my sometimes-skeptical social commentary

Archive for the ‘everyday miles’ Category

I hope I’m always capable of seeing the bright side.

Last night, when I was riding up Delaware Avenue, I overhead two men greeting each other from opposite sides of the street. The first one must have asked the other guy to join him, because the answer I heard from the second man was “No, I’m on my way home, I had a great night!”

The second man was pushing a shopping cart down his side of the street, and as it hit each crack in the sidewalk, the bottles and cans rattled. The cart was full, and he had a couple large plastic bags full of more bottles and cans that were hanging over the sides of the cart.

It made me think of how often people ask me how the bike taxi business is doing. My definition of a “great night” varies, because some nights are great for different reasons. Sometimes it’s a great night because I earn a decent amount, but some nights are great because the weather was perfect, or because I met good people, or saw old friends, or made a new contact with a future customer or potential business partner.

I know the cynical among us have already dismissed my comments above as sentimental and lacking any real social commentary. Bah to them.

The cynical among us need to take a moment to think about the fact that the two men I saw last night are real men, not something made up to tug at the heartstrings of the liberal and sentimental. If the cynics can’t step outside of their postmodern grumpiness long enough to think, just think broadly and considerately, then they are stuck in a rut of recycled, ready-made conclusions, and aren’t living a real life themselves.

I think most intelligent people agree that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. A cynical approach to everything may seem like they’re examining life, but if they’re always coming to the same grouchy conclusion, is it?

As I wrote on my bike taxi blog, I took the bike taxi out for Mardi Gras. Lots of fun riding, but only one passenger, so not what we call in the bike taxi business a commercially successful outing.

The past three seasons, I didn’t take the bike taxi out for Buffalo’s Mardi Gras celebrations, but this year the mild weather made it a no-brainer–why not, right?

I caught the parade (maybe next year I’ll create a “float” and sign up to be IN the parade, –only if I can get some bikey friends to ride along with me), so here are some snapshots from where I watched the parade (I missed a few of the floats because oncoming traffic blocked my view).

I didn’t have beads to throw to the people watching the parade, so I gave out my yellow bike taxi pens instead. My joke that they are “Not as much fun, but so much more practical” got a few laughs.

The temperature outside is basically the same as it is inside. So turn off your heat, open your windows, and get on your bicycle.

That’s city hall in the background. I love that I get to ride past it on my way to and from work. There are a few historical buildings on my commute, such as the nearby Statler Towers, Ellicott Square Building, Gauranty/Prudential building, and lots of others that I have read about for the historical/architectural tour I give to bike taxi passengers.

Oh and about the winter beard you see in this picture. I admit I was disappointed when David Letterman shaved his beard during last night’s show. I don’t know if Conan O’Brian still has his, but I figure the more beards on TV the better.

One more thing. I have been having trouble with the way my bike blog is set up, and rather than not blog my bike rides until I get it fixed, I decided to blog about bike rides on this blog. Maybe I’ll keep it this way permanently, I don’t know. But for now, if you browse the category everyday miles you’ll see all my old bike blogging posts that I imported from my original blog.

The boys and I biked down to the park, where we found that the water level in the creek has dropped to the point we can almost walk over the creek. The spot I was standing in to take this photo would normally be underwater during the summer–and in the spring, way way under water, to the point where it would be dangerous in the strong current of melting snow runnoff.

The boys just love to ride their bikes. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. If I haven’t contributed anything else to the world, I’m okay knowing that there are two more avid cyclists than there were before I got here.

It was in a bike tool bag we got from a friend.