There are a number of things I like about Austin. The year-round good weather. The big-city feel without the big-city crime. The outdoor activities. The “hipster” scene. The town does a pretty good job with food, too. However, there are three areas of food where they are lacking.

Hot Dog & Beef Joints

Finding a good hot dog joint is next to impossible. Heck, finding any joint is tough. I find this a bit surprising, considering the number of ex-Chicagoans down here. There is supposed to be a Chicago-style place in the area, but it’s up north near Round Rock, I think. There’s no Demon Dogs, no T&Gs, no Portillo’s, no Mr. Beef. How could the land of longhorns not have a beef joint? And why the missing hot dog places? We’ve got a Gyro place near us, but no dogs. Explain that to me! Evelyn gets so annoyed by this that she’s gone on record that she wants to open up a dog joint. She loves hotdogs. For now, she makes due with store bought dogs. Luckily, they are Hebrew National, so that helps quite a lot.

Pizza Places

Father and Sons, Giordanos, Home Run, Malnatis, Gino’s, Aurelio’s, where are you? In Chicago you’ve got a pizza place every couple blocks. Sure, a lot of them are awful, but you have a wide variety of crappy places to choose from. Here, I’ve got to go miles to find a good one. Sure, I have a Little Caesars and Papa John’s, but I really can’t consider those. Though, unlike the hot dog & beef problem, there are supposed to be some good pizza places down here, but I haven’t visited them, and I don’t trust anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line to tell me what good pizza is.

Carolina BBQ

Well, for this one I can’t be quite so hard on Austin. The area has some great BBQ, but it’s Texas BBQ. That means beef. Now, I’m not going to push aside a plate of well prepared brisket, but I do miss the pig. I’m the type of guy that plans rest stops based on the BBQ joint in the area. Oh, how I want a plate of shredded pork, some vinegary sauce, and some sweet syrupy beans. (Most of the beans down here are “cowboy” beans, which are good, but not at all sweet and red like the ones you find in the east.) In Chicago, I miss Lem’s BBQ House. I love how it’s called “house” as the last time I was there, many years ago, it was a shack with 2″ thick bullet proof glass for windows. The glass had turned yellow from smoke, and you paid your though a drive-up-teller like device. This was a place that did good business, and got robbed a lot for it. Its delightful location, at 75th and MLK, says it all.

The Reason

It’s all about the people, I guess. Look at the Beef and Pizza joints. Both very Italian, and Chicago has a lot of Italian immigrants, whereas the Hill Country in Texas was mostly German. For south-east BBQ, Chicago has a large black population which moved from the poor south to the poor north, looking for work. They brought with them their food and their tastes, like all people do.

On the bright side, those are the only three areas where Austin is really lacking food-wise, with the most notable being the complete vacuum of Hot Dog & Beef Joints. That’s a market opportunity if I ever saw one. Other than these, I’ve been pretty well fed. Good Chinese-American, decent sushi, lots of Thai, a first-class vegetarian Indian dump (first class food, with dive-like atmosphere), lots of beef, middle-eastern deli a stones throw away, and plenty of burgers & beer. 

I was just reading the current Cook’s Illustrated newsletter. They had a bit about choosing pineapple:

Pineapples do not ripen once they’re picked, so to ensure you choose a ripe pineapple at the grocery store, try this trick: With one hand, gently tug at a leaf in the center of the fruit. If the leaf releases with little effort, the pineapple is ripe. Avoid pineapples with dried-out leaves and a fermented aroma—the fruit may be overripe.

It reminded me how, no matter how “fresh” they are, store bought pineapples are usually pretty crappy. I didn’t realize how crappy until I had a fresh one, right from the farm, in Puerto Rico.

It’s hard to describe how different fresh food is compared to store bought, until you try some. When I bit into that fresh fruit, I was reminded of Proust and his madeleine. The intensity of sweetness, the amazing juice, the perfect texture. It was the best pineapple I’ve ever eaten. Perhaps the best I’ll ever eat. It was so good that even when I read newsletters I remember it.

It all makes me a little sad. Sad because I look at the world and see two great groups of people.

On one side, we have the millions, perhaps billions, of people who are lucky to have any kind of food to eat. They don’t have time to worry about taste and texture. They need food for sustenance, not enjoyment.

On the other side, you have millions who have ready access to a bounty of food, and yet live on junk coming out of food factories, filled with fat and salt and calories and devoid of any true flavor. I’m lucky to live in a part of the world with almost endless food choices, and yet people often choose food products and not real, honest, food. We’ll spend $150 a month on digital cable, but freak out if we spend $50 on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Frankly, I get a lot more enjoyment out of good food than I would receive out of any silly television programming. A good meal, carefully prepared and shared with loved ones, is a wonderful thing.

