DavidDexter's Blog

Before anyone jumps to any conclusions about me hating people on bikes ... for the record, I don't. I have a road bike myself, I love cycling through our wonderful metro park system, and the exercise leaves me feeling great. And also a little winded nowadays since I've not only added miles to my bike's odometer ... but years to myself as well. :^)

With gasoline and diesel prices at all times highs, I realize the two wheel form of weekend recreation has quickly transformed into a two wheel form of daily transportation. To work, to school, to civic events, etc. Great for exercise and great for the environment. :^)

But ... maybe not so great for those of us who still have to drive a four (or more) wheeled vehicle to work or places beyond the reasonable range of a bicycle.

I almost made roadkill out of a man and a woman riding side by side at an intersection with a traffic signal. She was busy with her cell phone, he had his head turned talking to her, neither were paying attention that they had a red light and cruised right out into traffic crossing a busy state route without stopping at full speed. The oncoming traffic being me, a charter bus, and a garbage truck ... all slammed on our brakes ... I missed the guy by inches.

No one was injured - just a bunch of mid-morning drivers had their nerves jarred.

But what got me, was I saw the woman turn back (still on her cell phone) ... and flip all of us off. I'm pretty sure I made out what she yelled back at us was a profane four letter word as well. Then they kept on going as if they had done nothing wrong.

They weren't kids. I'd say they had to be in their mid-40s. Old enough to know better.

As more and more people switch to peddle-power instead of fossil-fuel-power modes of transportation - I'm noticing a lot more cyclists blatantly ignoring safety and traffic laws. Riding on State Routes that have no berms, riding 4 and maybe 6 abreast (even left of center) on roads expecting cars and trucks to swerve out of their way, running stop signs and traffic lights, darting out into streets from between cars without looking, etc. I even saw one cyclist with a death wish riding along the side of I-90 by the curve during rush hour!?!?!? (I-90 is bad enough without a cyclist added to the mix ...) Again, most of the time these are not children or teenagers. These are adults. Who should know better.

Is it me, or is it when some people get on a bike they toss all safety and responsibility out the window? I've read blogs were cyclists complain drivers need to look out for them, that they have a right to the road as well, and it's drivers and not cyclists who cause the mounting number of bike/motor vehicle accidents and fatalities.

I believe both sides are responsible. Drivers need to be aware of their surroundings at all times because of their size, weight, and speed. But in that same token, cyclists also need to get it through their bike helmets that just because they're on two wheels they get no "special" treatment on the road and don't get to choose when or where they want to follow traffic laws.

Just like the Miller Brewing Company urges people to "Drink Responsibly" and the state highway patrol urges motorists to "Drive Carefully" ... maybe Trek/Giant/Schwinn need to urge cyclists to "Bike Safely." The burden of "Road Safety" doesn't rest squarely on the shoulders of motorists alone as some cyclists (I would have to say "arrogantly") think it should ... cyclists also have to share half of that burden as well.

I have to admit, I was lured to wakeupwalmart.com after seeing the WalMart/Sam's Club attack ad broadcast on several local television stations.  More so, because the overall attack ad blatantly oozed so much negativity and generalities than the fact that WalMart/Sams Club was the target.  I was more interested in finding out who the true backer of the campaign was, that was disseminating this latest attack via the mass media.

It's our old friends, the United Food and Commercial Workers union, the largest union of retail workers in the nation.

I have nothing against unions - they have their place in certain situations.  But this immediately shot up a red flag that this was less about waking up WalMart to "public safety" and "human rights" concerns than it was an attempt to whine about WalMart because the UFCW is frustrated.  The UFCW is moaning again because its latest attempts to unionize WalMart (and fill UFCW coffers with all that untapped union due resource) have been about as successful as Quebec's attempts at seceding from Canada.

If "public safety" and "human rights" was truly the issue of the attack ad - then it should have also included other bulk retailers such as Costco and Target - which also have just as many Chinese or Forced Labor made products as WalMart does on its shelves.  Which were just as unsafe and lead-laden.  Which were sold to the public in bulk.  Which Costco and Target didn't do anything more or less than WalMart to protect its consumers.

