I suppose it doesn't. It's more of a New Year's Resolution post, and the general nonsense of such things but when it's the perfect situation to create one.
You all out there in the Mineshaft should address the OP topic and not start riffing on New Year's resolutions. Stern orders.
I guess they're too close to tease apart, aren't they.
You have two more days to continue your slothful and ineffective habits, or, if you're that way inclined, to do something stunningly ill-advised
Does coming down with a cold count?
My theory is: you should only make resolutions that delight you to enforce them. Historically I've resolved things like "From now on, if something is echoing in my head I will say it outloud, social ineptness be damned."
My current resolution needs context: we eat pancakes every Sunday morning, which is a ritual I love but I don't personally like pancakes very much. So I decided I will acquire smoked fish and fancy breads and enjoy my Sunday morning feast a little more, from now on.
I didn't mean to sound as crabby as 1-6 minus 5 sound. I was trying to sound pleasantly petulant.
Smoked fish!
I went to (through?) a drive-through liquor store for the first time last night, because our babysitter insisted she wouldn't take cash and so we paid her in bourbon. I guess I might get a chance to do something ill-advised if the people we talked to while out last night do call and come over. Other than that, it'll probably just remain staying up too late and that sort of thing. Maybe I can throw some sloth in too.
our babysitter insisted she wouldn't take cash
As a policy? Does she insist on PayPal? Bitcoin?
Quick, write a trend piece!
so we paid her in bourbon
Is bourbon a common medium of exchange, or is she going to drink it all herself?
It's not a New Year's resolution as such, but I won't be eating any more sweets after New Year's eve. I don't normally eat sweets, but Christmas. And my nieces gave me a giant tube of American sweets, so my teeth aren't looking forward to the next couple of days.
It was a bottle she'll probably share with her husband and not use all in one sitting or anything, but we texted him for her favorite drink so we could give her something. She's a friend who was doing us a favor and watching the baby for a few hours while other friends took the big girls overnight, and admittedly we didn't pay them although we watch their kid a fair amount. Taking advantage of a non-parent friend felt different, I guess.
Heading to the gym for the first time since clot event. Will I keep it low impact and stay off the racquetball court?
What kind of American sweets come in the form of a tube?
15: I was wondering that as well. Maybe one of those plastic hollow candy canes full of M&M's or Hershey Kisses or something?
If anyone resolved to install a used pulpit in their house, I know where you can get one for $175.
What kind of American sweets come in the form of a tube?
If I try to visualize candies in a tube I get Sweet Tarts but that isn't "giant".
Well one thing about this year is New Year's Day is on a Wednesday, so all those people who were clutching my resume dying to call me on Hainaut (autocorrect say what?) on January 2 will now be calling me on January 6th. So that's peachy.
15: Low Hanging Fruit Rollups
15, 20 Mississippi John Hurt agrees.
What kind of American sweets come in the form of a tube?
Tootsie Rolls?
OT: I've been reading about the Michael Schumacher ski accident and thinking about it a lot since I've skied in exactly that place dozens upon dozens of times. I've also fallen in such places many times probably including right around where he fell, never wearing a helmet - the only times I've worn one is on guided off piste days where we were doing lots of narrow rock sided chutes. Reading about the accident makes me wonder whether I should wear one in the future. However, some of the accounts are a bit silly. The place he fell is not a real off piste area, it's just between two fairly closely situated parallel trails, and given that trails in the alps are mostly above the treeline, 'trail' here simply means a strip of groomed terrain on a snow covered meadow. It's standard issue intermediate terrain, and not remotely 'one of the most difficult runs' as the Guardian seems to think. But that's sort of why it makes me rethink my no-helmet wearing policy - this is not a place I'd ever have the slightest worry about safety except when it's really crowded, and then it's just the beginners and the snowboarders I'm worried about, not smashing my skull to bits on a rock, even though you often see small bits of rocky bald spots in low snow conditions.
23: teraz, most of the resorts in Colorado recommend always wearing a helmet.
Who was the actress? politician's wife? who died on a bunny-slope a few years ago? Fell down at fairly low speed and hit her head on a piece of ice?
I kind of think freak accidents can happen anyplace, and helmets are mostly overkill.
Natasha Richardson.
helmets are mostly overkill
Really? I haven't skied, but it seems to have a high head hitting ground probability.
actress?
Natasha Richardson
politician's wife?
No, retired CIA operative's wife!
26: the ground is generally pretty soft in the parts without rocks and trees.
I haven't skied, but it seems to have a high head hitting ground probability.
I ski quite little, and badly, but it doesn't feel that way. If you're skiing mostly in control, while you might fall down, your highest-odds fall is going to be sort of a feet-out-from-under-you on your ass kind of thing. And of course you're on snow, which is mostly softish and slipperyish. I've fallen down a lot, and fairly hard a lot, and I've never worried about cracking my head.
Plus it's pretty unusual for your head to take the brunt of the impact. Typically when you fall it's your ass or shoulder which hits first. Even when you do a head first wipeout you tend to slam into the snow with your torso. Imagine running around on a grassy field and tripping or slipping.
