Biking the Pacific Coast



Twenty years ago, my wife Christine, and I pedaled a tandem from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, California. We carried everything we needed, - tent, sleeping bags, cooking equipment, spare parts, clothes and a map. We had a phone too, but back then, mobile phones were mostly just used to talk to people. They didn't have email, internet browsers nor map applications. After packing our bike in a mattress box, we brought it to the cargo area at the airport. We flew in our bike clothes, carrying our panniers and front wheel. My journal entry indicated that we needed "water, fuel, matches and oil," all the things we couldn't bring on the airplane, even back then.



When we landed in Portland, we had less than an hour to get across the airport to the cargo area to retrieve our mattress box. Lugging our packs and front wheel, we decided to take a cab which in retrospect was a good idea as we made it to the cargo terminal with fifteen minutes to spare. Someone tore open the box to inspect the contents leaving a gapping hole from which we almost lost a bag containing our pedals. It took us two hours to assemble the elaborate machine that would carry us for the next three weeks. Ahead was a sixty mile ride to the town of Rainier. There was a distinct freeing moment when we set out on our journey with all our possessions stowed neatly on the frame of our tandem. On this trip, the sense of smell would compete with our eyes. You see, when you fly, you go over the country, but on a bike, you go through it.

We pushed up some impressive hills on our first day, taking us half way to the coast. The weather lived up to our immediate destination as it began to rain. We stopped on the side of a busy, four lane road to take a break from the up hill churning when I started to think about what we were attempting. When we resumed the rear wheel slipped on the slick asphalt, causing us to momentarily lose our balance. Once we were stable and stationary, I looked back to my wife as the rain dumped on our heads and speeding cars buzzed past us.

"I don't think we know what we're doing," I said.

Drops of water beaded up onto Christine's Oakleys. Although I couldn't see her eyes, I felt her resolve in her words.

"This is our personal eco-challenge. Pedal up."

With that I spun the crank into the start position, then we continued with our ascent. The regiments of clouds broke rank as the sun dried our clothes. We went through several towns before signs for Rainier began to show themselves. The first told us our destination was nineteen miles away. It was 4 pm PST, but three hours later back home. After flying across the country and assembling our equipment, we reached Rainier in just under five hours of pedaling. By the time we found lodging, showered and had a meal it was 8:30 pm PST. It was easy to fall asleep as our bodies were still in a later time zone. We settled in half way to the pacific ocean.

We woke the next morning with only one of the four things we needed. Where to get fuel, matches and oil was still an unknown. On this leg of our journey, I was certain we would pass a camp store or bike shop. Over breakfast, an elderly women said that there were three big hills between us and Astoria. We encountered the first just outside of town. Going up we stopped to strip off our jackets, only to put them back on for the descend. Hours later, we rolled down the third, more moderate hill into Astoria. Still looking for camp fuel and bike oil, we picked up matches earlier at a lunch stop. After another hotel stay, we turned south and headed for San Francisco.

The mornings in August were cool and foggy. We had planned on getting underway in the early morn, but the thought of cramming onto a bike seat in the fog made us creatively procrastinate. We would check and recheck our gear, then go for a coffee. Often we didn't get underway until 11:00 am. With our last hotel stay behind us, we would be camping for the duration of our trip. As we pulled out of Astoria and headed south, we were rewarded with spectacular views along the way.

At first we would venture down to the water when coming onto interesting places, but we quickly realized that the disadvantage of travelling under your own power is that there is little energy left for exploring. The small yellow dot in the center of the above picture is me. I walked down there while Christine waited with the camera. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I was pretty tired when I got back.

Camping was a lot of fun, especially because they had "hiker biker" accommodations. If you made it to a campground under your own power, they would have a place for you. This usually pissed off the guys driving RVs who were routinely turned away. At one campground they had an outdoor amphitheater in which a naturalist was coming to speak about local wildlife. After a day riding, we thought an evening lecture would be stimulating. There was six adults, including us, and two kids seated in the theatre. A camp counselor arrived to introduce the speaker, but first she had us all stand to sing a camp song. Instructing us to follow her lead, she stuck her thumbs in her ears with her fingers flared, then proceeded,

The moose goes moo.

Then she Pelosi clapped while saying,

The duck goes quack.

Followed by wide eyes as she sang,

The owl goes who.

