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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (49802)	5/1/2000 1:54:00 PM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

But if you think the English looked funny, what about the Spanish, with those metal buckets on their heads and those heavy metal vests? In Florida, in the summer? And Mexico? The natives must have bust a gut laughing at them, although probably later the Spanish got even. Yes! You're right... They were truly bizarre looking... But this is suddenly making me think of how often a hat, or headgear of some kind, is a defining part of a people's identification... But that at the same time, it is often what makes them look so... weird... Odd how we are in a time in which decorative head wear isn't normally part of our duds... No horned helms, big pillow-like velveteen caps, feathered head-dresses, big black fedoras, ten-gallon stetsons, tri-cornered hats, red fez caps, etc.... Nope... we don't seem to define ourselves with Big Hats anymore... The only ones I can think of who wear anything akin to that would be the cyclists... Gee... hope there aren't any hard-core cyclists here... They make me LAFF... Seriously. I live on a stretch of road where we get dozens of them going by any sunny day of the week... Lots of cycling clubs in our area and most of them "tour" along our road.... You can hear them coming from about a mile off... like a gaggle of geese... Makes both of the dogs go crazy with barking at the sound of them coming down the road. Most of them are men BTW... And men like to talk about how much women like to talk... Well, let me tell you something. There is nothing quite like the sound of 30 male cyclists yattering away to each other as they peddle along... Sometimes, if I'm working in the garden at the front, I become the unintentional eavesdropper on some of their conversations... Can be pretty funny stuff indeed... Particularly if it is just 2 or 3 guys speaking loudly back and forth as they pedal along the highway... But, back to their outfits... Eeeekk... Some of them are just too much!!... Yes, it's true... some of them are pretty conservative...your basic black spandex... but some of them are rather... shall we say...outlandish or even risque... Guys suited up like The Riddler from Batman... hot, psychedelic colours with squiggly patterns all over them...and IMHO, probably no underwear (based on my non-too-close inspection of them as they loiter around the little bakery shop in our town... downing espresso and fancy pastries during their Sunday morning circuit). However, the part that really makes me smirk are the helmets... Not the ordinary garden-variety helmets, but the ones that have long pointed "aerodynamic" tails on the back... Yep, those Pointy-Head Cyclists are the really serious dudes... the "pros"... Kind of makes those Spanish metal bucket helmets seem a little less silly, doesn't it?

To: Ilaine who wrote (49802)	5/4/2000 4:15:00 PM
From: nihil	Respond to of 71178

Most early American Massachusetts and Virginia colonists dressed in woolen clothes and if rich enough linen shirts (imported from Ireland). They imported boards and planks (look at the manifests). They knew virtually nothing about farming, or hunting, or fishing. They were townspeople from Eastern England (Essex, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk). They starved because they were far more ignorant than Boy Scouts. The Indians helped them some, taught them how to plant corn, and beans, and squash, but Indian agriculture was extremely inefficient and unproductive and produced crops the colonists didn't like to eat. The English liked wheaten bread and beef. Wheat of English varieties didn't grow well in the east. There was no grass or good clover in America. Lots and lots of weeds. It took a while to develop meadows, hay and forage crops. New Englanders had to learn to fish, and Virginians had to learn to eat crabs and oysters. They prayed a lot. A whole lot of good that did. Roanoke islanders all disappeared. The first hundred years was pretty much a waste of time. They needed people who would work. Africans, Scots, Irishmen, and Germans. Many of them came as indentured servants or slaves. It was the second generation that headed west. Of course the hunters and explorers were mostly French or breeds. They traveled all over the continent, speaking bad French, insulting Indians for their noses, marrying Indian women (like Sacagawea) naming stuff, mostly trading beaver to make felt hats, arming Indians to shoot Americans. Moccasins, stylish leathers (rubbed with bear grease and soot and fringed to let the rain run off. Buffler robes. Snow shoes. Most of them were murdered by bad Indians.