Off the Clock

I've decided my bike needs a name. I've been developing quite a relationship with it, and it seems too impersonal to just call it "the bike". So I need some help. Any ideas? Maybe Gretchen? or Gloria? Something else? Why don't I give you some background. I used to have a really hard time bike riding because of my rheumatoid arthritis. It's mostly in my wrists, and the conventional way of bike riding where you are leaning on the handlebars just put too much pressure on them. It was too painful. So about ten years ago Canadian Tire came out with the retro cruiser-style bike and I bought one. The cruiser has you sitting more upright without putting all your weight on your hands and wrists. The handlebars are curved back towards you in a much more comfortable position (my wrists don't really bend) that regular straight bars. It only had six gears instead of the 21 that everyone else was riding, but I found the six plenty for the type of riding I d

So you see what happens when I quit blogging? All of a sudden I want to blog! lol I'm addicted to my truck. Sad but true. While the rest of the country seems to be heading in droves to buy the latest in fuel efficiency, I've got absolutely no intention of giving up my Sport Trac. This truck was made for me. It's just the thing when I buy something fairly large and have to haul it home. Or when it's something dirty, like a load of compost, that you wouldn't want dumped in the back of a hatchback or the trunk of a car. I can toss bikes in there when one of the kids needs a ride home late at night. It's small enough to fit in my garage with all my other stuff in there. And, as of three weeks ago, it's all paid off. It's mine! Dennis DesRosiers, the negative auto analyst who's always putting down Windsor/unions/the domestic auto industry, has just written an article (below) about how we Windsorites love out "gas-guzzling" SUV's.

I suck at blogging. I was going really good for a few years, but I just can't seem to get to it these days. It's not that I don't think about it. Almost every day, certainly a few times a week, something happens that I think "I should blog about this". It's usually something small and boring, but interesting to me even if to no one else. However, I just can't seem to make the time to get to it. I have the same excuses as everyone else; school, work, family, blah blah blah. But the blog has become more of an albotross hanging over my head than the joy it once was. I have that sense of obligation to post and then the guilt when I don't. I find the guilt thing a little ironic since I've been working on a major mental cleanup to get rid of useless guilt. You know the type I mean, where we beat ourselves up over the simple mistakes we've made as we travel through life, or that our house isn't clean enough, or the weeds are overtaking th