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The Hazards of Being a Biker Babe

We've been having our October weather this first week in November, and the mild, sunny days have filled the bike path with walkers and cyclists. (Why, by the way, is someone who rides a bicycle called a cyclist while someone who rides a motorcycle called a biker? The other way around would make more sense.)

Anyway, among the bicycles on the bike path are always a few with those cute little tot-hauling carts hitched behind them. Most of the time they carry kids, though I've seen them with smug little dogs inside instead. Once in a while you'll see a child seat mounted on the back of a bike, but those don't seem to be very popular. I can understand why.

When my daughter was about eight or nine months old, I decided to get one of those seats so I could take her along while I got some exercise. Never mind that I didn't get my first bike till I was 26 and my bike-riding skills were approximately the same as those of an uncoordinated seven-year-old just barely out of training wheels. It still seemed like a good idea at the time.

One beautiful Sunday morning we set out on an expedition: my sister, my six-year-old son, and me, with the baby securely strapped into her seat behind me. We rode through quiet residential streets to the bike path, then pedaled easily along it until it was time to head home. My daughter sat in her seat talking happily to herself. We had a great time.

Everything went smoothly until we were back in the residential neighborhood a few blocks away from our house. I was in front, getting a little tired but still pedaling along, when a man started across the street in front of me. Either he didn't see us, or he assumed, correctly, that we had plenty of space to go around him.

My inner uncoordinated seven-year-old froze. I didn't have time to slow down. I was afraid that if I swerved to miss him, I might tip over. It never occurred to me to shout a warning. Taking the only other available choice, I plowed right into him.

Fortunately, he had better reflexes than I did. He grabbed the handlebars in time to both protect himself and keep the bike from going completely over. The only thing that hit the ground was my left leg.

So there we were, disturbing the peace of a quiet Sunday street. My daughter, still safely strapped in her seat, was screaming in fright. I was crying, mostly because I was afraid she was hurt. Blood was streaming down my leg from a scrape on my knee. And the hapless guy I had just run down was saying, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

I bet he was, too. He probably still flinches if a bicycle gets too close.

My sister rescued the baby and calmed her down. The man dug a first-aid kit out of the glove box in his pickup and stuck a bandage on my knee. We walked the rest of the way home.

My daughter never rode in the bicycle seat again. Every time I tried to put her into it, she started screaming. Evidently she didn't want to be a biker babe.

Halloween? Bah, Humbug--But Please Share the Chocolate

According to a survey of "Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions" by the National Retail Federation, 29.6% of Americans are reducing their Halloween spending this year because of the economy. I am not among that 29.6%. The economy hasn't affected my Halloween spending at all. I'm shelling out the same amount I did last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Nothing.

It's not that I'm cheap. Well, actually, I am, but that's not the whole story. It's just that I don't really get Halloween. At least I don't get why it has become such a big deal.

This probably stems from the fact that when I was a kid we didn't pay much attention to Halloween. We never went trick-or-treating. When you live in the country and the closest neighbors are a mile down the road, going door to door isn't exactly practical.

We must have had some sort of Halloween parties at school, because I do have a vague memory of bobbing for apples. With only five kids in the whole school, though, there wasn't much point in dressing up in elaborate costumes. We've have all recognized each other anyway.

When I was in eighth grade, our school did go to another rural school for a Halloween party. I dressed up as a pirate, complete with eye patch, which skewed my vision enough so I kept bumping into things. One of my younger sisters had a long braid bobby-pinned to her own short hair, and the other kids were shocked when she took it off at the end of the party. It was real hair, too. Our grandmother had kept it from the one time years earlier she had cut her own hair short. (I suppose some people might think that keeping a braid of your own hair in your dresser drawer for years was a little spooky in itself.)

Whatever the reasons, I've always found Halloween more annoying than entertaining. Carving pumpkins and dressing up for costume parties can be fun. So is handing out candy to little kids in their parka-covered costumes, even the tiny trick-or-treaters who are a little vague about the whole process. But spooky movies and haunted houses are way too scary. Giving candy to pillowcase-toting kids as tall as I am who don't even bother to say "Thank you" is irritating. And decorating the yard with a bunch of plastic witches, skeletons, and pumpkin-head lights? Forget it.

Then there is always the stressful question of how much candy to buy and what kind. Do you get stuff you like and end up eating way too much of it yourself? Or do you get stuff you don't like and end up tossing the leftovers in the trash? Or should you get candy at all? My adult kids probably still roll their eyes when they remember my Halloween health-food phase of giving out peanuts or little boxes of raisins instead of candy—especially because my non-candy views never kept me from begging a couple of pieces of chocolate out of their bags. 

At any rate, it's a relief now to live on a dead-end street where the houses are scattered on large lots and nobody bothers to come trick-or-treating. I can leave the porch light off and skip the whole thing with a clear conscience. And I don't even have to think about whether my low opinion of Halloween is merely resentment because I never got any trick-or-treat candy when I was a kid.

