the life you save may be your own

Yesterday I am riding home, and the weather is pretty good, and I am looking forward to going to the open house at my daughter's school, and I don't want to be late, and then I see something flash past just to the right of my wheels.  My brain rewinds and plays through the image again and what I think I have seen is a very small bird sitting in the bicycle lane.  

Bicyclists are close to everything, only pedestrians are closer and both parties see a lot of dead and injured animals.  On a bad day we see the shocking moment when an animal is killed and a car keeps on driving.  I know I should go back but I dread the misery of finding a terrified and dying animal.  Still I turn around.

It's a very tiny hummingbird.  It is sitting in the middle of the bicycle lane facing four lanes of busy and loud rush hour traffic.  I swear by anything holy that it's eyes are fixed in this total thousand yard stare as it appears to gaze listlessly at the steady stream of cars going by at about 35mph a few feet from it's head. Not without some dithering I prop up my bicycle and get between the bird and the traffic so as not to startle it into the road.  Then after more dithering (plus the anxious mooing noise I make when I am nervous and worried about doing the wrong thing) I kneel down and very gently scoop the bird into my hand.  It sits there, uncomplaining.  

Next I peer all over and around me looking for adult hummingbirds and looking for a nest I can boost this guy back into.  The only close tree is huge and high and over my head.  Maybe it has a nest.  Maybe not.  I call the Contraption Captain, the bird in one hand and the phone in the other.  I end up taking a small to-go container from my backpack and gently and apologetically I transfer the bird into the container and the container into my backpack.  

I continue towards home, meeting up with the Contraption Captain.  About a mile from the house we start hearing squeaking noises.  We think it's my bicycle but at a traffic light we realize - it's the bird.  

At the house we consult the internets and Contraption Captain fixes up some healthy (we hope) food for the guy.  We all take turns feeding him.  The bird's beauty and fragility - you can't be near to it and not feel something in your heart, I think.  For feeding we lightly touch the back of the bird's head and his tongue sticks out and then we present him with an eyedropper of the food and his tongue does that crazy crazy thing as he sucks up the nectar.  

The bird starts looking a little more hopeful.  Ok maybe not but I start feeling more hopeful.  He (or she) makes it through the night and eats a bunch more and shows some interest in flying.  As I write this he is en route to a further out town (by car alas) where there is a wildlife rescue that already has five of these little guys.  They will make sure he (or she) is grown up enough and stable enough and strong enough and then the bird will be released close to where he (or she) was found.  

I m fantastically happy about this.  So often I arrive too late, or without the right skills, or without the right tools to do anyone or any animal any good.  Just this once though I was in the right place at the right time and I am hopeful that a lovely little life was saved.  

Love.

Engineers (at least in my part of the world) really love their tee-shirts.  We love a tee-shirt paying homage to a favorite movie.  We love a tee that reminds us of a project we worked on.  A tee shirt commemorating a major outage is always full of win, really.  A tee shirt that sends up someone else's text editor of choice is even more win.  I just had a birthday and I got two fantastic tee-shirts and I am totally psyched.  

Here is a picture of one of my favorite tee-shirts.  Get it?  GET IT?  DO YOU GET IT?   I LOVE THIS SHIRT.

Some of the tee-shirts I see are a little creepy.  I know a senior engineer who periodically wanders around wearing a shirt that says "go away or I'll replace you with a tiny script."  But hey, just a tee-shirt.  Covers the nipples and adds some warmth and a pretty affordable thrill in an expensive life.  

Fast forward (and I mean really fast, really forward) to the people driving cars.  I watch these guys a lot.  You could say with some accuracy that my life depends on watching these guys so I am more attentive, more perceptive when it comes to observing the American Car Driver.   

What do I notice?  They don't seem very happy.  This is the bay area, where money rains from trees (haha, no actually) and so I am looking at some very high end cars but to this particular piercing scrutiny I notice that the people behind the wheel of the Porsche Carreras look like the people behind the wheel of the Toyota Corollas.  Bummed.  Disappointed.

Study the people around you and report back if they look like the people I see.  The people I am looking at are sortof sagging back into themselves, two chins become three, three become four.  Their mouths are fixed in a thin squeezy line.  The stare straight ahead.  Many will have a phone in one hand and they study it, their heads bowed and their lower lip drooping a little.  

Back to tee-shirts.  Do you follow xkcd?  It's even better than tee-shirts.  And one of my favorite xkcd graphics is about tee-shirts.  Someone I used to work with got the tee-shirt with that comic and wore it in to work.  It was a little uncomfortable.  

The idea I have as I study these alternately glum, angry, resigned, deadened drivers is that their cars are their tee-shirts.  Maybe if their car is sporty enough someone will love them.  Maybe if their car is luxurious enough they'll feel posh.  Maybe if their car is special enough, someone will finally think they are special.  And they're sad and hopeless because no matter what car they buy they are still themselves.  Ageing.  Lonely.  Misunderstood.  Frustrated.

what it's like, what it's like

I was riding home from work last week and there were these haunting delicate hints of wisteria in the air.  I could smell the dampness of the coming rain and the fried smells from In 'n' Out and the spicy smell of a Chipotle.  People who picture California may see Big Sur in their head or maybe the Golden Gate Bridge or Silicon Valley even but for people living here it is obviously more prosaic and I pedal past Costco, REI, several fast food restaurants and a bunch of gas stations as I make my way to and from work.  Yet in this very ordinary of worlds I notice the smells of trees and flowers...and last week I realized with surprise that the streams of people going by in their cars couldn't smell anything but the insides of their cars.  Body odor.  Shampoo.  Maybe new leather.

Because I am not in a metal box I get every noise un-muted and every scent unbound.  I think it must be like this for dogs.  They get all this information and one day they wake up and notice that everyone around them is oblivious.  The cars miss out on a lot of things (including some truly nasty smells that they generate) and they miss out on what they should be looking for (a kid running out into the road) and they also miss out on quieter things, like that the wisteria growing on the Costco building is in pastel lavender bloom.

A video made the rounds of my bicycle circles, it was a supposedly comic (not to the bicyclists obviously) duo ragging on how horrible bicyclists are, how they shouldn't be allowed on the road, how stupid lycra is blah blah blah.  I'm not linking to it because (a) we've hard it all before and (b) I got no wish to drive traffic to a troll.  I've been trolled by the best and this was no quality trolling - just two weak lazy people preying off an underclass.  I know these comic car people don't care about what it's like to be a bicyclist, but if I could corner them this is a version of what I would say.

You get up.

You get into your car.

You back out of your driveway and head out onto a shared road.  To your right is a slim bicycle lane and to the far right is an even narrower path for pedestrians and to your left is the road for trains.

These are special trains, they don't need a track.  The newest generation of these trains not only does not need a track, they are extra wide so as to be very comfortable for the passengers.  A train can carry up to sixteen people but it is more typical for it to have just a driver.  Unfortunately the extra width does mean that on narrower roads there is little room between you and the train, so you should be careful.

Did I mention the trains travel at 220mph?  They are much faster and more efficient than your car.

Technically the trains are supposed to stop at red lights and stop signs but sometimes they just slow down.

Periodically your lane will disappear and pick up on the other side of the train lane.  So then you have to look in your mirror and cross the train lane.  Some trains don't mind this and might yield to you but others get angry and speed up.

If you're unlucky the train driver is drunk or on strong prescription tranquilizers in which case they might not see you or even worse, get confused and start driving in your lane.

Of course if their lane is congested the trains will often drive in the car lane anyway.

On older roads there isn't enough room or train and car so they have just one lane and the trains ae supposed to be careful when they pass you.  Yeah that works well.  Not.

People in cars are encouraged to wear helmets because if you get hit by a train you are going to need some protection for your head.

Periodically a car gets hit by a train.  It's sad but really, what do the car drivers expect sharing the road with something so much heavier than themselves???  You have to wonder who would take a chance like that.

There you go.  What it's like.

well, that was depressing

Q:  Are you still a bicyclist?

A:  Yes.

Q:  You stopped writing?

A:  Yeah a bit.  The aforementioned friend died after the long illness.  My friend's daughter had a severe complication during labor and it looks as if the baby is brain damaged as a result.  I found all of this sobering.

Q:  And now?

A:  I'm in less of a dark mood.  I am excited that my favorite route to work which is seasonally closed may be open for bicycle business again in a few weeks.  

Q:  Anything interesting to report?

A:  I've seen a lot of car accidents in the past months!  They all roughly translate to "I was driving too fast and I hit another car and now I'm very sorry."  As I bike by the people standing next to their crumpled vehicles I think "I hope you learned something from this experience."  

your baby would probably be a better driver

One of the weirder aspects of bicycling (for me) is that it makes me very happy (peace!  love!  pedaling!  beautiful sunset!) and very scared (omg please don't back over me!) all at the same time.  Add to this that my sense of humor has never been entirely correct and you get a bicyclist (me) pedaling deliriously up a bike lane (oh bike lane, how I love thee, despite half of you being taken up by broken pavement and smashed up bits of car!) and alternating between crying unhappily (you killed that little cat you miserable fuckers!) and laughing (the sky is peach and blue and streaked with unicorns!) ...cheerfully.

Fortunately cars don't see bicyclists so I can behave erratically without fear of social repercussions.

I am sitting at a red light, wondering what I will eat for breakfast.  I'm a mammal.  Decisions like this are very dear to me.  The light turns green and I roll forward and clip in and begin pedaling.  I've made it about six feet when the road, and the bicycle lane I am in, veer slightly to the right.  No problem!  I've been turning my bicycle in different directions for about forty years now.  Yes.  Problem.  The giant shiny white Range Rover (does anyone else hate those things?) says "fuck turns in the road, I got shit to do" so instead of following their big wide freshly paved lane they roll into my crappy skinny broken up lane forcing me against a curb where I almost but don't quite un-clip before tipping onto my side.  I right myself and pedal on.

At the next red light the Range Rover is conveniently waiting for me.  "Hi to you too" I mutter dangerously as I scan it's snowy white rear end.  The rest of the world sees a white SUV.  I see a small mountain of rancid lard that's beached itself and is quietly grumbling and farting.

A magnet (I love these things!) on the back says "BABY ON BOARD."  I check to see if a baby is driving the SUV, as overall that would explain a lot and maybe even convince me to give this SUV a pass.  No baby.  Driver looks to be your usual blah blah female who is right now poking at her smart phone as she desperately whiles away the two minutes of otherwise unstructured traffic light time.   I lean over and casually pick the "Baby" magnet off the SUV and toss it under another car.  There.  Fixed that for you.

I told this story to a friend shortly after it happened and he was amazed.  "Don't they notice?"  And the fun thing is: They do not!  Cars notice like...nothing.  I honestly think I could drop trou and take a dump (sorry, vulgar, but cars, especially American cars, are super vulgar and you should speak their language don't you think?) on an offending bumper and no one would notice.

Don't push me or I might test this theory out.  Would be a fun headline if I got arrested that's for sure.

you have fucked with the wrong bicyclist

I have worked really hard to control the vitriolic outbursts that I direct at cars that behave dangerously towards me and mine.  

I know that if you get mad at someone who is, relatively speaking, holding a loaded howitzer you might get shot so it is important to control your temper.  I know on some level that if I chew out a car driver they may abuse a bicyclist further down the road and I would not like that.  I suspect that cars don't learn very much when shout questions about their sexual prowess and strongly suggest that no one wants to go to bed with them and so they drive like a douchebag to compensate.  

I know I should (probably) get behaviors like this under control.  I really do know this.

For awhile things went very smoothly!  I had this great alternate route that was totally car free and you would be amazed at how peaceful and pleasant I was.  I even slowed down a little so I could, you know, smell the flowers as I pedaled along.  Once a bunch of old ladies decided to have an impromptu yoga class that covered the entire path.  Did I get upset?  No, mon ami, I was absolutely serene and I even walked my bicycle around them.  It turns out that I'm not a walking talking volcano waiting for a chance to go all pyroclastic on people, I'm pretty easy-going right up until someone makes me think that my body is about to be smashed to pieces.  Then I get upset.  And if I get scared that my kid is going to be smashed to pieces?  I get really upset.  

So it is Christmas Eve day (yes, alas) and beloved older daughter actually has a soccer practice.  We decide that we will all bicycle to the practice and that we will then go downtown and wander around until it is time to retrieve older daughter and bike back to our home for more low key cheerful festivities like wrapping presents and making cocoa.

Often with me I am doing ok and then some car is mean and I cope but the next car that steps out of line I really go off on.  On this occasion, just outside the high school, a big red pick-up truck wanting to take a right on red gets mad at us for pedaling through and guns the engine as he passes, startling me.  I don't like being startled.

We get closer to downtown.  The town library is to our left and also a park.  On our right is a cafe and bookstore and we have a big street to cross and then we are in the downtown proper.  I tell you this so that you understand that I am not walking up an interstate here, I am in a totally ordinary place for a mom and her family to be.  

There is no bicycle lane and so we are pedaling single file (because cars love it when we are single file, right?  RIGHT?) towards a red light.  Contraption Captain is first.  Then beloved honorary daughter.  Then my darling Rapunzel on her new red bicycle that looks totally frigging awesome.  Then me, at the back watching my rear view mirror like a mother hawk.  Did I mention that the light was totally red?  It was red.  No one was going to get much of anywhere.  But what do I hear?

Honk.

Honk.

HONK.

HONK.  HONK.  HONK.  

HONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNK.

What.  Are you...are you...honking at...me?

You are honking at me.  And my husband.  And.  My.  Girls.

It's about to go down.

HonnnnnnnnnnnnNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnk!

I stop my bicycle and I turn around in time to see the car behind me give it one last honk.  I get off my bicycle and start walking towards the car.  Contraption Captain tells me later that he saw all of this in his rear view mirror and thought..."uh-oh."  I am aware of the kids and I know he has them.  I know I am going to take care of this car.

I get to the car.  It is no longer honking.  Actually I think if this car could cross it's legs to avoid peeing itself it would.  It is a very quiet car.  I gesture with a hard knife-like motion of my hand that the window should be rolled down.  The driver, an olderlady with giant black sunglasses pretends I am not there.

That is a mistake.  

I do not want the car to stomp on the gas and go over me or push by me and hit my family so in a weirdly lucid moment I lie down across the hood of the car, my bicycle held delicately to one side.

Yes.  Really.  I mouth the words "put.  down.  your.  window."

The window rolls down.  I walk over like a cop ready to issue a ticket.  The words hiss out of me as if I were a cobra and my voice is very low and very dangerous.  I say.  "What is your problem."

The driver knows she is fucked.  She starts saying "you were right there in the middle of the lane making it impossible to get by."

I smile and it is not a nice smile.  My low dangerous voice says "We are in the lane for people going straight because we are going straight.  SHALL I call the police?  Let's call the police.  Let's ask them where we were supposed to be bicycling here."

The driver does not want to call the police.

I on the other hand love the idea.  "Let's call the police!  Let's tell them how you harassed my family, how you threatened us with your car, how you honked and honked at a red light because you wanted us to get out of your way!  Let's call the police right now and talk to them about this!"

And the driver says, "I'm sorry."

And I love the words.  But not quite enough to let her go because I can sense that she is sorry that a middle aged woman is chewing her a new one but is not yet sorry that she drives like a mean selfish monster.  Her car is purring soft classical music.  I tell her to turn it off.  I tell her that I am out here, bicycling with my family, hoping to do a little shopping and that there she is is in such an incredible hurry to get to a red light that she has to lean on her horn and make me wonder if she is going to kill my beautiful daughters just so that she can get to her hair appointment thirty seconds faster.  I tell her that I am ashamed for her.  

She points out hopefully that the light is green?

I hiss "I'm.  Not.  Done.  With.  You."

Interestingly enough, the cars waiting for that green light behind her do not even breathe.  For just this once I have everyone's undivided attention.  I tell her to stop driving like a monster and I tell her that she will stop harassing bicyclists and that now I am going to pedal off with my family and if she knows what is healthy for her she will give us a great deal of space.  And all of a sudden I am done.  I back away from the car and I walk my bicycle back to where my family is waiting for the light to turn back to green.  When it does we pedal quietly through the intersection with the now very quiet are far behind us.  I tremble for another thirty minutes or so but in the end I am ok, and maybe I should be sorry for dressing down an impatient car.  But.  I'm not.  

waiting for the light

I'm heading home from work (again) and I am stopped at a red light and zoning out.  The bicyclist to my left is this tough old guy on a steel frame road bicycle.  We nod politely at each other.  I notice that he is studying me.  I turn towards him and he admits, embarrassed, that the way the light was falling across my face made it look as if I had a black eye, but I do not have a black eye.  He has this old school accent, like what I imagine California in 1940 to have been.  I smile and say some pleasantry about the evening.

A propos of nothing he says, this time without looking towards me, "Do you like cars?"  It comes out more as "Dew yoo lahk carz?"
I turn and look at him very directly, no smile on my face at all.  With a ghost of a Boston accent hovering between us I reply seriously, "No.  I do not."
The other bicyclist nods,  satisfied and equally serious.  "Me neither."

small peaceful moments in time

2013 was the year I made peace with other bicyclists.  I used to get bothered if someone passed me on my left as I waited at a stop sign.  I used to get childishly annoyed if a faster bicyclist went in front of me.  I'd get huffy if I saw a mother riding without a helmet.  I didn't like people on electric bicycles.  There was an entire litany of sins and annoyances that I would levy against the other bicyclists.

Then I decided to stop caring about the actions of other bicyclists.  I reasoned that they were not a threat to me the way cars were a threat and I decided that their presence, even if it was an uneven one, ultimately made me safer.

At first I had to grit my teeth and fake it.  I'd be pedaling through an intersection with the right of way and a bicyclist with no lights would cut across in front of me, out of nowhere, and startle me.  I loathe being startled.  But I didn't say anything, just clenched my jaw tight to keep the obscenities leashed.

And a funny thing happened.  I progressed from pretending to not care to actually not caring and from there I progressed to wishing these other bicyclists well, to hoping they had a good and safe ride.

So it is a few weeks before Christmas and I am on my way home from work and it is quite dark.  The road is a residential one and very bike friendly, both legs of it actually take you to different bicycle bridges.  The road forks and I need to go left.  Approaching me is a bicyclist who if she continues on towards me, has the right of way.  To my left is a car waiting at a stop.  Both of us bicyclists have the right of way over the car but I am watching the care carefully because I don't trust it to wait for us and I effectively have to cut in front of it to make my turn.

The bicyclist goes right.  I make my left turn.  The car guns it's engine with frustration at having to wait twelve seconds for two bicyclists (TWO.  TWO.) and then peels away and a moment later I almost collide with a third bicycle.  I am spooked because I pride myself on seeing everything around me and I have zero clue where this guy came from.  Zero.  I swerve around him and I say nothing and I feel no hostility, I'm just trying to get around and on my way and not have a collision.

The dark mystery bicyclist is now just behind me and he says in a self-deprecating way, "A light would probably have made that easier."  I turn to look at him.  He's a young guy in office like clothes on an ordinary bicycle.  I say "Lights help, yes."  And then.  "I think I have an extra.  Want one?"

He can't believe it.  He's ridiculously happy.  He tells me he had a light but someone stole it and he hadn't replaced it.  I show him how the neoprene ones  go on and off very easily.  We turn the light on.  It flashes a happy red.  He thanks me profusely.  He tells me that he was attending Stanford Medical school but is on leave to develop a drug that he thinks will halt the progression of a rare disease.  I tell him, gently, that this is all the more reason to have lights on his bicycle.  He agrees and we ride together for awhile and he thanks me so often it gets embarrassing.

If you have not already, turn and make peace with the bicyclists around you.  They are the ones with whom you truly share the road.  The forces lined up against us are too strong for us to be able to tolerate being divided.  We belong together.    

my suffer face

In the last year or so I have made use of one particular social platform in a low key way.  I use it to surround myself with bicyclists.  They're like a warm rug you can pull around yourself.  I don't contribute a lot, I just like to see the photos they put up - generally stuff like "me, on my bicycle" "my bicycle" and "me commuting on my bicycle."  I have a strong bias towards bicycle commuters.  I ride a road bike and I like being fast but for me, it's a commuting thing first and a love of bicycling thing second and everything else is mostly not there at all.  The cyclecross racers, and the roadie racers post pictures of their "suffer face."  It is a picture of them frowning mightily as they struggle bravely forward.  I get it, I used to have something similar when  ran road races and I was trying so hard to finish fast.  But commuting is different, I may work hard up hill or be fast but I don't suffer, or at least I don't suffer in that physical way.

I suffer in other ways.

Louis CK ran this great piece about not giving his kids cell phones because he thought it disconnected them from reality.  He goes on to talk about his experience being in his car and hearing a song and feeling terribly lonely and afraid and he wants to text everyone he knows but instead he feels the grief and cries and then feels better.  He's very funny and in my opinion spot on so if you have not seen the bit check it out.

In the morning I am very busy, I have to work with my husband to get the girls up.  I read to them.  The Contraption Captain makes breakfast and I pack lunches. Hair is braided and the day is discussed and I tidy up clutter and start laundry and clean the cat box.  At work I go to meetings, fix broken hardware, find problems, write documentation and...other stuff.  My mind is occupied at all times and when it is not occupied it wants something mindless to do because mindless-ness pushes back things I'd rather not think about.  Like my friend E.

I've known E for nearly twenty years, and we've shared many Thanksgivings.  She took care of my oldest when I was delivering my youngest and my oldest had never been away from home for the night but she had a fantastic time.  E and her husband D stayed friends with me when I split from my partner.  More importantly they stayed close to my kids who loved them.  About this time last year I got email that E had a brain tumor.  I Googled for it right away of course and it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that basically no one survived this kind of tumor at that stage in the game.  I hoped for different but I did not get different, and as I write this she is dying at her home surrounded by her husband and daughters and many friends.

I don't think about E when I am clearing up the dinner plates or when I am paying the bills I push the thoughts away of how I feel about her being afraid, of how frightened I am by the idea that her brain is swelling and her head hurts her.  I push the thoughts away up until I am riding my bicycle along some quiet stretch and then the thoughts come to me that E is dying, that I am far away, that there is nothing i can fix and little comfort I can provide.  The sorrow I feel is tempered by the steady up and down of my feet as I pedal and pedal and pedal.  It is as if my body assures me that something always goes on, even when something else is stopping.  I am alone as bicyclists are alone, not really seen by the world around them and the sorrow I feel about E touches the deeper sorrow of knowing that everyone I know will one day die, that my children are not immortal, that there is a great deal of pain in the world.  The corners of my mouth pull down and it probably looks pretty comical on a middle-aged lady biking as fast as she can, her eyes welling up.  My suffer face.

After awhile I start to feel better.  Nothing has changed but somehow you feel better able to accept what is happening, the things you cannot control, the sadness that exists, the wrongs you have done.  I keep pedaling and my mind is mostly emptied out and I watch for the cars at intersections and I am quiet.

a life without walls

I see a lot of the same people each day on my commute and there is definitely a favorite.  I think I prefer this bicyclist because he has a generous and ready smile.  We are always traveling in opposite directions.  We have never stopped to talk.  As we pass each other we wave or yell "good evening" or "nice weather" or "so windy!"  He noticed when I no longer pulled a kid wagon "WHERE IS THE WAGON?" and I noticed when his kids also had gone off to kindergarten "GROWING UP SO FAST" and then it was just him on the way to (I presume) his office.

A few weeks back the Contraption Captain was pedaling with me into the office and we saw this bicyclist and as we passed each other I called out "THIS IS MY HUSBAND" and he smiled and waved.

I saw the bicyclist again as I went in to work yesterday and as we passed each other he said "I ENJOYED MEETING YOUR HUSBAND!"

I was delighted and amused the rest of the way home and then today I was reminded of that moment as I read this article.  Cars do not do a good job of seeing bicycles and bicyclists are prevented from seeing much of what is in the car but almost everything else is seen, and considered, and on a lucky day, also understood.

dial 1-800 when I want your opinion I'll give it to you Mr. and MRs. SUV

This year Rapunzel started 4th grade, which means she starts at a new school.  Pele' started her freshman year in High School, so two new schools and two new commutes.

Rapunzel has been planning her commute for the last year.  She now walks to school and walks home afterwards unaccompanied by doting parents.  She informed us months ago, politely, that she would prefer to walk by herself and so we accompany her to the end of the driveway and hug and kiss her and then she sets out alone.

My father can't entirely get past this.

Father:  "does she run all the way to school?"
Me:  "I'm not there so I don't know."
Father:  "does she meet up with friends?"
Me:  "Well, I'm not sure actually, maybe sometimes?"

This solo behavior is in contrast to Pele' who liked the company of a parent even when she was not feeling very talkative and was always walked to school and was usually holding hands damn the torpedoes or any sneering teenagers.  Pele' has zero patience for sneering teenagers, demonstrating that at least one of my "you can go fuck yourself" genes will stay in the gene pool after I am gone.

I asked Rapunzel at one point about why she wanted to be alone (probably because I had paranoid thoughts that she did not want her peers to realize that the two weirdos in the area were her parents)  and she said, in a very civilized way, that being along gave a person a different perspective, one she enjoyed from time to time.  Maybe she is embarrassed by her two weirdo parents in which case I think it is extra classy that she considered our feelings so nicely in her response.  Rapunzel, if you ever see this and you were embarrassed?  Totally ok.  I embarrass myself some days.

So Rapunzel walks to school.  Check.  Cue Pele'.

Pele's high school is about four miles away and she is taking an extra elective which means she has to be there at the ass-crack of dawn.  We confer and after much hemming and hawing during which I consider the route (mostly ok for the US but not separated from cars beyond an occasional bicycle lane and including two nasty-ass intersections) and the hour (see ass-crack comment) we decide on her talking the city bus which stops conveniently near to our home.  Tada.  Contraption Captain works out the schedule and on day one of school she marches out to get the bus to school.  What could be more normal?

Yeah well this is the US where our city buses run on a best effort basis.   She sits out there and waits and nothing happens. She waits.  Nothing.  She waits.  Did I mention that Pele' is mildly obsessed with punctuality?  Pele' is mildly obsessed with punctuality.  Possibly a lot obsessed.  She and Contraption come running home totally breathless and if you think she gets in the car you are mistaken.  They get on their bicycles and she is escorted off to school and just makes it, go team.

The next day we tried and struck out on the bus again and by day 4 were were pretty well trained to bicycle.  If Contraption Captain is not available to ride her home she rides in to school on the back of his bicycle (recall it is giant and recumbent and comfortable for riding) and takes the (over-crowded) bus home and if he is available to assist (most days) she rides her bicycle in and rides her bicycle home with him again.

This raises the obvious question of "why does she need anyone to ride with her at all?"  The easy answer is "she prefers the company and feels safer with company."  The less easy answer is that I'm scared for her to ride by herself.  I'm scared some asshole will kill my daughter with their SUV.

Some people think this is silly of me.  I was at a soccer game a few weeks ago and this mother who has a kid at the same school asked how Pele' got to school.  I said we had tried the bus but it had been unreliable etc. etc. and so we were bicycling but that was nerve-wreacking also yet Contraption was accompanying her.  She didn't understand why I was worried about the route and repeated that we lived very close.  She said "you can bicycle of course, it is easy for you, for us it is too far."  I said that I was worried about the car traffic at El Camino and she looked blank.  She explained, more severely this time, "For us it is too far of course but for you, a very easy ride."

I smiled politely and said nothing else.

What I wanted to say was "I wish everyone who was driving their kid in to school but thought my kid should bicycle and who had no idea why that might make me nervous would park their SUV on a steep hill, release the parking brake, and then run in front and lie down so their own car could roll slowly over them."  Because fuck you lady.  Fuck you lady because I have biked past your house many times, it's hardly too far and your kid doesn't even have an early class, she's just a lazy fuck and so are you.  Fuck all of you who do jack shit but enjoy telling me that what I do is easy or not enough or too protective or whatever the fuck your problem is.

I feel better now, thanks.    

I told you about Rapunzel in an effort to show that my anxiety has a single focus:  death by automobile.  My 9 year old walks to school solo and I am cool and not obsessing.  I know it's a decent neighborhood.  I know she can look after herself.  I know she can stay out of the road.  There is risk to all things but the risk created by Rapunzel walking to and from school is not far from the risk of getting out of bed on a cold day.

The risk to people on bicycles is real.  Redwood City Girl died last year on a "safe" route and was even held at fault for dying.  An experienced bicyclist was just killed by a delivery truck who turned left into her in an area where bicyclists love to swarm and train.  The conclusion from that death was "maybe we should ban bicyclists from Skyline."  As a friend said "How come the answer is never to ban the cars?"

As long as this country continues to take such a lackadaisical  attitude towards the safety of our children on their way to school (and their parents and other relatives on their way to work or the store or wherever) I have to be the one who does the due diligence.  Maybe I can sort a route I feel ok about.  I hope so.  But right now I have her bicycling and I have a set of experienced adult eyes watching for her and that's what I need to feel ok about this.

bunnies!

I've seen three rabbits so far on the part of my commute that is new and car-free.  They are quite tall and have giant ears that stick up over the tall grass.  They ignore me entirely until I stop my bicycle and stare at them at which point they look over at me, stop chewing, and say "wtf are you staring at?"  Then they either freeze "if I don't move, no one can see me" or they run off "I am the wind!!"

Here is a picture with a rabbit in the middle.  Really.

It's still pretty new and exciting for me to see animals that run around as opposed to the flat kind I generally see on my regular commute.

Here's a close-up of the bunny ears.

His friend had already taken off when I got the Contraption Captain to take this picture.  Hopefully they don't put a picture of me pointing and staring with flecks of drool at the corner's of my mouth up onto their Facebook.

And here is a copyrighted picture in which you can actually see what a California jack rabbit looks like.  Big.  Long ears.  Sensitive whiskers.

the lonely sea and the sky

I asked the Contraption Captain to take a picture of the new pretty part of my commute when we were riding together yesterday.  He thought maybe I should wait for a more classically beautiful California sky but I like this quiet pigeon-colored grey.  You can see the faring of his recumbent in the lower right corner.

a legend in your own self-important mind

Last week I was waiting at a traffic light and as is usual for me I check out the cars to my right and left to see who is listening to music with headphones, who is texting, who is just sitting there staring straight ahead (pretty much no one) and who is frothing at the mouth because in any crowd at a red light at least one driver generally seems to be on the verge of a psychotic break.

To my right is your garden variety huge huge huge SUV.  It is driven by a sour looking woman with white earbuds who is arduously typing a text into her phone.  Her lips are all squeezy and pursed out and her brow is furrowed and she has these weirdly tiny hands and I am suddenly reminded of what a Tyrannosaurus Rex would look like using a calculator.

Her car is a Ford Expedition.  I smirk.  The Expedition is billed as providing [please use a deep voice when reading the next three words] "Confidence and Comfort."  The propaganda shows it with a backdrop of a lovely forest, a backdrop of a lovely ocean, and towing a giant boat.  Yes.  This is the car that you take to travel to distant unspoiled wilderness where you drop your powerboat into the water of a clear lake and then pollute the bejesus out of the area with your noise and fumes.   Except the most strenuous trip this spotless dingless SUV has ever made was to the Pottery Barn at the Stanford Mall. Then I see her license plate and it is a play on the word...

LEGEND.

I laugh out loud.  There is something so incredibly sad and pathetic (but funny!) about a person sitting in a metal box and awkwardly tapping at a phone who self-identifies as "legend."  Fortunately since bicycles are pretty much invisible she doesn't see me laughing.

But the best view turns out to be to my left.  Here a crabby looking guy on a shitty motorcycle (my co-workers have fancy motorcycles so I know a cheap craptastic one when I see it)  is glowering at the world.  He has a basic model motorcycle helmet on his head and the helmet has a carefully lettered slogan and the slogan is:

I AM THE SHIT THAT HAPPENS.

And all this time I've been blaming our two cats!

Seriously.  Seriously?  "I am the shit that happens?"  What the fuck does that even mean?  All it means to me is a long curving brown growing pile of stank.  My brain starts helpfully suggesting different images of shit happening and it's about as disgusting as you might expect but it is also really funny so I stand there laughing so hard that I have to unclip on both sides.  I laugh until the light turns green and then I weakly wobble off towards home.

There is nothing so filled with potential for humor as a totally humorless automobile.

hanging up my spurs. a little.

A few months back I am heading in to work and the ride has been pretty pleasant but I am coming to one of the dangerous ugly noisy pieces, a highway overpass, and I see a cat at the side of the road stretched out and still and I can see that it was flung there after being hit and it is silent and dead.  And my morning falls apart a little and I continue bicycling but I start crying in a hopeless desperate way.

I'm a pretty private person so maybe it seems odd that I'd cry openly as I head down the overpass going straight with cars cutting back and forth across my path but crying while I am bicycling is a not so bad way to calm myself.  There is the patient activity of the heart, the steady movement of the pedals, and the tears get taken away by the wind.  I don't have to worry about privacy because of course people in cars mostly do not see bicyclists.  They have a difficult time perceiving us as people who might be scared if they pass fast or close and so they definitely have a hard time seeing or caring if we are in emotional pain.

So I cried in relative peace.  That week I would also see a small black squirrel run out and try and turn around and then get killed.  I passed a snake that had been flattened in the middle before dying.  The cat was of course there every day.  My right hip has been bothering me, nagging at me, and it slows me down and at times it feels that what I am seeing is also slowing me down.  Somewhere in this week, no fewer than three cars in one day tried to squeeze around me for the tiny distance that I wanted to take a lane and I had this flat grey ugly thought.  One day it's you that will be hit.  And you can't stop it.   The grey thought stays stuck in my head like a piece of fruit furred over with mold.  

The same afternoon that I have this bad grey thought I see this guy who works for the same company as mine and in the same building.   He's told me that he often sees me bicycling when he drops off his kids at school.  Sometimes he sees me bicycling as he drives home from work, I know because he usually calls some kind of a greeting.  I asked him once if he ever bicycled into the office and he said "sometimes" ad I asked if his kids ever rode into school (they have a very good route for it) and he said "often."  Today I notice that he has an old bicycle and a helmet.  I brighten a little because I am glad that he is doing some riding.

He heads for the door  at the end of the day and he stops to tell me that he has been bicycling to work three times a week.  He said that my example had been part of the inspiration because he noticed that with traffic, I was getting to his house about as fast as he was getting to his house in a car.  I made appreciative noises.  Then he told me that since he started bicycling regularly his diabetes had been under far better control, which I find unsurprising but also very cool.  Then he asked me about my route and I told him and he mentioned his route which wasn't a familiar one to me.  Then he invited me to ride with him and I found myself saying "yes" which is totally unusual for me and he said he wasn't very fast and I said that was fine.

We exit the office building area by a back driveway and instead of hitting the regular road we noodle onto a maintenance road that goes behind a golf course.  That went along for a bit, awkwardly over an unpaved area and then easily along a straight path and then we were dumped out beside a nature preserve.  It was incredibly quiet.  I could hear myself pedal.  The wind pushed me around and I could hear the wind.  I could hear the sounds made by the ground squirrels as they lay around nibbling and talking to each other.  When birds took flight, and there were a lot of birds I could hear the sound of their wings.

After awhile we went through a gate and down under a road and then through another gate and then a few minutes later I was at my original route, but with all the worst intersections cleared away.  I was totally calm and happy.  I didn't really recognize myself, actually.

This is my new route.  Yesterday I saw three feral kittens lead by their feral mom cat.  I've seen snowy egrets standing silently in the shadow cast by the road overpass.  I saw two jack rabbits with big tall near transparent ears.  I've seen those birds with the long poky beaks for digging in mud.  The best part is that none of the animals and birds I see are flattened rotting corpses.  They're alive and they look cautiously back at me as I pedal in to work or home from work.

I see other people too, although not a lot.  Bicyclists heading somewhere or bicyclists training for something.  I carefully skirt people standing in the middle of the path studying birds through binoculars.  I slow down and give room to mothers pushing strollers and joggers running side by side.  It turns out that when I'm not threatened, I'm not mad.  I'm quiet.  And because I have spent time on roads I know (I think) a lot about how to pass those who are smaller or not as fast.  You give them some room.  You slow down a little.  You murmur  "g'evening" and you continue on your way.

Like Persephone this pleasant interlude cannot continue indefinitely.  The gateway to this route goes underwater in the California winter and the access to Elysium will close down.  I will again be shunted back onto the difficult roads and indifferent cars.  But for now I am not thinking about anything other than my two trips a day through peace and quiet.

The Wide Stance

I love to race where "race" means that I never stray off my commute and I don't run red lights (you can if you want but I'm way too chickenshit for that stuff at my age) and mostly I just try and pass and "win" on the long straight-aways.

I've never found the words to really describe how much I love this, this pedaling as fast as I can, this being a middle-aged lady on an off-rack bicycle flying down the road swooping past the other commuters until I encounter a like-minded racer and we fight for the front place, sometimes one of us drafting behind the other.  On a good day we worker bees, we ordinary people form a pace line of sorts, skimming along the road like lithe little swallows on their way to Capistrano.

I love that stuff.  I won't say it makes life worth living (my family would be that bit) but it makes life so incredibly rewarding on a daily basis, this racing, this beating heart, these well-powered lungs.

What is one teensy tiny annoying fly in the ointment?

The wide stance.

Please guys.  Please.  Stamp out The Wide Stance.

I guarantee you women are nodding their heads right about now, at least any woman who has been on a bus or subway.  The Wide Stance is a guy who sits like this:

 

See?  See how the guy is taking up two seats and has his legs all spread out?  I mean we get it, we get that your testicles are the size of bowling balls and that they need adequate room for breathing and ventilation but we (the rest of the non bowling ball world) would really like to sit down sometimes and when you allocate a seat to each testicle it makes it that much harder for the rest of us to find a place to sit down and rest our weary dogs.  

