Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Drive-thru skills

Hungry this morning, I left early for the bus. Yes, I wimped out again, but this bus to work, ride back home routine is working pretty well for me. On my way to the mall, I decided to test my stoplight-triggering skills at the Burger King drive-thru. Would I be able to trigger the sensor to place my order? Would I be doomed to a life of breakfast hunger forever? There's only one way to find out.

Stealthily, I rolled up to the menu to place my order, making sure to align my bike with the faintly visible lines of the inductor loop under the concrete. I clicked out of my pedals and waited. To my surprise, a half-asleep murmur greeted me within seconds. I ordered some miniature cinnamon rolls with an extra dose of that tasty, sweet, tooth-rotting icing and then crept to the window to pay for my goodies. The cashier said that usually the drive-thru can't even detect motorcycles, thinking it had something to do with vehicle weight. I told her that they just don't know "the secret." When she asked what the secret was, I told her that it was a secret, then chortled merrily while handing her a dollar bill and a dime in exchange for breakfast.

I think I may have spooked her a little bit with my routine. When she came back with my nutriment, I gave her a hint. "It's got more to do with where you park your vehicle than how much it weighs." I thanked her and launched in a fury of pedaling and shifting, hammering onto the road to get through the left-turn before the light went red.

Moments later, I sat down at the bus stop and munched on my hard-earned pabulum as motorists-in-wait observed from behind their walls of glass and steel. I arose, chasing the carbohydrate cocktail with water from my bottle before making another high-speed bike sprint across the parking lot to the nearest waste bin and back. By this time, some curious onlookers had emerged into the crisp morning air. Certainly a few of them were envious of the meal which they'd seen me devour in their presence. Too bad.

I wrapped up the morning by discussing religion and philosophy with Lorin over a nice, hot mocha. I don't ride my bike to lose weight. I ride it so I can do stuff like eat cinnamon rolls and drink mocha in the morning without feeling too bad about it.

Random Tunage:
Cascade - Escape
Deep Blue Something - Breakfast at Tiffany's

2 comments:

Adam Durand said...

The manager of the Tim Horton's here laughed at me when I told him the drive-through wasn't picking up my bike. He didn't take my order at the window, he just laughed. I'll try to find that sweet spot in the pavement next time.

Noah said...

There are a few places that display signage like "No walk-up traffic" at the window. From a few of these places, I got some flack.

My usual response is to go back around and make revving noises the next time, or point out that I'm on a street legal vehicle and that I got to their store using the same public roads as the rest of the customers that roll through there. These are usually places that close the lobby before the drive-thru, so they lazily expect that I'm just doing it that way so that they have to get off their asses and do work. Not entirely false.

My bank, and the pharmacy both think it's cool when I pull up on my bike.

Privacy Policy

This site is driven by software that uses third-party cookies from Google (Blogger, AdSense, Feedburner and their associates.) Cookies are small pieces of non-executable data stored by your web browser, often for the purpose of storing preferences or data from previous visits to a site. No individual user is directly tracked by this or any other means, but I do use the aggregate data for statistics purposes.

By leaving a link or e-mail address in my comments (including your blogger profile or website URL), you acknowledge that the published comment and associated links will be available to the public and that they will likely be clicked on.