Email and vacations do not mix well. We have an expectation of near-instantaneous response in our culture, so we have to put bots on to auto-respond in our absence. Unfortunately, the bots don’t keep the emails from arriving in the inbox so, rather than return to work with a reasonable expectation of a few calls to make, we return to mountains of emails to sort through and triage. “I know so-and-so is away, but I’ll email anyway and they can get back to me when they return.” The message just sits there waiting, or in the case of the BlackBerry user, it blinks there until you make it go away. A hundred tiny decisions a day. I remember when if you called someone and they didn’t answer, you shrugged it off and called again later. Of course, that was sometimes annoying, but there was an understanding that other people have other lives and are not always available. There was that inherent delay that put perspective on the urgency of a person’s needs–if you reeeeally need to speak to me, you are going to have to track me down in the physical world. Is your need to communicate so urgent that you are ready to drive across town/track me down face to face? Some folks blame the telephone for putting us on this slippery slope, but the culprit is really the answering machine.

I applaud the boundary setting. Keep up the good work!

I’ll defer to you on the number of folks and bikes… the numbers were my count of the standing bikes at the end, once the crowd had dispersed. I’m short and was standing near what I’ve called the side stage, and so some folks could have zoomed off once you all landed at the end… I was misdirected by a festival booth-er as to the best place to stand, and didn’t have the most fantastic view.

AND, my most sincere apologies for what you’ve read as cattiness… it was really just my perspective of the event, as a newbie to the Denver area and a 15 year booth-er (HIV, queer youth, etc) in Providence. I’ll agree, well done for the first time around! (See above, I’ve added your numbers…)

Gay boy, appreciate your sisters. You can start with learning how to count, then later we can talk about cattiness vs. appreciation. A HUGE success for the first time out for the women of Denver and Colorado.

Cathi Woodward, Pres, DDOB.