Mr. Smith asked me the other day why I don't write about stuff that happens on the bike trails too much any longer. Wellll... since I manned up and started taking the Northeast Passage most days, I just don't ride on the multi-use paths. Since there's only about one fat middle aged poseur on a nice racing bike where I ride now, there isn't a lot of grist for comedy.
What, am I going to make fun of immigrant families for wearing worn out clothes? It ain't as funny as the shi-shi Bethesda chicks jogging in $750 sweatsuits. I could talk about people sitting down and having a picnic in the middle of the path, but that'd have racist/culturally insensitive overtones and some of you would get the vapors. There are occasional gay / transvestite hookers, periodic needles in the path, the one group home that seems to take a walk on the path now and again. So in the short distance I'm actually on the path, I see a lot of people I could pick on but they really don't deserve it, and even if I could get away with picking on them for being funny, 80% of what I'd be saying would be mean in a bullying sense and not really in keeping with whom I'm trying to be.
Plus it's fun picking on clueless trail-misusing assholes from Georgetown, Bethesda or Chevy Chase. Many of them are so intent upon fitting into a particular image that they are like walking entries from Stuff White People Like. In other words, a lot of them kinda deserve schooling for their pathetic, high school-like following of fashion. The folks on the other side of town are just trying to get along, and God help me, I can't find it in myself to pick on them.
Doesn't mean nothing interesting happens though. Take today. This woman in a blue Camry guns the engine, gets in front of me, crams on the brakes, then turns right, cutting me off in a patented Right Hook Maneuver. This is how many cyclists get killed and she nearly got me, so I favored her with one of my traditional Right Hook curses, something along the lines of "May Your Uterus Be Polluted By Alien Probes Then Fall Out Onto Broken Glass!" or something like that. Yeah, I hate nearly getting killed. About 20 minutes later, I'm easing on down Good Luck Road near 201, The Intersection That Stops All, and wouldn't you know it, this same Goddamn bitch gasses it past me in the left lane, brakes then swerves right in front of me to cut into the right turn lane, and nearly crashes me out, this time at 40 MPH nearing the bottom of this long, steep hill. Same car, same jackass woman driving it. The curses were a little more elemental this time, and I think I may have made my "I will impale your babies on unfinished wood spikes" series of gestures at her. WTF...
The Northeast Branch Trail is also in pretty remarkable shape right now. I figured this out coming into a bridge underpass, doing about 22 MPH. There was a little tailwind, a little downhill, and I cut under the bridge and all of a sudden I'm in a 4" deep, 10' wide pile of something across the trail that looks like a pack of 9000 pound bears would have left after getting into some bad burritos at Chi Chi's. Suffice to say, I determined that the mud clearance on my Giant TCR and its plain old short reach 105 brakes are probably not sufficient for cyclocross purposes... A lurid slide ensued, and I only got through without crashing thanks to my solid, cyclocross-honed mud skills. That and the fact that in deep mud a fat guy on skinny tires will sink down to the firm layers where the bike rides a bit more stable.
So you see, interesting things do happen to me on this new route, but they just aren't the kind of interesting things that are my usual stock in trade. Trust me, as soon as I figure out how to make fun of an immigrant family with 5 kids under 7, all of them running around unsupervised on the path in front of bikes, joggers and transvestites, all without looking like a complete ass, I will do so. For now I'm cutting them a break.
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