Yeah Yep Cool Girl

Joys of Public Transportation

I have been riding my bike to work for close to 3 years now and wanted to list a few pros and cons…

Cons

A Wee Bit Cold in the Winter
Free Shower in the Summer

Pros

No Waiting
Cheaper
No nose in smelly arm pits. (Okay so since I am tall I don’t have that issue)
Faster
Exercise
Chatting it up with fellow cyclists
Racing cars at lights (Just Kidding)

and… No Yeah Yep Cool Girl!

Of course there are countless benefits of riding a bike. I had to ride the bus to work a few times while dealing with a medical issue and boy, did I regret it.

It’s one thing when everyone has headphones on, but something about a cell phone conversation early in the morning really got under my skin. I am polite and did not say anything, though I did nod my head in agreement with the conversation 🙂 I do find it very rude for people to have cell phone conversations or loud face to face conversations on public transit. This time I was particularly annoyed…

She was “like” yeah, you know. LOL
She kept saying “yeah, “yep,” and “cool” to her mother. Granted my mom was an English major and told me the word was “Yes.”
She said she was vegan and her mother was asking her all sorts of questions about groceries that she needed to get for her when home for the holidays. What I thought was particularly funny is that she said “The grocery store near us does not have anything for me to eat.” Okay, so they may not carry vegan chicken wings, but honestly….doesn’t half of everyone’s diet contain fruits and veggies? I find it hard to believe a store would not carry those. LOL Perhaps she recently became a vegan, because when her mom asked her what kind of vegan cheese she wanted, she had no idea.

That’s It..

Not much in this blog post, but it was so memorable I needed to let the world know. I don’t think a short phone conversation with high school level grammar would have bothered me, but a conversation that lasted the entire bus ride early in the am….just drove me to blog!

2013-01-102021-01-26

Your Bike Light is Too Bright

I don’t often have a driver of a car roll down their window to talk to me, but yesterday one did and we had quite an interesting conversation.

Firstly she said that she was a cyclist and that my bright head light which I happened to have in flash mode was blinding her from behind. When I was behind her I noticed that she seemed to have her hand up to her window much like I have done when bright lights hit the mirror just right. (I wonder if my mirrors are not properly angled when that happens) In fact it seemed that she had her hand to her ear originally and I immediately thought cell phone.

You are going to get hit!

She did reference those with Epilepsy in this statement. While I agree that some people are adversely affected by strobe lights from high school theatre warnings, I disagreed that this would make me more prone to getting hit. I calmly stated “You saw me right?”

Apparently she was just having a bad day, but I thought it was particularly interesting that she decided to get into a discussion with me. Granted when I see people with cell phones up to their ear I give them an evil stare, I rarely say anything. I may gesture to put the phone down, but as they are in a car, I don’t want to fuel any rage and get run off the road or run over.

Turn your Headlights On

Okay…so I was a little bit snarky as I asked her to turn her headlights on. I had come up behind her noticing her tail lights were not on which is usually indicative of the “My lights are on” when really just the day-time running lights are on.

Oddly enough she did not miss a beat to scold me for having a highly noticeable headlight as she turned on her headlights. 🙂

Be Visible and Be a Driver

So the moral of the story? I don’t feel that I was doing anything wrong. In fact, I feel better about my $100 headlight as it makes me visible to drivers. So much so that it annoys some of them.

Be a Driver. Be in the correct position in the lane, obey traffic laws, and staying alert and visible will help you survive the busy metro streets even during rush hour 🙂

Need some tips about driving safely as a cyclist? Contact your local bike advocacy group for safety class opportunities.

Happy Riding!

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224934 Visitors and Counting

Okay, so as of late I have not been blogging nearly as much as I would have liked. In fact, it seems that it takes a lot of effort to come up with grammatically correct posts. No wonder people “tweet” so much. LOL. In fact, my last blog post was so long ago, I am sure some NY Times Best Sellers have published a book or two in the interim. 🙂

224934

The number of people I have interacted with during my various volunteer activities.

Breakdown

167664 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
45132 Smithsonian National Zoological Park
4918 Washington Area Bicyclist Association
7150 National Park Service, etc.

88

The number of tours I have given at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park

1747.5

The number of hours spent volunteering. There are times when my volunteering does not involve interacting with visitors. For example, this past December, I got to be Panda Claws at the Smithsonian National Zoo.

24 March 2013

Will mark the 6th year of my volunteering in DC with the Smithsonian. I had originally thought it would take 35 years to make 1oooooo and it looks like it should take me 18 more years. Nothing like having a long term goal 🙂

Photos

Being Panda Claws was really fun and I thought I would include some photos. My friend Keith came to take photos of me and bought a panda hat to get into the spirit 🙂

2012-10-182021-01-26

Movie Review: Argo

So I decided not to spoil the movie for anyone, but I just wanted to make one comment…..

“So that is why there are so many bad Sci-Fi movies.”

Premise

Iranian Hostage Crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While I was alive during that time, I don’t recall hearing much about it. Granted, how much would a 1 year old retain 🙂 As with any foreign hostage situation, I would hope the goal of the government would be to attempt to free the hostages and return them to their home country. This movie was no different.

Appreciation

Since I don’t recall much about the crisis, I don’t think we covered this in social studies in grade school, I lacked a real connection to the movie. Just like the landing on the moon, I believe if you were paying attention to those events on the news as they unfolded, you would enjoy this movie more.

However I have a weakness for “True Stories” or movies “Based on true events.” Granted hopefully movies are a little more aligned with true events than the songs “Inspired by the motion picture soundtrack.” 🙂

Overall Impression

From what I could tell the cinematography was accurate and very well done. It is always hard to do movies that take place during an earlier period since you need to get the props to match. There must be a stockpile in Hollywood of so much stuff since I really doub’t you can find new “vintage” Star War sheets 🙂

While websites say “Must Go,” I would say “Go” if you like a true story. It moves a little slowly, but unlike Titanic, I did not look at my watch in hopes it would end. Kudos that my attention was kept! Granted had I received a text message and the associated vibration in my pocket, I might have taken a minute to see who it was. Now, if you recall the events from that time period, probably would be a “Must Go” if not only for fact checking and accuracy of clothing style.

As far as Ben Affleck winning an award for the movie…..have to see what else it is up against. I don’t think I will be waiting for this movie to come out at the RedBox, since I already saw it in the theatre, and this is not the kind of movie that I will run out and buy. If you don’t see it in theatres and are a history buff, definitely worth looking renting it when it comes to your local video store, Redbox weeks later, or Netflix the following year 🙂