What can I say?

We grew up in the country, with a lot of time on our hands and like all teenage boys...were a bit obsessed with fire.

Won't you come and ride the rail trial with me?

* To the tune of "She'll be Comin' Around the Mountain".... *

Won't you come and ride the rail trail with me?

Won't you come and ride the rail trail with me?

We'll be on a mountain bike

I'm your pilot, Captain Mike

Won't you come and ride the rail trail with me?

Let's get off a bit and climb up The Beast

Let's get off a bit and climb up The Beast

It's more rise than it is run

while holding the camera isn't fun

This was not a good idea in the least!

Now, let's take a picture of the Bass Island sign

Now, let's take a picture of the Bass Island sign

My head's blocking out the "B"

I hope that makes it extra funny

When I take a picture of the Bass Island sign!

We've reached the end of the trail, whoopie!

We've reached the end of the trail, whoopie!

But, we're only half way done

Sixty four more miles of fun

So, let's quick snap a worms-eye shot of me...

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.....








Won't you stop and take a pee break with me?
Won't you stop and take a pee break with me?
I checked no one's comin' or goin'
And my bladder's overflowin'
So, please stop and take a pee break with me.






Now, let's stop and pray for the dead mouse.
Now, let's stop and pray for the dead mouse.
He was Mickey mousin' around
then some rider mowed him down
So, let's stop and pray for the dead mouse.



It's about time this bike ride be done
It's about damn time this bike ride be done!
We're at mile 'hundred twenty six
and I can barely feel my dick
It's 'bout foopin' time this bike ride, be done!

Now we're home so let's celebrate with a beer!

Now we're home so let's celebrate with a beer!

It's my favorite carb drink

makes me forget how bad I stink

and all that painful chafing on my rear!

THE END

Hospital Sprawl

It might sound corny, but I like corn fields.

I don't like hospitals.

When I was a kid, we spent a lot of time in corn fields. It was fun. No one can find you in a corn field.

When I was a kid, I also spent a significant amount of time in hospitals. It sucked. No one can find you in a hospital either, thanks to HIPAA.

But, ya know what really sucks? When a hospital expands to where a corn field used to be.

We've all seen this with shopping malls. Here in Dayton, we have a brand new mall. It's called "The Greene". Notice the "e" on the end. The space occupied by The Greene used to be all trees, which makes it not very...green. Now it's a parking lot and shops. It's nice though. As a matter of fact, I am deathly afraid to go there because I think I might stop hating it. My favorite book store has a location there. There's a cool coffee shop, a bike shop, a comedy club, Victoria's Secret. What's not to like?

I'll tell ya what's not to like; it isn't necessary.

So, how about the new satellite medical centers, magnet hospitals, etc? Are they necessary? Maybe. But I'll tell you one thing, the hospital where my eight year old was born went out of business. So, hospitals must not be that much in need.

I liked that hospital. The birthing room had hardwood floors. I remember focusing on them when I was ready to pass out while my wife was in labor.

Anyhow, these medical centers are branching out into the 'burbs. They aren't quite full blown hospitals. But, some of them have emergency rooms. It must be emergencies make lots of money.

Some of them have strange names that insinuate bad things. For example "Sycamore Hospital". "Sycamore" just sounds awful bad if you say it. It sounds like; "I went to the hospital sick, and I came out Sycamore!". Sycaless would be better. Or "Southview" hospital. That sounds like a place for colonscopies. And I really wish they wouldn't name a hospital a "memorial" hospital. That means it's named after someone who died. I don't think we need to be reminded of that. These things should be named something that sounds a little more positive; like "The Doctor Feelgood Medical Center" or something.

So...malls cause sprawl, hospital medical centers cause sprawl. What if these were consolidated into a big medical mall? That way, the old-timers could walk laps around it at 6am and window shop for their next colonoscopy.

It sounds corny, but it might just work.

Mickey will put his fanny here

Nana 2.0 (my new bike build) is developing just fine in the womb of my basement bike room.

At this stage, she has components and only needs to add a few more parts.

Next, comes the saddle. And with all the bad racing luck I've experienced this year (no falls thankfully), I think it makes sense to add this saddle.

The green towards the back is a shamrock. I figure a little luck o' the Irish never hurt.

Lightning never strikes twice in the same spot. It strikes three times.

I got to catch the tail end of my daughter's 8th birthday bash yesterday.

That's cool. I was worried wouldn't make it. I thought I was going to be sidetracked by that pesky thing called sudden death by lightning strike!

* thunder clap *

I stayed at work and waited for some D-bag student to turn his lab reports late. This consequently, made me leave later and get caught in a strong thunderstorm on the ride home. Lightning was striking very close to me. When this happens I usually measure the closeness using the time interval between the thunder (sound) and the lightning (light). Every second is about one thousand feet. According to my calculations, the time interval was zero seconds, which means approximately holy shit, I am going to die!

