One big biking family (jerks and all)

This column appeared in the May 2, 2008, edition of the Rosemount Town Pages.

There are a lot of things I like about biking. I like that it keeps me in shape, that it allows me to go fast and that it provides an excuse to wear stretchy shorts in public.
I'm not crazy about being honked at or run off the road by drivers with more pent-up anger than common sense, but sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.
I also like the fact just about anyone can do it. Outside of foot power, a bicycle is just about the most universal mode of transportation around.
I was reminded of this last Sunday morning as I shook off the effects of a Saturday night dinner that prominently featured Belgian beer to ride in the Minnesota Ironman, the popular bike ride that begins each April at Lakeville High School.
Pedaling the 100 or so miles of my particular route provided a pretty fair overview of the bicycle community.     As I rode I passed entire families on bicycles, mothers and fathers pedaling full-size bicycles while children pedaled furiously to keep up on their BMX bikes. I passed fit men and women wearing high-tech bike gear and pedaling bikes that cost as much as a decent used car and others who appeared to be making an effort to get into better shape, toiling on bikes that hadn't left the garage in months. Some of the latter reminded of that song about the ant and the rubber-tree plant. I'm not sure if they had high hopes of finishing or of just avoiding the emergency room. For a few, either one might have been an accomplishment.
I passed more than one person making the ride in jeans, which brought to mind horrifying visions of the chafing that no doubt awaited them.
About the only thing missing was a senior citizen on one of those gigantic tricycle deals with the basket on front.
We were like one big family out there. Together we braved wind and cold and red, stinging thighs. I'm sure we didn't all finish, but we all tried. And that's worth something.
Bikers get a bad rap sometimes. As I write this, KSTP TV is preparing to air an investigative report it has titled, "Bicyclists breaking the law." In it, the station's hard-hitting investigators point a long, shaming finger at cyclists who don't come to a complete stop at intersections.
Fair enough. I'll admit I haven't stopped at every single stop sign I've seen  momentum is a beautiful thing. But I also know as a driver I've never once been inconvenienced by a biker breaking the rules of the road. I have, however, been riding my bike legally only to have an angry motorist flash me an obscene gesture and threaten to run me off the road. I've had a driver yell at me for running a stop light while I was stopped at a light. And my brother once smashed his bike into a car when it made a last-second right turn from the left lane in front of him.
There are bikers who are jerks just like there are drivers who are too aggressive. Maybe this isn't as obvious as I think it should be, but the average bicyclist has no interest in being hit by a car. The odds just aren't in our favor. We just want to ride.
Well, ride and wear stretchy shorts.

Nathan Hansen,
Editor

Posted by: townpages on 5/1/2008 at 4:49 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

The myth of a job well done

From the April 25, 2008, edition of the Town Pages.

Somewhere along the line, and I can't say exactly when, I convinced myself that if only I owned my home the chores that might otherwise seem tedious and unpleasant would be magically transformed. Somehow, I reasoned, otherwise unappealing jobs like mowing the lawn, raking leaves and making mortgage payments would be rewarding when I was performing them in the interest of my own home. I believed the sense of satisfaction that comes with a job well done would outweigh the drudgery involved in getting the job done.
I am quickly coming to realize that this line of thinking is what the great philosophers refer to as "total bunk."
I moved into my house in November and, honestly, winter wasn't too bad. I don't have a lot of sidewalk to clear, and it seemed like half the time one of my neighbors would use his snowblower to clear most of it before I got home. Apparently when you have a home with 20 feet of sidewalk frontage you need to do something to justify owning a gas-guzzling snow throwing machine. Whatever his reason, I was fully in favor of the results.
Spring has been a different matter. I haven't had to mow the lawn yet  we'll talk more about that in a bit  but I've spent a fair amount of time already raking. It's a job made more challenging by the fact I have several large trees in my back yard. And by the fact the home's previous owner didn't bother to do any raking of his own last fall. My yards, front and back, were covered with a thick coat of leaves that had spent months under a blanket of snow. The leaves seemed perfectly happy to stay where they were.
I made a first pass at the back yard a few weeks ago, but that was more out of curiosity than any interest in actually getting the job done then. Once the snow had melted I started to notice there was a decided lack of grass in the yard. Turns out, the grass in my back yard is thinner than Nicole Ritchie on a diet. By the time I was finished the  tips of my rake tines were encased in  fair-sized balls of mud and my shoes were caked with enough gunk to make me a couple of inches taller.
I made another attempt at the job on Sunday. The front yard was easier. There are fewer trees there, and there was at least a respectable lawn underneath the leaves. In two-some hours of work I filled 10 bags  all I had  with leaves. I'd also developed a sore back, a twinge in my right shoulder and a healthy skepticism about the true value of pride in a job well done.
I can take pride in painting a room or building something. Those jobs take at least a little skill. Even if its your own yard you're cleaning up, raking is just dragging around a fancy stick. There's no pride to be found there. A moderately intelligent monkey could do it.
In fact, if you know any particularly sharp monkeys I've got more leaves to clear. I'd be happy to provide the bananas.

