I've written here before that I am almost the only person left to get reader mail by regular mail anymore. Almost all of it calls me names and begins with stuff like: "Dear jerk,"

I got a plain white postcard today with the return address of "Future Dust, Box 10805, Rock Hill, SC 29731."

The space where you write something states "Purposely empty space," with an arrow pointing to the empty space.

And on the front of the postcard is the statement, "Thank You For Not Breeding"

Mixed response on me blasting away in Saturday's Herald at South Carolina's contest to rename its annual end of grade test. Change the name, same old baloney, I say. Especially in York County where three of four school districts are giddily adding football stadiums, or artificial turf, or scoreboards, or all three.

A few agreed.

A guy, J.B. from Charleston, wrote:

"I really enjoyed and appreciated your article about changing the PACT. You are right on all counts.

I asked readers about Hugo. Boy, do you remember! Readers called and e-mailed and even walked in today to talk about their Hurricane Hugo memories from 1989.

Here's a few:

Lady named Becky wrote in:

Before noon on the day that the column ran about Derrick Barksdale's non-profit outfit called "The Leadership Group," he received 8 phone calls and 15 e-mails from people wanting to help out with the program or get involved somehow.

More have contacted him since.

The group helps out black teenagers.

Anybody can moan about problems with the youth of today: Barksdale is actually trying to fix the problems.

Tonight Joe Biden gives a speech at the Democratic convention certain to be a doozy. The vice-presidential candidate yells, points, rants and raises a stink all the time, and hopefully tonight will be no different.

Joe Biden, like his politics or not, never bores anybody.

Back in October, when Biden was still a candidate for president, he stumped on Main Street in Rock Hill. That was long before he got about 16 votes in Iowa and dropped out.

One lady Janet wrote in response to the column about the sadness and joy mixed into a bittersweet cocktail that is parents dropping off Winthrop's arriving freshmen that parents never stop parenting, no matter how old the kids are.

Right she is, although I never wrote that these parents will stop doing the stuff parents do: Mainly, worry. But the teens are now away at college so all that raising of kids is set to pay off. Or not.

First in-box response among what probably will be many - one coworker already told me I am stupid for defending the rude and disrespectful - about today's column where I praise the common sense of the courts for dropping criminal charges against graduation cheerers from an unsigned email:

Just a few seconds after Jamaican Usain Bolt rocked the world Wednesday morning by smashing the 200 meter world record and winning his second gold medal, my cellphone rang.

I was in Van Wyck, writing about Shawn Crawford, Bolt's competitor and a native son. Dozens of times I have proudly, willingly, joyously, wrote about Crawford's greatness and that greatness of his family.

Sprinter Shawn Crawford took the bronze medal for third place in the 200 meters at the Beijing Olympics a little more than an hour ago.

I just got back from Van Wyck, Crawford's hometown just across the Catawba River in Lancaster County, and nobody is hanging heads over there. All still love their favorite son who made them all proud.

Van Wyck is home to about 300 people — if you count cousins visiting. There's maybe 400 when the Boral brick yard is running.

Crawford won gold in the 200 in the Athens Olympics in 2004, and a silver for a relay.

In a whirlwind Tuesday, the graduation arrests in June that brought national attention — and plenty of scorn - to Rock Hill and York County were dismissed in court.

All the people involved apologized for yelling or clapping in exchange for prosecutors dropping disorderly conduct charges.

Yet the issue remains hot: Is it illegal to cheer at graduation? Or is it just bad manners? Or is the policy of not allowing cheering until the end a silly solution anyway?

Much scorn has been tossed at me about the Dora the Explorer backpack I used on the bike trip.

I deserve it all.

However, my oldest daughter, 13 going on 30, stated flatly after watcvhing the video, reading all the comments: "That's it! Nobody gets to make fun of my dad!"

She paused and said: "Except me. Dad, you are the worst."

I love you, too.

Readers chiming in in droves already about the stupid stunt I pulled riding a bicycle and walking 14 miles to work yesterday.

Pam M. even said "she appreciated the photographer getting your smelly self."

True, I did stink. That photographer was of course the great and incomparable Andy Burriss.

And by the way: I drove the old jalopy to work this morning. 23 minutes, door to door. I arrived early at 7:46 a.m.: Smelled and looked a lot better than yesterday, you can be sure.

9:30 a.m., an hour and a half after I normally get to work, I made it. Dragged myself through the door after walking about 7 miles after bicycling 7 miles.

Never, ever again.

It took less time than I thought because I was afraid if I stopped I would never start again.

Those hills on U.S. 21 are mountains. I swear I saw a glacier snow cap on two of them they were so high.

I took so long to cycle across the Catawba River Bridge that people probably called 911 to see if there was a roadkill on the bridge.

Andrew's passing Winthrop University on Oakland Avenue in hopes being at The Herald in about 10 minutes.

If he does, that will complete his 14-mile trek in a little more than two and a half hours.

I don't know if that's a record, but sure beats Andrew's initial estimate of all day.

Andrew Dys was passing the Arby's on Cherry Road at 8:15 a.m. when he called to check in.

"I feel like somebody hit me with a truck," Dys said. "I road a bike for seven miles. I would rather do anything other than this."

He's walking the remaining four miles or so to The Herald on West Main Street. Google maps says it should take less than two hours.

We'll see.

It took about an hour to get from Dys Manor in Fort Mill to the Catawba River bridge.

“So far, so good,” Dys said.

His travel companions, George and Frank, have been pushing him and keeping him from falling, he said.

