Nothing made me realize the importance of driving carefully near people on bicycles as when I had to ride my bicycle on crappy roads.

I Have Evolved

For years, I was one of those drivers that complained about the bicyclists who road carelessly on the side of a busy road or who flouted laws by crossing intersections on a red light or road on the wrong side of the street.  While at the same time, I was impatient while trying to pass bicyclists who were pedaling on the side of the road.

Now I tell that person who I was in the past to shut the fuck up…you don’t know very much.

Many of you know Thaddeus and I are bicycling quite a bit these days.  Most of our trips are on the local canal towpath bordering the Delaware River because it’s beautiful, relatively flat and easy to get to with minimal roads on which we need to ride our bicycles.

Recently, they started to replace one of the bridges that cross the canal, and they have closed down the towpath for about a mile or so, requiring us to ride on a relatively busy, curvy road with a shitty shoulder of the road (when there’s any shoulder at all).

Bicycling on that short stretch of road has made me a much better driver/operator of my automobile…especially when it comes to navigating around cyclists.

For those bicyclists who I have besmirched in my mind in the past as I drove by you, I apologize and promise to take extra precautions while passing you to make sure you have plenty of room to ride your bicycle.

Current Knitting

Today, I leave for my five-day retreat with 31 other men into fiber-play, so I’ve been busy with last minute preparations for that.  But I have been able to add a few rows to my current garter-on-the-bias scarf.

Not much progress, but I figure this project will give me a perfectly mindless project to work on at the retreat if I care to knit there at all (which I normally don’t).