Monday 11/30/09

Human Interest News — Posted on November 30, 2009

Riding in style
You wouldn’t know it by looking, but when Lan Yin Tsai jumps on a bicycle, she means business. The 84-year-old recently completed her 26th riding of an annual 150-mile charity bike race in New Jersey. Her age-and her attire-make her an unlikely regular at the City to Shore bike race to raise money for multiple sclerosis research. In late September, the octogenarian donned her green turtleneck dress and her high heels and climbed aboard her purple one-speed for another 150-mile bike trek with competitors less than half her age. Tsai said her formal apparel is simply how she learned to pump the pedals in her native Taiwan. “I went to church, so I always dressed up and would ride my bicycle,” she told CNN. “So that’s why I do it that way-I do it that way naturally. That’s the way I ride my bike.”

Fifty-year fine
A former student with a guilty conscience returned two overdue books he checked out from Camelback High School in Phoenix-in 1959. The anonymous former student included a $1,000 money order when returning two Audubon Society books with a note explaining the books were lost when the family moved in 1959. The note explained the former student had calculated the overdue book fee at 2 cents per day per book-the going rate in the 1950s. The librarian at Camelback says the books are back on the shelf.

Holiday diet
With a little diet and exercise, experts in Edmonton, Alberta, feel confident they can help Lucy shed 1,000 pounds. That’s because Lucy’s a 34-year-old Asian elephant for whom a half-ton only represents about 11 percent of her jumbo-sized body. Currently Lucy, who has lived at the Edmonton Zoo for 33 of her 34 years, tips the scales at 9,360 pounds. But zookeepers say she’ll need to drop weight to help her breathing and arthritis. The experts’ plan? They’ll be exercising the elephant more often and will be cutting her carbohydrates by scaling back her fruit intake.