I'm all excited -- after not skiing at all last year, I'm taking the kids for a week in Vermont in February. Six days is long enough for me to get back into it properly, or at least to recover whatever I ever knew how to do.
Though if you're skiing hard the big risk is catching an edge.
I keep on vaguely daydreaming about living somewhere that skiing wasn't such a production -- I really don't enjoy day trips from NYC at all.
Geneva makes NYC look like a low cost kind of place, and it's pretty boring and parochial, however, we used to even do half day trips - sleep in, eat an early lunch, drive an hour, and buy a half day ticket for about double the cost of seeing a movie.
Skiing is one of those things that gives me mild class-based anxiety. Every other physicist I meet thinks it's de rigueur to take skiing vacations every winter, and has usually been doing so since childhood, whereas I had never skiied at all until about two years ago.
I know two and sort of one more person who has died on the slopes, which is way more than I know in any other sport. My brother's best friend died while they were on spring break.
36: Do you think it gives them an advantage when studying gravity?
sort of one more person
Was this being a hobbit?
I get class-based anxiety about skiing. It's so expensive, and such a hassle. But it's really really fun, and there aren't many outdoorsy things I like doing that much. And the kids like it a surprising amount: that is, I'd sort of thought I'd been dragging them along, but this trip is largely due to spontaneous nagging about when we were going to get to go again.
Skiing is one of those things that gives me mild class-based anxiety. Every other physicist I meet thinks it's de rigueur to take skiing vacations every winter, and has usually been doing so since childhood, whereas I had never skiied at all until about two years ago.
Are these physicists from places where skiing is not so associated with the rich? Or are they rich?
I went cross-country skiing once. It wasn't that bad, but if I'm going to work really hard in unpleasant conditions, I think I should get paid.
No one in this whole thread has plans to do anything excitingly ill-advised?
In your case, probably something relating to Swedish fish.
43: I drank too much egg nog. Now I have a stomach ache.
Every other physicist I meet thinks it's de rigueur to take skiing vacations every winter, and has usually been doing so since childhood
Are they all from CERN? This has (to say the least) not been my experience. Snowmass was in the middle of summer. Most US labs aren't especially close to ski areas.
I plan to put some significant proportion of ours possessions in boxes, whence I will no doubt never be able to find anything again. Also, I might try to attach some things to newly painted plaster walls and doors, which can't be a good thing. Oh, and I will likely try to move a fridge through a door that seems too small for it.
Some of this will happen in 2014, to be honest. But I'm trying to help.
I generally think of physicists hiking, not skiing, but insofar as skiing can be considered frictionless hiking I guess it makes sense.
I generally think of physicists hiking drinking
My understanding (plus anecdata) is that most skiing deaths happen on intermediate trails where people are going fast but lose it near a border with trees. I believe that was the case with Sonny Bono and that extended Kennedy who died while they were playing snow football (both at Heavenly at Lake Tahoe?--pretty sure Bono was).
as skiing can be considered frictionless hiking
That's how I think of it: outdoors! scenery! but fast!
47: Wait, are you in physics? I thought from some earlier thread you were in some other field, but had a relative in physics, or something.
There are Aspen winter conferences every year, plus conferences at Lake Louise and Chamonix and Telluride and other places. But also lots of people just go on their own-- a lot of people I know who live on the west coast have been posting to Facebook about their trips to Mammoth or Tahoe or wherever.
I might go skiing tomorrow afternoon. Definitely Wednesday. (But that's for Heebie's post-to-come, right?)
Easily 95% of folks at my local hill wear helmets, and the 5% who don't are usually people who seem to know less about what they're doing, not more. Our ski area doesn't have condos, movie stars, rich people, tourists, or beginners, though, so you'd expect to see a lot more respect for the thing. On any given day, between half and 3/4ths of the people have season passes -- and when you're skiing a lot, you're pretty likely to be falling some.
My wife was an avid skier via her Austrian father (they did a lot at Vernon Valley New Jersey, but would go on big trips every couple of years). We used to go a lot, but only here and my two sons do it sporadically now.
Hiking, yeah. But hiking I grew up doing, just not the way a lot of the physicists I know do it. A lot are into rock climbing, or don't consider it a real hike if they don't either need to use an ice ax or summit multiple 14ers in one day. I always liked to go hiking in Colorado, but the way the Aspen regulars do it terrifies me.
53.last: to be fair, this is true of me as well and none of my friends who live on the west coast are physicists.
54: I feel like there's been a vast cultural shift on this within the past maybe 10-15 years, at the most; last time I went skiing almost nobody was wearing helmts.
(Thinking about it, I've been skiing, one form or the other, 5 times this season. And fallen each time.)
It's so expensive, and such a hassle.
Definitely a good number of people out here who moved for the ski and outdoor scene. My suburb backs up to the canyons where there's Brighton, Alta, etc.
