Surely You Jest

I stumbled across an interesting read courtesty of Bike Calgary (@bikecalgary) this morning.  It combines two of my favourite topics – cycling and psychology.  More specifically, why non-cycling drivers perceive cyclists as suicidal mayhem-makers.  My solution is to institute a mandatory cycling provision on your license that would require minimum mileage riding a bicycle before you could graduate from a Learners to an unrestricted license (and make them – drivers – into us – cyclists).  The cycling industry would gleefully support such a motion, perhaps some cautious support from the health industry too. We are unlikely to get the backing of the McDonald’s-munching, iPhone-texting, I’m-too-busy-for-that-crap general populace – in other words me two years ago though.  Whatever – I’m well off on a tangent with my outlandish schemes – ignore that, read the article and be a better person for it.

I’ve been hounding Ron at Ridley’s somewhat incessantly of late.  Unlike in my line of work, hounding the local bike shop and the happy souls trying to do their jobs will bend space and time, eliminating all of the supply chain logistical quirks of production and distribution.  No?  No.  It was worth a shot.  No?  No.  It kept me occupied.  Yes.  And Ron annoyed.  Yes.  When I queried him tonight on the schedule, he let it escape that my bike had finally hit the shop – yay! – but (wait, what do you mean but?) – but it was followed by a story that boiled down to “we had to close when the truck took out the pole and power to the entire block – Enmax optimistic but non-committal on the repair timeline”.

My first thought was he was pulling my leg, after all I’d harassed him about delivery enough.  Turnabout is fair play and all that.  Then he followed it up with this.

Hmmm…boss ain’t gonna be happy about this one…

That’s definitely a broken power pole in the alley.  What are you going to do except laugh?  Ah well – here’s hoping Enmax has no issues putting things right, Ron and his crew have the time after today’s interruption to get things into operation and I find the time to sneak away for some much-needed mental health.  That’s a lot of space-time convergence to just hope for.  Maybe there’s someone I can call about that? Repeatedly.