Honestly truly overheard on Delta 844

Passenger in 1D (first class) is lucky enough to be the only person to get a pre-flight drink, as the pilots were apparently trying to hustle us out of PIT to avoid ground delays in ATL. Woman in her 50s or 60s, somewhere between obese and morbidly obese, orders “a vodka with just a tiny splash of orange juice.” It's almost 6 in the evening, so nothing too surprising so far.

Woman gets her drink, and begins slurping it down like she just walked out of the Sonoran desert and missed the drive-through liquor stores in the Arizona stretch.

Somehow the conversation with the (amazingly friendly) flight attendant turns to this (paraphrased, but pretty darn close):

Flight attendant: You should watch it, because alcohol affects you double in the air than it does on the ground.

Editor's note:(A marginally dubious claim, which I'm unable to find primary evidence to support or disprove. The best indications are that the added intensity of alcohol consumption in flight is really rooted in dehydration, so you mostly need to be sure to consume a lot of water. A more profound impact than on the ground? Maybe. Double? There is zero evidence i can find for this. But I digress.)

Woman: Really? I have never, ever heard that, and I fly all the time.

Flight attendant: Oh yeah, absolutely, no question about it.

Woman Who Flies All The Time:Wow -- I have never heard that. I'll be fine, though: I can sit here and drink a fifth of vodka straight and not even feel it.

Flight attendant: Oh wow, well, you won't be getting that tonight. (It's an hour and a half flight, incidentally.)

Fifth of Vodka Woman: Oh yeah, I can drink anyone, and I mean anyone, under the table in about three minutes! Any man, any woman!

(inaudible conversation, brief pause as the flight attendant goes and does some other stuff)

Woman Who Can Drink Any Man, Any Woman, Under The Table In About Three Minutes: Say, do you sell these little bottles on board?

Flight attendant: No, sorry, we don't.

Woman Who Wants To Give The Idea Of Buy On Board A Whole New Meaning:That's too bad, 'cause I've been taking care of my mother who is 91 all week, and she has a whole line of them on her shelf, and I thought I'd take her a couple. (That she is apparently heading the wrong direction for such a gift is part of the nature of the Folk Process, with apologies to Dry Branch Fire Squad.)

Flight attendant: Well, you know you can buy them at any liquor store?

Woman Who Wants To Give Her 91 Year Old Mother A Couple Shooter Bottles of Cheap Vodka As A Gift To Add To Mother's Collection: Really? I never heard of that! Never saw them!

Flight attendant: Sure, every liquor store sells them.

Woman Who Can Drink A Fifth of Vodka In About Three Minutes And Not Even Feel It And Can Drink Any Man Or Woman Under The Table In About Three Minutes But Doesn't Know Liquor Stores Sell Small Shooter Bottles Of Cheap Vodka: Well, I'll just have to look for that!

A few minutes go by, we continue the pre-flight process, and next thing I hear is the flight attendant leaning in close and telling the woman kindly, but firmly and repeatedly, that she needs to behave herself. Gosh, can't imagine why.

Balcony garden: late September 2009

Here is what happens when you fly around to five states, through seven airports, in two weeks. Your plants miss you:


This is an overall of the plants. I could probably blame some of their sad appearance on the intense thunderstorms they've had to endurse in the last two weeks, which some are saying resulted in epic, 500-year flooding, but that's probably a cop-out. Really, I've just been a bad plant parent.


Here's a closeup of the Bonnie tomatoes, which are still producing. I ate one just before leaving for Pittsburgh, and it was pretty darn tasty. The leaves look like shit, but the tomatoes themselves look pretty decent.


Here's the Bush Goliath, looking much the same: the tomatoes are looking pretty decent, while the leaves and plant is looking pretty dire.


The herg garden is looking so-so; I'll probably start to harvest quite a bit of it soon.


Here's a closeup of the sage in the herb garden, which is a pretty mixed bag: some of it is clearly curling and dying off, while other parts are doing fine.


And the stand-alone basil planting, which is struggling, but putting up a game fight.

Of plants and protests.