Christine was unamused. We got up and left. I probably would have fell asleep five minutes into the talk anyway. When we rolled into California the road went from bridges to switchbacks. We would spend the whole day winding down into a valley, then cross a stream, only to have to climb back up on the other side.

Five miles out from a campground, we would search for a place to get food for the night. Christine would cook salmon with rice. We bought bread and wine. It was cumbersome to have to scavenge for and carry your food each night, but it was part of the adventure. Camping among giant trees in northern California was certainly amazing. We were puzzled by the big metal boxes at the campsites though. Christine asked me to inquire about them if I saw a park ranger When I did, I asked what the metal boxes were for.

She explained, "You put your food in the box so the bears and mountain lions don't get it. "

When I returned to our camp, Christine asked, "What's the deal?"

"I'm sleeping in the box," I answered.

There were two herds of elk that roamed freely in the region. The locals seemed always to know where they were. The park rangers told us not to approach them. Problem was back then I had a crappy camera that shot cellophane and didn't have a good zoom lens. When we came upon one of the herds, I decided to venture into the tall grass to get a closer look. Just after I took this picture, I came upon a dead elk.

From the matted down grass, covered with entrails and blood, I surmised the kill was fresh. I also recalled the park rangers saying that you would never see a mountain lion, but they would definitely see you. As I looked at the large dead animal surrounded by tall grass, I thought,

"Huh. Mountain lion's probably looking at me right now."

Then as fear replaced my acute awareness, I fought the urge to turn and run for my life. I backed away slowly until I was far enough to turn and bolt. I only wish I took a picture of that eviscerated elk carcass. What a way to check out. One time while camping, I got up to urinate. It was cold at night so you had to really have to go badly to get out of a warm sleeping bag then stand outside your tent in the night air. I decided under the star filled sky to venture to the bathrooms rather than marking my territory. When I returned, I crawled back into the warmth of my sleeping bag. When I settled in comfortably, Christine said,

"You went all the way to the bathrooms?"

"Yeah, it's a beautiful night," I answered.

She convinced me to escort her to the bathroom, having not wanted to exit the comfort and warmth of her sleeping bag if I was going to relieve myself in the woods. I was certain that a mountain lion would pounce on me during a second trip to the loo, but that never happened. After twenty days of pedaling, we made it to San Francisco and crossed over the Golden Gate bridge.

Arriving a day early, we found a hotel, packed up our bike, then went off to dinner. After three weeks of collecting and preparing meals for ourselves at campsites, we were both enamored by the thought that there were places you could go to and give people money, and they would come out with food for you to eat. The appreciation for restaurants only lasted for a day. Life returned to normal for us. We never did another bike excursion that required the level of planning as did our west coast trip. As the years passed, we continued our education, got promotions at work then had two children of our own. I'm glad I wrote in a journal every day of our ride, the last entry of which reads,

The miles will record indifferently on the display tomorrow and mark off the final distance. I think we will always be on this ride with the wind rushing by our helmets, the scent of the approaching sea, the sun searing through the morning fog, the taste of wild blackberries along the roadside, forever bearing witness to a single moment high in the hills of the Pacific Coast.

Scholastic Asinine Test

 

Back in the early 80's, I was getting ready to apply to colleges. I played a sport, logged some community service and, of course, I got good grades. Every college bound hopeful soldiered through the Scholastic Aptitude Test or SAT for short. An important metric even today, the exam is taken by students as a practice test in ninth grade often followed by two additional attempts at the real thing.

Back then, there were no prep classes offered in high school. As the youngest baby boomer, the generation millennials often accuse of stealing their jobs and opportunities, I had to take the SAT straight up in a not so safe space without extra time allotted for an inability to sit still. I might not have had to walk to school barefoot in the snow, but when it came to college admissions, I was on my own.
 
One math problem I had on the SAT puzzled me for years until I recently looked up the answer. It was as follows. Given the angle, what is the value of theta?


Bullshit Math Problem

 The four possible answers were,
 
          A) 150°
          B) 30°
          C) 135°
          D) 90°

The issue here is that the 90° in the graph is clearly wrong. It looks more like 45°. Faced with this on the test, I wasn't sure what to do. I threw out "A" and "B" as they didn't make any sense, but do you ignore the data in favor of the plot or do you take the given number as gospel? I finally settled on this approach,

Go with what it really is.

