Thursday, September 18, 2008

Full Moon Fever

This is a full moon week. When I was on my way to work Monday, the clouds parted, I saw the moon, and knew I had to prepare for the worst.

I’m not superstitious. Well, not totally. After all, I grew up in an extended family that was part Irish, Welsh, and American Indian. There were lots of stories about spirits, ghosts, lepricauns, and other supernatural things. But the full moon thing is based on personal observations on the behavior of people. Years ago I was a Boys Club director, and got quickly familiar with the pattern of the kids behavior taking a turn for the worst during a full moon. It was so bad that some of the staff refused to come in, preferring to take their chances on calling in sick and huddling behind barricades in their homes.

The Wild Night of Destruction

This all culminated in the Infamous Night of Destruction, when the kids literally ran wild in the CLub. It was October, so we had the impending Halloween Night adding fuel to the fire. I have foul, but distant, memories of horros that included:

- water balloons knocking out a surgeons windows in his Mercedes Benz

- the complete destruction of the Game Room after some kids:

- broke in to the adult liquor locker and drained the contents which led to:

-the establishment, and subsequent discovery by the staff, of the "Secret Sex Room" in a storage area over the stage in the gym. Complete with mattresses.

These are things that I never want to repeat. Not in this lifetime.

So I knew we were in for it this week. Mrs Flyer knows this, too. She was a nurse in a hospital. Every bizarre patient in the city showed up during Full Moon Week. So we braced ourselves for the worst. Here is sample of what we have had to face – so far:

The Bicycle Thief

Not the movie – the real deal. A well-dressed young guy wearing a Georgia Tech shirt walked into the store and wanted to look at a top-of-line Team Fuji carbon frame bike setup with full Dura Ace components. He had Ritchey pedals mounted, and then asked for Sidi shoes with LOOK KEO pedals. Mrs. Flyer remembers seeing the sales person helping him, and thinking something was funny about the way the kid was acting. But she was involved in dealing with another nut case, and couldn’t help out. The sales person was finalizing the deal, counting up the commission in his head, and had only to check out his customer with the shiny new bicycle. The kid said he wanted to just ride the bike around the store while the salesperson was going to the register.

Fatal mistake for the sales person. As soon as he got to the counter, the kid accelerated in a way that would do Robbie Mckewen proud, and bolted through the automatic doors. The sales person tried to give chase, but could never compete with Fuji’s finest ride. The kid got to his car, threw the bike in the trunk, did his best Steve McQueen out of the parking lot, and then ran three red lights. Two days later, the store is still waiting for the police to show up.

The Case of the Lop-sided Dragon

Although Mrs Flyer is nominally a manager, she often pitches in to spin a wrench when the maintenance department is backed up or a wrench calls in sick. Yesterday she had a request for new headset from a guy that looked like the spitting image of Jerry Garcia. She suggested, and sold him, a Cane Creek S-2 threadless. He asked for th headset to be mounted, and she just tore out the old one, then installed the new one and brought it out for him. That’s when Jerry freaked out.

“NONONONONONONONONO” he shrieked as he jumped up and down. “The dragon MUST be straight or all is lost!” he bellowed, nearly in tears. He made Mrs. Flyer spend about 10 minutes getting the logo on the headset lined up to his liking. “Crazy bastard doesn’t know the difference between a dragon and a salamander” she muttered as she sipped on cold beer after work. “Maybe he knows something we don’t know” I replied.

Incident at the Rock Quarry

I notice that the percentage of “close passes” goes up during a full moon week. A “close pass” is a car that comes within the three foot zone recommended by most bicycle advocacy groups and Safety Councils. I don’t usually get freaked out by cars that come close to me. Back in roadie days I was used to pulling bidons and bags out of team cars while we barreled down the road, and as a triathlete I jumped into the slipstreams of passing cars and officials motorcycles to get a few seconds draft. In big races you constantly have to watch out for team cars, officials, and photographers, and they pass alot closer than three feet. But here in the South, you have to keep the eyes in the back of your head focused for some of the worst drivers in the USA.

