Dropped pannier

Yesterday, I arrived at work to find that one of my panniers had fallen off. I wasn’t sure where I lost it, but I needed it, so I turned back. Naturally, I found it only 1/4 mile from my apartment. This meant I rode all the way to work, nearly all the way home, and back to work again, making my ride to work nearly 9 miles, instead of around 3.  This, of course, meant I was late.

Rain!

This morning, it was in the lower 40s and absolutely pouring outside. I planned for this and brought a dry change of clothes, but it’s still never fun to arrive at work drenched.

I have another camping trip, and some hiking, to write about, but I haven’t been able to find time for that yet.

However, I put some Christmas lights on my old mountain bike. Does this make me a fraud? Sarah says no, but I’m not so sure.

My old mountain bike, repurposed as a commuter, with Christmas lights

I feel a little weird riding around with the lights turned on. So far, they’ve attracted nothing but positive attention in the form of a few people shouting, “I like your lights!” as I ride past. And truth be told, I don’t completely hate Christmas. I like the time with family. That’s what it’s about to me. I like the lights downtown by the square and tastefully-done lights on people’s houses.
Basically, when you get down to it, I like things that light up, and I like putting things on my bike. So I put the lights on my bike. Does this make me a fraud?

Side note: one nice side-effect of the lights is that they make me much more visible on the road. I like to think of them as a safety feature.

Action shot with the Christmas lights

One of the first things I did when I got my road bike was to take off most of the stickers. Well, actually, Sarah did a lot of it because it’s damn near impossible to get those things off, and she’s better at it than I am (not to mention incredibly patient).  But a couple stickers we left on there because it just looked like too much of a pain to take them off.

Since I got a new wheelset, I removed all the stickers. These stickers weren’t as loud to begin with and were actually surprisingly tasteful, but my bicycle looks so much better with nice clean, unobstructed rims. In fact, it looks faster, too. It wasn’t hard getting these stickers off, but they left a gummy mess of glue behind that was really difficult to clean off, even with my new can of Finish Line Citrus Degreaser. This stuff cuts through the gunk on my chain like nobody’s business, but even with it, it took me probably 30 minutes per wheel to remove the gunk from the 5 stickers.

I think it was worth it. I should have taken before and after photos, but I didn’t. I really wish manufacturers would (a) not put stickers on their stuff or (b) at least have the common decency to use stickers that can be removed cleanly without a lot of fuss.

One of these days, I should take the rest of the stickers off my mountain bike wheels, too …

It’s been raining here yesterday and today, but I’ve ridden to work anyway. I’ve lucked out and it hasn’t rained in the morning — usually, I decide whether to ride based on that. I don’t mind getting wet on the way home, but I don’t want to show up at work drenched.

There were some storms rolling through the area yesterday afternoon and around 5-5:30 pm, it was very dark outside, raining hard with some thunder and lightning. I heard someone complain, “How am I going to get to my car?” There are two places you can park if you work for my company: right next to the building or right across the street. I thought to myself, “You’ll walk! And you’ll get a little wet. Who cares?” I heard various other complaints about getting a little wet, and even one person debating whether it was safe to drive. What the hell?

I mentioned I rode my bike to work, garnering astonished looks from a couple of people. One of them offered me a ride home, which I appreciated, but politely declined. This brought more astonishment. They seemed to be thinking, “What kind of masochist would ride a bicycle in the rain?”

Honestly, I was looking forward to it. It’s still warm outside, so I can take my preferred approach to riding in the rain and just accept the mantra, “If you ride in the rain, you’re gonna get wet.” I wear clothes that won’t get too waterlogged and that dry quickly. But I get wet and I dry off and change my clothes when I get home. I don’t understand this fear so many people have of getting wet. They aren’t going to melt.

People act the same way about the heat in the summer, the cold in the winter, the dark during the night, etc. They ask things like, “How can you ride in the (heat/cold/rain/dark/snow/mud)? Won’t you get (hot/cold/scared/snowed on/dirty)?” The answer, of course, is YES. If you ride in the heat, for instance, you’ll get hot. You can dress appropriately and try to make it more comfortable, but if you go out in those conditions anyway, you’ll get used to it. You might be a bit uncomfortable, but so what? Why let the weather stand in the way of doing the things you love? I know that sometimes the weather really will make it impossible or undesirable to do some things, but why is so many people’s threshold for discomfort so low?

I do understand how sometimes weather will make people lazy. It almost happened to me this morning. It looked like it could rain at any moment, so I wasn’t sure whether I should ride or drive to work. I decided to ride, and I’m glad I did. It was a beautiful morning, with the smells of the rain we got overnight. It was overcast, but everything basked in a warm glow. It was pretty muggy, but I rode slower and I was fine. It was a perfect morning to ride to work, and I got more astonished looks when I walked in carrying my bicycle helmet. I’ll probably get rained on again on my way home — and I am looking forward to it.

