24.8.06

Close Calls--4 times?

So on Monday I moved down to my new apartment in Madison, it's pretty sweet.

The first thing I notice is that the lock on the door doesn't open unless you give it a little bit of "extra" motivation with the shoulder. Next, all the outlets are not grounded, so that's real safe and easy to use 3-prong plugs in. Finally, I'm on the third floor--that's a LOT of stairs after a hard ride. Ouch.

The close calls of fall have started already, and it's been better than ever. I should've figured out long ago that Fred and I riding on bikes equals akward shit going down every day.

On Monday, after moving in and seeing my roomate Claude, I headed out for a "dusk" (shall we call it night--nah, that sounds too hard) ride with Fred. On the way out of the arb we see the Stabb brothers hammering out a mountain bike ride--on the road--so things got started off well. Except for the fact that it was already 7:45 pm before we left the arb. Yeah, um...the Paoli loop takes longer than I remember?

So it's 9pm and I can't see anything, I have one blinking red light on my seatpost, Fred is wearing the all-black UW kit, and we're riding through closed roads consisting of dirt and rock from road construction. It's all good, right? At the next intersection on Seminole Hwy, this car totally stops for us and lets us cross the intersection. So we go. But then, the car goes, and doesn't stop while we're crossing the intersection. Keep in mind he has a stop sign, we don't.

As a side note, Fred crashed his Schwinn in Dennmark, so he was riding a suedo-ghetto cross bike with almost one working brake. So he can't stop. I scream "GO!!!!!!" and we bolt across the intersection, the car nearly taking out both our rear wheels. Somehow, we make it back in one piece.

That was just the begining.

Tuesday--Bellville was a good ride and all, but yeah, we put a COUCH on the roof of my Taurus this morning. Hell yes--a COUCH. A three-seater at that. A couple strands of twine, some bungee cords, and we're off. A Saris roof rack is usefull for more than bikes and skis, perhaps?

How do we measure if the couch is the right size? Fred uses his "super-accurate" body tape measure. Lay on the couch, stretch the arms out, and see if the edge of the couch is longer than your hands. Only at St. Vincent De Paul's...

Today-- It's raining. Let's go for a ride, eh? Fred and I head out for a "3 hour spin" with some seriously ominous clouds hanging in the sky. Before we get through the arb it's POURING, and the thunder starts booming really loud. Luckily in the arb it's pretty sheltered, because cars were stopping it was raining so hard. Pretty soon lightning strikes, literally, 100m from us and we pull off the road for 20 min.

It starts to let up, and I actually think we can get away with a ride....to the bike path for a ride to Monona Terrace, right? As soon as we get around the lake, it begins pouring again and the THUNDER gets really close.....then BAM! A strike of lightning hits a house RIGHT behind us. Wow, it's time to get out of here...we took shelter for another 20 min before heading it on home.

After this week, I'm looking forward to a long, suprise-ridden base period yet again!

1 comment:

Sarah Lukas said...

Good to see you still living, Ryan.