Critical Condition

30 June - Woke up feeling completely awful - still really worn out from the day before but did get a nice surprise on the ride into work - a girl had set up a little stand on the Adenac bike path with free coffee and cinnamon rolls for the commuters - Surly John was there and I stopped but while I was there at least two dozen commuters bypassed the free breakfast with excuses of being late for work, I for one will never give up free food. The GST has been reduced 1% which means my morning coffee only costs 2.06 rather than 2.09 (basically this means that rather than gettinga single penny to throw away I now get three). The day wasn’t nearly as busy as yesterday, Duncan is back at work and we also had Jeremy on givingus a total of 8 bikers - I had a very good day moneywise but was so sore from yesterday's pandemonium that I couldn’t reallyenjoy it. One of our big clients, HSBC, seemed to be really upset with us because of the tardiness of the deliveries but not much could be done - there's only so many bikers and drivers and it was not only the end of week, but also end of month AND end of quarter so everyone wanted to deliver stuff. Did get the much sought after Talbot Mediation bank run - Lynn Talbot is treasured for the free food and cold drinks she forces on any courier who graces her doorways. This was very useful as I didn’t get a chance to eat all day. As it was the last Fiday there was the usual Critical Mass (like Reclaim The streets) but because it coincided with the end of bike month there was a giant turnout - about 1500 people turned up (well that was the target), the gallery was overflowing every kind of bike you could imagine: mountain bikes, BMXs, road bikes, hybrids, track bikes, recumbant bikes, unicycles, tall freak bikes, tandems and a couple of Penny Farthings for good measure. The critical mass crowd are a strange bunch, mainly lefty environmentalists all a bit TOO political at times, but they certainly turned out in force. A bunch of the couriers went along for a ways - up Georgia St and onto Howe, over the Granville Bridge, down the Sixth wind tunnel, over the Cambie bridge then through downtown to the Georgia viaduct and onto Main, right at Hastings then ... Well, tthat was when we decided we'd had enough. There was a bit of support from the locals but generallythe attitude from the cars was pretty vehement as the crowd of bikers was pretty much stopping traffic completely - the group must have been at least half a kilometre long and was not moving fast at all, there were a couple of little skirmishes between drivers and bikers, nothing serious other than the slapping and kicking of a the cars but as jeremy said, that woman is probably goingto go out and smoke a cyclist ... tomorrow. As much fun as it was paralysying the traffic grid riding so slowly after 9 hours of riding reallyfast was just too much. My bum was killing me and we were starving. Had a slap up meal at sha-lin noodle place then I went home and tried to pass out.