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This page is a Monthly Archive of entries from September 2008 listed from newest to oldest.
If you've been to any event involving any Champaign County bicycling organization, chances are good that you've met Sue Jones, because she's darn near ubiquitous. From ChampaignCountyBikes.org to Prairie Cycle Club to The Bike Project, Sue works behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly. She even helped organize last weekend's Lincoln Circuit Ride from Champaign to Danville and back. Somehow, she also finds time to ride 100 to 250 miles per week, update her blog (Urbana-Champaign Bicycle Commute) and, oh yeah, work full-time at Parkland.
This article is part of a series profiling members of the C-U bike community. Send me a tip if you know someone who should be interviewed.
This weekend hundreds of people gathered in the center of downtown Urbana for one common goal: to eat chili and drink beer. The 7th Annual International Beer Tasting and Chili Cook-off maintained its position as the second largest outdoor festival in Urbana, next to the Sweetcorn Festival. Two hours before the doors opened, almost fifty people had already gathered on the north and south sides of the downtown Urbana parking garage to secure their free 4 oz. cups. As 3:00 P.M. approached, the lines stretched around the corners of Race, Elm and Main. Julia Rietz, the Champaign County State's Attorney, had a booth to serve chili but did not attend the event, preventing us from grilling her about the possibility of alcohol-related incidents stemming from the beer tasting festival. We took the opportunity to interview attendees about the festival and bar-entry laws in Champaign-Urbana.
If you have been meaning to make it out to Sleepy Creek Vineyards, but just haven’t had the chance, this weekend is a great opportunity to do so. Sleepy Creek is playing host to the first Salt Fork River Art Festival on Saturday from 10: a.m. – 6: p.m. and from 12: – 5: p.m. on Sunday.
Those who attend will have the opportunity to view and purchase the works of over thirty artists, as well as taste locally produced wines, and enjoy live music. Admission is free and food will be available for purchase by Papa George. A portion of the proceeds from the festival will be donated to Prairie Rivers Network to help protect our area’s rivers and streams.
--Say you're tooling around campus on your bike on a given fall evening, and you get a flat. What do you do? Well, thanks to the enterprising minds at ChampaignCountyBikes.org, The Bike Project and That's Rentertainment, you can stop by Rentertainment and take advantage of "The Itty-Bitty Bike Shop," a recent addition near the entrance of the movie-rental joint at Sixth and John. In addition to lights, reflective leg bands, tubes, patch kits and chain lube, they also have a pump available for loan behind the counter. Consider yourself redeemed.
(Photo by Gary Cziko)
This evening at the Illini Union Courtyard Cafe a panel of experts will present comparisons of historically significant events that occurred in 1968 with our nation's current racial, political and educational landscape. 1968 was a crucial turning point for the United States and the World, as marked by the end of the civil rights movement and the beginning of the Vietnam War. This year also included a Summer Olympics, complete with Black Power salutes (Beijing made sure to prevent these through use of gagging clauses) and massive clashes between protesters and police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, mostly due to reactions to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. University of Illinois speakers include James Anderson, Gutsgell Professor of Educational Policy Studies, Antonia Darder, Professor of Education Policy Studies and Latino/a Studies and author of various books such as After Race: Racism and Multiculturalism, and Belden Fields, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, author of Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States, and participant in the May 1968 riots in France. The panel will begin at 7:00 and will be moderated by Augusto Espiritu, Associate Professor of History.
Technology is very convenient in the workplace. It speeds up communication, cuts down on the use of paper and allows information to be analyzed more efficiently, thus enabling companies to run more smoothly. I work in a very fast-paced environment, so the use of technology is critical to our survival. Whenever I hire someone, I am able to send out all of our new hire paperwork to the new hire via his or her email. I find this to be very helpful to us, because we are able to circumnavigate the postal service. The new hire usually likes this too, because within hours after the offer is made, they have all the information they need, prior to their physical.
Even though technology does pay off most of the time, there are times when it can be disastrous. I have found that some applicants don’t think about how their technological choices might be viewed by potential employers.
I guess a fake email went out recently to undergraduates of the University of Illinois stating the negative aspects of fraternity life and rush week. Since it has been some time since I’ve been in school, I can’t necessarily say what rush week or frat life is like anymore. What I can do is relate my own frat experience in this article.
Like most people of my generation, my scant knowledge of Pilates has been gleaned from chance encounters with late-night infomercials hosted by Denise Austin or Daisy Fuentes: it was invented by Joseph Pilates, it's kind of like yoga, and it's what supermodels use to stay toned. So when I was recently offered the opportunity to try a private session of Pilates with personal trainer Rachel Hills, owner of Two Birds, One Tree, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, and I was a little nervous.
(Ed. note: Every so often, Gillian will write about her first-hand experiences with health and wellness topics in this column, Your Guinea Pig. If you have a suggestion for something she should try, email her at gilliangabriel@smilepolitely.com.)
Not very long ago (in terms of the human experience), the majority of us were intimately connected with our food sources. Even the urban-dwellers in post-industrial America typically had a section of their property dedicated to growing edibles. Any extra bounty could be exchanged with neighbors in barter or canned for enjoying during the winter.
However, by the time of the First World War, many gardens had become neglected or converted into lawns, especially outside of the traditionally agricultural communities. Wartime rationing would change that and the idea of Victory Gardens spread throughout allied nations as a direct means to help the War Effort.
The Champaign-Urbana bike community will be losing a great resource and advocate in a couple of weeks, when Champaign Cycle manager Scot McCollum moves to La Crosse, Wisconsin. In addition to running the best bike shop in the area, McCollum has been active in the Prairie Cycle Club and played an integral role in getting the Bike Project co-op off the ground. He's moving to La Crosse with his wife, Carrie Melin, who accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse teaching English as a second language.
McCollum has a long history in the bike business, including more than 12 years working for Trek in Waterloo, Wisconsin. His family moved away from Champaign-Urbana when he was one, and he's "lived all over Illinois, except for Chicagoland."
Do you remember the show Kids Say the Darndest Things? It was a television show, hosted by Bill Cosby, that aired during the end of the 90s (a previous incarnation was hosted by Art Linkletter). In the show, Cosby would ask adorable children simple questions to provoke a cute response. The novel show didn’t last long, because eventually audience members started to throw up due to the hyperbolic levels of cuteness the kids exuded. The Surgeon General came in, shut the show down, forced Cosby into exile and made Art Linkletter (co-host) eat pudding pops for a year. Of course that isn’t true, but the show did run out of gas, because cute kids really aren’t that entertaining.
If I had a chance to develop a show that would eventually run itself into the ground after one season, it would be "Applicants Say the Craziest Shit." I would set up hidden video cameras in my office and I would edit all the footage so that America could see the insane behavior some of my applicants possess.
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