Commuting And Weather

So, yesterday, I was out and about over lunch and saw this atrocity hanging from the side of my office.


All I can think is that it's some huge rapper necklace that's supposed to slightly resemble the KC Skyline, mirrored four ways. Check out the massive chains, yo.


Taking a closer look, the chains are fake and made of plastic. Lame. I was going to steal some of it and use it to lock my bike up with, but I guess that's a bad idea.


This police officer actually made eye contact with us. Although his door was cracked open a bit, he let us pass without giving us the door prize. Personally, I still took a wide berth.


It was brutally humid and windy last night. I stopped under a tree and leaned my bike against a lamp post for a bit to let the wind cool me down while I sipped from my Polar Bottle.



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I woke up this morning to this:


I used CHDK with an intervalometer script to snap a 4 second-long exposure every 15 seconds while I went back up to my apartment to get stuff together. You can see some of last night's clouds rolling in with a longer animation here.

I didn't need the rain covers this morning but the skies were ominous enough that I used them just in case.


I broke a spoke about a mile from home. I'm not 100% convinced that it's from riding it around the parking lot last night with 50 pounds of extra weight on the back. I just bent the broken spoke around another spoke to hold it out of the way. I'll replace it when I get home. I think this is the first non-drive-side spoke I've ever broken. I won't even need to remove the cassette to fix this one.


After bending the spoke out of the way, I was off to work again.


It's hard to see here, but the smoke from KC's newest BBQ pit is visible here.


I rode up Summit again (UGH!) to get some better photos of the carnage.


Looks like dark storm clouds, doesn't it?


Until you see that there's a fire...


What you're seeing is the end result of lightning hitting a container that was holding 1.2 Million gallons of unleaded gasoline at a local refinery. 1.2 million gallons. Retail cost on that is about $5M at 3.93 per gallon (current price of regular 87 octane I saw on the ride in this morning).


Oh, and Praise Beef!


I saw this bike outside Starbucks today, too.


Random Tunage:
Way Out West - Mindcircus (You've GOT to give this a listen if you haven't heard it)
Quivver - One Last Tim