I feel like Goldilocks

[noracharles]

I'm at ximeria's apartment while she isn't here. A guy was coming to inspect the building during her working hours, so I was here to let him in. Now I'm sitting here enjoying her excellent coffee, and using her sleek and quick laptop :-D

In other news, something creepy happened. The main arteries of the city I live in form a kind of starfish shape. I live at the end of one leg, and goddessindia lives at the end of the leg next to it. So to go home from her place I can go to the city center, which is a long distance and I would have to deal with traffic, or I can take a shortcut using some minor streets.

A few weeks ago I was riding my bike home, taking the shortcut which goes through an area where no one lives. It's an old factory district, and now there are strip malls, a cemetary and garden lots for people who live in apartment buildings somewhere else.

There are a few streetlights, but they're aimed at the middle of the road. The sidewalks are very dark. So I was going home, and I see very faintly the silhouette of a man riding a bike in an odd, slow way. He has no lights on, and he's wearing black pants and a black hoodie pulled up so it obscures his face. This was a warm summer night.

I thought he was acting freaky, and maybe he was going that slow because he was drunk, but I thought there was also a real chance he was up to no good. So I give him a wide berth as I pass him, and speed up. So he also speeds up, right when I pass him. He's following me pretty closely, but I put my bike in the highest gear and stand up to tramp the pedals. When I reach the end of the street that cuts through the cemetary where the strip malls are, there's more light, and he stops following me.

Then I see in the news that a man wearing clothes of that description has been lurking in the hedges by the cemetary and the garden lot, and has jumped out and chased two women bicyclists and tried to run them down. They both managed to get away, but they reported to the police that he was very obviously trying to knock them over.

Scary O_o

I wonder if it's the same guy who would hang trip wires across the bicycle path and drag the women bicyclists off into the underbrush a few years ago.

Comments

[noracharles]

I read about him! I didn't know he had assaulted people. Good thing your friend was not attacked, but how scary for her to learn that she had been in danger.

You are so very, very right about those bicycle paths and city planners. I'm concerned about my safety every time the path breaks away from the main road or goes into a tunnel. They've had to close several pedestrian tunnels and barricade them, because only criminals and substance abusers would ever go in there, and women and children often bicycle on heavily trafficked roads with almost no space for bikes just to avoid having to go into isolated areas. When will they learn?

Thanks for your email, by the way, glad the dvd arrived :-)
I send real mail so rarely it was fun to use all my stickers, haha :-) Yes, I am 5.

I'll get back to you later about the project of DOOM, because it's too awful to talk about before it's over and done with ;-)

[calvinahobbes]

Well, you've probably read about all of them. There have been so insanely many break-outs this summer (some people several times!) that I'm starting to feel a little dubious about where I live :oP

Here they are actually planning NEW tunnels in an 'effort to encourage people to ride their bikes to work'. Apparently tunnels make you get there faster. IDK.

Heehee, I know how you felt! I was so pleased just to see my name printed by hand! It's the little things!

I understand about the project of DOOM. I won't mention it again, but I will send you some good vibes ;o)

[noracharles]

I did not realize that. That must be scary for all of you who live around there. I don't read the newspaper anymore now that I don't get one at work, I make do with dr.dk. I figure if I have to pay a media license I better get good use of it, right? Unfortunately it's barely more than headline news.

I actually agree with the infra structure planners that commuter routes for bicyclists are awesome and wonderful. Odense is din cykelby, as they keep telling us, and we do have some commuter routes with no intersections, or only green wave intersections (you know, where if you keep a constant speed of 22 km/h you only hit green lights on all the intersections).

The problem is when they think isolated routes or tunnels are a substitute for bicycle paths in more well-lit, populated and trafficked areas, because they're really not.

Thanks :-)