"Do you know the Golden Rule? Those with the gold, make the rule."

The Scranton Times has stepped up its insulting of its carriers. In its Clarks Summit distribution center this morning, carriers arrived (clocks set forward all - or all except the Times, which made us then wait until 3:40 STANDARD time for the papers to arrive, just like on this day most years) to discover a new, big, duplicated-in-more-than-enough-places-to-be-impossible-to-miss, sign lecturing us about how we'll be canned if we take more papers than we're supposed to take, etc.

Well right off the bat, everybody including the managers knows that it's usually IMPOSSIBLE NOT to take a couple more papers than our official count, just to replace the couple that, on the average each Sunday, the Times screws us on by having failed to put all of the sections in. This screwing, by the Times, of its carriers out of sections (which the carrier can usually only notice if a paper seems light, a not-particularly-foolproof methodology), occasionally even amounts to a lot more than a couple. And when a customer complains about a paper being missing a section, the CARRIER gets charged $1.50!

So, the loudest (not including me, by the way; I tend to only be loud when I get home and write these diatribes) carriers rightly did some spleen-venting about how the new signs are an insult.

On the receiving end of these spleen-ventings was the manager's helper, whom I pitied for being, as usual, the only immediately-accessible, somewhat-representing-of-the-Times (even though I suspect he only gets paid chump change), person for the carriers to spleen-vent to.

The "best" one of the manager's helper's replies was that the signs are only aimed at the yet-to-be-identified abuser(s). However, he didn't get very far with that one, because if that were the case AND the Times had any respect for its carriers, why INSULT ALL of the carriers? There are already signs there saying - or should I say, more likely, bluffing - that there are video cameras around (and those signs have been there for as many years as I've known the place). So, why not ACTUALLY run a video camera (which wouldn't be Big-Brother-like at all, in a place that already SAYS that it has video cameras around) long enough to catch the abuser?

So, the REALLY best one of the manager's helper's replies was also the most honest one: "Do you know the Golden Rule? Those with the gold, make the rule."

Well that's when I piped up and said, "Wait until I buy the Times."

Virginia Cody for Governor!

PRO-DRILLERS AND ANTI-DRILLERS UNITE: VIRGINIA CODY is the only Pa. gubernatorial candidate to CLEARLY OPPOSE subsurface TRESPASS UPON, AND THEFT FROM, PROPERTY that an owner of has chosen not to provide too-cheap (or in the case of when it's Cabot doing the extraction, too-proven-to-be-ruining-of-groundwater) energy from.

On-topic-for-this-blog content: I'm happy to report that this 180-house paper route in Clarks Summit is among the places that I've been distributing the Virginia Cody for Governor brochure. I slipped one under the doormat of 150 of the houses last Sunday, 10/24, and I'm ready to do the other 30 tomorrow, 10/31.

Just like with the annual Xmas cards, the extra few seconds of time consumption per house makes it a tall order to do such an extra leafletting to all 180 houses in one Sunday without finishing excessively late, hence my saving of the last 30 for this weekend.

I also don't know whether the Times would take kindly to one of its paper boys inserting propaganda (as opposed to Xmas cards, which the Times infamously - see "War of the Worlds and my last Sunday of the Oughts" - knows that I, like I think most carriers, do) into the sleeves with the papers. So, sticking the Virginia Cody for Governor brochures under the doormats and such, separate from the papers, is my way of being on the safe side about that.

And bill-ignorers

The Saturday 10/9 issue of the Scranton Times-Tribune has a full-page, International Carrier Day salute to all of us Times-Tribune/Sunday Times carriers, listing all of our names (apparently 365 of us?) below the compliment, "Through rain, snow, sleet and cold, your carrier endures it all to deliver the news of the world to your doorstep."

Well how about bill-ignorers? Although I thank the Times for the compliment about the "rain, snow, sleet and cold", I don't mind those things one bit! It is the bill-ignorers, rather, that I must "endure".

Well, that and the editor's slandering of two of my "frac" spellings to "frack", in my Letter to the Editor in August. The correct spelling, which the Susquehanna County Transcript got my minor point about but the Times didn't, is "frac".

Saturday 6/12/10 Binghamton-paper delivery report

Well I'm finally getting around to writing this particular delivery report that I promised to the Northeastern Pennsylvania Bicycle Messengering blog. As I boasted earlier, I substituted on this Binghamton-paper route over New Year's and, in my last post to the blog, I boasted that I was ready to do it again on June 12.

I'm happy to report success in not only bringing the bike along (admittedly on top of my loaded-with-5-cent-bottles-to-supplement-the-trip's-revenue pickup truck like I've been doing for a lot of my Binghamton visits lately) but using it to deliver the Saturday Press & Sun papers to all 95-or-whatever houses in only two bikeloads.

(Compare that to my regular 180-house Sunday route in Clarks Summit that this blog tries to be devoted to, where everything is in considerably less compact of a geographical area and, more importantly, the Sunday papers are fat: It's still taking me a long time to weed the excess motoring out of that one. There, I still haven't gotten much beyond filling up as many carrier bags as possible with which to do 8-to-16-house segments by foot, and that's why this blog has been silent for a while.)

Anyhow, these Saturday 6/12 Binghamton papers were delivered to me at 5:10 and I delivered to the last house at 7:18; so, although that's 18 minutes late, it's a scores-of-percent speed improvement over when I did it over New Year's, back when I was an even-more-complete newbie to the route. I would have finished only 14 minutes late instead of 18 if NYDOT hadn't violated my Triadal http://www.newmilfordbike.com/Triad.htm rights by having its detector loop fail to detect me when I was trying to get back across 12A from the commuter parking lot while returning to resume the delivery after obeying a call of nature in the woods behind the commuter parking lot.

This bike that I used was what I described earlier in this blog as my "devoted-to-paperboying bike" - i.e. the one with, most importantly, 1) a kickstand and 2) the homemade front panniers consisting of halves of plastic filing boxes. But the update on that is that that bike has now been promoted to also being my primary bike: I'm happy to report success in, early this month, finally accumulating a frame-breaking number of miles on my old Fuji (i.e. the Time-Traveling Iron Steed of The Last Bike Ride Out of the 20th Century) that had been my primary bike for 10 years.

New comment policy

Regrettably, just now, I finally got around to figuring out how to change the "comments" setting to "moderated". I had been meaning to do so for a while, due to the increasing number of spammers. I apologize in advance to all other commenters, who will now have to wait until I come online and approve their comment before it appears.

[Edit: I changed the time stamp on this post, to lie by a few hours so as to have it appear below, rather than above, my other post of today.]

Ready for another Binghamton-paper delivery!

Back at New Year's I boasted about substituting on a Binghamton-area paper route. I'm happy to report that I'm going to do that again tomorrow morning, i.e. Saturday. Stay tuned for a report on it when I get around to writing it sometime afterwards.

I've got the bike ready to use this time (unlike the other time), and that ought to help speed the delivery up. But I'll be cheating and driving the pickup truck to the start again, because I still have loads and loads of the N.Y. 5 cent bottles that the Forest City Recycling Center gives me and that I cash in on every time I go to Binghamton, making the motoring trip more than pay for itself.

Eat Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

...to celebrate when you've passed a test.

I normally only go to Dunkin Donuts, but Krispy Kreme is the favorite stop of the ham who as I off-topically boasted in this blog a while back, informed me that it was even possible for a bumpkin such as myself to join the elite ranks of Extra, the top of ham radio. So on Wednesday night on my way home from passing the Extra, I stopped at Krispy Kreme.