after one long season of waiting

I am absolutely digging this 60-degree weather we're having. Last week (and even this weekend) I thought I was going to have to give up my bike for the winter, and now I've had two absolutely lovely nights of biking home without even needing a jacket. And it's a good thing, too, because otherwise I would be pulling out my hair.

Even the city is giving me advice now:



I spotted that as I was crossing the bridge over the Metra tracks by the Art Institute, and I figured, okay, it's the Blue Cross building, they're probably telling me to quit something. (Yes, despite that seemingly-strategic lamp, it does actually say "QUIT.") Smoking? Eating junk food? But... apparently no. Unless the array of blue lights above it is actually meant to represent a blue Tetris block and it's telling the city to stop playing Tetris?

I'm going to choose to interpret it as a Sign, because today we had two people give their notice, and both of them were of the rare, sane variety, who actually do work. We still haven't replaced people who left in August. I don't think there's a single department in the office that isn't behind right now, and I don't know how they're going to cope with losing two competent, well-adjusted people. (I'm almost certain I'm going to lose all my help, and I would crawl under my desk and cry except there's no room because of all the files at my desk.) I haven't filed something on time in more than a month... and I used to be the only one who was ahead. Now I spend all my time fighting with other legal assistants and attorneys to get their work done and have no time to do anything I'm actually supposed to be doing. Stupid nightmare job.

One positive upshoot of the current situation, though, is that I've been listening to a lot of music lately to drown out Ego Girl, and I recently wore out my crappy old $15 headphones. So today I invested some of my overtime money into a set of actually-good headphones (it actually occurs to me to be embarrassed as to how much I just spent on headphones). But music... guys, music has bass! And dynamics! And... and... I forgot how much I was missing by just listening to things on crappy headphones and crappy laptop speakers. (I thought I wouldn't like in-ear headphones, but it turns out they're not as creepily claustrophobic as noise-cancelling ones and the general effect is that the music is right there and all the outside noises are behind it. I rode past a helicopter on the lakefront tonight and could still hear my music, but I could also hear other cyclists coming up behind me at times when there was no helicopter. Fancy!)

Today marks the very first time I nearly hit another cyclist! And I don't mean "Oops, got a little close on the trail there, sorry" hit (that happens a lot). I mean "That would've been a spectacular and deadly crash!" hit. This fantastic buttmunch ran a red light while I was leaving from a green light (because I stop at lights when they're red) and was riding in the crosswalk, which is acceptable only when... never. I expect this kind of behavior from bike messengers, and, in fact, I tend to shrug it off when they do something that looks like it would kill anyone else who tried it. But that kind of risk is their job, and I generally assume that they do crazy things with an understanding of the consequences. Also none of them have ever killed me. Generally, though, they don't run red lights in the crosswalk, because that's just dumb, and the sort of thing only a helmetless blue button-downed crazy McBroker face would do on his thousand-dollar Yupster bike just to show how fast he could pedal (Note: Not Fast Enough, given how slow I am out of the starting blocks).

I'm all for the bike commuting. I'd go so far as to say I love it. But this guy clearly thought he was cool, and that's just not how it works. Today I left work with one plaid pant leg rubber-banded up almost to my knee so my chain wouldn't eat it... I was wearing a tight black tank top with my work shirt on over it, because I was going to the store and didn't want to walk in looking half-undressed. I was also wearing bright green and purple athletic shoes. It's humid now, too, so every time I take my helmet off my hair is apparently replaced by the top half of a lion. Point being: You cannot effectively commute by bike without looking like a looney. (Part of my particular problem is that I'm too lazy to get proper biking clothes. The other part is that I don't want to haul an extra pair of pants to work in addition to my lunch, snacks, proper topside attire, and my bike tools. Looking a fool is efficient. Also I'm hoping it'll stop the evening janitor hitting on me quite so much when I leave work late. Which is always.) And have you ever seen a bike messenger? They only look cool because they've been mismatched and weird for so long they've become one with it (or they were mismatched and weird to begin with and that's why they thought it'd be cool to be a bike messenger).

