Well, last night was the first time since about mid-October that I haven’t had to wear my coat while riding. My god it’s great to be riding in just regular clothes. I am so heartily sick of wearing EVERYTHING to go out and ride my bike. Last night I wore a pair of normal pants, two lightweight sweaters, and an earband, besides my boots, helmet and a pair of gloves.Â
Today I only needed one sweater (and pants, shoes, & basic bike safety equipment). My god, it was sweet!
Last night was Critical Mass. On account of it being the first one featuring acceptible weather since probably September there was a pretty impressive turnout. There were probably 40-45 riders out which for Kansas City, at the end of winter, is pretty astounding. Just a couple of years ago, we counted it a damn good CM if we racked up a dozen riders, and that was during high summer.
Different cities have different attitudes and different political climates, and I know CM can be pretty controversial, but here in Kansas City, it tends to be a party atmosphere, and folks don’t get too aggro, nor too evangelical, so it tends to be a damn fine time. It’s pretty inspiring to see that many riders out at once, just having a good time. No money changing hands, no big plans, everyone going the same direction at roughly the same pace. The stream of blinky lights deliniating the fluid stream of riders. It’s a beautiful thing.Â
This morning, I took a longish ride. I had some shit for work that I needed to look into. That part of the trip turned out to be a wild goose chase, so I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with the project when I get back in on Monday, but I guess I’m will figure that out when I get to work.Â
I didn’t get all of the stuff done today that I meant to, but that’s okay. I was going out principally to do that work research and to pick up a few more picture frames for those old photos from Joel’s dad. I found the frames – in fact, I got a couple that are just perfect in every way. I think the next time I am up at Joel’s house, I’m going to lay them all out and photograph my haul. I’ve spent $26 all told, and I think I have pretty much the majority of the frames I will need for his dad’s photos and some other pictures that I wanted to frame and hang.  It’s going to end up being a kind of shabby-chic look and I think it will work pretty darn well.
The thing that held me back from doing other errand running was that I found this one large frame (10X12, with a broad and deep-set oak frame) which only just barely fit into my pannier. I had the leave the top flap of the pannier open, and I didn’t really want to chain the bike up at the grocery or anywhere else for that matter, with the pannier just hanging open and half of my stash of picture frames just hanging out the top. It’s no biggie, though.Â
I went home & parked that bike (the yellow Bianchi with my super-sweet Ortleib panniers) ate lunch, and swapped out for the old Trek to go on the ACME ride. We found this total bonanza of crap where people have been doing hells of illegal dumping, so I took pictures of weird shit in the trash heap and scored a few random small items of bizarre ephemera. I am now the proud owner of about a 1/2 scale artificial pomegranite, and a very realistic artificial cucumber. I think I will take the cuke to work to use as a stressball. It immediately makes me feel MUCH better to squeeze a rubber cumber, and I was not in the least bit stressed today. I think on a bad day, the Cucumber will pretty much PWN anything negative happening in my brain. And on a good day, it will just make me deeply satisfied to view the rubber cucumber sitting beside my computer.
I’ll post some of the photos later or tomorrow. I’m tires, and my computer is eating balls right now. I’ll get the stuff up on Flickr and maybe do a photo essay tomorrow afternoon, since I’ll be up at Joel’s house and his computer isn’t half dead like mine is.
Ooo, a rubber cuke. Not only can you squeeze it, but you can good-naturedly whack people and things with it. Comedy gold.
Dude, don’t I know it. I’m way stoked about my rubber cucumber.
A “rubber cucumber”? Is that what the kids are calling them these days?
Yep, that’s what I’m calling it!