Sure makes the martinis taste nice.

I started riding my bike to work this week. Two days under the belt so far. On two different bikes no less. Tomorrow I’ll ride a different one. Maybe even finish out the week with the same routine. Sure makes the martinis taste nice.

What else I got?

From: Don
Subject: dodged this one!
Jonny,
After all the horrible biker down reports of the last few days, I got the dreaded call from son #1, a grad student in Chicago. He races and commutes and was riding in a designated bike lane from downtown to Evanston when a driver stopped in the bike lane (illegal) pulls an (illegal) u-turn as son #1 is passing him on the left, t-boning him with the front end of the car. The good news: son #1 is bruised, scraped but no broken bones or stitches and didn’t land on his head. His commuter bike was trashed and he hasn’t had a chance to check out his laptop with his dissertation files for damage. Lots of witnesses and the driver was beside himself with regret.
The driver was ticketed for the illegal turn and he promises to take care of any bike issues. I’m sure the poor kid is going to be quite sore tomorrow. His wife is an M.D. and will check him out closely but dammit, why didn’t he go to the hospital as the EMTs suggested? His memory is
highlighted, he says, by surprise at how high and far he flew before the impact. This was his second collision in two years; the other one was the driver’s fault as well. People just do not look out!!! He moves to Manhattan in June; oh joy. It makes a father (and high mileage rider himself) worry for his son and all the other cyclists on the road. The job of parenting never ends!

Stay well, keep a good lookout and always assume that drivers never know you are there.

I got a quick update on our boy from his old man “It’s cool, he’s fine; smoked me in a race yesterday.”

Everything is right in the world. Well, almost.

From: Tyler
Subject: Re: Fuckin Fire
Jonny, dont put Co2 canisters in your car on a hot day. I only had two rides on that helmet. I found half of the canister across the street about 25 feet away, not sure where the rest of it went. I’m thinking the stratosphere. Fucktarts!

Damn kid. Careful with that shit. God forbid you end up on some government list with the kaboom shit happening in your ride.

Randomness:
[oh snap] fearlessgearless.com
[iron maiden jersey] thesocksite.com
[sunday heroes] youtube.com
[big time] rockyroad5050.wordpress.com
[first century of spring] arcticglass.blogspot.com
[clusterfuck nation] jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com
[prison culture] andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

5 Replies to “Sure makes the martinis taste nice.”

  1. In order:

    Evanston ordeal: ouch.

    CO2 bullet: yowsa.

    first link in the dump: well, whaddya expect?

  2. Riding to work is great!
    Glad you’re on it.
    About the Iron Maiden jersey.
    Primal has some great ones. I’m a huge maiden head. A girlfriend got me this one a couple of years back. It’s awesome too!
    http://snipurl.com/239jw

  3. glad to hear the kid is ok.

    Kunstler continues to nail it. Anyone got a 7sp downtube shifter? That 10sp shit isn’t gunna work for ever.

  4. Can’t wait to start riding to work…built a singlespeed mtn bike into a commuter this winter. Right now it’s just too dark and cold at 4:30 am.