Instead of sitting home, I roused myself and went to the Hackerspace, and instead of driving there, I rode there. On my way, a white pickup slowed right in the spot, sort of analogous to a blind spot, where I can’t see the human figure in the car, is but their fender is keeping pace right next to and behind me and the driver yells something greetingish and then keeps trying to say stuff as I’m calling “What? Who is that? I can’t see you, who is that? What?” I can’t have a backwards conversation at 15mph. I slow so the window will pull alongside so I can see in, but it slows too.
Cut to the end of the story: The guy who used to fix my car is back in Danbury with a new garage and doesn’t know how not to alarm cyclists.
Then around 7pm at the Hackerspace, I look at the weather and it’s 53° and going down to 48°. I rode there in shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt. I guess I’m leaving sooner than later and suffering a little. No hoodie at the Hackerspace, no jacket, no socks. But 2020’s Randowear stuff is still on shelves in the closet. Maybe… And yes, there’s one long-sleeved men’s large that must have been returned at some point, or has something wrong with its transfer. It’s just thin cotton, but it’s twice as much thin cotton as I’d have otherwise, and it pleases me that I’ll be riding home at twilight in a shirt with that very same bike on it, with its headlight beam part of the design, so…
And then around 7:10, Greenwood Ave. is a parking lot, just one long chain of stopped cars. I can’t see over the little ridge of Blackman Ave., but I figure they’re probably all stopped for a train, .4 miles ahead at Library Place. But I’m cold and I’ve got a tailwind, two reasons to go fast—and I’m on a bicycle: three—so up the rise and yes, past the solid jam of stopped cars and their brake lights, blocks ahead, are the bigger red lights of the crossing and the dark gray of the train. Pump, snake, go, speed past the cars, eyes on drivers’ headrests and door cracks, going harder like I’ve been doing again this week, breathing through my back and pedaling from my butt, and then it’s .3 miles ahead, then everything’s still jammed and it’s .2 and I start thinking, could this go like… yeah, maybe, though it would be total random luck.
Nobody doors me, heart rate’s up, inhale in two stages, bring that oxygen in, now .1 miles and the butt of the gray train starts sliding into the gray shadows where it’ll disappear…and the shadows take it…and the barrier arms are still down and the red lights and the clangs still going, .05, is this going to—? But yes. Without slowing or even pulling my effort a little, the bike hits the intersection at exactly, precisely the perfect moment, the arms up, the clangs stopped, the lights not out yet but the first few cars have let up on the brakes – but it’s too late for them. I’m past the tracks, out of the saddle, and up the shallow little rise before the first car is even shifted past second gear. First through, from .4 miles back.
Though not from .4 miles back. That’s a conceit. From farther back, but no, before that, but no, before that. Yes, from 10 to the -43 seconds after the Big Bang.
If a train leaves Redding Station headed North at X mph and a bicycle leaves Danbury at 7:02 going Southeast at 15mph, does God smile?
God does.
Keith Snyder 