Worm-Fest

Overnight and this morning, it rained a total of half an inch. That doesn’t sound like much but at some points though, especially early this morning, the rain came down hard and fast. Because of all that rain, the worms had all evacuated from the ground and were beached on the streets and bike paths. If you don’t look closely, it just looks like a bunch of small twigs on the ground, but nope it’s just a huge host of worms. If it wasn’t for the wet trees and ground, you could’ve thought that it rained worms instead of drops of water. There was no way to bike to work this morning without creating worm road kill. I felt bad – even imagining little screams coming from the invertebrates at one point – but there was nothing I could do. The real bad part was the worm bits and guts that were covering my wheels, bike frame, and, most gross, bare lower legs. Oh yeah, I definitely took a shower when I got to work this morning.

By the way, I made myself feel a little bit better about running over all of those worms by realizing I was just giving many a robin or other bird a very easy breakfast.

What's Happened to the Bicycling Paper Boy?

I was biking to work this morning as I heard what sounded that like Satan’s lawnmower coming up behind me. As I turned to look over my left shoulder, an old beat up Toyota (or other Japanese made) two-door car without the muffler came past. The real strange thing happened a few moments later, as out the passenger side window flew what I first thought was a large piece of trash. “Did they just try to throw garbage at me?” I thought, but as I rolled past the refuse in question I found that it was actually the morning newspaper wrapped up in the plastic bag that is common now. It was still really odd though. I’ve been riding this same route three years now and this was the first time I had ever seen a newspaper delivery person. Why today?

It also brought up a larger question/thought in my head – when did the newspaper stop being delivered by bicycle? I grew up in the country so for me the delivery was always done by car, but I thought (and maybe this was a wishful thought) that in the city, especially the suburbs, that older kids would still deliver the newspaper by bike.

Watching the beat up car go down the street away from me, I possibly saw one contributing factor. Not every house was getting a paper. It seemed to be on average maybe every fifth house. This sporadic delivery would of course mean longer routes for the delivery person, possibly too far of a distance or too much time to do by bicycle. Electronic media and the poor economy can probably be to blame, but still it’s just sad. A morning paper delivered by a kid on bike has a good wholesome feeling to it. You know, that the paper got there from a good hardworking wipper-snapper kid that is not only is so responsible to be working hard at his first job, but is also using sweat and brawn to get that paper there. Getting the paper delivered from some seedy looking guy in a loud, barely operating 2-door beater of a car just doesn’t have the same warm fuzzies to it.

More importantly, how will kids of today and the future even understand the premise behind the classic Nintendo game?

Look! It's the seedy looking paper delivery man of today working on his beater of a car!

Spring Has Arrived

Yep, I’m calling it. It may only be March 14^th, but it is definitely spring outside. Besides the fact that it hit 76 degrees on the mercury, he’s my other observations that spring has sprung –

- Geese have been flying migrating back north (even last week).

- I’ve spotted multiple robins.

- The birds have been chirping in the morning when I roll my bike out of the garage.

- When I’ve checked the weather on the National Weather Service’s website, it wasn’t listing the wind chill anymore… It listed the heat index!

- I don’t need to wear my headlamp anymore when running after work (because of the time change).

- I’ve been running in shorts!

- I’ve even been biking in shorts!

- Today, biking home from work I wore shorts, a short sleeved jersey, and arm warmers. I was too warm with the arm warmers. It’s March freakin’ 14^th!

- It was so warm outside that it was nice returning home and walking into the refreshing cool garage.

These spring conditions are projected to be for at least the next week. As the forecast looks right now, the high temperature finally dips below 70 next Wednesday, but only to 68 degrees. The outlook my look spring-like, maybe even like summer, but I’m sure that we’ll see some snow in the air before things are said and done. I’m not purposely being pessimistic, just realistic This past winter was one of the mildest on record, but I never put it past the upper Midwest weather gods for some white stuff to be seen in early April.

However, until winter does come that one last time (if it does), you’ll find me outside enjoying this fantastic weather.