Nathan Hansen,
Editor

Posted by: townpages on 4/24/2008 at 4:30 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Do you have the status of the daylight?

This column appears in the April 18, 2008, edition of the Rosemount Town Pages.

It's hardly my place to tell other people how to spend their money. If you want to fill your home with expensive art and take luxurious vacations, more power to you. If you want to pamper yourself with lavish meals, well, I'm sure that steak was totally worth $150. And if you want to spend your hard-earned cash putting spinning rims on an otherwise stock Toyota Camry, well, go find your inner Sprewell, baby.
There comes a time, though, when you start to feel like the super-rich are just messing with the rest of us. A time, for example when you see something like Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome's Day&Night watch.
Now, I can appreciate a nice watch. I could have spent  $5 at a drugstore when I bought my last watch but I didn't. I wanted something nicer. I didn't get anything extravagant. It looks nice, but when you get down to it it's just a way to tell time, something I figure is an important feature of any watch.
The folks at Romain Jerome appear to disagree. Their new showpiece, which at $300,000 costs as much as a pretty decent house in this market, will not tell you whether you're running late for your dentist's appointment or your tee time at the club. It doesn't have a calculator or a Dick Tracy-style radio or even anything to show you the date. It just tells you whether the sun is up.
And according to Reuters, the time  er, daypiece?  sold out within 48 hours of its launch.
It's an admittedly striking watch, presuming you like the "left to rust for three years in the bottom of a rain barrel look. But is a pitted, grimy-looking exterior really enough to explain why people are dropping the equivalent of a nice split-level on a piece of jewelry that tells them something they should be able to figure out simply by opening their eyes.
I can see how the Day&Night watch might be useful for a race of well-to-do mole people, but is this really a reasonable purchase for any of us who lives in the surface world?
To be fair, the watch apparently uses something called Tourbillon movement, a complicated mechanical something-or-other designed to counteract the effect of Earth's gravity on the watch's accuracy. Which means it can tell you with astounding precision whether there's enough light out for you to see your wrist in front of your face.
What is the justification for this extravagance? Romain Jerome chief executive Yvan Arpa told Reuters it's because people want a trophy. And what better way to tell everyone around you you have more money than you could possibly spend than spending more than a decade's worth of minimum wage salary on the equivalent of a window?
I'll tell you what, ridiculously rich people of the world  if you really want to show off, you can hire me. I'll give you my cell phone number and guarantee I'll pick it up any time, day or night. If you're ever uncertain whether the sun is up, you call me and I, using a series of complex mathematical computations  or maybe Google Maps  will tell you whether you should be eating breakfast or dinner. And I'll do it all for the bargain price of $250,000.
How can you beat that?

Nathan Hansen,
Editor

Posted by: townpages on 4/17/2008 at 3:02 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Ah, the spring bike ride

This column appeared in the April 11, 2008, edition of the Rosemount Town Pages.

