October 12th, 2020

This man is a freakin' genius!~  Why aren't all bicycles in Florida made like this! It's got everything you might possibly need.   An umbrella to protect the rider from sun OR rain, the basket on the front to carry  purchases and the cooler on the back to keep water or ice tea or lemonade cold so when it's time for  a break, the rider can be refreshed. A person could be out all day long on this bicycle regardless of the weather.   It's awesome!

I have tremendous admiration for inventors.  Those folks who see a need and instead of just complaining about it (oh that would be me) they then turn around and find a way to make it better.

And it doesn't have to be really huge enormous life-altering invention to impress me. I mean, indoor plumbing is pretty much the most amazing thing ever and yes, I have been in homes that didn't have it.  Yeah, it pretty much changed my life.  Everyone's life really.  But there are smaller things in my life that wowed me too.

Pantyhose was a huge one for me. Yeah, I know nowadays almost nobody wears stockings at all but when I was just  coming into my teens it was still all about garter belts, individual stockings  and what a pain in the arse all of that was.  Pantyhose were a huge step forward (at the time)

Velcro, which came into being thanks to the Space Program, was awesome for anyone with small children.  Suddenly that didn't have to worry about tying their shoes and retieing their shoes and etc.  Just slap that velcro closure shut and taadaa!  And now you can find velcro on all sorts of things.  

Another great category of invention in my lifetime were the childhood disease vaccines.  No longer did any child have to suffer, be forever altered  or die of "ordinary" childhood diseases like polio, measles, whooping cough or mumps.  Wow. Yeah, that was a Huge one.

Less scary but also impactful in a positive way was the invention of non-stick cookware!  Holy Cats that stuff is great.  I will admit that the original interpretation of it had it's flaws but it had now been many times changed and improved and it's a huge time and effort saver in the kitchen.

Naturally kitchen related stuff are the ones with which I am most familiar. Modern Toasters are pretty awesome.  Before any kitchen toaster was invented, people would put a piece of bread on a long handled fork and hold it over a flame until it reached the desired shade of brown, turn it over and do the same thing on the other side. Inefficient and dangerous.  Current toasters and toaster ovens are awesome.

Oh!  Along with vacuum cleaners!  Modern vacuum cleaners rank pretty high with me.  I know that my grand mother had to just sweep, constantly.  Even rugs got swept most of the time.  Once or twice a year all of the rugs in the house were taken outside, thrown over a tree limb and beaten too get the dust and dirt out.  No thank you. When I was very young, my mother had a carpet sweeper.  It was one of the most useless household items ever created on this planet. Didn't do a bit of good.  At some point she got a vacuum cleaner and suddenly our house was sparklingly clean because she vacuumed every day. Sometimes several times a day. She loved that thing.  It was, inexplicably, powder blue.


I have to admit that home computers are probably the biggest most impressive modern invention followed by the World Wide Web and cell phones. We would be an entirely different society without them. Completely totally entirely different. They impact every aspect of our lives.  I guess that one wins in the modern invention category.

But still, I am totally digging the umbrella bicycle.  Woohoo to you umbrella bicycle guy! You Totally Rock!