I’ve always hated humidity.\u00a0\u00a0Heat, I’m fine with.\u00a0 Humidity – especially the hot, stick garbage we get in Minnesota this time of year, the kind that hangs over the state for weeks and makes foetid morasses of every part of your body where two things rub together – is the bane of my existence.<\/p>\n
The exception, since my mid-teens, has always been “unless I can be on my bike and riding like a madman”.\u00a0 There’s something about a fast, intense ride on a muggy dog day that just feels…good.\u00a0\u00a0 Like it cleans your system out a bit – or at least makes the air conditioning at work feel that much better-deserved.\u00a0 Either way, it’s about the only way I can stand humidity like this week.<\/p>\n
So – thank goodness for biking.<\/p>\n
Of course, in weather like this, and with as much stress as people these days have in their lives (gas prices, for instance), it’s good not to antagonize people.\u00a0 Some of them are on the razor’s edge of civility<\/a> to begin with.<\/p>\n Which brings us to “Critical Mass” the nationwide “group” of bicyclists whose stated goal is to promote bicyclists’ rights, but whose unstated one (if we ignore the likelihood<\/a> that they’re really just hapless tools of other groups who wish to promote thuggery<\/a>) seems to be to revel in the adolescent glee of pissing off “bad guys” – in their case, people who drive cars.<\/p>\n As someone who was biking long before most of “you” were born, please – stop your efforts “on my behalf”.\u00a0 Please.\u00a0 For all of the high-minded rhetoric accompanying your rides, it’s become a magnet in too many cities<\/a> for antisocial, solipsistic jagoffs, and does the rest of us<\/a> much more harm<\/a> than good, to the point where plenty of people can see this sort of thing<\/a> and be pretty damn sympathetic to the cop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve always hated humidity.\u00a0\u00a0Heat, I’m fine with.\u00a0 Humidity – especially the hot, stick garbage we get in Minnesota this time of year, the kind that hangs over the state for weeks and makes foetid morasses of every part of your body where two things rub together – is the bane of my existence. The exception, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking","category-days-of-adolescent-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}