BiCi Co. - Your November Event Calendar

There are a lot of bicycle related events coming up, and calendars can be confusing for some of us (including me).  Here's a short list of the events that you need to know about, particularly those that have to do with Bicycles and BiCi Co.  It feels like a wonderful November Bike-nado.

Cleaning up in our community - BiCi Co.

• Recurring Weekly in November - Demo DIY Bicycle Repair Hours at BiCi Co. (More Info)  Learn to change a tire, adjust a derailleur, or tighten that loose thingy.  We've got you covered, and you will get your hands dirty.
• Wednesdays from 5:30-8:30pm.  Starting on October 21st.  No hours on November 25th due to holiday weekend.
• Saturdays from 1:30-5:30pm.  Starting on November 7th.  No hours on November 28th due to holiday weekend.
• This is your opportunity to sample (for free!) what it would be like to be a BiCi Co. member.
• Local Music and BiCi Co. Social at Hook and Ladder.  Saturday, Nov 7th.  7-10pm at 209 Main Street.   Drink specials.  P.O.S.S.M playing great music, and a hug from Tony C for anyone that walks or bikes there.
• CT Rides Business Forum.  Thursday, Nov 12th.  8-10am, includes a light breakfast.  Learn about your commute options in Hartford.  A forum with local alternative transportation experts.  Great for employees and employers.  (More Info & Registration)
• Wetherfield Ave. Has a Bike Lane.  Thursday, Nov 12th @ Noon.  Come over to the Wethersfield Ave entrance to Colt park at Noon for a photo op and "thank you" to the Hartford DPW for working with the neighborhood organizations that requested bike lanes.   For all the griping and complaining, we'd like to offset a little with our hearty thanks.  For maximum effect, show up on bike - duh!  (Facebook Event)
• BiCi Co. Neighborhood Cleanup! Sunday, November 15th.  10am-1pm.  Meet at 97 Park Street.  Bicicletas and Communidad.  Bicycles and community.  BiCi Co. is reaching out to our friends, neighbors, and fellow bike riders to help clean up Park Street and the South Green neighborhood.  Let's put some shine on before winter hits and covers us up with snow.  Knox Inc. provides the supplies, we supply the human power! (Facebook event)
• Creative Cocktail Hour at Real Art Ways, Thursday, November 19th.  Join Hartford Prints and BiCi Co. at RAW.  "The best of everything Real Art Ways has to give: innovative art, invigorating music, and hundreds of the most interesting and open-minded people to share the experience." (More Info)
• Bike Walk CT Annual Dinner, Friday, November 20th at CCSU, 5:30pm.  Silent auction.  Nominate for People's Choice awards.  Featured speaker - the inspiring Colleen Kelly Alexander.  BiCi Co will be there and provided two "BiCi Co. Family Memberships" for the silent auction.  And the silent auction is choice!  Great for holiday shopping.
• Hartford Cranksgiving, Saturday, November 21st - In its fourth year, this all family friendly event collects food to donate for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Ride fast or slow, but make sure to bring a way to carry the groceries.  (Register Here)
• Final Slow Roll of 2015 and BiCi Co. Social.  Sunday, December 6th. Save the date.  More info soon.  Stay tuned to the BiCi Co. Facebook Page.

Don't forget to share the BiCi Co. Membership and Fundraising Campaign with all your bicycle loving friends!  We are depending on your invaluable grassroots publicity to get the word out.

Cyclists drink locally!

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Bring It!

First off , cuz I gots a p-u-s-s-y you have to disregard all this. It clearly means that I am having a meltdown, and not that I'm a bad boy. Even if I got a pair of tits to prove it, ain't enough-- they gotta be on someone else. There's loads of precedent for this. Lindsay Lohan: meltdown. Britney Spears: meltdown. Mariah Carey: meltdown. Men don't break down. They just be playaz. Don't hate on that.

So, if you wanna ride like Charlie, if you wanna win like Charlie, you gotta have tiger blood. If you weren't born with that, ain't a thing. Substitute vodka on an empty stomach. Stop the transfusion after your face is numb.

