Show of hands...

 ...who's riding today?

I am.

Lanny called the Winter Pub crawl for the last Sunday in January.  I can hardly wait.  Weather's gotta be better than this.

 

Meta biking - the hot Surly-on-Surly action mix

I had to leave a bike at work on Wednesday, so Thursday I took the bike I had taken to work that morning home on the bike that I had left the evening previous.  I ride past my wife's uncle's house and he shouts, "What, one bike isn't enough?  How many bikes do you need?"  How many bikes do you need?  I don't know, how many golf clubs do you need?  How many TVs?  How many cars?

Answer to my uncle-in-law's query: N_C+1 where N_C is the number of current bicycles owned.

It's been good to know ya...

G'bye:

Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.

251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. [1] Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. [2]

55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).

The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. [3]

Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.

The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.

The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.

[...]

The warning signs of an impending planetary catastrophe—of such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water.

Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containment—it can then permit the methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters. [6]

All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.

S'pose I just ought to quit my job and bike until the end comes. Why face the hammer behind a desk...