I instantly regretted my decision, and then I had about 30 minutes to really reflect on the bad decision I made. You see this morning I didn’t bike to work – a complicated affair of inaccessible showers at work and a flaky weather girl saying “it’s gonna rain all morning” – and ended up waiting for the bus for 30 minutes. Thirty long rainless minutes.

Did I mention I now bike to work in 35 minutes? So by the time I wrote this first paragraph, I could have been sitting at my desk – sweaty, smelly and happy? This really rubs me the wrong way.

Silver lining to this cloud: I’m writing this on the bus on my Blackberry, so you have something to read.

Speaking of biking, I had an adventure yesterday on my way back from work. I almost fought a French (meaning from France, not just french-speaking) dude. Well, two dudes really, but I don’t know if the other one was French.

You see, there’s a small section of the bike path that is actually a very wide sidewalk that cyclists and pedestrians share. BTW, the bike paths are also shared spaces. The problem on the sidewalk part is that there is no lines to tell people where they should be walking/biking.

So here I am on my bike, right behind those two dudes. I slowly move to circle them on their left, but they quickly sidestep to the left. I stood still for a moment – to let them take a few steps so I can have some distance to make a wide swerve to their right. At the last second, they again step right in front of me.

I figured that it wasn’t a problem, that I was just going to slowly follow them. I knew the actual bike path wasn’t too far off, and that they would have to stick to the right at that point. So I’m about 2 feet behind them, matching their pace when the French dude turns around and starts yelling at me.

“You know this is a sidewalk?*” He shrieked with his very feminine voice.

“Yup, I said, that’s why I’m just quietly following you. Notice how I didn’t ring my bell or asked you to move to the 10+ feet of empty space to your left?”

“BUT THIS IS A SIDEWALK! SHOW SOME RESPECT!” He yelled as he stopped squarely in front of me, forcing me to stop. He grabbed the handlebars. I stepped down and put my bike on the stand.

“Since this is a sidewalk, may I kindly suggest you WALK to the SIDE or should I kick your ass?”

I had never seen a French dude run that fast. The other one stood there, raising his hands in the universal “I want no troubles” gesture.

I swear I’m not on steroids.

*Of course the whole conversation was in French,and it went like this:
“Tu sais que c’est un trottoir ici?”
“Yup (I say yup even in French), c’est pourquoi je fais seulement vous suivre. Je n’ai pas sonné ma cloche, je ne vous ai pas demandé de vous déplacer vers les 3 mètres d’espace libre juste là.”
“MAIS C’EST UN TROTTOIR! UN PEU DE RESPECT QUAND MÊME!”
“C’est effectivement un trottoir… Alors tu TROTTES ou je te botte le derrière?”

And now, a quick question:

Should I shave my hair? I’m getting to this point where I kinda have long-ish hair on the top, and it’s getting really hard to style it in any way except for the slickback. I could wait about 4 months to gather the hair in decent a topknot – and from there sky floor is the limit – or I could shave it off and keep it short for a while. Have a look:

Top shot – this morning.

Unstyled – a few weeks ago.

Slicked back.

I’m on the fence about the whole thing, so I’m asking you for some assvice. WWTID?