Entries this day: Bicycle

Bicycle

12:25 pm Sunday 6 January 2002

I'm outside Subway now, across the street from First Church on Fannin.

I've had quite an interesting bike ride before this point! Today is beautiful, if a teeny bit cold, okay, not cold, but chilly at 60 degrees or so. But the sky is blue and very few clouds.

I flopped around in bed for a bit until I had to get up and meet Kevin at work at 8am. He helped me move the new G3 macros online. The problem that we had on the 26th was I had not renamed the macro definition inside a file to match the new filename. So the macro was defined and would overwrite the correct macro that still had its previous name. Feel free not to understand this.

Soon as I left work, I rode backwards down the old feeder and got my wheels pretty coated in mud. About as muddy as the time I rode down along Buffalo Bayou near downtown. Discovered that the cool unicycle obstacle down which I had ridden some weeks ago has been destroyed in the process of constructing the new highway. Oh well. I think I got a picture of where it used to be.

Rode back through the clay-mud and then to the other side of the freeway and rode down the newly poured freeway lanes that are not yet in use. Felt a bit nervous riding alongside the freeway, wondering if any cops would see me or care. Washed off my tires by riding through a long shallow puddle beside the concrete. Pretty effective, that.

Rode all the way to where the highway comes back up to ground level, and decided not to explore past that, nor past a fence post that was bent open allowing me to visit the ground level outside the highway.

Rode back down the highway, got a couple of good pics of the bridges and grafitti on the new lights. Notice HAR.com in this pic, advertising how you can locate our house for sale.

Instead of exiting at Shepherd, I rode up the overpass to scope out that view. Just a wonderful feeling to be able to freely ride anywhere!!

For fun, I whizzed down the ramp all the way to the bottom again. (whiz = ride quickly, allowing gravity to do the work. (whiz != urinate))

Back up, and went home.

- - - -

D'oh!

I didn't have my keys. I must have left them at work!

Ah well, I'll just ride around Herrman Park and stuff until time for HAC YAC meeting.

Left a note for Amanda, telling her I would come by to get a new key to tide me over until tomorrow morning.

Was gonna take Bissonnette over, but then I thought it would be a great adventure to take the highway back through the mysterious fence!

Took another pic of the bridges and hefted my bike over the fence. More mud. Aw well, I can clean it all again.

But I didn't make it through. Well, not without having to carry or drag my bike over the mud. My wheels were *so* covered that they literally would not roll. I'm bummed that I didn't take a picture, but for some reason I didn't think about it. I'll get used to having a digital camera on hand, so i can photograph everything in sight.

I was amazed at how much heavier my bike got when its wheels are covered in mud! I laughed at the scene. My feet were heavy; I struggled and laughed and noted that this must be what it's like living with 2gs instead of 1. I'll take 1 please.

I was panting with exersion when my phone rang. 'Oh please don't let that be work.'

- - - -

It was Bryn calling about the dates of our proposed romania trip! They were in YRUU and seeking an appropriate date for the OKC rally. I'm *so* much ahppier that I have my cell phone instead of a lad line. Cause then I would have gotten the message and their YRUU would have been over and then what? I wouldn't have been able to help. But with the cellie, it was simple and easy to be helpful. yay!

But I was still struggling through mud when we hung up. I had about 50 more feet to trudge before I'd get to the street.

Even then, the clay-mud was loathe to remove itself from my wheels. It was a trick just to get them to roll at all, much less to be able to ride. Lots of bouncing, lots of slow rolls through puddles, including rolling through the perimeter of the concrete pond at Bell Park, I got my wheels basically clean. If by clean I mean not clean, but just that they would roll.

To Herrman Park and saw the new expansion of the lake, complete with ducks and new paddle boats and bew path for the train track.

Cleaned off the rest of the way at the small water park portion of the park, then rode back around the other side of the lake.

- - - -

At the museum, I talked to an Egyptian guy named Said, who has been working security at the museum for 13 years. He gave me his thoughts on religion and fighting and the Middle East and all that. He had a few fun quotes. 'Our brain is given so we can use it, not just have it as a decoration.' and 'on earth, you are American, and I am Egyptian. When we die, we are both human.'

Wow.

Back to church area and to Subway, but I couldn't lock my bike without my keys, so I parked it on the 3rd floor church balcony with a note, 'Do not steal Rob's bike. :-)'

Now I'm going to HAC YAC meeting.

1:00 pm