Bell Made for Aficionados

On the fourth of December I wrote that I left on the shuttle and was able to get all the way to 16th no problem.  I was alone for twenty minutes until my friend arrived.  I left her alone to get a farm box.  She was dressed up nice for the bike fundraiser.  We brought our umbrellas though the rain had stopped for the night.

We walked to the J talking about hairdressers and walked up Valley to the house.  Our buddies greeted us upon entering.  One of the staffers signed the two of us up to be members and I told her that I had met her at her bike rides.  We talked about Midnight Ridazz.  I sat away from my friend because we were in different circles.  The host started speaking while my buddy and I were trying his scotch.  He had a special bell made for whiskey aficionados.

The host introduced a prominent engineer who showed a PowerPoint of his and his wife’s fun times in Germany.  There was a lot of discussion over Dutch and Danish mode share.  Then the director touted the organization’s accomplishments.  He introduced a couple of well placed politicians who both said something about being an ally to the cycling community.  I noted that the director had become a magnet for attending to transportation policy.

One thing I noticed about the crowd was the preponderance of young unaccompanied men and older women in power.  I thought that was striking given the politicos in the audience.  I sat with the people I knew while staff flogged the crowd for money.  

I seemed to remember in here having scotch with the prominent engineer who had skipped the happy hour because he had attended work and other events that were similar to the one we were attending.  I told him that when I was in Frankfurt I was impressed with the cyclists there and noted that that was years before the current movement towards livable cities and complete streets.

I tried some of the beer the host recommended and talked with some acquaintances from a bike ride I had blogged about years ago.  Later I talked to a guy about retiring from his job at the university when the politician from the federal government took over.  He said that he thought she would become senator after the next presidential election.

I told my friend to meet me in the front.  On the way out I finally caught up to another cyclist acquaintance.  They seemed to think that the host’s proposed new brew pub would be a great venue for any subsequent ride.  I introduced them to my friend and then we walked to the 24 with our buddies and the prominent engineer.

When we said bye at Castro and Market we walked to Park Chow and I had a lot of water and ginger ale.  I was in bed at about 1130.

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.