Me: "I got mosquito bites last night on my bike ride." My boss: "You weren't moving fast enough."

Bike ride, schmike ride, my bicycling skillz are off the chain. Two recent bike stories for all you loyal readers:

After working 12 hours at the office on Monday, yes I said 12, I went on a long bike ride to work out some of aggression and manic feelings that had built up after sitting at my desk for so long. I did my typical ride to Hopkins, MN, home of beloved Cargill, and then looped back into the city via the Greenway. On the way home, I decided to do a bit more, and circled Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet before heading back to my apartment. Of course, once I reached my apartment, I ran into the infamous Larry, whose car btw, is no longer abandoned on the side of the street. I'm secretly dying to ask him about the engine fire, but don't care enough to get into a 20 minute discussion on why cars from the '80s randomly implode. Whenever I see Larry after a bike ride, he usually says something really intelligent like, "Looks like you missed the rain," (it hadn't rained in the past 48 hours and there was no future rain in the forecast), or "Looks like you went on a bike ride" (umm yeah thanks, Larry), or the all time classic where he says nothing at all, attempts to hold open my apartment door to "help" me inside and then proceeds to strike up a conversation about how I should go into elder law.

Which is a perfect lead-in to my next story. On Thursday, I was on the West River Parkway trail, heading from school to Erin's house. This trail is massive. It's super wide and is always in great shape, which is why, when I pass slowpokes, I do not feel the need to shriek "on the left." Flash forward to halfway down the trail, I pass Mr. and Mrs. Old People pedaling along without a care in the world. With no one else approaching, I glided by unannounced. THEN, 10 minutes later, at a stop sign, Mr. Old Person breezes through the requisite stop (illegal btw) and yells "On the left! This what you're supposed to say when you pass someone!!!" I only wish I had been able to explain to him that the "lesson" he was trying to teach me was completely overshadowed by the fact that he almost got hit by a car during his instruction. But judging from how he swerved uglyass recumbent in the face of near death, I'm guessing he knows that already.