Recreation

[sam]

Came across this in my workspace. It's a compilation of posts made at CycleChat and YACF, neither of which care to see my like again...
About a month into lockdown last year I volunteered for enhanced interrogation across the road: I'm American, ask me anything was the result.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The best: the joy of constructing posts and figuring out how to (briefly, it must be said) answer things I had little to no clue about. The worst: there was no worst, it’s just one of those tropes. "Search engines are widely available these days" may have crossed my mind once or twice. It forced creative solutions.

The time has come for me to move. I'm bringing my sign. My plan is to visit British culture as the long-settled UK Yankee I am.

You may quiz this publican if the spirit moves you: there's still no guarantee that replies will be satisfactory, but they will be neatly typed.™

Welcome to my publet.

[sam]

[sam]

OK. America. Why? If that's a bit broad, Florida, why?

Of Florida I know little other than hanging chads, alligators, hurricanes, the panhandle, Miami Vice, and the tail end of Interstate 95. Apparently I passed through as a child; I’ll have to trust my parents on that.

Let’s see, it wasn’t one of the 13 colonies. I assume we stole it from the native Americans (could of course easily check, but where’s the fun in that).

We needed someplace warm to retire: there’s your answer.

America? Bloody hell man, everybody knows that. The world needs an empire to loathe and love (which the British do, else why would so many come to Florida?), and we’re currently it. Also: Amerigo Vespucci. Now excuse me while I go see how much I got wrong.


Clicky for moving pictures

That was a close one. If the colonists had thought to step over the future Georgia state line and shown some gumption, it might've been lucky #14. As for how we acquired it, looks like those pesky indians had to be shown the door, as usual. The Spanish were also involved in some way. Can you tell my dad was a history teacher and passed those genes on to me?

I lived in the US for a significant proportion of my life. This may explain a few things.

When you return, you have the floor.

I think that sign from The Slaughtered Lamb in Greenwich Village. Overpriced touristy place, but hey ho, welcome to NYC. Don't honk ($350).

I couldn't find information on the original. The sign in the movie was probably knocked up by the props department and ended up on eBay. The one outside the pub in Greenwich Village doesn't look nearly as awesome as this:


Abandon hope all ye who enter here

Not sure I want to see the rest of that guy's collection, tbh.

How did you live without the concept of a Fortnight?

I don’t even know what that is.


I am completely serious

Have now looked it up. Easy explanation: we don’t have kids, I’m not a gamer myself, and whenever I heard it mentioned, as I surely must have, I immediately tuned out.

Last video game I got into was a rudimentary tennis-pongy type deal, around the time Borg was battling it out with McEnroe. Honk if you preferred Borg.


"He can assimilate me anytime"

I've just had a rummage through my memory. It was Breakout. That might explain a few things.

On a side note, ya'll have no idea how glad I am to be in the land of no edit window. (Most recent meltdown.) Used responsibility, it is the height of civilisation as far as I’m concerned.


Actually, don't

A note about links. I use them a lot. Which is normally uncontroversial, this being the internet web internet and all. Whilst ALL YOUR TABS ARE MINE is a private fantasy, I don’t expect the reader to fall into every hole I provide.

"Who’s complaining, sam?" My wife, for one. She has told me she feels compelled to click on most if not all of them, which can slow down reading so much that it's hard to go on.

Here’s a sterling example. That’s a ride report of the last FNRttC I attended <sniff>. I’m afraid to count the links, never mind pics.

I have every sympathy, especially for my wife, but this is not something that’s likely to change. You have been warned.


You can click here. Mind the gore.

[sam]

I think FI meant “the fortnight” as in a 2 week period.

By golly you’re rite. My eyes clearly rushed too fast through the sentence. It was the capitalisation that threw me. FifeingEejit, do you by any chance read The Week?

I’m aware of fortnights, but the very fact I misconstrued that illustrates how I continue to live without them. 

