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Evens and Ends
Interesting, at least in my opinion, things have happened around me the past week, but they, individually, never amounted to a post, so here's another installment of miscellany. Various is the spice of life!
Before I left for Seattle, someone down in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam had offered on Freecycle a battery and charger to match the drill and impact drivers I have. The two batteries I own are replacements and still hold a good charge, so on items I could use but don't need, I'll wait a week before responding to an offering, giving first dibs to anyone with a stronger need, or at least want. That had been my tack with the three speed belt drive ex-e-bike that carried me down to Feeding Hills on Wednesday when I finally connected with the battery and charger after a month of delayed messages. As for the bike, I was told there had been a bevy of requests for that, but mine was the first that sounded sane, so I guess I fake sanity well! For wet days, I have become a fan of the belt combined with a choice of uphill, flat, or downhill gears.
But sort of on the way to Agawam is the Westfield thrift store where I've repeatedly had particularly good finds. I also enjoy the serene route I've discovered for getting there from Holyoke that includes riding through the Ashley Reservoir as a connection to old woods roads through Bear Hole. I even worked up a mnemonic aid (jackal we) to help me find my way through the maze of quiet neighborhood streets that avoid all but a couple hundred yards of Route 20. Nothing for me at the store that day, but I did ride back to Granby with a motorcycle jacket stuffed in a pannier for a friend who once again lives (a little further) down the street.
With the jacket under my arm, I left the store and was happy to see three other bikes outside along with mine. Then, while I was eating my sandwich on the grass, someone crossing the lot complimented my hi-viz vest as being perfect. Yes, I hope brighter visibility will help me avoid further loss of smarts from another accident and brain injury, but I do have some angst with the outlook that people on bikes SHOULD be responsible for making up for the people operating deadly motor vehicles without paying sufficient attention. I replied with a simple, "Thank you."
Then, when the person walked over to one of the waiting bikes, I added, "Your shirt is pretty good too!" It was a bright pink I had noticed and appreciated earlier inside the store. I finished with, "It's too bad we need them." She then recounted an unfortunately not unbelievable interaction she'd recently had with a driver in a pickup who'd laced his dislike of her biking on the road with a "n word". Sigh, yes, these people exist, but why do we, as a society, keep granting them driver's licenses? Regardless, the pink shirt wearer came back, we had a lovely little interaction, and she even had me try on the glasses the store had given her because of a big scratch on the lens. And the bright pink shirt I liked, I found my own on the way home in a bag of clothes discarded near the Springfield Chicopee line!
But if one free roadside shirt is good, two must be twice as better! The next day on a cruise through Greenfield, I added bright blue to my collection, and yesterday I wore it for the first time on a Holyoke range run with my friend Matt. Maybe more than twice as better, it traded the logo on front for a row of buttons, which work great for venting on hot days, like yesterday. Matt was bemused by how well the color matched my socks, the bill of my cap, and even the logo on my ankle braces. I commented that my first choice of shorts for combined running and mountain biking, which I did after the run, were also royal blue, but I refrained for being so utterly matchy-matchy. Matt replied with a comment about all black or all white, and Matt being Matt, I reference the Minor Threat song "Sometimes Good Guys don't Wear White." Matt, again being Matt, had met Ian MacKaye after a The Evens show, so I told him about my meeting and asking Ian a silly question to settle a friendly bet between me and the friend who'd invited me to hear him speak about music copyright and ownership. Ian is a class act, and I think he even enjoyed the silly question, first asking us our respective guesses. I won with guessing he drove something small and Japanese: Honda Civic Wagon! Sometimes hardcore punks don't drive big, black vans.
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