Chillin'

I folded like a cheap tent. I wondered out loud last night whether I should ride to work and make our daughter walk to school on a really cold morning, even though it's only a couple of blocks. "She's got longjohns," my wife replied. So I laid out all my layers and then climbed out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to ride in the sub-zero cold. Then my wife said, "It's supposed to hit 10 below. I'm not sure it's fair to make her walk."

So I climbed back into bed for 45 minutes. Didn't even bother to climb on the trainer. I suck.

I bet a couple of my fellow commuters will be out there. All summer long, I met two young guys riding the opposite direction just about every morning and afternoon. It was always in the same stretch of South Anchorage—a fairly quiet, upscale subdivision that all three of us ride through on a wide and curving, divided street with decent bike lanes. They were young and on mountain bikes, and always waved from across the road when we saw each other. I assumed they were college guys with summer jobs and no car, and that they'd disappear come fall.

They're still there, though now we're all headlights, mask-covered faces and black gloves waving in the early morning darkness and evening twilight. Friday morning we actually crossed a street at the same time, where the bike path briefly forced us all to the same side of the road. We said hello as we passed, and kept moving to get out of traffic. I have no idea who they are, where they ride from, or where they're going. Still, it's kind of cool we're a small part of each other's daily routine.

The news stories coming out of the Bush/Cheney sewage pit continue to depress me. I don't even want to fall into the habit of ranting about it here. But there is one thing I'd like to give the those shitheads.

OK, deep breaths. Gotta go to my "happy place" for a minute.

I feel better now. Here are a few odd links to occupy your time:

I have no idea if this is for real, but if this is a legitimate business and it has customers, people are more screwed up than I thought. And that's a big freakin' statement.

I've had this site bookmarked for weeks with the intention of looking through it more thoroughly. I still haven't made time to fully check it out, but it looks like it could be useful. It calls itself "A resource for mountain bikers." That sounds promising.

If you've never clicked on my "Drunk Cyclist" link, you're missing out on a twisted little site from the town of Flagstaff, home of one of my all-time favorite burger joints—Bun Huggers. Big Jonny seems to be in a funky mood of late, but he always has something to say about cycling and/or politics and/or bike-related debauchery, and he always provides a bunch of time-sucking links to explore. Just don't visit his site from work, because your company's Web-use spies won't be fond of the porn links that help pay his bills. Oops. Should I have mentioned that at the beginning of this paragraph? Sorry about that.

Jonny's the guy who helped bring Livewrong to the world. I've been wearin' my black wrist band for months now.

If you think riding near an SUV is bad, check this out. They call it the bye bye syndrome. That's about as sad as it gets.

That's it for me. Welcome to Monday. Let the pain begin.