But I do understanding that cooking from scratch is a time consuming process. Often, it’s not that people don’t want to eat better, fresher, food. Instead, they are hemmed in by a society with over-long workdays, endless commutes, and ever-rising food costs. Though, when I hear that people are turning to products like SPAM because of rising meat costs, I want to weep.

This also gets me thinking about another food-related problem we’re going to face very soon. The feeding of our ever-growing senior population. 

Take, for example, our 92 year old neighbor. She is considering going to an assisted living facility. Because she can’t get around? No. Because her health is not good? No. It’s because she’s having a harder time cooking. It has become a chore for her, cooking for one, and I know what she means. It’s really no fun cooking for yourself only. When Evelyn is here I do all sorts of dishes. When she’s gone, I cut back dramatically. (Though, I do try new recipes. Rehearsals, as it were.)

So, here we have a perfectly able older person, who is thinking of giving up her independence because of the time and bother involved in cooking. (It’s not the expense, as an assisted living facility would be far more expensive than the apartment she’s in now.) That sure seems like a bad reason to give up ones freedom, don’t you think?

This is just one of many food related problems we are going to have to address in the coming years. It’s going to be interesting, for sure, as worrying about food and eating has been displaced out of the American psyche for quite a while now.

And yet, every problem has a solution. It might not be cheap or easy, but there’s a solution. I kinda like these types of problems, as they foster innovative thinking, with people approaching problems from new directions. Plus, they are big problems that can, and must, be solved at a micro level. (In my opinion, any sort of solution, to any social problem, must be handled as close to the problem as possible. The second the solution becomes depersonalized is the second it ceases to work effectively. I’m talking to you, Socialism.)

For example, let’s take the seniors in this facility. There is a club room with a full kitchen. Could there not be shared meals? Could not groups of people take turns making lunches and dinners for small groups? It works for special events, like Thanksgiving, why can’t it work for the more mundane day-to-day feeding of our elders?

Of course, the second you start thinking of more innovative ways of doing things is the second you get the Old Guard throwing up roadblocks. Nothing stifles innovation like good old fashioned bureaucracy. That’s why I can’t deal with politics of any sort, or any kind of large scale organizations. When every meeting you have with schools or libraries or whatever starts with “we can’t do that” you know that’s an organization you stay away from.

Ron’s Theory Of Organizations: Small minds gravitate toward large organizations.

And so we have a Proust like post. I start with pineapples and end up with theories of organization. Go figure. Though, I leave you with this challenge. How do you assist the 92 year old neighbors of this world to remain independent for as long as possible? Not only is it good for them, it’s good for society as a whole. And the problem is just going to get worse, as the “boomers” get closer to losing their own independence.

Just got this note regarding two bills going through Congress, both of which affect funding for the Arecibo Observatory. I’ll quote it in its entirety:

Arecibo Observatory, the world’s largest radio telescope and the source for the SETI@home data that your computer analyzes, faces massive budget cuts that will END its ability to continue the search for life beyond Earth. The decision to ensure full funding currently rests upon votes in Congress on Senate Bill S. 2862 and House Resolution H.R. 3737. These bills desperately need more support.

Please take a moment to help us SAVE ARECIBO.

Clicking the link below will direct you to a web page that allows you print out letters prepared for your Senators and Congressional Representative urging them to support Arecibo. Printing and mailing the letters is really easy, too! You will also have the chance to add a few personal thoughts, if you wish, to let your Senators and Representative know why this funding is important to you! And if you’re really feeling passionate about saving Arecibo, please use these letters as the basis for letters you write yourself, urging your congressmen and women to vote to save Arecibo.

Because our representatives in Congress rarely give much attention to all the email they receive, printing out and MAILING these letters via standard U.S. Postal mail remains our best option for contacting them and our best hope for saving Arecibo (The second best option is to call your representatives). Your 42 cent stamps on these letters could help us get the millions of dollars needed to save Arecibo.

Our search cannot continue without the necessary support. Your work, as SETI@home participants, represents an indispensable resource for conducting the search. Now, we need your help to ensure that our other most valuable resource – our eyes and ears to the cosmos – can continue to probe the universe as we seek to answer the question: Is there anybody out there?

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/arecibo_letter.php

Thank you for your help,

The SETI@home Team

Please take a moment and print out the letter from their website, sign it, and MAIL it to your representatives. Funding for the telescope is almost trivial, when compared to other things we’re pissing money away on.

The budget for ONE DAY of the War In Iraq would fund the observatory for THIRTY YEARS.

