the roses they won't hurt you

the recent proliferation of partially smushed walnuts, at certain locations along my bicycle commute, has become something of a hazard, greater in fact than the fully smushed osage oranges on state street, next to the u-m golf course and near the ann arbor railroad. the thing is, the walnut husks get smushed but the nut itself remains intact, hiding knob-like underneath the smushed husk and presenting the sort of hazard that could cause one to lose control of one's bicycle, if one's mind was on something other than the exigencies of bicycle maneuvers. a smushed osage orange, on the other hand, while kind of gross is still something you could pretty much ride right through, as long as you held your line and didn't try to turn in the middle of it, in which case the transverse forces may be too much for the psuedoplastic smushed osage orange and it would just give way, and the bicycle would slide, and you'd be on your ass, in traffic no less.

me, i wouldn't place much faith in the rheological properties of smushed fruit. better i should look where i'm going.

so i was looking where i was going this morning and pulled in behind a honda pilot that was turning right from miller onto first street, getting right behind the vehicle and in line with its rearview mirror, on the off chance that the driver would take a glance at the mirror and hence see me (it does happen sometimes), and just as the car makes its turn i see it almost hit another bicyclist who has come essentially from nowhere, and shakes his head in what i imagine to be disbelief or exasperation or something like that, and i think well there you are tearing up on the right and what exactly were you expecting to have happen, and oh by the way did you happen to see me and what i was doing, and figure out that there was no way in hell that honda pilot was going to give me the right hook in that situation? with me riding behind it instead of trying to slip through on th right? and then he rides up on the sidewalk, and i think oh well whatever. and he tears along the sidewalk but waits at the light at main street. on green he starts tearing along the sidewalk again, scoots across fourth avenue at the next intersection, then stops again at the light at fifth. and i was tempted to invite him into the street, if he is going to be that swift and agressive, but i thought the better of it and turned on red to head south on fifth and that was pretty much it.

funnier still was that, while heading east on catherine, parallel with mister wift and furious, i also saw another cyclist coming the other way, blowing the stop sign at fourth and going straight through from the left turn lane, and he was riding a "fixie" just like me! and i thought hey fixed gear brother, right on! no, actually that's not what i thought at all. i though what a bonehead. which was judgemental, i know, but hey i'm riding my bike here.

the guy was hitting "fixed gear culture" on all cylinders: jankity conversion, messenger bag, no helmet, no rules. sometimes i wish i had a nickel for every cornball cyclist i see in my town. i wouldn't be rich, but i would have a tidy pile of nickels.