This meant that I would ignore the 90° on the graph and pick the supplement to 45°, that is, C) 135°. The correct answer is D) 90°. According to the authors of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, one should ignore reality in favor of bogus data. Back when I took the test, word analogies in the English section were commonplace. Those were questions that read like this,

Planet is to ball as _______ is to _______.

The answer is something like "dice : box" except the actual test questions weren't that easy, and there were a lot of them too. The test was more like this,

ABSTRUSE : ALLOGAMY ::

A) alysm : crepuscular
B) lucubration : zeugma
C) persiflage : panglossian
D) levament : mytacism

I didn't know what the first two words meant, let alone any of the answers. Unless you read a lot of books or Latin was your first language, you hadn't a prayer of answering these questions. This all changed in 2005 when it was determined that word analogies were biased towards certain socioeconomic groups. The question identified as advantageous to coastal elites was,

RUNNER : MARATHON ::

A) envoy : embassy
B) martyr : massacre
C) oarsman : regatta
D) referee : tournament
E) horse : stable

The correct answer is "C" but unless you wear oxfords, salmon shorts and Jesus sandals, it looks like it will be Two Rivers Community college for you. I didn't do well on the verbal reasoning section that was later renamed "critical reading." You had to read several paragraphs about volcanoes or something, then answer questions like,

Which choice best defines the main purpose of this article?

All four possible answers would appear in the text. Not knowing how to approach these problems, I would number the answers in the order that they appeared in the passage, then I would discard the middle two, and select either the first or last whichever seemed best. I later learned that this was completely wrong. A complicated technique described to me by a college admissions advisor involved looking at each paragraph for synonyms used in the answers to narrow it down without reading the entire passage. She explained that doing well on the SAT is about time management so you have to arrive at the answer quickly by skimming for clues.

Today, there are many guides that students may purchase which will teach them how to improve their SAT scores. Additionally, if you come from money, you can hire a tutor who specializes in SAT preparedness. Even though a stellar score will help get you into an elite academic institution, it's widely accepted that it isn't a measure of how well you will do in college. How much effort you are willing to put into something is not determined by an aptitude test, the score for which today seems more connected to your parent's income than a student's ability. Then again, if your parents are rich, you could always have them stroke a check to a real estate holding company after which a coach will put you on the roster of the lacrosse team to justify the athletic scholarship the exclusive school will offer you. You won't even have to go to any practices or play in any games. That seems way easier and certainly less work on your part.

In 2011, I saw the movie Moneyball which was about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and how the general manger, Billy Beane, assembled a bunch of undervalued players. Beane hired a Harvard educated computer analyst, Paul DePodesta, who had no baseball analysis experience but theorized that the existing method of evaluating athletes which included factoring in the number of seasonal errors for each player was inadequate and misleading. DePodesta argued that the way to win at baseball was to get on base and not by worrying about how many times a player dropped the ball. So to in academics, optimizing on a student's performance on a standardized test is the wrong metric to assess suitability for higher education and as such is not a predictor of performance.

Now, if I had read the book by Michael Lewis on which Moneyball was based, I would've known that "mytacism" means an excessive or incorrect use of the sound of the letter "m" and that "persiflage" is light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter.

I should have read more as a kid.

Bill Nye the Pseudoscience Guy

Bill Nye

Bill Nye is a mechanical engineer who graduated in 1977 from Cornell where he enrolled in classes taught by Carl Sagan. After working for Boeing for several years, Nye migrated towards comedy and invented his popular character who hosted the syndicated PBS namesake children's science show. Following the success of his television series, Nye wrote two best selling books on science, rose to prominence as the CEO of the Planetary Society, and competed on Dancing with the Stars. Now, his Netflix series, Bill Nye Saves the World, continues to educate devoted fans through lighthearted comedic thespianism artfully crafted to explain the world around us. 

While hordes of nerds attribute their success in fields like engineering, medicine and astrophysics to their childhood patronage of Bill Nye The Science Guy, I watched Nye's shows collectively for less than a few minutes. I find him to be exceedingly tedious with all the goofy get ups and theatrical facial expressions. The show, itself, is downright painful with odd voice overs and jumpy cut scenes designed to speed up the more boring parts. My oldest son is a very tech savvy high schooler who loathed Bill Nye primarily because Aidan doesn't suffer from attention deficit disorder. Nye would repeatedly drive home a mundane point with statements like,

"The earth is big. Way big!"