58 -- 10-15 years ago, it was just kids. We certainly made our kids wear them. I started right after a pretty good high speed wipeout in 09, but was already in a small minority by then.
Until I was in my twenties I don't think I ever saw anyone wearing a helmet, and it was only about a decade ago that I first started seeing helmets on adults. As of two years ago helmet wearers were pretty common but still a minority among adult skiers. I've known quite a few skiers and only heard of a few head injuries, none with any long term consequences. All the deaths I've heard of have been off piste courtesy of avalanches.
Same here in Utah. I don't remember helmets at all when I was going more often in the mid 90's.
Well, back in my youth nobody wore helmets riding a bicycle either.
Some time in the 1980s scientists discovered that that the brain was important for something or another, and the helmet makers decided to cash in on this.
64.1: as indeed they probably didn't need to.
Anyhow, my walking helmet is pretty sleek.
There's controversy about whether bicycle helmets net out to being a good idea. The anti position is that by making biking less convenient, they make people much less likely to bike, and don't actually improve safety that much.
My sitting helmet is a little cumbersome, but safety first.
62 -- My sample is undoubtedly skewed by the number of people who own their ski gear. My office-mate's daughter was just home from DC for the holidays, and enjoyed the $24 ski rental, saying it was more like $100 in the East. Paying that much, on a family trip, I can see why someone would skimp on the extra for helmets, given especially the unlikelihood of hitting one's head on a given day of groomers. Mostly, people here are not skiing groomers, and do enough that the stats are going to catch up with them.
And anyway, helmets are warm, and handy for carrying gloves etc when you go to the bar.
Of course, I did get myself concussed wiping out on my bike when I was twelve or so (ran over my sister and landed badly), so six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Mostly, people here are not skiing groomers, and do enough that the stats are going to catch up with them.
Yeah giant western powder bowls are maybe a different category than the gentle-yet-icy conditions LB will find in Vermont.
Snow out west is really really nice, I say from my one experience with it. I was half thinking about flying out to the Rockies for this trip, given that it was going to be a week anyway so the additional travel time wasn't a thing, but there wasn't any place I could find to get it down to the (already exorbitant) same price range when you counted in airfare.
I always thought it would be funny if someone started a big campaign that your kid will be safest if they wear a helmet while riding in the car, and then if they wear oven mitts, and so on, and see how goddamn safe we can get those kids. Even though I myself am a member of the butt of the joke demographic.
70 -- http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e193/jahfree/westbowls.jpg
They should have rotated this one a bit -- the radio towers at the top are actually vertical.
Mostly, people here are not skiing groomers
Is this on the dialect quiz? What are we talking about here? I thought groomers basically raked the snow smooth for other people.
69: I wiped out on my bike at about that age and chipped my front teeth. I'm don't think a helmet would have helped.
I remember my sister (5 years older than me) telling me to tell people that "I wiped out on my bike", because it sounded cooler than the way I was saying it (probably, "I fell of my bike.")
It's touching to remember that she did her best to help me seem cool.
64.1: as indeed they probably didn't need to.
Oh! Is this seriously the consensus now? I didn't realize that the pendulum had swung back.
Whoa, you wiped out? That does sound cool.
53: No, not me, cousin and father. My father took the family to conferences occasionally, but I think the only time we got to ski was when he was at CERN for a few months when I was very young. We surely didn't take annual ski vacations, nor did most of the people he was friendly with at work.
I think you know very fancy physicists. A better class than I do, anyway. To be fair, I don't know many physicists roughly my age.
Is this seriously the consensus now?
No.
79: Thanks, heebie!
Followup question -- is it seriously your opinion, Sifu?
It's common enough to make this make sense: For the 50th anniversary of Snowbowl 2 years ago, one of our local brewers conjured up a beer called Groomer. You could only get it at the bar on the hill. So the local paper asked the owners of the hill about the beer and was told 'Now we have an answer to the question visitors keep asking: Where are the groomers? They're in the bar.'
76, 79: It's not consensus, but I think it's a fairly common belief among serious bike people.
Concussions suck, and if your rides have you moving at reasonable speed or with fast-moving traffic, a helmet's a good idea.
If you're riding slowly in low traffic, not much point since all there is to fear is a low-speed fall.
I think mountain bikers generally wear helmets, which is decently similar to skiing in the kind of injuries you'd get.
80.2: helmets are very good at preventing injury during a very specific type of accident, which is not the most common type of accident recreational or commuter cyclists are likely to get into. The best thing for bike safety is to have more people riding bikes, so that drivers are more aware of/attentive to them. Helmets do not, to a first approximation, do shit if somebody runs you over.
That said, I always wear mine when riding in the city, because I ride pretty aggressively and would feel for unrelated reasons like a real nincompoop if I got a closed head injury.
Do you think? I'd think of mountain-biking as much more head-injury-likely. An over-the-handlebars wreck seems much higher-odds than falling on your head skiing, and you're on rocks and trees rather than snow.
