Ride Home 8/22: You're done in this craft war

By the time I arrived home, I was very wet. It started drizzling and then it started really raining and there wasn't much I could do about it except ride through it and it was mostly fine because it was neither especially hot or especially cold nor especially dark nor did the rain prove especially daunting. If anything, it was a boring rain. But a boring rain still leaves you wet and it still leaves your bike slightly less responsive with regards to braking and so I found myself nearly colliding into the rear end of a car that was in the process of being maneuvered out of a parking spot by Lincoln Park. I went around a blind-ish curve and maybe I went too fast, but there I was shooting the gap between the car pulling out and the car alongside me that had stopped to allow the car to pull out. Rain. It can get you sometimes. But it didn't.

Well before the rain happened, I had left work and I rode behind a woman who took her hands off her handlebars to tie the front of her shirt into a knot, exposing her midriff. Ok.

I rode down Massachusetts and I was tailgated by a bus driver. This is a decisively most unpleasant experience. I ran a red light to put some distance between us. I'm not especially apologetic about that.

When the rain starts, how do I know when to put on my lights? I don't have windshield wipers. I don't have a windshield. I didn't put my lights on my bike.

I wore my new Road Holland jersey home. Typically, I'm the kind of person who would make fun of this kind of admission, but gosh, sometimes it feels great to don bike clothes and bike home like you're not some kind of citizen cyclist, but instead some kind of super-special bike person who is special and different and special. You may mock me accordingly. I don't think I rode any differently.

So many bikes. Even in the rain. Someone should give the bicycle a Nobel Prize. Maybe for economics? Or peace? Or medicine? Basically, any and all Nobel Prizes should probably be given to bikes. Except for literature. That should go to some obscure midcentury small country European playwright because boo Nobel Prizes.