New motto for Austin

or am I repeating myself? Anyway, my proposal for Austin's new motto is:
Welcome to Austin. Speed bumps in every neighborhood, or your money back!
Most of them are actually speed "pillows," the separate lumps that allow ambulances and fire trucks to straddle them entirely. And allow bikes to ride right in between the pillows.

I found the perfect thing for my med alert buttons: little rubbery circles. Place my alert symbols and words between 2, stick 'em together with the glue that's already on there, dab some superglue on the edges for additional safety, and drill a small hole in it. Voila! A small, lightweight, non-metal medical alert charm/tag/bead.

This year is now half over. Are you done with half of everything you planned to accomplish this year?

Another brief thought

I mentioned that Austin's average annual rainfall is 32 inches. What I may not have mentioned is that there's only about one year out of 10 where we get something near 32 inches. The rest of the time we alternate between about 20 inches one year and 45 inches the next year. That tends to mean that half the plants in the city die of drought one year, and the other half, the good xeriscaping, gets flooded out the following year. This is going to be one of the 45-inch years; we had about 13 inches of rain in June alone, and it's still raining as we enter the beginning of July.

We're supposed to play patriotic concerts - you know, Stars & Stripes Forever accompanying fireworks - both Saturday and Sunday nights, Saturday in Bastrop and Sunday in Round Rock. Can't tell yet whether there will be any intermissions in the precipitant humidity so that we can really play and the fireworks might even burst in air. Fingers crossed, or other superstition of your choice, that it will be outdoor concert weather.

the rain stopped so I could get to the post office

Got a couple of eBay sales mailed off, and picked up two days worth of mail. Magazines: Old House Journal (every other month), Consumer Reports, Science (weekly), Discover, Time (weekly), Rider, Mensa Bulletin, The Door Magazine (every other month), Reports of the NCSE (irregular but approximately quarterly). This is an average haul - I think I will keep track for a while, as I haven't quite pinned down exactly how many magazines we subscribe to. Since this is the first of the month, a month's worth should give a fair estimate, although it may bypass some quarterly journals.

Each person makes his own decision about what to wear for safety on a bike. Ideally, we'd all be wearing full-face helmets, full leathers, gloves, boots. For some people, safety is against the point; those people deliberately don't wear helmets, but just as matters of style they tend to wear long pants, good boots, and often gloves. They are often on Harleys. Then there are the people for whom safety has never crossed their minds - they wear shorts and flip-flops, and nothing else. Sunburn, anyone? Apart from all the other hazards. These people are almost always males under 25, and usually on crotch rockets. We call them "organ donors" and hope that as they gain their painful experience, if they live through it, their medical care doesn't cost too much of the taxpayers' dime. And then there's everyone else, who balances safety, affordability, and weather and comes up with an individual balance. Usually the first compromise, based in large part on cost, is wearing jeans (or slacks, trousers, pants, khakis, chinos) and whatever jacket is handy. For me, though, once it gets over 80 degrees, which is at least 6 months of the year here, I cannot stand to wear long sleeves. I weigh road rash vs. heat stroke, and find heat stroke the more likely. So it's my white helmet, which keeps my head cooler than naked (you know that experiment someone does on a bike shop parking lot every year, with 3 thermometers, and a black helmet over one, a white helmet over another, and no helmet over the third...), long pants, good shoes although not always boots, and whatever short-sleeved shirt I happen to be wearing. I just can't bring myself to put on long sleeves of any sort, let alone a jacket, from May through October.

One of the things that gets affected by the balance of safety apparel is who to wave to. Probably every rider has his own formula for this. Mine is, I'll wave to anybody who waves to me first - why be unfriendly? - and I will wave regardless to anybody else in a full-face helmet, even if they're on a 50-cc scooter. (We'll have the "are scooters real bikes?" discussion some other day.) And I'll wave regardless to anyone I see regularly - I think the guy who frequently appears to be going by the post office I use, wearing his full bright lime green leathers, is nuts, but since I see him frequently, I wave. Gotta admit that safety-wise, he's sure as hell visible.

Note to self: write about Lamar when have time. Not now.