Yeah wearing a helmet when mountain biking is an incredibly good idea. Not a bad idea if you're doing fast road descending, either.
86: also often (usually?) a lot closer to trees.
No, seriously, I'm an expert because I've skied exactly once and mountain biked maybe twice and white knuckled both of them. They're the same.
It isn't a class-based thing, I don't think, but all my life skiing has seemed like something other people do. It would just never, ever occur to me as a thing I might do.
Helmets do not, to a first approximation, do shit if somebody runs you over.
What about this calf guards soccer players wear?
Snow out west is really really nice
Is it ever. The first time I skied on fluffy powder out here, having previously experienced only ice-covered moguls in Vermont, I thought OMG, my neighbor was right: people out west are total pussies.
Re: 92
It's not their calves they're protecting.
I've been putting them on my son backward?
93: Well, at least the relationship between difficulty and steepness is totally different. My capacity to ski slowly down a nearly vertical slope in powder impressed the heck out of me -- on East Coast ice, it doesn't take much of a slope at all to be uncontrollable.
Also, powder is quiet. I found I was having trouble my first few powder runs, because I was so used to getting real information out of the sound of my skis scraping across the ice.
I'm certainly "continuing my slothful and ineffective habits" so far today. I know I should find it motivating when a fellow student comes by and asks me for advice about a job offer he got--at 80k, it's at the very low end of what we've been told is reasonable, but it's the only offer he's gotten, and they want a response in 4 days--but it just makes me want to give up and stay in bed forever.
Well, at least the relationship between difficulty and steepness is totally different.
LB, it may not qualify as stunningly ill-advised, but you have two days left to call westerners total pussies before 2014 rolls around. You could start with CharleyCarp and gswift.
Mostly, people here are not skiing groomers, and do enough that the stats are going to catch up with them.
Overall ski injuries requiring any sort of medical attention are at about 1-3 per one thousand days of skiing. About one tenth to one sixth of those are head injuries. Not all head injuries will be prevented by helmets, and many injuries are relatively minor, e.g. mild concussions. For most skiers the odds will not catch up with them.
I'd consider a mild concussion to count as being caught.
But a thousand days of skiing is an awful lot. I certainly haven't come close to skiing a thousand days lifetime, and don't expect to. Charley really likes it and lives right near a slope, and said he's been out five times this year.
This from that link: Despite accounting for a relatively small fraction of all injuries, head injuries are particularly serious given that they are the most frequent cause of death and severe disability.
I don't care how many days beginners spend on the relatively flat terrain of Park City. (Or the Sella Ronda). Or standing in line at Squaw Valley. The relevant factors are (a) how much of an inconvenience is it to wear a helmet and (b) what is the potential downside of not wearing one. As I see all around me, people understand that as low as the odds of an adverse (b) event might be, they are not lower in value than (a). I've hit my head, before and after having a helmet. It's a no-brainer. YMMOV.
I started wearing a seat belt only after breaking a windshield with my head. If the belt starts to bother me, maybe a helmet would be enough.
The actual inconvenience is that on warm days they're an unpleasantly sweaty pain in the ass and generally make you feel overheated. The rest of the time they're less comfortable than a hat but that's pretty minor. Also you have to carry them around with you. Other than on warm days the real reason that I don't wear a helmet is that I feel weird wearing one and that I like the feeling of air rushing over my head. It's habit and the reverse of the reason why I always wear a helmet when I bike regardless of the degree to which it makes sense from a rational perspective. FWIW, however, being a beginner isn't that much of an advantage - they fall more often and are more likely to end up in a collision.
but it just makes me want to give up and stay in bed forever.
This is my week of being twinsies with everyone.
I thought there was also a factor where people (cyclists, skiers, investment bankers) acted more riskily when they have more safety equipment. So is the influx of helmets a danger on more crowded slopes?
The best thing about this real, measurable phenomenon is you can then get people to nod in agreement and say "people ARE so much ruder now days" ...
I snowboard (pretty badly) and don't ski, but in my view it's insane not to wear a helmet snowboarding, and probably skiing too. We're on a ski trip right now and just from the lift today I saw maybe three falls where a helmet would be a good idea. Also unless you're in fresh powder the snow isn't really soft, and frequently it's pretty icy. Actually the year I learned to snowboard it was a lousy snow year and super icy and I'm pretty sure I would have been fucked without the helmet.
FWIW my wife, who is likely better a skier than most of you (college skier on a good ski team) wears one, though she's generally pretty safety conscious.
108: God your life turned out just like an 80's HS movie, didn't it?
Halford owns a hot tub time machine.
I don't, but I had literally just gotten out of a hot tub when I posted my last comment.
God your life turned out just like an 80's HS movie, didn't it?
The one with John Cusack and the French foreign exchange student?
Does this mean that Halford is actually John Cusack?
I actually think of Nick S as being more a Cusack fellow. Halford has never endlessly second-guessed himself.
Halford has never endlessly second-guessed himself.
