A Look Under the Hood
Looking beneath, that seems to be the theme of the day. It's just a little look under the hood, a view of the underbelly from the inside. Yesterday, I completed 44 miles on the week and felt desperate for the spin, so desperate I took a ride despite the fact that I was on a clear liquid fast as part of the prep for the dreaded butt snake today. I figure colon cancer has to be worse than the screening procedure, so I'm trying to go through it as complacently as possible.
Three cans of sprite at a department meeting fully stocked with what looked like a ton of pizza was sheer torture, but I sucked it down and smiled. Because I hadn't had any sugary soda beverage in...well, years. So lunch and dinner was 430 calories of sugar--I'm surprised I didn't sprout wings and start hummmmmming.
The caffeine headache has me fully engulfed now, so I'm remembering the cokes I had to pass up with a bit of a mist in my eye. Clean as a whistle--you know if you have to have your tubing cleaned out, at least there could be caffeine. I'm thinking I didn't need to have my caffeine habit cleaned out, too.
I realized that road construction season is in full swing in El Lay as I dodged a lot of orange cones this week. It tends to make the car people, poor dears, stomp more fiercely on the accelerator. Metal boxes house metal minds. Yesterday, I had my first encounter with an a-hole in a truck who clearly didn't want me anywhere near his goddam road. It's funny, how this kind of metal mind puts off a recognizable prickle, something you can hear in the lurch of the engine coming up behind you. I was lucky to have caught on, lucky to have veered to the sidewalk while he filled the space I was about to occupy without hesitation.
No, I wasn't wearing my iPod.
Why IS there so much construction? Could it be a subliminal tax time message--your tax dollars at work? Cyclists all over the area are praying they put some of that bull into play up on Wilshire, where the potholes are named for the Great Lakes. Word is one has it's own monster when the rains come.
The used condom in the road yesterday, that gave me pause. Don't get it wrong, I twitch my front wheel around them almost as frequently as I avoid 3" steel bolts (which is to say, often enough). Latex road kill usually frequents the quieter places, the paths along El Lay's forsaken and imprisoned waterways, dropped under the overpass or next to some bushes. It's an easy thing to explain in these dark places. People have needs and shouldn't spare the protection--although they really shouldn't be slobs about it. Now this one yesterday, was only about 200 feet of a main arterial that stretches through the greater metro area, even in the wee hours there is a good amount of traffic. Yet, there it was, discarded tinfoil wrapper flapping in the wind next to it.
Huh. Underbelly--and does it make me a deviant that I've spent enough time on that cast off to tell eleven different stories to explain its presence? Ah, El Lay is a two-dollar whore on display at a one-dollar freak show. Sometimes, she's the prettiest gal in the room, and others she's just an over-painted and aging bitch with hard eyes and a crack problem.
Still and all, I was proud of myself for riding despite the extra suffering. I needed the ride and I took it, and it made me feel better--orange cones, assholes, used condoms and hunger pangs aside. I'm looking forward to getting the rear end roto rooter over with so I can eat a really juicy mushroom and swiss burger. And a brownie. But most of all I'm looking forward to the rides of the coming week.
Three cans of sprite at a department meeting fully stocked with what looked like a ton of pizza was sheer torture, but I sucked it down and smiled. Because I hadn't had any sugary soda beverage in...well, years. So lunch and dinner was 430 calories of sugar--I'm surprised I didn't sprout wings and start hummmmmming.
The caffeine headache has me fully engulfed now, so I'm remembering the cokes I had to pass up with a bit of a mist in my eye. Clean as a whistle--you know if you have to have your tubing cleaned out, at least there could be caffeine. I'm thinking I didn't need to have my caffeine habit cleaned out, too.
I realized that road construction season is in full swing in El Lay as I dodged a lot of orange cones this week. It tends to make the car people, poor dears, stomp more fiercely on the accelerator. Metal boxes house metal minds. Yesterday, I had my first encounter with an a-hole in a truck who clearly didn't want me anywhere near his goddam road. It's funny, how this kind of metal mind puts off a recognizable prickle, something you can hear in the lurch of the engine coming up behind you. I was lucky to have caught on, lucky to have veered to the sidewalk while he filled the space I was about to occupy without hesitation.
No, I wasn't wearing my iPod.
Why IS there so much construction? Could it be a subliminal tax time message--your tax dollars at work? Cyclists all over the area are praying they put some of that bull into play up on Wilshire, where the potholes are named for the Great Lakes. Word is one has it's own monster when the rains come.
The used condom in the road yesterday, that gave me pause. Don't get it wrong, I twitch my front wheel around them almost as frequently as I avoid 3" steel bolts (which is to say, often enough). Latex road kill usually frequents the quieter places, the paths along El Lay's forsaken and imprisoned waterways, dropped under the overpass or next to some bushes. It's an easy thing to explain in these dark places. People have needs and shouldn't spare the protection--although they really shouldn't be slobs about it. Now this one yesterday, was only about 200 feet of a main arterial that stretches through the greater metro area, even in the wee hours there is a good amount of traffic. Yet, there it was, discarded tinfoil wrapper flapping in the wind next to it.
Huh. Underbelly--and does it make me a deviant that I've spent enough time on that cast off to tell eleven different stories to explain its presence? Ah, El Lay is a two-dollar whore on display at a one-dollar freak show. Sometimes, she's the prettiest gal in the room, and others she's just an over-painted and aging bitch with hard eyes and a crack problem.
Still and all, I was proud of myself for riding despite the extra suffering. I needed the ride and I took it, and it made me feel better--orange cones, assholes, used condoms and hunger pangs aside. I'm looking forward to getting the rear end roto rooter over with so I can eat a really juicy mushroom and swiss burger. And a brownie. But most of all I'm looking forward to the rides of the coming week.