I got one of those all too common emails today that purports to alert you to some malfeasance on the part of our elected officials.  This one was about how Obama wants to give social security benefits to illegal aliens.  They wanted you to add your name to the petition and bcc it to all of your friends.  The one thousandth signer was instructed to forward it to the White House.

The last seven people, in the chain that ended up in my inbox, had neglected to use the blind copy feature not only, but they had not stripped the previous sender's email recipients either.  Ha!  What a gold mine of unsuspecting people.  I decided to conduct an experiment.

First I clicked "Reply to All" letting them know that Snopes.com had deemed the information in the email was false and I included the link.  Then I sent an email to the first sender of record. 

So far, I've had one response from the first email.  The gentleman said "I probably get at least one of these emails each week and forward some of them without bothering to check snopes. One of the positive aspects of this is, assuming you send them to reasonably intelligent people, that it stimulates people to think about significant issues and become much more informed than they were before. More progress comes from differences of opinion than ever comes from agreement."

That seemed like quite an assumption considering none of the last seven senders had bothered to read the forwarding instructions, much less investigate the story.  But the intelligence of the original sender was clearly confirmed by her response: 

"Don't tell me what to think or do.  Do not respond to this message."    I guess I've been told!  Considering the snotty tone of my email, I suppose it was well deserved.

-----Original Message-----
From: Judy RutRider <judyrutrider@>
To: mrsdaley@
Sent: Thu, Feb 4, 2010 8:18 pm
Subject: Fwd: False Social Security information!

Dear Mrs. Daley:

I received this email, it having been forwarded seven times by people who took your word for it that it was the truth.  Might I suggest that you check your facts and then issue a retraction to all of the people to whom you forwarded it, so that they, in turn, can let their contacts know the truth?  The following link will take you to the true story about the origins of this email:  www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp

If it was your intention to spread misinformation, please excuse this email.

Sincerely,

Judy Tanner

Sally, Tim and I were headed up to see what kind of damage the heavy rain did to Yikes! today but got diverted by a sign on Garnet advising that the bridge at Greenspot Road was closed.

The old Greenspot Bridge is a narrow, wood and steel relic, built in 1912, that spans the South Fork of the Santa Ana River.  The floods of 1969 undermined one of the abutments but it was repaired and bears heavier traffic today than its designers could have ever visualized.  That same flood took out the newer, bigger Orange Street Bridge and the Alabama Street culverts (both downstream), testimony to the durability of the ancient bridge and the wisdom of its location.

Curious to see why the venerable structure was out of service, we set off over hill and through orange groves, to see for ourselves.  It was hard to imagine that the 6 or 7 inches of rain that fell last week could have wreaked the kind of havoc that it would take to close this bridge (though it has been deemed "structurally deficient" for years), especially in light of the newly erected (about ten years ago) Seven Oaks Dam built just a mile upstream. 

We approached the bridge from the East, descending a steep, rutted, gravel road to the river bed.  We could see no damage, as a matter of fact, the river was absolutely dry.  Since there was very little traffic on the bridge, due to the liar, liar, pants on fire signs posted several miles away, we decided to ride back and forth across the creaky old thing. 

But first we had to scale a rock and concrete wall that was about six feet high.  (You can see it on the far side of the bridge on the left.)  Tim scrambled nimbly to the top and we lifted our bikes up for him to hoist onto the wall.  It was about two or three feet wide on the top, just wide enough for him to lay our bikes down while Sally and I scaled the wall.  Tim isn't a big boy but he's very strong and had no difficulty giving Sally a hand up.  I had watched Tim's technique of using momentum to get his shoulders over the top and then using his arms to lift his body high enough to swing a leg up so I followed his example.  I didn't make it look easy but I made it.

We pedaled merrily down the middle of the normally busy road to a dirt road off to the left that climbed steeply back up the ridge we had descended earlier.  It was a granny gear struggle and I was grateful when I slipped into a small rut, lost momentum and was forced to dismount half way up the hill.  Sally gamely maintained her line and rode all the way to the top. 

Steep climbing is as much about keeping your weight distributed over both wheels as it is about strength.  Tim, being new to mountain biking, is still perfecting the skill and lost traction before he ran out of strength.  When I lamented my lack of stamina he kindly told me, "Don't feel bad, I fell over back there and had to walk too."  How sweet is that?!?

A little farther on Tim found a nearly vertical ramp that motorcyclists had made on a hillside.  Boys will be boys and Tim is no exception.  He saw no reason why he couldn't ride up it with sufficient momentum.  He sprinted valiantly towards the bottom of the ramp, lost speed a third of the way up and caught himself on one foot.  The bike rolled backwards and he got tangled up in it and fell backwards on his butt with the bike on top of him.  He disentangled himself and got up, determined to try again.  I could see that the second attempt wasn't going to be anymore successful than the first so I suggested that he wait a moment for his mom to catch up so she could watch too.

This time he started from farther away and in a bigger gear.  He hit the bottom of the ramp with more speed but with more weight on the front wheel than was propitious.  His bike lost momentum rather abruptly and tossed him neatly over the bars Superman style.  Adding insult to injury, his bike again mounted him, the seat attempting penetration. 

We did a few more grunt climbs and even a hike-a-bike climb just for the views of the valley and the brief pleasure of riding downhill, and then picked up a gentle trail we call Lower Workout.  Running short of time we took a shortcut towards home and came upon a group of guys driving four-wheel drive trucks.  They were at the bottom of a canyon that we wanted to descend into but their vehicles were blocking the trail.  We looked over the edge of one particularly steep trail, debating if the risk was worth the show off value.  It was rideable but so steep that it was going to entail some almost in control speed, and with a truck parked directly in the middle of the roll out, it looked like an uncertain outcome.  The guys below were shouting encouragement but good sense overrode vanity and we opted for a gentler descent.  (A sure sign of old age.)