On the bright side, I get to cycle more.


Mama and I have been commuting on the bus since we found out about Baby in mid-August.  I love to cycle, but I’d much rather ride with Mama.  Now that she’s on bed rest, that’s not an option.  On the bright side of this week’s rollercoaster, I get to cycle more now, to work at least.  Winter cycling is rewarding, and I could really use the exercise.  Soon, Mama will get to ride again, too.  And, in a year maybe, Baby also!

Attractive enough to be a stripper?

Getting tea today at a local cafe’, I asked for my change in ones (for the bus). I joked with the lady who works there, “I don’t wanna steal all your ones.” She showed me her huge roll of ones and said, “When I get home, I have like thirty singles. People ask me if I’m a stripper or a dancer. I’m like, ‘Thanks, I guess, for thinking I’m attractive enough to be a stripper.’”

Been walking so much the bus looks fast to me.

I’ve blogged a lot about walking.  I know.  It’s something that I don’t do enough (because I am lazy and impatient) but something I enjoy endlessly.

Wednesday, I was at a community meeting at St. Paul Street and North Avenue in Central Baltimore.  It was supposed to last until 7:30 or 8:00, but it was over at 7:04 for pizza and chatting.  I’d already done my “networking” before the meeting started, so I bolted to catch my 7:53 bus at the train station.  On my way from my chair to the door, I thought, “Why should I bullshit in my office until my bus?  I can just walk!”  So when I left the building, I made a left and headed for home.

Sure, folks will chide you for walking through “that area” at “that time of night.”  Dude, 7:00pm dark is not the same as 2:00am dark — and I don’t walk around anywhere at that time (except once in Carbondale when we walked from the train station to home in the dead middle of the night after a trip to Memphis, with a tiny flashlight –  but that’s another story).  I didn’t see anyone sketchy and in fact was the sketchy person to lady who halted her exit from her car until after I passed her around 24th Street.  And for two young ladies carrying their groceries home above 25th Street.

Instead of driving or sitting on an empty bus or pedaling uphill, I got to peak into the big, old, stately houses on St. Paul Street (think 3-story rowhomes with big basements), at folks’ bookshelves and holiday decorations.  I greeted a dozen dog-walkers.  I caught the exam-time buzz as I cut through JHU to University Parkway.  I scared a guy on the section of University Parkway there the streetlights are out and where it is completely pitch black.  And, at the top of the hill, I saw the warm glow of the LED star lights in our windows, on the corner of the building, where warmth, my wife and a pasta dinner awaited.  In all, I walked 3 miles in 45 minutes.  Not that far, but fast, and I was tired.  That distance is small for a hike, but pretty long in a smallish city like Baltimore.

It was an exceptional night.  I read before bed and slept like a baby.

We planned some similar fun walking for Saturday, which is itself worthy of a post.

Nothing looks like this, not lately.

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This week: grey, rain, rain, rain, grey. With recently broken bones and my still-smashed right hand, I’m tempted to sound like one of those people who acts like crappy weather was invented just for suffering and just for their suffering at that.  It doesn’t feel good.

However, in search of better times and making the best of what’s left of autumn, Mrs. P. and I will venture to our very favorite bookstore and perhaps have dinner somewhere in Charles Village, Hampden or Roland Park.  I will have a waterproof messenger bag, so treasures will make it home unscathed.  At least it’s going to be in the upper 50s/lower 60s.  I hate when it rains just shy of the freezing point.  Unless I’m cycling.  I do get a kick out of that.

Curiously, Normal’s is on 31st Street, where I blew a spoke last Sunday and had to miss the ride I’d spent so much time helping to plan.  Much better tidings today, I think.

My bike is out of commission currently.  Yes, breaking a rear spoke on the drive side can make your wheel no longer turn without hitting the frame.  No, this does not, as has been suggested, make me a wimp or perfectionist.  It’s a matter of my understanding bike wheels, at least a little bit.  Plus, there’s the empirical smack-your-ass part where my wheel literally does not turn.  The shop will take care of it; it’s under warranty.  It’s a good excuse to visit my favorite bike shop.

I need to get some new books and spend quality time with the Mrs. and our little belly/Baby.  As if it’s not obvious, I’m growing increasingly less patient with people’s bullshit.  A nice walk usually helps a lot.