Then he would demonstrate that if the earth was a grain of sand he held in tweezers, the sun would be the size of a grapefruit. He didn't just reveal how far away the grapefruit would be though. He held his hand a few inches from the tweezers, then asked,

"Would the sun be this far away?"

Of course not. After playing this game three more times, Bill finally let us all in on the titillating fact that the grapefruit would be 22 meters away. I know this is a character Bill plays, but a less goofy version of the science guy, complete with bowtie, has been appearing in the media, making all sorts of intellectual claims based on dubious scientific knowledge. Bill Nye is not really a scientist. He's an engineer. A college degree and a bowtie don't make you a scientist. Nye often says when arguing a point he feels he understands better than you based on his extensive scientific background,

"We in the science field..."

Nye won't be doing an intellectual ride along with Neil de Grasse Tyson anytime soon. A while ago Nye did an "ask me anything" on reddit in which he fielded a question about an interesting event in his life that affected him deeply. Nye said,

"I watched bumble bees (Hymentoptera bombidae) for hours. How could such a relatively big animal fly with such relatively small wings? The answer was discovered in my lifetime. Their abdomens are springs, and their halteres provide vortices with (sic) allow the wings to swing up with hardly any aerodynamic drag. If I may, how cool is that?"

An etymologist chimed in with,

"...hymenopterans don't have halteres. Those are specialized balancing structures limited to Diptera (flies). Hence di (two) ptera (wing). Hymenoptera still have all four wings, no balancing structures. Their muscles vibrate instead of contract to allow for extremely fast wing movement."

Can't argue with a bug guy. I guess when Bill was watching bumble bees for hours, he never actually thought of reading a book about them. At least he didn't say that scientists don't know how a bee is able to fly because clearly the etymologist who responded to Nye had his bees in a row. Okay, I'll spot Bill Nye this public flub since we all at some time in our life comment on something we know nothing about. A few years ago, Nye weighed in on abortion with a video entitled, Bill Nye: Can We Stop Telling Women What to Do With Their Bodies? Refuting the prolife stance that life begins at conception, Nye opened with,

"Many, many, many, many more hundreds of eggs are fertilized than become humans, ...but if you're going to hold that as a standard—that is to say, that when an egg is fertilized, it therefore has the same rights as a human, whom are you going to sue?"

Nye makes the point that fertilization is not enough. The egg must attach to the uterine wall before it can grow into a fetus. About half of fertilized eggs fail to do this. Most of the time only one egg is released per month so a woman does not discard hundreds of fertilized eggs naturally as Bill suggests. Nye also uses the term "womb" instead of uterus which had me thinking he made this clip for eight year olds. Although I'm not a lawyer nor a physicist, I suspect a neutrino went through Nye's head when he suggested you can sue a women for terminating a pregnancy. He can't possibly think right to lifers want to sue women whose bodies for whatever reason reject a fertilized egg, but Bill yanks in science by saying,

"It just reflects a deep lack of scientific understanding, and you... apparently literally don't know what you're talking about."

I'm glad that Bill Nye with his mechanical engineering degree could straighten out all those stupid people concerning this whole abortion issue. It took an unmarried, childless guy who is not a medical practitioner to explain the science behind procreation to the hordes of dumbasses in our society. I found it hard to listen to Nye explaining procreation especially when he used the term "sperm." The fact is Bill Nye is not the most masculine guy on Tinder. He was married once for seven weeks before the union was annulled, after which he filed a restraining order against his former spouse for stealing his laptop and dumping herbicide in his garden. Bill has to get back into the game of life. Even Stephen Hawkin got hitched twice.

When asked if he thought it was ok to jail climate skeptics as war criminals, Bill stated,

"Was it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?"

Then he added,

"Was it appropriate to jail people from the cigarette industry who insisted that this addictive product was not addictive?"

The Enron guys who cooked the books to scam investors are being bitch slapped right now in Shawshank, but the cigarette executives who testified before congress that cigarettes were not addictive never went to prison. Bill continues,

"In these cases as a taxpayer and voter... the introduction of extreme doubt... about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen. So I can see where people are very concerned about this and are pursuing criminal investigations..."

Bill must be applauding the Italian courts manslaughter conviction in 2012 of six scientists and one civil defense officer over their failed prediction of the 2009 earthquake in l’Aquila that killed 309 people. The courts found the scientist and government official did not communicate the actual risk to the populus. The defendants were accused of giving "inexact, incomplete and contradictory information" concerning minor tremors before the quake. Oddly, those are the exact adjectives which accurately describe the science of earthquake prediction.

