Hall of Famer

A shout out today to my sister for reaching the mountain top of her profession this past Tuesday evening, the Public Relations Society of America's Hall of Fame. I always kid her for what she has to put up with daily and her innate ability to laugh at very bad jokes during her thankless job tasks.  But damn, she is quite good at what she does. She has the gift of gab; a trait yours truly does not possess. You can say this and that about how Detroit got out of bankruptcy because of X and Y but I have reason to believe my sister's efforts bringing past and present Detroiters (Detroiters with clout) together in joining as one helped the city recover.  

Proud to say I'm her bro.

Trail Head

Feeling 52

In celebration of my 52nd year on earth, the bike tour headed south out of the Michigan November snow....to the Ohio November snow, but not as much. The destination, Mohican State Park in Loudonville, Ohio, a little east between Toledo and Columbus. The park maintains a 23 mile mountain bike loop (largest in Ohio) that this large headed rider had yet to experience. I wish I had experienced it when I was turning 40 as opposed to 52 as it was a bear. The first couple miles are a climb up to the ridge and then you level off somewhat with smaller hills. You think of Ohio as flat but the Mohican State Forest has some serious hills. I would compare it to a larger Pinckney Recreation Area with more rock gardens that this rider cares to see. I didn't plan on making the full 23 miles but even the abbreviated ride had me dragging ass more times than not. One of the drawbacks of riding solo is you don't have the other rider(s) to feed off of to get you past your ass drag (then again, maybe that is a positive - ha). I attached a short video of my ass dragging along with a cool view of the gorge within the park. 

gorge view 

The trip was not restricted to bike riding as I put the tourist hat on Thursday and took the Shawshank Redemption tour at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield where a portion of the picture was filmed. The tour took you to the warden's office where Andy played the opera music and the warden blew his brains out, the parole board room where Red got reviewed a few times and the post prison room where Brooks and Red stayed. Cool tour.

Nightlife in Mansfield Thursday had me experiencing what I was expecting with the local Cleveland Browns on television that evening. I knew the Brown faithful were VERY passionate based on the handful of Lion-Brown games I have experienced over the years. My conflict was that Michigan State had a basketball game at the same time Thursday evening. I could watch it in the hotel but being cooped up in a hotel room is no fun. I wanted to see some Mansfield-iens. A few blocks from the hotel was a sports bar and I left towards there thinking maybe a 10% chance that I could get a secondary tv to show the hoops game. My 10% turned to 0 upon entering the bar as pretty much every patron had some form of Brown merchandise on. I didn't even bother asking and just took it all in while these passionate son of a guns were cheering on their 3-6 team (soon to be 4-6). They were even doing group cheers. One guy bought a round for the entire bar so....go Browns. Fun experience.
Trail Head

Ohio State Reformatory

warden office

chapel

some seriously close quarters

Free At Last

I left one of the social media sites today. As my last post advised, I hope I don't end up like the characters in the movie "The Firm" after clicking the 'remove me' button. It was a good decade run on the site seeing people via the information superhighway you hadn't seen in awhile. 

On with the sarcasm. I will miss seeing friends that have 1,000 friends on there but none when the computer is off.  The bumper sticker senders; and who is making up these bumper stickers and their sayings? The helicopter parents; stop hovering. The attention starved ones who send a picture of themselves with the text, "caption my photo." "I need attention" is the caption that comes to most minds but don't dare send that and get publicly flogged on the Internet. The ever-so-popular changing of the profile picture every other week person. The political pushers. It's all there. 

In all seriousness, I will miss the many dog pictures and the mountain bike trail information. If it could only be that.  

So sorry Russia, you have one less voter to manipulate for the next election.

Trail Head