Purple blanket.

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Being a good Baltimorean, Mrs. P., AKA Aunt Frankie, made a Ravens purple blanket for Little Z, AKA Zack Jr.  This is him playing with Baby G.’s toy stash and enjoying the colorful rug in my living room last week. Also, rocking that purple blanket.

Little Z, by the way, said his first word that day: Dada.

Turns out there IS a photo.

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Of someone riding my old (2005) bike.  I found this photo on my old hard-drive (the one with Windoze).  It’s my Dad.  It’s during our move from Carbondale to Baltimore in August 2006.  When our bikes were sitting by the little trailer, ready to get packed last, my Dad snatched my bike and took off.  He wound up buying the 2006 model a few weeks later. Cycling is so damned fun that no one can resist and unattended bike.

Dear Baltimore Sun, Re: Commenters.

Dear Baltimore Sun,

You should really moderate the comments on your website.  They are threatening, poorly written, evenly more poorly reasoned, often racist and usually unrelated to the article they’re attached to.  I understand their purpose: to give people a chance to respond and start a conversation.  This is a good purpose.  This is the best part of this Web 2.0 stuff.  And if you moderated them and kept out the irrelevant, threatening, racist ones, this might happen.

But as it stands:

1) You’re paying for webspace and bandwidth for idiots to pontificate and then never come back, which is hardly a conversation.  You’re paying for people to generalize about black people, to attack politicians in stupid ways, etc.  You’re a newspaper!  You’re supposed to edit what you publish!
2) People leave blatantly threatening comments; other people report them (multiple times); you never do anything about it. I assume you have a certain level of editorial integrity, yes? Why publish comments by people who can barely type legible sentences when all that clearly comes across is hate/racism/assholery?
3) There are people like me who refuse to read your website and paper because you seem to endorse this kind of behavior.  There are other sources to read the same stories sans mean comments at the end about the kid who got assaulted by a cop, the man killed by an irresponsible truck driver, etc.
4) You lose money.
5) You lose readers and don’t get the news out.
6) 4 and/or 5 mean(s) that your purpose fails.
7) You’re contributing to the climate of idiocy that seems to sweep over Maryland whenever the state’s Republicans don’t get their way in elections.

Please don’t tell me about your belief in Freedom of Speech. Print the F word tomorrow morning if that’s what you’re about. Right there on the front page. And address it to JOHNNY so I know it’s for me. This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech.  It requires accountability, and there is none.

This is really and actually because you either:

1) Think this bullshit is Okay, in which case, I hope your paper fails, personally.
2) You don’t care what people write on your site, in which case, you should hire some bloggers (like me!) to run it for you.
3) You don’t pay any attention at all to what goes up on your own website. That’s just irresponsible to a terrible degree and doesn’t lend you much in the way of credibility and really means your paper should fail.

I look forward to some integrity and discretion from you in the future. And, seriously, thanks for being the only official news outlet to show up for the Ghost Bike last month (and I’m not being sarcastic; no stations came at all, only you).

Thank you,

This Dude

Two excellent birthday gifts.

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One: The ways in which I have been spoiled today, culminating in a lovely sunset and cool evening (the end of summer?).  From chocolate chip pancakes to delicious mattar paneer, this was a very yummy day. And there was also a fun dinner at Joe Squared last night, complete with French lager, Czech lager, Irish stout and chocolate cake.

Two: What I said I wanted since spring (when we decided to have a baby).  I wanted Mrs. FP to be pregnant, and I wanted to know.  With my party three weeks ago and the best news I ever received two weeks ago, I thought my birthday would be anti-climatic.  But it wasn’t.

Thanks to everyone who made this three weeks of awesomeness. I am a very fortunate 30-year-old. Ahem, 29-year-old (again, ahem).

Where I’ve been.

bikestand0809Mourning and covering the coverage of the recent cycling fatality in Baltimore.  In case you don’t live here and have no way of knowing, a cyclist was killed by a truck Tuesday.  The truck and driver haven’t been found.

Aside from being a cyclist, aside from the fact that this cyclist was on his way to the university where I work, aside from my own use of that intersection, aside from my wife knowing him from her old job — why am I so personally upset about this?  (As is the violent loss of life isn’t enough?)

