Soapboxing Helena

The Blog hopes you had a restful weekend, recharging the work battery for this upcoming week. It looks like summer has started to loom on the horizon here in the Metro as temperatures climbed into the nineties. Keeping an oath The Blog made to its grandfather on his deathbed, the air conditioning shall not be activated until June. Well, it's June today, it's going to be 93 degrees and the air conditioning will be turned to "meat locker" settings. However, since the AC hasn't been turned on in 7 months, The Blog fully expects a blast of hot, fetid air to issue forth from the vents instead of the cool, life-affirming air conditioning that its monthly rent check supposedly pays for. Oh well, all part of life's rich pageant!
In addition to hoping you rested this weekend, The Blog also hopes you got out on your bicycle. The Blog did a quick loop on Fort Jackson and had a quasi-pucker moment as a firing range that was supposedly empty suddenly came to life with the sound of M-16s and heavy artillery (see provided video footage). This happens all the time but it still adds a little excitement to an otherwise mundane road loop.otherwise mundane road loop.


After leaving the fort, The Blog did a cruise through downtown and stumbled upon the Columbia Midlands Soapbox Derby.

After having a brief exchange of ideas with an ebulliently intoxicated street urchin about my "bike-cli-cles" and the various shortcomings of my ethnicity, I settled in at the finish line to watch a few qualifiers. Let it be known there is nothing eerier than watching soapbox derby racing, unless you have a drunken urchin standing behind you, undressing you with its eyes. Completely silent, both racers, crowd and urchin alike.

But at the risk of climbing onto my soapbox for a speech, I shall offer up the eerily quiet finish of a qualifier:

Also just in case you have been in a sensory-deprivation chamber all weekend, it appears North Korea has turned its craziness amplifier to eleven as it has made plans to test fire another rocket whose range is potentially trans-oceanic. They lack the technology to fit a nuclear warhead onto a missile, but I'm sure our good buddies at Shimano Japan are drinking a little more beer with their breakfast. All aboard the white knuckle express! But to keep this bicycle related, here is an article from a few years ago about the surreal world of North Korean cycling culture. Wacky Translation Ahead