irreverendt

Recent events have caused me to conclude that I am a D-List (bicycle) rider. I became aware that there have been at least two events attended or to be attended by other cyclists, friends of mine, to which I received no invitation. To clarify, I am not talking about a phone call, e-mail or text invite to a daytime or evening ride. I’m talking about a group trip.

This causes me to be curious as to why. I have hypothesized answers to the two instances but they are just that. I could dedicate several paragraphs to guesses but one point is fact. Neither of the two originators of these plans/rides contacted me to see if I had an interest in participating. Compounding this, in my opinion, is the fact that I didn’t receive a shout out or a “hey did you know” from any of the riders (friends) that did or will participate.

I have tried my best to make this a “water under the bridge” thing but it continues to nag at me. Other than this writing I do not plan to bring this up to any of those who were passively involved. I did contact one of the planners who provided an explanation but did not directly address my primary question, why wasn’t I contacted? I will acknowledge that I am not the center of the universe to be consulted on all matters cycling but WTF?

I was reading the paper this morning, what’s left of it, and found myself again in the Obits. I don’t read it to see if I am there so much as I do for some kind of, I guess, morbid entertainment. In a serious vein, there was a man 37 years old that died of a heart attack. Ouch!

Looking ahead at my eventual demise I always check to see what the 80 & 90 somethings die from. Most times, if stated, it is usually cancer, the occasional heart attack or pneumonia, often a side effect of some other chronic illness. Knowing that in most if not all instances someone other than the deceased has written the obit I am curious about how the death is described. Most often people just “die” however the next most common description is that they have “passed” or “passed on”. If so, passed on to what? The dictionary version I read said it was a “polite” way of saying died. From Wikipedia I also learned that Passed Away Vol. 1 is a compilation of Dr. Dog tunes. I noted that if you pass someone or something, you go past them/it. So in this sense a person is passing life on the way to something else.

This brings me to the next group of descriptions. These, I assume, are religious descriptions of what has happened. I find, “was called home” “went to his/her reward” “met his maker”. I have never read where someone has “gone to hell” but I suppose that on more than one occasion that might be the opinion of the writer. If you know what I believe concerning religion then you will understand that at this point I’ll just let sleeping dog lye (or lay).

Next time I’ll take up my possible choices.