Over the last several years I have come to inhabit a new reality. While reviewing video the other day, I saw something and said to myself, "woah. When did I get used to that?"
The clip that actually made me think that was worse, with closer passes and more transport trucks, but you get the idea. When I step outside of my new reality and look at those buses and trucks rolling past on either side of me, it looks downright scary. In my new cycling reality, however, it doesn't even make me nervous. Alert? Yes. Daunted? Not at all. I am dauntless! In this way only, but dauntless!
I also inhabit a new work reality in which the following voicemail message makes perfect sense:
You see, I arrive at work in my cycling gear, including stretchy bike shorts, every day. Everybody knows that I change in my office. Sometimes I shut my office door and work for a while still in my cycling gear, cooling down before putting on long pants and sleeves. It is well known that people choosing to knock on my closed door do so at their own considerable risk.
Even knowing that in this context the voicemail made perfect sense, it made me laugh pretty hard when my good friend and colleague delivered that snappy line in such a deadpan, matter of fact way. In my new reality I am pantless! In the way described above only, but pantless!
Congratulate me on my new found dauntlessness and pity my widely known pantlessness, brothers and sisters of the bicycling universe! I think they balance each other quite nicely, don't you?
Yer Pal,
