANGED ROADS!!!

To paraphrase President Zylenskyy...

I don't need bike lanes... I need asphalt!

--Shannon

​

Korina

Good point; although smooth roads only encourage the idiots to drive faster. I'll bet you're looking forward to the trail to Tooby Rd. to be finished.

ShannonM

The single best thing that the county could do for me would be to repave Old Broadway between King Salmon and Humboldt Hill.

I live in Fields Landing, work at the nursing home in Humboldt Hill, and shop at the little grocery store across from the NBC TV station. I ride that road twice a day. I swear, the sales taxes I've paid on the inner tubes I've pinch-flatted on that road in the last year and a half could almost pay for the paving job.

--Shannon

Lenton58 

CrMo, butted and lugged Tange ... what frames do you have? if it beat anything you have, trade frames for the group. )) Or make a shopping bike.

Korina

Sounds like something a bike advocacy group could help with. Have you tried fatter tires?