April 28th, 2005
Today marks the momentous First Day of Biking this Spring. I've known lots and lots of people who ride their bicycles daily all year. They plow through snow, hydroplane through Vancouver's voluminous rainwater, and even negotiate the ever-increasingly-deadly traffic to get to work or their favourite restaurant, etc.
But me, no. I prefer the evenings of a fairly nice and otherwise sunny day. None of this intense "no pain, no gain" stuff for me ("no brain, no pain"). And so as I sit here at my favourite coffee shop with trembling knees and a slowly-diminishing desire to barf all over my laptop computer (doesn't everyone bring their laptop computers to the coffee shop?) I can contemplate my surviving yet another winter.
Heck, there are even a couple of unsecured wireless networks in the apartments across the street that I can steal some bandwidth from. Handy things, those built-in wireless network cards, eh? It stuns me how trendy/geeky I can be. Cell phone, laptop computer.
Feh.
At least I went with tap water instead of shelling out $2.00 for a bottle of ... er ... well, tap water.
Now, this whole biking thing has been delayed a few weeks by my stupid foot injury. It is disturbing that something so small can put me so thoroughly out of commission in such short order. And as I've already stated previously, I haven't been in the best of moods lately anyhow. But add the looming threat of nagging persistent (chronic?) injuries, and I might as well retire now and sit out on the balcony whittling sticks down to little points and whistling mindless pop songs between sessions of boring the pants off folks with stories of how things were when I was a young whippersnapper (in the 1980s).
Well, I exaggerate. It's a character trait of mine (or perhaps it's a character flaw ... who knows?) to use hyperbole to exemplify situations I feel especially strong about.
But it's no exaggeration at all to say that my foot hurt so much a couple of weeks ago that I was questioning whether or not I would get back on my feet—not even thinking about my bicycle—ever again ... a small miracle later and here I am.
Maybe I'm not feeling so grumpy tonight after all.