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Thread: Finally got back on my bike

  1. #11
    Administrator N8YX's Avatar
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    I'm usually a live-and-let-live type of individual when it comes to substance abuse - as long as your actions don't affect those around you, including your community.

    That includes theft to support your habit, and that also includes your polluting up the area's parks - some national - with your illicit cooking operations.

    This is pertinent to bicycling: Late evening and nighttime is my preferred riding time in the heat of summer. Two of my bikes are equipped with dynamo-powered offroad lights (the brightest in the business for that type); I have battery-powered lights as backups and main lighting for the others. Thus, I can see for miles and miles...including all the backpack-portable labs. These are noticeable by the smell; you'd also think that purported "fishermen" set up on a trail alongside a river bank would remember to bring fishing poles with them?

    It's all fun and good until I get the stink eye as I go riding past. Our local PD's SWAT and K9 units have these wonderful toys to play with...dogs, thermal, night vision stuff...what's a little live practice amongst friends?

    Keep it at home and I really don't care what you do.
    "Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."

  2. #12
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    The term "functional" only applies to alcoholics in our great nation.
    I have seen and worked with functional crack heads and meth heads.
    They work for their money. Show up on time and do the job they're being paid to do. Pain pill people can be functional too but once the doctor or circumstances cut them off the scene changes. Mind you, you probably can't be a functional drug addict forever as the hard drugs age a person quickly and that includes America's number 1 favorite hardcore addictive substance (government favorite too),
    A L C O H O L.
    Then there's the one that gets you addicted with seemingly no pay-off, tobacco.

    If you're lucky, all you'll end up with from tobacco is a cough and a nicotine addiction. If the government is lucky, you'll be dead before you can collect SSN benefits. Which to me explains why in the 21st century we as a nation choose not to employ nicotine mitigation strategies and choose instead to offer taxpayer funded benefits to companies that still produce cigarette tobacco. Just a way to kill off a few extra of the hoi polloi before they can collect on whatever monies they had coming to them through a system they already paid into.
    In the 21st century we choose to make people fight against each other instead of work together to reduce cigarette usage. Instead we lie to children with all manner of crazy claims about tobacco and do so in such a way that it makes them hate instead of help. Don't get me wrong, it's worse, tobacco that is, since there is no accountability on how addictive cigarette companies have made the finished product but it's a win win for government and corporations because it's a deadly and addictive substance that doesn't impair the user's ability to complete their daily tasks. Ideally for all involved, except the user, you'll die before you can become "a burden on the system." A burden on the system is anyone which collects what's due to them from Social Security and any other benefits they have coming that they already paid in to. I mean yeah, that's how the people who are really running the big show see it, whomever they may be. Nothing I can do about it except to avoid everything that trying to kill me, addict me or piss me off.
    Of note, the added chemicals and now radiation added to tobacco is a crime against humanity but in their eyes it's not like they didn't tell you it was bad. Ammiright? They just made it a lot worse, a thousand fold worse. Geiger counter, pack of smokes, try it.
    As a person who has smoked cigarettes for over 30 years, quit for 8 years and now vapes and has a very occasional (rare) cigar AND has intensely studied the topic of tobacco cultivation and history from both an artisan point of view and a corporate point of view, I think I have a pretty good grasp on the subject.

    Everything we do, we are trained, from childhood, usually via the religion of our parents and of our times and eventually through government propaganda to cling to pointing a finger at others so we don't feel so bad about ourselves and our own failures and thus making it easier to demonize others when we are all guilty of something. Yeah, that sounded quite nutter but let's just call it out like it is. There is a lot of programming out there that is in place to cause us to fail and before us, it was there to cause our parents to fail and it is also designed to keep us focused on what is wrong with everyone else so that we are blind to our own failings. If you should begin to look at your own life, will it be too late to fix your own shit? Will you be too set in your ways to change?

    TL;DR
    Cliff Notes: Try to think good on others so that you don't destroy your own humanity.
    That doesn't mean you have to lay down and be a doormat.
    Nobody in their childhood ever said, "when I grow up, I want to be a junkie."

  3. #13
    "Usual Suspect" WZ7U's Avatar
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    Sorry Sue if I've offended you. Wasn't my intention and it's good news you are making progress for yourself. Keep it up. Lord knows I should be doing the same. Ignore my ramblings concerning our neighborhood here.

    Charles, my respect for you and the forum is squelching my knee jerk reaction to what you wrote about functional addiction. Of all people here to be bashed for functional addiction, I'm not the one. Most everyone in my orbit are functional addicts in one lane or another, so the whole pointing my finger to feel better about myself is utter strawman bullshit and it's rather annoying that you would go there with me. Especially since I fall into that category (functional addict) myself. Starting into substance use is a choice, so when I see someone choosing to steal my stuff to fuel their addiction, I have no qualms squashing that.

    Is that a problem for you?

    Or does this make me the enemy, the other?
    Last edited by WZ7U; 10-05-2021 at 04:51 PM.