I was also riding next to some tall utility poles and this was not making feel the least bit comfy. Your chance of being struck by lightning is one in five thousand. But Darwin's law was not in my favor.

There's a guy on my cycling team who claims to have been struck by lightning three times. Nice guy. Kind of a character. So, I think he's just telling a funny-fib. Funny-fibs are lies you see if you can get away with when you are bored and don't have anything else to do. I once convinced a student that I had never tried a Pringle. My brother once conviced his roomate that the Goodyear Blimp folded up into a van and that's how they transported it from place to place. That guy's a lawyer now.

But, what if this is not a fib and you were actually struck by lightning three times? I suppose you'd earn the nickname "Sparky" for one. But generally:

Strike one: Chalk it up to bad luck. But, you shouldn't have been outside during the storm.
Strike two: I'm having a hard time understanding how this happened. I would be scared as hell of thunderstorms and not even as much as poke my head outside. But, maybe you just have really, really bad luck.
Strike three: You are a potential Darwin award candidate. It's obvious that lightning has a crush on you. You should have been in the basement...in the clothes dryer.

Yesterday's close calls have me thinking twice. I don't wanna "ground out" the next time I'm up to bat.

Especially if I'm the hot wire.

Electricians should appreciate the punnage.

Bye now.

My Dad

If I call my Dad's house and the answering machine picks up, this is the greeting:

"You've reached Mike at ***-****. This is not the CVS pharmacy in West Corners! You dialed an eight instead of a zero. That's okay, we all make mistakes. But, don't do it again! For the 75% of you who can dial correctly, please leave a message."

Happy Father's Day, Dad. This is your blog. My father; chemist, engineer, thinker...weirdo.

But you're an original, always cooking up a new angle on things. And, I appreciate that. Thanks to you, I've got some very...unique memories.

Here's some of those memories you provided me, my Mom and my brothers:

• The "Ice Buggy"; a go-cart you built with spiked wheels in the back and skis in the front you used to ride around the frozen pond up the road.
• The time you put nitrogen triiodide contact explosive all over the place at my birthday party and terrorized the kids.
• When you made your own dynamite and used it to remove tree stumps.
• When you lost a tooth and kept gluing it back in with super glue.
• The air-pressure powered snowball bazooka.
• The time the well pump broke and you felt you had to fix it yourself. So, we didn't have running water for several days.
• The PVC gravity roller coaster you made for my kids, which they could ride down the hill in my back yard along pulley wheels and PVC rails.
• The pole barn you built almost single handedly and put a basketball hoop in the upstairs for us kids to play with.
• All the shit (including three treadmills) you bought at garage sales that has now filled that space in the barn where we once played basketball.
• When you packed all five of us into a van and took us on a tour out west for six weeks.
• The time we went camping and there were loud people partying all night next to us. So, to retaliate, you rigged a sprinkler with a timer in the form of a piece of ice that would melt. Once it did, the sprinkler shifted direction and soaked all their stuff as we were long gone.
• The time you took us to the airport for an economy vacation, because you knew we liked planes.
• Equipping my first car with an "Ooooga" horn you purchased at a garage sale for 25 cents.
• All the knee jerk conservative rant letters to the editor that were printed in the local newspaper. This is where I really appreciate having the same name as you.
• The times you went to our wrestling matches and yelled for us to do your favorite move, where you pry the guy to his back using your arm between his legs. It wasn't embarrassing at all for us to hear you yell "In the crotch!" at the top of your lungs.

I could go on. But I won't.

Happy Father's Day!

Fat Rat

Holy cannolli! I was riding the rail trail to work and I caught a glimpse of the most obese mouse ever! The thing was just as wide as it was long and it could barely walk! I almost ran it over because it couldn't get out of my way fast enough!

It must be eating too much? Not exercising enough? We gotta put that boy on a diet.

Seriously, how could a thing like that happen in nature?

Oh, wait. I think I figured it out, just as I typed the word "nature".

Never mind. I'm kinda embarrassed now.

Sheesh!

Blue Streak is Back!

Yeah, so I was having a bad day because I work with difficult people.

But foop all that! Who cares! Because yesterday, the Dayton Cycling Club emailed me and informed me that the Blue Streak Time Trial is back!

Woot. * irish jig *

Please, let me 'splain.

Most time trials are hilly or are an out and back 5 miles each way or open to traffic.

The Blue Streak is a flat, ten mile circular loop, which is closed to traffic on the grounds of Wright Patt Air Force Base. So, it's fast. This all means I have a better opportunity (and more of them) to try and beat my personal best of 24:12.

I really wanna break the 24 mark. This might all sound lame to you, but in my mind it's not.

And then after it's all done, Fox & Hound is right on the way home. Coincidence? Yes! I really needed a coincidence!