Halford staring at the closet mirror, Meat is Murder blaring on the record player: "at least she doesn't know I'm like this" *sobs*
This is all deeply confusing because life turning out for me like either the hero/Billy Zabka villain (I can never decide which one) of an 80s movie is pretty much my lifetime dream, but actually most of my life is dreary and mediocre. I need to go away now.
108: My wife is also a pretty good skier--although not fast or aggressive*-- and has worn a helmet for a number of years now. Although extra warmth was a big consideration for her.
*She did manage to break a rib a few years back, however.
Speaking of Halford and the 80s (and by extension metal), saw this today and immediately thought of Halford.
Speaking of Halford and the 80s (and by extension metal), saw this today and immediately thought of Halford and the 80s (and by extension metal).
YMMOV
No, your mother's musty old vagina.
After spending two decades never thinking about skiing - Smearcase's 91 covers me too - and one decade believing learning to ski would be terrifying and out of the question I've recently had multiple almost-convincing conversations with beginner skiers my age.
I'm afraid I remain convinced that I won't much regret not learning, effortfully, as an adult; I doubt I can shake the sense of real danger and I bet I can find commensurate enjoyment in some other use of a given leisure day.
I grew up cross-country skiing and as an adult, never bother with skiing. Downhill is weird, with all those people around and the strange hassle of rentals and lodges and money and ski lifts. Crosscountry isn't worth the trip there, packing all the gear for a kinda hike that I could do without that gear in five months.
I have every opportunity, and use them all not to ski.
I doubt I can shake the sense of real danger
On the bunny hill? You really, really can.
This is all deeply confusing because life turning out for me like either the hero/Billy Zabka villain (I can never decide which one) of an 80s movie is pretty much my lifetime dream, but actually most of my life is dreary and mediocre
Maybe your life is more like the actual 80s?
We went cross-country on Cascade concrete (actually, usually Olympic concrete, for which no name) when I was a kid, but it wasn't stylish. Presumably telemark turns in wool have come back in? What's the over/under on whether ski hipsters wear helmets?
I don't have the slightest idea what that means until the part about the hipsters.
I do concede that I might could* be tolerably comfortable on a bunny hill, but - and this where I start to sound defensive and too dogmatic, in person at least - I also suspect the bunny hill is only minimally interesting, and suspect that the investment required to get off it safely, as an adult learner, would be somewhat too much money and definitely too much time.
But the perverse truth is that even if I could be convinced that learning to ski were easy, or that the learning would be its own reward in the event I never left the bunny hill, I would probably resist. For me, personally, that ship sailed at some past date, without my being able to fully explain it.
I do concede that I might could* be tolerably comfortable on a bunny hill, but - and this where I start to sound defensive and too dogmatic, in person at least - I also suspect the bunny hill is only minimally interesting, and suspect that the investment required to get off it safely, as an adult learner, would be somewhat too much money and definitely too much time.
But the perverse truth is that even if I could be convinced that learning to ski were easy, or that the learning would be its own reward in the event I never left the bunny hill, I would probably resist. For me, personally, that ship sailed at some past date, without my being able to fully explain it.
126 and 127 to 122, more or less obviously.
Probably I will post the footnote only once, but not yet.
Does the US have cross country skiing trails? By that I mean ones where they've tamped the snow down hard while cutting parallel grooves slightly wider then the width of your skis. It makes the experience much nicer. In nice terrain it's not bad, particularly when you manage to get the technique sort of right and are doing long glides rather than something akin to walking or running. I strongly recommend waxed skis rather than the ones with scales or strips or other physical feature to provide the grip.
On the safety issue of skiing and helmets, I'll note that the Alps have seen seven skiers killed by avalanche in the past six days, and zero killed by head injury. Helmets provide a noticeable reduction in risk of a pretty rare form of accident. Wearing one makes a certain amount of sense, however if you think skiing without one is crazy, what do you think of bike commuting or getting on a motorcycle (with helmet) or wilderness/off piste skiing or any number of riskier activities?
The footnote from my double-post:
*I picked up "might could" here, doing my part to confound region-based expectations for dialect. Am I even using it with the right intonation?
I doubt death is the biggest problem w/ head injuries from skiing -- concussions are probably pretty common and bad.
To Joyslinger, I learned snowboarding in my mid 30s, I definitely recommend it over skiing as something that gets you quickly on most of the mountain. It's fun!
Pfff. If you really want to learn a mountain, Minecraft gets you inside and out.
A relative of mine had a skiing accident at about age 12; steered straight into a rock and hit with his torso. Lost a kidney and associated glands, which may have accounted for how short he is now (though genetics indicates that he was never likely to be very tall).
I have yet to see body-airbags for skiers, though.
I never saw a moor;
I never saw the sea,
Yet know I how the airbag hooks
And how 'twill pillow me.
89 should be amended to admit I've snowboarded more than I've skied. Basically I'm a giant pansy and everything scares the crap out of me. OTOH I get real thrills from things like glass elevators.
Does the US have cross country skiing trails? By that I mean ones where they've tamped the snow down hard while cutting parallel grooves slightly wider then the width of your skis.
