A young guy got clipped yesterday on Packard in Ann Arbor... motorist turning right in front of a helmetless cyclist riding a brakeless fixie. From someone (avid, experienced cyclist) who saw the aftermath and paramedics putting him onto a stretcher... "It was the worst cyclist accident I have ever seen." Convulsions, paramedics, possible brain injury.
Fuck.
Helmets and brakes, folks. Seriously.
I never really finished up on the rundown of the Toronto experience... because there isn't a whole lot that's really that noteworthy. I watched some polo until the tournament paused for the main race, then packed up and was already headed out of town right before the downpour. Cut to: montage of this boy driving through the Canadian countryside. Cut to: this upstanding citizen getting hassled at the US Border by his own border patrol. Cut to: this boy arrives home and gets (mostly) unpacked.
In the meantime, it occurs to me the fulfillment of a dream from long ago. Not exactly the plot of the dream, but the right scene. Could've been, but wasn't. You know how they say that, when you're studying a foreign language, the way you know that you've achieved proficiency (dare I say fluency?) is that you recognize that you are dreaming in that language? Well, this dream comes from a different bike-heavy period of my life. I don't remember the whole thing, but a moment, an image: for some reason I'm on a ferry as it's landing/docking (whatever the ferry-appropriate verb is), and as I'm walking down the ramp past the line of passengers waiting to get on the ferry, there's this amazing beautiful brunette woman with a backpack, and she's got this really really sweet bike. Chrome lugs, tasteful, elegant, functional, suave.
In the dream, the first thing through my mind? "Wow, cool bike." The second thing? "Oooh, she's pretty." That's when you know you've got bikes on the brain, and bad.
... so I got off the Toronto Island Ferry (a couple times over the weekend), and while there were no brunette hotties attached to pristine classic road bikes there to fulfill my prophetic dream, there were lots of people of varying hotness, attached to bikes of varying levels of awesome and not-so-awesome.
Maybe that counts as dream-fulfillment. Maybe I'll just keep an eye out on future ferry rides.
by way of Stevil
(be sure to watch at least past the halfway point, btw)
I'm not going to go so far as to say "now I've seen everything", but in the news there's teenagers in bizarre pregnancy pacts (used to be TP-ing trees just a couple years ago, no?) and then people praying for lower gas prices (I thought they wanted the rapture, not cheap petrol).
I'm starting to wonder how much more wacky stuff there is out there.
On a lark, here I am at the Cycle Messenger World Championships in Toronto. I'm not a messenger, I don't 'messenge', but I do spectate on occasion.
So I put a bike, a change of clothes, and the laptop in the car yesterday, and hit the road. Why? Well, Toronto is only 4.5 hours away, and this is the closest the CMWC is gonna get to Michigan (I really doubt I'd go to spectate if it were in San Francisco or Philly or Dublin or Sydney). Oh yeah, there's a large format bike polo tournament (64 teams), and I not only am curious to see how other people do it, but want to see how big and bad the big shots are. Maybe learn something too. Impressions of the warmup Saturday, you ask? OK...
- lt looks like knee high socks are the new thing for all the cool people. Too bad my wardrobe lacks them. 'Cause I want to be a unique individual, just like everyone else.
- I'm unlikely to ever adopt "messenger culture". Sure, I saw Quicksilver, and messengers are the nouveau urban cowboy, but I'm not much of a joiner when it comes down to it.
- I continue to not understand what fascinates people so much about riding their bikes in backwards circles. I get it, it's a trick. Congratulations. But once you've learned it, doesn't it just get boring after the 20th time?
- From watching East Vancouver and Ottawa play (the guy organizing it predicted they'll play the finals), their movement is so different. Keep moving, move the ball quickly, dynamically, not by 'carrying it'. Maybe you get intercepted, but let it go. Then take it back. Oh yeah, and play both sides of the bike with the mallet in the same hand.
I found a hostel downtown Toronto after some wandering, and after checking in and stashing my car went for a walk to find a beer. Seems that Toronto has been non-smoking for a while, but they neglected to pass a no-cologne ordinance along the way. I swear, walking by open doors or the rope line outside some club, my eyes were tearing. Found an Irish-ish pub, plunked down my $7 for a Guiness, read my book for a little while, and then decided I don't need to buy any more over-priced beer and headed back to the hostel. Seeing some of the folks all dressed up in their 6" heels and super-fishnets and patent leather corsets , I thought "hmm, must be a fetish club around here somewhere" Yup - Goodhandy's is right next to the Irish pub. Again, not being dressed for the occasion, I was content just to walk around and wander back to bed and sleep.
... I discover that not only is "natural" considered a "flavor" these days...
... but that apparently the marketeers at Kroger think that the food-buying public doesn't seem to know that there's a difference between calories from carbohydrates and calories from fat, regradless of how many there are.
From David Brin's Earth :
"It was, indeed, a bad habit, this toying with people. But as the years flickered by it grew easier. They all forgave so, almost as if they expected it... demanded it of her. And because she tested everybody, taking contrary positions without prejudice, fewer and fewer people seemed to believe she meant anything she said at all!
Perhaps, Jen admitted honestly, that would be the world's long-term revenge on her. To attribute everything she said to jest. That would be some fate for the so-called 'mother of the modern Gaian paradigm.'"
[sigh] ... if I was worried that I was misunderstood before, now I've got one more thing to include among possible reasons why.