Maybe we should call for the imprisonment of Bill Nye for his many misstatements. Something tells me Bill wouldn't survive the check in procedure at the county jail. Nye likes to invoke consensus among climate researches when he argues for jailing global warming skeptics. Agreeing with the crowd is important to Bill because he probably spend most of high school with his underwear rocket rammed up his rectum. History is full of stories of people being jailed for their beliefs. Bill often exclaims,

"Science rules!"

But what we know about science from recent history is that rather than ruling, science is often wrong. Before the advent of the personal computer, scientists at IBM believed that five super computers would run the world. Hewlett Packard had the rights to the personal computer, but they signed them over to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak because they didn't think anyone would want a computer in their home. Prior to 1880, physicians didn’t believe in germs. Amputation saws weren’t sterilized during the Civil War. Not only did the science community not know how to treat basic wounds, their actions often led to life threatening infection. Disease was thought to have been spread by “bad air” and foul water. Scientist believed that infection propagated by “miasma” a poisonous bad smelling mist filled with particles from decomposing matter. At least by then they had stopped trying to balance the humors, which killed George Washington, who was bled to death by his barber to treat a soar throat.

When I was a kid, we learned in school that dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge eruption of a giant volcano. After scientists were unable to find a volcano large enough to snuff out most of the life on the planet, they switched to the asteroid impact theory. Scientists now believe dinosaurs had large multicolored feathers. So much for the depiction of the T-Rex running down Jeff Golblum in Jurassic Park. In ancient times, scientists erroneously believed that the earth was continuously increasing in size and that an undiscovered planet, called Vulcan, messed up Mercury’s orbit. They also said a fluid passed between objects rubbed together which explained the heat that was generated. It didn’t seem to bother them that objects contained an infinite amount of this fluid as you could keep generating heat indefinitely. Science is not always right, and consensus is not a measure of veracity. In fact, often the opposite is true.

This got me thinking about Bill Nye's actual education, namely his GPA. A guy stretching his credentials as far as he would certainly let his GPA slip out, especially if it was noteworthy. Since he was in school in the '70's, I would imagine he smoked a lot of pot while listening to Peter, Paul and Mary. So I went to the Cornell website where I found the frequently asked questions to which I submitted a straight up inquiry. As anticipated, that went nowhere.

Then I called the Registrar's Office at Cornell and spoke to a nice bot that directed me to the National Student Clearinghouse, the organization that handles such inquires. I opened a case by explaining that I was "an independent journalist" writing an article on Bill Nye. Hey, if he can call himself a scientist, I can call myself a journalist. I asked four things in my email.

1. Did Bill Nye graduate in 1977?
2. With a degree in mechanical engineering?
3. Was Carl Sagan one of his professors?
4. Was his GPA 3.61?

All of this is on the internet except his GPA, but I was hoping that someone new at the National Student Clearinghouse would inadvertently rifle off an answer to #4. Unfortunately my case worker wanted to know what I was going to do with all this information. I responded that I was a "freelance journalist" verifying information for an article. My caseworker told me, as I expected, they could only verify information a student used on a job application. So I responded with,

I didn't get a response. Maybe because I misspelled "Cornell." Undaunted, I decided to go directly to Bill himself. I found his email address online then sent him this,

I know "whose" should be "who's," but I find intelligencia often flame off an answer when they think someone is beneath their intellect. Like Bill Nye, I was an engineer for many years. To be equitable, my education and GPA can be found here.

In the end, I believe that people use the term “scientist” because they want to invoke credibility. We all know those religious folks are consummate nut jobs. They don’t believe in evolution, they don't want women to have abortions, and they think the earth is 4000 years old. Scientists know better because, well, they’re scientists. People listened to Stephen Hawkin, Carl Sagan, and Albert Einstein blather about anything because they were scientists so they had to be right. Hawkin once claimed the universe would eventually stop expanding and when it contracted, time would run backwards. Sagan often lamented about overpopulation in his books and television series, but he and his wife had five children. Einstein often used fudge factors he called "cosmological constants" to make his equations match reality. He also married his first cousin.

I once jokingly put down on an online profile for my life's ambition,

"To not learn anything new for the rest of my life, but if I have to learn something, let it come from TV."

