Road Trip News
By Andrea Menzies
Happy New Year’s Eve To All! Here are some bike meet up park lunch photos for New Year’s Eve! Downtown in this area has been way too wild and violent for night events lately. I am just doing lunchtime meetings and BBQ for a while on weekends.
By Andrea Menzies
My daughter Alexandria is visiting my aunt Jeannie in San Jose, California for part of Christmas Break. So far freezing airports didn’t block her in for travel, and she sent me an airport photo. Some weeks I am proud of being a single mother even if it is really expensive.
Thanks to my family Anne and Alexandria and my park bike club friends for many great gifts at this year’s frequent Christmas Holiday parties in Virginia.
It was horrible news that a truck killed one of my Texas friends this week on I-35. It made me very homesick to visit Texas. They were a friend from Elysium in Austin I knew from my student years when I graduated University. I have loved spending time with my family in Virginia, and lunches with bike groups in Virginia. However the last 8 times I went out at night downtown in Virginia people tried to take money from my purse, people tried to drug my drink, con-artists swarmed me, gang fights broke out next to me, and gunfire rang all night. Every person I have tried to date in Virginia has been horribly abusive verbally and physically. Nights out for concerts in DC, Baltimore, Austin, and New Orleans have been great for music and nice friends for me in the past few years. It is therefore my vow and New Years Resolution NEVER to go out at night in Virginia again, and if a good band is on tour I will ONLY see them in a town outside Virginia. I will NEVER date a Virginia person again. If constantly going on road trips and train trips on the weekends is what I have to do, then it is what I have to do. The death of my friend reminded me that I had more and better friends every time I was not in Virginia. The government needs to spend more on clean and constantly running public transportation so that people do not have to get killed by trucks. I traveled internationally in my teenage years, and other countries far more poor than the USA have clean trains you can take bikes on everywhere at all hours. Uber is a tiny band-aide on the gushing wound that is a horrible transport system in the USA. The working class has to suffer as the rich have private airplanes and limousines taking them everywhere. The rich in private airplanes then vote on how much money is spent on public transportation, and make it worse every year. This spending cycle creates a horrible death toll daily.
By Andrea Menzies
Thanksgiving Dinner with the family. My daughter is visiting from out of town to dinner.
A great article on e-bikes and the environment. I have had e-bikes before, and am getting a new one soon. Amazon has many bike to e-bike conversion kits that are amazing. I am a person who has had asthma since I was a kid so the air pollution scares me. 5 dollar gas some years is scary, and backup plans are needed more often by the year.
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https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/resources/cars-and-climate-change/
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https://www.freebeatfit.com/blogs/brand-story/e-bikes-how-much-can-you-really-save
I am still employed as a teacher, and here are my top School Photos of the Week before Thanksgiving Holiday Break 2023.
People think Samhain is the only origin of Halloween, but really the October Thesmorphoria rites were an origin in addition. The end of October is when Hades had to return Persephone back to her mother to change the seasons. This is why the spirit world grows close, and scary death images are normal as old world tradition.
“While the Thesmophoria acted as a pre-harvest ritual, the festival also celebrated Persephone’s return from the Underworld. The myth was therefore deeply intertwined with the festival’s rituals.”