Next what you want to do is equip your bike with lights. The idea of this is to get everyone to see who is coming at them. When they see that someone so great and winning is hurtling in their direction, they have no choice but to step aside and kneel out of respect. See the light on the bike in the picture? Ain't no way people can't see that. So, when I hear that my buddy got smacked by a van, and knowing that he shines brighter with truth than this light, all I can think is the opposition be hurling fastballs that we are going to hafta hit right out of the park.

That's right. Bicycle thug gang action. You gotta strap on the biggest fenders you got, exercise that middle finger, and get prepared mentally to cut off transit buses, GTL frat boys, and nervous suburbanites who accidentally stayed inside of city limits past sunset. You gotta be willing to ride through puddles in Bushnell Park that soak through your jeans up to your knees even with those fenders. Riding and winning like Charlie means rolling on ahead no matter how the opposition is creating barriers.

Defeat is not an option, and that's what they are trying to do when they ram into you or come inches away. They're trying to get you to throw up your hands and cry surrender. They trying to put you back behind the wheel or next to the car at the gas pump at six in the morning so that they have company, so that they can look around and still say "Hey, everyone is doing this. There's nothing wrong with my lifestyle." They want proof that the American lifestyle of overindulgence exists and that everyone is happily floating along with it. And they'll keep it up and keep it up until the law enforcement agencies or the vigilantes get to them first.

After you've slapped on some fenders, lights, and guzzled down some vodka, what you need to do is make sure your bike is a total piece of shit. This helps, especially if you are sentimental. You need to be ready to pick up your bicycle and launch it at the opposition. Let's face it. We need something stronger than the tiptoeing around, begging for scraps type of advocacy we've been getting. We need the craziest most balls-out, tits-out kind of show that we can put on because they answering to nothing else.

Asshole drivers-- consider yourselves on notice.


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Justice sandwich

CT Transit buses don't like bikes despite those front racks. Or at the very least, they don't like bikes in Hartford. Maybe they think bikes are taking their business. Who knows?

Anyway, back in September I was riding to work and dealing with a particularly unfriendly bus. I passed it around South Green's bus stop and then it passed me, then I passed it again. I guess the driver got mad about this, because when he passed me at Main and Buckingham, he slammed on the brakes in the middle of the intersection right after he passed me. I was force to switch lanes to avoid the bus, but there was a Rav 4 waiting for me in the other lane that had stopped because a bus had pulled out in front of it. I hit the Rav 4 and broke its taillight and dented the rear quarter panel. I was contrite and apologized. The driver was very concerned that I was going to take off.

Called 911, etc. The cops were initially nice. I admitted fault for hitting the car. They gave me a warning and right before I was about to leave, they changed their minds and decided to write a ticket for following too closely. I thought that was unfair, but despite being a fellow City employee, I avoid arguing with cops.

My renter's insurance (Liberty Mutual, they're good!) thankfully covered the Rav-4 damage, because the repair bill was almost $1000. I plead not guilty, because I figured taking evasive action to avoid an angry bus shouldn't warrant a $170 fine. My court date was today and I won! The State's attorney at first thought I was operating a motorcycle, but when I told her it was a bicycle she questioned how I could even receive a ticket for failure to signal a turn ((C.G.S. §14-242) which is what the ticket ended up being for, not sure why the cops told me something else). She also told me to be careful.

Anyway, thank you CT Judicial Branch for being lenient with me. Watch out of buses. Read more!

Talcum Crotch Rode

After the pious finally reach mecca -- dollars to doughnuts -- a few among them feel more than a tinge let down. Despite tiring of the institution, I can still appreciate handiwork and odd relics. When the opportunity to visit the local poetry mecca afforded itself to me yesterday, I succumbed.

Not long after the Sunken Garden Poetry & Music Festival debuted in 1992 was I informed by nearly everyone I knew that I should make the pilgrimage. Not only should I journey through the woods, across the river, and up hills, I was told to submit my poetry so that I might read there. Methinks my poetry was too fresh for their Fresh Voices Competition, and then I had no idea how to get in there as an adult writer, so I sort of allowed the Hill-Stead Museum fall off my radar after several years of obsessing over the place. Yesterday, after eighteen years of curiosity, I visited.

