Go ride your bike!

Rode the Wiss with the Sunday Posse today. Trails were hard and fast (just like how your mom like's it Windows!) today and we rode incredibly quick and smooth. Too quick actually, b/c the dudes I ride with had frozen hands b/c they hadn't planned on how much faster things would be. There was just a few icy sections which added a wee bit of suspense. Total ride time was 4 hours, which was crazy, as it sure didn't feel that long. It really amazes how time flies while mtb'ing. It must be that since your focus is typically not more than a few hundred feet ahead, that you just do hundreds of little bits of distance, and you never actually feel like you are covering much ground (as compared to a road bike ride).

Dude, another week flew by way too quick. I can't believe it's almost February! Racing season is getting close. I just swapped teams yesterday. No one on my old team knows yet (outside of the prez), though half of my old team is on my new team anyways...

This past week I received an email which really got me thinking, as I've seen such a thing printed dozens of times the past few years. I receive a WebMD email 2-3x a week at work and this week I got one which mentioned how married people live a "happier" life than those not married. It got me thinking about people I know that fall into each category, especially those that are "still" single. I realized that some people who work hard, party hard and live life really hard, approach everything like a game that they have to win, and yet they win and they are never happy.
I wonder if they ever take that into consideration for these Marriage happiness studies. I'm thinking that some people who are still single, are single for a reason and most likely it has nothing to do with the marriage thing.

Whoa, now that it's gotten cold here, it's really sad to see all the homeless coming down into Suburban station. I easily can count a few dozen in my 3 block underground walk in the morning. Also it's obvious many more people are staying down there as the urine smell's gotten a lot worse. It's really sad that there's such an issue here, I've heard Philly's actually one of the worst cities on the East Coast for the amount of homeless people. Something like 3000 people at any one time. Most are pretty harmless and you don't ever feel threatened, though there's definitely a schizo or two who can be pretty darn scary.
OH one big word of advice, which sounds harsh at first, but if you think about it, it makes sense. NEVER give a homeless person money. Buy them food, give them clothes, but NEVER give them money. If you feel for them, donate to a homeless shelter, but never just give that needy hand money directly. I know this may sound inhumane, but I back in my non-profit days, a homeless shelter Exec. Director told me that exact statement above.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day (or two), teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lot longer. Something like that.

Oh and here's a conspiracy theory for dat azz. One of the high-rolling client's who come into my office and hang out every day (he's retired) posed this interesting theory a few days ago. What if the US finally realized that the war in the Middle East and the impending economic one with Venezula cannot be won Militarily and instead decided to do it economically? What if our gvt. opened up the strategic oil reserve, without anyone finding out? What if they started shorting millions of oil contracts to lower the price? What if they say were paying Qatar billions to ignore OPEC and keep pumping? No one would ever know and yet Iran would fold. Since Iran is supposedly founding the Iraq insurgency, then that would obviously die back b/c Iran would have it's own problems.

It's just this dude's crazy idea, but to me it was worth a few "what if" brain cells.

Alright, it's winter time and it's time for bed.

-bc

Warm thoughts, from Key West: