Damn school buses...

Damn school buses. They annoy me. It’s the time of the year of course when the big yellow buses have been out on the road for a month or more now in North Carolina, and damn it all if they don’t get in the way of things, like me trying to get home in the afternoon. Sure as shit, if I’m leaving work at 4:15, or just a touch earlier in the afternoon, I run into 1 or 2 of them on good old route 57 driving over from Roxboro to Hillsborough. And sure as shit, they’re there, clogging up the road. Driving 40 miles per hour in a 55 mile per hour zone, with a line of traffic lined up 10 deep behind them as they trundle on down the road on their merry way to the parking garage, which according to the luck afforded to me in life, is located in Hillsborough on my drive home route. It’s not even the buses really, so much as the assholes who line up behind them and then fail to pass them when they can, and when you’re sitting 6th in line, you can’t get past those assholes to get past the bus holding up the traffic in the first place. This kind of drive home is the bain of my existence. Take for example today. I’m cruising along, 65 MPH, got some music playing, feeling good about getting home at some point in time early so I can ride my bike, and then… BUS!!! Luckily, there is only one car behind said bus, and then me, but this guy is someone who doesn’t follow closely, but follows just far enough that it might be a little dangerous to pass because there’s not enough space between the bus and the car, but just enough space to make it a hard pass because you’ve got to gun it hard. Luckily for me, I now have a car that has some get up and go, and once the opportunity opened up, I had to take it. The guy that was driving the car behind the bus kind of freaked out when I passed, and slammed on his brakes. The bus, just kept on keeping on, and I pushed the speed up to 80 just to make sure I got past without any trouble. Of course I didn’t realize that I had pushed it up to 80, and had to get on the brakes pretty hard in order to not run afoul of the law (like driving 80 in a 55 isn’t running afoul of the law and all), but this particular piece of road seems to have a large number of cops driving back and forth on it, and not just your Podunk police with a badge and an attitude, oh no. These roads are mostly patrolled by State Troopers, because there is a barracks in Hillsborough right where the DMV is. They crawl all over that place. My personal record for seeing the poe-poe on the drive home is 4 State Troopers in a span of 15 minutes. I shit you not. 4 of them. Is that really necessary? I think not of course. Don’t they have a meth lab to bust somewhere? Then again, they are heading towards Roxboro, they probably are going to bust a meth lab, so keep on rockin’ State Troopers of North Carolina. You go with your bad ass Smokey The Bear hats, and mirrored sunglasses. Of course, by the time I get home now, I’m almost in a road rage kind of way, luckily, I can still ride my bike, and after riding, all is well. As soon as I get rolling on the bike, the stress of the drive home melts away. This is why I really need to concentrate on riding my bike every day after work. It makes everything nice.

Riding this time of year, not overrated. It’s October 19th, and the weather is phenomenal, kind of like bacon wrapped scallops. It was 85 degrees today during the day, and by the time I get home, it’s a perfect ride temperature if you ask me, 82 degrees, sunny, and not humid. Yes, this is the reason that I moved to NC for. OK, I really moved down here for a woman, but weather like this is a good reason as well. More about the woman some other time. Just for your edification, no the current SO is not the woman I moved down here for. The woman I moved down here for is now married, living in Phoenix, married to a guy named Mac, and having her first child, but I digress. Riding in this weather, this time of year, is awesome. I can’t wait for this weekend when we’re supposed to have more weather like this, and I can increase the good old ride time out in the countryside of Orange and Chatham counties of North Carolina. I would love for it to stay like this for months at a time, but alas, it will get cold soon, which I tend to like more than the summer anyway, so I’ll be all good for that. I love riding in the winter when it’s cold out there. Sure, it’s hard to motivate to get outside when it’s cold sometimes, but once I get out there, I’m good. I’m riding. It’s crisp out there. There’s something about riding out there in the cold, getting home, taking a hot bath, or a hot shower, and then drinking some tea and or eating some soup. It’s just good. I can’t help but love it. Winter, my favorite season of the year. Always has been, always will be I guess. I used to love skiing and waiting for the first snowflakes to fall to cover the hills around my hometown with the white stuff so I can wax up the skis, sharpen the edges, and make some turns, and get ready for the upcoming race season, taking slalom gates in the face, and just carving turns. It’s hard to explain it all if you haven’t done it over the years. It’s just good stuff. Everyone should ski at some point in time, just don’t ask me to teach you, I retired from that gig a long time ago. OK, I might throw a few lessons out there for the SO, or maybe some other close friends, but if you’re not really close with me, you can forget it. Well, that and I’m out of practice as far as skiing goes, as I haven’t really done it much since moving South in the summer of ’99. Which reminds me, when I did move down here, in July of 1999, I’d thought I dropped straight into hell. The first 10 days I was here, the air temperature was well over 100 degrees everyday, throw in some heat index, and I thought I was going to do. Add into that the fact that I had to wear a suit to work, and you have, yes, you guessed it, a sweaty Tom promoting swamp ass all over Greensboro. For those of you not in the know, swamp ass is when you sweat so much your boxers get a little wet and sticky, and then smelly, and well, it’s swampy back there. Need I explain it more? I think not. That summer I was king of the swamp ass, I can guarantee you that. Also add into that the fact that I was living in Chapel Hill and commuting to Greensboro 5 days per week, well, you can probably tell how I felt about such things. Now THAT commute sucked really bad. Especially since they were still trying to build the damn Interstate back up through Greensboro, and everyday heading home at 5 in the afternoon, I-40 out near where I worked for Volvo truck was a damn parking lot. I could get there in the morning in about 50 minutes. It was pretty much a straight shot. In the evening though. You can forget about it. An hour and forty was pretty regular. Why do I do these things to myself? I don’t freakin’ know. Ideally, I would love to live close enough to where I work to ride my bike to work, every single day. Maybe, just maybe someday if I’m lucky. I hope so. Especially with the old oil companies making record profits on the backs of Americans. That’s for another entry though.