The idea behind these assemblages of random snippets is that they are supposed to accumulate over the week and then we chuck them out on the weekend, when we’re rather be doing something else. But sometimes the bucket gets filled early, and great news doesn’t necessary keep. So…

  • These are words you don’t often get to put together in this order: mother and son weightlifting team. But there is such a team, and the duo will be participating in a U. S. Powerlifting Federation Regional competition in February. After winning gold medals in weightlifting at the state games in December, Dr. Segismundo “Picky” Pares, 54, and his mother, Maria Pares, 80, will be competing soon in Fort Lauderdale. Picky won for “raw unequipped bench press and dead lift combination total” while mother Maria took home three golds in her age group, with a 60-pound bench press and 127-pound dead lift. Maria told the Ocala Star-Banner this isn’t her first hardware: “I was a bronze medalist [in swimming] at the Pan American Games in 1946.”
  • According to a new study of bicycling and walking, seniors are “the most vulnerable bicyclists and pedestrians. Adults over 65 make up 10% of walking trips, yet comprise 19% of pedestrian fatalities. This age group accounts for 6% of bicycling trips, yet 10% of bicyclist fatalities.” The numbers are even higher—starkly higher—in places like San Francisco and Honolulu. The report, from the Alliance for Biking & Walking, also draws connections between the decline in biking  and walking since 1960 and the corresponding increase in obesity. The good news?  “From 2000 to 2009, the number of commuters who bicycle to work increased by 57%.”
  • There’s no free ride and there’s no absolutely safe one, either. In the aftermath of the tragic death of freestyle snowboarder Sarah Burke, Discovery News has published a sobering reminder that going downhill fast in the company of others and amongst multiple hard and inanimate objects can and sometimes does lead to injury. And death. And while you can wear a helmet, there’s not a lot more that you can do. In fact, “even as companies continue to release new protective gear, the rate of fatalities in snow sports hasn’t budged since researchers started tracking the numbers 40 years ago.” The advent of helmets has shifted the cause of the fatality from head injuries to trauma to the torso. Death is rare but constant, but injuries can be reduced through equipment and especially education. With training, according to one researcher, ski patrollers at 42 ski areas suffered 62 percent fewer ACL tears.
  • The story of Armando Basile, 65, pulled up in the backspray coming off Tuesday’s post about crazyguyonabike.com. The retired bricklayer is one of the world’s epic cyclists, with more than a million kilometers logged in 60 countries over the past three decades. The account starts in New Zealand (as, coincidentally, Tuesday’s post did) and concerns Armando’s recent tour, which included a spin across Australia and around Tasmania, followed by New Zealand. Yet to come: a ride across the U.S. and a flight back home to Germany.

In the past, we illustrated our hash posts (and before them, our stew posts), with pictures of hash (and stew) because it amused us. After a few months, we’ve decided that jumbled up foodstuffs don’t make great pictures, and didn’t really convey anything about the material. So we’re changing. Ultimately, we’ll probably use a photo of something that pertains to something in the post, which is the conventional approach. But today we came across this great picture of the eruption of Sarychev Peak, located on Matua Island in the Kuril Island group, northeast of Japan (June 12, 2009), taken by NASA (via Wikimedia Commons), and thought most people would prefer it to virtually anything else we might use.