Tasting Deliciously of Death and Freedom
The gridlock today was some of the worse I've ever biked through. Cars were nudging each other's bumpers, horns were honking, cabbies were cutting into turning lanes &c. I spent the forties and fifties weaving in between cars, shifting from the right to the left side of the road and back looking for openings to slip through, ducking under car mirrors and shouting down errant pedestrians.

Somewhere in the midst of all this—between squeezing through two vans so close I had to suck in my breath and shaving front bumpers with my back tire as I cut across lanes—I realized I was having fun. A lot of fun. I wasn't thinking about how much my legs hurt (and they do, all the time), or whether biking was some sort of death wish on my part (probably), I was riding with total concentration and efficiency. I felt like a cowboy steering my mount nimbly among a herd of long-horn cattle, only at the time it wasn't cheesy—it was terribly exciting.

And then on the bridge I passed two other bikers. Which almost never happens, because I am very very slow, though in conversation I like to blame my slowness on my shitty second-hand department-store-brand mountain bike. But I passed two bikers, both female, both on road bikes. One of them was even wearing bike pants, which means extra points for me.

It feels good.