Bike Blog

I had to stop by a customer of my web design consulting business before riding with Critical Mass tonight, and everyone there reacted strongly and vocally to my having ridden my bike to work today. I really can’t stress this enough: If you cover your skin, you don’t get cold. Of course there’s a little more to it than that, but covering your skin is a good start. Being wind- and waterproof helps too, and good layers keep warm air next to your skin, and wool keeps moisture away from your skin….

When I got to City Hall, I was the first bicyclist there. I was the only one there for about 25 minutes, so I took a few photos of Niagara Square while the sun was still bright enough. After a while, three guys showed up (Gumby, Charles, and John), and a few minutes later Andy showed up. We beat last January by 66% (2 additional people)! The five of us waited until about 5 or 10 after 6:00 before we got started.

We rode aimlessly, sort of intending to hang out at a pub for sandwiches and maybe a pint. John had to stop at a money machine, and while we were waiting for him, two nice sheriff’s deputies walked by, telling us we were nuts. They said we were as nuts as those crazy sheriff’s deputies who ride horses. (They were sheriff’s deputies who ride horses!)

When we rode down Allen Street, we recognized Bernie’s bike in front of the Antique Man store, so we went inside and found Bernie, who couldn’t make it to Mass this month because of some things he had to take care of. But he did share some black and tan with us. We looked around the Antique Man store for a while, and man, I could spend some money in there. I was looking through the postcards box, and it never occurred to me before now that reading other people’s old post cards would be intereseting. At Antique Man, you can buy them for 50 cents. We hung out there for a while, and then the store owner said he needed to carry some firewood from the sidewalk to the second floor and then leave for dinner. Bernie suggested we all give a hand with the firewood, so we did, and what took us 10 minutes probably would have taken John and Bernie (and May, who was also there) two or three times as long. John and May are pretty cool, and I’m glad their taking care of that old building. They have put a TON of work into it, and I think in the years to come, their efforts will be greatly appreciated.

After we helped with the firewood, our ride had lost much of its momentum. Andy was planning to head to the Statler Towers for a war-resistance gathering, and since it was on my way home, I was going to go with him that far and maybe stop in and see what it was all about. Gumby and John were heading somewhere to hang out with people, and Charles had to leave to play hockey. I was pretty hungry, so I suggested we stop at a pizza place on Allen, and everybody else stopped there too. John, Andy and I went in and ordered, while outside Charles and Gumby were accosted by a panhandler. After the panhandler failed to get any money from Charles or Gumby, he came in the pizza shop and announced it was his birthday (and hinted we should give him a birthday present). The pizza shop man said that the panhandler had a birthday 365 days a year, which made the panhandler angry. He stood face to face with John, who at this point was eating a slice of pizza, and told John to prove today is NOT his birthday. John said he didn’t know what day the man’s birthday was, but the panhandler wouldn’t take that answer. John didn’t know how angry the man was, and he said “I don’t know when your birthday is, I’m not your mother,” and the panhandler threw a big punch and hit John in the face, bye bye pizza, bye bye glasses. The pizza shop man called 911, and Andy leaped over a chair and grabbed the panhandler before he could throw another punch at John. I grabbed both of them and tried to pull them out of the store, but they weren’t budging. The panhandler guy was yelling at Andy to let go of him, and Andy wouldn’t because he thought the panhandler was going to keep throwing punches. Gumby came in the store to see what he could do to help, and another man who might have been the panhandler’s friend came in to try to talk him out of what he was doing. Eventually, Andy let the guy go, and he just strutted around the pizza shop challenging each of us. He was spitting a brown spit on Gumby, so Gumby picked up a chair to put in front of him so the spit would go on the chair, not on Gumby. I don’t remember what I was doing, I think I was talking to him, trying to calm him down and get him to move on, but I don’t remember. At one point I wanted the pizza shop owner to replace all the slices we had to drop on the floor, but I never verbalized that, and we all left without finishing our pizzas. Except John, who picked his off the floor and ate it.

When the cops arrived (the cops weren’t there to arrest the Critical Mass riders!), and there were about 7 cars that showed up, I recognized a couple officers as ones who had been at the May 30, 2003, debacle. I don’t know if they recognized us or not, but we bicyclists all agreed to NOT identify ourselves as Critical Massers. Anyway, they found two knives on the panhandler, and John agreed to not file charges if the panhandler gave a sincere apology. The cops let him go, and afterwards we all stood there a little shocked at what had just happened. John wondered aloud if not pressing charges was the right thing to do. Honestly, I don’t think arrest is a strong deterrant for these kinds of attacks. This was a hungry, cold, desperate man. If anything, he may have benefited from a night in jail, where it was warm, and where he’d get food.

While we were standing there, a drunk woman named Robin or Sally told us she was running for mayor and told us all about the problems the city is facing. Her husband showed up a little while later to take her home or somewhere. It was pretty funny, because every time she said something about some aspect of the city, Gumby started talking like he was in favor of what she was against. She never caught on to him, and we had a good laugh after she was gone.

Afterwards, I rode down to Statler Towers with Andy, but there was no good place to leave my bike, so I just rode home.

ride distance: 12 miles
weather data from W Underground.com:
temperature: 12.9 °F / -10.6 °C
dewpoint: 3.0 °F / -16.1 °C
humidity: 65%
pressure: 30.69 in / 1039.2 hPa
visibility: 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
wind: east 3.5 mph / 5.6 km/h
sky: partly cloudy