So, to borrow a phrase from Kenny, take a suck on that, world!

What Bread is NO!

I have an activist in my house.

After tasting the sweet spoils of soft white bread for several months, I decided it was in her best interest to switch to something healthier. Boy, was that a dumb move. I soon found her door plastered with protest signs stating "No wheat bread allowed".

This girl needs to be heard. And, that's where you come in.

The following interview was conducted today:

Mick: I couldn't help noticing the anti-wheat bread signs on your door. What do they represent?

Daughter: It means I don't like wheat bread.

Mick: And what do you hope to accomplish by posting these signs?

Daughter: That no one will bring wheat bread into my room, because I don't like the way it smells and I don't like the way it tastes.

Mick: Who did you hope would see your signs?

Daughter: Everybody who's going into my room.

Mick: Do you have other plans for the future regarding your dislike for wheat bread?

Daughter: Well, can I talk about how I feel about wheat bread?

Mick: Of course.

Daughter: What I feel about wheat bread is...whenever I swallow it, it makes me have a funny feeling in my throat and I have to spit it out.

Mick: Do you feel like you've been oppressed by wheat bread?

Daughter: I do like the bread, but I don't like the wheat in it. I like other types of grains but not wheat bread.

Mick: What do you prefer?

Daughter: I like oatmeal. I don't know any other foods that has grains in it.

Mick: If you could form a group of like-minded people who do not like wheat bread, what would you name it?

Daughter: Wheat bread is NO!

Mick: I see. What would you like to tell the world?

Daughter: I don't like wheat bread.

And that concluded the interview.

I'd like to tell this to the world. Today it might be wheat bread. But tomorrow it could be poverty, social injustice and racism.

Baby steps. Baby steps...

I almost wrecked, lost my cool and dropped the F-bomb!

I kinda yelled a potty word at a guy during the Strawberry Festival Time trial.

Unfortunately, he was a new guy and an african american guy, two things cycling needs more of.

Also, I hate it when people who are more experienced glom on to neophytes and give them advanced lectures and play the expert. Most of the time they aren't doing it to help the other person as much as trying to elevate themselves above the other person so they can feel better about themselves. That's what alienated my from golf. Stuff like "Here Mike, let me show you how to correct your slice". That crap.

But today a guy almost killed me. And in my book, it was fair game to tell him to watch where the foop where he was going.

Except, I didn't say foop, I said fuck.

Oh shit! I said a potty word.

Damn, I did it again.

Shucks.

I was in the final 50 meters of the finishing stretch and my dilithium crystals were severely overloaded. As I was cooking it as best as I could, this ass clown was meandering across the road on his bike about 50 feet behind the finish line. So, I'm on a crash course here.

Since I can't change my direction easily or stop, I yelled "Hey!".

He lackadaisically turned around and went the other direction, still in my path and still in the middle of the foopin' road. Mind you, this would have been much worse than your typical cycling crash, where two bikes are going the same speed, clip wheels and fall together. This would have been a guy going 28 mph plowing into another guy doing 0.5 mph.

So, naturally, all I can think is "This is the big one" and I almost peed.

Luckilly, I veered left really hard and missed him by about a foot. And that's where I lost it and yelled "Watch where the foop you're goin'!" or something like that sans foop.

My teammate Chris Slone was at the finish, saw this and told me that directly afterwards the dude shouted something back at me and then promptly fell over. That was instant Kharma, I say.

So, now I've cooled off and I'll put it gently:

Please, please, please, never crowd the finish area, rookie.

Maybe he's reading this. Nahhhhh.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to still be walkin'.

Bye.

Celtics vs. Lakers

When I was a high school kid, I did the very non-wrestler thing and started following pro hoops.

I'd watch Larry Bird on TV and then go outside and shoot hoops.

I'd also go outside and shoot birds, but that's the subject of another blog.

We had a telephone pole on our property

* spit...p-ting! *

and my Dad built a backboard out of wood and attached a rim to it. I remember deliberating with him about it and asking him to put it below 10 feet so I could try to dunk. He hung it at like 9.5 feet and I could barely dunk this little mini ball.

Look at how I could sky back in 1986:

I don't know where I am going with all this. I guess when I watched pro basketball on TV it was back when the Celtics were really good. I loved the Celtics, especially Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. They'd get to the NBA finals and play the Laker and I hated the Lakers. The Lakers were this flashy fast-break type of team and the Celtics were a bunch of pasty-skinned guys shooting fadeaway bank shots. They were very different styles.

Well, I still hate the Lakers. Largely because Los Angeles isn't near any lakes.

And, I've been tuned out for oh, the past 18 years or so, but I like Paul Pierce and I still like the Celtics.

So, let me just wrap by saying: 2008 NBA finals, Celtics vs. Lakers, game 1 tonight.

Oh, and Go Celtics!

Bye.