Why Women of a Certain Age Are Such Good Drivers

According to reliable information that I just made up because I didn't find any statistics after five minutes of intensive Internet research, some of the safest drivers are middle-aged women whose kids are grown. Here are the top ten reasons this is true:

10. We're not distracted by eating in the car because we're always trying to lose five pounds.

9. After all those years of preparing family meals, we're not going to do anything that might increase our insurance premiums and reduce the money we have available for eating out.

8. We're not distracted by changing music CDs because all our favorite songs are still on cassette tapes.

7. It's hard to flirt your way out of a ticket when the patrolman is young enough to be your kid.

6. We're not distracted by looking for a radio station because we can easily find by touch the only two stations we listen to: oldies and NPR.

5. We don't touch up our makeup while we're driving because the magnifying mirror won't fit on the dashboard.

4. We never drink and drive because alcohol has too many calories.

3. We're less likely to use our cell phones while we drive. We don't answer the phone because it's buried in the bottom of our purse, so even if we hear it ring we won't be able to find it. We don't make calls because we've never figured out how to use speed dial and we can't see the keypad without our reading glasses.

2. After years of driving while simultaneously feeding Cheerios to toddlers in car seats, answering questions like "Where do babies come from?", and refereeing squabbles about who gets to sit by the window, being alone in the car makes driving a snap.

And the most important reason middle-aged women are the best drivers?

1. We know that, if we do get into an accident, the police report and the newspaper article are going to give our age.

Confusing, Amusing, or Just Plain Odd

Things that make a logical woman think twice:

Why, as a group of us were working out the other morning at the women-only fitness center, the background music was "Macho, Macho Man."

Why the covers of certain women's magazines always feature both a photo of a mouth-watering dessert (recipe on page 87) and a headline about the latest diet plan (details on page 34). It would seem to make more sense to alternate them, with one month's dessert leading logically to the next month's diet plan.

Why a newly purchased bottle of cosmetic stuff included a warning on the label: "Keep product away from of eyes." It was intended to be reassuring, no doubt, but it wasn't exactly practical. The stuff was eye makeup remover.

Why manufacturers and bra designers (now there's a 14-year-old boy's dream job for you) are so careful to make bras fit smoothly so they don't show under tee-shirts—and then they stick a decorative little ribbon or rosette right in the middle. There are probably entire factories in China dedicated to making these rosettes, which are shipped by the billions to bra-making factories, where hardworking women painstakingly sew them on. The bras are shipped to wholesalers, then distributed to stores, where they are bought by hardworking women who take them home, dig out their seam rippers or fingernail scissors, painstakingly cut off the little rosettes, and toss them into the trash.

Why children will sit at the dinner table and painstakingly separate every bit of fat out of their steak or their pork chop to avoid letting the most microscopic speck of the gross and disgusting stuff pass their delicate little lips—yet at the breakfast table, those same children will lie, cheat, steal, and elbow each other in order to get third and fourth pieces of bacon.

Just wondering. A logical woman would like to know.

Vegetarian Obesity

It was the green pepper I got at the grocery store this week that started me thinking great thoughts about giant vegetables. It was the size of an acorn squash, at least six inches long and four or five inches in diameter. When peppers are priced "each" rather than "per lb." you naturally go for the bigger ones, and at 99 cents this one was a real bargain.

Then there were the embarrassingly proportioned cucumbers we got from a friend's garden. They weren't yellow and overripe, they were just big. I've been told that, in Turkey, for one man to call another a "cucumber" is an insult he'd better be prepared to back up with his fists. I would think that being compared to these cucumbers would be a compliment.

The same person who reported the insulting capabilities of the cucumber also talked about Black Sea cabbages so huge that no one bought a whole one; you'd just tell the grocer how many kilos you wanted, and he'd whack off a section. And, of course, it isn't necessary to even mention how out of control zucchini can get if they're left in the garden a little too long.

But when it comes to oversized vegetables, the champion of champions has to be the giant pumpkin. A pumpkin festival was held downtown last weekend, along with a kids' costume parade, music, and food booths presumably specializing in pumpkin pie and muffins. The featured attraction was the giant pumpkin contest.

Six or seven contestants squatted along the street, looking like aging sumo wrestlers who had succumbed to gravity. Their bulging, sagging mounds of excess flesh were certainly big, if not exactly beautiful. Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater's wife would have had ample room to live in one, but decorating might have presented a challenge.

I suppose the fun of growing giant pumpkins lies in the challenge of producing one just a little bigger than last year's—or than the other guy's. Otherwise, it seems like a lot of trouble just to end up with something that is seriously ugly and doesn't even get made into pies.

Another featured event at the festival was the pumpkin catapult toss. Not surprisingly, the contestants were engineering students from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The purpose was to see which team could build a device capable of hurling a pumpkin the longest distance. It wasn't clear who was responsible for cleaning up the mess afterward.

They didn't use giant pumpkins, of course. Too bad; the idea offers some exciting possibilities. Just imagine the explosive impact of a thousand-pound pumpkin hitting the ground. Onlookers would need to wear raincoats to protect themselves from the spatter. Small children and pets would need to be kept at a safe distance, say a couple of blocks away. The Great Pumpkin Splat. I'm sure it would be a smashing success.