Don't Leave Home Without It

Overheard on the way to work:

30ish man getting into car with kid. 30ish woman in doorway of house says,

"Honey, are you taking the bong?"





OK, she could have said "bomb," either one is pretty funny

Driving Miss Daisy

I'm riding home from work Monday night. It's dark. I'm coming up to the Publix on Riverside, meaning I've got to be on my guard for cars pulling out in front of me or backing out of parking spaces along the street. It has already been a bad night. Cars have been giving me about an inch to ride on. I've had to stop at stop lights on Riverside. Nobody uses turn signals before they turn in front of me.

A car pulls out of the parking lot and is going parallel with me. I'm far enough on the right side that it doesn't affect me. The window rolls down. It's an old black lady.


"I do beg your pardon, sir. I surely didn't see you there."

I was in a good mood after that.

Dear Lady in the Black Accord

First off, that red thing a block ago? That was a stop sign. You were supposed to apply the brakes.

Secondly, in America, when making a turn, we generally only use one of the two lanes in the road (i.e., not the one that might contain another car or bicyclist on his way to work). I'd go into how easy it is to make a turn signal in today's modern car, but I've given up on that. The savages have won.

You did look very happy talking on your phone, but did you ever stop to consider the person on the other end? Do they really want to listen to your bullshit at 8:15 in the morning?

"Guess what? I'm driving to work!"
"Daddy's little girl has certainly grown up."


"How's your day going?"
"I dunno. It's 8:15. It hasn't started yet."

However, if I hadn't stopped to yell at you, I might have missed seeing the following things on my way to work:

A black cat wearing a fluorescent pink cast chasing a bird

A fat guy with no shirt on, man boobs out in proud defiance of the laws of both God and man, pushing a dog in a baby cart in the 40 degree weather. He looked a lot like a younger version of this guy:



A woman in a '70s Cadillac singing along to the Eagles with the window open

A woman on the Riverwalk singing over and over again, "Jesus, Lord almighty."

It was like I was in an art film (the kitty with a cast represented my soul), or perhaps you actually did hit me like you wanted to and I was stuck in some sort of weird purgatory until I could absolve my sins.

So actually, thanks for running that stop sign, making a wide turn with no signals and almost hitting me. It started the day off on a surreal note.

The Sting

I decided to take Thursday off. I had some errands to run and hadn't been able to get out on the trail in a long time, and besides, I just needed a little time off. Hey, get off my back, it was a long week. Jeez, what are you, my boss?

Say, you don't suppose my boss is reading this and realizes that I didn't have extra deadly swine flu Thursday, do you?

So I must have had my mouth open when I was riding down the trail. I've been perfecting my mouthbreather Halloween costume. All of a sudden I feel a bug fly into my mouth.

"Hey," I think to myself. "That was a really big bug." The thing is all tangled up in my mouth between my lower lip and teeth and I'm trying to spit it out while trying not to veer off the road. I'm also noticing my lip feels like I got slapped, but I figure that was just the impact.

The bug doesn't want to leave my inviting mouth. After a couple spits I finally get him out of there, but not before I start feeling sort of funny. "Must have been where he hit me," I'm thinking. "I mean, right there in the inner lip, of course that's gonna sting for a while."

So I've got about 6-7 miles to go and I can feel my lip swelling up. Again, I'm thinking that it's just the impact, since we were both going pretty fast and that's a sort of sensitve area.

By the time I get off the trail my lower lip has swollen to Popeye proportions. I get home and call the doctor for an appointment and sound like a stroke victim over the phone. Never one to let a gross medical condition go to waste (maybe I can squeeze some sympathy out of it, or at least post gross pictures of it on the internet) I try to take some photos of my swollen lip but nothing comes out.

Of course by the time the doctor can finally see me most of the swelling has gone down and he can't find any stinger or anything in me. He writes me a prescription for some steroid pills and sends me out into the world, wondering why I came into his office with such a made-up story. Later on I notice that doc's steroids haven't made my arms any bigger either so I'm thinking of just buying them from that dude that hangs out at the gym from now on.