What does this have to do with bicycling and racing home on my commute?  A lot, it turns out.

Ever seen those teeny tiny hard roadie seats?  Mmm-hmmm.  Here's how it goes.  You and me are at a red light.  It turns green.  You take off in front of me and that's cool, I like a good fast pace.  But then you do it.  You slow down.  And you move way out to the left until you are within about two feet of the double yellow.  You can do this because we are riding on Bicycle Boulevard, and because of that we should be having a great time tearing up the road as we hurtle our respective work laptops home to rest for the evening but not you.  You slow way the hell down and then sprawl your bicycle across the entire lane.  

You totally know I'm there.  I mean you were behind me at a red light ten seconds ago, remember?  I try and pass and you move further to the left.  I think about the right side (although I am a big believer in the right side) and you move over there and so I head back to the left and you are there.  

Cmon, man!  Cmon.  You're inching along now at a bare 12 mph and I'm dying to make a run for it but you are all over this road who ever guessed a skinny bicycle could take up that much room!  And so I finally risk life and limb to pass way the hell over in the oncoming traffic lane and I do get away from you and your giant testicles, one for each side of the road and I continue on and totally drop you know why?  The real commuter racer types don't win because they block off anyone from passing, they win because they ride faster then the next person.  See how that works?  

I got my whinges with girl bicyclists but I'm trying hard and I can't think of them ever trying to actively block someone from getting around them the way you do with your extra wide stance.  

Rapunzel, to me, "Can I see that picture?"

Me: "Sure.  It's not that exciting."  [I scroll up] "Just a guy taking up two seats."

Rapunzel shakes her head "Wow.  And he could easily fit in one.  Some people."  [shakes head]

good news bad news

I went to New Mexico to visit family a few weeks back.  When I visit family I generally end up getting on an airplane and this makes me feel guilty because I do believe in climate change (clap your hands if you believe) and flying around to make visits is part of the general level of pollution.

I know know know I could bicycle to New Mexico.  Or Massachusetts.  In fact I would really like to do either of these rides.  Unfortunately I'd have to first quit my job and second strap my nine year old to the hood of my bicycle after mile ten followed by strapping my 14 year old to the rear fender of my bicycle after mile twenty or so and that really slows me down and the paternal unit in Massachusetts and the two in-law units in New Mexico are not getting any younger.

So at the moment I am in Massachusetts doing a lot of swimming and before this I was in New Mexico and this short story made inexplicably longer, by me, is about New Mexico.

First I saw exactly one bicycle in the four days I was there.  Second I spent more time than before with my very intelligent brother-in-law who happens to be a neurosurgeon and I finally got to ask him all of my questions about brain surgery which was great although I still think that if someone has a tumor it would be worthwhile to look into a cerebro-spino fluid replacement because the cancerous cells are there and if we could swap that fluid out with healthy fluid that would be good right?  Apparently this is totally out of left field and no, it is definitely not correct but whatever.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law do not bicycle, a subject I skirt very carefully.  They scuba dive, and they ride horses, but ixnay on the icycle-bay.  We were talking about vacations and in the manner of making pleasant lightweight talk I mentioned that I would love to see Costa Rica and maybe ride one of the famous Costa Rican zip lines through the jungle.

My brother-in-law said "oh, absolutely not."  I was surprised.  I asked why.  He said patiently that he was a neurosurgeon, and he worked trauma, and he saw a lot of people badly messed up by vacation adventures along the lines of zip-lining through jungles.

I took a breath and I said "so, do you see, uhh, a lot of bicyclists?  In the ER?"

He didn't hesitate.  "Oh yes.  I see a lot of bicyclists."

I asked carefully, "The bicyclists, did they get hurt because they were umm, running red lights?  Behaving dangerously?"

He looked totally surprised as if he had thought I was smarter than this.  He said "What?  No, never.  They're just going along and some car hits them.  Often the driver of the car is drunk."  He looked pensive as if he was searching backwards in time to give a totally complete answer.  "Once there was an occasion where they said the bicyclist had fallen inexplicably, turned into the path of the passing car so maybe on that one occasion it was the bicyclist but hard to know for sure."

Me:  "Did the bicyclist make it?"

Him:  "What?  Oh no.  He didn't."

So there it is.  As every bicyclist I have ever met suspects, it is not the way we ride that gets us killed.  It is the way the drivers drive, that gets the bicyclist killed.

I still hope to ride a zip-line in Costa Rica one day.  But I'd like to bike down there, not fly.

Five Easy Pieces. Flight.

A week or so back I was about a mile in to my trip home and I saw a green light ahead and stepped up the pace to a sprint.  Since there is no bicycle lane (but five car lanes, go figure) I was in the middle of a lane but travelling with the cars.

I got through the light and was feeling very very decent and immediately after there is another light and it is also green and I start trying to get this one also and this amazing thing happened.  I all of a sudden was pedaling crazy faster.  In a short miracle-esque moment, for reasons I don't get at all, my middle-aged body found something much younger in itself and my sprint doubled and although I am now heading up hill I am passing all the cars to my left and by the time I was pedaling through the (still green) light I felt like I was flying, or maybe even gliding because I felt as if it was all easy, I felt as if I could have gone as fast as I wanted.

Then it ended, as suddenly as it had arrived, like a thief disappearing in the night and I was back to me and breathing really hard  and the cars were again passing me as if I were just an ordinary bicyclist.  But for a minute or two, I was not an ordinary bicyclist.  And that minute or two was incredibly delicious.

Bob Dylan has this song I love, it's called "Let Me Die In My Footsteps."  My favorite version is on disc one of the three disc bootleg series.  He wrote it after seeing people digging massive underground bomb shelters for shelter in the event of a nuclear war.  Lately I have been thinking of this song when people tell me that bicycling is too dangerous, or when I see another article of a person being killed or badly injured by a car while the driver walks away without consequences.  

I want to take my chances out here, on my bicycle, because everything that matters to me is out here.  The air that flows around me and smells of hot sun and white oleander and tall drying grasses.  The little ground squirrels that I ride by camped out by the side of the road nibbling tender green shoots.  The shadows that flicker through the trees.  The big white egret that flies overhead and the circling hawks that scan for long legged rabbits.  I love to see the same people pass me each day and they wave and smile and then go on to their own jobs or take the dog out for a walk.

Moments of flight are daily reminders that I cannot bear to lock myself away in a metal box from everything that matters to me, even if it is marginally safer in there.

