they give no fuck

hullo there...been a while.

riding the bike has been an adventure of late, what with yesterday evening's whipping slushstorm, and this morning's sheets of ice and lusty wind gusts. turning that dodgy corner from state onto avis drive, i almost went down when i took a blast of headwind while hitting a patch of ice - the front wheel moved several inches to one side, but that was all; i somehow stayed up.

last night there was no ice but the rain/slush was coming down assertively. a guy nearly took me out with a classic right hook on packard at fourth ave., where i turn right anyway; it was a matter of inches. i took off in pursuit, adrenaline-fueled, but turned left at william as i usually do, considering that a) i had to get home so i could pick someone up from child care and 2) discretion is the better part of valor, or so they say. i'm not sure i want to get into the same awkward position as the city dog that finally catches the squirrel, wondering: now what? anyway, i will recognize the 1/4-ton pickup again by its bumperstickers: "vegan" and "peacemonger". there were more, but the first two were enough to get me going. at least i can be quite sure the fellow was a local. so yeah, that ben folds song...

i really wish i had the camera the other day (saturday it was) when i encountered, riding the bike across the u-m campus to celebrate a freshly-cleaned chain and a test application of phil wood's "tenacious oil" (which i will discuss further at another time), a red-tailed hawk grappling with a fox squirrel, right there on the grass near the grad library. the hawk had a pretty good grip on the squirrel with its talons, but was having difficulty finishing it off; whenever it would bend its head forward, presumably to get a grip on the squirrels neck and break it, it lost some leverage on the body and the squirrel would start to wriggle around too much. this went on for a while, with a small group of interested persons watching along with another squirrel, up in the tree (one of those tremendously beautiful burr oaks they have on the campus), who was definitely not rooting for the predator; me, i like hawks, but have no opinion of squirrels. the hawk would pause frequently to glare, long and hard, at the spectators (if you have ever considered trying to stare down a bird of prey, you should probably forget about it). suddenly, and i'm not really sure how it happened, but the squirrel got away, and ran up the tree, and the hawk s-l-o-w-l-y flew to a distant tree, and then back to the tree with the squirrels in it.

i don't know what happened after that, because it was a sunny day and i was eager to keep riding the bike. i hope that hawk got a meal, though.