Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. This week, I am recovering from a 100 mile bike ride through northeastern Indiana. It is interesting country; very flat and for this 100 miles very windy. What’s the deal with that? It has been a very windy June. I must admit during the middle of the crushing 25 miles into a 15 mph wind I longed for those heady No-Zone action days; those days when the wind dies, the flags go limp, and the smog hangs in the valley obscuring the tree line to the west. I may not be able to breathe but its better than riding into a 15 mph wind.
The ride is up in Adam’s county. I know it hardly seems fair that Eve wouldn’t have a county also. But its Adam’s county. I don’t name them. I just report on the names that they happen to have. This is the second time that I have ridden this ride. It is called the Flat Fifty. Yes, it is ironic when I wear a T-shirt proclaiming that I rode in the Flat fifty; especially as the word flat goes up and over the bulge of my gut. I should probably stick with the Hilly Hundred shirts. At least there will be no false advertising.
Wind aside, I do love this ride. It is farm country. It is also Amish country. It appears that horses hooves and buggies do not put much wear and tear on the roads. So the roads are very nice. I was a bit disappointed with this ride however. Three years ago when I rode, several entrepreneurial Amish youth sold cookies. This time I was prepared and took extra money and alas no Amish youth selling cookies. I managed.
It appears that Saturday afternoon is mow the lawn time in Amish land. It does take some time to get used to seeing a riding mower in Amish country. Imagine going out to the garage and getting out the Clydesdale and hooking up to the sickle bar mower and riding it around the yard. If you have ever used a sickle bar mower, you would know that it had to be very sharp to cut an inch off of 3 inch grass. But they did a good job; nice and smooth. It also appeared that Saturday afternoon was some sort of social affair in Amish country. Buggy after buggy was loaded down with the family with one lap holding a covered dish.
What does one do with 100 miles of open road and no sugar cookies? One contemplates. What does one contemplate? Well, I contemplate binge watching streamed TV shows. I must admit that I know very little about the topic. I have no time to binge watch. I can’t even find the time to write this blog let alone watch 100 hours of a same show all in a row. So as you can guess, I do not hold up my end of the conversation around the work water cooler. I try to explain that I don’t feel like I have the time to watch that much TV. I mean. I am 55 years old. I have 5 or 6 hobbies. If I don’t stay focused, I will have several half finished projects that my children will have to sell or burn even if I live to 150 years old. No I don’t have time to binge watch.
The lovely Miss Beverly does have a few guilty TV pleasures. The show du jour is the Walking Dead. I would explain but you know what it is. If you don’t, go stand by the water cooler at work for a few days. I do not like it. I think that I made it through one episode. That was just enough to seed my contemplation for 100 miles. I tried to tell myself that I do not like it because I am too good to enjoy a dystopian tale. But who am I kidding. I am right there for Mad Max, Zombieland (although I still think that killing Bill Murray is one of the most disturbing scenes in movie history) and the Terminator. Even my religion of choice follows an apocalyptic prophet who was sure that the end times were near. Following his lead, the movers and shakers of the cause produced four or five rapture videos to scare me out of the necking row at church camp through the pearly gates. No I am comfortable with the apocalypse. But I am very uncomfortable with The Walking Dead.
That paragraph took about 50 miles to suss out. Why don’t I like The Walking Dead? It hit me a few days later as the family was gathering together for my son Ben’s wedding. The lovely Miss Beverly isn’t the only one in our family who likes The Walking Dead. J.D., our foster kiddo is a big fan, Grace, our daughter, doesn’t like it but is addicted. With this much commonality, we had a lot to talk about. I had decided that if I were in a zombie infested apocalypse that I would want a samurai sword; light weight and long enough that you can sever that brain stem with little muss or fuss. You never have to reload it and you don’t have to worry about foraging for more ammo. I don’t think you can underestimate the length of the sword as a definite advantage. How many extras have been accidentally bitten doing their killing up close and personal? No, it is much better to keep those teeth far away.
This brings up another question. What is the infection vector for zombie virus? You can take a bath in zombie guts without getting all glassy eyed and stiff legged but a nip on the leg and you are zombie man walking. I do not get it.
Anyhow, it was during this scintillating conversation that I figured it out. I figured out why I do not like The Walking Dead. It should be easy for these people to identify the most pressing problem of the day. The world is full of dead men walking who want to make you dead men walking. They need to be killed or is that rekilled. That is the bad news. The good news is they have almost no skills. They cannot run, jump, climb, or throw. While they have opposable thumbs they don’t appear to be able to grasp a tool to utilize to their advantage. They just shamble along hoping that a human falls over in front of them so that they can rip out the bloody parts. As a foe, they are pretty underwhelming. The only thing that they have going for them is their vast superiority in numbers. You can’t walk anywhere without some stiff legged jerk wandering up on your picnic trying to rip your throat out.
Why aren’t these people trying to kill all of the zombies? That is the crux of why I don’t like The Walking Dead. No one is focused on the real problem. Kill all of the zombies. Have we lost our industrial know how to the extent that we can’t kill zombies on a vast scale? Have we lost that can do attitude that got us to the moon, won world war 2 or found a way to fill and tie off 50 water balloons in about 30 seconds. For those trying to decide on which camp to join in the upcoming zombie infestation, I have a few ideas that you may want to use to make yourself useful.
If I found myself in a zombie dystopia, I would go to Kings Island. Those queues would be perfect. Drape the area off on three sides and set up a combine at the exit with a strobe light at the throat of the header. Turn on the lights and fire up the combine. Keep the head up about shoulder high and watch them walk into the combine. It would be just like a dandelion flower popping fest on steroids. “Mamma had a baby and its head . . .” The lovely miss Beverly is concerned that the zombies would gum up the inside of the combine. It is a fair concern. That many zombie guts would mess up your bearings and axles in a hurry. As an alternative, I suggest using a detasseler. No a detasseler has nothing to do with messing up a shriner’s parade. A detasseler is a machine with spinning blades about head height. They are used to remove the tassel, the male part of the corn, when trying to hybridize corn seed. Sure there would be a few of the vertically challenged who got through but for that there is the samurai sword. What happens when the pile of zombies is so high that alive zombies can’t get through? Easy, just put up a sign that says this ride temporarily closed for maintenance. Move your light and machine to a different ride and start up. While all of the zombies wonder off over there, get your bulldozer in there and clean up the mess and reset your trap. If you weren’t tied to the mid-west, you could go to central Florida and then have the advantage of directing the zombies by an app that told them what rides lines were the shortest.
So what does an urban dweller do with little access to high end farm implements. Don’t fear. You have come to the right blog solution. It is a bit of an indirect route to the brain stem but it will work also. Go to any ramp on the interstate system in your town, get a truck load of bottles and glass, break them from edge to edge the length of the bridge or ramp and put a strobe light in the middle. The zombies will proceed to grind themselves down until they reach their brain stems and then poof their little brain stemless skulls will be sitting in the middle waiting for you to clean up the mess with your bulldozer.
You also have plenty of sky scrapers in the big city. Simply lure them up the stairwell and set a strobe light a little over the edge. They will wonder right up there and topple over. You could probably get two birds with one stone by placing the “exit” directly above the entrance to the building. Just think how gratifying it will be when a 300 lbs zombie splats five skinny zombies down on the ground. I do think that I would direct the “exit” away from the entrance. You don’t want to block the entrance before you used up all of your terminal velocity.
And once you have the zombie threat eliminated? Well you would have more free time to stay inside and watch The Game of Thrones.
Take care.
Roger
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