Yes.
As for snowboarding/downhill skiing, it's fun, it's just too much time and money. All the gear I wouldn't use for anything else, because it's not like I've made a snow fort in even longer. Maybe if I lived in Vermont again, or stayed there visiting my parents for a good month at a time, but not these days.
As for snowboarding in helmets, I don't think I've done it. I think some people did when I was last living in Vermont, but I don't think it was standard.
I do wear a bike helmet, though. In the past year I've had an accident in which I think my head grazed the pavement, and a neighbor of mine definitely got concussed, so those could easily have been worse if we hadn't been wearing helmets. Anecdata, but still. Although I admit the inconvenience of them kept me from biking for a while, sort of. I used to gel my hair and for almost a year I'd take the metro in to work, carry a helmet with me, and bike home with a Bikeshare bike. I wasn't biking in the morning just because a helmet would mess up my hair. I eventually took the plunge and gave up the rad stylin, though.
139: How do cyclists feel about those? I saw the video when it was making the rounds a while back, and it certainly seems like a cool idea, but I don't have a sense of how people who actually know about this stuff reacted.
I don't have much trouble with overheating while downhill skiing. It's easy enough to take a jacket off, or open vents in my parts, or something. My son boards with a beeper, and I guess if I skied where he does, I'd have one too. I was in a small avalanche 30+ years ago -- enough to scare me a little, though the damger was always pretty slight.
140: seems cool in theory, but not at $500, especially when it probably activates even in crashes that wouldn't involve the head. At a tenth the price, sure.
139 A huge, padded 1.5lb completely unbreathable neckwarmer? Sounds ok for winter biking, but can you imagine wearing that thing in the summertime?.
127: You could probably learn enough in a day to get on the green or blue variety hills. Skiing is more intuitive than you might think. I've only ever rented equipment, and can count on one hand the number of times I've gone skiing, but have managed to follow my more experienced friends up to the intermediate level (and one technically higher level portion of a run which was probably the easiest of its variety). It helps if you're willing to fall down. Still, it's expensive, and there's no good reason to ski except if you enjoy it.
Airbag for skiers. (Versus avalanches.)
140 i feel a sharp pain at the price tag, which slowly moderate to a dull ache as I remember how much other cycling gear is absurdly expensive,
otherwise I would happily try one
I actually think of Nick S as being more a Cusack fellow. Halford has never endlessly second-guessed himself.
Aw, that's nice of you. I'm flattered.
On the other topic, I just bought an embarrassingly expensive bike helmet.
In my years of bike commuting I've fallen off my bike a couple times, none in the last eight years, all at low speeds, and never hit my head. However, I still wear a helmet out of habit.
I love my old helmet, and I'm replacing it just because I do think helmets wear out over time even if you haven't been in a crash (a much debated theory), and also because the size adjustment strap has been broken for a while and it fits well but not firmly, which isn't ideal. But my old helmet was also a high-end model, and I really enjoyed having it. It was noticeably less of an, "unpleasantly sweaty pain in the ass" than other helmets I'd worn.
I'm pretty sure the shank end of the Shank End thread is the right place to vent that I'm heading for a party I don't want to be at carrying too much of a dessert I didn't make well enough.
On the OP's checklist, I'm counting this as ineffective and perhaps ill-advised, but not slothful or stunning.
carrying too much of a dessert I didn't make well enough
Didn't make well enough to carry? Like, it lacks structural integrity and you risk getting brained by acres of razor-sharp falling fondant?
149 would be kinda great and obviously apropos of my previous contribution to this thread, but is sadly untrue.
Happy New Year, Europeans! I've been watching Polish satellite tv with my dad and grandmother, and we are quite impressed with London's fireworks!
I started drinking rye two days ago (for the first time, not non-stop) and just made myself the first Manhattan I've ever made, which was my grandfather's signature drink and always makes me think of him. I sort of ruined it initially by adding a little simple syrup when I didn't have maraschino cherries, but realized I could add pomegranate instead and that was a great choice.
I routinely drink my Manhattans without garnish and find them just fine that way! Not that a nice brandied cherry would go amiss.
Yeah, the ruin was in adding sweetness, I think, or something. It was just wrong, and now it's better.
A good thing to use for sweet vermouth in manhattans is carpano antica.
Our liquor cabinet is so pitiful nowadays. I'm amazed we had any vermouth at all, although really I'm not because we need the sweet for tinto de verano in the summer. We also have some Old Fashioned mix someone left here at some party we had but it suggests you add club soda (?) I don't have and thus seems like a bad idea for several reasons.
Although while you're here, nosflow, was it you who'd read Penelope Lively's Making It Up? I started crying in the middle of a restaurant when I got to the end of the first story, so I'll probably read the rest of it on my own, but I don't really know how I was going to end this sentence.
We just threw away the expired maraschino cherries from when I was making myself Manhattan.
