Ride Home 3/4: General Motors Glavine General Motors

"CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW, YUSUF ISLAM?"- Aquilon

First ride down Massachusetts since last week. It turned out better than the last time I rode down Massachusetts, an experience about which I've shared little, but that's ok. Per she of the Pietà, life is a mystery and we must stand alone, but presumably not alone in the absence of learning about my interrupted ride down the hill where I usually ride and now ride in a slightly different manner and that works for me.

Massachusetts to 21st to L to 11th to Pennsylvania. On Pennsylvania, I saw a woman wearing what I would call chef pants and this had led me to google "chef pants" and now I'm perusing chefwear.com and its chef pants of varying cuts and styles. I desperately await the Project Runway/Top Chef crossover episode. "Please pack your knives and make it work!" I'm not entirely sure why chefs need their own special kinds of pants and why non-chef pants might not suffice for their cheferly (I think that's a Maryland suburb) duties. Do sous chefs wear sous pants? Is there a special pant for sauciers and how might these pants appear, other than delicately sauced? The things I don't know about chef pants could fill a book and that book would be titled "I'm wasting your time with a long digression about chef pants in what is (or once was) putatively a bicycle commuter blog."

For how many people would you stop your ride home so you could chat and catch up? 2? 9? Another number? My number is pretty low (I very much like being at home), but I happened to chance upon one of those very special, chatworthy people today and it was Mary, of the Chasing Mailboxes and the many associated utility cycling "challenges." I noticed her as I rounded the Peace Monument and I stopped and we talked and the cold was no bother and the time passed easily and quickly, as it does in all easy conversations with kind and like-minded people. Of the many benefits associated with bike commuting, seeing familiar faces and being able to engage them in a manner more meaningful than a honk and wave (though I do honk if I ever remember to bring my clown nose) is certainly one of the top ones. It's difficult to wallow in misanthropy when you take the time to meet your fellow bike commuting misanthropes. FUN FACT: a fictionalized Moliere appears in an early chapter on The Man in the Iron Mask and I'll end this post on Dumas and full circle we shall have come.