It puzzled our colleagues from Minnesota recently. But then they don’t even use knives to cut their food, it’s all forks and fingers.

My wife, who was born in one of those pesky Commonwealth countries invaded by Jim Reeves, and also spent time in the UK as a girl, does indeed sensibly use a knife for the purpose it was invented (as well as her fingers, for the same reason). I only use one when preparing food for cooking. I'd rather hack away with the edge of my fork, thank you.


Includes what's sure to be the new hit single I Left My Heart In Anuradhapura

PeteB99, I’ll have to get back to you. Beardy too, re: Jenny Agutter.

[sam]

On a tangential note, Jenny Agutter. Ok, as you were.

Get your mind out of Agutter.
- Prince Ludwig the Deplorable

Sam re Food cutting implements a Splayd is your friend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splayd

My first thought was that it's a solution for a problem which doesn’t exist, but I see that it was "a popular wedding gift in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s." Finding the gift with the worst name has always been a problem for disappointed suitors.

Speaking of forks,



this one's from Sri Lanka. Hold on to it for a minute...

My wife, who was born in one of those pesky Commonwealth countries invaded by Jim Reeves,

Hmmm, so that would make you meeting her, serendipitous?  Sorry, I'll get my coat, but only after I've dug out a copy of, "The Black Hills of Dakota".

We only met because the university we were both attending forced her to take an English class she didn't need, and allowed me to jump up a rung (she's older than me, if I'm allowed to say that) and therefore find myself sitting not far away. So yes, serendipitous.

One of my favourite scenes from the great Deadwood ["The Black Hills of Dakota"–Calamity Jane–Deadwood, South Dakota was my train of thought there]:

How did you live without the concept of a Fortnight?

Every two weeks, I'd remind myself and then line up for something. The odd thing about America is that most people think, because of the language, that it's just a bigger, brasher UK, the blundering oversized cousin that make a racket when you have the family around. But what can you do? Ironically, we have a lot more in common with our recently divorced European neighbours that the land across the ocean.

Stick around. I'd like to hear more from a longtime British(?) resident of the States.

This has been a forknight for me.

Electoral college - Why?

Much as I hate to quote Rush Limbaugh: "The primary purpose of the Electoral College is to maintain the power of the states and to support the idea that the election is decided by the states. It’s not decided by the general population, and it never was."

Here's Gore Vidal to get some of that bad taste out of my mouth: "The Founding Fathers did not want democracy in the United States ever. They also did not want tyranny—a king or a Hitler. They wanted a republic. And they devised the electoral college so the majority could never control anything."



Let's zoom in on New York New York, shall we?



Zooming in still further, we have...



my wife again, in the middle of Times Square. If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. Just call a cab.

[sam]

blah blah blah

Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant came in particularly handy during the Trump years.



Ta for sending me down yet another rabbit hole. Pull quote: “The best poetry is untranslatable.”

[sam]

I'm not even sure how you'd get an ottoman through the turnstile.

Must not have been an issue at the stations we were using. The turnstiles would've been something like this



rather than this



or god forbid, this.



Therefore, an easy up-n-over and Bob's your uncle. New Yorkers have certainly seen stranger things.

Spoiler

OK, Gdańskers

[close]

I have carried the following:
• A solid wood door two miles home.
• A small but not light fridge up a stepladder into our loft.
• A bookcase, hanging from my arm (I'm a rightie), cycling from an antique shop in the village.
• A bouquet of roses while hitchhiking from Chicago to Toledo.
• My Langster, freshly bought from Wild Side Cycles in Tunbridge Wells, slung over my shoulder down the hill to the station.
• You get the idea. I really should’ve explored a career as a mover.

The only reason I wasn’t carrying the ottoman empire was because I was carrying the chair.

A friend of mine bought a gas station in Jersey City back when it was unpopular

Ever since the great gas station buyback (roughly similar to Thatcher's council house right to buy), demand has exploded. The aspiring middle classes dream of oil rigs.


