petebrunelli

Weather permitting, meaning that it will be a few raindrops shy of an easy call, it looks like I am participating in a Bike To Work Day event on Friday. Dan Esty, the guy who had a moment of weakness (or else Dannel Malloy has some photos in a manila envelope that Dan would rather not ever have released from said envelope) and decided to leave the plushest gig in enviro-law to ride herd over a state agency during the deepest financial crisis of the past 80 years, is planning on biking from Cheshire to Hartford, and the route goes damn near past my house. All the excuses I have used for not making the slog into HardFerd by bike are useless against this tyranny of coincidences. The mileage is not a problem: I knock out this kind of ride on a regular basis. The grades will be nothing I don’t see every week in my neighborhood. The route is pretty much what I would pick, barring a dawn assault on New Britain. No… Nothing outside of my comfort range there… but, the Oh-Dark-Hundred departure time is a kick in the you know who. I love an alpine start as much as anyone else, and I am counterbalanced by my wife who believes that 5:00 AM is a mythical place beyond the stars, like Ballouville, only darker and colder. So if this thing actually happens, I will be heading out to join the fun at an ungodly hour of the morning, and I don’t usually sleep well with an impending early start. I am sure that Dan will have already sped-read through the latest Federal Register, written a few Amicus briefs, chatted up Kofi Annan, and checked in on his far-east portfolio, before hitting the road. I will be lucky to not shoot myself in the foot to get out of it.