I drove my car to work yesterday. It's not because I was too weak from my fast. It was 5 degrees outside, but that’s not the reason either. The reason was that I spent much of Monday night cleaning Mags’s vomit off of the bathroom floor. She had come down with some sort of nasty bug. So I couldn’t hop right out of bed when my alarm went off at 5:45. It was more like 6:45 when I finally rolled out, and I’m supposed to be at work by 7:00.
Like I said yesterday, this fast has saved me lots of time. My liquid breakfast was waiting for me in the fridge, so I chugged it down and hopped in the car. Mags certainly wouldn’t need it. I was only a few minutes late for work.
Six people asked me why I didn’t have my bike with me in the office today. I had to repeat the above vomit story each time. I found I was justifying driving a car to a bunch of car drivers. I wonder why that is?
It’s a little like as asking a Muslim why he’s eating a ham sandwich, or asking an Amish man why he sent you an email. Have I set myself up as a beacon of bicycle righteousness? Do they find pleasure in seeing me slip from my pedestal? And is it because they harbor secret insecurities about their own driving habits?
I’m just a guy who prefers exercising to sitting in traffic, burning Calories instead of gasoline, living in the world instead of watching it roll by from behind a windshield.
right on!
ReplyDeleteHow do you keep your hands warm in 5 degrees? Mine are freezing every day.
Well, I don't exactly keep my hands warm, but I wear some neoprene gloves that usually work well enough down to about 20 degrees. I found them in the hunting department of a sporting goods store, but they look more like oven cleaning gloves than hunting gloves. They're totally windproof and totally un-breathable, which could explain why they're starting to smell a little funny.
ReplyDeleteLately I've been wearing a pair of over-mittens over my neoprene gloves. They're basically an un-insulated waterproof shell, but they keep everything but my thumbs from throbbing when I start to warm up at work. I usually don't like wearing mittens on my bike, but it's worth it when the temperature is in the single digits.