So my relaxing no work day ended up full of bee venom and doctor tedium. To make matters worse, there was a retirement party that day so I missed deviled eggs. I have learned my lesson and will never play hooky again.

New York was Cool; Hope I Didn't Cause an International Incident on My Birthday.

Went to New York this weekend. It was awesome. I ate and drank all sorts of treats (the Vietnamese just might have overtaken the Cubans in the great sandwich wars), saw this really cool lounge singer/comedian guy, hung out with some good friends, put an old French lady in the hospital, got some culture and learning at some museums, yeah, New York, that town really has its stuff together. If you get a chance, book a flight right now, because - what's that? Oh yeah, the French lady.

I rented a bike on my birthday and my friend Curt took me on this long tour through Brooklyn. It was awesome. We went through all these cool little neighborhoods and parks, went over that bridge from "Once Upon a Time in America," rode to Coney Island like in that Ramones song, and just had a great time. I got to see all sorts of cool stuff, like this:


And the opening shot of that old "Barney Miller" show.


We crossed over to Manhattan in the early afternoon. We were going pretty fast in the bike lane through all this crazy traffic, and Curt had been warning me all day to watch out for people opening car doors into the street, so I was being pretty safe and paying attention.

Then this old French lady materialized right in front of me in the bike lane.

I didn't have time to slam on the brakes or swerve or anything really and the next thing I know I'm on the ground. I ask the woman if she's alright and I go to put my bike on the sidewalk when some dudes say, "Where do you think you're going? You're not going anywhere."

"Yeah, I'm not going anywhere," I said a little more forcefully than usual. "I'm just putting the bike up on the curb. I thought New Yorkers were all blase about people getting stabbed and mugged and stuff, somehow my accident happens in front of Batman.

Now if professional wrestling and shennanigan-related incidents have taught us anything, it's that cuts to the head will produce a whole lot of blood. So she didn't look good. She also got a pretty good shiner. By the time I was up the paramedics had been called and some of the crowd had sort of patched her up with some napkins. She didn't speak any English, and her daughter didn't speak much more, so that didn't help, either.

The paramedics examine her and take one of the napkins off her head. I was sort of wondering how bad it really was when I see this massive patch of blood and flesh. Holy crap, I really hurt her, I thought. Then I realized that that was just a napkin underneath the other one that had soaked up all the blood. She had a small cut and seemed to be OK from what everyone could make out what with the language barrier and all, but she went off to the hospital for stitches or catscans or whatever anyway.

I dealt with the cops who were pretty cool about the whole thing. I got an incident report that I have to call about in case anything else happens. I really wanted to take some photos, but I figured that wouldn't be too cool, so I only snapped this one on the sly:



And that's how I spent my birthday. I hope she's feeling better and this didn't color her impressions on her American vacation.

So remember, always wear a helmet and look both ways before crossing the street.

By the way, uh...does anyone know anything about ribs? Mine still sort of hurt when I breath in deeply.

Does This Sort of Thing Happen to Normal People?

So I'm riding home Monday at 6:00, just when it's starting to get dark. About a block away I see this little black dog running pretty fast. Then I see a boy of about 10 years old chasing after the dog.

"Mister, please help me," the kid pants. "Please help me catch my dog."

Well, I can't really refuse that. I park my bike and figure the dog will see a new person and come up to see me, then either me or the kid can catch her.

Nope. The dog runs at me, then takes off in the other direction.

"Come on, please get off your bike and help me catch her."

I get off and put my bag down on the sidewalk and start running for this dog. The dog is running on to porches and then running away at full speed. Every time I sort of start to half-ass it after the pooch, the kid seems like he's about to burst into tears and urges me to catch her.

Finally the dog goes into a back yard. The kid starts closing the gate and pleads with me to close the other one.

"Yeah, I don't know if we should mess with someone's gate like this."

