Change Your Mind

“It is easier to change your mind than it is to change the minds of 900 million other people.”
- Rajastani street vender

Alcohol Sermon

You may or may not know that my husband and I own a sexy Ducati Monster. It’s light; it’s fast; it’s the most fun you can have with a motorized vehicle, assuming you have only one person’s meager salary to spend. This post isn’t about our motorcycle, however. It’s a reminder to all my friends and family who own bikes or are thinking about buying bikes that alcohol and motorcycle riding do not mix. Ever.

“Preacher” Dave Preston recently published an excellent article on Sound Rider about the involvement of alcohol in fatal accidents. He really does his reasearch, and let me tell you - it ain’t pretty.

“Would a mandatory helmet law reduce the number of fatalities?” I asked.

The AC [Assistant Coronor] looked me straight in the eye as he composed his response. “A good helmet would certainly protect the brain,” he said,” but that won’t help the rider much when the head comes off the body.” He was being serious. I got a little queasy thinking about times I had ridden after a drink or two.

Dave is not your over-cautious “safetycrat.” He’s an avid rider who simply lays it on the line, using well-researched statistics, interviews with experts and his years of riding experience. Before you think about downing even one beer at a holiday party and hopping on your bike, I’d encourage you to take to heart what Dave is preaching from the pulpit.

Travel

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrowmindedness...and many of our people need it solely on these accounts.”
- Mark Twain

Hey everybody! The SAS Advent calendar is back!

If you’re jonesin’ to travel to Europe next year, just go their Web site and enter your email address. Every day in December, SAS will put tickets to one European destination on super-sale and send you a link to the advent calendar to find out which city it is. You have that day to decide if that’s the city you’d like to go to and book your tickets. If you don’t want to go to that particular city, just wait until tomorrow.

Last year Nick and I bought RT tickets to Manchester, England for $300 ea. It looks like prices are about the same this year.

Skiing in Switzerland, anyone? How about a shopping trip to Milan?

100 Years Ago

About a week ago, the oldest person in the world passed away. He was 113 years old. At the tender age of 29, I can only imagine what it must be like to have experienced the world and all of its changes for more than a century. Even now, it seems sort of strange to think that I’ll be telling stories to neices and nephews of how we used to look information up in books...which we’d find using a card catalogue...in a library. And that was only 15 years ago!

In case you’re wondering what life in America looked like 100 years ago, here are a few bits of trivia:

• The average life expectancy in the US was 47 years.
• Only 14% of the homes in the US had a bathtub.
• Only 8% of homes had a telephone.
• A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.
• There were only 8,000 cars in the US, and only 144 miles of paved roads.
• The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
• Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.
• The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
• The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour.
• The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
• A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year. A veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year. A mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
• More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home.
• Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”
• Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
• Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
• Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason.
• The five leading causes of death in the US were: pneumonia/influenza, tuberculosis, diarrhea, heart disease and stroke.
• The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.
• The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30.
• Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented.
• There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
• Two of 10 US adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6% of all Americans had graduated high school.
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”
• Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic.
• There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire US.

Eat Smart Play Hard

If you’re anything like me, you’re tired of hearing about the low-carb, high-protein diet plans like South Beach or Atkins. Not only are they boring and one dimensional, they’re expensive to maintain and sap you of the energy required to exercise and stay active. Enter Eat Smart, Play Hard by Liz Applegate.

Whether you spend all day on a golf course, hours in a bike saddle, 45 minutes at a local running trail or a half-hour on a weight bench, it’s no doubt that eating well can help you perform better. Eat Smart, Play Hard offers advice on fueling your body to maximize your effort and minimize your recovery time.

In part 1 of the book - New Fueling Basics - Applegate offers a revised food pyramid. She adapts the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid to fit an active lifestyle, relecting a greater need for nutrients, fluids and yes, fats. She also offers the latest information on how to eat smartly befor, during and after exercise. In part 2 of the book - Advances in Fitness Eating - you get the most up to date research on energy bars, gels, sports drinks, supplements and performance foods. What works, what doesn’t and what falls somewhere in between. Part 3 - Eat to Reach Your Goals - talks about eating for 14 specific fitness pursuits, including the Weekend Warrior approach to fitness.

This book has been criticised for being overly simplistic or too common sense. I found the detailed diet plans for morning, noon, afternoon and evening exercise worth the cost of the book alone. The revised food pyramid was also a refreshing dose of sound nutritional advice in the sea of high protein nonsense. Even if you think you’re nutrition-saavy, I’d recommend picking up a copy.