you californians sure are weird.
We might be crazy, but it's 65 degrees and sunny where I am right now.
So there. I was unnaturally excited to open my blinds this morning and see
Big Yellow Day Star; I'd thought it was going to rain all week and leave
me cage-trapped. But sunny it is, and so I put all my million tons of crap
in my tank bag and headed out to my bike with a spring in my step and a
song in my heart. I was going to take the long way to work today; a nice
jaunt up 280 for a few miles, and then take a back road down into Palo Alto.
Nice and pretty and sunny and relaxing.
Unfortunately for me, six motorcycle cops also had this bright idea. At first, I thought there was just an unusual amount of traffic on 280; I was only going about 60mph in the far-left lane, and all the lanes to my right (and in front of me) were packed with cars. Then we went over a crest, and I could see down the hill, waaay in front of me, the six motorcycle cops, all in the middle lane, utterly surrounded by the "oh, shit, cops" empty space. We all looked like a military procession or bizarre parade: six cops in a little rectangle, followed by a four-lane-width blockage of slow-moving cars. It was sort of surreal.
So anyway, that was hardly the relaxing open road that I figured 280 would be at 10:30am, and since everyone and their idiot brother was getting off the freeway at the same exit I was, the rest of the ride in to work wasn't idyllic, either. But that's OK. I was riding, and that's really what matters.
this is what i should do when i'm retired.
Ted Simon, who wrote Jupiter's Travels and Riding High (the latter being my current before-bed reading), has published
a new update here. Basically, he's re-riding the journey
he did in 1973-77, which was the basis for the two previously-mentioned
books. Considering that he's 69 years old now, I think that's damn cool.
He's sending his updates to Rider magazine, which is going to be printing them
in their print version, and apparently also the online magazine (the
above link goes to Rider's website). If you're interested, Ted's personal
website is also going to be following his journey, and has some nice info
as to who he is, and why in god's name he's going around the world on
a motorcycle *again*: http://www.jupitalia.com/.
daytona.
I've been glancing through photos and articles about Daytona when I come
across them. Here are some of my favorites so far:
Speaking of Daytona, check out this news article.
"A man suspected of drunken driving plowed his sport utility vehicle into a row of motorcyclists on Main Street on Tuesday afternoon, trapping at least two people under the wreckage and sending three to the hospital, police said.
One bystander had to reach into the SUV and choke the driver to get him to take his foot off the gas pedal after the accident, a witness said. Other bystanders lifted the SUV to free the trapped motorcyclists. "
Y'know, if there's *ever* a place to be an asshole drunk SUV driver and hit motorcylists, I would think that Main Street in Daytona during Bike Week might not be one's first choice. As one bystander noted, "If he had gotten out [of his SUV], he would have been killed."