"Fixer upper"

I always thought it would be pretty cool to acquire, say, a train station, as someone did along the Cuckoo Trail in East Sussex.

Not this guy

He's just your garden variety trainspotter.

[close]

Imagine how bad it would have been if Jersey People were allowed to handle gasoline directly.

I’m reminded of the line in the song: "In Jersey anything’s legal, as long as you don’t get caught." Which gets the Sopranos crew off the hook

If they're going to do anything that might pass for socialism, they're doing it with a grudge.

You can say that again! Bernie, Bernie, Bernie…

[sam]

(remember going to work?)

Another day at the office

I haven't gone out to work for a long time.



It would truly be a sartorial challenge.

Well, at least you managed trousers, sir.

Trouserless (don't worry, I'm decent) and definitely tieless, I'd just gotten to my desk two rooms over from the bedroom when a Boots receipt fluttered in from 9/01/2020.

[image gone, sorry]

As I was examining it I thought "Huh. I remember when I used to go to Boots," and "someone sure likes dental floss." That would be my wife, who now does all the shopping out in the world, the feeling being I'm at greater risk even despite her BAMEness (not her favourite acronym btw).

We haven't exactly placed me under house arrest. I still go for rides most days, and have actually met more new people this past year than years previous.


New acquaintance holding social distancer

News from my home state of Ohio is that curfew, timed to hinder night owls, could soon be lifted. The rules don't appear to be drastically different from here except they've actually been using the C-word – something I only heard as a child, but she experienced frequently in Sri Lanka during unstable times.

Anyway, I shall set this receipt on her desk, where it must've travelled from, taking care to weigh it down so the chompster doesn't get to it.


CORRECTION: I’ve just been informed that the receipt was for an electric toothbrush, not dental floss. I should've known this, as she sources it from across the pond, using me as a floss mule on my typically annual trips back. Fortunately a stash still remains from those halcyon days.

[sam]

...I don't like turnstiles in general, they always look ready to take a piece of me and generally I like to keep all my pieces. That said, I don't like the slammy door London ones either or any kind of groin-level guillotine that might promise blunt instrument circumcision.

Speaking of slammy doors, or in the case of the ones on my train into London more like slow crushing jaws, I miss the old rolling stock. On trial here now: the doors embracing the wheelchair accessible toilets.

I try to sit in that ample area, because bike, and often wind up being the talking toilet instruction manual. (Note that as an American well versed in the euphemisms, it took years for me to get comfortable saying "toilet" out loud. And yes, been there, done that.)


Spend a penny, sir?

First comes the uncertainty of how to open it, the big button not being an obvious clue for some. Then the slow unveiling of the seat of ease. Next comes the decision process of which button will set the doors in reverse motion. It will close on its own, but it must be locked or hilarity will ensue. Wait for the button to light up! This is a crucial bit of changed state information. Securing the portal is de rigueur unless one was born in a barn and has no notion of privacy.


You had one job.

The patrons are blameless. I do blame those responsible for the facilities. Good design, particularly in service of one’s basic needs, is the bare minimum requirement.


Like a cup of tea while you're in there?

[sam]

And speaking of bathrooms. From my "Everything is material" file:



Doesn't look so bad, right? Aside from the grouting maybe needing a bit of clean, but that's not why we're here in my executive washroom today.

The problem started when I bought a shower cord last year which was slightly too short for the holster above. I must've thought they were all a standard size. Now it lives on that rack which always reminds me of an old-fashioned phone cradle.


"Hello? Can you dial up the water pressure please?"

After one complaint too many (admittedly most of them by me) that the cord kept getting in the way when the tap was used for other things, like bathing bunnies

Don't try this at home

PETA photo of rabbit about to be given a new shower gel to test.
Seriously, don't bath bunnies.

[close]

I raided the bike cupboard and found a bungee cord which wasn't doing anything useful. Voilà!



Closeup showing fine detail of workmanship: