Tread Carefully, Again

"Excuse me, did you see me here?" I asked after pounding on the driver's window.

The driver was a man in his 30s, wearing glasses and a big hat, and there were young children in his car. The small sedan had backed out of the driveway at me, where I was waiting for the light to turn to my favor. I heard the sound of gears grinding into place and looked over my shoulder just in time to see the trunk-mounted bike rack, metal prongs sticking out of the little car, rushing towards me. My feet had enough traction in the slush for me to scramble backwards while the car swung around past me.

I only needed to lean forward slightly to reach the window as the he changed gears into forward drive. He looked up at me with an expression of horror that he somehow completely missed seeing a figure in a bright chartreuse jacket and orange ski goggles under broad daylight when it was no longer snowing. All I heard was my own panting breath and his idle engine when he quickly shook his head and slammed on the accelerator to get away from me.

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16 February 2014 17:35

Era Vulgaris Noon

My collective tardiness for the week exceeds four hours, and there's still not enough motivation to get moving in the mornings. I cannot tolerate feeling rushed in the mornings. I cheat this by starting my mornings before I go to bed, and make the act of waking and sliding into my clothes, my breakfast, my bicycle, as part of a continuous flow.

Fridays always feel as if they aren't happening. I push forward through a headwind that persists regardless of which direction the road is pointing. "Do you need help?" she asks when I approach the door, when I'm untangling my hair from my face.

"Nah, I've got it," I claim, but she's held the door for me anyway. "Thanks a lot!"

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14 February 2014 15:00

Gerber

Both our hands are full when we notice that the paper needs to be trimmed, so I balance the heavy roll between one hand and one thigh so I can reach for the knife in my pocket. It flicks open easily despite the lint jammed into the hinge, and I trim as far as I can reach from my side.

"You're pretty handy with opening that thing one handed," he says, especially after nicking himself when taking it from me to trim his side. It was a present from him, and after a couple of months in my hands, there are already spots where my fingers have worn their mark into the finish.

"Well, we've come to an agreement. But it hasn't drawn my blood yet, so it's not really mine until it does."

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13 February 2014 09:59

Tread Carefully

I saw the salt-encrusted red truck start to turn onto my road before he realized he wasn't going to get the turning radius he expected, and I tensed. In a moment, all I knew was the distance between myself and every escape route possible, but none of them seemed like a plausible option. I was ready to vault onto the hood as a last resort, and he saw me at the same time his wheels suddenly became nearly useless front-mounted rudders.

The sound of tires losing traction have been haunting me this entire winter, and every winter prior. It's the only thing I truly fear when I'm riding with traffic, that a driver will lose control of their car while our vehicles are on an unchangeable trajectory towards each other. I heard those wheels spinning under the heavy load, useless scraping against the ice for an entire heartbeat before becoming drowned out by a frantic honking of the horn. I squeezed down, knowing just how much pressure my brake levers could take without sending the bike sideways underneath of me, embedding my front tire into a snowbank.

I faced the truck, which had so much snow on the hood that I couldn't even feel heat rising from the engine that idled a foot away from my chest. Breath curled out from my balaclava, lit by the truck's headlamps. I couldn't see the driver inside the dark cab, and he probably couldn't see my face behind the light well of my headlamp. I threw a hand up in equal parts helpless despair and "the hell do you want from me" in response to the honk.

My right foot was buried past the ankle in the wall of snow built by passing plows, and it came free with a lurch as I dismounted to push my bike to a clearer path so I could move on with my ride.

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10 February 2014 09:14

Happens All the Time

"Aren't you freezing biking around in this weather?" the elctrician asked me when I wheeled my bike into the elevator. I just gave him a shrug and a grin.

"How else am I supposed to get around?"

"Well, I don't know. Do you live too far away to walk?"

"Not really, it just takes too long."

"But you won't freeze the way you would on a bike."

"Honestly, I'd rather be really cold for fifteen minutes than kind of cold for forty-five."

He watched me peeling off my outer layers and shook his head once the elevator got to my floor. "I just think you'd freeze on a bike."

"Nah, I'm fine. Take it easy!"

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07 February 2014 14:18