Bike-to-Work Week - Day Four

Watching the weather forecast this morning, I knew that today would not be the day to see bicycles commuting to work. It was supposed to rain, starting in the mid-morning, and lasting all thru the afternoon.

Of course, on my ride home in the afternoon, it looked like this:


Now, if it had rained, I might have seen the Romulan bikes with their cloaking devices, since they would be ghostly silhouettes as water sheeted off them and their tires sluiced roostertails in their wake. But the roads were dry, and all of the non-Romulans had been frightened away by the predictions of dire weather.

Today's commute report is going to be one of pictures. These are the kinds of things that I regularly see on my daily commute.

Taking the paved trail that connects Green Hills Blvd. to Foxboro Drive, the guys from the power company were working on the high-tension wires. It was windy, too.

And people are always telling me that I'm crazy to ride a bike in traffic. Puh-lease! Crazy is climbing around wires that can immediately fry you, way up high, in the wind. Did I mention that they are way up high?

Later, I went thru a subdivision called Anandale. I always think of that line from Steely Dan's "My Old School" when I ride thru here:

"That'll be the day I go back to Anandale."

Of course, I go back to Anandale most days, so I don't know what Mr. Dan was talking about.

The houses in this neighborhood are huge. This one always strikes me as being the pinnacle of conspicuous consumption, by dint of the three uber-guzzlers in the driveway.


All of these houses have three- and four-car garages, so why does this guy park his huge cars in the driveway? Does he have four really big cars in the garage? I suspect that he may just be showing off. You gotta have some kind of edge in the land of the uber-consumers.

On my way home, I noticed the Bike Route sign was torn up. I thought this was emblematic of how seriously Tennessee takes its Bike Routes, or at least of how my fellow motorists often treat me.

Of course, it's possible that this is just what happens when a screw comes loose. I'm always looking for deeper meaning, but as Freud would say, "Sometimes a loose screw is just a loose screw."

Less than a mile down the road, here's a truck parked in one of the only two bike lanes that I have on this route. Sure, neither of these bike lanes really goes anywhere, but it's still a "bike" lane, and not a "park your truck here while you cut somebody's grass" lane.

By the way, there's a cool web site called My Bike Lane.com, where you can post instances of cars parking in the bike lane. I thought that I had another shot of this truck's license, so that I could post him up there, but I missed it.

This road is not a bike path; it's Overton Road, and I use it regularly on my commute. This is a classic example of how a narrow road with speed bumps makes for a good bike commuting road, because it scares away cars.

Also, ain't it pretty? I love this stretch of my ride.

From here, I go back via Anandale ("That'll be the day ...") and then cut thru a bunch of neighborhoods. Most of these now have signs congratulating their high school seniors.


Some of the neighborhoods have signs for last week's elections. Here, the signs must have been playing king of the mountain, and Rhea Little's sign is obviously kicking Paul Webb's sign's butt.


Of course, there are a lot of For Sale signs. I don't see a lot of faded For Sale signs, which is good. These are signs of the times, though.

I remember a couple of years ago, on a road I frequently ride, there was a "congratulation to our graduate" sign in the same yard as a "For Sale" sign. You had to wonder if they were selling the house to pay for the kid's college, or if it was a case of "Yee-haw, Velma, the last one's outta here, so let's sell this dump!"


And then, here's my favorite graduation congratulation sign.