Early season bike rides are always tricky business. The weather's unpredictable. The equipment is usually in need of a tuneup and the physical fitness of the previous summer has gone the way of the dodo and Britney Spears' dignity.
Take Sunday. It was 40-odd degrees and rainy when my father, my brother and I set out from our respective homes. Each of us knew the experience would be unpleasant, but nobody wanted to be the one to actually call it off. I suspect this is how Two and a Half Men stays on the air, give or take a detail or two.
Anyway, there we were. We were all soaked within minutes. We were cold. And our faces were steadily being caked with mud kicked up by the person riding in front of us. It was the kind of ride where you start anticipating a hot shower roughly 15 minutes after you start.
Then things started to get bad.
The first flat tire happened about 10 miles into the ride. We were headed south on Highway 13 when my dad announced his rear wheel had sprung a leak. We stopped under the overhang in front of a Mexican restaurant to repair it and, having given our bodies an opportunity to vent any spare warmth they'd built up to that point, set out again into the mist.
Here's the other thing about early-season rides in the rain. Rain, it turns out, fills up the multitude of potholes that develop on Minnesota roads over the winter. This makes the potholes difficult to see, which in turn leads to an uncomfortable number of jolts as you ride into holes large enough to swallow mid-sized dogs.
I don't know if those bumps were the cause of the next flat, but for one reason or another my front tire started leaking air a few miles after our first stop. Air was jetting out of the tire fast enough to make bubbles in the puddles on the road. That leak blew harder than Memphis' free throw shooting Monday night.
At this point, we started to worry. Each of us carried one spare tube. My brother's was the only one left. And considering we had something like 30 miles to go, that suddenly didn't seem like good odds.
We didn't beat the odds. Just over 30 miles into the ride, my back tire suddenly went softer than the Twins' bats this season. My brother grudgingly gave up his spare. I put it on the rim and started to pump it up. I got it about half full before all the air rushed back out, leaving us spare-less on Old Shakopee Road in Bloomington. When a self-adhesive patch I carried with me failed completely to adhere, my ride was officially over.
I spent the next hour and a half waiting in an Oasis Market in Bloomington while my dad finished his ride. My face was caked with mud from forehead to chin. I looked like a Navy Seal getting ready for a night mission. A scrawny, ineffective Navy Seal.
I was wearing spandex shorts, bike shoes and a close-fitting rain jacket. I felt, I have to say, a little out of place among the people stopping in to buy cigarettes. Or the college-age clerk who spent the entire time listening to Beatles music who said at one point he would have been taller but all the drugs he'd done stunted his growth.
My dad finally made it back to get me, but not before getting one last flat half a mile from home forced him to call for a ride of his own. By the time I got home it was nearly 5 p.m., roughly five hours after I'd rolled away from my front door. I was wet and cold and tired and generally uncomfortable.
But, hey, at least it's supposed to snow this weekend.

Nathan Hansen,
Editor

Posted by: townpages on 4/11/2008 at 10:04 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Seasons change; people change

This column appeared in the April 4, 2008 edition of the Town Pages.

Dear Winter,
We need to talk.
I know what you're thinking. I can see it in your eyes. You're worried this is one of "those" talks. And, well, it is. Because as  important as you are to me, I think it's time I moved on.
I'd like to start seeing other seasons.
Hey. No. Don't do that. Come on. Dumping six inches of snow on everyone isn't going to change things. You can't hide the distance that's grown between us. You can't bury feelings under ice crystals. Things between us have grown cold, and I need something warmer. Something greener. Something that doesn't cause me to injure my back heaving wet snow off my sidewalk.
We had some good times, Winter. Remember a few months ago when I slipped on some ice and got bruises all up and down the side of my body? That was a hoot. I ached for days.
But, Winter, I need to move on. I'm a different person now than I was five months ago. I'm in a different place. I've put away my shovel. I've stored my bag of sidewalk salt. I bought a garden hose. I bought a lawn mower. That means I need a lawn, Winter. And I'm never going to have one if you don't stop dumping snow all over my yard. Given my past demonstrations of gardening skills I might not have one anyway, but you've got to let me at least try to grow.
I've got my bike out, Winter. You know what that means? It means slushy streets and sub-freezing temperatures are not cool. Spandex and sleet do not mix, Winter. I need you to understand that, because the way I've been eating these last few months  it's because I'm uncomfortable around you, I think  I need to get out there and get some exercise.
It's not just me, Winter. You've worn out your welcome here and people are starting to get uncomfortable. They're too polite to say anything, but there are a lot of people who are ready to trade in their boots and snow pants for flip-flops and cargo shorts. You've got to let them go.
If it helps, I have a feeling this isn't the end for us, Winter. People change, you know? Sunny skies and warm weather might seem good now, but who knows if it will last. We might feel very different in a few months. We'll have tired of swimming and walking in the park and long for an opportunity to ski or snowshoe.
We've been through this before, Winter, and somehow we always end up back together. Pretty soon we'll realize life in Minnesota just isn't the same without you. Let's face it, you're as iconic in this state as lutefisk and underachieving football teams.
For now, though, you need to go. Take your things with you. Yes, the toothbrush, too.
It's been fun, Winter. But you've got to go.
Love, Nathan

Nathan Hansen,
Editor

Posted by: townpages on 4/4/2008 at 1:16 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink