Tour da Crashes

As for the Tour Da Chicago this past Sunday, I had a good ride. Considering I did not wreck or find myself thrown into a windshield – like 2 riders did – I would say I did very well, even a winner one might say. There were over 90 riders, which is a ridiculously large number of riders for an alleycat in January (that is the kind of number you get for a summer supercat). That was excellent, but the crashes were not. Barreling down Milwaukee into a red light the peloton was able to freeze a SUV in the left turn lane initially, but he then lurched forward a few feet, thus forcing the pack to split around him like water around a rock in a stream. I was the first to have to book right and barely made it. The rider behind me was overlapping my rear wheel and went down hard, but didn’t run into any cars, which is a plus. She was shaken up but walked away – lucky. At the turnaround of the stage apparently a rider was thrown onto a car’s hood, ultimately shattering the windshield. Keeping in mind that I stopped for 5 minutes on Milwaukee for the first crash and also stopped for some time to watch the cleanup and paramedics at the second crash, I was happy to finish the race safely and with 26 points (I think that means I finished ahead of 20 something people, including the DNF’s). I never expect to win these deals, but it is nice to not be dead last; and since I didn’t get hurt, I won.

Madison’s current weather is almost good biking weather (with the exception of seeing the sun rise and set from my office building’s windows), yet remains terrible hockey weather. I expected to exorcise the up and down weather of Chicago by moving a little closer to the great white north, but I find myself stymied again. Maybe I should move to Alaska like I’ve always dreamt of so I can play hockey everyday and complain incessantly about not being able to bike. Maybe there will be some freak snow and cold temps here in march so I can complain about not being able to fly fish the early season on the Black Earth River. Complaining is an undesirable quality, but if you turn it into a concept of having an intense hunger towards activity, knowledge, and movement it becomes positive – or at least that is the justification I try to sell. I’m not cranky, I’m just so wide awake in this world and cannot settle for mediocrity. Sure…

David Letterman read the lyrics plainly to Love Train a few times last night. Extremely odd, and very funny. I completely embrace the strangeness the show journeys towards these days, more so as his age and crankiness increases.