Aborted 2014 Tour De Rook

So, it’s beautiful outside I tell myself. In fact, it’s a perfect day to hit the bike trail. What the hell, huh? So, I get my shorts on and tie my hair back with four binders. I pump up the tires, fill the water bottle, and head north on the trail. I’m listening to Beethoven’s 1st Symphony when I suddenly hear a hiss and feel the rear tire start to ride rough. Yup, flat. And I am 2.5 miles or more down the road.

Bright Blue Skies!

Going out on the road to Duluth. I heard about some out of the way coffee shop from a coworker and I want to see if I can find it!

Update: Well crap! I found the coffee shop, but it’s closed up! Bummer.

What Numerian Said

Some days I am reminded of the magnitude of writing I have yet to achieve.

(The Agonist) Almost always I get lost in the process. There are too many hyperlinks to draw you away, and after moving two or three degrees away from what I was reading, I forget where I had started from altogether. There’s so much news and analysis to absorb, that I rarely remember to bookmark the interesting ones. I should have bookmarked one I came across yesterday; it chronicles climate change activity around the world, with some great maps from NOAA and data from various climate centers at major universities. I do remember it was linked here on The Agonist by raja, and it’s a blog by the anonymous robertscribbler. Did you know Queensland, Australia is now entirely in a state of extreme drought? A high pressure dome has formed over Oklahoma that promises to worsen the 10-year old drought over the Southwest US. Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F. were experienced this week in Nebraska and Kansas, the earliest such high temperatures have been recorded ever in those states. How are farmers responding to these conditions? They’re continuing to irrigate by drawing water from stressed-out underground aquifers. The winter wheat crop is many parts of the US is nearly 95% destroyed, but so is the wheat crop in Ukraine, which has its own geopolitical stresses to add to its problems. A very serious global shortage of wheat is looming. Siberia is once again battling forest fires, and all of southeast Alaska has been put on alert for forest fires. The monsoons that normally arrive in Singapore and Indonesia are over a month late, and what is normally considered jungle terrain is so parched that it can no longer be called a rainforest.

I am in awe. And frightened at the collective denial of the majority of the United States population.