i love biking to work
By shag carpet bomb • Nov 10th, 2009 • Category: Belly Button Linti just wanted to record how much i love riding my bike to work from my new digs. I’ve already said it, but I’m so full of glee riding on streets where I’m not fighting traffic or scared to death the fuckers will refuse to yield or who can’t stand having to drive a little slower until I get out of the way.
today, I came up behind this guy with a big ol’ beard, put putting along, smoking a cigar or pipe while he biked away. Cracked me up. I passed him and then had to wait wait wait at a major intersection, which I came upon from a different direction. I’d decided to go the wrong way up a one way street, just for something different. As a consequence, while waiting, he came upon me from the street I’d normally be on. He was ahead of me, so we rode this final street of side street before I had to cross major thoroughfare where I park my bike in a garage on the corner. I put putted behind him while he put putted away, puf puffing on his ceegar or pipe.
When I ride, I always pass a patch of school buses and a crossing guard. I hadn’t paid attention until today when I had to stop. I looked at the bus and saw, “Williams School” on it. Had time to look around and noticed this private school. I’d seen people’s bumper stickers and wondered what it was. I vaguely recall reading about it in a history of the area. It’s a she-she private school in a she-she section of town where the home cost over half a million, are older Federalist, Georgian, Victorian architecture, yadda.
It is so cool riding through the area during Halloween. Given that these houses are perfect for dressing them up as spooky old mansions, that is what people do. One house has this huge u-shaped stone porch upon which were a mummy, Frankenstein, a werewolf, and dracula. Every time I passed, dork that I am, I thought: huh, guy standing out on the porch this fine morning. Then, I’d realize it was Frankenstein. Dope! Other people created mini-graveyards in their front yards, decorated the trees with all manner of spooky things, and many had witches and warlocks on their porches, along with the occasional scare crow.
I used to love Halloween. I’d dress up as a witch, sit quiet on the porch and wait for the kiddies so I could scare them and then we’d all laugh and laugh and laugh. One year, I took sonshine to the Jaycees Haunted House. He was dracula that year, with a little suit, white face, blood dripping from his mouth, dracula teeth, etc. He was so freakin scared in the Haunted House, he was screaming. But as i tried to get the people to stop chasing him with a fake chain saw in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre part of the house, they didn’t understand. First, it was too loud. Second, Sonshine was made up to look scary, so when he screamed, they thought it was just the costume!
I’ll have to find out if he remembers that.
anyway, dumb post about how much I love biking to work. I’m gonna be bummed tomorrow because it’s supposed to be a nor’easter so i have to drive the car. Would have had to anyway, because it’s one of those early mornings for a special disaster recovery test we’re doing. which reminds me: time to get to bed, early to rise at 3 a.m. tomorrow!
http://www.thewilliamsschool.org/page.cfm?p=2
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I used to ride my bike to work. Gosh, that was 23 years of riding. I sometimes dream about being back at work. Fortunately, I’m free of wage-slavery now. Anyway, my bike, it was one of those old, what we used to call ‘English’ three speeds. This one was made by workers hired by Rollfast back in 1963. The old black girl was already in her teens when I got her secondhand. Loved that bike. I rode it everwhere, except to the store for groceries. Then, I took my car. But my bike, man I remember on Fridays, I’d get off work and ride it to the “O”, which added another three miles to my already accumulated four miles from my crummy apartment. The “O” (aka the Oasis) was where I’d cool off and relax after my usual forty hour work week. The Anchor Steam came in pints and the conversations at the short bar were mostly centered on how the Giants were doing or some such sports trivia and the Anchor would flow and I’d start getting tanked and talking with my fellow library worker, Bernie about politics, history, current haps and later, much later about jazz. Quite and education I got there at the “O”. And then, I’d roll out, unlock my old black girl and peddle her back seven miles, under moonlight, once under a comet, to my apartment, which rattled and shook next to the railline that Kerouac worked on as a ticket taker back in the real old days.