Editor:
I awoke Sunday morning with but one goal — to eat brunch as soon as possible, for it was already 10:30 a.m. Having no car, I was about to set off toward the Plaza on my bicycle when I remembered I had left its lock somewhere within the HSU Music Department. Little did I know, as I rode toward campus to collect said lock, what would befall me.?At first, everything was going well — though hungry, I was making good time through the sometimes unpredictable Arcata inner-city Sunday traffic. Then I suddenly noticed a large number of people congregating on the sidewalk ahead of me and a man with a bullhorn yelling, “Get off the road!”
Apparently there was a bike race scheduled, (“Eight Days a Week,” March 22) and I had somehow wandered onto its course. This was, of course, something of a surprise as there were no warning signs posted along the street I had come from.?In any event, though overcome with panic as superhuman cyclists sped by me with Olympian disdain, I tried to keep my composure as the man with the bullhorn repeated his admonitions at increasing decibel levels while a chorus of spectators slowly but surely joined him in their righteous contempt for my very existence. Dismounting, I tried to explain that there were no signs posted, but the crowd was already thoroughly against me. Only with great difficulty was I able to make my way through their glaring mass to B Street so that I might walk in great humiliation up the hill toward the art/music/theater buildings to collect my bike lock.?All in all, I was over an hour late for brunch, narrowly avoided a rampaging peloton, and am now very likely a pariah of the Arcata cycling community. Well, what’s done is done, but I do hope that appropriate signs are put up next year.
John Chernoff, Arcata
This article appears in The Death of Redevelopment.
Signs? We don’t need no stinkin’ signs! We’re the non-polluting, environmentally sensitive, ultra-liberal, two-wheeled bicycle jocks of Arcata. Get out of our way!
If John would only bother to read the campus bulk emails, the race AND its route were prominently announced each week for the past three weeks.
By the way, you had better have been wearing your bike helmet, John!
Stupid comment, Joe B.
Thank you, John, for such lively prose, a wonderful description of you micromoment in our Arcata time. Please write a book! We love you, and we love your musicianship. You are a local hero.
That sounds like a nightmare. Signs should have been posted on the route – not everyone that goes to a public campus on a Sunday gets campus bulk email. I’m glad you survived to write this, and live another day to write some more.