|
|
Monday, July 13th, 2009
| |
5:34 pm - Coincidence? Mass superstition? Something else?
|
For the next few weeks, I'm in charge of setting up a few site visits for a visiting group of international students. One of the places we'll be going is, of course, the Statue of Liberty.
Now, if you've been following the news lately, you know the crown of the statue has recently been reopened, but that tickets are reserved for months ahead. On a lark, I decided to see what was available; it turns out nothing is available until mid-October except for one day: September 11th. Furthermore, on that day, all of the tickets are gone for every time except one: 9:00 am. The 8:00, 10:00, 11:00, etc. tickets are all gone, but September 11th at nine in the morning is still available if you want to go up in the crown. Otherwise, you'll be waiting for over a month.
Are people really avoiding this time? They must be, because it's not an issue of the statue being locked down, closed for memorial ceremony or VIP or something - the tickets were available. Are people avoiding this time out of respect? Superstition? Are people afraid that that precise time on that specific day is the most likely time for something bad to happen if you're up in the crown? And if so, what's up with all the people booking for 10:00? If you think there'll be an attack at nine, you're not going up at ten! That's like some kind of conflict of optimism.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
| |
11:11 am
|
|
| Friday, May 22nd, 2009
| |
2:26 pm - You'd Think Rain Would Feel Good on Sunburn: More Notes from the Ride
|
The ride is nearly a week behind me now; my sunburn is fading, and I'm starting to walk normally again.
I want to take this time to sincerely thank all of you who donated or even spread the word. It's cliche, and I say it every time, but without your part in my rides, mine has no importance.
I took some pictures this time! With a real camera! Except the obvious self-portrait, which is a camera phone.
( But you're going to have to click here. )
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, May 18th, 2009
| |
5:53 pm - I Can't Feel My Feet: Notes from the Ride
|
In the past seven months, people have occasionally asked me what it's like to be a new father. My answer usually involves such ideas as responsibility, love and fatigue. There's something else, though.
Lately, I'm fairly emotional and given to tears easily. As I started off on this ride, I saw a man pedaling solo on a tandem bike with nobody riding in back. I had just enough time to think how out of character this was for the Coast the Coast, whose riders tend to be fairly traditional (none of the mountain bikes, BMXs or fixed-gears that I sometimes see on the City to Shore), before I noticed a laminated piece of paper, tented and attached where that rider would be: "FOR [man's name] / 19**-2000 / HE HAD MS, BUT MS NEVER HAD HIM"
And it just started me thinking. I've been working against this disease for most of a decade, and I know it sucks, but what disease doesn't, right? People die. We work against it, but they die anyway. Or: they die, but we work against it anyway. I guess I'm saying that until I saw that sign (one of similar dozens, maybe hundreds, I've seen over the years), my opposition to MS had always been hypothetical, but something about my mindset as I reread that little piece of paper, starting to feel that emotion that I suspect most men fight if only out of reflex, hit me on a personal level. So far, I've been one of the fortunate few on these rides; I've never directly known anyone with multiple sclerosis. But this person's death was so important to this guy that he was affected enough even years later to pay tribute to him by making this already dedicated ride that much more difficult.
I thought back to one rider that Corri and I saw at the Woodcrest PATCO station at last year's City to Shore start line. Many people write "In memoriam _______" somewhere on their gear or even pin photos to their jersey. This man, though, seemingly in his early twenties, had simply written in grease pencil or makeup across the back of one calf, "I MISS MY MOM." Not, "In loving memory...", not "In tribute to...", or something else so euphemistically distancing, but something so powerful and intimate that it came back to me this past Saturday, about ten miles into a foggy morning ride, and combined with the empty seat on the tandem bike just made me glad that that an MS ride is a good place to cry because tears are indistinguishable from the sweat every rider has on his or her face. I realized it doesn't matter what other diseases are out there. It doesn't matter whether MS is the top killer or even in the top ten; it is the reason these two people who were so loved by others are not walking around on this earth anymore.
