Do you ever have a commute where you get to work and wonder, “Is this real life!?” I DO. I don’t know how it happened, but I ended up uber late to work today, rolling in at an embarassing 1:10pm! Not to say that I arrive at the dark box of drudgery and sadness (a.k.a. office with no windows) any earlier than 9:30am on a regular M-F… but today was different. Caught between a nightmare of angry drivers and a dream of ukulele bike advocacy, I thought “Dr. Toothenstein must have gone overboard with the Novocaine yesterday.” Either that, or now I’m biking in my dreams too.
Gramps keeps it real, he's my posture coach.
My dream started out like this: I groggily flopped out of bed late with no time to shower OR shop for vegetables in Chinatown! Grandpa yelled my name from the streets below as he waited for a ride on my handlebars over to the acupuncture lady. We’re cruising down the narrow streets of C-town, as I wait in the middle lane to make a left turn. Gramps and I are chillin’ completely innocent and unoffensive (well, except for maybe some strong B.O. since hygiene is not my forte), and the nightmare begins. A jerk-bomb in a truck passes by in the far right lane and yells “Get the FAWK outta tha ROAD!” The truck passes by at full 5 mph (bad traffic makes yelling at cyclists then speeding away kinda hard!) Gramps gets pissed and starts yelling in Cantonese and chasing the truck down. Guess I don’t need to drop him off to acupuncture after all.
I call these scones "Forget-Me-Nows" - eat one and forget all bad juju from Jerk Bomb in Pick-up Truck!
I’m a bit stunned from the nightmare, but decide to just crank it out. There’s only one way to repair the damages from a street-fire jerk bomb: Forget-Me-Now blueberry cream cheese scones from Diamonhead Market! With nothing but scone on the brain, I zone out for the rest of my ride. On the way there, I detour through Kapiolani Park. It’s a beautiful day to take the scenic route to scones, and I hear the voice of the executive director at HBL calling out my name! I stop and pull over.
Kapiolani Park - a dreamy royal shower tree.
I’ve apparently entered into the Bike Advocacy dream sequence with this kinda hot n’ famous ukulele guy, Chad from HBL and a lady cop. So much for scones, I guess it’s time to film a dreamy PSA with Jake Shimabukuro on how cyclists have the right to take the whole lane in Hawaii!
After a couple of video takes, some sweet harmonious tunes, and awkward posing in my HBL tee… I start to think: maybe this isn’t a dream, this is REALITY! And if it is, am I frackin’ sweaty and smelly.
Well, whatever is happening here, I just can’t help but throw up a shaka for the camera! Deputy lady cop so-n-so says “It’s the law!”
How appropriate that my nightmare and dream revolve around the same theme: cyclists have the right to take the whole lane if it’s too narrow to share with the car! Seems Mr. Jerk-bomb is the perfect audience for this Public Service Announcement. Let’s hope jerk-bomb and other drivers out there will listen up and share the road! Until this PSA is published on the telly, I gotta go back to Chinatown and find Gramps… Any of you riders out there have bike commuting nightmares to share? How do you guys get over those nasty comments from drivers on your commutes?
(For the more literal readers out there, Mir.I.Am was intentionally late to work today to film a Public Service Announcement with Hawaii Bicycling League. Coincidentally, she did get yelled at by a guy in a pick up truck, but no Grandpas were harmed in the writing of this post. Blueberry cream cheese scones are baked pure deliciousness itself. Oh god, they’re so good!)
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First… the seat. It’s a 