Update: The letter generator on their site seemed to act up for me. Please just copy the text and then go to house.gov and senate.gov to find your Representatives and Senators.

A patch version of Opera 9.5 is out, and it seems to have fixed some of the terribly annoying bugs in 9.5.0. The right-click search seems to be working again and Speed Dial is updating (instead of a never-ending spin).

The default skins still suck, with the Windows Native tabs being hard to read. Dag-nam-it, I want to quickly be able to tell what tab I’m on! Is that too much to ask? Light yellow on white doesn’t jump out at me. (And the default Opera skin is ugly, hard to read, blackness.)  …just searched for some more. Listen, kids: I don’t want “brushed metal” backgrounds. It’s a computer, not a late 70′s stereo system. Plus, that black-on-black look is a tad hard to read. The most acceptable skin so far is the BeOS version. LOL. At least it highlights the entire active tab in yellow.

Update: I really like the BeOS skin for Opera. For two reasons: Yellow and Yellow. The entire active tab is in bright yellow, so you can see it. Plus, the scroll bar “dragger” is bright yellow, making it super easy to spot, especially on long-scrolling pages. It’s the little things, but they make a difference.

We used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. A couple on cooking, a smattering of science, history, weekly news, work-related, and on and on. Recently, I’ve been taking a hard look at what we subscribe to, and what we get out of them.

I love magazines, because they are usually topical and current. More of the here and now. Things which can be digested quickly and then passed on. The trouble was, I was getting into overload, and finding that many were just sitting unread. A lot of what used to be useful (like news) aren’t so much, with the advent of endless Internet news sources. (That’s a whole ‘nother story.)

Anyhow, old standbys like Smithsonian and National Geographic and Scientific American have been cast aside. Either the information wasn’t useful, or the magazine had gone down the toilet (SciAm, IMO). Other stuff, like The Sun, I grew tired of. Too much crying and never-ending sameness. After you’ve read you 30th near-death-suicide-drunk-prison-child-abuse story, you’ve read them all.

Though, I haven’t given up on magazines. I’ve just gotten more picky. I’ve got the cheap throw-away stuff, like Wired and The Week, which I still subscribe to. And, some stuff, like Mother Jones, got very close to becoming a castoff, but redeemed themselves with real investigative journalism (and I use the term journalism in the genuine way, not the fluff that CNN and company have become). Magazines like Reason came back on-line, as my libertarian spirit returned.

Recently, I ran into a new magazine that seemed interesting. It’s called Cabinet and caught my eye because a recent issue was on Magic (legerdemain, not ghosts and witches). Like Mother Jones, it is run as a non-profit. Unlike Mother Jones, the focus is Art and Culture.

Cabinet is one of those magazines you flip through and feel good about. It’s like opening a Folio edition of a book. It just feels good. Thick paper, interesting photos, well laid-out, little surprise inserts, and so on. The kind of magazine that ends up on the bookshelf, not the trash can. Is it possible to like a magazine on feel alone?

I’ve yet to go through the back issues I recently received, so I can’t tell for sure if the content matches the first impression. However, after flipping though a couple, I’m sure I’m in for a real treat.

or, Building A Better Commuter Bike.

I’ve owned a lot of bikes. Road, recumbent, mountain, folding, tandem, cheap, expensive, and in-between. I used to ride a lot, but haven’t done much in the last couple of years. Work and weather always seem to get in the way, especially in Chicago.

In Austin, I have far less excuse. The weather is rideable for most of the year, and even in the heat of summer the evenings are no worse than a humid Chicago summer night. Austinites seem to bitch about how unfriendly the city is for bikes, but I haven’t seen that in the central part of the city. I can safely follow a route from 8500 North all the way downtown to Ladybird (Town) Lake. Try doing that in Chicago, especially on the South Side. (Drivers are often another issue, but there always jerks, so I obey the rules of the road, and give cars a wide berth. A “hello” doesn’t hurt either.)

Anyhow, we had our mountain bikes in the apartment for a while, but no longer had space for them. Then I remember my Dahon folding bike. I had bought it a couple of years ago for my Chicago commute (a disaster, for many reasons). I wasn’t too keen on the folding and unfolding part, but even “put together” it’s quite small. In fact, it sits very nicely behind our front door, in a 4×4 “foyer”.

As you can see, the wheels are very small, like those on a kids bike. I think they are 14″ diameter. They take a little getting used to (watch out for big bumps and potholes), but allow the bike to take up very little space. From stem-to-stern it’s about 52″. Normally the bike can be folded at the midsection, the seat tube dropped, and the handlebar folded and tucked in. Even the pedals fold down. It compacts pretty well, but I intend to keep it opened up.

