Posted inSalem

Salem’s riverfront development looking better, but not great

If you're a Salem, Oregon area resident who isn't regularly reading the Breakfast on Bikes blog, you should be! It's not really about bicycling, though it partly is. Many, if not most, of the posts are focused on how our sometimes-fair city needs to improve alternative transportation and mixed use options. Today's blog offering is an excellent overview of what's happening (and what isn't) with the re-development of the old Boise Cascade industrial property along Salem's riverfront: "Proposed Apartments for Boise Site Turn Backs on Park." I agree with the overall conclusion.  It's great news that things are heating up…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Marijuana

Kaufmann crushes Marquis in KGW marijuana debate

Sure, I'm biased. I want marijuana to be legalized in Oregon. This made good sense before Washington, our neighbor to the north, made pot legal last November. Now, it makes even more sense -- since soon a good share of Oregon's population will be within an hour's driving time of state-sponsored marijuana stores. Recently KGW TV held a "Straight Talk" debate on marijuana legalization between Roy Kaufmann, spokesman for the unsuccessful Measure 80 campaign that would have made pot legal here, and Josh Marquis, Clatsop County district attorney. I liked how both Kaufmann and Marquis were respectful, well-spoken, and generally…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

NYT Tesla test drive makes me happy we got a Volt

Since we were not-so-happy owners of an all-electric Nissan Leaf before we sold the car and leased a Chevy Volt (battery powered, with back up gas generator), I"ve been following the fascinating tale of a New York Times automotive reporter's test drive of the $101,000 Tesla Model S sedan with considerable interest. The title of the story wasn't good news for Tesla's marketing efforts: "Stalled Out on Tesla's Electric Highway." Nor was the story itself. John Broder relates the horrors of trying to drive the Tesla, which has an estimated 300 mile range, between charging stations 200 miles apart -- seemingly…
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Posted inSkateboarding

Land paddler reviews LongBoard Larry’s Walkabout

At the age of sixty-three, I took up land paddling on a longboard. This was after I spent a few months doing the push with your foot thing, which I never felt comfortable with. Discovering the Kahuna Big Stick changed my longboarding life. Being a senior citizen land paddler, I figure that I need to evolve my longboarding approach as expeditiously as possible. After all, when you're sixteen you've got a lifetime of skateboarding/ longboarding ahead of you. Same is true at sixty-four, but with a big difference: my remaining time of being alive likely is much less. So in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Whew! No reason to worry about Rubio being GOP savior.

Last night I watched Marco Rubio's Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address with some trepidation. After all, TIME magazine has just annointed him on its cover as "The Republican Savior."  And I'm a Democrat. I don't want the GOP to be saved. I want it to continue on down its road to ruin. Thankfully, proving that my prayers to Tao, Buddha-nature, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster paid off, Rubio gave a thoroughly mundane speech which, in my oh-so-reasonable opinion, wouldn't sway many (if any) Dem-voters to the Republican side. I tried to picture independently minded swing…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Gun nut or mass shooter? Sure look the same.

Here's a great "comic" by Jen Sorensen that would be funnier if it wasn't so disturbingly true. l've been thinking in much the same way about what would happen if the NRA's wet dream became reality, and the United States was filled with people carrying military-style assault rifles and other guns openly around in public. That'd be great for mass shooters. Blend right in. Start shooting in a mall, kill a few people, then run around a corner with your rifle over your shoulder and start yelling, "Oh, my God! There's a shooter back there! Take cover. I'm going to…
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Posted inHome life Scootering Skateboarding

USA Today story about older motorcycle riders mentions…ME!

Here's what I found most interesting in a USA Today story by Kim Painter, "Older motorcycle riders more likely to get badly hurt" -- the parts that mentioned me. Brian Hines, 64, a writer from Salem, Ore., rode a motorcycle as a younger man, but when he wanted to return to two-wheeled riding in 2009, he took some extra safety steps: He got a motorized scooter instead of a full-sized bike, repeated an optional safety course, bought a highly-visible white helmet and avoided riding at night or in the rain. His precautions paid off and he never had an accident,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon should vote on gay marriage AND legal pot in 2014

Let's do it, Oregonians! Catch up to Washington state on "living free." Last year Washington affirmed the legality of gay marriage and legalized marijuana in a groundbreaking election.  While Oregon weenied out on legalizing pot. So now our neighbor state to the north will reap the tax revenues from Oregonians journeying across the border to score some legal weed.  Today I was excited to learn that Basic Rights Oregon has decided to put a measure on the 2014 ballot that would legalize same-sex marriage.  Basic Rights Oregon has been laying the groundwork for a statewide vote on the issue since…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Unfunny humor about gun control

Yesterday a bunch of people brought guns to the Oregon capitol building. They paraded outside showing off their rifles, handguns, shotguns, and other pseudo-macho paraphenalia. Some even brought them inside, since Oregon is one of the few states that allow someone with a concealed handgun permit to carry around a military-style assault rifle in the halls of a Capitol.  Now, news of this sort of event should stimulate a reasonable question: "Who the heck would be so crazy as to carry guns around in public like that for no good reason?" After all, if I was a tourist visiting a state…
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Posted inSkateboarding

My first impression of Brakeboard longboard brakes

At 63 years old, I came late to longboarding (skateboarding on, duh, a long board). But I'm on the early cutting edge of those trying out an innovative way of stopping on a longboard or skateboard: the Brakeboard.  I must be one of the first to order a Brakeboard, which recently started to be sold by Ben Newman, an Australian. They're pricy, including shipping from halfway around the world. However, I was drawn to buy this braking system for a simple reason: Stopping on a longboard is important, yet not easy. Especially at speed. Sliding (either sit-down or stand-up) takes…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Oregon’s First Cats survive Governor’s mansion dog invasion