I don't know. It seems mean to throw it out but stupid to keep it. (I'm pretty sure I know who brought it and I've been keeping it because it's likely they and a bottle of bourbon will come back soon, but I'm not sure it's worth it.)
161: Does your son not drink Shirley Temples? My mom has been awful about making them for the kids, which would be the most shocking thing about her grandparenting except that she not only gives them spray whipped cream but lets them eat it off their dessert and then offers them more, which blows the mind of her children every time. (Or if your son is more butch, my brother went through a Roy Rogers phase, but it's not as cool if the syrup isn't making the drink pink.)
Well, if you decide to change that, either don't read it in public or don't be as sappy as I am!
At a party at which I have caught myself, engaged in an interesting conversation with a man on whom I have no actual designs whatsoever, thinking smugly "And I'm hotter than your girlfriend." I would like my subconscious to graduate from middle school, please.
Interesting choice of pseud there, Golda.
Anyway, Golda should probably sleep with him, just for the sake of her subconscious.
And she's even at a party, unlike the rest of us slugs! (But Golda, I think it's your subconscious and everybody else's at least every once in a while.)
I was at a party but it's over now, to appease all the kids (mostly ages 1-9) we celebrated the Icelandic new year.
And there was no alcohol there. I'm going to have some of my cheap Spanish absinthe now.
I would call tonight a new low for me, but my life is so dull I keep hitting the same old lows.
We are trying to stay up until midnight. It might happen! We drank some wine, and I just decided an additional drink will help me stay up. Am I right? Stay tuned!
Babysitter! Party with food! Other party with dancing! I am wearing a tie!
Have to stop and pick up wine first. All we have to bring is unvouchable screw-top wine. I feel like if you're going to bring screw-top win you have to be able to look a host in the eye and say, "this is good stuff."
In all probability I'm only going to make it halfway through my bottle of rum and half gallon of eggnog.
175: I'm sorry you don't think more favorably of us, but on the other hand I can guess why.
In the new year we will purchase boxes. The fresh, untroubled boxes of a glorious new dawn. Then we will soil them with, uh, books and shit.
I am drinking gin and water and black walnut bitters. It is good! Why don't you believe me?
Probably the type of gin is important to this working.
Now Blume is taking a nap and have promised to wake her at midnight. SHIT GOT REAL.
I just signed up for auto-debit of my student loan payments.
03:11 here. Everybody's gone home and I've finished washing the dishes. Will now drink anything that's left and fuck off to bed. Happy what little is left of the new year.
Because that's the kind of exciting New Year's Eve this is around here.
Going to sneak with one of my kids.
192: shit yeah, DJ Sneak? Where's he spinning? That's gonna be a nuts NYE party.
175: I am watching tv with my dad and my grandmother.. Also, I texted my dad to ask him to pick up some champagne while he was at an AA meeting. I see your new low and raise (lower?) you one.
An AA meeting seems like it would be a difficult place to find champagne.
196: well you have to go see the guy that lurks around the corner.
In the new year we will purchase boxes...Then we will soil them with, uh, books and shit.
I've heard that the city of your new residence can have some lower quality buildings, but really you should have paid more to get a place with a toilet.
There are two, but they're on the wrong floors.
For Christmas I received, among other things, this very delicious gin, which I have mixed with a sparkling rosé to very pleasant effect. Meanwhile, Thing 2 is giving Thing 1 a spelling test based on words she finds in Finnegans Wake. Just saying.
I have this which is less exciting than Old Tom but still tasty. I bet Old Tom and black walnut bitters would be swell.
Somebody just linked this on the internet, which is hilarious on really a lot of levels, some more directly tied to how much I did or didn't date in high school than others.
How can this baby be asleep enough that the pacifier falls out of her mouth but not so much that I can put her in bed without instant lamentations? I may be up until the new year just working on getting her to bed!
200: Just don't try to use the end of Ulysses instead of an actual talk about sex.
Same party, in Bklyn. Another guest has just announced that he's in a band that does Beatles covers, but as a matter of principle, nothing after 1962. This is why people in red states hate is, right?
I think people in red states tend to hate later Beatles songs more than earlier ones.
204: What does his girlfriend look like?
I was very ill -- I think with eating and drinking too much -- and so I was forced to call the maid. I vomited in the bason, and so to sleep.
I was about to write this in the other place when I realized it would seem too passive-aggressive there, probably, but I'm grateful to be ending one year and starting another with kind, supportive, cruelly hilarious internet friends around me. I would be in bad shape without what I get here and in a few other spots, sad as that may be. So thanks.
Now put a link to the dinosaurs having sex with cars site on Facebook.
It's dragons fucking cars, not dinosaurs.
Some of us don't have it bookmarked.
It is mostly dragons. I was thinking this was a dinosaur, but, really, which dinosaur would it be?
I thought Herpy was pretty clear that it's the place to go for reptile lovers. Bird folks presumably have MeSoOrny.net or something and Apo just hasn't tracked them down yet. (I'm not actually sure if Apo is to blame for Herpy, but it seems likely, right?)
