Bloviations

This week held a couple of interesting during-commute events.

I met a fellow cycling commuter on the ride home earlier in the week. Nice guy on a free box-store bike. He needed some saddle advice. It was kind of nice to actually talk to someone on the ride instead of just being passed with barely a notice.

On another day, I was over-taken and passed by an older woman on a gas-powered scooter. I suppose it would be pointless to tell her that the City of Jacksonville Recreation Department’s Trails and Greenways prohibits motorized vehicles on the paths…

There’s an 8-feet (or more) fence going up on on the Camp Lejeune portion of the path, just after the North East Creek bridge. What’s interesting to me, is that this fence, with what will apparently be a barbed or razor wired top, does not surround anything. It begins and ends in a single line and really only provides an obstacle for cyclists that may need to repair their bicycle or pedestrians that may need to tie their shoes. There’s no real protection or security benefit to this fence. I’ll try to get some photos up in case my description isn’t adequate.

Also different this week was the weather…It got cold darned cold! My standard short-sleeved technical fabric shirt didn’t do much of job keeping me warm. I grabbed a cheap fleece and a long-sleeved technical fabric shirt.

The week’s total was over 73 miles.

In addition to the work-week, there was some weekend riding.

It was less than 10 miles, sure, but it was some weekend riding. There would’ve been more, but for last-minute changes of plans with Mini. Plus, the ease of cycling to a few of the places AM and I regularly go on Saturday mornings has instituted a plan to bicycle every Saturday on the errands. As we get better and more comfortable, better equipped, we’ll be adding destinations to the trips.

As for the change in plans…Saturday we took Mini to lunch (Shoguns instead of Red Robin. I was very disappointed and they didn’t have a “children’s” menu which was confusing to me, the hibachi tables were closed for cleaning and the teriyaki chicken wasn’t great.) and to get a gift for a party she was attending on Sunday. The plan was to leave the car by Shoguns, walk to ToysRUs and ride the Jacksonville City Transit bus to the apartment and back. And it went pretty smoothly until the bus-ride back to ToysRUs. The bus driver made several unscheduled stops along the route and, at the Onslow County Library, stopped, shut off the bus and left us locked inside as she went into the library. The driver was gone probably less than ten minutes, but in that time, the bus had gotten a bit warm. I can only guess as to how hot it would’ve been had there been other passengers. When the driver returned, she mumbled something about “goin’ to the emergency room” after her shift. Maybe I’m off-base here, but if she thinks she needs to go to the ER, isn’t now a much better time than at the end of her shift?

And, as if that weren’t enough to cause a bad bus experience for Mini, the driver did not hear or did not recognize the two times Mini pulled the “Get-me-the-heck-off-this-bus-at-the-next-stop” cord and we nearly missed our preferred stop. When I spoke up, she said, in a raised-voice-that-wasn’t-quite-yelling, that she didn’t know we wanted to stop there and that “if you wanted to stop you should’ve pulled the cord”. Uh. Yeah. Even the other passenger that wasn’t getting off with us started laughing at that.

Mini said, after getting off the bus, that that driver was the “worst, ever”. Indeed, she was.

After getting into AM’s car, we went to Rita’s Water Ice for Italian ice gelatis, for the adults, and cones-of-custard, for Mini.

It was a good Saturday, which AM and I closed out with a short night-time ride through downtown.