I woke up feeling particularly crappy this morning. I wanted nothing more than to work from home, or better yet, punt completely and play hooky. So it was with a bit of pride that I dragged my sorry ass out of bed anyway, showered, loaded my pannier (including a few extra items to help deal with the forecasted rain), and rode to work.

It was muggy outside, and a little misty. The mist felt good on my face, having a cooling effect. It did a little bit to offset the mugginess. It was a little foggy, not enough for me to get a good picture, but enough to make things just a little bit prettier.

I arrived at work, parked my bicycle outside by the recycling area door, and walked through the building to bring my bike inside. I said hello to a few people along the way, as I usually do, brought my bike in and opened the pannier.

As I moved a few items to get my change of clothes out, I realized I had left my change of clothes sitting on the dining room table at home! I muttered a few profanities, walked to my desk, grabbed my notebook, and informed the other developer that I was going to ride back home, and that I was going to stay there for the rest of the day.

I’m also at a standstill right now in terms of weight loss, which I know is related to my sloth, but it’s still frustrating. I weigh about what I did a week ago, I guess it’s good I haven’t gained any weight, but I stopped losing it, too. This is made more frustrating because I wasn’t exactly sluggish over the weekend, hiking over 8 miles and mountain biking 15. But that brings me to the other problem: it’s also getting harder to follow our diet because … well, I’m just hungry all the time. I thought this would get easier as time went on, but so far, it’s only gotten harder as I get hungrier every day.

Sarah and I rode to the public library last night, a ride that is mostly a subset of my commuting route. She hasn’t ridden much yet, so I wanted to show her a way to get to the library, where she has an internship. I don’t know if she’ll try riding to work or not, but I think she was surprised how easy it was.

I think Sarah wants to build up some more confidence before trying to ride to work, and I don’t blame her. It can be scary out there when you aren’t used to dealing with traffic. Hopefully, if we ride more together, she’ll get used to riding in traffic and learn how to do it safely. She did very well last night, the only mistake I noticed was that she rode in the door zone briefly, and she promptly corrected her mistake. I need to get Sarah a new seatpost or something — the one that came with her bike was terrible, so I replaced it with an old one I had on hand, but that one keeps slipping.

I took my mountain bike in for some service last night. The rear brake hardly works, it probably needs a new pad, but the shop had to order that. I also need to replace my saddle, as I bent the rails on my old one when I crashed on Sunday. The guy was trying to sell me on this $65 Specialized saddle that seems really nice, and he’s going to let me try riding it around the neighborhood first. I actually don’t mind spending that much on a saddle if I won’t have to buy another one for a long time. I just wish I could try it a little more first.

I’ve been observing lately an aspect of motorist behavior that baffles me, even as a motorist myself: people sure can be weird about parking. I started thinking about this yesterday as I pulled into the parking lot on my bicycle and found that the lot was so full that I could barely navigate it, even on two wheels. Cars were parked very close together, some even double-parked.

You might assume that they have no choice, but there is a parking lot with plenty of space right across the street — and we can get free permits (free to us, the company pays for it). If you get a permit, you’re asked not to park in the lots on either side of our building, and so are committed to parking across the street, but it’s not even a very busy street. I simply don’t understand why people would rather fight for a space right next to the building , possibly getting trapped, rather than park across the street with no trouble at all.

This also makes me think of people who will drive around for 20 minutes to find the closest possible parking space, instead of parking slightly further away and walking. What’s wrong with walking? Don’t people realize that in some cases, they’d actually save time by parking further away? Are people so lazy that they can’t walk a few hundred feet?

I’m just glad I never have to worry about stuff like this when I’m bicycling. I do still have to deal with the drivers who speed to a red light. Why the hurry to stop? If it looks like I’ll have to stop, I’ll slow down so I can keep moving at least a little bit, and hopefully by the time I reach the light, it will have changed. It’s easier to keep moving, even if only a little bit, than to have to put a foot down.

But my boss sent his declaratory e-mail too late and (even though it was a high priority message!) almost nobody read it and almost nobody wore orange shirts today, aside from my boss, the head-bobber (whose shirt is the orangest I’ve ever seen), and my very own self, although I feel particularly weird about it because: 1.) I never wear orange and Q.) My orange shirt is a bit too small, not too small to be comfortable, but small enough to accentuate my belly and make me feel a bit too nipply, even though I am wearing a T-shirt underneath. But I wore the orange shirt in solidarity, or at least that was my intent, to reach out to my coworkers about whom I know little and with whom I don’t speak very much, and now I’m left here wearing this ridiculous too-small orange shirt and trying to hide my nipples without actually trying to hide them.

For the second day in a row, I sit here working on something that should be simple, so simple that it should just work, but it doesn’t. I broke down and e-mailed tech support, only to find that the guy I need to talk to is on vacation and won’t be able to help me until next week — unless the other guy helps me out of the kindness of his heart and the fact that we pay them thousands of dollars a year to …. well, we pay them to give us this ridiculous system that only works exactly how they designed it, just like some other systems here that are the same way.

