How I long...

Oh, how I long for the Holidays to be over so that all of the "get out of my way, I'm in a hurry to get my gifts to the house" folks slow the F down and pay attention to their surroundings. I'm glad I have good handling skills on the bike, because they came in handy last night.

I decided to go out and ride, even though I really wasn't motivated. I hate wasting a 75 degree day though. I left the house @ 5:45 and it was still 70! Brilliant! Anyway, I mixed up my downtown route a bit last night. I dropped down through the old projects, where they are now building $200k+ houses (head scratcher) and went up past The Roost and soccer field. The climb out from the bottom all the way to the Horseshoe is a long one, but didn't hurt all that much. The normal 'Hour of Power'(tm) continued from this point.

The ride through North Main is where the action began. I got buzzed by a 3 foot tall Asian guy. His mirror missed my hip by about 3 inches. Granted, I'm a bit thick in the posterior, but come on...! I don't think he could see over to dash.
Once I got to the Greenway, the pace picked up a bit and I started to open up. It's funny how people come out to exercise when it's above 60 degrees. The Greenway was packed! The LED light on strobe moves them right out of the way though. One bigger than average sized guy heard me coming on the gravel and, of course, stepped right in front of me. If you hear something coming from behind you, on your left, why do you step left sir? I narrowly avoided incident number 2.
The ride from the trail, up throught the Vista was uneventful, thankfully. I dropped into campus, went past TVH's house and hit the path into Five Points. I had two more near misses in a 1/2 mile stretch of Harden. The first was some dumbass backing his POS truck into the middle of the road...without so much as a glance, and the second was with a Buick driven by Methuselah's brother. He decided he need to get to the red light before me, so he gunned it around and swerved dead in front of me at the light. I knocked on his window, by he never even turned his head. Maybe he couldn't...!
At this point, I headed for the relative safety of Shandon and made it back to the house.
I had a good ride, opened up the legs and got to practice emergency braking and evasive avoidance tactics.

I'll be back out on Thursday, if anyone wants to ride. The downtown loop might be nixed in favor of the woods though...