The state trooper guarding Mahonia Hall, the Oregon Governor's mansion here in Salem, gave me some faulty intelligence. I'm not blaming him; the enemies I asked about are notoriously sly and unpredictable. "Is it OK to bring our dogs in? We'd been told that the First Cats might be running around the mansion." "You're fine," the trooper replied. "They'll be shut away upstairs."  (Martha Russell photo) So began a saga that could have ended in a public relations nightmare for the Willamette Humane Society. Imagine the headline: Oregon's First Cats terrorized by dog pack at lunch won by donors at…
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Posted inHome life

Notice what doesn’t change in your life… and satisfies

I've gotten an insight into how to make life more satisfying. Focus on generally-unnoticed unchanges, what stays the same, rather than obvious alterations.  Here's what I mean. If your life is like mine, and I bet it is, it's full of damn's. For example: each example coming from recent actual My Life experience -- Damn, the water heater is leaking!Damn, a wheel came off of my longboard!Damn, I gained two pounds!Damn, I tweaked my left hip and it feels weird! In his fascinating new book, "Antifragile," Nassim Nicholas Taleb offers an insight into why these sorts of irritating damn's throw…
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Posted inSkateboarding

Why longboarders suck (I proudly suck triple)

I'm a skateboarder.  That's how I started off referring to myself last July, when at the geezer'ish age of 63 (496, or thereabouts, in skateboarder years) I decided to get a longboard skateboard. So actually... I'm a longboarder.  Except it didn't take me long in my longboarding career to realize it was going to take me too long to learn how to push with my foot and stop by foot-braking or sliding, so I decided to get into pushing myself along with a stick on an even longer longboard. So... I'm a land paddler.  At least, that's what I say…
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Posted inHome life

Minimalist shoes get thumbs up from Nassim Taleb… and me

I'm slowly making my way through Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's new book (he's the author of The Black Swan, which has nothing to do with kinky ballet).  Taleb's highly opinionated quasi-libertarian in-your-face writing style can be irritating at times, but in general I agree with most of his core theses, including: natural is more robust than artificial; stress is desirable when it strengthens us; things that last do so for good reasons. A few days ago I came across Taleb's attitude toward shoes, which almost exactly mirrors mine. I've become a big fan of lightweight, barely-there shoes and sandals.  In…
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Posted inEntertainment Philosophy

“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a paean to soulful strangeness

I loved the movie, "Beasts of the Southern Wild." Yesterday I tried to explain on my other blog what the film meant to me.  Don't feel like I succeeded. This try likely won't be much more successful. After all, what I love about "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is its -- no big surprise -- beastliness and wildness. Guess I could roar. Or jump up on a table and scream "I'm the man! I'm the man!" like the marvelous Hushpuppy does in the movie. Or trample down buildings like the aurochs do. Or... I can type away and try to say…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Neighborhood

Oregon HOA’s lose out on liens after foreclosure (probably)

I'm the secretary of our planned community's homeowners association (HOA). Our HOA has had to file liens on property owners who fail to pay their dues two years in a row. The dues are only $185 a year. Payment plans are allowed. Volunteers do a lot of the work needed to maintain the common property (we also hire a contractor for mowing, spraying, bark mulching, and such). When dues aren't paid by some of our 90 property owners, the other owners have to make up the lost money. Being the secretary, I have the not-so-fun duty of filing the liens…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Oregonian wastes paper on global warming denier Gordon Fulks

Oregon's largest newspaper, the Oregonian, is not-so-slowly sinking into irrelevancy. That's my considered opinion, at least. As noted in a recent post about a global warming story that downplayed scientific fact and played up a local meteorologist's unscientific denial of climate change, I've noted a distinct right-wing tilting in both the news and editorial sections during the past few years. After reading an absurd January 19 op-ed by Gordon Fulks, "The Changing Climate of Climate Change," that was prominently displayed by Oregonian editors, I'm even more convinced that the newspaper has joined the Republican war on science. It pains me…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Obama’s gun control plan supported by 52% of Americans

When it comes to gun control, the NRA likes to claim that it represents the American public. Not true. Obama does. A national survey conducted January 17-20 among 1,006 adults found that 52% feel that Obama's are about right (39%) or do not go far enough (13%).  By contrast, only 31% say Obama's proposals go too far. (No opinion: 17%) Clearly Obama isn't a radical when it comes to gun control. He's got a majority of the country on his side. Hopefully this majority won't remain silent when it comes time for Congress to vote on requiring background checks for…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

Obama gets serious about climate change. Finally.

Yes. Yes. Yes.  I could hear my brain screaming those words when I came across President Obama's strong statement about global warming in his second inauguation address. We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy…
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Posted inEntertainment

Pickpocket Apollo Robbins: so smooth at stealing

If you think you'd know if a skilled pickpocket was taking your watch, wallet, or cell phone, think again. That's the lesson I've learned from watching a video of theatrical pickpocket (meaning, a legal "stealer") Apollo Robbins. I've watched the video several times, I'm so fascinated by Robbins. His physical skills are amazing, but its the smoothness of his whole persona that is particularly impressive. Without that, his pickpocketing would be much less successful. Have a look. And a read, if you click on that link.   
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