I was biking in the rain.

I forget what time of year it was, but it was surely no time to be biking in the rain. This time I was coming from a sweetheart's house and I should have probably brought a change of clothes because as I remarked to whoever would listen, I "smell[ed] like a brothel."

This time, I was tormented by an insane pounding downpour that pitied no cyclist. I struggled my way up the senseless Mechanicsville overpass-senseless because it's the biggest overpass I've ever seen, and merely goes over a tiny train track, who knows what its real name is?-and today nature was not being kind.

This was surely the wettest I had been to date on a bicycle. I pulled to a stop at, I believe, Wellington and Holland, and some smart-alecky pedestrian remarked "fine day for bikin', huh?" Surely that was the most obvious and painful thing anyone could say at such a time, and then I was very contemptuous, although I have since developed a taste for stating the campily obvious.

I think that, if I recall correctly, I was also tormented by a bus "leapfrogging" me, the no. 2. In bus-company-to-cyclist literature, they urge us not to "leapfrog" them by constantly passing them when they are stopped and being in their way in front of them as they drive. Well, roads that busses are on go two ways and they are also "leapfrogging" us.

It's irritating to have timed it just so that you are right where a bus wants to be. One could pull off the road for a bit or work to go faster, ever faster, but it's trouble any way you look at it.

I remember the day being bright but heavy with clouds, not dark like the more recent times I have biked in the rain. The weather can be seen especially clearly in my memories of that neighborhood, for some reason.

I passed the ol' somosa joint and was finally at work. They looked at me as if I had a crazed look in my eyes, and yet so did they (with surprise), for I was sopping wet when I carried my bike in, and even every part of my bike was quite soggy and sad. They were all baffled that I would consider making myself so wet. They were sad that I had to take my wet shoes and wet socks off and contravene workplace policy by not having anything on my feet.

I do believe that in such an instance once, one of the girls fashioned me a pair of unofficial sandals out of foam and some other components, and these sandals were very crudely fashioned, and I do believe that I found them unwearable and shoved them under the break-room couch, although I do also recall pulling them out from there and disposing of them at a later date.

On that day, though, my clothes were wet and I was the happiest boy in all of the world.

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