Signs, Training, Tumbleweeds

Howdy partners... Ol' Curly is in a pretty good mood today. And for good reason... yesterday he cheated death. Yeah, Ol' Curly spat in the face of an ongoing issue here in the Seattle area. The dreaded parked car. You know the one... the one sitting on Rainier Ave... poised to surprise your ass like a stripper ready to pop out of a cake. "SURPRISE!!!! You're on the ground" Not yesterday though... Ol' Curly saw that nonsense coming three cars away. Now I'm not sure if this was instinct or pure evil, but Curly, prepped himself by checking traffic, moving left and then yelling like a momma cow giving birth "WATCH IT!!!" I could assume that I surprised the feller a bit cuz he flipped me off something fierce... cussin' and screaming like a little girl. It crossed my mind that he was the sort of feller that might get back in his poorly-parallel-parked BM-Dubya and try to follow me. He didn't though... I think I might have scared him so bad he needed to change his britches. Now some of you are saying "but Coach Curly... that makes us all look bad" and to you I say better to look bad another day than be dead in a heap. Yeah... I've been riding that stretch of road for over 20 years now and it ain't the first time that's happened and it won't be the last... so I (you) need to be prepared... don't be out training in "motorist mode". You know the mode... totally oblivious to your surroundings.

One time Ol' Curly even trusted "eye contact" with a motorist... that ended up in a truck nearly making a widow out of Mrs. Curly (of course we was courtin' then). Some good came out of that incident though. I made the poor feller feel so bad by calling the cops, who then checked his insurance (which he didn't have)... yeah.. that feller felt real bad about runnin' into a cyclist.

Now for your training today I want you to ride through downtown Seattle at 5:30pm... with panniers on. That should help your bike handling. Keep you heads up folks... be aware... even on the BG... cuz we all know what can happen when you say "on your left!" to a pedestrian...

One last thought from Ol' Curly... We all know that there are a helluva alot of crows out there. And I mean real crows... the black birds. Makin' their noise and harassin' other birds. I want you to ponder where crows go to die... occasionally you see a dead one around... but really... where do they go to die? They gots to go somewheres. Now we can assume that Seagulls go out to sea to die and decay... where do the crows go?

Tomorrow... we have "Curly's Name That PRO Trivia"... be there or be a tumbleweed. I promise ya... it'll be good.