There are no bad bike commutes, just good bike commutes that you're not having at the moment. I don't know. I think about this a lot. When things are shit, when drivers are WTF-ing every which way, where it's cold and you inhale salty smog and there's rain and you ride through mud and muck and when your legs disagree with you and when you leave the house without lunch or your lunch container isn't closed and you get soup on your work shirt and when a bus driver honks at you for no reason at all and when there's yet still more driver WTFs and another bicyclist cuts you off for no reason and you say 'dick' and he turns around and you avert his glance because you don't want to deal with the repercussions of calling someone a dick and thankfully he lets it go, maybe because you mumbled it quietly enough and he heard you say something but didn't know what, or when you're cut off by some driver trying to change lanes only to realize halfway through that the lane ahead is blocked by a parked car and there's no way to get by that car and yet he's still blocking your way and you put your left foot down and tilt your heard to the right and give a quizzical look that only barely masks the exasperated 'come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn' you're thinking and when things are like this all at once and all in the period of fifty something minutes and eight something miles, just remember that there are no bad bike commutes, just a good bike commute that you're not having at the moment. Yeah, that works. Sure.
Yesterday was one of those good bike commutes I wasn't having, but this was today. Today was better. Today was great, actually. It was a little cold and the afternoon was a little gusty, but those are hardly things to complain about. It was Friday and there's a lot to like about that. One of the top few days of the week. There was coffee and I shared the ride most of the way from coffee to work with Rudi (thanks Rudi! Sorry for dropping you with my blinding speed! After all, I was riding a Brompton) and on the way home, I saw not a single person throw any rotten vegetables at me so that's some good news. Truth be told, I'm not sure anyone has every thrown rotting foodstuffs at me during a bike commute and for that I'm immensely grateful. I just hate to see food wasted, you know? (As someone in a 1980s sitcom might have said 'there are kids in Africa who would just love to throw that food at bike commuters, so eat your dinner." 1980s sitcoms were, and are, to a large extent, deeply problematic. As are 70s and 90s sitcoms. And ones from both before and after those decades. It's just a troubling format.)
So that's that.
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Tomorrow marks four years since the beginning of this blog in this format. Prior to 1/31/11, it wasn't called Tales From The Sharrows and it wasn't about bike commuting. It was a blog about tea cups, in which I would rank tea cups on a scale of daintiness. It was a very popular blog and remunerative, but after a while, I just had to do something different. It was just too much pressure and the daily struggle of finding new ways to qualify the daintiness of tea cups ("very dainty," "rather dainty," "exorbitantly dainty," "suspiciously dainty"- I'm not even through a week and I'm nearly out of adverbs) was simply to much to bear, so I shucked it off and tried something new. And that was four years ago and while I've on more than one occasion heard the siren song of once more assessing the daintiness of tea cups and writing about my justification for that assessment at some length, I've yet to manage to shuck off the bike commuter blog thing and I don't plan to shuck it off for a little while yet.
For anyone who has been around since the beginning, I'm sorry. I should've intervened a long time ago. If you're new here, please look for the scratching from former inmates on the prison walls. Check behind the movie posters- there might be an escape tunnel. No promises though.
I sincerely thank everyone and anyone who has ever read Tales From The Sharrows. I've been fortunate to meet many of you and even more fortunate to avoid the lot of you. I will reply to your angry letters in the order received. Yours first, Mom. I promise.
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