Sunday, June 23, 2019

We are Wrong!

Sitting here without a car, the only thing I can think about is finding a way to get around. It's the same problem my father had when we lived in Panama and Mom had the car. He bought and rode a bicycle. I know. I tried to ride his bike when it was home and I had two problems: my legs were too short and there was a high bar (man's bicycle) I had to get over to work the pedals. I learned how to do it, but it hurt every time I had to stop quickly. I was impaled by the bar between my legs catching me between the legs. I suffered the pain and got on with riding the bike.

I am sitting here without my license because of an 18-year old warrant on my Ohio drivers' license that I cannot get removed until I can get myself up to Stow, Ohio to talk to a judge and have it removed. You are up to date on that part of the equation. I have decided to go a different way -- I will get a bike and propel myself around with a bicycle. No impediments to riding a bike now because my legs are much longer and I don't have to put up with that bar catching me between the legs. I can get the pedals easily and I will because I am willing to trade my Teeter inversion table (paid for) for a brand new bicycle. No Peloton for me. I just want a bicycle and I will have one. If I can't trade for it, I will save up my pennies and get one for myself or trade my labor for a bike at the local bicycle shop here in Urbana. I will HAVE my bike. You watch me. I don't mind the rain and I don't mind the sun. I WILL get around. Watch me.

By trade of volunteer services of trade of my brand new, paid for Teeter inversion table, I will get around and I will get a job -- one way or the other.

Riding a bike will also make me fitter and healthier, so a bike is also a carbon-neutral form of transportation. More people should be riding bicycles and not buying twenty plus thousand cars that pollute the air and get you there faster. If you don't mind the rain or the sun and like the wind blowing in your face, get a bike. No one, not even the GREEN POLICE will stop you and you will be more athletic, fitter, and better able to pedal out of their way.

I don't know why we tend to think of life as an exercise powered by car. Probably it is the first thing we think about as soon as we are able to get a drivers license. No problem there, but I am tired of thinking in the box. I'd rather think out of the box and get a bike. I will be farther ahead in the scheme of things and better off athletically and personally. No one is going to worry about me if I am pedaling a bike. I can get a slicker when it gets wet and I might even dodge the raindrops with a bike.

As I think about it now, I didn't think of Dad as being ahead of the game. He had to leave the car for Mom and I have no car to leave since I left it in Colorado when I sold it to the next door neighbor and still haven't been paid. Oh, well, that's no problem for me. I will NOT give him the title. It's cheaper than taking him to court -- and a lot easier since I will not travel back to Colorado to take him to court. No problem.

I think about things like getting a bike. Dad had the answer but it is not one I had to think about before I was dumped here in Urbana. I think about all the things my dad managed when he was out of options. That is what I think about now. The other options.

I have spoken about my dad living a closeted life because he was a homosexual, not a problem in today's society with everyone covering their backsides about prejudice. I'm sure that Dad would not have worried in today's society, except that he was pretending to be straight in a straight world. My siblings are turning their heads because they cannot accept that our father was homosexual and pretending to be straight. I'd say he was bisexual since he had no trouble dealing with Mom, but he was still closeted and pretending to be straight because that was expected of him. I thought of him as my father and didn't give it a second thought when I learned he was other.

Maybe it was because he was always adapting to his environment just as he adapted to his environment when he pretended to be straight. Gays were not accepted in the military though he had friends who were homosexual like John Kane who had been banished to Panama by his cosmetics mother who also paid him to stay hidden. The world had not yet gotten the word that Liberace and heartthrob Rock Hudson were homosexuals or that much of Hollywood's elite were also homosexuals. It doesn't even turn heads now. We don't talk about the women who were also pretending to be straight though they were homosexual (lesbian). All are equal and all are out of the closet now and it is past time that my father is out of the closet as well. It doesn't turn heads and I am sure Uncle Bob would have been prejudiced about dad being a homosexual, although I am sure Uncle Bob and all the people that noticed that dad ran funny and was a bit effeminate. They don't have anything to say now because they are all dead and only I am alive to remember. It didn't matter to me and it still doesn't matter. After all, Dad had a bicycle and he rode the bike whenever he didn't get the car.  I don't have a car and I'm tired of having to call and get the bus or a ride when I don't have a car either.

I will hop on my bike and get where I need to go.

There are solutions if you are willing to look and think outside the box and I won't have to worry about drinking and pedaling or about insurance because I don't have a car. A bike is a better alternative and no one, not even the up in arms Green Police can get up in arms if they can't catch me since I will be riding a bike.

With all the hoopla about the energy crisis, no one is even thinking about alternative methods of dealing with the energy crisis. How about thorium, a cleaner burning, safer, and very accessible and very plentiful fuel source. It is lying about, doesn't have to be mined, and already has the power plants built to receive and use thorium. In that case, China and India are already ahead of us and getting farther away. China has been using and building nuclear reactors for decades, using our own plans and information, and so is India ahead in this matter. Maybe that will get the US off their elitist behinds and get them working on building more reactors. If catching up to China is the brass ring, let's get it done and get moving. Maybe the Green Police will stop talking about their draconian methods of saving the planet and get behind the thorium nuclear reactor. We don't have to build our plants near the ocean the way that Japan did where they are tsunamis ready to smash into the island nation of Japan and take their nuclear reactor offline. Our nuclear reactors are built in Tennessee along the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). FDR must've known something since it was his plan that put people back to work building the reactors along the TVA in the first place.

Scientists backed away from nuclear power, not because it wasn't safe (It was always safe) but because their grants and government-funded work was cut off. We don't have to worry about that now because our world is in peril. We need nuclear power NOW. Thorium is the best bet and doesn't cause the same problems since we don't have Jane Fonda and Hollywood screaming at us about the China Syndrome in our ears. We can still watch Fonda in The China Syndrome on the TV and on DVDs. We can reminisce but we do not have to chain ourselves to the past. We have a closer and more possible future ahead of us. The China Syndrome will be getting behind in the cleaner and safer nuclear race, the same thing that the US and JFK used to get the United States ahead of Russia in the space race and get us to the moon first. Once again, we will have to follow China to the finish line by renewing our race to the finish by getting the thorium nuclear plants started and start pumping out cleaner and safer and far more affordable energy to the public. No hydrogen stations and no more coal mines or oil drilling and fracking with its myriad downsides. All we need to do is use what we have and what is already mined and ready to pick up and use thorium. That is all we need. We do not have to adopt the draconian measures that Democrats and the Green Police are ready to stuff down our collective throats. All we need to do is pick up where we left off, join the clean and affordable and eminently available thorium nuclear reactor waiting for us to get smart and get out of our own way plans. I am afraid we will all have to give up eating meat and that does not mean eating the pink slime that we grow in the labs either. All we need to do is gradually go vegetarian and get on with it. We will be healthier and cleaner and pick up where we left off to follow the faster and more expensive older reactors. When the thorium goes critical all we need to do is let it run out of the reactor and everything stops. No Fukushima. No Three Mile Island. No Chernobyl. Just clean energy without waste and we can breathe easier and cleaner.

Once again, we have the demon to follow -- China. We can add India and call it a three-way split or we can call it done. We can keep our solar energy, our wind farms, and our hydroelectric, but thorium is the way to go. Let's follow the leader and jump the queue. That is how we got ahead of the Russians to get to the moon first. Why don't we jump the queue again and get to the future ahead of coal-burning China and the innovative Indians. We will be first in the future.

We will get there however we need to get there, but we WILL get there.

That is all. Disperse.




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