in the sweet music on my radio

so i am feeling somewhat ambivalent about this global climate change thing. the loss of species and the inundation of coastal areas are bad (although the latter is at least reversible), but sunday afternoon i cleaned, relubed and tightened my bicycle chain out in the driveway, in my stocking feet. that is not a typical thanksgiving weekend activity.

of course i am being facetious. but cut me some slack; i am feeling unusually old this morning. somehow the combined effects of three hours of sleep and crashing my bicycle into the shoulder of state road yesterday evening are having a stronger impact on my state of well-being than they might have had, say, twenty years ago. as it happened yesterday i left work to a worse-than-usual backup of traffic on state. for some reason i contemplated taking my place in line, not scooting along the right as i typically do in this situation, despite my rigorous adherence to the rules of the road at other times. passing on the right is a pet peeve, something i never do in town and in most other situations, having found that taking one's place in line at red lights and stop signs does not significantly increase the time it taes to get places, and is far safer (the dreaded right hook is essentially a non-issue), technically legal, and courteous to boot.

safe, legal and courteous, in that order: my mantra as an urban bicyclist.

anyway i make an exception on state road when the backups at ellsworth are insane. it is tricky because the road is narrow, most drivers are on their phones saying honey the traffic is bad put my potatoes in the microwave okay honey? and the shoulder is a bit of a dropoff. but hey. i'm good. and last night i felt even better becaue i had a freshly-cleaned and all but silent drive train to propel me in near silence, and the dusk lowering and the shoulder looking as though it had been graded that day so it would be soft and dangerous and no longer a place to bail out, and the cars mostly centered in their lane except for the ford taurus wagon ahead fairly far to the right, maybe just enough room if i slow it down a tad and steady myself on his window, the gloved left hand brushing the window and the balance maintained, but the spacing imprecise and the handlebars hooking on the sideview mirror, the rapid turn of the front wheel and getting thrown down into the soft, graveled shoulder and bouncing up with the bike still in hand, or so it seemed, it all happening so fast that it felt as though i never let go of the bike, standing there on the side of the road with the bike and the crooked handlebars and the bruised elbow and blood-spotted knee.

the guy pulled right over and was very nice, perhaps not as shocked as i would have liked, but really i didn't give him a chance before saying that it was totally my fault for trying to sneak through like that, and that there wasn't really anything he should have done differently to prevent it. i had a wrench out by then and was straightening the bars, and we chatted a little more, him offering me a ride and me looking things over and saying no thanks, i'll be fine. so i made it home without further incident, and cleaned myself up, and then after dinner and family business i stayed up until 2:00 finishing that paper for the disinfection conference in february. all in a day's work, except, as i said before, i'm getting a little old for this and i feel it all, more completely, than i used to.