I saw him.  Lying on the ground.  Not five minutes after it happened.  I don’t want to think through the details too much or share them.  But what I saw was…disturbing.  I’m not a person who sees a lot of dead bodies, especially not of people who died a terrible way.  Combined with being sick and having things to do for work even though I’m technically on vacation, I’ve not been myself this week.

Read more here and here.

There’s a memorial Sunday at 6pm.  Stay tuned to NBBB for more details.

Testing the Jones Falls River.

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The University where I work awards seed funding to awesome faculty project in Central Baltimore. I helped to recruit applicants and continue to help support/promote their projects. One such project is an analysis of the Jones Falls River, the lower falls. If you ride along the trail, you’re aware of the, uh, poopy smell around the Streetcar Museum? That’s a leak. That’s one of the four test sites.

It’s much nicer than you’d think down there, though, along our urban river. There are tadpoles, frogs, fish, ducks, assorted birds that our Ecologist can identify but that I certainly can’t. There are even tomato plants growing near the poopy leak.

“Do you think they’re being….fertilized by what’s coming out of here?” I asked.

“Probably. And you know what else I thought of, John[ny]? What if they weren’t planted?”

OMG. GAG. There are also cuke vines. Some are above the water, on the side of the trail. But, as my friend Dan points out, the seeds could have been picked out of the water by birds.

Still, there is some genuine beauty and peace down there. And it was fun to play scientist for a day, spending an afternoon making up for my relatively useless major.

New recycling program.

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With all the bullshit we keep hearing about rats, garbage everywhere, trashcans with lids and idiots complaining about any kind of change that will make them take an extra step to do anything, we’re forgetting about our yet-again-improved recycling program. In case you’re not lucky enough to live here, One PLUS One started this week. That is, city residents get their trash picked up on one day of the week and their recycling picked up on another. Everyone’s mad at DPW. God forbid anyone try to improve something, wait, I mean, CHANGE something and force people out of lazy habits.

This is the kind of thing that can get Baltimore some good national press. How much better can a recycling program be than to take everything recyclable from your home every single week? Do cities like Portland and Chicago have recycling programs like this? But this is Baltimore, right? And our local news is run by a bunch of complete DOWNERS.

Two years ago, we got cans, glass, #1 and #2 plastic picked up once a month and paper picked up once a month.  It was, at best, a basic recycling program for a large, modern city.  Then Sheila Dixon started us on twice a month single-stream recycling.  Not only that, but if you paid attention, the plastics they would take increased from #1-2 to #1-7.  A lot of household plastic is #4-5, so this was an awesome, if quiet, improvement.  More recently, it was announced that these plastics even included things that had oil like butter containers, etc.  Up until last week, city residents could put all their paper, metal, plastic and glass out twice a month and have it recycled for them.  Up until last week, we had a very nice recycling system.

Starting this week, we get the same single-stream recycling pick-ups, but we get them every week.  EVERY WEEK!  How many cities are there where you put out basically everything in your home that is recyclable, and the city takes it all away every single week, without even requiring you to have a special container?

We don’t hear about this in our local news.  All we hear about is that “trash” pick-up has been reduced to once a week.  “And I been having dat pick-up day fer ferty years!” Oh, shit! There are gonna be more rats! More trash in the streets! People are gonna ferrgit! “Now I gotta git me a ke-an wiff a lid!”

Well, folks, you were never supposed to leave your fucking trash out without a can in the first place. This has always been a law, but it has seldom been enforced. Do you leave your trash out behind your home in bags? Well, blame yourself for the plague of rats in this fucking city. You did your part to bring them here, so why don’t you take a few in as pets or at least name a few of the fuckers and keep feeding them your trash that you leave all over your alley? You think trash is gonna be all over the alleys? Simple. Put it in your can. Did you know that trash in cans with tight lids usually stays there? (I know; HOLY SHIT! What a concept!)

You don’t think that three 32-gallon cans is enough for you? You create more than 96 fucking gallons of trash a week?! What are you putting in your trash? Do you use it for a toilet also?

Guess what? Sheila figured out a way to FORCE you lazy fucking 35% of Baltimoreans who don’t recycle at all. Ha! Ha! You think recycling is some liberal bullshit? Fine. Be stupid. But now you’re gonna be stupid and recycle, fuckers.

There, I’ve cussed enough on the innernetz today.