Prison Memoirs

"Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't."- Eli Cash

I worked from home today, which a thing that I'm sometimes, but not frequently, able to do. I have a pretty standard work schedule and a pretty regular commute, meaning I ride into work on the five weekdays and at pretty on the "get in by 9, leave after 5" kind of schedule. How very gray flannel suit of me. Anyway, I realize that my situation, and perhaps increasingly so, is not really the standard one for many area bike commuters, who either work from home and have to carve out rides at different times of the day or work on a shift schedule or work on weekends or work overnight or work from various locations in non-traditional office settings. As one might learn from an elementary school play, we're not all the same.

Sometimes when I leave work early or go in late or have a day off and find myself riding at different times from my normal rush hour, I feel like I'm confronted with a totally different terrain and a completely different cast of characters. Cars are parked where they're not "normally" parked. Pedestrians aren't where they "normally" are. Pogoists clog the streets, springing from "out of nowhere" and making you question why they're not mandated to carry licenses and insurance. The speed of traffic flow is faster or slower. Those you ride along with are more louche or more serious or more self-serious or less attentive or more vigilant or more soccer mom or less bus driver. The whole thing is like watching the actors from Mad Men performing an episode of How I Met Your Mother on the set of Battlestar Galactica. ["Have you met cylon Don Draper?"] You recognize the constituent parts, but the total experience is dissonant. Bike commuting isn't an act without context and often it's the context that shapes the experience more than the act itself.

So, allow me to solicit your feedback. How is your ride shaped by when you do it (and with whom your "sharing the road")? Do you think that grass would be greener if your commute was your commute but at a different time and with a different set of fellow travelers? Additionally, do you think that grass would be greener if you stopped riding your bike over it and listened to various lawn care professionals and watered it every so often and maybe used a turfbuilder for once? Or, thanks to circumstances, do you think that you're met with unparalleled favorable conditions that you would never trade, no matter what? Not even for a million cheeseburgers [or cheeseburger equivalents for those of who don't denominate in cheeseburgers]?