So I took 3305 and have narrowed it down to 409 photos of fauna. I have about 100 photos of flora to upload shortly.
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!
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!
How can thieves sleep at night?
Honey…I can’t sleep
While I cannot go into much detail since there was a police investigation initiated, but how do thieves sleep? I guess it all depends on how you are brought up, but there is no way I could steal anything and not feel so guilty about it. I have witnessed quite a few things over the years “grow legs and walk off.” Something as cheap as an Ethernet cable. If it were me, each time I used it, I would feel guilty. Is the guilty feeling really worth a $5 Ethernet cable?
Caught in the act
The local police spotted the thieves and they have been apprehended. I am hoping that my computer is among the retrieved and still functional. There was no forced entry..so who knows, if they were not caught in the act…how many offices would have been ransacked! Can you really be that stupid? Besides the moral implications, the thieves pretty much have ruined their lives as they will likely be fired and not be able to get a job.
Changes
So…quite a few changes are being initiated. Machines will be locked down to hopefully prevent theft in the future. I also plan to secure my backup drive. Thankfully my backup drive was left and still functions. Being a Mac, my computer was backed up and it will be easy for me to import all of my profile settings, applications, and files if it is necessary to get a new computer.