So now I had a bike that would fit into the apartment without taking up any new space (it’s behind the door, which has to be kept clear). Now, how do I make sure I use it? Well, you have to eliminate the excuses.

Here are my standard reasons for putting off riding: Gotta pull the bike out, and that’s a hassle. Gotta charge the light. Gotta attach the light to the helmet. Gotta wear a shirt that will hold the battery for the light (a jersey). Gotta avoid getting killed (need lots of lights). Gotta this, gotta that. My goal was to eliminate those excuses and bring it down to one: laziness.

First the light. I have a NiteRider, which is the only headlight brand I recommend. I’ve found most of the others to be junk, or just not as well built, or lacking in light.  I have the model which mounts to your helmet. These are wonderful, because they allow you to shine light where you’re looking, not where the bike is heading. Great on trails, but more of a hassle for a commuter bike. So I mounted the light near the handlebars:

Since I’m not planning on folding the bike, I secured the wire along the frame with some zip-ties. Luckily, the cable was long enough to reach the rear of the bike, where I wanted to mount the battery. Note that I’ve got the headlight pointed down a little bit. That’s because the NiteRiders are super-bright, and since I’m on city streets, I’m usually worried about people seeing me, and don’t need to see that far ahead. However, if I’m in a darker area, I can crank up the output and tip it up a bit.

As you can see below, the battery is a slim rectangle, normally dropped into the back on your jersey. Instead, I zip-tied it to the rear rack of the Dahon. This is the perfect spot for this battery, as it doesn’t block the rear rack in any way (it sits on the supports) and is rock-solid.

The battery gets charged with a power pack that I keep right near the bike. I bring the bike in, attach the charger, and I’m ready to go whenever. No searching for the battery, no hassle.

Above the battery area, you can see how I mounted a water bottle holder. Since this is a folding bike, and there is little frame, there is no traditional mounting points for a bottle cage. So, zip-ties to the rescue again. A little bit of orange non-slip “shelf liner”, a couple of ties, and it’s a strong as it can be.

Now, you can skip this, and go with something like a CamelBak, but I wanted this to be a get-on-and-go bike. A CamelBak means filling up the water bag, putting it on, etc. More preparation. More reasons to “skip it”. So I went with the simple water bottle.

As for aesthetics, well, this isn’t some hand-crafted Italian carbon and titanium setup. I’ve got zip-ties and tiny wheels and ride a bike that looks mutated. Frankly, I could care less. For three reasons. First, I’m too old to care. Second, this is designed to be a commuter bike, not a racer. It’s the Toyota Echo of the biking world. Fourth, I’m in Austin. They like weirdos.

In Puerto Rico, we picked up some really nice combo bags & tool sets for our mountain bikes. I also got the brightest rear light I could find (if you’ve driven in PR, you know why). These were perfect for this bike, as I could mount the light high-up, near the seat.

It’s a Cateye blind-you-from-all-directions light and I love it, because you get good flashing from the rear and the sides. The bag, which has a complete tool set, has reflective material all around, which also helps me stand-out at night.

A note about night riding: Please, use lights. At the very least, have a flashing red light in the rear. Though, I’d honestly say the least you should have is a flashing red in the rear and white in the front. The LED units are cheap, run forever, and make you much less invisible at night (or during the day, for that matter). I have a proper white headlamp in the front, so people can see me and so I can see potholes, and two rear lights. The super bright-one near the seat, and an always-on one on the rear rack. It’s a good idea to have them on whenever you ride, night or day. There are a LOT of distracted people out there–in cars, on bikes, and walking. Make sure to stand out!

The other really nice thing about the Dahon is that, since it was designed for commuters and folding, there are a ton of nice features. You have a nice rear rack. More importantly, you have complete fenders on both front and rear wheels. No more dirt sprayed on your clothes! The entire chain assembly is covered in a guard, so you don’t have to worry about getting chain grease on your clothes or legs, either! Plus, they use simple pedals, so no fancy shoes required. Finally, it’s a three-speed hub, so no front or rear derailer to get mucked up, or confused about.

With the addition of the lights, a bag, and (soon) a rear basket, I’ll have put together a really handy get-on-and-ride bike. No fancy clothes. No equipment to gather. Just put on a helmet, grab a water bottle, and get out and ride. In two minutes I can be out the door. So much for handy excuses.

Next up on my upgrades: Some sort of crate or box that will be mounted to the rear rack. Something to hold a bag or two of groceries. Something like a milk crate, but smaller. Also, I need some way of holding a U-lock. Perhaps at the bottom of the crate.