Birds are dinosaurs, my friend.
Of course they are.
Also I thought I was responsible for Herpy, but maybe that's just some weird pathology on my part.
"MeSoOrny" is great and someone should do it if it doesn't exist already. (Not me though because birds.)
Now I'm super paranoid it will exist and everyone will assume I hang out in birds/dinos-fucking-cars web communities, WHICH I DON'T.
And I'm entirely willing to believe 221 is the real backstory too.
"Meso Orny" appears to be a character name in one or more MMORPGs, but I don't see anything related to bird porn.
224: I mean, you're maybe one degree of separation away. I'm sure the distinction will be clear to people.
teo, I realize it's midafternoon or something, but you should just go to bed and reset your life if you're being driven to look up bird porn. I guess this is the thread for ill-advised adventures, though.
228: I wouldn't be looking it up if I thought it existed.
I'm confusing myself with the following exercise:
1. What is the surface area of Times Square?
2. If, as they said on the TV, a million people are there, how much area does each person have to occupy?
3. In light of the answer to #2, is: (a) the estimate of a million people inflated; (b) the area considered as "Times Square" on the TV much larger than what I would call Ties Square; (c) my estimating ability really, really bad?
I mean, it probably does exist somewhere, but I think I'm unlikely to find it with this sort of search effort.
essear's going to wake up with a searing headache and a management consulting job.
And now I'm off to see some fireworks!
230: I thought theoretical porn on the internet always existed. I'm glad this doesn't, or doesn't yet.
Happy fireworks, teo!
Bave found the most excellent cherries that really pull an Old Fashioned together. I will walk to the refrigerator and tell you all what they are, because we're in this weird time zone and haven't even left the house.
Oh right, they're Luxardo. They cost as much as a bottle of liquor but, you know, you can't take it with you.
I woke Blume up for midnight. Sort of. We didn't toast, quite, but I did kind of bother her.
For obvious reasons*, I can only remember what's in a Shirley Temple and not a Roy Rogers.
*drink ordering history includes: Tijuana Lady, Plum Lady, White Lady, something or other Femme...
I should not sit here responding to things 100 comments up.
Doesn't a Roy Rogers have scotch? It's a weird drink.
I think Shirley Temple is Sprite or equivalent with maraschino cherries and juice/grenadine and Roy Rogers is the same but with Coke or Pepsi or equivalent as the soda.
I'm waiting until people have stopped shooting off whatever is making all that noise before going to bed, but it doesn't seem to have woken anyone. Hooray!
Oh I'm thinking of a Rob Roy. Damned cowboys.
237.last: Stupid open container law.
207: hotter than the other guy's.
Hey Moby; Golda: happy new year, you crazy kids. I forget what time zone Thorn is in but I'm going to go with happy new year to her as well.
Happy new year to all the bird-fetishists and others.
Goodnight. Somebody register two's domains for him.
Two should be teo. Stupid generic tablet.
Happy New Year! (Eastern time edition.)
Happy New Year, Easterners!
The fireworks were underwhelming; it turns out the official show isn't very visible from my neighborhood, and by the time I got to the best place to watch from it was over. But on the way back I stopped at the liquor store and now I'm set.
Still 2013, but I'm pretty much done with it.
Happy New Year everyone. I had planned to be asleep by now, but it is nice to mark the occasion.
Happy New Year, Californians/Nevadans/Oregonians/Washingtonians/Northern Idahoans/British Columbians/Yukoners/Bajacalifornianos!
And, at long last, Happy New Year to me!
Happy New Year to teo when he wakes up!
I stayed up watching the Avengers on Netflix, then woke up the kids at 11:55, but this morning one insists that he didn't get up- he doesn't remember watching any of the ball drop.
Thomas Pepys dinner a sorry, poor dinner for a man of his estate, there being nothing but ordinary meat in it.
This is why people in red states hate is, right?
And those in Queens too.
I am looking forward to skiing this year very much. I tried as a kid on school trips in Maine, and it was awful.
Shaped skis out west -- fun.
We always stay with my aunt and uncle and split our time between big mountains and local hills. My uncle works in town government and can borrow 2 passes to that ski area.
This year we bought a Winter Park Season pass last spring for a few hundred dollars. That gives us unlimited skiing at Winter Park and Copper, 6 days at Steamboat and 3 days at Monarch which is near where my aunt and uncle live.
Steamboat is like $150 a day, so it's a pretty good deal. Expensive but cheaper than it could be. Bought myself boots last year and then just decided to get the skis too.
I had a fun New Year's, tagging along with some friends' band that was playing in a mountain town in Apo-state. The show was great, the crowd was fun, and at the end of the night the bartender told me not to worry about my tab. (Speaking of which, when did everyone start ordering shots of Fireball all the time?) And then we went to the after-party, where I crashed pretty early, meaning I scored a coveted couch spot. And then this morning I found out some friends ended up back at the bar much later, and that same bartender said, "Please tell me Stanley is single." So, free drinks and I'm flattered. 2014!
