Bicycle notes
Got lightly tapped by a car a couple weeks ago. I was bicycling to work, next to cars that were pretty much at a standstill due to heavy traffic. A car had stopped partway out of a driveway ahead of me. I saw it, and even thought to myself I hope the driver sees me, but neglected to do anything other than slow down a bit. The driver did not see me. They started to pull forward just before I reached the driveway, then hit their brakes when they saw me move in front of the car (I was also hitting my brakes). They were going slowly enough that they stopped before doing any damage, but the front of the car did contact my right leg. I glared at the driver and rode on, a little shaken but okay.
A week or two after that, my rear tire was low as I was leaving work. I had been avoiding pumping it up, for no reason, so a block away from my office I stopped and pumped up the tire. But the valve seemed to be leaking air. I pumped again; the valve (or something) leaked more air. Soon it had less air than when I had started. I resigned myself to walking home. (Which gave me a chance to play some more of The Walk, a fascinating walking app that I've been meaning to post about for a long time.) Got most of the way home, found a gas station, used their pump to pump my tire completely full; walked the rest of the way home, parked my bike. The next morning it was totally flat. It's been so long since I've had a flat tire on my bike—possibly on the order of ten years—that I no longer seem to have appropriate tools or a patch kit or a spare inner tube.
About a week later, I finally got around to taking the bike in to the shop. I decided to ask them to fix the tire for me, and while I was at it I asked them to install a bunch of accessories that I had bought from them previously but had had a weirdly hard time installing: a bell (which sounds really nice to me, much nicer than most bicycle bells I hear), an iPhone holder (for use with a maps app), and a mirror. I've now ridden to work once with all those accessories in place; everything seems to work pretty well.