Aw, you know, every once in a while I get tired of the plain stripes down the side and decide to make you wait for an image to download. These leaves were in the parking lot at work. It's autumn in New England. I'm going to keep 'em for a while.
I got my first flame for the web page the other night. There were two emails from the same person; one had for a subject, “Your web page is so stupid” and no message. The other (in case I didn't get the first, or maybe because the sender didn't know how to use email) had no subject and the message, “Your web page is very stupid.” Not what I call constructive criticism. Not even evidence of the capability of giving constructive criticism. I'm curious to know how he stumbled across me, and just what page he was talking about; but not curious enough to have written back.
Sometime over the summer I modified my bike route to work. There were a few days when streets were blocked for construction and the detours seemed preferable to the direct route. I go straight across a moderately busy street (Homer) and parallel to it for a couple of blocks on strictly residential streets. That saves making a left off Homer, something that wasn't dangerous but took more looking in the rearview mirror than I really liked. The other advantage of this route is that it's more fun. On the way home, the last block before I get to Homer has a slight downhill with an S curve. It's too close to the stop sign to go really fast, but it's fun anyway.
When you go around a curve at any speed on a bike, you have to lean in to the center of the curve. Going faster or around a sharper curve means more lean. If you're leaning, you'd better have the pedal on the inside of the curve -- the side that's leaning down -- raised. If the pedal is down it can scrape the ground, at best causing unnecessary wear and tear on the bike, and possibly making you fall. If you go through an S curve you'll have to lean one way and then the other, so you want to pedal backwards slowly just right as you come out of the first curve so as to get the other pedal up as you go into the second curve. As far as I'm concerned, coordinating the pedals and the leans and the steering on a fast, tight S curve is the most fun there is in bicycling. The curve on my new route isn't really tight and fast, but it's better than I've had on a regular route since I was in grad school. And, for a scenery bonus, there's an old fashioned gas streetlight at the second curve.
 | ||||