And that was enough to make me hate the disease in a way I never have. It made me want to keep biking until it was gone. That kid was way too young to lose his mother. And maybe that's why I've made more of an emotional connection than ever before; this heightened empathy is something I only occasionally see mentioned by other new fathers. Maybe it's not a universal phenomenon, but maybe it is and men just don't talk about it.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
| |
2:41 pm - Ride insecurity
|
Guys, we've known each other for a while now, right? I feel I can confide in you, show my weaker side, my vulnerabilities.
I am really worried about this upcoming ride.
I know I always say I'm underprepared, but this time it's so much worse. The longest ride I've done so far is about an hour. Each day of this weekend will be about seven hours of riding. It's hard not to focus on the "each day" part.
But I committed to do it when I signed up, and I committed again when I posted asking for money, which is probably why I did it. I think somewhere along the way I decided it's better to try and fail, all while raising money for MS, than not to try at all. It's a noble sentiment, but it will feel like nothing but bullshit around mile 35. That's over twice as far as any ride I've done yet, but it's less than halfway through one day.
The ride itself, however, is not bad; I've done it before, four times or so. In the end, I suppose this is an opportunity to see just how much of my training holds over from the previous season. I hope a lot, though I'm not holding my breath. Mostly because that would make it even harder to ride.
Anyway, many people have been posting about my ride, and I want to thank each and every one of them. Every time my donations start getting active again, I can tell someone has spread the word - it really is effective and really is helpful.
If you can donate:
BensMSRide.com
And even if you can't (or already have), please pass along the info in any way you see fit. I'm glad you are all part of this life-long project with me, and I thank you for helping me.
|
|
(8 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
| |
4:16 pm
|
You know how evey year I do two MS rides, and every year I come on here and ask all of you to donate to them, and every year I mention how little training I've done.
This year is no different. Or maybe it is...
You see, this year there has been a horrible combination of bad luck. I say this not to complain, but to illustrate. The fantastic timing of a surprisingly broken bicycle, delays at the shop, and damn near a week of rain have all combined to leave me about a week and a half from a two-day 170-mile ride having not ridden my bike since last fall.
Honestly, I've been thinking of skipping this one.
Compounding matters is the fact that one of my part-time jobs (they're both part-time) has informed me that they are (allegedly temporarily) suspending their ESL program. This would seem to indicate that I'm joining the statistics of the recession, though there seems to be some hope of reduced hours in a different position. Nothing is certain at this point. Anyone need some English taught?
I know this seems unrelated, but there's a certain low level of background depression coloring my decisions. As a father, a husband, a "breadwinner" I kind of feel like I should be spending this time looking for jobs, or at least polishing my resume - maybe even working on a cv or, at the very least, learning what a cv is.
Anyway, after a bit of internal debate, I have decided to do the ride after all. I think doing some good for someone in the world will make me feel better about my situation. Unfortunately, this puts me in a position of trying to fundraise in the eleven days remaining. So here we go:
www.bensmsride.com
That's where you go to support horribly cramped legs and medically threatening levels of fatigue and sunburn. Oh, and multiple sclerosis research and support programs. Those are very important.
Seriously, if I ever again start to wonder if I should do the ride, just remind me of the one or two times someone in public has seen my MS ride T-shirt and approached me just to thank me for what I've done for them or their family. Total strangers. I feel like I could ride two hundred miles on just that feeling. I hope my poor legs agree.
Please donate!
www.bensmsride.com
|
|
(6 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, March 9th, 2009
| |
3:43 pm
|
|
| |
1:22 pm
|
I think we really dropped the ball on the placement of Christmas.
It's difficult to think of now that the weather has turned, but last week, and maybe later this week if it gets cold enough again, all I could think of was Lewis Black's description of winter: "It just gets greyer and greyer and greyer, and then one day you wake up and it's the greyest day you've ever seen. And then the next day is even greyer." You know what would help that? Christmas! Just toward the end of winter.
To me, Christmas should be the payoff of the season, the reward for suffering through weeks of bitterness, dreariness, shoveling, scraping, skidding, slipping, and no daylight. As it is now, we all celebrate the biggest winter event right at the beginning, and then slog through the rest of it with nothing to look forward to soon but more of the same. The White Queen damned Narnia to eternal winter without Christmas, but that's what winter really is here with the holiday frontloaded the way it is.