    Like that post was...
    Moving on, my posts are not helpful

  4. #14
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    Oh My God, Eric! I wasn't talking about you!

    The whole topic of addiction and being a nation of addicts is an offshoot to what we're all dealing with living in a country that manufactures addicts of one form or another.

    I don't know about anyone's addictions on this forum with regard to substance abuse, only the ones that show themselves in the Politico forum as being addicted to doing mental gymnastics to support a bias that goes against their beliefs.

    I'm sorry if what I posted seemed to target any individuals on the Island. It was about creating a nation of addicts, including those that are addicted to pointing the finger at those who sin differently than they do. Mainly religious conservatives that dominate the news.

    I'm sorry, Eric. I think very highly of you (and all the other forum members ... for the most part).

  5. #15
    Administrator N8YX's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WZ7U View Post
    Starting into substance use is a choice, so when I see someone choosing to steal my stuff to fuel their addiction, I have no qualms squashing that.
    This is where I'm at.

    Do unto yourself all you want. Leave others out of your life choices, either directly or indirectly.
    "Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."

  6. #16
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    We all could use some work, myself very much included. What we have here, what this topic shows is that we have a Catch 22 situation. You ride a bicycle and people think you're a tweaker looking to loot and acquire ill gotten booty.
    On the other side of that if you want to ride a bike you have to worry about someone bike-jacking you in broad daylight or stealing it off your property. We can't win for losing.
    I have no qualms with firing off a round, if need be, at an addict hell bent on looting my property. I do wonder, often I might add, what brought them to the place they're at, especially since it is such a common scenario in these Great United States. The richest country on Earth and we can't even solve any problem AT ALL! We always tend to make everything WORSE!

    The War on Drugs after 40 years didn't stop the flow of illegal narcotics or the usage of such. It only made the importation, manufacture and usage increase at alarming rates. Of course it doesn't help when our own government not only makes a business out of arrests and incarceration but plays the part of the supplier and dealer on the other end! True story! Documented ad-infinitum!

    Whenever our government decides to declare war on a social problem it does nothing to actually solve anything except to enrich those tasked with enforcing and carrying out punishment and making everything generally worse for the rest of us. Worrying about riding a bike and worrying about being thought of as a tweaker because of riding said bike and worrying about having your bike stolen by actual tweakers reminded me of this cold hard fact, the whole situation and EVERYTHING that lead up to where we are.

    Sue I'm sorry you have your concerns with bicycle ownership. It sucks. What I feel like I've learned in life so far is that it's always something. The problem with living in 2021 seems to be that we (general term not specific to any individual here) still have not learned that circus barkers do not make good civil servants. Vengeful individuals with an axe to grind do not make good public servants. Sales persons do not make good public servants. The list goes on!
    While we'll all never agree on everything, we're stuck in loop where we will never agree on anything. Created and exploited to keep a small group of individuals in power while their acolytes keep whipping up the base to keep the cycle going.

  7. #17
    "Usual Suspect" WZ7U's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KG4CGC View Post
    Oh My God, Eric! I wasn't talking about you!

    The whole topic of addiction and being a nation of addicts is an offshoot to what we're all dealing with living in a country that manufactures addicts of one form or another.

    I don't know about anyone's addictions on this forum with regard to substance abuse, only the ones that show themselves in the Politico forum as being addicted to doing mental gymnastics to support a bias that goes against their beliefs.

    I'm sorry if what I posted seemed to target any individuals on the Island. It was about creating a nation of addicts, including those that are addicted to pointing the finger at those who sin differently than they do. Mainly religious conservatives that dominate the news.

    I'm sorry, Eric. I think very highly of you (and all the other forum members ... for the most part).
    Sorry Charles, I mistook your intent. We're dealing with family problems that have addiction as a base issue and I suppose this colored my thinking today. Apologies my friend.

    Out here in the woods the whole tweaker thing has exploded and my county has it bad. The homelessness issue is getting worse out here too. Try having a felony on your record; you're guaranteed to be living out of a car. Decriminalization sounds good on the surface but without services to back up the other end, it's a never ending cycle. Which is what "they" want.

    Keep riding Sue. Unless the snow comes.

    Like that post was...
    Moving on, my posts are not helpful

  8. #18
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    Fucking shit, Eric. I'm sorry. You're good. No worries.


    Sue, work out those leg muscles for keeping explosive acceleration in reserve when you need it.
    You never know when you'll have to make a quick getaway!
    I'm a terrible person.

  9. #19
    "Island Bartender" KG4CGC's Avatar
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    During the early days of the Island and before, I regularly rode a 24 speed mountain-ish bike. MONGOOSE!
    $600 at the bike store. Picked it up at Walmart in 2003 for One Fiddy. I maxed out at a 1 hour ride at 20 miles. This was riding hills of varying steepness.
    I tried to explain the terrain around here in another group. We have no flats. Everything is on an incline so there is no speed testing on "flats" to determine top speed on level, flat terrain. Some roads are less of an incline than others but that's it!
    Ruckus groups on a national scale are weird of course it didn't help that online groups tend to get ... you know ...

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