Alternative Transportation - Update
Bike commuting has been a blast so far. It's just a skosh under 13 miles door to door, with one big plus: it's all down hill on the way home. I've been riding twice a week and, unbelievably, it has finally allowed me a way to arrive home smelling like something other than dead fish!
Thursday, however, the ride was a bit, shall we say, "challenging". It was 95 freakin' degrees out, so I popped into REI and bought a bandana to keep the sweat out of the eyes. As I was leaving the store in Lynnwood I almost got hit by a car. About a mile later the rear tire was feeling a bit splashy, so I got out my handy-dandy CO2 tire inflator to pump up the tire, only to realize that I had a puncture (that's biker cool-guy slang for a hole in the innertube). I swapped the tube out only to realize that I was out of CO2, and as Simon would say (see 4/14/04 post), was up the creek with out a pump. I began hiking back up the street to Gart Sports for a little air when I was nearly struck by a second vehicle (this time I was right in the middle of a crosswalk!)
Those jokers a Gart know about as much about bikes as I know about the fluvial geomorphology of Wet Beaver Creek, AZ. I wasted an hour there looking for products they did not carry, and service they could not perform - the bike tech didn't know the difference between shrader and presta valves - that's akin to a computer tech not knowing the difference between Macintosh and Microsoft, or a Fishpimp not knowing the difference between Salmon and Halibut. Outrageous.
So I hiked back up to REI about a 1/2 mile further up the road and almost got hit by a 3rd car. What's up with drivers in Lynnwood anyway? Apparently, they do not understand what the parallel white lines perpendicular to their direction of travel indicate (That would be a crosswalk for those Lynnwoodite readers, it means don't run over the people walking between the lines!).
"Welcome to REI, how are you doing today, sir?"
"Terrible, thanks for asking." says I, figuring that being covered in sweat and bike grease while pushing a bike with a flat tire would have tipped her off, but she just had to ask. And it got worse still when the bike tech over-inflated my tube and it burst. So I got a Cliff Bar for dinner while they put a 3rd tube on my wheel. when he finnished he handed me the box for the tube and tells me to have them ring it up in front. Ring it up?!?! You're the bonehead who destroyed my good tube in the first place! Unfortunatly, by that time it was nearly 7:30, and I just wanted to get home to my dogs and leftover cassarole. I paid for it.
Anyway, it is my hope that I exorcized all my bad bike Karma, my bike Yin, and that I should be riding my bicycle Yang for months to come.
In other words I'll have Yang up the Ying.
Bike commuting has been a blast so far. It's just a skosh under 13 miles door to door, with one big plus: it's all down hill on the way home. I've been riding twice a week and, unbelievably, it has finally allowed me a way to arrive home smelling like something other than dead fish!
Thursday, however, the ride was a bit, shall we say, "challenging". It was 95 freakin' degrees out, so I popped into REI and bought a bandana to keep the sweat out of the eyes. As I was leaving the store in Lynnwood I almost got hit by a car. About a mile later the rear tire was feeling a bit splashy, so I got out my handy-dandy CO2 tire inflator to pump up the tire, only to realize that I had a puncture (that's biker cool-guy slang for a hole in the innertube). I swapped the tube out only to realize that I was out of CO2, and as Simon would say (see 4/14/04 post), was up the creek with out a pump. I began hiking back up the street to Gart Sports for a little air when I was nearly struck by a second vehicle (this time I was right in the middle of a crosswalk!)
Those jokers a Gart know about as much about bikes as I know about the fluvial geomorphology of Wet Beaver Creek, AZ. I wasted an hour there looking for products they did not carry, and service they could not perform - the bike tech didn't know the difference between shrader and presta valves - that's akin to a computer tech not knowing the difference between Macintosh and Microsoft, or a Fishpimp not knowing the difference between Salmon and Halibut. Outrageous.
So I hiked back up to REI about a 1/2 mile further up the road and almost got hit by a 3rd car. What's up with drivers in Lynnwood anyway? Apparently, they do not understand what the parallel white lines perpendicular to their direction of travel indicate (That would be a crosswalk for those Lynnwoodite readers, it means don't run over the people walking between the lines!).
"Welcome to REI, how are you doing today, sir?"
"Terrible, thanks for asking." says I, figuring that being covered in sweat and bike grease while pushing a bike with a flat tire would have tipped her off, but she just had to ask. And it got worse still when the bike tech over-inflated my tube and it burst. So I got a Cliff Bar for dinner while they put a 3rd tube on my wheel. when he finnished he handed me the box for the tube and tells me to have them ring it up in front. Ring it up?!?! You're the bonehead who destroyed my good tube in the first place! Unfortunatly, by that time it was nearly 7:30, and I just wanted to get home to my dogs and leftover cassarole. I paid for it.
Anyway, it is my hope that I exorcized all my bad bike Karma, my bike Yin, and that I should be riding my bicycle Yang for months to come.
In other words I'll have Yang up the Ying.
posted by Fishpimp | 9:38 AM
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