Lesson for everyone here being... um. Don't be a tool. I'm starting to think the reason people in cars hate people on bikes is that we're unpredictable and behave like we have an inalienable right not to ever have to brake or lose momentum. And by "starting to think" I pretty much mean "realized as soon as I got up the nerve to start biking downtown." We'd all be much better off if people would just signal and obey reasonable traffic courtesy. I mean... weaving in and out of a traffic jam is one thing (that "one thing" being "very satisfying"), as is riding very wide of parked cars (which I acknowledge is very annoying for anyone behind me, but man guys car doors hurt, I'm sorry, some day I'll get over it), but blowing through a busy intersection during rush hour is entirely different. I was in a car with a friend a few weeks ago and we were coming up toward Millennium Park and I had to warn him that a couple of cyclists were going to cut him off because no one in their right mind wants to be on a bike next to a taxi in the turning lane (something you learn on about day two of biking downtown, but never learn if you've never biked downtown). But did they give any indication that they were going to cut over in front of him? Did they even look? Nope! And if he had hit them there's no way they would've been at fault. (This is actually part of why I refuse to drive downtown.)

I was going to whine about something else, like how my internet is so slow lately that I can't even use Hulu or how work is insane, but this will do for now.

But oh! Okay, one more thing, and then I'm going to bed. Has anyone else read Kafka's Metamorphosis? I finally got around to reading it (... as a break from Finnegan's Wake. Let's just ignore this bit, okay?). And... um. I found it kind of cute, poignant, and sad. It's supposed to be really crushingly depressing, right? But mostly I was thinking "Wow, Kafka leaves this all up to interpretation, nice!" Perhaps this is because I'm used to The Angst being hammered home very obviously. Maybe it's also because the translation I read was pretty matter-of-fact and not flowery at all (I think the only bit of extraneous description that I remember was to do with the light from the street outside). I mean, I know I'm meant to employ the sort of literary tools I left sitting next to those dissected seasons of Doctor Who I have lying around over there, but lots of people have done that already, and I was just after the gestalt of the thing. I was afraid I was going to read this and go "Oh man my job... it's turning me into a bug too!" but instead I read it going "... You know, this just gave me an excellent idea for a backstory for a character. Or a children's book." Perhaps this is a sign that it's already too late for me? (Day 9317: Still no apple lodged in my carapace. Things are a-ok!)

You know what I hate more than anything? What, if I had a true nemesis, that nemesis would be?

Car doors.

I can't wait until this bruise on my arm blooms out fully, if the half-dollar sized dent in The Stig is any indication of the damage. Ow. SUV doors really pack a punch.

Hate car doors.

On the plus side, this guy was super cordial and apologetic about it. I mean, it's a freak sort of accident, and I don't hold it against people unless they're complete tools like Mr. "Don't Worry About My Car!" I feel bad that I actually was hurt badly enough that I had to file a police report this time, because it probably ruined his evening, but man, ow. And I shouldn't feel bad about going to get my wrist checked out tomorrow, but I do, because his insurance is probably going to go up just because he didn't check his mirror before he opened his door. I mean, it was right into me. I didn't even see it coming. Stupid 53rd Street. At least it was just after a stop sign, so no one was going fast enough to run me over afterwards. Which, of course, didn't limit the terror of finding myself flat on the pavement looking back at an oncoming red car. I immediately panicked and rolled away, and then had two almost-simultaneous thoughts, which were: 1) Omg did that just break my arm? followed by 2) I was almost Sam Tylered there. And that made me laugh until I started crying. The poor man, he probably thought he'd really hurt me. Then I told him my shoe was still under his car. And that's when the police came.

And crap what is this now like, twice in a month? Geez. I guess I need to start riding in the middle of the road so cars can hit me head-on instead.

