Thoughts on riding a bike in Howard County

I'm probably wrong, but i remember it as Ernest Hemingway who said that one day you understand you're going to die and nothing is the same afterward. I think that's why I don't ride as much as I'd like: when I'm just sitting around thinking about it, riding in suburban America is scary. Once I get on the bike and go out, though, it's not all that bad. Doesn't mean I'm not still gonna get run over and die, but being on the bike is not as scary as just thinking about being on the bike. Most people around here give you your 3 feet, and then some, and are generally alert to cyclists. Thanks, HoCo drivers. And the roads in my part of the county generally have a bit of shoulder to ride on. The storm grates are the ostensibly bike-friendly kind, too, though I do not take my road bike over them.

That said, it would be better for bikes and cars both if the roads were better maintained and we were all less careless about what falls off or gets thrown out of our vehicles. Cracked pavement, potholes of various sizes, metal scraps, broken glass, wet leaves, low-hanging tree limbs, shoes, bottles, cups, and overgrown brambles may annoy us when we're in cars, but all of them can cause serious damage when we're on bikes.

I don't expect bike lanes. I know money's tight and there are better things to spend it on than weekend cyclists (I have no illusions about our car-crazy populace suddenly biking to school and the grocery store, myself included), but come on, county administration. Why do you tease us with 200 feet of bike lane that disappears into a narrow piece of road with no shoulder whatsoever? I suppose that's the bike equivalent of the sidewalk to nowhere, with which we're all too familiar around here.

Oh...

À propos of the post before last, "Relax, nobody died," turns out to be not totally true. The store itself died. Fairly quickly. It started out gangbusters, with all sorts of cool merchandise, but the shelves started emptying, and within a little over a year it closed. Bummer

The war on "Christmas"

Meaning the one run by the stores. Not the real Christmas, the one God runs. If you, too, would like to...maybe not declare war on commercial Christmas, but even dial it back a little, you might be interested in a web site to which we were recently alerted: The Advent Conspiracy . I've only just begun to explore it, but I like what these guys are doing. They're swimming upstream. That's what they're doing.

Relax, nobody died

While this may look to our Western eyes like a funeral, it's not. These are congratulatory arrangements sent to our new Asian-Latin-American supermarket when it opened last week. The bank, the local liquor store, even the competition (albeit one located at safe distance) sent flowers. I feel bad because we didn't think to do it. All we did was spend money there.

When the moon hits your eyes...

Regular followers may recall my Moondance posting 3 years ago--almost to the day. We had a similar experience tonight on this side of the water. We went for a walk late under a gorgeous full moon. We didn't need flashlights, partly because we're now in a more urban area with more ambient light and partly because we went to the optometrist this afternoon and had our eyes dilated. Boy was it ever bright out! I feel like I now know what a cat sees.

Not exactly Marlon Brando

Overheard at the Starbucks yesterday: Four middle-aged motorcycle "hoodlums" preparing for a multiday ride into the mountains of Maryland and Pennsylvania. One was a banker, a fact that came out when the others started complaining about tight credit. One was excited because the company he and his wife own (it involves yarn) had just landed a half-million-dollar order from Macy's, which was going to increase their business by 30%. One was going to have to leave the ride a day early because he had something to do at home. The fourth one never said a word. Yarn guy also called his mother-in-law to apologize because his bike had torn up the yard when he tried to get it up a hill. Yarn guy was chatty.

A Distressing Realization

Day before yesterday I failed to smile at a pretty girl. That disturbs me because it means the Yankees may have finally beat me down.

For the benefit of our non-Southern readers--if readers we still have at all--I should explain that the Southern lady (and Southern men afford all women that status until they prove otherwise) considers it her sacred duty to smile at any man she passes in a public place. This she does simply to spread the joy of her particular loveliness. The Southern man grows up expecting, prepared for, these pleasant little encounters. So imagine my shock when we moved north (and don't kid yourself, Maryland; culturally you are the North) and ladies did not smile when we met. Once when I was out jogging, a lady--another exerciser no less--actually crossed to the other side of the street, where there was no sidewalk. presumably to avoid having to acknowledge my existence. I doubt it was because I exude masculine menace. I have a house full of females. You can smell the estrogen on me, fer cryin' out loud.

Anyways, it appears that I have been away from home long enough to have grown accustomed to not being smiled at by the ladies. In fact, I seem to have gone to the opposite extreme and now try to avoid eye contact, so as not to upset those of the gentler sex forced to share corridors or sidewalks or grocery store aisles with me. So when I met a pretty girl, whom I actually know, by the way, I was not prepared to smile. That depresses me.