The Perils of Cycling - Dinosaur Head

I keep my hair pretty short, and one benefit of that is that I don't get terrible "helmet head" most of the time. When I'm overdue for a haircut, however, I get what I and my kids call "dinosaur head".

For those of you who might prefer my online visage, it translates to this:



Pasting that hair onto my Rantwick face was really fun, so fun that I thought I would try it some more. How about dinosaur head Prime Minister Stephen Harper?
Or Nicolas Cage?
Or, (I hope he will forgive me) Chandra of GreenComotion?



I did about ten of these, but then thought to myself, "self, why not give the tools to others and see what happens? You know, give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Give a man an image file to paste onto people, and he wastes a lifetime..." And so, you will find below a link to the dinosaur head cutout, in png format, which was one of the only ones that allowed me to keep the non-hair bits transparent. The file is pretty big, so that's why link instead of pic. Just right-click and choose Save Target As... in Windows, or do the similar for Mac (I don't know the exact language). Anyone who is so inclined should download it and paste it onto whoever they want. If you send me the finished product, I will post it ASAP and, of course, credit the creator. I've got a bad feeling no one will bother, but that's OK; nothing ventured, right?

Dinohead PNG file (1 MB)

Thanks for reading,

R A N T W I C K

Lucky Penny

This blog is the closest thing I've ever had to a journal, so here's something I just wanted to jot down. Yesterday my kids and I were out walking the dog, who was misbehaving in his puppyish way, when my 8 year old son found a penny on the sidewalk. I told him the old expression "find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck". Being an 8 year old boy, he managed to drop the penny about 5 steps later. His sister helped him look for it, but it wasn't to be found, and the dog was making it hard to stick around. I told him to leave it, and that at least having picked it up he would still get the good luck part. He promptly replied, "Dad, if I had gotten the good luck, I would have found it again".

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

Stormy Stuff

When it comes to bad weather, I am a completely irresponsible person. I love riding in it. Yesterday, a line of storms travelled across Southern Ontario. Multiple tornadoes touched down, thankfully not in London. I took a look at the weather radar before leaving work, and it looked bad. I read that there were tornado warnings. Unlike a rational person, I thought "oh, boy!" Mother nature did not disappoint...

The plastic covered camera didn't do the ride justice. I almost got knocked over by the wind a couple of times, and the thunder was sometimes super loud. It was great.

Please do as I say, not as I do. Take cover in bad weather.

R A N T W I C K

P.S. - I know I'm a broken record, but everything in my panniers remained completely dry.

One BAD Bike Lane

My kids recently attended a week long summer camp at the University of Western Ontario. I think, but am not entirely sure, that UWO has almost complete control of its roads and the markings on them. If I am wrong, please comment and correct me. Bike lanes appeared at UWO before they did anywhere else in London. They are sometimes sensible, sometimes not. But when I was driving my kids back and forth from this Sport Western camp (which was excellent, by the way), I saw and took some video of some truly ridiculous bike lane paint.

Just imagine what happens when to medium/big vehicles are in the car lanes. Can you say squish? I have to believe that cyclists faced with such a situation would just line up in the car lane the way they should, but paint can be a powerful influence, in this case one that will definitely create conflict, and quite likely create injury or worse. I got my degree from UWO, and think it's a great school. I also think this may be the worst bike paint I've ever seen!

My online friend and frequent commenter Keri from Orlando, who is a very knowledgeable vehicular cyclist, called parts of the Queens bike lanes "heinous". I wonder what she would call this?

Implicit trust of bike paint is hazardous! Keep using your good sense,

R A N T W I C K