But now, aside from being very sore and covered in ice, I'm mostly sad that I didn't make it to Doctor Who night. Darnit, car doors. Way to interfere with my already-meager social life.

Normally I don't go pedalling podcasts, but the first half of this week's This American Life is amazing. Not particularly because of how it occasionally pretends to be impartial but clearly doesn't mean it, but because the story is like a terrible science fiction plot. I mean, the evil corporation? It's named after a freaking black hole. And, with cynical insiders at the helm, it comes in and absorbs a significant portion of the housing market when things would otherwise have slowed down and kills everyone and nothing escapes basically makes everything more of a disaster. It's classic evil villain, except it actually happened. True, what the NPR story covered up with tongue-in-cheek neutrality I have now multiplied by about fifty-three, but it sounds better this way. It's so ridiculously overwrought and symbolic it can't possibly be real. (But you know me, I'm always into finding other things to blame for the terrible economy, especially when they're 1) based in Chicago, and therefore easy to find and throw rocks at 2) directly related to the housing crisis which, while technically keeping me employed, is also probably the reason I can't find another job.) A secondary effect of this story is to re-bunny me for something I really want to work on, but don't have the people necessary to do so. (There's a part of me that wants to bang out/clean up my outline/spec script and troll through C2E2 this weekend to find the sort of people I need buuuuut I'm awkward so no.)

That aside, on things I do go pedalling [on]: I've reached the point that I am really properly in love with my bike. I adore it. Frighteningly, it's best on the streets. With cars. But don't tell anyone else that! (I think I just like the terror of rush hour. I've stopped hopping off and pushing it through the Loop, and have instead hunted out a street with wide-enough lanes.) I'm actually getting to work faster now, so I'm not even finishing entire albums anymore. I even got to work more than ten minutes early once this week (needless to say, I did not make that mistake a second time).

Today's interesting way of measuring time: My commute home by bike is exactly the length of Jose Gonzalez's Veneer. ... Technically, though, just the bit from Monroe and Lake Shore down to my apartment, so that cuts out all the terrifying street biking. The weather down was amazing, though. It went from about 60 degrees when I started to what felt like about 30 by the time I got back to Hyde Park. Hooray for spring in the midwest!

In my infinite foolishness this morning, I decided to actually try biking inside the loop downtown, on real, car-occupied roads. I hopped off of the lake trail at Roosevelt (which is 12th street, and the first major road you can get off of LSD onto; also the only one with a bike lane), which was terrifying. Then I went north on State, which was terrifying, so I turned and went a bit west on Harrison (6th street) which turned out to be also terrifying, then I went up Dearborn with a bus on my tail for three blocks which was, surprisingly, terrifying, but not as terrifying as finding myself in between two cars with the bus right next to me instead. Once I got within a block of work I just got off my bike and walked. It crossed my mind several times that I could have died with a bunch of complaints strapped to my back like some kind of suicidal bike messenger. Suffice to say I will probably not be trying that again... until it gets warmer out. And when I'm not carrying files. And when I know my bike a little better and am not getting my pants caught in the chain every quarter-mile. ...Or next time I'm biking to work and am really late.

Bonus points today to my office doorman, who saw I was carrying my front wheel and insisted that I wasn't allowed to bring my bicycle inside. I feel somewhat bad that my response was "Yes, that's why the rest of it is still outside." I think just being inside my building now makes me irritable and surly. Normal-me probably would've gone back outside and locked the wheel up properly.

So, my general verdict on my bike (this one, but with straight black handlebars and a black seat post instead) is that I like it quite a lot. I'm just not... as madly in love with it as I would've been with the $700 one I really wanted. But I know deep down in my heart that this bike will be pretty much exactly what I need around here once I get the fenders and rear rack on it, and I will come to love it far more than I would've loved the slightly uncomfortable and impractical pretty-bike. Alternately: Hooray for/curse pragmatism!