One Wild Ride

Why is it that I have so many biking adventures?
Yesterday, I got all dressed up to go to work. I put on a long skirt, a shirt, a little fleece-lined jacket, and my red rabbit-fur hat. Then, I was stupid enough to spend about 45 seconds shooting off an email to Nemesis, Daltongirl, and Sahkmet. I wasn't even saying anything important. But then I hurried out to the bus stop and missed the bus by 15 seconds. Drat.

I didn't want to wait for the next bus. I REALLY didn't want to wait for the next bus. And, of course, because I've been eating well and exercising, then I was full of energy and love of life. I remembered that the few times I biked to work this summer, I wore different clothes so that I could change out of them and into something professional, but I dismissed that thought, thinking that surely I wouldn't sweat. Afterall, it was all downhill.

So I got on my bike and started pedalling. In my long skirt. And my red rabbit fur hat. And my aviator sunglasses. I'm sure I looked like I took my sport fashionably, if not seriously.

The problem was that apparently, it was all downhill from where I used to live. It is not all downhill from where I currenly live. I think it was slightly uphill. So I was exerting a little more effort than I had thought I would. And the inside of my hat is leather.

I also hadn't taken into account that there's currenly construction on the highway I was riding down. I suppose one doesn't really notice these things when one rides the bus every day and doesn't have to navigate construction. Normally it's scary enough to drive on the highway's one-foot shoulder. But the pylons (that's road cones to you Americans) indicated that all traffic had to move to the left. Following the pylons, and therefore the law, I ended up riding in the left-hand lane with all of the regular highway traffic. Of course, there was absolutely nothing going on to the right side of the pylons. It was just regular highway that was sectioned off, and the contruction was taking place on about 1/25 of the space that was sectioned off. I started to consider riding on the right side of the pylons, but one never knows why it's been sectioned off. I ran the risk of driving over land mines.

When the risk of being run over by a car finally seemed to outweigh my risk of running over a land mine, I started driving to the right of the pylons, or in the construction (land mine) zone.

Of course, since to the right of the pylons I was not where I was supposed to be and to the left of the pylons, I was in serious danger of getting run over, I started pedalling as fast as I possibly could. So much for my leisurely ride to work.

When I finally got to work, I was covered in sweat. I took off my leather hat and not surprisingly, my entire head of hair was soaked. Sick. At least everyone at work thought that I just got out of the shower...

Four hours later, I didn't want to ride the bike back home, so I decided that I'd take it on the bus. My regular bus driver (who is nice and shmoozy with all the other regulars but had yet to recognize me as a regular passenger) pulled to the side of the road and I poked my head in the door to indicate that I had no idea how to attach my bike to the front of the bus. A helpful man came out to do it for me and teach me how. When I got on the bus after the bike was secured, the bus driver said to me, "What did you do to your hair??" I said, "I dyed it red... and... uh... rabbit." And then I got a crush on him.

And thus concludes my biking adventure yesterday.

Unless, of course, you count the part that I rode the bus to school so that I could work on a project in the computer lab, and several hours later, I walked home and it was really cold out and I wished that there had been a way to get home faster... and then I realized that the bike was still parked at school. And there it remains.