"Please, please, please," the kid wails, so I close my part of the gate and figure with the kid and the dog in the yard, my work is done. Plus, I was sort of getting tired of the chase, what with little Vince Lombardi there telling me to keep hustling after the world's fastest dog.

Naturally, as soon as I close the gate an SUV pulls up.

"Hi, um...I'm sorry about this, there's a kid back there trying to catch his dog. He chased her back there and I'm really sorry about messing with your gate and..."

The woman was actually very understanding and thought the whole thing was funny. If I had pulled into my driveway and seen some helmeted guy coming towards me after closing my gate, one hand would have been on the final 1 in 911, the other hand would have been wrapped around a gun, and my foot would have been poised on the gas pedal ready to floor it.


I guess that's the sort of thing you get to miss driving to work.

True Tales of Wilderness Survival

I pull into the Baldwin Trail this morning a little before 8. I get all my stuff together and before I start down the trail this guy says, "Hey, mind if I ride with you for a little while?"

What? I come here to get away from people and clear my head. If I wanted people around I'd ride the bus or something.

"Uh, yeah, sure."

So the guy stays with me for a while.

"I've seen you out here before and you're always alone."

Yeah, well that's the way I - waitaminute! Didn't Keith tell me that this place's bathrooms were a notorious gay pickup spot? What does he mean he's seen me here before? I've seen hundreds of people on the trail but I wouldn't remember any of them. Damn these ruggedly handsome good loooks!

The guy looks to be about my dad's age, with a bald head and a moustache. He keeps up with me for a couple miles, talking the whole way while I respond with 'yeah,' and 'uh-huh.' He tells me how he is a home inspector and wait - didn't he say he worked at the bulk mail place down the road?

I wonder what this guy's deal is? He hasn't really said anything sexual, but he's starting to give me the creeps. I suppose if it came down to it I could take him. He's not wearing a helmet, so I could headbut him, then give him a punch or two and take off. Wait, when was the last actual punching fight I was in? 20? 19 years ago? And he probably has some sort of special super pervert strength he'll use to drag me off the trail.

"I saw this thing on the TV last night where that ACORN deal paid this black kid a bunch of beer and wine to vote 58 times for Obama."

"What? Early voting isn't even open yet. How could anyone vote? And also, they've been looking for voting fraud for years and haven't come up with anything substantial yet. I flipped through the New York Times and the Washington Post online this morning. Seems like they'd mention something like that."

"Yeah, well I just heard it on the radio yesterday."

Wait. I thought he said he saw it on TV. Holy crap. He's got the Jesus fish on his shirt. Republican talking points, Jesus shirt, moustache. Those are the guys that are always caught in rest stop bathrooms with Cub Scouts after railing about family values. Alright, I've been polite too long, it's time to get out of here. What the hell, normally the trail is like Grand Central Station on weekend mornings, now that I'm riding with Talky the Rapist the place is dead.

"Well, you'll understand when you're older, but I've got to go relieve myself. Good talkin' with you. God bless you."

"Uh, nice meeting you."

And with that, he pulled into the little restroom hut thing at the six mile marker, I guess to wait for someone else to molest.

As I got to the end of the trail I remembered that he asked me how long it usually took me to finish. Maybe he wasn't a pervert after all, but using that as a cover to ride back to my car and break in. I doubt he'd want an oxidized Honda Civic with 200,000 miles on it, but I did have my new cell phone hidden under the seat. Shit, I hadn't even figured out to use half the stuff on it, now that dude was going to break in and take it, probably ending up by calling all my contacts and talking their ears off before going to their houses and molesting them.

I made it back to the car in record time and naturally nothing was amiss, but man, did that dude ruin my morning.

Happy Trails

After riding my bike to work every day for about a month, I've gotten sort of addicted. On the rare day that I have to drive the car I feel sort of weird - I guess because the daily ride burns up a lot of energy that I later convert into crazy and/or worry.

