Getting Your Goat
I can almost guarantee that, among the hordes which read Xferen on a daily basis, I am the only one who sees a goat every morning. Out where we live on the edge of town, our neighbors are inclined toward livestock, chiefly chickens. But one house, actually quite a bit closer to town than country, has a tiny pen in the yard, and in that pen is a rather shaggy and impressively horned goat who likes to stand on a rock in the pen and stare at the road down which I bike to work.
The bike commute, which is now a more-or-less daily thing thanks to the nice weather, takes me past, around, through, or over all kinds of interesting things you don't see from a car. For instance, one hundred-yard span of ditch near home contains some found art: a perfectly alternating series of empty cans of Michelob Light and Mountain Dew (downer, upper, downer, upper, downer, upper) and then a deflated beach ball. At numerous spots on my route to and from work, I have to swerve around roadkill birds, mostly crows. How a half-dozen birds managed to get squashed in the past few weeks is a mystery to me. There are also quite a few increasingly blackened gloves and mittens lying in the roads, and an occasional shoe.
The bike ride makes me a participant in some impromptu research into the sociology of commuting. So far as I can tell, the principal investigator is studyign two behaviors: passing and stopping. 1) Almost every time a vehicle passes me, the driver swings all the way into the oncoming lane and guns it to get around me as quickly as possibly. If someone is behind me as we enter the gentle S-curve near home, s/he tends to hover right behind me, waiting to see that the coast is clear, and then whooshes past at what feels like a hundred miles an hour. Red cars, trucks, and SUVs seem to be exceptions to these rules: they go by whenever they like, at high speed, and in very close proximity. 2) One stretch of my commute takes me over city surface streets with several 2-, 3-, and 4-way stops. I always come to a complete halt when reaching a stop sign, but this seems to throw vehicular commuters off. If I'm stopped, cars will often stop, too, even when they don't have stop signs. I'm not sure if the drivers stop because they are surprised to see me, because they're trying to do a good deed by letting me go first, or because they overreact to my having stopped, but it's strange to see. This morning, one guy stopped so abruptly in the middle of a left turn that he almost got rear-ended. He didn't notice because he was so busy waving at me, trying to get me to go first. I didn't, preferring to see him finish his turn and get out of everyone's way.
The bike commute, which is now a more-or-less daily thing thanks to the nice weather, takes me past, around, through, or over all kinds of interesting things you don't see from a car. For instance, one hundred-yard span of ditch near home contains some found art: a perfectly alternating series of empty cans of Michelob Light and Mountain Dew (downer, upper, downer, upper, downer, upper) and then a deflated beach ball. At numerous spots on my route to and from work, I have to swerve around roadkill birds, mostly crows. How a half-dozen birds managed to get squashed in the past few weeks is a mystery to me. There are also quite a few increasingly blackened gloves and mittens lying in the roads, and an occasional shoe.
The bike ride makes me a participant in some impromptu research into the sociology of commuting. So far as I can tell, the principal investigator is studyign two behaviors: passing and stopping. 1) Almost every time a vehicle passes me, the driver swings all the way into the oncoming lane and guns it to get around me as quickly as possibly. If someone is behind me as we enter the gentle S-curve near home, s/he tends to hover right behind me, waiting to see that the coast is clear, and then whooshes past at what feels like a hundred miles an hour. Red cars, trucks, and SUVs seem to be exceptions to these rules: they go by whenever they like, at high speed, and in very close proximity. 2) One stretch of my commute takes me over city surface streets with several 2-, 3-, and 4-way stops. I always come to a complete halt when reaching a stop sign, but this seems to throw vehicular commuters off. If I'm stopped, cars will often stop, too, even when they don't have stop signs. I'm not sure if the drivers stop because they are surprised to see me, because they're trying to do a good deed by letting me go first, or because they overreact to my having stopped, but it's strange to see. This morning, one guy stopped so abruptly in the middle of a left turn that he almost got rear-ended. He didn't notice because he was so busy waving at me, trying to get me to go first. I didn't, preferring to see him finish his turn and get out of everyone's way.
posted by Christopher Tassava at Thursday, June 08, 2006
2 Comments:
The question of the ages: Why is there always only one shoe?
The second shoe is down the road a bit further than you (the questioner) have gone. In my trade I have studied this phenomenon and have found it sometimes takes up to a half hour or maybe 30 miles to see the second shoe. (Unless perhaps what I really saw was just the first of a new pair)
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