More than half of the trip down. Soon, he’ll be walking the remaining six or so miles.

Google maps says that should take about two hours.

He's actually doing it.

At 6:45 a.m. Andrew Dys departed for The Herald. A 14-mile trek he's taking by bike and feet the day after "Don't Drive Day."

“It’s going to take me forever,” Dys said.

By his side, he has more than 140 years of experience he calls his chaperones -- local cycling club members George Davis, 68, and Frank Rizzo, 77.

Can two water bottles and a CPR technician keep Dys alive as he rides his daughter’s bike from his home in Fort Mill on U.S. 21 to the Catawba River bridge? If he makes it that far, he’ll walk the rest of the way.

Stay tuned.

Few columns have stirred interest like today's about the heretical omission of Duke's Mayonnaise from a recent Chicago-written story about best tasting mayo.

Calls, e-mails, school kids to little old ladies to politicians and everything in between. Duke's from toddlerhood to dotage, recipes, memories. Duke's is one thread to the family that cannot be snapped.

"I’ve only lived in the south for 20 years but even I know it’s Duke’s all the way!!---Denise"

The early betting line on me making it to work Wednesday from Fort Mill bicycling halfway and walking halfway has it 10:1 against and most say I don't even make it to the Catawba River.

One rascal said today: "If he passes a bar without stopping, it'll be a first anyway."

Reader Philip Schwerin wrote: "I enjoy the majority of your columns; you are the best thing in The Herald along with the crossword, comics, & a couple of those guys that appear in the opinion section (Pitts, Friedman, & rarely Sowell.)

It is fair and right to say I took a few days off for vacation until late last week. I wasn't back 72 hours with a couple columns under my belt and I made a mistake.

I would like to blame the vacation's beer and the Cavalier rum and the mother-in-law but that is not fair and right. I can only blame myself. A correction will run in the paper tomorrow.

The Rock Hill High Class of 1959 ring lost for decades that was returned to the late owner's daughter in Montana is from the Class of 1959, not the Class of 1957. The date was wrong in Saturday's paper.

Whoa — "Hold the phone" as my late great old man used to say.

I wrote a column that ran Sunday about some letters recently saying my recent columns advocating applause at graduations, motorcyclists who want to run red lights are not freedom fighters, my admittedly difficult times with parenting, and how readers say I am more rotten than Idia Amin, dumber than Pauly Shore, more hated than Ian Paisley.

But some devoted readers came to my rescue.

In my list of beers, how did I forget Red Stripe?

The Jamaican beer, that during Hurricane Hugo in the Caribbean that was just smashed in some places became a symbol because after we got electric power restored everybody watched "The Mighty Quinn" on VCR tapes at least a hundred times, and Red Stripe is one of the movie's main characters.

Probably because I drank so many of them.

But I will not forget a reporter who leaves The Herald after this weekend named Adam O'Daniel.

The phone is ringing off the hook about today's column about Coroner Doug McKown.

One guy laughed, loved the comparison to Napoleon.

Next lady, T.B. from York, said "He's just like you say. And you did it right. Not offensive, not mean, just right on."

Next lady, T.R., said, "I loved it."

E-mailer, L.G., said "You hit the nail on the head."

In a truly incredible display of snobbery after I wrote that Lake Wylie access stinks for the non-rich, one commenter wrote that if the riff-raff like me want to use Lake Wylie, we should buy a boat. That person claims "No more taxes," while likely counting up the saving from his property tax cut enacted last year.

Right out of the chute this morning I got this from reader K.C. about the lack of swimming access in York County when we have so many miles of shoreline on Lake Wylie:

Readers are mad about what I wrote about in today's paper: Somebody stealing the three-wheel trike of Tommy Kimble, a guy in York with Down syndrome.

Before 9 a.m. I had calls from people who wanted to buy him a new one, people who wanted to give him another one, and one lady named Doris who said, "If I find that guy who took it, I will ring his neck!"

York County people don't take kindly to rascals taking the wheels from a super guy like Tommy. They are right to be angry and frustrated.

First person I saw this morning said her son at age 4 told a guy at a barbecue, with a beer he had taken from the fridge; "This Bud's For you."

2nd person: "Tough assignment," she said. "Spend half the day in a bar."

Well, I am a team player.

My column on how Budweiser's sale to Europeans won't change the beer - to the relief of so many lager swilling millions - brought out many memories of Budweiser from so many:

*The Bud versus Bud Light Super Bowl bottle battles
*The damn Clydesdales
*"When you say Budwesier, you've said it all...da da da da da da..."

Reader K.C blasts me for my Friday column making fun of the governor for proclaiming motocycles running red lights is liberty. She is not alone. Many commenters today have said I am a nitwit for making fun of something apparently as big a deal as motorycles getting to break the law and shoppers who forge the line in '10 items or less' get nothing.

She says my daily columns both "rub her the wrong way" and "irritate" her. Here's our exhange:

"Let me first say that just about all of your articles rub me the wrong way.

Got this today from a lady, D.M., about a recent column about my teenager being embarrassed by everything I do and say:

8:22 p.m. here at The Residence in Charlotte, where Lou Petrozza is throwing his Hell's Kitchen viewing party. The Winthrop catering chef is one of the last two standing on the Fox TV show. At stake is a year working in LA.

Lou welcomed me: "Andrew!"

"Lou!" I say.

"Come on in," says Lou.

Might as well have been his house on a Sunday with the ravioli p[ress working in the basement.