37th ride

I rode to work this morning in beautiful conditions—mild temperature, and clear early morning sunshine. I was hoping to lengthen my ride home considerably, going down to Saline. But in the middle part of the afternoon, rain moved in for a time, so I decided to scale it back. When one of my colleagues (Dustin) grinned and told me, "But the rain has now stopped!", I replied, "Yeah, but I don't want to press my luck." And as I rode, I allowed a combination of three factors—the threat of the return of the rain, already gathering heavy traffic, and the spray of rainwater from the ground thrown up by my rear tire so that it sprinkled my back wuite nicely—to persuade me of the rightness of this decision to ride directly home instead of the longer way. So I settled for a daily total of a mere 5.5 miles, in 33 minutes.

One incident from yesterday's ride that I forgot to mention then seems significant now. Riding in rush hour, I allowed the heavy traffic to persuade to do something I virtually never do, and rode on the sidewalk on my stretch along Eisenhower. And while I was climbing a large grade to cross a railroad track a little east of State, I came up behind a young man wearing a Tigers cap backwards sauntering rather indirectly back and forth in the middle of the walk. Gathering all the voice I could muster, I hollered, "Bike coming!" He looked back over his left shoulder and said, "Oh—sorry buddy!" But then when I eased by his left elbow, missing him by several inches, he sucked in his breath and exclaimed, "Jesus!" While I was sorry to have caused this outburst, I was happy to have missed him.