Bizzaroland

I have now entered bizzaroland. I land of pure strangeness. I had a very strange conversation last night. A little background before I begin. I usually leave work around 430ish. It isn't really dark yet but it is on its way. I usually get home around 530ish and by then it is dark. I typically turn my lights on if cars have their lights on. When I get on the bike path I usually turn my light down to half power or lower to conserve battery. Ok now on to bizzaroland.

So I am biking home last night and I have just turned on to the bike path and gone down about a block or two when a pedestrian walking the other way kind of waves his hand and says'

"Excuse me. Could you stop please."

I figure that was pretty polite maybe they need directions or something so I stop and ask, "Whats up?"

The start of the rabbit hole is, "What is with the light?"

I start to explain that it is so the cars can see me when I arrive at cross streets and when I actually ride on streets but I get interrupted with, "It isn't even that dark out and the light really bothers me. All the blinking and what not. You should really think about turning it off." While talking he makes a strange jesture with his head as if the lights were making him dizzy.

Mind you I don't have a blinking front light. At this point my mouth drops open and I have that classic what the hell is going on face. I am waiting for the joke or the punch line. When there is no response or anything I realized he is actually serious. I reply using about as much sarcasm as I can muster at this moment with, "Yea well we should also ask all the cars to turn off their pesky lights."

He looks as if he is seriously contenplating it. I used that moment to get back on my bike and escape

The Bitcher

I have never heard someone bitch as much as the guy who sits right across from me. We are at work and he bitches about getting emails. I mean WTF. It is work you get emails. He was also bitching about the weather. Again WTF its end of November and its close to 50 out. I can't wait to hear him bitch when the weather is actually bad. I think this guy should enter a contest on bitching. I guarntee he would do well. Oh before I could finish writting this he is bitching more about. Sweet.

Bubble boy

I have made a concious decision to not watch or read any news. I find it to be pretty nice. I don't get riled up everytime I see someone debating Michelle Bachman's ideas like they actually have merit and are not just ravings of a sly lunatic. I find myself living happily in my little bubble. I al don't have to feel guilty about not being more involved.

On a completely different subject. As I was biking home last night at about 6 pm I had one of those scared shitless moments. As any one knows around these parts it is pretty dark at 6pm. I have a nice light but it can only do so much. In any case, I am not emberassed to say that I had a death grip on my handlebars, a clenched jaw, and all breathing had stopped. This occured because I just missed hitting a small dear by about 2". I actually am not really sure how I didn't hit it. Hard to tell when your eyes are closed. Ok my eyes were not closed but I was frozen in the paralysis of fear. In any case I had a good laugh about it after it happened.

I see sick people

First the child now Koogs. Sick people everywhere. Knock on wood. hopefully I don't get the sicknes.

Earworm

I have had Insistor by Tapes n Tapes and Happy Hippo from Cloud Cult running through my head like all summer. Specifically the tune from insistor and the line "I gotta happy hippopotamus. She livin under neath my matteress. She showed me jesus at the bottom of a Colt 45". not that i mind having either song running through my head but i find myself whistling either one as I am biking to or from work or doing whatever.

Check it out here for more info. Here

Pathfinder vs Tree

Over the weekend we were at Koogs's cabin. It has been raining a lot and anyone who has been there knows its not the nicest road to ride in on. We were driving back from town about 7 pm on Saturday night. I want to go down on record as saying Koogs was driving and not me. Of course it doesn't mean the outcome would have been any different but.....it makes me feel better. Again as anyone who has driven in or out of that road knows trees fall and need to be removed from the road. Usually it just means chainsawing a section of the tree out wide enough to open the road up and leaving the rest of the tree there. In this case there was a old sawed tree on the side of the road. This one happened to be laying on its branches so it wasn't on the ground but about 4-5 feet in the air. As Koogs came around the corner she slid a little and went off the side of the road right into this reminants of a tree. The trunk of the tree caught the passenger side roof(yes the side I was on) and then slid down a little and came through the window. The limb was solid and really didn't move that much. As we were not going that fast there really was no danger of being impaled movie like on the tree limb. I did comment that I thought Koogs was trying to kill me. I had to remind her that I don't have much life insurance yet so she might want to wait to do that. In any case there was glass everywhere from the shattered window. We cleaned the car of glass and duct taped cradboard on both sides of the hole in the windw and drove home. Kind of felt a little white trashish but what can you do. In any case we are fine well except the truck which is currently in the shop getting repaired. Tree 1 Pathfinder 0. Of course the tree was already dead so what kind of damage could the Pathfinder do? Pathfinder needed +1 to Treant damage.

Too Cool Fixie

Anyone who bikes knows there are "groups" of bikers. You have your spandexed out road riders, you have your jean wearing wallet chain toating single speed and fixed gear guys, you have the adrenaline junkie mountain bikers, then you have the rest. Ok there are a lot more divisions of biking but for this conversation that will suffice. I will try not to generalize but it makes it so much easier to be angry at people when you can catagorize them. All this brings me to my ride home yesterday. I tend to bike home fast. Part of it is just to get home quick to releave Author#1 from child duty. Part of it is just trying to bike fast to get more excercise. Yesterday I pull up to a stop light on Portalnd and Lake. For those of you who don't know Portland is a 3 lane one way road out of the city that has a nice bike lane on it. Also I have learned that if I bike around 21-23 mph I can catch all but one light. As I pull up to the stop light at Lake it is red so I stop to wait for it to turn greem(This is the first light I hit off the bike path so usually I have to wait for it.) As I wait for it to turn green another biker kind of just pulls in front of me. Of course it is a fixie dude with his trendy backpack, torn jeans, and wallet chain. He does his little balancing act until the light turns green and we start to go. I almost immediately want to go around him because I want to make sure I go fast enough to catch all the lights. He then proceeds to ride in the middle of the bike lane so I can't pass him on the inside because of parked cars and can't pass him on the otherside because of moving cars. So I wait to a point where there are no parked cars figuring he will move over and I can pass him. The problem is he doesn't. So I wait for the next break in parked cars and pass him on the inside. This apparently disrupted his senses. There is this strange thing where bikers hate to be passed. I can't tell you how many people speed up when I pass them. In any case as I pass him he starts to yell something to the affect of "HI! Bye!". He must of yelled it about 5 times looking for some reaction from me. I so badly wanted to stop and let him know that this wouldn't have been an issue if one he didn't pull in front of me at the light at Lake St. Or two had the decency to move over when I was behind him. Instead I just sped by him ignoring him hoping I could go fast enough to make the lights.