Turns out I was wrong. Bill Nye is a successful showman, but when it comes to questions about science, I'd rather not be educated by a comedian on a television show.

The Meaning of LIFETM

Our eight year old, William, really loves playing the Parker Brother’s reality board game, LIFE. I played the game as a kid in the '70's. As the youngest in my family, I never actually won a game of LIFE or any other board game for that matter. Much later, one of my sisters admitted that she and others took liberties with the rules unbeknownst to me. I got used to losing all the time in my youth. In fact, it made me rather resilient. Now, Willy was rolling out the new version of the old game of LIFE.

While the board looks like the one I used to get trounced on all the time, the game play is a little different. In both, you choose to go to college or into business. The academic path in old LIFE lands you a job with the following salary.

1. Doctor - $20,000
2. Lawyer - $15,000
3. Journalist - $10,000
4. Physicist - $10,000
5. Teacher - $8,000
6. Bachelor's Degree - $6000

Apart from how low salaries were in the '70's, I for one didn't know that a journalist and a physicist made the same scratch. That must be because both involve dreaming up nonsense which everyone accepts as fact. Not going to college will get you a career in business with a salary of $5000, less than a teacher and even less than someone with a bachelor's degree. Back then, working for the man in an office with no air conditioning was less lucrative than a manager of a department store who had a degree in Latin.

In new LIFE, the college route gets you this.

1. Doctor - $100,000
2. Lawyer - $90,000
3. Veterinarian - $80,000
4. Accountant - $70,000
5. Computer Designer - $50,000
6. Teacher - $40,000  

One of the lowest paying jobs is a tech career making computers which beats out educators, who end up dues paying members of the Federation of Teachers. The teacher's union mandates that its members may be fired only after "due process," ensuring that even the worst instructors will remain employed as long as they don't kill anyone. No wonder the US ranks 26 overall for education in the industrialized world behind Latvia and the Czech Republic.

New LIFE's nonacademic career path yields these opportunities.

1. Athlete - $60,000
2. Entertainer - $50,000
3. Police Officer - $40,000
4. Hair Stylist - $30,000
5. Mechanic - $30,000
6. Salesperson - $20,000

Today, without a college degree, your best shot is to shoot hoops or keep pushing your mixtape. A career in business still sucks as it did in the past except now it pays more than a physicist, who apparently can't find a job. In old LIFE, going the college route puts you $1500 in the hole. In new LIFE, a college degree lands you $100,000 in the red. That's about right.

College LIFE

My strategy while playing old LIFE always involved getting a college degree, buying a modest house, and saving as much money as possible. Even though it never worked when playing the game, that's what I did in real life which so far has turned out pretty good. In new LIFE, the blue squares represent lawsuits against other players. In old LIFE, the blue squares all involved playing the stock market. Apparently, you get ahead in new LIFE by suing your neighbor.

Blue Spaces

There are nine "Spin to Win" board spaces in new LIFE. Landing on one of these spaces allows you to bet on the next number spun on the wheel. If your number comes in you get ten times the amount you wager. In old LIFE, you bet on the wheel every time your opponent spins. So the way to win in old LIFE is to gamble. I never knew that. The regular spaces in both games are different as well. For example, in old LIFE there is a space that indicates,

"Lost in the Jungle! Pay $30,000"

While in new LIFE, we have,

"Snowboarding accident! Pay $5000"

Shelling out thousands in ransom to a local warlord in a third world country was a likely scenario back in the '70's as is a snowboarding accident costing thousands today with all the crap healthcare plans we have. Old LIFE has,

"Eccentric Aunt leaves you with 100 cats! Pay $10,000 to give them away."

Alternately, new LIFE has two squares indicating that you "adopt a pet from a shelter." I never knew anybody who spent thousands of dollars to get rid of a bunch of cats. Back when I was young, my neighbor, Old Man Perry, was fed up with a cat that kept sneaking into his garage. Mr. Perry exclaimed,

"That cat's pissing all over the place!"

One day, he caught the cat in the garage so he shut the door, started up his car, then went to get a cup of coffee. I asked Mr. Perry what happened to the cat. He said,

"I threw it in the trash."

That's how we got it done in the '70's.