Also, as it is now, the Christmas monster has pretty much eaten up all of fall, a season that deserves its own attention. Let that build-up happen when there's snow on the ground, not when the leaves are changing and people are drinking cider. After the big snow last week, I saw a house with all its lights up, the perfect Christmas picture, and all I could think of was how long it had been since winter seemed charming. Everybody gets all excited for Christmas, cuts out paper snowflakes, goes to see the Nutcracker, hangs lights and decorations, artificially frosts their windows, and then the first serious snow falls about a month after the big day. They've done all this in merely a slight chill with bone dry streets. Push it back about two months, and let them do it in the snow.
But for God's sake, don't push it back too far; give people a week or two to take their stuff down. Ben's rule still applies: If you have Christmas decorations up after the first day of spring, I get to drive my car through your front door.
|
|
(12 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, March 5th, 2009
| |
3:38 pm
|
"Don't piss on my foot and tell me it's raining."
I used to think that was pretty clever until I realized you could end that sentence much earlier and be closer to my actual philosophy.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
| |
12:04 pm
|
A block-wide fire had a local reporter on the news the other day say that it started in one unit and then "spread like wildfire" to other units.
Is that right? Can you say that? I don't have a very good creative writing background, so what is this? A failed simile, failed because it's too similar to begin with? Isn't this a little like saying, "The rubies shone like precious gems"? Or, because the fire wasn't really wild, "The cubic zirconia shone like precious gems"?
Unrelatedly, on my walk to the train this morning, a woman half a block back shouted, "Tiger! Tiger!" When I turned around, she was just calling her cat, but until then I thought maybe Sagat was behind me. You know, with a high voice - his wife or mom or something. Or someone quoting William Blake. Now that I think of it, no reason it couldn't be both.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
| |
1:05 pm
|
As I was falling asleep last night, my mind reeled off into the future, and I thought of all the things that I am very unlikely to do. I will never climb Mount Everest. I will never compete in the Olympics. I will never sell a piece of fruit.
I woke up a little. Could that be true?
As the years stretch out ahead of me, even if I get seventy more of them, might I never in all that time sell a piece of fruit?
The more I thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. Sure, I could potentially befriend a fruiterer, and he may on some day ask me to watch his shop while he goes and buys Lotto tickets, but that's unlikely. And on an individual level, under what circumstances might I ever sell a piece of fruit to another person rather than just give it freely?
No, no, I was becoming more convinced; there is no fruit commerce awaiting me. I thought that after sleep this would seem ridiculous, that in the clear light of day I would be able to refute or abandon this position. Now I find I can do neither.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
| |
5:05 pm
|
I got Corri a Wii Fit for her birthday, and I've been trying it out too. The other day it kind of gave me the business for skipping a day, but in a totally patronizing way: "I guess you were too busy to work out yesterday, huh?" Being as it includes a functional scale, it tracks your weight and BMI, helpfully plotting them on a graph for you. I never thought I'd see the day that a video game had an integrated weight loss plan over a course of three months.
I also never thought I'd see the day that I'd skip a piece of chocolate, worried what my Nintendo would think of it.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| |
4:22 pm
|
|
| Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
| |
10:05 am - An introduction
|
|
| Friday, October 3rd, 2008
| |
1:05 pm - Hawks & Doves
|
I'm finally getting around to posting about the ride, and I find I have little to nothing to say about it. I ended up doing the century on Saturday, something I wasn't sure about right up until I made the turn that committed me to it. The ride pretty much kicked my ass from mile 60 to about mile 85 where I cheated and drank some caffeine. Oh, I was a different rider then! Anyway, I sent out the email thank-yous on Tuesday, but if for some reason you didn't get one, let me take this time to thank you now for donating. To paraphrase my own email, without your support, I'm just some schmo staying on a bike far longer than is advisable.
Unrelatedly, here's a story from work today: After class, one of my students asked if I had watched the debates last night. I did, and so had she; I asked her if she had any opinion about who she liked better. She said Biden because, get this, he answered the questions that were asked of him while Palin just talked in circles without saying anything. Now, I know that this is conventional wisdom - pretty much what was expected and perceived from the debate, but this is an ESL student in her late teens or early twenties. Don't get the wrong idea; she is not a person who just speaks English with an accent and occasionally hilariously mangles an idiom. This is a person who struggles with the English language every day of her life, and she was not confused by Palin's accent, rate of speech, or vocabulary. She was very aware that Biden had structure, form, and most importantly, content to his answers. He laid out a main idea and supported it with details, just as we teach students to do. It astounds me that any large group in this country could not demand that at a bare minimum of a VP nominee.
