Morning Meditations

I rode to work this morning for the first time in a while it seems. It's amazing to me how much better I feel, and how much clearer I think while and after I ride. This morning I passed a truck with Hexel something printed on the side. That got me thinking about numbering and different numerical bases (this is the geek part of GeekCyclist). I am a computer programmer by trade, but my training was in Economics, so I never really got that base of computer science.

Anyway, I'm tooling down the road off in numerical la-la-land thinking about hexadecimal and finally realizing how hex, octal and binary are all related and why so much of what I encounter in programming deals with hex. And then it hit me...I finally got the joke.

You see, there is a shirt that says "How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?" Now, I get the one that says "There are only 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't." But I am sorry to say I never got the hex one until this morning. I am not going to reveal the whole thing to you, but you can see a sample of a shirt and a hint here.

Right after that was when the truck almost killed me.

I was still in la-la-land a little; cruising on a through street that makes the top of a T with another street. My road/lane has no stop sign, the intersecting street does. A truck passed me and the intersection, and a truck waiting at the stop sign pulled out right in front of me.

Yes, it was 6:45 AM which is pretty dark right now in SLC. But I had both bulbs of my headlight going, for about 18 watts of power. I had two rear blinkies going (not that the truck driver could see those). I had on a white helmet, a jacket with reflective piping, and two reflective ankle straps on. I think I am pretty visible.

We both skidded to a halt, and then, miracle of miracles, he rolled down his window and instead of yelling at me, said "Sorry for pulling out in front of you and scaring the #### out of you."

Honestly, I don't think it was that he didn't see me. I think drivers are so accustomed to seeing kids and grown-ups on heavy, cheap bikes that are moving at 8-10 mph, that they are literally shocked at how fast a serious cyclist approaches an intersection. I was doing somewhere between 17 and 21 mph, and I think he just assumed he would clear the intersection before I got there.

I told him thanks, and no harm done, and clipped back in as he pulled off, at which point the next car at the stop sign pulled out into my path as well - him I yelled at...