In old LIFE, if you land directly on a "Pay Day" you had to "Share the Wealth," that is, you draw a card that instructs you to collect half the amount an opponent is entitled to or require someone else to pay half your bill. Your opponent might have an "Exemption Card" which counters your claim. In new LIFE, the "Share the Wealth" card may be played against another player who then must pay half your debt to the bank. In old LIFE, sharing the wealth meant others pay for you. In new LIFE, it means others pay the bank for you because as everyone knows, the banks have us all by the balls.

Unique to old LIFE, is the "Green Revenge Space," which allows you to enact revenge against another player to the tune of $100,000. Alternately, you can send them back ten spaces. The instructions expressly state that you cannot exact revenge on someone in "Millionaire Acres." Of course you can't. With wealth comes power and privilege like spending $450,000 so your kid can get accepted into a geology program in college on a phony athletic scholarship just to wash out in a semester.

Revenge!

Oddly, just south of the green pictured revenge space is,

"Catch a whale, skin diving. Collect $5000"

I'm pretty sure this was not something anyone did with any measure of success in the 1970's. Whale watching was just starting to be a thing back then. I never heard of anyone pawning a whale for $5000. I always thought the old version should've had,

"Draw low draft number. Move ahead three spaces."

Or perhaps,

"Busted for possession of pot. Move back five spaces."

In the new version, we should have,

"Robot takes your job. Take new career card."

Or maybe,

 "Earn useless anthropology degree. Pay all your money."

The biggest difference in the old versus and the new version of LIFE is at the end. In old LIFE when you reach the "Day of Reckoning," you cash out, receiving $20,000 (a doctor's salary) for each kid you have. You either go to "Millionaire Acres" if you think you have enough wealth to win the game, or you bet all your coin on a one in ten chance at the spin of the wheel to become a "Millionaire Tycoon." If your number doesn't come in, you go to the "Poor Farm."

In new LIFE, when you reach the "Retirement" square, you choose to go to "Millionaire Estates" or "Countryside Acres," both of which sound very nice to me. There's no poor farm because that isn't a safe space. You get $10,000 per kid (10% of a doctor's salary), much less than in old LIFE. Apparently, having children has significantly depreciated. During the game, you collect "Life Tiles" when you land on an appropriate square. When the pile of tiles are exhausted, the remaining players who are awarded a Life Tile take them from people in Millionaire Estates but not in Countryside Acres. That's because the people in Millionaire Estates have to pay their fair share. In both versions, the player with the most money at the end wins.

Life is sometimes difficult, often wondrous, and occasionally exhilarating, but one thing is for sure. It's far less complicated than the Game of LIFE.

A Guide to the Democratic Candidates

Now that the first Democratic debates are over, I'm certain that we've all learned a little something about each candidate. Currently, there are 25 confirmed presidential hopefuls, vying for an opportunity to trade insults with Trump. As I eagerly watched the debates, I was keenly focused on who had the best plans for the future of our nation.

While I occasionally write "pro Trump" pieces as described by my family and the few friends I have left, I'm actually a registered Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama. I was vehemently against the investigation and subsequent impeachment of President Clinton for lying about the cigar box he had in the oval office. Back then, my father argued that the president should be a moral pillar for the country while I was more practical. I was relieved that the guy with his finger on the nuclear button had the same finger in a pie. It was years later that I learned President Clinton actually lost the nuclear codes for months. I was just as much against special counselor Robert Mueller's investigation of Trump as I was opposed to Kenneth Star's investigation of Clinton. Using taxpayer funds to unleash a team of lawyers to look into anyone's background is just not a fair game. With enough money and time, twenty lawyers could likely unearth mud on the Virgin Mary.

Since I always vote in the primary, I need to know something about all these candidates. Some would have more success with a gun shop in Lancaster County than ever becoming president. So I'm focusing on just a few of the contenders for the 2020 Presidential Election.

Joe Biden

As the leader in the polls, Biden has a target squarely on his back. A former vice president and senator from Delaware, Biden stands out as a centrist except for how he behaves in picture opportunities with the wives and daughters of his colleagues. He has a long history of public service swaying moderate Republicans and independents as well as staunch bigots. At 76 years of age, some say he should heed his own words to "pass the torch." Biden has declared that he's "still holding onto that torch," but his outdated tactics of making young girls "feel comfortable" by trying to bury his head in their hair and kiss them gives me some good ideas where he can insert that torch. The video he put out mansplains that he believes governing is "about connecting with people." President Trump connected with a lot of women too, especially over furniture shopping.

