2/25/15

Rides 2/25: this is going to autotweet

Strange parabolic commutes that swung wildly from carefree and mundane to oddly tense and fraught and back again. One second it's a dawdle in a wide open lane and nothing but daylight and the next it's a taxi from two lanes over and the next it's a gloved middle finger, extended, and the next it's nothing but room and relaxed pedaling and insouciance. If the relaxing moments weren't so relaxing, the stressful moments would have been too stressful. It was just a weird one, both on the way in and on the way home. All bike commutes have the potential to be really good or really bad and some bike commutes have the potential to be alternatively both.

I rode down the House side of the Capitol. The House is the worst. Their driveway is ok, I guess.

I had hopes that the marginally warmer temperatures would succeed in melting more ice than they did. It snowed on Saturday. I think the efforts to clear the snow ceased on Sunday. The snow remains on Wednesday and will continue to remain for the next couple of days. It's bad in some bike lanes, but where it's worst of all are at the curb ramps. I watched from across a the way a woman with a stroller and two young children walking beside the baby she was trying to push all struggle to get over an ice patch and I thought 'yup, we definitely can't do any better than this.'

It's a really bad thing when you accidentally bump into a driver's sideview mirror. I should've just waited instead of trying to squeeze past to make a right turn. I should've just followed my own advice. I gave a friendly little 'sorry!' wave, but I didn't turn around to make eye contact with the driver. Maybe I should have. It was just the tiniest glance but people really, really, really hate it when you touch their cars. So try not to do that. And be better at not doing it than I am.

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For the past 48 hours (which is not at all a substantial amount of time, but definitely seemed like it), I haven't been on Twitter. I lack the willpower, wherewithal, and desire to continue my fast. I've learned a few things:

1. I am surprisingly dependent on twitter for learning things about the outside world. Facebook doesn't do as good of a job at that, especially given the singularity of my interests. I pretty much felt totally in the dark and since I really prefer not to be totally in the dark (even when I think that maybe I should be). It's kinda funny because somewhat incidentally, though maybe not really, I took a Strengths Finder career thing (you get desperate for things to do when you don't tweet) and it turns out that my 'strength' is something called "Input," which means something like 'perpetually needs to soak up information or will explode.' And yeah, I think that's about right.

2. I might've kicked twitter, but that didn't stop me from constantly looking at some screen. Admittedly this is a problem, but this is a different problem from constantly being on twitter. And not being on twitter does nothing to fix that.

3. Willpower: I don't really have it. I mean, maybe I have it about other stuff, but I think I don't have it about this. Make of that what you will.

4. I could still interact with people through Facebook. I did that. I appreciated having conversations with the same people I interact with on twitter on a different platform. But it didn't feel the same. I don't know why. I think when you're a constant tweeter and a rare FB-er, posting on FB seems so... consequential. Yes, that sounds trite. SO trite that it should be a tweet and not a sentence in a blog post. Also, my Mom told me that my constantly updating Facebook was annoying her. So there's that too.

5. Twitter is great. I like the way I use it and I like what I use it for. It is an abundantly useful tool and there's really no reason not to use it. I think my twitter follower/followee Eric Budd gets it right: Twitter is the city. And I prefer the city.

So, yeah. That's that.

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