Silence—A Funeral

I wrote that on the twentieth of May I took the bike on the VTA and CT to 22nd.  I took Mariposa and some guy in an SUV was hopping mad.  I stopped and looked back to find that he was visibly engaged in at least three illegal things.  He told me to be glad it was him.

I went to Sports Basement for the Ride of Silence.  I saw the organizer who said I was early so I did some shopping.  I was looking at tires when my friend showed up.  We looked at her wheels and then went down to the event.

There were a lot of stories about people dying on the road.  I was passing out arm bands until some lady started hissing at me.  The group went outside and the motorcycle cops showed up and we went out.  It was a solemn occasion.  We went to Bryant and then to Folsom.  Then we visited Rincon Hill for the unknown cyclist.  We continued to Mission where one of the organizers was late.  Some lady asked why we were blocking traffic.  “What now?” she asked.  I told her that it was the Ride of Silence—a funeral—that was when she started nodding her head like she suddenly understood that it wasn’t critical mass.

At Sansome a bike messenger told us about his friend that died and the memorial that the other messengers in his group had.  We went to McAllestar and up to Geary and Polk and then we made a circle at Gough and Market and Hickory.  We shut down Octavia at Market.  My friend snuck away for a bit then and the group went down Valencia to 16th and Van Ness. We continued to 14th and Howard then.  My friend had reappeared then and we ended up at Rainbow.

The group met up at Dear Mom and my close friend’s and I got food and sat together.  One of my buddies gone to Henry Coe.  He told us that it was a great ride.  I described Deadman’s Creek in Tuolumne.  When we were done I said thank you to the organizers and left.  I learned that all of the images I had sent to Twitter got messed up.  I interacted with a friend about camping equipment and went to bed.

On the morning of the day that I wrote this I got up late.  I was accosted at Duboce and Valencia by a screaming motorist.  I saw her behind me revving to go so I slowed down.  She sped up to yell at me on the inside.  I slapped rearview so hard it nearly broke.  She drove off screaming.  I waited at the Mission street intersection stoically—all the motorists around me had seen the incident.  I rode to CT with no real problems after that.  At MV I had to ride to work.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.