I remembered that the price of parking was reasonable. The amount of two dollars was in my head. Some last minute research showed how very wrong I was. While admission was free, it would cost ten dollars to park in their lot. I don't spend over two dollars to park anywhere, and given the suburban setting, trying to park on street seemed pregnant with the promise of returning later in the evening to find that my Honda had been towed. I recently read that the neighbors of the Hill-Stead have their boxers all bunched up over the traffic created by the museum's farmers' market. Because of time constraints that would not allow for us to just ride there, Interstatement proposed that we load our bikes on the bus and then ride home from the event. I cringed at the thought of my Jenny flailing around on the front of the bus, but knew that of my bicycles, she would have to be the one as the others lacked appropriate number of functioning gears.

We loaded our bikes in Asylum Hill on a bus which had the final destination of Unionville. Our addition of bikes to the front of the bus apparently shook up passengers. They could not understand what we would do this. A bit later, the bus allowed for a man using a wheelchair to board, which was also a controversy amongst these passengers, as I learned they already had one person in a wheelchair ride earlier. Seems like people along Route 4 have a very low threshold for changes in their routines.

Speaking of routine, the bus driver was asking potential passengers what bus stops for them next. At an intersection, she wanted to know if she should turn right. I get that this was not her normal route, but the bus full of loons lacking indoor voices, plus a seemingly confused driver does not exactly inspire confidence. Meanwhile, I was cringing at every pothole we hit, waiting for the Jenny to come crashing down from her docking station and fall under the wheels of the bus. For $1.25 each, we arrived at the museum. Zooming past the parking attendant was fun. There did not appear to be any designated bike racks, so we tied up to a light post which we later came to learn was an unofficial mosquito breeding ground.

The grounds of the museum are picturesque, bucolic even. We could hear Common Ground playing already, so did not want to dawdle exploring the site. The band did some kind of gospel number that did not jive with me, but then they switched back to Afro Cuban jazz while we snacked on crackers and honey chevre. Besides the music, lovely garden, and ambient sounds of livestock, what was most notable was the formidable silence otherwise.

The poetry segment began with what reminded me of (one of the reasons) why I lost interest with spoken poetry -- the air of pretension. Later, poet Bessy Reyna read in English and Spanish. Her style was more enjoyable to me, though I wish I had seen her perform more locally, where I would not have felt the sense of embarrassment listening to an audience not knowing when to applaud due to lack of understanding one of the languages.

As we headed back to gather our bikes, we encountered the Overloaded Bike that Brendan Hates. The willingness to pay ten dollars to park somewhere must be the norm because we were treated with awe in the parking lot. A concerned woman informed us that it "is not exactly flat" on our way back to Hartford. Interstatement thought she was being nice, but I think this sort of observation is silly. Even if she knew we had taken the bus there, would she not have figured out that along the route we would have observed the hilliness of the region?

While the cars created a traffic jam getting out of the lot, we rode down a dark drive that offered an unprecedented-for-the-day cool breeze. This section was gated off from the street, so it was just us and the fireflies. When we reached Mountain Spring Road and Talcott Notch Road, I began to really miss Hartford. There were no street lights on these windy, often shoulderless roads. The darkness would have been a nice change had it been a clear night without cars bombing up and down the road. I was reminded of why I never rode a bike in my hometown-- people drive far too fast for the roads, are not looking for bicyclists, and quite often have a few drinks in them. It was hilly, as expected, and probably would have been less awful if the humidity were not what it was. When not getting ready to vomit, I was preoccupied with not flying off the bike as I hit an uncountable number of potholes which were impossible to see. My gears starting doing funny things. It was a suckfest.

Around the crossing with Route 4, we pulled into some massive parking lot to tinker with gears. Rather, Interstatement tinkered. I guzzled my lemonade and tried to find my zen place. The rest of the ride was beautiful. The roads became more predictable, or at least were well-lit so that I could anticipate potential problems. An actual shoulder appeared. Before I knew it we were passing the Reservoir, which, by the way, looks excessively simple to ride into during the late evening. We cruised downhill most of the rest of the way home, even getting to see a bunny scamper across Boulevard.

I am pretty certain that I would skip those two windy roads in the future, and possibly also, the bus.

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