Shot in the Dark

Category: Biking

  • Some Of Their Best Friends…

    UPPER MIDDLE CLASS NPR-LISTENING WHOLE FOODS SHOPPING DEMOCRATS FROM GOOD NEIGHBORHOODS WITH “GOOD SCHOOLS”:  “The problem with Republicans is that they’re just so racist”. EVENTS:  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Upper Middle Class Democrat from a Nice Neighborhood:  We’re going to fulfill a liberal goal and start busing your kids and seriously integrating your school district”.…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle, Year 11, Day 1

    Why yes – it was ten years ago I started biking to work again. Of course, I haven’t had ten straight years of biking.  After four years of working downtown (in easy biking distance), I followed up with a year of working someplace with a sixteen mile ride across Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Saint Louis Park…

  • Going Long On The Stupidity Of Crowds

    A friend of this blog writes: I don’t know about you, but most of the people think of the bicycle lobby as the leisure class, so it is interesting that one of them is now admitting that we lower class taxpayers are indeed building this infrastructure for the elites. The piece, on the transportation/transit site…

  • To Mr. Chunk, Wherever And Whoever You May Be

    To: The Piece Of Garbage Throwing Chunks of Cement at Bikers in Minneapolis From:  Just Plain Mitch Berg Re:  Consequences Big Guy With The White Bronco And The Cement Chunks, Just a hint for you before you go throwing any more chunks of cement at bikers; it is – I’m speaking purely hypothetically, here –…

  • John Edwards Was Only 2/3 Right

    Former Senator and two-time Presidential hopeful John Edwards was an immensely tragic figure, in a purely satirical sense, in that he may have been the only Democrat candidate in history to be derailed by violating conventional prole social mores. But he made one great contribution to American life; the phrase starting “There are Two Americas…”.…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 9 Preview

    The temps are in the fifties. More important, the temperature at 7AM is above 33 degrees. And after a couple of lean-ish years, it looks like biking season starts for me at 7AM tomorrow! I wrote a lot about biking to work from 2007 through 2010. Back then, I had a job in downtown Saint…

  • Ow

    As I mentally get ready to start a new job that is well within biking range, I can’t help but read about U2’s Bono, and his biking accident in New York. Bono broke his arm in six places and fractured his eye socket, hand and shoulder blade in what he called a “freak accident” in…

  • Everyone: Get Off My Side

    I bike. I’m waiting with bated breath for the “out the door” temperature to be 33 or above, soon, so I can start biking to work again.  I’ve missed it terribly (and didn’t get to do nearly enough last season).    It just plain makes me feel good. Of course, as I pointed out a…

  • Doakes Sunday: Priorities

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I saw the article in the pie-pan (Pioneer Press) about the new bicycle boondoggle.  The estimate for the loop downtown is $18 million.  Which means the true estimate that they had is $30 million, and the actual cost will be $45 million. The story quotes the City of St.…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle, Year 7-ish: Cyclus Interruptus

    It was back in 2007, working at a job in downtown Saint Paul, that I was able to start biking to work for the first time. And I loved it; for most of the next four summers, I biked every morning I was able to; in 2008, that was every morning from about April 23 on (because…

  • Critical Ass

    One of the things I miss about my current job is that I can’t bike it to work. Not that’s too far – the distance would be a nice challenge, and there are some park ‘n rides halfway there for days when I don’t want a challenge. But there’s no place to take a shower…

  • Skidding Past Every Point

    Dan Haugen, who we last ran into a few years back when we taught him a little about research, writes for “Midwest Energy News” – which is funded by an alt-energy pressure group – about Minneapolis’ new biking director, which recently survived a challenge in the Minneapolis city council even as the city lays off firemen.…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 5, Month 2

    It’s been a frustrating year for biking. The bad news:  My office is in the western burbs.  I live in Saint Paul.  That makes for a sixteen mile commute. The good news: Those sixteen miles are almost completely striped lanes and bike paths.  I know – taxes, transportation dollar, silly expenditures, bla bla bla, but…

