Fridays and Bikes

Sometime I have to relearn how to actually get out of bed once I've turned off Clocky. Today I didn't get up until 6:56 and we usually try to eat breakfast at 7. But today is Friday and Friday is my self-declared big-breakfast day so I took a quick shower and forwent shaving (I really need to) so I could get down to Rieber in time. To my dismay Rieber hates me now and never has bacon anymore - the essence of big-breakfast Friday. So I just ate some cereal instead.

It was the start of one of those perfectly mediocre days until we went outside. Apparently while I slept yesterday UCLA levitated to the end of the world. Walking down the hill around what was once Drake Stadium gave us a captivating vista of absolutely nothing. It was a scene out of The Neverending Story except not hilarious. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me and the fog had cleared by the time calc was over. I think I need to start carrying it with me at all times. Other recently-missed Polaroid moments include:

• A chalk drawing of the outline of a small person garnished the side of path by Rieber yesterday afternoon. It was labeled Midget died here.
• The floor display of the right elevator in Hedrick Summit briefly read "Q" as we were returning from lunch.
• The fattest squirrel of all time catapulted itself across our path this morning.
• An old guy and a youngish woman both walking tiny dogs. The dogs started staring each other down and everything was motionless for about ten seconds. Finally their owners awkwardly said hello to each other.
• Some guy who looked exactly like me.
  

Over the course of the past two months here I have unfortunately developed an acute fear of bikes. When I'm walking up hill few things are scarier to me than a bicyclist suddenly appearing out of nowhere and heading right towards my feet. He doesn't have much room to maneuver because I am only one of what is probably a hundred people walking up or down the same hill. Somehow I realize in the few seconds I have left before the collision that he is better at dodging me than I am at dodging him. But when the vicious hum of bike wheels reaches my ears and those malicious little devil-eyes stare at me in the straight in the face, fight-or-flight syndrome kicks into full gear and the last thing I want to do is stand still. Fortunately in the end I manage to restrain myself yet again.

This happens several times daily and now I can say sans exaggeration that I hate bikes with every fiber of my being. Those remorseless baby-killing terrorist machines.