To illustrate how ancient Biden's thinking is, he declared that as president, he'll "cure cancer." Back in the '70's, people used to think that all cancer was the same, and a single cure was possible. Today, we know that's just not the case. I think Joe Biden's expiration date has long passed.

Bernie Sanders

Sanders is the socialist senator from Vermont who owns three houses. Born in Brooklyn, he wants public college tuition to be paid for by taxpayers, which means we will all be complicit to the collective bad choices of millennials selecting useless majors. I wouldn't pay for my kid to get a degree in anthropology. Why should I pay for yours? Bernie also wants Medicare for all even though when they tried to do this in Vermont, the governor scrapped the idea because it was too costly and more complicated than setting up a Starbucks on Mars. At least Bernie admitted he would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for all of his bold, socialist ideas. He can be forceful and argumentative, but he seemed to fade in the latter half of the debate as the event pushed past his bedtime.

Elizabeth Warren

A senator from Massachusetts, Warren is a sometimes Native American, although she posted to her website a cringeworthy video femsplaining that she never benefitted from her phony minority status. Being from Tax-achusetts, most of her plans are going to be paid by a "wealth tax" levied against the handful of Americans making over $50 million and a special tax on the three people who made over a billion. Look out Kylie Jenner. Elizabeth Warren is coming for you.

Marianna Williamson

Best selling author of spiritual self help books and advisor to Oprah, Williamson lost her bid in 2014 for a congressional seat in California. She promotes racial reconciliation through reparations and a more humane immigration policy. She wants the government to pay $10 billion a year for ten years to African Americans. When asked what the first thing she would do if elected, she answered,

"My first call is to the prime minister of New Zealand, who said her goal was to make New Zealand the place where it’s the best place in the world for a child to grow up. And I will tell her, 'Girlfriend, you are so on.' Because the United States of America is going to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up."

I'm glad that at least one candidate has a foreign policy that reigns in those pesky kiwis.

Kamala Harris
 
A former prosecutor in California, Harris most recently was the states attorney general before she was elected to the US Senate. She is known for the Lift Act, a middle class tax break similar to the Earned Income Credit (EIC), which is tax relief for people who don't actually pay taxes. Harris had the big moment in the debate when she went after Joe Biden for boasting about his past work with his racist colleagues as well as his stance against busing early in his career. She said,
 
"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.”
 
Before we declare busing a success, let's find out what happened to the kid Harris bumped so she could go to a different school.

Cory Booker
 
Hailing from the nation's armpit, New Jersey, Booker is a junior senator who graduated from Stamford, Oxford and Yale and is a Rhodes scholar. He's known for the "baby bond" program giving every child a US Treasury bond at birth with larger sums going to poorer kids. He's also known for a deer in the headlights stare during the debates when Beto O'Rourke started speaking Spanish. I think he was trying to recall the Spanish word for "handout." Either way, the internet got another viral meme out of it.

Julián Castro

Castro grew up a poor kid from San Antonio, but managed to graduate from Stanford and Harvard. He worked as the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary in the Obama Administration. He is a strong supporter of free trade. During the debate, Castro was asked whether his healthcare plan would cover abortion. He said,

“Yes, it would. I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom. I believe in reproductive justice.”

He should have stopped there upon a safe Democratic talking point. Instead he added,

"And, you know, what that means is that just because a woman — or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female — is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”

Finally, a liberal cause with a manageable cost, abortions for people with no uteruses.

Andrew Yang

The former tech entrepreneur promotes only one issue, protecting Americans from robots stealing their jobs. Yang proposes giving everyone over 18 years of age $1000 a month to help pay bills after they lose their job to a robot. That comes to $3.2 trillion dollars a year. He would pay for it by a value added tax that would result in a "trickle up" economy as people spent their free government scratch. Seems to me that the smart thing to do is to take the $1000 a month and enroll in robot repairman school.

During the debate, there were other one liners worth mentioning like when Tulsi Gabbard, US Representative from Hawaii, corrected Ohio Congressman, Tim Ryan, who said that the Taliban flew planes into our buildings, by saying,

"The Taliban didn’t attack us on 9/11, al Qaeda did."

Just like an American to pile everyone into the same basket of deplorables.

When co-moderator Savannah Guthrie said, "This is a show of hands question and hold them up so people can see. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants."

Ten candidates raised their hands including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson.

Yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker which pretty much sums it up.