Five Easy Pieces. Roadwork.

You know how in Orwell's 1984 we have always been at war with Oceania?  Well on my commute we've always had the road construction.  It's has no start and it has no end, just like that war with Eurasia we got going somewhere awhile back.  The road is being ripped up or pipe is being put down or an office building is being torn out and replaced by a bigger glassier office building.  Me I'm just on my increasingly grubby bicycle trying to get to work or trying to get home from work or (for variety) trying to get to the food store.  

Road construction is not my friend.  It starts with a gigantic sign that says ROAD WORK which is always perfectly centered in the middle of the skinny little sorry-ass excuse for bicycle infrastructure lane that I ride in and that I fantasize gives me some little delusional protection from the cars.  So that's right out, the bicycle lane.

Next you see a sign saying "Lane Closed" and all the cars bunch up like cows lining up for a slaughter house and the more desperate ones go to the front of the line and moo in low anxious voices while the more patient cars stay in a fixed lane with a centimeter of space between bumpers so that the cows (I mean cars) that are queue jumping have to stand to the side.

Where does this leave the bicycles?

Not in very good shape thanks.  We sometimes get a helpful nudge in the shape of  BICYCLE LANE CLOSED.  Sometimes the cars are actually shunted into our lane because their own is being made smooth and lovely and so they use our broken sorry ass lane during the repairs.  Mostly we just fend for ourselves, sticking our arms out as we signal that we want to move away from the backhoe beeping along in our direction.

Yesterday I was pointed towards the sidewalk by a guy in a yellow vest.  Oh yay.  O Frabjous Day.  I ride onto the sidewalk and pedal uneasily up the broken bit that's actually for pedestrians and I am dodging angry strollers and throwing apologetic looks at the other bicyclists limping along in the other direction.  We get moved onto the sidewalk but somehow the cars never get moved onto a teeter-totter to get to work.  So unfair.

Once I saw a sign that said "Walk Your Bike" and I thought to myself "I'll walk my bicycle when you get out and push your goddamned car you dumb sow."

Some days there is a long line of cones with cars to the left and no road construction to the right.  I mean eventually they plan to do a little bit of a something but why bother taking down all the cones just for lunch break?  When this happens I ride on the construction side of the cones and I watch out for yawning holes and snicker at the cars the way the cat thumbs her nose at the dog when he's on a leash.

It's a special hoot when they shut down Bicycle Boulevard because unlike the cars who can detour around using another road, we only have this one street.  The result is that the construction workers put up barriers and we pause and then flow around them, like ants at a picnic.  Each day they make the bicycle deterrents a little more stout but each day we find our way around anyways, weaving around piles of gravel and crap and on and off sidewalks until the road returns to something like normal.

And then there was yesterday.  I'm hurrying along Charleston when I see that the entire road is blocked off and there are police everywhere.  The cars are detouring around.  I stop and ask "could I go along here?  On the sidewalk maybe?"  The cop explains that there is a gas leak and I will have to go around.  So I set out completing an extra circle that involves me heading up San Antonio in a tangle of angry detoured cars ad then having to take the left lane and getting beeped at and harassed.  Two other bicyclists arrived and huddled in my shadow.  We talked before the light turned green and agreed that we wished we could have just taken our chances with the gas leak.

Five Easy Pieces. The Crazy

I'm bicycling home from work and I'm thinking about a problem I failed to solve and my legs are going along in their mindless way and I am keeping an eye on my rear view mirror but I am riding on "Bicycle Boulevard" and feeling relatively safe about my situation.  The road is sadly narrow and it is is made far more narrow by cars parked on either side because even the so-called Mini --- the late model Mini that they sell in the US is as fat as any other car.  Compact.  Mini.  Hahahahaha.  If these parked cars were people they'd be dozy old senior citizens whose soft bellies flowed over thei elastic waistband of their pants.

Slim little bicycles pass easily in both directions, cars not so much.  I tell you that bicycling mothers and fathers can be spotted herding small shoals of children on little bicycles or in trailers as they make their respective ways home from summer camp or the playground so that you can understand that the road we are talking about here is not the Indianapolis 500 speedway although some of the cars going by make it feel that way.

I watch in my rear view mirror as a car comes up behind me very quickly.  I look ahead and see a second car heading towards me in the mindless way that cars travel when the next traffic light is not on the horizon.  The car coming up behind me is going very fast and I pull closer than is safe to the doors of the parked cars on my right.  The speeding car passes me way too close and way too fast and still accelerating and I am startled and unhappy but not nearly as unhappy as the oncoming car who sees the windshield of an approaching automobile and pees a little and has no where to swerve and so just bleats a whiny little tiny Volkswagen bug bleat.  Weah!  Weah!

I watch Fast Car ignore the bleating and progress up the street at speed and then pummel a 4-way stop with nary a pause and then repeat at the next 4-way stop.

I arch an eyebrow.  I pick up speed.  I consider giving this driver some verbal abuse because he is driving like a bag of dicks***.  It's easy to come up behind Fast Car at the next red light because even a Fast Car can only make so much progress on a tiny residential street dotted with stop signs and traffic lights and parked cars and strollers and bicycles.

Fast Car is now Stopped car.  He wants to take a right at this intersection but the road is narrow and his way (it is a he) is blocked by a car in front that is going straight and waiting for a green.  He honks angrily at the car that is blocking his way.  That car ignores him because he cannot believe that a someone would honk at a someone else for waiting at a red light seeing that it is after all the law.

I am quite close now.  As I watch, Stopped Car (nee Fast Car) gets out of his car (!!!) and strides angrily over (holy fucking shit!!!) to Waiting Car and starts shouting at Waiting Car.  Waiting Car becomes Terrified Car and hunches back in his seat and stares up at the driver of Stopped Car (who I now christen 'Nutsy Fucker') and does not roll down the window.  Smart boy.  The light blessedly turns green and Waiting Car hurries off and Nutsy Fucker runs back to get into their car and tear away doing 40 in a 20 zone.

Holy shit!  So so glad I didn't say anything to Nutsy Fucker when I had the chance.  What did Nutsy Fucker look like?  Old white guy with a straight across mouth in a tight thin line.  Normal other than the froth dotting his chin.  My my.  Someone needs to have their meds adjusted.

Moral of the story?  Don't stick your bicycle in the crazy.  Not worth it my friends.  Stay safe out there.


xoxoxo,

Chafed




***special thanks to the Australian engineer who taught me this wonderful term, you rock my insult-world TW