Type A-hole

Here's the scene:

I'm riding home on Howard Tuesday night, stopped at the light at Ninth. An elderly lady, walking with one of those canes with a cage at the bottom ending in four rubber feet, starts on the crosswalk late, and she ain't quick. It's clear to everybody there that she isn't going to make it before the light changes. Sure enough, she's still a good ten feet from the the curb when it does. So the car in the right lane waits for her, and I wait too.

She barely makes it past me when some biker behind me just can't stand waiting any longer. He swerves around me as I'm standing there, and swerves back within inches of the old lady. Keep in mind the light's been green for less than ten seconds at this point.

I keep on riding. Since he's a slow and sloppy pedaler, I catch up with him pretty quickly. He's on a new-looking Novara, wearing a grey two-piece suit and tie, and dress shoes. Using hair gel in lieu of a helmet. He's also weaving a bit, but the bike lane's a mile wide on Howard, so I pass him.

As I go by, against my better judgement, I snark at him, "Do you deck grannies every day, or just on Tuesdays?"

He can't hear me. He's got his iPhone earbuds in.

And still angry at the world that they repoed his Lexus.

Classy

Waiting by the light on Page & Octavia, watching the stream of 101-bound traffic crawl by. Some rocket scientist in a BMW SUV (WTF) with the windows rolled down thought it'd be hilarious if he SCREAMED AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS suddenly while driving by us.

"Bro, watch me make all them bikers jump."
"Go for it."
"BLAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW!"
"Sweet."

My head might've twitched. The biker in front of me just silently raised a middle finger in salute. If anybody thought it was funny, they were all in the SUV.

In other news, that bright thing in the sky? I think it's the sun. You know, as foretold in the prophecy. Little darlin', it seems like years since it's been here.

Hatin' on the Fixies

OK, there's no love lost between me and the SF fixie cultists. But even I find this a tad bit strident:

"Early 1980's Eddy Merckx: Anyone buying this bike for a “fixie conversion” will be shot."

(via Kent Peterson, by way of BoingBoing.)

Your Tax Dollars At Work

Road construction again. Just because it'll be better later doesn't make it suck less today.

A big chunk of Duboce West of Church is dug up as of yesterday. The Westbound side consists of a) steel plates, and b) MUNI tracks. Both choices suck for a bike rider in the Irish Summer (50 degrees, foggy, drizzling) we're currently enjoying in SF.

Also, the Eastbound bike lane on Market was blocked off near Franklin this morning for some reason. Looks like I'm taking Page instead of The Wiggle for the next week or so.

Motivation

I've always felt that any effective training regimen requires that you get in touch with your Inner Asshole. This is the little voice inside your head that heaps abuse on you when you try to sleaze out of a workout.

By way of example, let's look at this morning. Freshly back from vacation, resolved to get on the bike every day this week, I woke up to find that it was damp and cold. Instantly, I started concocting reasons why getting on the bike this morning would be just a terrible idea:

• It's a steel-frame bike, it'll get rusty.
• Wet road surface: dangerous in traffic!
• Also, slippery MUNI tracks!
• Grey and foggy, bad visibility to cars.

Inner Asshole to the rescue! "There's a little water on the ground? Aww, WEEEAAAHHH, poor baby! GET ON THE BIKE, YEH FAT BASTID!"

Well, what do you know -- my Inner Asshole has a Boston accent. Just like my high-school gym teacher. Hm.

Wet Ones

Welcome to July in SF: cold and damp. Does that discourage the bike commuters? Not at all. I saw at least a hundred other riders out this morning.

As a side note, Mike's Bikes on Howard does great tune-ups. The brakes and shifting on my ride were as tight as two Scotsmen's grips on the same dropped farthing.

I still had the wet-weather tires on the bike this morning, and I was really glad of it too. I'm going to go ahead and pretend that's because I'm smart, and not just lazy.