Ride Home 7/18

For anyone interested in getting into the blogging racket, I don't recommend the twice daily posting with the latter post contingent on your writing when you get home. Sometimes you just want to eat goat cheese and drink box sangria and don't want to type out another post about riding your bike on the same streets you always ride. Good thing that's not me! I can drone on and on about the same roads 4-eva and no amount of goat cheese and box sangria can lure me away from my intense desire to foist my uninformed ideas about urban bicycling on you, the helpless, hapless reader!
I accidentally rode rammed my foot into my front fender this morning, nudging the fender slightly and now the off-kilter fender blade rubs ever so gently against the front wheel. Or at least it did until I bent it back over and now it's askew in a different direction and while still off-center, it rubs less and is now virtually noiseless. I ought to spend more time with it to ensure that it will be ok in the long-term, but so it goes.
My philosophy has always been that if it's not too broken, don't try to fix it (because you will brake it further). It's not a good philosophy, like objectivism, but it gets the job done. If only my bike were made of Rearden metal! (I'm going to keep going back to the Atlas Shrugged well until it runs dry. Is the Atlas Shrugged well in Galt's Gulch? Who knows? I mean, who is John Galt?)
Hipster on a fixie, right by school. Blah blah blah. Track stand. Beard. U lock in jeans. (P.S. Levi Commuter jean? ugh. How many times must we pass through the irony wormhole in which wearing these jeans is seen as anything other than completely stupid? As many times as Dagny Taggart... oh screw it.) I don't understand the assault on the freewheel, which to my mind ranks as one of the greatest inventions in the history of man. Of course, I have no sense of perspective.
It's rare that a driver totally blows a stop sign, but it happens. It's just sort of weird when it happens and when it happens right next to you. Especially when you stop. Oh well.
I apologize to my mom for making her nervous with this morning's post. I wasn't trying to worry you.
I'm probably a jerk for admitting this, but there isn't much of a better feeling than passing someone while riding uphill. Just makes you feel good about yourself. Conversely, there's no worse feeling than getting passed. I think that's why I ride up every hill, no matter how small or short, like a total maniac. I apologize to anyone who's offended by my Braveheart-style screaming as I ride by.
Sometimes when my path is blocked because it's too narrow and cars block the entire lane I pick up my bike and ride on the sidewalk. Because I can.
The Trek Allant. I ask you to consider it. Kent likes it. I see a lot of them. I rode one once and it made me feel like a milkman, but I think that's ok. It's hard to be a bike commuter and not like something that comes stock with a rack and fenders. And the people I've seen riding them look genuinely happy.