Life is skittles and life is beer

[bunrab]

I can tell it's really spring now: the neighbor's kid set up his portable basketball hoop at the dead end of our street - in front of our house - and he and his friends started bouncing the basketball on the street, earlier than I would have liked to wake up. However, once up: yes! Sunlight! 70 degrees! Our household took its helmets down from the top of the entertainment center, found its gloves on the bookshelf, and rode off into the... traffic. Across the street from the foot of our block is a Sam's Club. Which apparently had something extra going on. It took several minutes to turn from our street onto the other road, and several more to get past the driveway to Sam's, and then a few more to get past the people in the turn lane who suddenly noticed it was a turn lane and then decided they didn't want to turn. And then, just after the right-turn-only lane, a patrol car, lights ablinking, in the traffic lane I needed, guarding several upset looking people on cell phones and a very crumpled car - I have to assume that the other car(s) had already been towed off, as this car could not have achieved the seriously stove-in side it had all by its lonesome. Once past that, finally, it was good. Miles per hour slightly in excess of the posted limit were achieved. Cherry trees in blossom were observed. Also dogwood and magnolia. Also dandelions. Many, many dandelions. Much of the rest of the helmet-owning population of the greater Baltimore area was waved at. Lunch was had. Errands were run. The post office clerks admired the bike, and no one asked why there is a grapevine christmas wreath wrapped around the bottom of my helmet box. And the mail included my order from Upton Tea, including the Spring Dragon Oolong which is my favorite oolong in the world, so now I am going to go make myself a cup of iced tea.

I had a dream the other night, where I had parked the bike on a street, and a van was blocking me from getting out of the parking space. The van owner refused to move the van until I had helped him round up his pygmy goats. Steve woke me up. I had to go back to sleep, to get a few more minutes, so that I could finish rounding up the goats and get the bike back out on the road.