I don't normally write about my ride home from work but last night's was strange not once or twice but in four separate incidents.
The first was a camper parked on the side of the road with black smoke coming from it and bright flames growing underneath.
The second, a scant quarter mile from the burning camper, was a motorcycle in the middle of the lane, the rider propped up against the barrier between the north and south routes, his helmet was off and the paramedics were attending to him. He looked like he would probably be alright but was gonna feel like utter hell this morning.
The third was a biker I was following for a good portion of the ride. He had a super skinny back tire and a suicide shifter behind his left leg, this means that, instead of a normal lever at the left foot to shift, he had a gear shift like you find in a car. That wasn't the unusual part though. Bear in mind that it gets dark early now, it was almost 5:30 and it was dark out on the highway. At one point he was duffing along and there was an opening and, since I tend to ride alot faster than most cruiser style bikers, I passed him. Once I was riding in front of him, he disappeared and I couldn't find him in my mirrors. Until he happened to get shined up from behind by a car's headlights. This guy was riding his motorcycle through traffic at night without a headlight. Without a headlight and a suicide shifter and a skinny little backtire and an engine that sounded like a turbocharged chainsaw. I can't imagine how he was able to sit on that bike with such enormous balls.
The fourth wasn't so unusual but it hasn't happened in a long time and makes me laugh. People in cars that have been lowered generally hate bikers because our headlights sit above their trunks and basically light up their cars like a hundred watt bulb. Well, last night, four teenagers in a Celica took umbrage at my low beam in their car and started flipping me off because, I assume, they thought my low beam was my high beam. So I showed them what my high beam looked like and they went fucking ballistic in the car. Or, if you can call really aggresive middle fingering of people at 75 miles an hour on the highway ballistic, they did go ballistic. And when I pulled in front of them, they immediately set on their high beams and tried to pace me.
Which is really stupid in a car with four kids against a pretty new motorcycle with a sport engine. Good luck, idiots. I dusted them pretty easily and got the rest of the way home without major incident.
Of course, on my way back out, there was another accident in the middle of the street that turned a 6 pm reverse commute drive into a crawl.
But it was all made up by pulling a 6 on the river in some No Limit Poker last night and completing a six through ten straight the hard way to scoop in a decent little pot and end up positive on the night. And then knocked back down because somehow the bank got badly screwed up and I had to give up some winnings. Oh well, still fun. Even if I'm beat and burnt today.
Tags: commute, motorcycle, poker
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