How dare someone get into a serious car accident and possibly die when you need to hurry up and get home!!!! Gosh!!!!

I know, that's what I'm saying!

Ach. Overturned tractor trailers usually don't even hurt the driver. Seriously.

So I think you should throw rotten fruit when you finally get to pass him.

sorry to hear that, mike. for what it's worth I get your drift.

here's a (hopefully not too pompous sounding) cautionary tail along that theme.

this is not only true, it's also indicitive of how small Boulder actually is: a couple months ago on my way into work, there was some species of road accident that completely bunged up traffic. This was one of those deals where the cops shut down a major intersection along my ride route and weren't letting anyone through, period, even bikes. Not to mention there was no warning and ineffectual detour planning on the part of the road crews / emergency response team. So I was forced to backtrack, and, running short on time, decided to take a 'shortcut' through a local open space trail.

Bad. Idea. our open space trails aren't paved, but they are pretty well maintained and usually aren't very sketchy, but I'd conveniently forgotten the torrential downpour we'd had the night before. For those of you who've never attempted riding a fixed gear track bicycle on muddy singletrack... I'll spare you the details.

Suffice to say I arrived at work sweaty, late, pissed-off, covered in mud and generally feeling uncharitable towards the entire world in general, and drivers in specific.

I now vividly recall the comment I made to my colleague after showering and sitting down at my desk, when he asked how my morning went. "oh just great!" I responded. "They had Jay and the Diagonal totally shut down this morning and not only was I running late but they wouldn't let anyone through. Somebody better have died..."

somebody did, actually. He was one of the board members of the Boulder Offroad Alliance / Boulder Mountainbike Action advocasy group that I'm an active member of, whom I had drunk beers with on a roughly quarterly basis at social functions.

I know it didn't actually change anything, plus it shouldn't have made any difference if it was a stranger or not, but I got that extra special 'you're-really-going-to-hell-for-that' cringe when I got the email notice from BOA later that day. I can't tell you how sick that made me feel, both for his family, and for my shitty snarky comment.

Yesterday, near here, an overturned truck dumped penguins into the roadway.

Yes. Clearly I worded that very, very poorly. I hope all involved were okay.

Alternate route home wasn't all that bad, after all.

honestly mike, I wasn't being an ass. more like kicking my own by admission.

Oh, I know! No worries.

Do we need to hug? Let's hug.

Hey guys! What's grey and puddle-like?














A melted penguin.

:( and :(

One of the great things of living where I do in relation to where I work is there are 3 distinct alternates to my main route home. None of which adds more than 10 minutes to my 15 minute commute.