msb-0315 Shauna Rides On

msb-0315 Shauna Rides On

I'm Voting Republican
..

intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

MSBPodcast is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for MSers.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disease.

The path to illness is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

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I have a quick and easy, painless and not too figgin' nosy customer survey that I really, really, really need you to go and fill out.

You can go to my podcast "page" [ http://www.msbpodcast.com ], click on the button on the left hand side of the page and anonymously answer a few simple questions.

I really need this.

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Feedback comes first, so...

First, I want to apologize to Shana for the video at the front of this post but it was so darn funny that I just had to include it.

Next, I'm going to try cleaning up the mess my friend made to the database of my "wiki" [ http://wage.packet.org/ ] because, well just because. (Yup. Letting a manager actually "do" something in North America is usually a recipe for disaster. :-)

Lastly, I'd really appreciate it if my anybody hearing this would go to my "Podcast site" [ http://www.msbpodcast.com/ ] and take the audience survey.

I'm trying things out with Wizzard Media and I figure the first thing to do is get you to tell them you actually exist and that I haven't downloaded the 75 thousand podcasts (to date!) by myself.

---- "Bike" by: "Steve Dreher and Friends" http://www.steveandfriends.com/

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.

Say "your" piece on this segment.

Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.

Drop us an email: "charles at MSBPodcast.com"

---- "Backpack bike-ride" by: "Audiofinger" http://www.audiofinger.com/

Feed Me comes third, so...

Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?

Consider advertising on this podcast.

Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)

It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.

That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)

But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.

No play, no pay.

Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...

Send us an email at: "charles (at) MSBPodcast.com"

---- "Diamond Bike" by: "Offcutts" http://www.myspace.com/offcutts

"Thesis:"

Shauna rides a bike and so did I until I moved to Ottawa back in the eighties.

I used to ride it "everywhere", all the time, and in any weather. (Much to the amusement of my friends who used to make fun of the "black stripe" that ran down my back after a ride in the rain.)

Montréal is a city built around a mountain too so there was a lot of hill climbing and coasting.

I used to love coasting down "Atwater Street" and speeding past cars by the bottom of a very "l-o-n-g" hill.

(You had to pick your lane, do it when there wasn't too much traffic and time it just right so that you went through the street lights during a green light sequence. Man ... "Syzygy" ... I loved doing that. "University Street" was steeper and wider but it was shorter and there was always more traffic. :-)

I used to work and commute on both those streets so I got to be intimate with the pavement... (Sometimes face first... [ "Ouch!" {I admit it. I was bat shit crazy! -"-}])

---- "Bikeride" by: "SCANLAN" http://www.myspace.com/scanlanmusic

"Synthesis:"

Because of unrelated health issues, I have been unable to ride my bike since April 30th.

Keeping my fingers crossed, I'm going to try a little the first week of June (maybe even as you are reading this) to get ready for the MS Bike Tour. I have been doing a little prep work in advance of getting on the bike, mainly gardening with lots of up and downs, and stairs.
I have mentioned that before I even began riding I spent two months at the gym (makes me sound sooooo athletic, doesn't it?). My reasoning was that I wanted to be able to get on the bike and not be discouraged by lack of physical fitness. And to a degree it worked. I was able to go much farther than I thought I'd be able. The only problem was the seat. I wanted to be comfortable on a bike seat for long periods of time, and at my leisurely pace a regular bike seat just wasn't going to cut it.

The search began for something like a tractor seat. I'm not kidding, either. That's how I phrased it when I went in to Sport Wheels in Lower Sackville. The owner thought about it for a minute, then said, "I've got just the thing". And he came back with the biggest bike seat I've ever seen. It's about a foot across. He told me he got one for his mom's exercise bike. So now I'm feeling a little bit old and decrepit, but I bought it and put it on the bike. Simply put, it is one of the most comfortable seats I've ever sat on. And I don't care how silly it looks (and it does). It generates a lot of interest by on-lookers, I've gotten a few smiles from people, and few expressions of interest in buying it. I often offer to let folks try sitting on it. One day while taking the bike off the car 3 boys came by on skateboards. "Whoa, dudes.....look at the pimped out bike!" At least a few preteens thought I was cool.

I think I understand the reasoning and the physics behind some of those extraordinary bike seats I've seen, you know the ones with holes in them or specially designed to accomodate male genitalia, or the one with the two teeny tiny little pads for a teeny tiny little butt. And I know that speed demons spend little time resting on their laurels, so to speak. I can't imagine getting on one of those things. My giant seat did the trick for my first year of riding. I got a fairly large gel seat for last year's bike tour on my hybrid, but my tractor seat will stay on the mountain bike. The whole point of being more comfortable was to stay longer on the bike and therefore get more exercise. It worked! Someday, I may have a bike built for speed and one of those high tech seats, but I'm no Lance Armstrong and I'm not in a race. I just want to stay upright, finish if I can, and raise money for a worthy cause.

---- "Brown Bike" by: "Nortec Collective" http://www.myspace.com/tijuanasoundmachine

"Conclusion:"

Oh god. I'm sitting here typing this with a "huge" grin on my face.

I hadn't thought of my bike and biking in years.

Its a miracle I'm still alive after some of the shit I pulled on those bikes, (which sometimes involved their complete and utter annihilation, so its quite the plural. [One of them is buried in the concrete wall of the foundation of a famous Montréal landmark. {Its along Atwater street. I won't tell you how fast I was going when I wiped out, but it had to make quite a jump to get to where the concrete was being poured. :-}])

---- "Yellow Bike" by: "Tracy Jane Come" http://www.tracyjanecomer.com/

Outro

Look at this "link" and it'll make you sick with how we've treated this planet with indifference. [ http://www.vbs.tv/shows/toxic/garbage-island/ ]