This week I discovered the Baldwin Trail, this cool 14.5 mile bike path about 5 miles from my house. I've been there twice this week. The first time I figured I'd do 5 miles in, then 5 miles back which is my daily commute. After about 6 miles, I noticed I wasn't dying, so I ended up doing the whole thing. It probably helped that Christie is redecorating the house, and my once mighty Man Room is being reduced to a Man Corner or Man Alcove under the rising tide of beads and fabric, so I felt it was better for me to be away from the house as much as possible.

Today I took the camera with me, since I noticed all sorts of cool animals Monday. This morning I saw a family of wild turkeys, a chicken family, and a big indigo snake, but they were all too quick for my camera. Instead, I got a picture of a cow.


Most of the trail is covered by a canopy of trees so you don't get too hot.


Through most of this ride, I had Toto's "Africa" and a bunch of Journey songs going through my head thanks to some karaoke last night, so it was sort of like I was reliving the audio of one of my 8th grade dances. I did a passable version of Tom Jones' version of Prince's "Kiss" last night but feel I could have performed better had I hit the gin and tonics.

You also get to pass by all these cool looking swampy areas.


And a gun range


A big chunk of the trail goes around the back of people's farms and trailers and stuff. I read a review that thought this was pretty trashy, but it reminds me of growing up, so I kind of dig it. I didn't take any pictures of people's houses, 'cause I was afraid the sound of freedom might be coming after me.

These are the sort of trails you could find moldy old Penthouse and Playboy magazines on back when I was a kid. The internet has made things a lot easier.


Towards the end of the trail, there's this little skatepark. Man, I would have loved a skatepark when I was a teenager. Actually, I probably would have come up with some Dead Kennedys-esque conspiracy theory about how Reagan was gathering all the skaters in one place to ship them off to the camps or something.

Yeah, I was pretty stupid back then.



You see those? Those are the legs of a man, not some car-driving pansy. Suck it, OPEC!

Burning Bridges, Breaking Chains

I went ahead and cancelled my parking last week. Naturally, this morning on the way to work my bike chain popped off right at the beginning of the Riverwalk, which means that now that I'm all addicted to riding to work, the bike will be in the shop for a while, waiting for the bike dudes to act like dicks to me for not buying a thousand dollar bike and instead riding my free Target/Wal Mart crapper.

For those keeping count, this makes a TV, an external hard drive and a bike that I've managed to break in a little less than two weeks. If you are a parent, you should probably keep your kids away from me just in case.

But you know what's awesome about riding to work? The Riverwalk. I was going to take some pictures this morning but I wasn't feeling very photographic after walking my bike the whole way.

I had been on Riverwalk once before to watch the 4th of July fireworks, but didn't know how long and awesome it was. You get to ride right next to the water, for downtown it is fairly bum-free, and if you get really lucky, when you go over the overpass thing there'll be a train on the tracks right below you. Sometimes you have to dodge around the office ladies out for their morning constitutional, but it beats driving through the streets (Hey America - that stick on your steering wheel? That's a turn signal. It signals which way you are going to turn.).

Sadly, I think my Riverwalk days are over for a while, at least until they figure out what keeps breaking my chain.

I am Iron Man

I finally rode my bike to work today which is about 5 miles, according to the smart computer. I've been planning it for a while, at least since my parking doubled. Eventually I'd like to make it every day, but we'll see what happens.

It only took about 40 minutes to get there, and I surprised myself by not dying. I think I even managed not to smell too bad afterwards, but that's not really for me to say.

Couple things I determined:

I need to get a better seat.

I need to do a bit more research into that whole 'gear' thing. I kept getting the gear where you pedal and pedal and pedal without getting anywhere.

I also need to get a bigger helmet. I have a huge head, full of dreams and smarts, so I look like a gorilla wearing a kid's hat.

Even though I'm a dirty, oily man, I was able to clean up OK.

Riding home against the wind by the river about killed me.

Will I be able to eventually do this full-time, not having to pay for parking or gas and possibly not being so fat? Well, we'll see. With my excellent timing, I started this little experiment about a month before the temperature hits 90s/100s.