  • The Cramdown

    I like to bike.  My current commute is 16 miles each way, if I do the whole thing (and I usually don’t; most days, I’ll throw my bike on the rack and drive to a park-and-ride and bike the last 8-10 miles,although my goal by the end of bike season, November-something with any luck at…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Seaon 5, Day 1

    So yesterday I finally got back on the road.  Sort of. For the first four years of this series, I was riding to a job in downtown Saint Paul.  It was about six miles each way; a brisk twenty minutes, mostly downhill, in the morning; a gruelling (initially) climb up Cathedral Hill followed by a…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Year 5, Pre-Game

    Getting a late start on the bike commuting this year.  Part of it is because my commute jumped from six to about 20 miles.  Part of it is because my bike – a 1983 Fuji Monterey that I got in, well, 1983 – is showing its age; it’s a bit of a hangar queen these…

  • Frequently Asked Questions – II

    I get a lot of questions here at Shot In The Dark.  Periodically, I like to answer them. Let’s start at the top! “Hey, Merg!  You worked on a special election campaign.  And it lost!  Hahahahahahahahaha!” Yeah, who’da thunk it, a Republican losing in Saint Paul.  That’s not even “dog bites man”.  That’s “Dog sniffs…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle, Season 5: Cease And Desist

    To: Mother Nature From: Mitch Berg, Biker Re: Springing for Spring Ma: By this time last year, I’d been commuting via bike for a week already. Two years ago?  I’d been on the road for four days. In 2008, of course, we had an ice storm in early April, pushing biking season back to the…

  • Opportunities For Improving Ones’ Reasoning Explained

    Over the years, this blog has had great fun bagging on conspiracy theorists.  In almost eight and a half years of writing Shot In The Dark, I’ve mixed it up with 9/11 Truthers, Triggers (people who believe Bristol is really Trig Palin’s mother), Ronulans who think that there’s a conspiracy to build a trans-American highway,…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 4, Month 4; Mental Health Day

    I hate hot weather, especially hot and humid weather like yesterday – unless I can be biking constantly and intensely. Oddly enough, being up and on the road inverts things completely; that same overheated/drenched with sweat feeling that’s so miserable when you’re cooking dinner, for example, is just wonderful when you’re out on the bike,…

  • “It’s All About Meeeeeeeeeeee!”

    A North Dakota bike tour M bars a Minnesotan for objecting to a community prayer… …over, and over, and over, and over… Morgan Christian, 54, of St. Paul, rode the 500-mile CANDISC [“Cycling around North Dakota in Sakakawea Country”] tour three consecutive years. He objected last summer to a prayer said before a meal at…

  • Jason Lewis Is Wrong

    I was enjoying an all-too-rare hour of listening to Jason Lewis the other day. I was driving through the teller line at the bank, when he chimed in with an oldie but goodie:  “Bikers don’t pay taxes”.  And the teller looked at me, perplexed, when I shouted “you are wrong for two reasons!”. First:  I…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 4, Day 1 Recap

    Riding to work was a huge rush yesterday morning – especially racing down Cathedral Hill with a brisk tailwind! Riding home from work, on the other hand, was a character-building ordeal, plodding up Cathedral Hill into a howling headwind. Note to self:  Figure out how to get the wind to shift during the day. Mission…

  • I Want To Ride My Bicycle: Season 4, Day 1

    Bike out:  Check. Tires topped up:  Check. Bag/Backpack for hauling my crap to work:  D’oh. Last minute trip to WalMart?  Check. Mission clock is at T minus thirty minutes.

  • Counting The Hours

    The Problem: While daytime temps are well above freezing, clearing off the streets fairly nicely, the morning temps are still a little chilly; the lows are going to be out of the teens, at least, but still plenty below freezing.  It’s not too cold to ride – that’s why we have caps and gloves, of…