What’s with the snow?  This interferes with my declaration of the start of bicycle season.  Doesn’t make scooterin’ too convenient either.  Nope, looks like it is back to the bus for a while.  I didn’t chance the bus last night though, and from reading the paper this morning it looks like that was a wise choice.  Instead, Donette met me down at the Phoenix and we listened to some piano music for a while and let the rush hour traffic die down.  This plot worked out well for us;  Got a little dinner out of the deal and the drive home was just fine.

Today I have the day off, which would actually thrill me if not for the high probability that, due to the inclement weather, I will sit on the couch all day.  I do have high aspirations of taking out the trash, but that’s about it.

I read this letter to the editor last week and got a good laugh out of it:

“KC mass transit lacking

This city has the worst public transportation in the universe.  The Max ridiculously meanders through downtown barely keeping schedule in nice weather.

Rain makes it late.  Snow makes it disappear.  You can outrun the thing on a Hoveround.

Kansas City, with its earnings tax, offers no service to Kauffman Stadium, even though it is miles from the urban core.”

That’s pretty funny stuff right there, I guess mostly because I ride the Max every day and the comments are so accurate.  There is probably no slower means of traveling downtown than the “Max.”  I guarantee I could beat it on my bicycle.  Granted, it’s probably not entirely the fault of the KCATA, except for the part about the wandering route.  The riders don’t really help either, waiting until they get on the bus to start sorting through their nickels for fare, oblivious to the fact that an entire bus-load of people are waiting on them.  The route is a good part of the slowness though.  It doesn’t just “meander through downtown;”  It meanders through the Plaza and Crown Center too.  Why??!!!  Just go straight down Main and it would cut off ten minutes.  Now, granted, I occasionally like to hop off at the Plaza and go to Diebel’s.  So, maybe it would fix things if they just went through the Plaza on Fridays, or better yet just when it suits me.  The part about downtown is easily fixed though, and not by the bus service.  I long ago gave up that part of the route, electing instead to just get off on the far south edge and walk the rest of the way.  I’m surprised more people don’t, it’s much quicker than criss-crossing the entire area, stopping at every single corner.  Plus, a brisk stroll across downtown always affords the opportunity to interact with all sorts of interesting people, what a bonus.

Ahhhh, I like the bus.  I sure ain’t gonna walk seven miles each way, nor am I going to take any of my myriad two-wheel transportation options when it’s raining or freezing.  So, it serves a purpose, and does so quite economically.  With a little tweaking it could be a lot better though.  I’m sure they are still pondering what action to take over the last email I sent them, and they will address this writer’s concerns after they finish with mine.

Once again I am on my kick of turning off our cable TV.  That may be a bit drastic, but I am truly tired of the ridiculous monthly bill just so I can sit on the couch and click through countless channels of nothing.  Every now and then I will admit it does come in handy though, and those are the times I cannot decide if I can do without.  Case in point, Saturday evening when I needed to kill some time until my work started at midnight.  I started clicking around and found a Clint Eastwood marathon;  Back-to-back-to-back westerns.  Problem solved.  More frequent still are the sporting events I want to watch.  Most of those could probably be watched for free though, if I could just figure out how to run the big antenna in our attic down to the TV’s.  Or of course I could walk down to the Brooksider and sponge one of their 40 televisions, although the likelihood of me going down there to watch an 8:00 p.m. game is pretty remote.  I played around last night and got Hulu running on both the televisions, so that covers a lot of the series that Donette likes to watch.  We can watch Netflix on both too, although their “on demand” selection is rather weak.  We shall see what the next few weeks bring.  We’re going to run in a “Netflix-Hulu-Boxee-Cable” hybrid mode for a while and then re-assess the situation.

Ahhh, good ol’ President’s Day.  I get this major holiday off fortunately;  Now I have to decide what to do with it.  What I will NOT do with it is sit on the couch playing on the computer.  I’d better make a cursory update though.

I was oncall for the weekend so we kept things rather low-key.  Started things off Friday night at a fund-raising auction up at Donette’s school.  We’ve been the last several years and it is always a good time.  Last year they switched from a BBQ dinner to a shrimp boil, which I have to say was a nice upgrade.  I can eat me some shrimp.  We stayed for the entire auction too, although luckily we didn’t buy anything this year.  The Nigro Brothers donate their services as auctioneers, and they are quite entertaining to watch.  They get going so fast it’s kind of hard to track what is going on.  My favorite purchase of the evening was by a friend of ours.  He came over and told us his wife thought she was bidding on a BBQ dinner, and instead purchased a reserved pew at the Christmas Eve service.  Apparently she had trouble tracking the action too.

Saturday was pleasantly subdued also.  Donette’s folks come down and they joined her at 75th Street for some lunch.  Meanwhile I broke out the bicycle for sort of a “leg stretch.”  I rode to Volker Bikes down on 39th Street;  Just about right for a chilly first ride.  Later in the afternoon, we once again tore apart the house looking for our long-missing drill.  How do you lose a bright yellow power tool anyway?  I cannot really imagine.  Lost it is though, and has been for quite some time.  It’s been holding up several projects around the house.  Finally we gave up and went drill-shopping.  They struck me as being significantly more expensive than when we bought the last one, which was probably 15 years ago.  But, gotta have one, so we bit the bullet and went with a Milwaukee 3/8″.  Hope we don’t lose it too.  It’s immediate use was putting down some decking up in the attic, where we are slowly moving all our “junk” from the basement.  The basement is too damp and moldy, so we’re moving everything to the attic where it will melt instead.  Sounds like a plan to me.

Sunday Martin & Munkirs came over and we took off on our first “official” bike ride of the year.  It went pretty well;  Everybody made it back and nobody threw up at any rate.  I was a little worried, as I have essentially spent the winter laying on the couch watching TV, but we took it slow and I lived.  Got in a nice little 17 mile ride, then went down to the Brooksider and celebrated the opening of cycling season.  Which, from looking at the forecast, might already be on hold for a few weeks.  I have some nice cold-weather stuff, but it’s for like 45 degree cold, not sub-freezing cold.  After that Donette and I made some tasty dinner, then sat on the couch and played an epic round of Photo Hunt on the Wii for a few hours.

It’s a three-day weekend people, who has entertainment for me?  Actually I am oncall so that might be all the “entertainment” I need right there.  Weather looks pretty marginal too.  I’ve got the scooter out though, rode it all week.  It’s pretty amazing how much quicker my trip to and from work is when I’m not riding the bus.

That’s about the best I can do for an update.  I have no news.  Got the new wheels on my bicycle but haven’t gone riding yet.  Went to a cycle shop “open house” last night but it was uneventful.  We are out of milk.  Yeah, I’m done.