My Gay Life

I have never experienced anything quite as surreal as taking a bike ride with 1500 other people at midnight. That is what I did at the Heuberger Subaru Starlight Spectacular Saturday night. 1500 riders, over 3000 headlights, over 3000 tail lights, and 22 miles of deserted streets. That is when you find out why you ride. Cyclists of all skill levels getting together to have fun and a little bit of fitness.

It is surreal being able to pedal down normally crowded streets and all you see are cyclists. It is surreal to look in front of you and see hundreds of blinking red lights. Or look behind you and see equal numbers of weaving white lights. It is quiet without all of that traffic and even the conversations you have with the friends you are riding with are in hushed tones as you do not want to disturb the peace. No honking, no yelling, no semis idling just the sweet sound of bicycle tires gliding across the road, and the clickety-clack-clack of a chain that needs oiled. And it is all for a good cause.

Even better is the ride in Colorado Springs goes through Garden of the Gods which is one of the only roads closed to traffic on the route. On a nice night with the moon you can turn off your head lights and enjoy the garden by the moonlight. Living in Colorado Springs the Garden of the Gods in daylight becomes ho-hum but at night in the moonlight it is always a new and beautiful experience.

I was having so much fun that I forgot to take out my camera and snap pictures even though I carried my camera in my jersey pocket the entire time.

If you ever have the opportunity I cannot suggest more participating in a midnight bicycle ride in your town. To sweeten the pot most of the midnight bike rides are benefitting good causes. And the three I have participated in have all offered a good breakfast after. You will be hungry. It does not matter how good of a bike rider you are. I saw 10 year olds and 60 year olds out on the bike. If it takes you 2 hours or 4 hors to complete the ride it is worth it. It is an experience you would otherwise never have experienced. Add it to your bucket list and sign up for a night ride.

Ask your local bike shop or Google for night rides in your area. They do not exist everywhere, but if you can find one I can not recommend it enough. Below are a few night rides I am aware of.

• N.I.T.E. Ride – Indianapolis, IN
• Kaiser Permanente Moonlight Classic – Denver, CO
• Owl Ride – Omaha – NE
• Heuberger Subaru Starlight Spectacular – Colorado Springs, CO
• Antelope by Midnight – Davis County, UT

Submit your favorite night ride in the comments.

Very serious but very funny at the same time.

I have been using Dish and Qwest for the last couple years for my TV and internet after having a terrible experience with Comcast. But Comcast approached me with an offer for TV and internet that was too good to refuse. It was going to save me $40 per month while upgrading my programming and internet. So I decided to give them a chance. Well 9.5 hours after having Comcast installed I am just about ready to drop them. Why?

1. After I decided to try to switch Comcast called me and gave me an installation time. However, that installation time did not work and I asked them to give me a different time, fine they were going to call me back. Time passed and 8 hours later I still had not heard back from Comcast. I call them back and say “Hey! I told you the installation time you scheduled did not work for me. You were going to call me back with a different time but you never did. What’s up?” So they were going to call me back again. An hour later they call me back, “What did you want again?”. Finally they figured out what I wanted and called me with an installation time that worked. Comcast life 1 is dead.
2. The next day I get another call from Comcast with yet another installation time. Now I have not even had Comcast installed yet and I am unhappy. Comcast life 2 is down.
3. Finally, Comcast comes to do the install. However, they were out of HD DVR boxes. Since I did not want to have to go down to their office and wait in an hour line I refused installation until they had an HD DVR box. There goes life 3.
4. But rather than treating their customer’s well and the technician rescheduling for me, I have to call Comcast and reschedule myself. And even worse, when I called to reschedule Comcast did not have an available installation date for a full week. This despite the fact that the reason I was rescheduling was their screw up. Bye Bye life 4.

Read entire article.

I was just looking at my Google Webmaster Tools for this site and noticed that I averaged in the top 10 search results for the search query Michelle Bachmann Lion King. I was a bit surprised because I was not sure I had ever talked about the Lion King on this site, although I have expressed my dislike for Michelle Bachmann. So I did some searching myself to figure out what this was all about and found another homophobic quote by Michelle Bachmann. So now I know.

“Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of “The Lion King” for instance, and a teacher might say, “Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?” The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.” — Senator Michele Bachmann, speaking at EdWatch National Education Conference, November 6, 2004.

I hope this bitch does not get anywhere close to becoming President.

Rolling Stone recently published an expose on Roger Ailes the President of Fox News. Reading this article gives a great insight into why Fox News is the laughing stock that it is. (Warning the article is very long.)

To start with Roger Ailes is a dictator who runs Fox News like China. His employees are not allowed to have their own opinions and must worship him.

“It’s like the Soviet Union or China: People are always looking over their shoulders,” says a former executive with the network’s parent, News Corp. “There are people who turn people in.”

Even more telling is Roger Ailes’ fear of gays to the point he bomb proofed his office.

Murdoch installed ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having “bombproof glass” installed in the windows – even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. “They’ll be down there protesting,” Ailes said. “Those gays.”

Is any of this really news? No. But the article is just further proof that Fox News is not news and their commentators and reporters are not journalists. Fox News is the Fox Gossip Channel employing a bunch of people repeating gossip handed to them by Roger Ailes or his close inner core. And that Roger Murdoch the owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and much more loves having his gossip channel.

Gay Pride flags have been making news in the past couple of days. First the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank is flying the rainbow flag beneath the American Flag. Of course since this is Virginia which has a reputation currently of not being gay friendly, it is no surprise that some are objecting to this.

State Republican Robert Marshall somehow thinks this flag is going to cause another recession.

homosexual behavior “celebrated” by the bank “undermines the American economy.”

But the bank is not backing down with their COO Sally Green earlier this week stating:

We are flying the pride flag as an example of our commitment to the values of acceptance and inclusion,”

In other news, the Space Needle has decided not to fly the rainbow flag again this year. Some are raising a big storm and making Change.org petitions about this. But the decision is in line with the Space Needle’s policies and I think we should thank them for flying it the time they did.

Spokeswoman Mary Bacarella explained the decision with the following:

As you should know, we don’t make a habit of flying flags on top of the Space Needle. In fact, we make an effort not to fly any flags on a recurring basis.

If that statement is really true, I cannot blame the Space Needle for not flying the flag again. And I don’t think anyone should, as making a big fuss about this will cause others to be leery about flying the flag in a major public display again too.

Hat Tip to Sea Turtle on Flickr for the picture.