It’s Alive!

This past week I took my e-bike in for a tuneup. The gears weren’t shifting smoothly, and while I know that there are some sorts of routine maintenance that I might learn, the manual that I did purchase on the topic has so far turned out to be useless. So down to the shop I went.

A few hours later they called me to tell me that my chain was senescent. The bike is at 1600 miles on the odometer, and apparently because of the power of those electric motors, needing replacement at about 1000 miles is about the average lifespan of a chain. I did get a left-handed compliment from the mechanic. On the one hand he praised my driving style in that the chain had already lasted so long, but the unspoken flip side of that statement was that I was a timid rider, and perhaps not using that available power the way that I might.

If I wanted to have the bike spirit me away and free me from having to expend any effort at all, I would rather have a motorcycle as I once did. Of course, in those days I used to have quick reflexes and good balance as well, which is what kept me from ending up face-planted against an oak tree or in a drainage ditch.

So I wear my badge of timidity proudly. I will continue to use Level One as I do and learn to live with the gentle scorn of my more adventurous cycling colleagues.

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Last evening I went out for dinner with friend Rod, and we rendezvoused downtown at one of the cooler pizza joints in the area. (The place may be cool, but they do allow un-cool people to eat there as well, which explains how I got in). I had biked to the restaurant in daylight, but after our meal it was full dark, and I got to use those lights I’d purchased a couple of years ago for the first time. They are LEDs, and lord, don’t they put out the power! I almost felt that I needed a dimmer switch for the benefit of approaching cars. Flashing brilliant white light in front and a sturdy red in the back I had confidence that if someone should hit me with their automobile it would be because they wanted to, and not because they couldn’t see me. I was okay with that.

When we were walking around downtown after supper just to wear off a bit of that pizza, Rod was musing about bike locks and their utility. He made the observation that “such locks are useful only to ward off the inept and the half-hearted. Fortunately, this describes the majority of bicycle thieves.”

Nice turn of phrase, that.

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A friend recently asked me what I thought about Taylor Swift. I had to pause, because I really don’t think about that artist very often, and the last bit of music that I heard her perform was way back when she was still considered a teenaged country artist and was prancing the stage in her cowgirl boots.

So I went to Apple Music and listened to a handful of more recent cuts from “Taylor Swift Essentials,” and found that I didn’t really care much for any of them. Her voice and style of music are just not my thing, I guess.

According to a 2023 survey by Morning Consult, in the U.S., 53% of adults said they were fans of Swift, of whom 44% identified as Swifties and 16% as her “avid” fans. Of the fans, 52% were women while 48% were men. Racially, the 74% of the fans were white, 13% were Black, 9% were Asian and 4% from other races. Politically, 55% of the fans were Democratic, 23% were Republican, and 23% were independent. In terms of generations, 45% are millennials, 23% are baby boomers, 21% are Generation X, and 11% are Generation Z. Journalists have also noted an increase in Swift’s boomer and Generation X fans, known as ” senior Swifties”.

Wikipedia: Swifties

I realize that she is a phenomenon, and has crafted her public image and interactions very intelligently from the beginning. I applaud her being able to wrest control of her music from the evil empire of the record companies by re-recording all of her first albums, note for note. Smart woman, that. But although it hurts a people-pleaser like myself to admit it, I am not a “senior Swifty.” It’s just one more loop that I’m okay with being out of.

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As part of watching as many horror movies as we can leading up to Halloween, I sought out the original Frankenstein, from 1931. Expecting something that I could make fun of, I found instead that it was a pretty good film. The acting and the costumes were mannered, of course, but the plot was solid, the special effects were done well, and it followed its own logic, which a movie about putting a human together out of spare part has to do.

There were a couple of oddities that I noted even before the story began.

And then there was this one-minute introduction. Cute. Notice how his face is lit from below to get it to look spookier.

Anyway, it was well worth the four bucks to rent it, and now we’ve seen the classic Dracula and the classic Frankenstein. And still a few days to go until the Hallowed Eve itself.

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The last leaf has fallen from our backyard trees and been encouraged to take up residence over the fence with thousands of its compadres, where it will compost and continue the process of improving the soil back there. The leaf blower was a great help in doing this, even though it is far from a precision instrument. It is an electric model, so my stints blasting leaves were automatically limited to how long the two batteries lasted. That amount of time was just about right for me, and my decision not to buy bigger and longer-lasting batteries turned out to be genius.

I’ve been happy with my electric leaf blower, lawn mower, and weed-whacker. Even though they are not entirely silent, they make less noise than gas-powered models do, and enable me to keep BaseCamp looking like someone actually lives here, rather than taking on the appearance of an abandoned property (my outdoor-housekeeping goals are quite modest).

I’ve started looking for an electric snow shovel, but have had no luck so far. I don’t need a full-fledged big-time snow blowing machine, not with the small amount that falls here in Paradise. What would be perfect would be an outdoor equivalent of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba that would scamper up and down the sidewalks removing what snow did fall without any help needed from me. I could then stand at my living room window, coffee cup in hand and pajama-clad, watching while the device did the work and glorying in the wonderfulness of technology.

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