Steve Tilford

I don’t really hardly ever open mail any more. I rarely get a letter that I’m surprised to get. And when I do, I’m pretty surprised. When the subject of eliminating Saturday mail delivery, most of the people I talk with are against it. I couldn’t care less. They are losing billions of dollars a year and if it is going to save a bunch of money, then I think they should consider it. I guess most people are against it because no one likes to lose a service, even if that service isn’t being used. I guess the internet has really hurt the mail big time. It is sort of sad, but I guess that is progress.

FedEx and UPS are different. I get packages all the time. And I always look forward to the packages. I look more forward to the packages when I’m not expecting a package, when the doorbell rings and I can see the FedEx truck out front. The internet is just making these companies more and more busy. Shipping has increased dramatically the last decade.

Yesterday was a prime example. Doorbell first thing in the morning. Small package for Trudi. She had no idea what it was, then she saw it was shipped from Europe. Inside, a Tour de France yellow jersey from Cadel. Pretty nice.

Today, was my turn. It wasn’t a surprise. I knew last night. UPS has a new RockShox 29’r fork for me. But, no, when I went to UPS website this morning and put in the tracking number, it says the plane has a mechanical. That’s all. I need to leave for Berryman tomorrow morning, so I hope that plane gets fixed.

I’ve always respected UPS and FedEx. They seem to have their shit together. They seem to work like a finely tuned clock. At nearly every bikeshop I’ve been associated with, the UPS guy is a standard fixture. Usually the UPS man will hang there a bit when he’s ahead of schedule. I’m not sure why that is, but it is common. Maybe they just like bikes.

It does seem sort of strange that we have 3 companies doing are essentially the same thing. I don’t know why the post office never got the package delivery service down. They tried about 10 years ago with the 2 pound, 2 day, $2 thing. But, that didn’t work. Probably because they never delivered it within two days. And there was no tracking. It seems to me, if some guy is coming to my house, everyday, bringing something, they should be able to leave a letter or package. But, that isn’t the case with the USPS.

I’m so racked from riding rocky singletrack two days in a row that I might not even ride today. Yesterday I was better than the day before. Hopefully I’ll be back up to snuff by Saturday. And that UPS does their magic and gets that fork to me sometime soon, like today.

I have more kittens in my bathroom. I had decided that I’d done my moral duty on saving cats and kittens. But after what happened in Zansville Ohio a couple nights ago, I couldn’t stand seeing those kittens go wild. Humans are very bad sometimes. This was the case here. Some redneck Sheriff decided to let his guys go on a shooting rampage and they ended killing 49 animals. And 18 of those were Bengal tigers.

I’ve looked a few places and there are somewhere between 1500 and 5000 tigers total left on this planet. And these guys just killed 18 of them. He did this in the name of human safety. Wow. This is an example of how primitive this country is in solving immediate problems intellectually. And the reason that we don’t let local sheriffs make huge decisions on our futures.

Okay, you’re going to say “What if your child got eaten by one of those ferocious cats or bears?” That would be horrible, for sure. But there were lots of better ways to control the situation than go on a wild game hunting spree throughout the night. It isn’t as if this was Jurassic Park and a bunch of Velociraptors are running around killing every moving thing in site. If the sheriff was really trying to control the situation properly, he would of made sure that every human in the surrounding area was apprised of the situation. Then he should have brought in the resources to properly contain the animals. The statement that the dead owner sabotaged the cages so they couldn’t use them to contain the animals if they were caught is a joke.

I personally don’t think a human’s life is more valuable than any one of those animals that are laid out in that compound. Especially considering how few of these tigers exist and how many of us. There are 6,000,000,000 of us humans. That is 1,200,000 people on the planet for each tiger, assuming the 5000 number is correct. 4 million people for each tiger if the 1500 number is closer.

We, as a country, as people on this planet, should have handled this situation in a much better manner. We should be ashamed.