Slow and Dirty Bike Commute

Last Week's "THRILLING" Picture - an "Ominous-Looking Cloud"

Lately, my commute has been getting routine. My v2 commute to Alliance Airport rarely went a week without some exciting or novel event occurring. I think the 200 mile weekly distance and the variety of roads and jurisdictions provided many opportunities. After all, how many of y'all get to see a tank and buffalo on your way to work every day? My v3 commute, on the other hand, has me worried that I'll get too complacent. As an example, last week's "thrilling" photo was a shot of an ominous-looking cloud as I sipped some coffee at a local branch of a large national coffee chain. Today, I was reminded that a routine commute is not necessarily a bad thing.

Slow and Dirty
Things turned a little sour when I came out to hop on Buddy for the ride home. I saw two birds perched on my saddle. Being a little SLOW, I neglected to take any photos of them. They actually stayed ON the saddle up until I was within a couple of feet of them. I almost thought I was going to have to flick them off the saddle. Well, then I saw the presents they left behind. DIRTY. It's bad enough to get bird poo on a car. It's nastier on a leather saddle and not real pleasant even on things like the fenders.

Dirty Bird Waste - the Photographer was too SLOW to Actually Photograph the Scofflaws

Dirty
Then I did a bit of riding on the way home. About a mile and a half along, I encountered a freshly oiled road. Freshly as in "hey, none of this was here when I came in this morning!" DIRTY!

You KNOW a Road is Pretty HumDrum When I Actually Don't Bother to Stop Before Taking a Picture - DIRTY Fresh Oil All Over

Dirty and Slow
After a block or so of oil messing up my tires and generally getting things cruddy, I turned right to detour down what I call my "bail out" route. Well, you guessed it. More DIRT. Literally, about a block or more of THIS route was getting dug out in preparation to lay fresh concrete. This time, I was so SLOW that I was about a mile past all the construction equipment before it occurred to me that I probably could have gotten the bulldozer driver to wave to the camera. So, you'll have to content yourself with the last refuge of the scoundrel, a Google map with the segment colored in.

Cycling MAY be fun and safe, but even bike commuting can become routine...

Google Maps is Good, But Streetview Doesn't Show the Bulldozers