This Pearls Before Swine comic strip from two days ago seems apropos regarding my post from last week on how one’s attitudes change when one becomes old enough to die.
Mano Singham
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This Pearls Before Swine comic strip from two days ago seems apropos regarding my post from last week on how one’s attitudes change when one becomes old enough to die.
That cartoon is slandering cyclists. Life is for fast riding so one can better enjoy the bakery stops.
Cycling can take the rest of your life off. Almost been there, several times.
@ 2 Rob Grigjanis
Cycling can take the rest of your life off.
Taking a shower can too. Oops, cycling + shower. I may have to rethink my travel modes.
jrkrideau @3: That’s why I use a bath mat. Unfortunately, Home Depot doesn’t offer accessories to prevent idiots opening their car doors without looking, or making sharp last-second right turns in front of me, or taking sociopathic truck drivers off the road.
Rob,
I have heard about the Dutch reach method for opening car doors so that drivers are more likely to see cyclists. I am trying to remember to do it but don’t always succeed.
You can see a video of it here.
Car doors don’t kill. Thoughtless drivers do.
I had a Guns N Roses fan deliberately open a door to force me off the road on my bike. I wound up in a fairly comfy box hedge.
Junk food is less dangerous than sharing your ride (or your shower) with a psychopath, but I try to avoid both junk food and the psychos.
At least the cyclist wears a helmet. The roads around here are full of idiots who decide to ride a bicycle in bad visibility, sometimes even on snow and/or ice (!) without a helmet and without reflective elements on their clothing. I do not think that is good for their health.
Mano,
I’m not sure where I first read this, but a great philosophical question is: Why do you value your future self more than your present self? Clearly the cyclist does and the pig doesn’t.
When I was a senior in high school I met one of my best girlfriends when she door jacked me--her window was thankfully down--while I was riding past her car on my bike. We dated for about a year until I left for Colorado State. : )
Jeff
And no Charly, I wasn’t wearing a helmet. In 1973 that really wasn’t a thing yet in Marietta, Ohio. (I do wear my helmet now, but I’m increasingly having problems finding newer helmets because they seem to have stopped making them in my size: 7 5/8.)
Dancing is less dangerous than cycling…… 🙂 And I can eat a lot too.
“how one’s attitudes change when one becomes old enough to die.”
Bah. In my twenties I already realized that “will take ten years off my life” quite likely will be the worst ten years, given all the diseases that come with age. That hasn’t changed since then.
As I’ve never had any car driving instruction this is new to (Dutch) me. Actually I always use the hand that’s closest. But otherwise I follow exactly the same procedure. It’s because I’m a cyclist myself (and like almost all Dutchies I never wear a helmet) and hence are fully aware of the fact that cars are potential murder weapons. All of them. No exception.
The phrase “ten years off your life” is widely misused. A more accurate phrase might be “lower the quality of your life to come and raise the possibility of horrible illnesses, such that on average the “yous” spread across the multiverse live ten years less because of them”.
Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way, but at least you can’t delude yourself that living ten years less can be a good thing.
@ 8 Charly
“At least the cyclist wears a helmet.”
Homeopathy works well too.
A comedian in the ’80s (I don’t remember who) spoke about the potential increase in years living by avoiding doing things that probably decrease lifespan (smoking, if I recall correctly) by saying, in reference to the extra time at the end of one’s life, “yeah, but those years suck.”
This is, of course, just another way of saying a slogan popular through the ages, “live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”
I’ve decided that living forever would be awesome, but that’s going to depend on massive increases in medical technology. Those same advances ought to correct for the “bad” stuff I’m doing to my body these days. It’s win-win, really.
@ 4 Rob Grigjanis
One assumes that all drivers are homicidal, psychopathic, half-blind, idiots.
You may have seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdgVcGjzgR4
It makes cycling much safer.