Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo.

When you ride the same route, at the same time, every day, you tend to see the same people group of people. So on my ride into work for the past week, I've been passing the same spandex clad roadie, awkwardly carrying one of those cheap Timbuk 2 messenger bags. This is obviously his idea of a sensible commuting outfit. He's heading towards Black Mountain, and myself towards Asheville, so we have never been able to stop and chat. The only thing we know about each other is that we both ride bikes.

The first day, there was maybe a curt nod or a hand half raised off the hood, gestures in cycling that appear to be the equivalent of meeting your ex's new boyfriend. You really don't want to acknowledge them, but you kind of have to. Over the week nothing seemed to really have changed until today. Today I was in a full kit, with my big ol' bag stuffed to the brim and an extra read wheel strapped to the damned thing. I don't know why, but I was honestly excited to see him when he got into sight. I gave him a thumbs up, and he took one hand off the bars to shoot the metal horns.

I believe this is the start of a beautiful new bromance.

I've been following this story for a while now. It's horrendous. There's no way around it. I almost threw up when I read it at my office. I've been riding bikes for a long time, and almost all of that has been in major cities, so I've heard more than my share of 'hit cyclist' stories. Sometimes i even think that I'll get used to hearing stuff like this, but I never do. The silver lining here is this. Usually all you have to do is say "I didn't see them!" and you can get off a murder wrap and have it downgraded to distracted driving. Not for this woman. This was her second DUI and it resulted in the death of two cyclists and near fatal injuries on the third. And then what did she do? She kept driving until forced off the road by another motorist. If you're reading this, you're probably a cyclist, so take a good look at this pictures in the first article. Do you see the bottom bracket shell on the bottom left of the first picture? She hit these guys so hard that their bikes literally exploded. Now she's charged with two counts of manslaughter. I really hope this sets a prescedent. I really do. A few years back a girl killed a graduate student in Champagne Indiana while he was riding on the shoulder of the road. This girl was downloading a new ringtone and drifted so far into the other lane, she hit him with the drivers side of her car. The drivers side. This girl got slapped with distracted driving and had her license taken away for 6 months. I'm glad we're finally stepping it up a notch, but jeez, it's taken long enough.

Sorry for the rant, here's some bike porn to make up for it.




That last one belongs to my friend Sashae. He built the entire thing up with period correct components. He spent a long time working on his... Dick Power.