Since I have plenty of entertaining stories about providing legal support for the protestors at the over the last few days, I'll instead post pictures about my balcony garden. Okay, okay: a few summary thoughts, with more to come.

The police response was properly described by one activist as a "bumbling and violent police action."

The cops did a whole lot of arbitrary shutting down of streets with rows of riot-clad cops, when zero protestors were anywhere nearby. In this picture, at Liberty Ave & S. Millvale Ave near Western Pennsylvania Hospital, the cops had watched the protest march continue down the street. They were about a third of a mile away when i took this picture (I had to hotfoot it to catch up.)

And as usual when the police engage in the overwhelming show of force, shock-and-awe style repression of dissent that has been popularized since Seattle, the cops did some pretty stupid stuff, and beat down some people who had nothing to do with the protests. This included University of Pittsburgh students who happened to have the nerve to try to walk through their campus, and deploying of tear gas and peper spray on narrow residential streets.

Police outnumbered protestors approximately five to one, or six to one.

I'm going to break up these posts and do the gardening pics separately...

Snippets from the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh

Context: this is several miles away from any protest activity at a road closure near Shendley Park. Literally three activists are standing near, doing nothing after being told they can't enter the park for their permitted event. There are approximately ten police, including at least Pennsylvania State Police, Pittsburgh PD, and Cleveland PD.

Pittsburgh PD to activist: "Quit being such a fucking smartass. Get the fuck out of here. I will fucking shoot you."

Cleveland Police Department officer to attorney: "Get out of here. Move. Go away." (I ignored him and turned my attention to the homicidal Pittsburgh PD, as Cleveland cop wasn't even remotely in charge of the area. He was an out of town, deputized rentacop who was essentially relegated to traffic management. He had his uniform shirt unbuttoned low enough to show the hair just above his bellybutton. He had a lot of it.)

More after-reports to come. (Confidential to anyone who might worry: I'm perfectly safe and being careful.)

People I don't understand

1) People who launch themselves out of their seats on the airplane, so they can occupy the aisle for the several minutes it takes the ground crew and flight crew to get the door open. Then it turns out the (specific jerk in question) needs to wait at planeside for his gate-checked bag to come out, just like the people he was jockeying to get in front of.

2) People who rush to the televisions in the airport to see the football game. (Confidential to football fans: the game won't change because you're watching it, and the ten minutes you see of grown men smashing into one another will be much more interesting without all the pap and filler when you watch it tomorrow on Sportscenter.)

3) People who don't tip, or even worse, tip badly. Examples: too numerous to mention. You know who you are.

4) Self-important TSA officers, who seem to think their scowl and facially insincere grunt of "how are you" somehow imparts some sort of gravitas or authority. Confidential to TSA: you're largely incompetent rentacops that 98% of the regular-traveling public despises. Oh, and suspiciously sneering at me when you look at the x-ray of my carryon isn't intimidating: it's just silly.

Boarding soon for segment five of nine in two weeks, so I should get my stuff together.

Dateline: Montana

At the tail end of a week+ of excellent mountain biking in Montana. I hope to upload some of the 120+ pictures I took sometime this week, but for now, you'll have to settle for numbers:

~275: total miles ridden
38.6: average miles per day (including off-route grocery/beer stops)
32.4 mph: max speed
51.18: max daily miles

Wildlife: a bunch of white tail deer, one pesky red fox near Fatty Creek (on two different nights), a ton of cicada, crickets, and beetles, and assorted smaller animals.

The people, on the whole, were fantastic. Truly nice, accommodating, pleasant, and fun to talk to.

The roads, well, I could take or leave them. Much of the Great Divide Route is on Forest Service roads, which range from flat and brutally maintained to singletrack, technical, and moderately unpleasant.

Some shoutouts to some particularly wonderful local businesses:

The Grateful Bread, Bigfork, MT. Great bread and sandwiches, solid espresso drinks, amazing people, and great vegetarian and vegan (ask!) options. Went twice in two days.

Glacier Cyclery , Whitefish, MT. Fantastic people, decent bikes, great location.

Markus Foods , Whitefish, MT. Solid grocery store with a nice little deli and excellent beer selection.

