about getting from point A to point B in the most interesting ways possible

If you're a large woman in America, your whole life is an opportunity to feel self-conscious, embarrassed, resentful and way too big. You can hide in the corner or on the couch, you can go to therapy, or you can put on your lycra bike shorts and get out there and move.
—Jayne Williams, Slow Fat Triathlete

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December 16, 2005

Let it snow! permalink

bike basket
xmas lights
The city is getting the golden color it gets at this point in the afternoon, about a half-hour before everything goes pitch black. It looks cold outside, and while I haven't left the building today, I have no reason to believe that it is suddenly warm.

I know that every day I whine about how cold it is outside, and every day its worse than the last. Dunno what to tell you about that. It's true, damn it! When I left the house this morning, in my usual I'm-a-cyclist-incognito gear, it was in the 20s. Two-zero. Brrr!

I learned some things. N0rdstrom Rack makes these knee-highs, nylon/acrylic or some such, and they have amazing stretch—large enough to cover my ginormous calves. So I put them on this morning, with my newish thin leather boots, which meant I could feel my frozen and detached toes rolling around in my boots as I rode to work.

I also learned that if about half of the xmas presents for my mom are at work, I can fit the other half AND all 6 rolls of wrapping paper in my panier. Boy, I bet I looked festive pedalling like the worlds slowest slug.

Last night, and this morning, the Steel Bridge pedestrian bridge has been closed. A person invariably learns this when they are right on top of the damn thing. I know, lots of cyclists like the Eastside Esplanade better than the Tom McCall bicycle parkway, but I have one word for you, for what the Esplanade is not: F-L-A-T. So I huff and puff up and down the dorky little hills. Yeah, I should kept biking, I've lost all conditioning, I know, I know. Don't I know!

And then I'm crossing the Hawthorne Bridge. It got restriped recently, so peds and bikes have separate lanes. Sorta. So I'm trying to stay in the cycle lane, which seems ridiculous given that no pedestrians are crazy enough to be walking across the bridge, and Trimet buses are whisking by a mere foot away. And meanwhile, cyclists are calling out, on your left, and flying by me, and then moving entirely over to the right, to the pedestrian lane. So I started counting. There was exactly one other cyclist who stayed in the bike "lane". This whole obeying the law thing is a drag.

Posted at December 16, 2005

Comments

yeah, those lane stripes are boooo-gus. it makes me wonder what happened - was there some spectacular bike-ped accident at that intersection where the stairs come up on the east side?

i don't think it's against the law to ignore them, so i do. i think they're just guidelines. it's too freaky to ride right next to the traffic-drop-off-edge, anyway.

Posted by: tszuj at December 16, 2005 10:50 PM

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