This week I have car after car go whizzing by my elbow. Most of this occurs on Atlanta Road in the afternoon. It’s an undivided four lane road, one of the major arteries to get from Marietta to Atlanta over the river, and during Rush Hour is filled with motorists on their cell phones, or texting, or reading the Bible, or playing with themselves. I have seen all of these actions, and more, during my eight months of full-time carless commuting. Ask me about the guy and his goat sometime.

I work a weird time slot that sees me riding into the office at 5:00AM and leaving before 3PM specifically to avoid as much traffic as I can. This usually works out pretty well. Not too many people n the road at these hours, and it plays the percentages of good-to-bad driver in my favor. I have found over the years that 9,999 out of 10,000 drivers are at least semi-conscious and try to avoid you – if they see you. But, once in while, you run into an asshole.

It was right before the bridge over the Chattahoochee. There is a rock quarry on the right where trucks come and go during the day. There is a long, steep, downhill run to the bridge, and even on my fixed gear track bike I can get my speed up over 30 MPH. Then I can swoop over the bridge ahead of the traffic and into the relative safety of Atlanta. That’s where the road that immediately widens with a large hard shoulder. But right before the bridge there is the section with the quarry, and a raised curb that makes no sense on a relatively rural section of road.

I was flying down the hill in a racing crouch, along the top tube, when I sensed him behind me. Then I heard the engine – not on my left shoulder, but in my right ear. This is never good – it means the bastard is directly behind you. Then the air horn went off, and I heard the Jake Brake – that percussive sound from the Jacobsen compression brake on the diesel – kick in. And I knew I was going to get hit. He must have been on the phone, or texting, or naked from the waist down and playing with himself, or just a mean assed hillbilly. But I was going to get hit. And I took the one path I could – bunny hopping the curb at 30MPH, and steering the bike through the scrubby grass and doing a Fred Flintstone to come to a stop. I actually tore two furrows in the ground from my SPD cleats.

Mr. Hillbilly Asshole never slowed down, and never stopped. He just turned into the quarry entrance. I checked my shoes, hopped back on my ride, and passed on down the hill to the river. Fighting off every urge to turn into the quarry, hunt down the Hillbilly, and stomp his dumb ass into the ground.


The Week In Review

Today is Thursday. All I want is for the week to get over. I have a longer route home that goes over some steep hills with 10% plus inclines, but has the benefit of being way off the main drag and has little traffic at the times I ride in and out. I may use it this afternoon, just to hedge my bets on this crazy lunar cycle.

And I’m not the only one that can’t wait for the week to get over. I’m sure the boys and girls at AIG would probably like to forget this week ever happened, along with the gang at Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae. Oil is going up again, and gasoline prices will be sure to follow. This will continue to accelerate as the Winter Heating season is just starting. The first frost of the season is going to happen tonight in the NorthEast.

Yet, people still refuse to acknowledge reality. A recent poll here in the AJC indicates that 80% of drivers will still not consider using MARTA busses or trains. And bicycles? Fuhgettaboudit. A recent letter to the editor in the AJC compared bicycle commuting to hang-gliding in the relevance to solving the Atlanta traffic problem.

Funny, because the small city I’m going to in Oregon for bicycle mechanic training has bicycle lanes on every single major road in the town. They are putting the finishing touches on an off-road paved bicycle path that connects every single town in the Rogue River Valley. And they did it because pretty much everybody out there rides a bicycle. It’s important to them.

That’s the big problem here. Bicycles aren’t important to people in the South, and in many other areas of the USA. They want greasy food, big cars, and bigger trucks. Most of the people nowadays look like somebody over-inflated them with an air hose. They don’t walk, they waddle.

.I’m really praying for gas to go to $8.00 a gallon, as it is in most places in Europe. Then, and only, then, will we ever get adequate mass transportation, upgraded railroads that link up our cities and towns, and breaks for cyclists in the form of bike lanes and bike paths.

Until then, we just have to keep dodging the hillbillies, watching out for the bike thieves, and taking the back roads on the way home during Full Moon Week.

Oh yeah, and make sure the Frigging Dragons are ON STRAIGHT!!!!

No comments: