tokolosh

oy. i'm really glad you're okay, and impressed by your toughness - i'd be shaky even if i hadn't been hurt. but it still sucks. you could report hit-and-run, you know . . . ?

pretty average rides today. i think i'm glad of this returned warmth, but i'm not sure yet. humidity is back all the way up, so +4 doesn't feel all that different from 0 really. i think i'm disappointed that i couldn't swank around all day today disengenuously exclaiming 'but it's so WARM!' to all the bundled people. small mind, me. plus it felt pretty cold starting out, but i guess it's deceptive when so much of it is humidity-related - i was way overwarm by the time i was halfway home, in the same stuff that was just right last week at about 5C colder.

obstruction on the bridge; i got to do the midnight-shadow free-spirit glide past everyone queueing up in the cloverleaf at 7:30 pm. apart from that section, everyone on the way home driving like the world's supply of prozac had all run out at once. i have no idea why, except two theories: there was something violent on tv last night, or being sprung from the snow back to our standard conditions has made them all come over all strange and peculiar. i didn't really enjoy anybody, but the prize for the night goes to the guy at the stopsign who came to a full stop, looked both ways and right at me, and then started out again right in my path. i've never experienced that invisible-cyclist thing people talk about before; it was kind of surreal. and yeh. enraging. he made me put my feet down right in the middle of the killer hill, which meant i had to start out all over again from a stand.

twelve more commutes till christmas. my drivetrain definitely seems to be losing the will to live; it keeps making strange noises and skipping and chattering, doing the shift with a clunk half a mile after i actually made the change . . . but i think it'll hold out. i'm thinking more and more that i'd like to have a real bike, but i've got this little personal-challenge thing going that says When i've finished this contract and commuted to all of it on this bike, Then i can think about retiring this one with honour and getting a different (read: real) bike for a different job and a different ride. assume there'll be a different job, that's to say. i feel like if i change bikes in the middle of this, i'll never know if what it and me together would have been able to do, which was kind of the point of all this. but i think i can clean the chain and maybe put air in the tires this weekend without compromise.

songs: gallant murray, traditional; chain up the swings, michael marra.