Please Pardon My Absence: I Was Busy Preparing to Fail

I have been very stressed out and busy preparing for an Exam that I wrote yesterday. I bombed. Like really bombed. I will be extraordinarily lucky if I get the 60% required to pass. The crummy part is, I studied harder than I ever have for just about anything. I prepared  a wide variety of answers for the essay questions that may come. None of the questions I prepared for were on the test. NONE. I am totally sad and upset now, because I have never failed at something I actually put reasonable effort into. There are options for failures like me to re-do the exam, thank God, but man, will that ever suck.

Hey, what if the marker of my exam happens to be a Rantwick reader?  I mean, at least a couple dozen people in my great province read this blog... Hey, remote Exam marker person: You rock. Like, really. Please mark my exam like somebody really nice and/or stupid would rather than how I would or how you normally would. Thanks! 

Ah, well. What's done is done and all I can do is await my fate. I was provided with a study package that may have well as been one page that read "study everything"... but at least it had its lighter moments in the final point of the "exam tip ands tricks" section:

That's all for now, because I really am kinda whipped from 3 days of rather intensive, perfectly useless study on top of work. You should know, though, that I currently have 3 more SARATS entries to tell you about! Leaves! Trees! Salt Lake City, Utah! San Juan Capistrano, California! Unknown location! Aren't you just busting with anticipation? I'm not, because I've seen them. But they're coming to this space soon, I promise. I'm thinking Monday, but maybe sooner... I dunno.

Yer Pal, R A N T W I C K

The Other Other Other Woman

When cycle blog reading people see a title like "The Other Woman" they naturally make the assumption that "she" is yet another bike. Car enthusiasts use the expression all the time for their secondary passions too. Indeed, I have posted on three bikes in just such a manner in the past. In this case, however, "The Other Woman" actually refers to a woman. I love her. It's a good thing Mrs. Rantwick is OK with my fixations on unreal women like Mother Nature and my new flame, Billboard Bike Woman:

She speaks to me every time I ride by, whispering sweet bike path nothings filled with the promise of freewheeling sun-dappled romance and a nice red wine buzz. She is a stylized, unreal swoopy-figured lady purposefully crafted to drive me mad. She is the natural advertising result of the current popularity of cycle chic, transportation cycling and many people's deep love of red wine; in the immortal words of Meatloaf (the only true authority on love), two out three ain't bad, baby. Cycle Chic isn't really my thing... although maybe I'll make an exception in her case.

my latest devastating crush

Now, contrary to the abundant evidence otherwise, I ain't stupid. I can see through this billboard lady's wine and dress and bike and basket. I know that she is really just another famous woman, repackaged for the gentle cycling wino set:

I don't care. In fact, her less refined and more lurid past in the mud flap trade just makes her even more attractive to me. I mean, everyone has a past, right? Who am I to judge?

Yer Pal,

 

R A N T W I C K