Do you want a bike?

A friend of mine asked me a couple months back " hey, do you want a bike?" Usually whenever anyone asks this, they are referring to some rusty POS that is in their garage that hasn't been ridden in 15 years. My instinct therefore, is to immediately say no simply because I don't need anymore garbage to deal with. Not to mention the fact that most bikes are way too small for me. You know, the circus with the guys riding those tiny little bikes. Yeah, something like that.

He assured me that it was none of the above and that I might actually like it. Which seemed kind of fishy because if it was decent, why would someone be giving it away? It turns out this bike is gigantic like me. It is an XL frame size and I have a hard time getting my leg over the frame (first time ever). If you're not 6'4" or bigger, this is definitely not your bike, which is why he was giving it away ( to me specifically) because not just anyone could ride it. In one of the few instances I can ever recall, I actually was able to use some secondhand gift because it was the right size for me.

So I picked up the bike, and it was sweet! Hands down the best bike I've ever owned. I can still hardly believe it. It really does fit me and I don't have any of the common issues that I used to have with bikes such as back pain. I've been inspired lately to ride places that I never would have considered riding before. I've also been googlin bike stuff and I found this one guy who contends that travel by bike is just as fast as car. He says the problem is the overall average speed for a car is quite low due to the frequent stops and starts. When you ride a bike, the speed is considerably more constant because you can take routes that aren't as busy with traffic and stops, which gives a relatively high average speed.

I decided to give this a test drive just for fun, and it is quite true. It might not be as fast or faster, but I would say no less than 50%. And it might even be closer to 100%. I am amazed at how quick you can get somewhere on a good bike. And you get the benefit of no traffic ( or little traffic), a great little workout, and no money for gas. Riding a bike is like driving a convertible with the top down. You can see everything. It's quite enjoyable actually. And if you ever got some road rage while riding, you could just take it out by pedaling harder. I think I will try to make short trips (less than 2 miles) on the bike just because it seems like it's working for me.

I also ran across this page as well. I don't know who this guy is but, he appears to be some sort of bike aficionado. He has this page of Detroit graffiti that he has discovered, presumably by biking. Which is an interesting point of this whole thing. I've seen a fair amount of the stuff that he has photographed just by driving around the city, but there is some other stuff that is stated to be at locations that I know well, yet I've never seen.

Which would indicate that maybe there is something to be said for biking. I know that with cars, it is sometimes a pain to find a place to park or pull off. With a bike you can go almost anywhere and get inbetween stuff that cars just can't. You can take vastly different routes which obviously yields a different experience. I'm hoping to see things from a different perspective riding two wheels intead of four.

Snickers

For the last year I've been working on getting in shape, which for me means building muscle. In order to do that, you have to eat more calories than you burn to add mass to your body. This has translated into eating at least 5 meals a day at 600 calories or more for me. I'm a very busy person, so stopping to eat is like the last thing I want to do. So in an effort to eat more calories even when I don't feel like it, I've ended up sometimes eating junk food; specifically Snickers King Size which is 500 calories a bar. Yeah, I know that I shouldn't be eating crap like that to be healthy but when you're in a calorie deficit, you do what you have to do.

After sucking down a few Snickers here and there, I can honestly say that they don't taste like I remember them tasting. When I was a kid, Snickers was my poison of choice and I knew it well. I remember them being more peanutty than they seem to be today. I stopped eating candy bars long ago and have only picked them up again recently because of the calorie deal. I would say that there was a good 15 year hiatus from Snickers for me. And now that I'm back, I really think that at sometime they changed the formula. But this is the clincher, how could one really know if they did or not?

Before I suggest though that they did indeed change, I recognize that there is a very real possibility that my taste buds have changed. I mean between all of the scalding coffee and tea, there is a good chance that I have some permanent damage to my tongue. I've never heard of that, but it seems reasonable to me. However, other stuff still tastes the same as before so I'm not entirely sold on the idea.

So the question is, did they change Snickers or not? The reason I say that one may never know is because unless you eat it all the time, you wouldn't necessarily catch it. If you eat a Snickers a couple times a year, you probably might think that you just got a bad bar if it tasted different than you remember. Only the regulars would know for sure that it changed, and even then, would they be vocal enough to get them to change back. It obviously worked like that for Coke, but lots of people drink Coke. Are there enough people that eat Snickers regularly to notice the difference and then make a stink because they changed the recipe? I think a big factor is the fact that food in general is perishable. You can't hold on to a Snickers bar from 1985 and then compare it to one today. That's why I say it is almost impossible to really know. Also, they might be changing the formula just a little bit at a time and gradually you wouldn't notice as it changed. It's like the company that shaves an ounce off of the cereal box or the can or whatever and they are betting that you won't notice. Maybe they are changing the formula ever so slightly and betting that the peeps won't notice. Unless you had confirmation by someone at the company I think you would never know for sure. I don't like the thought of that.

I challenge you to do this. Go buy some Welch's grape juice as well as some organic pure concord grape juice, (you pick the brand.) The organic stuff is going to be way more expensive, but buy them both and then go home and try them. The organic pure grape juice is almost like non alcoholic red wine in flavor and appearance. The Welch's looks and tastes like grape drink/aid/purple stuff in comparison to the organic stuff. I bet though, that at one time, way back in the day, Welch's stuff was probably just like the organic stuff now. They just cheapened it up along they way and now peeps don't know any better unless they compare grapes to grapes.

I'm just saying.