Darwin is 200

There was a nice explanation of "natural selection" in Scientific American this month, celebrating the birth of Charles Darwin. http://tinyurl.com/Darwin-link It has always struck me that most people who argue against evolution really don't understand it, usually because they have never studied it, at least with an open mind. And I'm getting damned sick of them trying to push their crackpot religions into our schools! (Hows that for an open mind?)

Through the Ice

For years they pulled an old car out onto the ice of the gravel quarry pond north of Glenville. They left the chain on the vehicle so it could be dragged out when the ice went out. There was a pool at the local bar on the Spring "break through" date. My classmate Toby's old man had a brilliant idea, that well executed, would pay off handsomely. On his date he left the bar and went out to the pond with a BUNCH of dynamite. He crawled under the car with his explosives, with the intent of blowing a hole in the ice. Somehow he miscalculated something - mistakes were made. There wasn't enough left of the unfortunate man to bury. That was the last year they had the Spring Pool.

The World Shifts...and the Shifting is Indexed!

Two days ago I stopped by the shop of Chris Kvale, a custom bicycle builder. I came away from the experience, frankly shaken. What I knew to be true is now false, what was evil is now good, what was frivolous is necessary. Chris is older, my age, and a person of moderation in all things, slow to change, and slow to embrace the present, say nothing of the future. Much like an Indian, he takes only from the White culture that which makes sense in his world. He once described himself as an analog man living in a digital world. Of course there were rumblings in the distance, hints of the coming change. First, he started using a cell phone...only because his wife gave it to him as a gift, he said. Then a friend set up a website for him. Chris' wife showed him how to use her old computer. The man who didn't know how to turn a computer on, started answering e-mails sent to the address posted on his own website.

But what I saw Wednesday was different. It struck to the very core of what Chris is as a person and a rider. He asked if I would like to see his new bicycle. Well yes! When an artisan wants to share a special project, of course you want to see it. At first glance it was what I expected, a lean spare machine, looking fast just sitting on the stand. Then it registered in my mind - carbon Campagnolo components! A ten-speed rear hub, INDEXED downtube shifters! I was stunned. The world as I knew it had shifted. "Ya, it came in just under 19 pounds. Of course it could have been lighter with lighter tubeset." Chris Kvale, my ultimate arbitrator on all things bicycle, in his older years had become a weight weenie! - a weight weenie with an automatic transmission. He has gone over to the Dark Side.

Art and the Muse

Lugs are the sleeves that join the tubes of traditional steel framed bicycles. On older bikes they are two pieces of pressed steel welded together, the newer lugs are cast iron. The real artisans "carve" them, that is they file the shorelines into graceful shapes, and file them thinner. For instance, my Chris Kvale frame lugs are simple, minimalist outlines filed as thin as a possible - almost as if a Shaker did them. J Peter Weigle's lugs are not really ornate, but tend toward graceful, almost feminine curves. I really like them. If I had more money in my bike account, he would certainly be on my short list. (Thanks Peter W. and Chuck S.)

Thomas Buttenschøn

Ad is in Laos. She's traveling with group that includes an Othelloish Danish pop singer. They share an appreciation of the ukulele. I checked Youtube and he's really pretty good. Of course he sings in Danish and my Danish is a little sketchy these days.

Indian Railroads

My mind tends to collect worthless information and statistics. Because my daughter logged a lot of miles on the Indian railroads, this caught my eye this morning:

"Only Bollywood does more to unite India than its railways. The statistics beggar belief: every year, Indians take 5.4 billion train trips, 7 million per day in suburban Mumbai alone. New Delhi Station sees daily transit of 350,000 passengers, which is roughly five times more than New York’s LaGuardia Airport, and enough to make Grand Central look like Mayberry Junction. The railways’ total track mileage rivals the length of the entire U.S. Interstate Highway system, even though the United States is three times the size of India. Among human resource problems, the railways of India are an Everest. Its employees outnumber Wal-Mart’s by a figure comparable to the population of Pittsburgh. The world’s only larger employer is the People’s Liberation Army of China. (The third-largest employer is the British National Health Service.)"