The store at Swan Lake Trading Post, Swan Lake, MT. They have a nice little grocery, and a great take one, leave one paperback book section.

More to come. Now back to flying! Tonight FCA-SLC-SMF.

Insert: deep, loud, irritated sigh

The asshattery here in the LAX Delta Skyclub gets more intense by the minute. Not only does it sound like a junior high school cafeteria, both in volume and content, but this fucking nitwit is standing next to me, immediately in front of the "QUIET AREA" sign with a cell phone crossed out in a circle, with his cell phone plugged in right behind it, talking on it. There are literally dozens of electrical outlets spread throughout the room. Idiot.

Now the moron has left his cell phone plugged in while he wanders around. I'm tempted to pour my margarita on it, but the margarita tastes too good.

More calories, please

I decided that it's not really worth the walk to browse more overpriced food in other terminals, so I needed to get some more calories here. Fortunately, the bar makes a surprisingly good margarita. (Hey! It's almost noon, okay?)

Airports and etc.

After a frenzy to get packed and ready for the bike trip, I'm finally en route.

The morning flight from ATL to LAX was pleasant due to an upgrade, but unpleasant due to none of the reading lights working. The flight attendants were apologetic about this, but still didn't seem to think it worth leaving the overhead lights on, and the always helpful fellow passengers all closed their windows so they could watch The Fast and the Furious, and bad romcom. I got a little reading done until it started to really strain my eyes, and then I did some more eye-straining reading on my netbook.

Now in the Delta Skyclub in the crappy, run-down Terminal 5 at LAX. The lounge is nice enough, if quite crowded and loud. I'm actually listening to music (Gomez: Get Miles, appropriate in so many ways) which I almost never do in the airport or lounges. This is to drown out the woman who has been prattling nonstop with her companion since she came in. Well, not truly non-stop: she takes breaks to prattle loudly on her cell phone, too. All while she keeps her feet up on the chair. She's a teacher, but apparently hasn't learned Inside Voice.

The food at Delta Skyclubs pretty much always stinks, with a few exceptions (JFK terminal 2 has some really good snacks and appetizers at certain hours.) I'm hungry, and the food options in Terminal 5 mostly suck, so I was pleased to see them roll out a cart of food when they took away the breakfast foods. What was it? Some sort of caramel-fudge-flourless-chocolate cake thing. At 10:30 in the morning. Yes, really. My favorite response to this (well, the only response other than mine so far) came from a friend via e-mail: "turtle fudge cake? gross. i wouldn't eat that at any time of day."

It does appear that GrossCake(tm) is going to be the only option, so I'll be sticking with pretzels and beer. (Hey, it's now after 11!) I mean, c'mon: you can't even bring out some soft, wilted celery and carrots with grayish/white caking?

In other travel (news), my travels in the next month and a week will have me in the following airports: ATL, LAX, SLC, FCA, SMF, SFO, PIT, JFK, SEA. Woo.

Maybe I'll go hunt down better food, since I still have an hour and a half. A little web searching did indicate that it's possible to walk from Terminal 5 to Terminals 6, 7, and 8. Yay informationsuperinfobahn!

Bicycling and more bicycling! (oh, and some traveling)

Yesterday J and I both rode in an organized ride. We did the first ~31 miles together at a relatively slower pace, then J cut off to do the metric century (~62 miles, which with some difficulties due to the cue sheet, map, and course markings, ended up being ~70.) I sped off to continue the century, which ended up being 93 miles due to needing to cut off a distance loop at the end as they were beginning to close down rest stops and SAG support.

Numbers:

93.07 miles
6:12:01 total riding time
34 mph max speed
15.0 avg speed
135 max RPM
72 avg RPM

I also did a good turn by a fellow rider which took a long time and slowed my average speed somewhat, but which isn't something I'll blog about. Lovely weather all day, overcast and a slight breeze in the morning, and hotter, more direct sunlight in the afternoon. None of the torrential downpour stuff from last weekend.