Also, here's some pictures of some kestrels on Drexel's campus about a month ago.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
| |
3:00 pm - Also...
|
I can take directions.
- Take a picture of yourself right now.
- Get a hot dog. Be nonplussed. Just take a picture.
- Post that picture with you looking nonplussed with a hot dog.
- Don't go posting an eight megapixel hot dog.
- Include these instructions.
By the way, I finally upgraded to a paid account just for this.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
2:31 pm
|
I want to thank everyone who donated yesterday in response to my plea (as well as, of course, those who donated earlier). The fundraising is looking up a little bit, though I'm still a couple hundred shy of my goal. Help me rectify this; go to bensmsride.com and donate while there's still time.
While we're here, I'd like to thank Calamity Jon who is donating his time and effort by selling original artwork toward the cause. If you go there and buy a piece, the money goes straight to the National MS Society. I can't recommend it enough. In fact, when Jon has done this in the past, I've even bought a piece or two. There's one up in the nursery right now, hanging o'er the crib. How does that make you feel, Jon? Drawing for little kids, that is. My daughter is going to spend a lot of time in her formative years staring at your rooftop rabbit.
You know how to tell that it's MS ride season? There's a hurricane on the way. I mean, not that we haven't done the City to Shore through a hurricane before, but I'd just rather not do it again is all.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, September 22nd, 2008
| |
1:38 pm - One last short ride
|
I did my last training ride yesterday - 52 miles out to Toms River. My time wasn't as good as it was two weeks ago when I went to AC, but I still finished the ride feeling just fine and ready for more. I'm really starting to believe that this weekend will be easy.
If you haven't donated yet, please do. To be honest, this has not been the best year for donations so far; I keep hoping for a last minute surge. Anything you can donate is generous, and I know the National MS Society puts it to good use. As always, please put the word out too, if you can. That always helps. While you're at it, go to Calamity Jon's, and bid on original art for a donation. This is something that Jon has done for me in the past, and it really goes a long way toward helping raise money. Thanks Jon!
BENSMSRIDE.COM
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, September 19th, 2008
| |
12:51 pm
|
I just wanted to post a reminder to anyone who intended to donate, that you can do so at BENSMSRIDE.COM. The ride is fast approaching, and, even though I am, as always, far behind where I should be in training and fundraising efforts, every year everything seems to come together just fine. Thanks to anyone who donates, and if you can, put the word out. I hope the redirect will make it easier to do so; other people talking about the ride always creates a very real and significant jump in donations.
Thank you everyone - I'm almost halfway to my goal already.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
| |
1:28 pm
|
Have you ever managed to cut yourself a good one with the serrated edge of a box of plastic cling wrap? Have you ever done it on your stomach?
Unrelatedly, my summer's not over. In fact, Drexel only begins its break on Labor Day. Because of this, I'm down to just one job for most of September, and I've been spending it goofing off and riding. In fact, I've got a moderate sunburn from riding down to Atlantic City two days ago. Corri met me down there to drive me home, but not before pizza and an ocean foot-soaking. Maybe I had a tailwind, but it was a pretty easy 55 miles; I'm feeling more confident than usual about my upcoming ride.
What ride, you ask? Oh come on, are you new here?
bensmsride.com
Thanks again to Manning for building (and hosting) the redirect, making it easier than ever for you to remember how to donate, should you be unable to click that link right now. I mean, you can even type "Ben's MS ride" (no quotes) into google and it's the first hit.
In case you are new, here's the basics: Twice a year I bike in a non-competitive event to raise funds for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. These funds go to help the victims of MS and their families, as well as support future research into the disease. MS is a deadly ailment about which much is still unknown, including specific causes, and, unfortunately, a cure. I hope to be part of a movement that eradicates, or at least tames, MS. But I can't do it without you.
Donate any amount that you can; your generosity is always appreciated. You can read more about the disease and my ride by following the links on the donation page.
As always, thanks in advance to any and all who donate.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
schtune's journal
