You should be, for real.

Happy Fall, yinz!

A few weeks ago on a Monday, We the Family and another longtail-driving friend of ours got our kids, our bikes, our gear, and ourselves dropped off in Meyersdale, PA, about 3 hours and change northwest of DC on the Great Allegheny Passage. We spent the rest of that day descending from the Eastern Continental Divide down to Cumberland, and the next 5 days riding and camping the C&O Canal Trail all the way back to DC.

(Click through for a slideshow!)

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I realize I don’t update much anymore. Well, at all. It’s certainly not that I’m any less enamored of turnin’ cranks, especially this time of year in DC. I keep having experiences that would violate the can’t-say-something-nice rule, and I don’t wanna talk about that. I’ve also had a whole bunch of amazing experiences, but I haven’t been as into documenting them as just livin’ and breathin’ ‘em.

I’m workin’ out whether or not I wanna change that, or this, or something else. But I have missed you, oh yes I have.

In the meantime! Here’s a copy of a note I just sent to Senator Chuck Schumer, after reading an article about how he wants to bring the TSA circus that’s worked so well for air travel to buses and trains too!

Senator Schumer,

I just read a distressing article that stated you’re attempting to bring the same kind of security theater to trains and buses that we all now despise while flying.

Do you understand that the reason more people take trains and planes now is because flying has become such an unpleasant, intrusive, pseudo-Soviet experience that people are willing to spend more time travelling by bus and plane just to avoid it?

Do you understand that there’s nothing to be gained security-wise from groping, scanning, dominating, bullying, and humiliating bus passengers? Do you understand that trains can’t so much as leave their tracks, and so they can’t be “hijacked”?

Do you understand that despite all the sacrifices we’ve made of our liberty, privacy, and dignity in order to fly, the TSA’s efforts are, in the end, theater?

What do you say to not doing us any more favors, and limiting the TSA to intimidating and harrasssing women trying to carry breast-milk through airports. Leave the trains and buses alone.

Thanks for your time

I had hoped that after 10 years of this nonsense, we’d be coming down off the paranoia, seeing clearly that these measures aren’t actually keeping anyone secure, and that we’re being molested, bulied, and searched for all the worst reasons. I had hoped we’d be farther along in demanding an end to this, and I certainly didn’t think we’d be looking to duplicate the TSA experience in any other milleu.

If you have feelings about this, perhaps you’d like to share them with him.

Attention all students, faculty, and staff of University of Maryland! Someone is driving around DC besmirching your good name, I believe it may be a plot by one of your ACC rivals! Here is a hastily snapped photo of the perpetrator’s vehicle:

While on the way downtown this morning, I observed the driver:

• Stopped at the red light on 16th at New Hampshire, on top of the bike box and into the crosswalk
• Aggressively pushing on bikes and honking at them on New Hampshire between U and T for being in his very, very important way
• Blowing through stop signs all the way down New Hampshire while failing to yield rights of way to motorist and pedestrian alike, including one woman who actually had to back up in the crosswalk to avoid being hit.
• Generally driving like a lead-footed asshole on every block of New Hampshire down to M St, where I parted ways with him

At first, I thought this was another regrettable instance of a highway-oriented Maryland commuter forgetting they were in a dense urban neighborhood teeming with pedestrians, strollers, dogs, and cyclists. But I’d already avoided interacting with a couple of those on the way in, and something about this was different. The driver’s thoughtlessness, lack of consideration, and aggressive recklessness, as well as his cavalier regard for everyone else’s safety, led me to conclude that it had to be intentional.

Imagine my shock and confusion when I caught up with the vehicle and saw the Maryland Terrapins sticker on the back window! Why on earth, I puzzled, would someone adorn their vehicle with the flag of an institution they revere and hold close to their hearts, and then drive that vehicle such that all who witness their driving regard them as a complete and total asshole?

That’s when it hit me. The reason, that is, not the SUV. This must be a Blue Devil, or a Tarheel, or perhaps a Demon Deacon looking to drag the University of Maryland’s name through the mud of Our Nation’s Capitol.

Well, I think that stinks. So if any of you Terrapins out there see this person out on the streets driving like an asshole who’s enjoying driving like an asshole, let them know that their cunning ruse is at an end. Ask them what school they’re really from, and what they think they have to gain from tarnishing the reputation of your splendid academic institution by driving like that. Maybe tell them that if they’re going to drive like that, you’d sure appreciate it if they removed that Terrapin sticker from their back window, or perhaps even do it for them.

You’re welcome!

RRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I need a shot of fire.

That’s better.

So far, indications suggest the tagline for Vince Gray’s Administration should be something like, “It’s to be expected, whadda ya gonna do?”

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit at this point to hear that Mayor-elect Gray has short-listed “a couple guys who love breaking glass bottles in DC’s streets and alleys” for Klein’s position. Despite the fact that I dearly love a lot of folks who live here, I’m pretty eager to not live in DC anymore, and the sentiment’s gaining momentum.

So there I was, browsing around the Internet, when I ran across this post:

It’s often been said, ever since the days of Usenet and Tiananmen Square, that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

As it was in those bygone days, so it is today, as the US State pressures Wikileaks’ “cloud” provider and DNS service to take steps in an attempt to silence dissent.
The problem is — at least, if you’re the US State, it’s a problem — Wikileaks can still be reached on the Web via any number of alternate links, such as through its numeric “dotted quad” IP addresses http://213.251.145.96 and http://46.59.1.2/. It can also be reached through its alternate domains in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

I’d like to encourage everyone reading this to follow that grand old Web censorship-defeating tradition of “mirroring” and passing alternate links around, and post these links to your blog or Web site:

http://213.251.145.96/

http://46.59.1.2/

http://wikileaks.ch/

http://www.wikileaks.nl/

Tough luck, Barack. Better luck next time, Hillary.

Well! Needless to say, I was shocked. Shocked and dismayed. Shocked, dismayed, and revolted. Shocked, dismayed, revolted, and angry that someone would post all that information in an attempt to give a big fat middle finger to those nice people at the State Department that just wanna put those 250,000 cats back in their bags.

I mean, President Obama and Secretary Clinton and other very concerned people say that this sort of thing could cost people their lives! And just because they work for an organization that’s currently carrying out extra-judicial assassinations (which also result in the very regrettable deaths of numerous proximate innocent civilians, but whatta ya gonna do, ya know?) in other people’s ostensibly sovereign nations with missiles fired from flying killer robots doesn’t mean that they’re not sincere in their concern. About other people, I mean. Or at least some of them.

So, uh… anyone got any jpg’s of Qaddafi’s Ukrainian nurse?

PS: Fuck Joe Leiberman, too. But that’s not exactly news.

Everyday I get to ride in this beautiful fall weather is a blessing. Soopah doopah.