Campagnolo Super Record Seatpost

The last major piece of the puzzle has fallen into place for my Chris Kvale bike build up; early 1980s SR post. :-)

Harbingers of Spring

This time of the year we in the Northland tend to start looking for benchmarks that let us realize that, beyond the frozen horizon, Spring is still on the way. A couple of days ago Sally mentioned her hostas under the snow - obviously grasping at straws to maintain her sanity. Robins and crocuses are fine, but they are still two pages down the calender. One of our first harbingers is the ice houses, or lack of them. They are off the ice, by law I suspect, because they seemed to vanish overnight.

For you people living in more reasonable climes, these shacks in the picture are on the lake. Don't let the tracks laid down by pickups mislead you. When it freezes hard you can drive all over the lakes. Ice houses, or fish houses, are clustered around the lake, usually in groups in front of the "better" homes. They have floors with cutouts for the holes that are chiseled through a foot or more of ice, to allow a fishing line to be dangled down into the water, at east theoretically. In actuality it's a place where men go to drink beer, scratch, spit and fart without being "corrected". It is an example of how far society would slide and deteriorate without women to maintain certain minimal standards. There are no frilly curtains, no "cute" window boxes - just a minimal shack painted with a mixture of the old paint from the top shelf. Both my grandfather and father had ice houses. I don't, and I'm probably the poorer for it.

The Evils of Processed Food

From an article in The Economist on human evolution and it's relationship to food, cooked food in particular:

"Another telling experiment, conducted on rats, did not rely on cooking. Rather the experimenters ground up food pellets and then recompacted them to make them softer. Rats fed on the softer pellets weighed 30% more after 26 weeks than those fed the same weight of standard pellets. The difference was because of the lower cost of digestion. Indeed, Dr Wrangham suspects the main cause of the modern epidemic of obesity is not overeating (which the evidence suggests—in America, at least—is a myth) but the rise of processed foods."

A Dog Called Worker

Today I made my periodic trip to the Mayo Clinic. Any time you are really feeling sorry for yourself, a walk through the clinic will help adjust your attitude. There are a lot of people in this world that are really messed up, and a lot of them end up there. As I was leaving I got on the elevator with a young man in a wheelchair leashed to a Golden Lab. I commented on the animal. He said, kind of matter of factually, "Yeah, he pulls me. I need help since I broke my back". I asked what the dog's name was. "Ahh, I dunno, I just call him Worker". The door opened and the kid said, "Let's go." Worker tugged, spun the chair around, and towed him out of the elevator and down the hall - a dog on a mission, pulling deliberate, looking straight ahead. Not a pet, a worker with a job to do.

Addy Report

Addy called this evening. She's back in Thailand after her sojourn into Cambodia. She'll be posting photos of Angkor Wat and maybe the Killing Fields on her blog soon. I'll post a link if and when. Tomorrow she's taking a slow riverboat to somewhere. It was a bad connection and I'd have forgotten it anyway. Anyway, she's doing fine on her backpack through life.

Akvavit

I have a confession to make; I am a Dane. I'm not as Danish is the sweetroll I married, who is full blooded Dane. I'm only half Dane. When the relatives gather, the light glaring off the top of the towheads can sometimes be blinding. On Christmas after the food is eaten, the gifts are exchanged and we can see the end of the good wine, it begins. Slowly at first, even innocently, the strong cheeses appear, then the canned fish. Before long, bottles of Akvavit and Gammel Dansk are fetched from the freezer or back stoop. Then some, particularily the younger men, start throwing down the gauntlet, they begin establishing their "Danishness"; first by eating strong smelly cheeses and canned fish, and then by drinking Akvavit shots. Even Tim from up the street, who I believe is actually Irish, falls victim to the challenges.

Our Akvavit of choice is Aalborg, which is the nearest city to the village where my grandfather was born. Recently a novice from the Coast asked about how to drink Akvavit and I explained it to him, but I shorted him a little on the "ritual". From today's Minneapolis Tribune:

"Aquavit's strange attractions go beyond health. There's a mystical quality to the elixir; it's like a Scandinavian version of communion wine, fraught with ritual. The basic ritual goes like this:
Pour into a frozen aquavit glass (a special shot glass with a stem so your fingers won't warm the contents). Lift glass toward mouth and pause. Stare into eyes of everyone else holding a glass. Say the obligatory Danish toast, "Skaal." Drink -- to empty or not to empty is up to the individual. Look everyone in the eyes again. Set glass down."