Now I'm finalizing my packing list for self-supported backcountry mountain bike touring in Montana later this week, followed by a whirlwind tour of northern California. (Y'all know who you are.) As with many such trips, it'll require trips to several local stores for food and gear, which is likely to gobble up much of the rest of my day.

Then PIT. Then NYC. Then SEA. And maybe more ATL sometime: who knows?

Big times! Lots of fun! Very poor carbon footprint!

A Nervous. Fucking. Breakdown.

Is what I'm about to have. In the condo next door to the north, for the second day in a row, they are replacing flooring and otherwise making such an astonishing amount of noise that it's like having a dance party inside a 747 engine. On our floor to ceiling windows to the south and east, the window washers dangling from ropes are slamming around. (They also make a surprisingly massive amount of noise.) They are allegedly cleaning the windows.

I'm going to go read new urbanism at a coffeehouse. In the not-very-amusing irony department, I'm going to have to ride my bike to get to one, since there really isn't a good one within a five minute walking distance (consistent with NU principles.)

Before I go, here are a few pictures from the 65 mile (~metric century) ride I did with a friend on Sunday, mentioned in the previous post. We'll call this friend J2, to distinguish him from J. As mentioned, the first two thirds of the ride were fantastic: rolling hills, and quiet back roads in central Georgia.


Here is the obligatory bucolic country road, with white picket fence, and cyclists approaching the second rest stop image:



Here is the obligatory condom-icecube-in-the-portapotty urinal picture. Yes, really. (This is at that same rest stop):

It was a lovely rest stop, complete with a friendly volunteer mechanic who fixed J2's rubbing front derailleur. In other news, J2 had never heard of the idea of a condom icecube?!? Consider this a request for a Highly Scientific poll of my readership: please leave a comment if you knew this fantastic utilization for condoms.


Remember, dear reader, how I said that the first two thirds of the ride was fantastic? Well, after the last rest stop it rapidly got marginally less fantastic, as the last twenty miles was in apocalyptic-quality rain, thunder, and lightning. Here is the obligatory standing-water-in-my-shoes at the end of the ride picture:


We had great conversation the whole time, including shouting to be heard over the thunder and rain about whose bike was more likely to be struck by the lightning that was blasting at nearly the exact same time as the thunder boomed: my friend's steel frame urban commuter style bike with slightly wider tires, or my aluminum frame road bike with super skinny tires. My friend maintained that his bike and person was less likely to be struck down due to the wider tires (because the lightning would have to go farther to get to ground.) I maintained that my aluminum frame was less attractive, period, and still believe the lightning wouldn't be doing the endgame analysis when it decided who to strike down for their wicked ways.

Of course, in the wicked ways analysis, I definitely lose. (Incidentally, when I described this to J later, she agreed that the steel frame was far more susceptible to lightning strikage. And she's Really Really Smart about such things.) Sorry, J2.

Rode a lot.

Rode a metric century (~65 miles) today, the last 20 or so in apocalyptic-value rain.

specs:

total miles: 66.18
total riding time: 4:00:44
max mph: 37 mph
average mph: 16.4
max rpm: 131
avg rpm: 73

Excellent ride! Toward the end, repeated lightning and thunder in the very near vicinty, and the last 20 miles in rain thick enough that at various points we could barely see and it stung exposed flesh, not so fun, but super entertaining, and an excellent ride overall.

Bicycles and feasibility

Many of you know that I think bicycling in the sprawl of Atlanta is hideous, and only rewarding because I'm a bit of an obsessivist freak: the more difficult it is, the more committed I am to doing it.

In my reading for this New Urbanism course, there is a recurring theme, namely that you can't exist in daily life in most American cities without a car:

Low-density, single-use development that is spread out over large regions has created a settlement pattern that is completely dependent on automobiles to carry out even the simplest daily tasks such as going to school, picking up a loaf of bread, visiting a friend, seeing a doctor or dentist, visiting a park, or going to work....

Well actually, in the 72 hour period starting yesterday morning, I'm going to do every single one of these tasks by bicycle with the exception of going to school (which I'm doing online) and going to work (which I do from home, but which J does five days a week by bicycle.)

Yes, it can be done: yes, we CAN do most of this stuff by bicycle. By foot. By public transportation. If absolutely need be, by car.

But many of us, at least those of us with the leisure time and internet connectivity to sit around and read random, mediocre blogs like mine, CAN avoid the car 98% of the time. We just have to decide to.

Atlanta as miserable place?

From a video lecture by James Howard Kuntsler, Our Civic Spaces, at minute 38:

“...Atlanta is now becoming perhaps the most miserable city to be in in America.”

To paraphrase, he was referring to the barracks-like concrete buildings on central Atlanta streets (including "about four miles of Peachtree Street") that are built more to repel people than to invite them in.

Traffic sewers

My favorite thing from my reading today for the new urbanism course I'm taking:

"Streets that once served vehicles and people equitably are now designed for the sole purpose of moving vehicles through them as quickly as possible. They have become, in effect, traffic sewers."

--Suburban Nation, p. 64

Still irritated by the lack of footnotes and conclusory nature of a lot of the statements in the book, though. That's probably the attorney in me.

Per capita waste generation

If that last post wasn't enough, and you want to get really depressed about waste generation, you could start reading EPA reports on municipal solid waste generation and recycling.

Here's a tiny tidbit: despite steady improvements in recent decades, in 2007, the net per capita discard rate after materials recovery and combustion with energy recovery was 2.50 pounds per person per day.

Think about this: roughly, go take a good quality 10" skillet, or a pair of hiking boots (okay, I have big feet), or a one liter bottle of water or soda, package it up, and mail it to yourself for $4.95 (USPS priority mail; since you're mailing it to yourself, calculate it from your zip code to your zip code.) NOW DO THIS EVERY FUCKING DAY. That is the amount of trash YOU AND I generated per capita AFTER RECYCLING and energy recovery is factored in.

Perhaps I need to go back to pictures of container gardening and lay off the harping for a while...

Making it easy/easier: recycling

I really do think that most people want to do good, and would do good, if they could. Unfortunately, most people are also fundamentally lazy, or uninformed, or overworked, or stressed out, or some combination of the above, and don't have the time to do good.

I was thinking about this yesterday in the context of recycling. A friend just moved to Atlanta, and I was helping his partner move them into his new condo. We were generating a lot of cardboard (oh, Ikea, for all your grandstanding and fairly hypocritical claims of environmental responsibility, you really suck. Really bad. Here's a hint as to how to be more environmentally friendly: quit selling so much fucking crap with a built-in product life of a year or two. Quit selling junk food on paper and plastic plates, with plastic flatware, and a side of paper cup. Your in-store recycling is lovely, but how about more reduction so less recycling is necessary? How about you quit passing on the financial savings of flat-packing to the ecologies and communities which are impacted by the immense amounts of cardboard, styrofoam, and plastic your flat packing demands?

On a related note of Ikea sucking, check out this article in the Economist laying bare the revolting faux-charity corporate structure of the cheap furniture powerhouse:

What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous. The overall set-up of IKEA minimises tax and disclosure, handsomely rewards the founding Kamprad family and makes IKEA immune to a takeover.

But I digress: back to recycling. So, we have a lot of cardboard, in a high-rise condo in Atlanta. I wander down and ask the concierge/security guy where the building's recycling is, and get the somewhat obscure directions (it involves taking the elevator to a parking level, going through one set of doors, walking across the parking lot, then going through another set of doors, then finding the big mixed recycling bin in a moderately smelly and very humid loading dock.

My quest to find the recycling area is aided by several signs that say IN LARGE LETTERS THAT ABSOLUTELY NO GLASS CAN BE RECYCLED. Oh, and mandating that NO CARDBOARD CAN BE LEFT BY THE RECYCLING AREA. But there's another direction indicating that there is a special area for cardboard recycling at the back of the loading dock. Right on! Recycling obsessivist that I am, I don't mind walking a little farther to the special cardboard recycling area. What I do mind is that when I get there, it turns out the extra super special area for cardboard recycling is a HUGE DUMPSTER FULL OF ASSORTED GARBAGE. Booooooooo!

I left our friend a note on how to get to his recycling, and that he can recycle both his cardboard and glass at our building. I have faith in this particular friend that he actually cares enough to go to this extra trouble, and also to consider the issue in his purchasing.

But c'mon: do we really have to make recycling this difficult? Do we really have to contract it out to greedy private corporations who only care about making a profit on it? Isn't the value of keeping the material out of toxic landfills that destroy communities and water tables sufficient to have municipal recycling, even on relatively low energy return material like glass?

Let's remember, this is a waste hirearchy for a reason: think about this the next time you buy bottled water, a genuine and ongoing ecological catastrophe that even McNewspaper finds a problem:

Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil per year... That much energy could power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year...

Even if we can do a good job of separating and recycling water bottles, it still comes down to the fact that it's completely unnecessary... Strictly speaking, tap water isn't free — it costs about $0.00002 per ounce. But single-serve bottled water costs between 1,000 and 4,000 times more...

My bike helmet hack

I saw this "bike hack" on someone's motorcycle helmet while I was on the motorcycle tour.
It made all sorts of sense, and I'm only surprised I didn't think of it before. This way if I'm splashed all over the road by some fossil fueled death machine, emergency responders and the hospital will know i don't have any known drug allergies (NKDA = No Known Drug Allergies) and that they don't need to waste AB blood on me, since my blood type is the most common in the country. It also tells them how to contact J (on a piece of duct tape inside); I.C.E. = In Case of Emergency.

New York, and more garden pics

Just back from a busy but good trip to NYC, including a zany bike ride to the north Jersey coast for a lovely wedding/commitment ceremony. I have a bunch of pictures from the bike trip, but want to try to organize them into a trip report rather than just posting random ones. Here is one, however, of the sidewalk/bike path on the Passaic River bridge between Jersey City and the Port of Newark:


You can't really tell it clearly, but the "path" becomes primeval forest thick here at the end, as it was at the beginning, and you essentially have to bushwack to get a bike through. From everything I could tell, they just don't really give a damn about maintaining bridge crossing facilities for cyclists or pedestrians in New Jersey.

Someone gave me a beater commuter bicycle to use while I'm in NYC, and I'm abusing the kindness of another cyclist friend by stuffing it in his bicycle closet (thanks, T!) I had a great ride with the person who gifted the bike on me from Queens to the financial district in Manhattan. I discovered that there is basically no reason to even try to obey traffic regulations in Manhattan, since the cars, trucks, taxis, hired cars, and NYPD traffic officers don't. There were several cases where it was actually reckless to try to obey the law.

My favorite was when the asshole NYPD officer directing traffic yelled (literally) at us to get out of the way when we were at the front of a left turn lane just before turning into Chinatown (it was Delancy Street, I think at Allen Street, just after we got off the Williamsburg Bridge.) Baffled, we did, and the cop proceeded to yell at the cars behind us to ignore the no left turn red light and turn. He completely ignored us and after a while started to yell at more cars to drive through the still red light. Dumb asshole. This was basically the only thing this cop was doing, which caused the intersection to devolve into chaos, since the other drivers didn't know what to do, and we had to make our own way through the intersection. Dumb dumb dumb asshole.

While I was gone J watered the plants, and both the herb garden and tomato plantings are doing well:

the Bonnie Original hybrid

the herb garden planting and individual sweet basil...

Okay, I have some errands to run, and really need to get in a bike ride.

Flights, but no flights.

I'm at the airport for a flight to JFK, which yes, I will walk out of instead of paying for the fucking Airtrain.

Being at the airport, I thought I'd book another set of flights, but Delta's crappy website isn't cooperating. So I have time to BLOG!

Or I could read my new(ly checked out) book, Suburban Nation: the rise of sprawl and the decline of the american dream . It's assigned reading for a really neat online course in New Urbanism I just signed up for through the University of Miami called The Principles and Practice of New Urbanism . I'm really, really looking forward to it.

Okay, back to about the best dried fruit mix I've ever seen in an airport lounge (yes, I did take a picture, but I don't have a cable) and trying to get delta.com to actually do its job.