Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

Bike

There won't be anything about the US, I'm kinda sick of it. I'm reading all sorts of nonsense on Wikipedia and retelling it to you in Russian. Of course, this activity is more dignified than reading idiotic blogs on LJ, which are essentially no less dumb than fishki.net, but still. What's really cool to do on a summer evening is to be out in nature, which is exactly what I was doing today - riding my bike.

By the way, I replaced the rear sprockets (cassette) and chain on it - they were worn to trash from winter and lack of maintenance. The new stuff works pretty well, plus the manufacturer's name sounds funny to a Russian ear - SRAM. The cassette is simple, a PG-830, the chain is a slightly higher class - PG-880 or something like that. I don't know much about all this - the mechanic  at Trek said it's easier to get the simple ones and change them more often than buying expensive ones. The latter only make sense if you ride a lot and in harsh conditions - through mud and puddles. The prices, by the way, are normal - not much higher than the famous store ChainReactionCycles, where all the bike fetishists, I mean bike upgrade enthusiasts, shop. While I was at it, I also bought a universal bike tool, lube that's better than oil, patches with glue, and a chain cleaning machine. It lets you clean the chain without taking it off the bike. Very relevant for a lazybones like me. Although my laziness is so monstrous that up until now I haven't cleaned anything at all, except for relatively rarely washing the bike.

I was riding around Lake Bolshiye Stropy, didn't ride that much, about 25 kilometers, but it took me a whole two hours - the terrain is way too rough, in some places I was almost walking, in others pushing through the forest. I'm SCARED of ticks, was too lazy to get vaccinated, as usual for me. But while I was pretending to do cross-country, that is, off-road riding, on the shore of the lake opposite the hospital

I saw something interesting.

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European Health Insurance Card

Если вы житель ЕС и поедете в другие страны ЕС, рекомендую прочитать вот это, затем получить бесплатную страховую карту для ЕС - European Health Insurance Card.

Инфа с форума:
https://www.paintballer.lv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8048&sid=9bced9daf195b22b94a9720317e17435

Официальная инфа на русском:
https://www.voava.lv/rus/ES/EVAKkarte/ka_iegut_evak/

Заказать карту бесплатно через интернет можно здесь:
https://www.voava.lv/lat/es/LV_iedzivotajiem/formas/?doc=252

Поробнее почитать можно здесь:
https://web.archive.org/web/20081023054501/https://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/healthcard/index_en.htm

Срок годности карты составляет 12 месяцев, делают её 15 дней.

Полезно смотреть euronews, как ни крути.

Предвосхищая главный вопрос: да, если вы едете в Европу надолго или знаете, что можете сильно заболеть, обычную платную страховку тоже имеет смысл сделать.

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USA — 24, Woodman's Supermarket Chain and About Food, Part 2

Now directly onto the groceries. The vegetables taste normal, even if potatoes the size of a small melon are a bit unnerving. The strawberries—and this is the talk of the town—are horribly tasteless, never mind that they're the size of an average apple. One thing I liked absolutely, fantastically much. It's fresh, assorted julienned or whole vegetables in a bag. You can get cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and so on. They're very tasty; you don't have to chop anything yourself, or, more importantly, buy a mountain of stuff that you have nowhere to store, and it's also awesome to dunk them in dip. We have those too, but they're rare, expensive, and taste awful.

image 
There wasn't one exactly like this, of course, but overall it's pretty close

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USA — 23, The Woodman's supermarket chain and about food, part 1

I continue to delight you with convoluted linguistic constructs and literary devices. In the title, lest you think ill of me, it's not a grammatical error at all, but rather an anacoluthon. Since out of everyone reading these lines only phoneme, and maybe ears_of_tin, actually knows what this word means, once again there's no one to call my bluff. [rubs hands together gleefully].

Amidst all our tourist perturbations we found the time to visit a Woodman's supermarket, where my sister once worked as a cashier. Since then she has become an accountant in the service of a benevolent megacorporation that saves people from terrible diseases. Yes, such things happen. If you don't believe me, you're absolutely right — save people it does, but only those who have insurance. Which about a quarter of the US population lacks. In general, Americans tend to consider their healthcare system the worst in the world, because of all this crap with insurance and terrifying prices. But in my opinion, every nation thinks that way, even those who have free and decent healthcare, like the Canadians or the British.

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