Alison and I are down in the Twin Cities for Thanksgiving, visiting her family. It’s always good to get down here. Turkey’s in the oven, and even though I just got up (insert laziness joke), dinners only a couple hours away. Should be tasty.
The ride down here seemed to take sooo long this time. Al and I were shooting for Chipotle, our favorite burrito grill for dinner, and the timing was not right. We were super starvin’ two hours out from dinner. We had a couple apples to tide us over, but that didn’t quite do the trick. I resorted to eating a questionable old granola bar found in my flight bag. Al didn’t want any. I lived, she lived, and Chipotle was wonderful when we finally got there. The wait did give me a chance to read a great article in Bicycling magazine however. They did a piece in the latest (Dec. ’05) issue on people who ride not for fun, but necessity. We all see the beater bikes chained to trees in various workplaces around town, and there are of course riders to go with them. It was an article focused on the poor who ride out of not being able to afford a car, but who obviously need to get to work. (I can relate somewhat, but I’m a rich rich man compared to the people in this article.) It took a look mainly at the Spanish-American demographic group in Los Angeles. There’s a big difference between myself, commuting on an expensive Surly 1x1 to get to my flight instruction job, and an immigrant riding a WalMart bike to a temp agency, who may or may not find work to support their family. I always find it shocking to read of how poor many people in our country are, and how a huge portion of our citizens would rather ignore that fact than do anything to help change the situation. Anyhow, it was very interesting reading, I recommend it.
For now I’m going to spend some time with family and enjoy Thanksgiving, thankful that we are very blessed, and even though money can be tight sometimes, we are quite wealthy when it comes down to it, considering in the world we live in.
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