I’m about to go eat some Mexican food with two of my coworkers, the orangest-shirt-ever head-bobber who thinks Americans don’t like rice, and the poker-playing accountant with wild business ideas that’ll never be practical. The good news is it’s Friday, and I think it’ll be a pretty good weekend with Sarah and hopefully a bike ride or even two, and maybe some music.

I thought about writing reviews of the awful movies we’ve watched, but I don’t think I could ever do justice to atrocities such as Contaminated Man, Storm Catcher, Troll, or Troll 2. Troll 2 is easily the worst of the bunch, but Contaminated Man remains my favorite.

Other than those things, not much has been going on. I think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) or something like it. I always get depressed during the winter, and this winter has been no exception. I’m still having trouble adjusting to work, avoiding smoking is still hard, I hate that I can’t get outside to exercise, and I’m generally feeling like a slug. It even seems like lately, it’s been nice outside during the week, then raining on the weekends, further contributing to my frustration.

Sarah and I had an argument on Saturday night. As usual, it started out with something stupid — I’m not even sure what anymore. It ended with me riding my bike to the gas station in the rain in the middle of the night, drunk, to buy cigarettes. That was a real act of brilliance. I smoked two cigarettes, and about 4 drags of one on Sunday, and I haven’t touched them since then. Sometimes, avoiding smoking is easier, but sometimes, it isn’t. And even now, 4+ months after quitting, I really don’t feel like myself. Even when I’m not having nicotine cravings, I’m a moody bastard with a short temper. That really isn’t like me. I’ve got to figure out how to get myself back, without going back to the nicotine. The temper part especially has to go.

Sarah and I went for a drive on Sunday to Brown County State Park. Even though it was cold and raining, it was great to be out of the house and spending time together somewhere closer to nature. We took a few photos. Most didn’t turn out, but a few did. Some of the ones that did really captured the mood of that day, which is pretty close to the mood I’ve been in general lately.

I’ve taken numerous photos of Hesitation Point, but none quite like this. The fog is beautiful, and I like the reds and muted green colors.

Intentionally blurry shot of the road/trees/etc.

Minimalism in nature?

Squub hit on some interesting points, but this one part sums things up pretty well: “If I always knew when I was doing a thing for the last time I’d spend every minute sappily bemoaning the passing of an age. What if I could decide to be twenty four again and …”

Both these sentiments are things I’ve experienced in general, but particularly recently as a part of my quarter-life crisis. I’ve felt an increased sense of nostalgia, even for some aspects of the lowest points in my life. It’s so easy to only remember the good things and forget about the bad ones, or even to view the bad things in a good light in hindsight.

I think about when I lived in the ghetto, across a big fence from an all-but-abandoned apartment building where a crazy Jamaican guy named Dread lived. Dread constantly had a joint in his mouth. He had a ladyfriend on the south side, and a Jewish woman from Skokie would, for reasons I never understood, drive him to the south side to see her.

Sometimes, I even miss taking the El around Chicago, which was almost always an incredibly frustrating experience in practice. But trains are inherently cool, and being able to look at various neighborhoods — including many where you wouldn’t want to walk — from an elevated position was pretty cool. It was a fascinating cross section of city life. I tend to forget now about the bad parts: waiting 20 minutes for a train and watching three go by in the opposite direction while standing on a platform in -30 degree windchills, surrounded by shady characters and hipsters and mothers with four children and no father in sight.

It’s also interesting how you can reconnect with these experiences. Dread used to throw movies over the fence for me to borrow, without my asking for them. They always turned out to be terrible, such as The Perfect Fit, a movie about a couple who would kill for the perfect pair of blue jeans — in fact, the woman couldn’t get off otherwise. Then there was the one about a Jewish woman falling in love with a Nazi (described as a “chick flick” by Dread). But best of all was Contaminated Man, a “bio-thriller” that has to be seen to be believed. I can’t possibly do it justice, but Sarah got me a copy of Contaminated Man for Christmas, and even though the circumstances are completely different now, watching it still takes me back somewhat to the time Dread threw the movie at me from the balcony of the adjoining building, and Sarah and I watched it on the couch that my roommate Josh and I had struggled to haul up from the alley behind our apartment.

I was going to write more about nostalgia, but it’s not really necessary because even if I do feel some at times, I know that I’m much better off now. I’ve got the greatest woman in the world, a good job, I’m close to my family and in a beautiful place. I wouldn’t trade any of that to go back to any previous point in my life. But I will continue to think about the past and try to reconnect with it in some ways, whether it’s by watching ridiculous movies, listening to CDs I listened to at that time, riding my bike, or making occassional trips to the other places I’ve lived (this is something I haven’t done yet, but need to at some point).