Someone Will Make a Political Post of This

There's something just very liberating about riding a bike. I'm sure that's not the first time someone has started off a missive with that initial sentence. I'm re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and he explains the same thing about a motorcycle, a different kind of bike than what I am referring to. But unlike a car, either "bike" makes you a part of the scene. In a car, you just see the scene through a frame. A motorcycle is probably a better comparison against a car. You travel the same distance more or less and go more or less along the same routes. With a bicycle you are maybe more in the scene but travelling slower and going places a gasoline powered engine can't take you, which was my experience tonight. There really is no wonder that learning to ride a bike is one of those key moments in most people's childhood.

I'm really in love with my bike and wish I rode more. Today was really the first day I've had it out all year thus far. Bicycles, like motorcycles, take a certain amount of maintenance. Bike maintenance takes a certain amount of patience. Something was wrong or is wrong with the way they seated my tubeless tire on the rim when I bought it. It has a slow leak. I was taken back to trying to replace the tubes on my previous road bike and going through three or four tubes, pinching the sidewall each time, before I gave up. Over the winter the tubeless tires on my new bike went flat (You shouldn't allow that to happen.) and I was afraid to really touch them. Plus, I've gotten back into running.

I like running. I mean, I don't really like the act of running. I like how it makes me feel afterwards. The release of endorphins and serotonin makes me feel as I imagine normal people who don't suffer from chronic depression feel. I HATE getting started running, though. Frankly, after two or three miles I start to feel a lot better. It makes it rough getting started, though, and rough getting motivated to even put on running shoes.Once I'm going, I usually like being out seeing the neighborhood. Really, though, that's about as much as you are going to see - the neighborhood. Unless you are marathon training, a run isn't going to take you much beyond what a run to the grocery store would do. A bike, on the other hand...

And getting going on a bike is actually fun! I kind of race to get out of town. Automobile drivers in Brighton aren't super keen with sharing the road with bicyclists I've found. From where we live smack in the center of town, however, one must make one's escape along the main streets. Tonight it was out Bridge St for me, which turns into Highway 7 as you leave town. Just beyond the outskirts of town, though, is Veteran's Park where you can pick up a trail that goes down along the South Platte.

This trail used to go down through Brighton along the river and then into one of those subdivisions that was new when someone thought that having biking/walking trails MIGHT be a good idea. I'm thinking 1990's. And MIGHT be a good idea was as far as anyone got with the idea, so the trail ended after about two miles.

For the past couple years, the City of Brighton has been working on extending that trail down out of town, to where the Adams County Fairgrounds, now the Adams County Regional Park, is and hooks up with another system of trails that runs all the way up the Platte to Denver and beyond. I watched the progress on that seemingly inch along until all of a sudden it was done!

It's worth the wait. Like I said, it goes along the South Platte, but also runs around these man-made lakes that are used for water retention.If you don't know Brighton you may not realize it is a very agricultural community that was essentially built on the high desert. Water is very important here. It would not surprise me if half the laws on the local books related to water rights. So there are these important little reservoirs built to feed water into a series of ditches for the surrounding farms. The new path runs along a series of these that are privately owned. However, Brighton has negotiated either to buy or work out rights to allow public access to some of these. That opens up fishing along at least one. We have A LOT of people in the area who like to fish and not a lot of area to do it, so this is really welcome. 

Also there are some nice gravel paths. I have a gravel bike. I didn't even know they made gravel bikes until a couple of years ago. I really like riding a road bike. Yes, sometimes I like imagining I'm in the Tour de France, but really I just like going from point A to point B without any fetters and doing it rather quickly. Also, for me, there isn't usually a mountain standing between point A and point B, at least not without some road winding up it. So mountain bikes are fun, but we are out here on the plains. I mean, when I go out on runs, sometimes the max elevation change is twelve feet. It is very flat out here.

So the gravel bike... you just get this feeling you can go almost anywhere. Almost anywhere. Maybe not quite up the sides of mountains. I actually found that when you try to get down to the river, the sand gets too soft for the tires I have on. However, when you are in a park and can just zoomdle diagonally across the grass, it's pretty liberating. I mean, I could fly right through a frisbee golf course, interrupting the Jack Nicklaus of frisbee golf, "Frolf" if you will, and no one would be able to catch me.

