I Am a Victim?

Like most people who foolishly use that wild-wild-west-esque electronic frontier that the young folks call the "interwebs," I get more than my fair share of spam. Not the savory canned meat treat (because, honestly, nobody ever gets their fair share of that kind of Spam), but the kind of spam that is email which the cyber-intelligences in the metal demon box that the young folks call "computers" determines is evil and shunts off to email Limbo.

Of course, often the demon box is wrong, and what it sends to Limbo turns out to be last month's electricity bill ... which is ironically a form of suicide for the demon box, since it suckles so vociferously on that easily interrupted electron stream. Or the demon box makes a mistake and allows thru an email from the ubiquitous disenfranchised Nigerian prince. Won't somebody help that poor man?

Last week, the demon box dropped in my box something that smelled fishy ... or should I say "pfishy?" You see, there's also spam email which is used to pfish for valuable information from people, such as user names, passwords, credit card data, and phone numbers of dependable baby sitters. These emails seem to come from such solid trustworthy entities as banks, the government, and major corporations, but in reality come from far less savory criminals than those guys.

The one I got said that it came from the United States Department of Justice -- a dead give-away as being false, since everybody knows there is no such thing as Justice in this world. Since my virus-checker said it was safe (and I had my flu shot just a few days before), I opened and read some of it. The mail was supposedly from someone with the FBI in San Diego, and said that I had been a victim of a crime.

Yeah. Right.

Just to be sure, however, I checked my wallet -- yep, $14 still there -- and went out to make sure that my bikes were secure in the new RandoCave. Of course, nobody can get past the security systems for my sanctum sanitarium without either getting the retina for my right eye and a DNA sample ... or the garage-door opener out of the car. Nonetheless, irregardless, and res ipsa loquitur, my bikes were all safe (not to mention clean and well-lubed ... yea, me!), so I knew that there could not have been any crimes perpetrated upon my personage or property. Herewith, forsooth!

I thought nothing more about it for the rest of the week, but got a follow-up email yesterday. This was from another lady at the so-called Department of Justice, claiming to be an FBI agent in San Diego. However, when I read this email I found more information about the nature of the crime of which I was supposedly a victim. It all related to the Floyd Fairness Fund.

Ahah!

You see, I actually gave money to the Floyd Fairness Fund. Not nearly as much as that first Nigerian prince who emailed me, but more than I gave to the next two. Call me a "softie," but I consider myself a "believer" when it comes to helping people in need. And that sounds better than what RandoGirl calls me when she sees the cancelled checks.

So, apparently the Department of Justice (yeah, there really is such a thing -- who'd have thunk?) is going after the Floyd Fairness Fund on behalf of me and the couple of dozen other people that thought Floyd was one of the many cyclists that were riding clean during the first decade of the millennium. Supposedly, they are also going to go after Lance.

I've heard that Floyd is planning to sue Lance as well, as is Frankie Andreu and probably the U.S. Postal Service and Trek and Bissell vacuums and everybody else that ever gave him money. We are entering a golden age of litigation, wherein everyone will be suing everyone else until all the riders are bankrupt and all the fans have moved over to watching indoor soccer. I predict frequent courtroom drama resembling a feeding frenzy of Great White Sharks.

Which is a whole different kind of pfishing.

Miss Me!

Yeah, I've been away. My excuses were good -- moving into a new house, unpacking, getting stuff turned on, getting stuff fixed, more unpacking, holidays -- and it was frankly easier to just not blog than post a blog about why I wasn't blogging.

Another reason for me not to write is that I barely rode my bike 50 miles each of the last three weeks of 2012. Then there was one ride where I decorated my bike with Christmas lights and reindeer antlers and went into downtown Franklin from our new house on Christmas morning, and I thought about writing a blog about that. But somewhere during the move, my camera took a hard ding and the lens aperture will no longer open. Somehow, that blog without pictures was just not worth writing.

Anyhow, I'll try to write more regularly in the next few weeks ... even if the weather outside is frightful and I don't ride as much here as I could in Florida. In part, I'll blog more because a number of friends have asked for it, but mostly because I miss the artistic release of blathering on about my favorite subject: Me.

Speaking of Me ...

RandoGirl and I were at a party during this past holiday season and were talking to some co-workers about bike-riding in Nashville. One of the people that we were talking to said that she often encounters bicyclists when driving around town, and went to great lengths to stress how she always slows down and waits for a clear spot in the traffic before passing.

"I always remind myself that the person on the bike is probably someone's father or mother," she said. "It's someone's son or daughter out there."

What she meant was, "You all are real people, too."

I got what she was trying to say, but it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. When she's out in her car and comes across a bicyclist, she should just be able to say, "Oh, look. A vehicle. It's moving well under the speed limit." Then, she should deal with that vehicle exactly as the law says, waiting to pass when it is safe and leaving at least three feet when she does. She shouldn't need to remind herself that we are, technically, members of the same race as she.

Think about what you do when you come upon a postal worker delivering the mail. Yeah, you know that mail truck is probably going to stop at the next mailbox, and so you may roll your eyes and sigh and eventually zip around the truck as soon as you get an opening. But you don't have to tell yourself, "That mailman is somebody's son. Somebody's father. It's a real person." But I hear this kind of crap from car drivers all the time when they talk about dealing with cyclists on the road. It's as if they need to justify law-abiding tolerance.

What brought this back into my mind today was me thinking about how I have been riding ever since we moved to the new house. Now, whenever I ride somewhere I wave at the cars, smile, and make eye contact. Subconsciously, what I'm doing is personalizing myself -- and, by proxy, all other cyclists -- to my new neighbors. I want them to see all two-wheeled, spandex-clad travelers as good, friendly folks ... so that they will (hopefully) not run me over.

What I'm doing is one of the things that you're supposed to do if you are ever taken hostage. According to expert, you should personalize yourself, so that you are RandoBoy and not just that tall dorky guy who smells like old cabbage. If you do that, the bank robber is less likely to evacuate your brains from your skull when it comes time to make a point to the police negotiator that "he is serious, dang it!"

I know that, as a cyclist, I've been taken hostage. Instead of being tied up and locked in the vault, I'm only fettered in that I'd best ride single file and as far to the right in the lane as I can, and that various roads are all but forbidden to me. It's okay -- I've come to accept it, and I'm willing to shuck and jive so that the two-ton SUVs with which I regularly share tarmac around here will suffer me to exist.

But don't tell me at some party how enlightened you are because you don't run me down every day. Telling me that you allow me to live because I'm human just like you is insulting in ways that you cannot possibly imagine.