But ... Costco is the darling of the UFCW.  And Target, often viewed as the "Anti-WalMart" even though the two retailers operate similar to one another, is only half-heartedly smacked around by United Food and Commercial Workers union because it is 6 times smaller than WalMart and doesn't create as big of headlines.  Plus the fact that "Target Dog" is a lot cuter and lovable than a Smiley Face that bounces around knocking prices onto the floor.

Plus .... wakeupwalmart-target-samsclub-bjs-costco-marcs-fleamark
ets-ebay-chineseguysellingrosesandstufffromtrunkofcar.c
om just  isn't as cool sounding as wakeupwalmart.

I'm not a big WalMart fan myself.  Many stores are dirty.  Customer service is ... well ... nothing like you see in their television ads.  Products are sometimes as cheaply made as their price.  And its annoying that to draw people into a new store, they'll carry name brand items like Kiwi Shoe Polish and a good price - then two weeks later, the Kiwi is pulled from the shelves and replaced with Uncle Somebodies' Black Shoe Wax and they never restock Kiwi again.  But I'm not stupid either.  And Costco can be just as dirty.  I do shop there for items, like any other person who has to squeeze as much out of every penny from my paycheck.  I'm not going to pay $40 for an item at a "UFCW" approved store, when the same item is available for $10 at WalMart.  In simple economics - I'm not throwing away $30 from my family's budget just to satisfy a union.  For a product, that itself, probably wasn't made in the United States in the first place.

This "I don't shop at WalMart because they stock products not made in America by Americans" fantasy is ... ridiculous.  Every major store you shop in, every major online retailer carries a bulk of non-American products.  I had a good laugh once when a friend of mine commented that she'll never step into a WalMart to buy clothes because they aren't made in the Good Ol' USA.  I asked her to check the tag on her Columbia jacket that she bought at Dick's ... made and assembled in Malaysia.  So much for the I only buy USA thing with her ... I guess she won't be shopping at Dick's anymore either.  If you think this way, the next time you go to the grocery store, you better check really close to where your food came from as well.  That can of corn probably came from Argentina and was only canned in Iowa.   I guess you could dump the corn out and eat the can, but the can itself probably came from China or Taiwan.  So that leaves you with the label - made from a pulp and paper manufacturer in Canada.  So much for American Corn ...

Anyway ... wakeupwalmart.com is a farce.  Thinly disguised as a "Protect The People" website, it's just the same old United Food and Commercial Workers union rant that they can't unionize WalMart.  Only this time, they're using the same bait and switch tactic WalMart used with the KiWi shoe polish in my local WalMart.  Except, instead of shoe polish, they're using Chinese Lead and Forced Labor as the bait.

I think wakeupwalmart.com does more damage to the United Food and Commercial Workers union's image than WalMart ever could have done.  If the UFCW truly was concerned about Human Rights and Consumer Safety - they'd create a joint web reference site with Amnesty International and the Consumer Products Safety Commission/Underwriters Laboratories and address these issues that affect all retailers and consumers ... instead of wasting UFCW resources on a narrow-sighted attack ad.

Meanwhile ... Walmart enjoys free publicity that it didn't have to pay for, at the expense of UFCW members.  Once again, the WalMart Empire ... still wins.

All the whining about "can't afford it" and "i don't like the look" aside ... it's about time for this.  There was a time when people knew how to dress and didn't beat someone unconscious because they weren't wearing the "socially acceptable brand name" tennis shoes or their starter jacket just happened to be the same one worn by a rival gang to an M13 clique ... take a look at kids nowadays.  They look more like back alley vagrants and prostitutes in some schools.  Why does an 11 year old need to wear thigh boots and a skirt that's hiked up nearly to her belly?  They claim "it's an expression of their individuality" - it really looks like they just rolled out of a Waste Management dumpster.  I been to my share of third world nations, and even the most destitute of the poor in those countries torn by war and strife still have enough dignity left not to degrade themselves to what I see walking the halls of our schools today.  And some Educators are not much better either.  There are going to be many more times in your life that you're going to be forced to do things that you don't want to do  ... buck up and get used to it.  Someone remarked that the dress code was "ruining the best years of their life" ... if a dress code is all that it takes to ruin the "best years of someone's life" ... that's a pretty shallow life.  I had to go to a Catholic School all of my early years with an extreme "ruler-across-the-knuckles-if-you-didn't-follow-it" dress code and my parents were as poor as church mice ... and my buddies and I still had a blast.  No dress code got in the way of having the best years of my life.