I did an easy ten miles, about five down and five back. I say "easy" though the wind blew a couple of times that I may not have really thought it was so easy. I will need to work up to the twenty-something miles it will take to get down into Denver for some Little Man Ice Cream. (UGH! Not to mention the twenty-something miles back!) And if we ever get back into the Nordstrom office again, I think conceptually I could make it down there. Starting my commute at 5 am may not be PRACTICAL however. We'll see.

Of Redskins and Irishmen

I never understood how people backed the Redskins name. It's so obviously racist. I've heard the argument that it isn't necessarily derogatory. Certainly it isn't "nigger" or "kike", and not even "wop" or "mick". But we don't have the "Cincinnati Darkies" nor the "Atlanta Whiteys". Why should we ever lump an entire group of people all in by skin color? You can do your own research on the etymology of the name, but it boils down to making a mascot out of an entire race of people by their skin color. I never understood that. It's (past) time for it to go.

I have mixed feelings about using Native American iconography at all. For example, I understand that Florida State has a very good relationship and open dialog with the Seminole tribe in using their name. I know that the University of North Dakota abandoned the Sioux name after it could not get approval from all neighboring Sioux tribes. ( I have to note here that 'Dakota' is literally one of the linguistic divisions of the Greater Sioux nation, so one of the suggestions in their entire naming controversy was to just call the teams 'North Dakota' as 'North Dakota Sioux' was simply redundant.) I can understand arguments both for and against the Blackhawks, the Braves, the Indians. Those aren't blatantly racist and contemptuous. I could even attempt to hear an argument for the "Tomahawk Chop" cheer of Braves fans. (I dunno. I'd listen, but I'm pretty close-minded to those particular shenanigans. "The Indians" kind of too - I wouldn't really understand the argument behind that mascot. I'd try. [No, I wouldn't.] I like that "Caucasians" t-shirt one can buy that mocks the Cleveland Indians.) Redskins, though, is a racist, pejorative term. It may not have started that way (again, feel free to do your own research) but it has been used that way for over a hundred years. Has to go.

In a Facebook post I brought up the fact that everyone seems to completely ignore "The Fighting Irish". It broke down into a thread about the merits or lack thereof of the Redskins moniker. I should know better. (I should know better than to say anything slightly political in a Facebook post. Though how this is even a political issue is absolutely stunning to me. [I should say, it WAS stunning until I thought about it more and realized I shouldn't be so surprised.] I should also know better than to say anything that goes a slight bit against the tide of the social discourse of the day, which has turned into more tide than actual discourse. Don't say anything against it nor even something tangential to today's topic - you'll just be trying to swim across an overwhelming current. Just nod your head and go with it.) The Rice name is Orange Irish. I'm pretty sure our family went over to the Emerald Isle and beat (and worse) the Catholic into servitude. So I'm not going to feign any sort of indignation at the name "Fighting Irish". What perplexes me is that I don't understand why people ignore the mascot of Notre Dame but are incensed that North Dakota would use "The Fighting Sioux".

The Fighting Irish is no less a pejorative than the Fighting Sioux (though both, to me, are much less so than Redskins). One of the stories of how Notre Dame athletes gained the moniker is that Northwestern students taunted their team with "Kill the Fighting Irish" during a game in 1899. (There have been many proud days in Northwestern history, but that doesn't sound like one of them.) Another is that Notre Dame's own coach used the stereotype when he said to his team during a game in 1909, this time against Michigan, "What’s the matter with you guys? You’re all Irish and you’re not fighting worth a lick.” In 2005 the NCAA went forward with sanctions on just about anyone with a Native American mascot including the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota, but said nothing about Notre Dame.

Anytime the NCAA does something about anything I first assume it's about money. Why doesn't anyone else take notice of it, however? What doesn't anyone, Irish or otherwise say, "Hey, why are you holding onto that old stereotype anyway?" (I have my personal suspicions.) You will notice that the media hardly ever adds the "Fighting" part in anymore, particularly NBC, simply calling them "The Irish" more often than not. But Notre Dame's athletics web page is titled "Notre Dame Athletics | The Fighting Irish". I realize that I've written a lot about Notre Dame now on the day the Washington Redskins gave up their mascot, but here's the reason - It makes doing something that is completely right, like standing against the Redskins name, look hypocritical. It smacks of political correctness instead of simply what it is - Correctness. I'm not suggesting that we change every athletics mascot name that might offend someone in someway. I'm saying that if we are going to have a conversation about removing racially or ethnically disparaging names and The Fighting Irish doesn't even enter the conversation, people need to ask themselves why.