yaleman.org

“Saratoga Springs school district prohibits kids from biking to school, but a mom and her son defied the law. A state trooper was there to greet them.”

I’m completely and utterly gobsmacked at the nanny-state behaviour that’s happening more and more in today’s society. If a kid wants to ride or walk to school along a designated bike path with their parent supervising them no less, when does is it become the school’s choice to ban them from doing so?

I have to ask how the “State Troopers and an unhappy group of administrators” became involved, other than the fact that they had been pre warned or something else had happened to spark it.

One section of the school policy states: “The Board of Education forbids the riding of bicycles by students to and from Maple Avenue Middle School.” Another section also prohibits riding to elementary schools.

Why would they do this? What is the justification? There is mention that it has something to do with the bicycles being on the property – possibly sparked by parents making it the fault of the school for bikes being stolen in the past.

There’s a reader comment (that seems to have been written by someone with the spelling ability of a bucket of sand) which complains that if a child got injured, the town and school district would be sued.
The concept that a parent would sue the school or the town for a child’s injury caused by a motorist is nothing less than disgusting.

They go on to say that the mother is setting a bad example by teaching their child to break the rules. While I agree that while it’s bad for them to break the rules, being taught to question political decisions and perform peaceful protests isn’t such a bad idea. This is especially true in the face of a generation of children that will likely be buried by their parents because of their terrible nutrition and weight problems, poisoned by the culture that they want so badly.

I hope I’m not one of them – I am trying to cut back on the garbage and get a bit healthier these days. If at all possible my kids will walk or ride to school with me, reinforcing the message that it’s good fun to be outside and getting some road sense.

What do (or will) your children do?

Saratogian via Mother Nature Network

Apple-brie soup at Bistro du Soleil in Playa del Rey – Los Angeles Times

Looks like tasty-tasty unhealthy creamy soup indeed

I just had one of the best rides in the wet since my first night on the bike. I basically said to myself “shut the fuck up and ride” and did so. I loosened my typical vice-tight grip on the bars, tightened up my knees like one should on the bike and just rode it smooth. Remembering to think less about the fact that I had a bit of water on my visor and just watching the road was a good thing too.

I’ve been fearful of the wet because I don’t like the feeling of the bike being unstable under me. It reminds me too much of the feeling of the bike going down while heralding a expensive, annoying and boring couple of weeks.

Tonight it didn’t slip or shudder, sailing along as smooth as silk. I kept my speed to under about fifty and I was doing not much above walking speed for some of the corners, but it was smooth and that’s what matters.

Good times, now all I need to do is work on trusting the bike.

And convincing a mechanic I trust to service the engine and suspension.

Here’s my current fun with a certain unnamed hosting provider. Feel free to traceroute this site’s domain name if you want to know which one.

me: “please do this specific thing to twenty domains.”
them: “ok, like this?”
me: “no, do it how I asked!”
them: “oh dear, we need someone smarter… I’ll send the request somewhere else”
[ 24 hours goes past ]
me: “hello?”
them: “sorry, ok, done”
me: “but you didn’t do it, and I had to create a new ticket to ask you to do it again, properly!”
them: “ok, done… I checked two.”
me: “… out of twenty? I’ll do it myself. DO NOT BREAK ANYTHING ELSE”

This may be slightly paraphrased, but it’s taken three days to go backwards on where I was at the start, and realise I should have just done it myself the first time.

So, loads of people are having issues with this as per a search or two on the Wordpress forums, and I found myself in the same boat. Check it out – I found a fix

I inserted the wp_categories table from my backups and then ran the sql query I found here:

update wp_term_taxonomy, wp_categories set description = cat_name where term_id = cat_ID;
update wp_terms, wp_categories set name = cat_name, slug = category_nicename where term_id = cat_ID;