Like Oddball and Kelly in Kelly’s Heroes, I don’ like officers. Corporate officers.
They tend to frown at me, lie to me, and indirectly fire me.
I trust them like I would a hungry lion pacing about. Or, as noted in Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Universe, as far as I could spit a dead rat.
But my current one, my managing director (i.e. my boss’s boss) is slowly winning my respect. He seems…. decent. How strange that is to me.
He’s been straight-up, even when the company hasn’t been. He’s asked for my opinions and forwarded them up. And, most notably, he’s backed me when I’ve pulled stunts and pranks that should have gotten me in trouble (like nominating my plant for an award and the recent April Fools Manager Stampede). So, good enough guy.
Yesterday in passing he asked how we (me and the contractor in my pod, who also rides) get our bikes up to the 14th floor. I told him we use the freight elevator. That’s the deal we’ve got with the building managers (who gnash their teeth that we do it, but console themselves that we stick to the servant’s dumbwaiter).
After telling him that, I thought about it on the way home. Why should he ask such a thing? Was someone stirring this pot again, that bikes should be stored in the unsecured garage, that its not fair we get such access (even though bicycles do not afford us other boons, like safety, comfort, radio and AC)? Why ask now? Why?
I was maybe going to ride today, even though the rain chance was 50-60%. And even when I woke up at 3am and heard it sprinkling down, I still was going to ride. If someone was going to make a fuss, I wanted to be there in my righteous commuter self, my bike at my back. So I rode in.
And so, imagine my surprise when I came out of the shower room this morning and here he comes in his bike togs, having ridden in from Longwood (10 miles). Actually, he does all sorts of long rides so this wasn’t much for him, but still, commuting tends to be a bird of a different feather. Later that morning, my boss and I were in his office and his bike was there and we oogled it – nice road bike, all Star Warsy, very lightweight, very cool. I did point out that he needed to get lights for it, and wasn’t comfortable with those skinny slicks he was riding on (it’s like riding on a pair of bent hotdogs. Or, more accurately, beeny-wienies). But it was still cool. I went away impressed. Anyone who commutes by bike impresses me.
That evening, we swapped out of the our day clothes in the locker room, chatting. Storms were coming out of the west, a big black wall. Me, I’d be dogging Southeast against the trades and could probably get out from under it. He’d be going directly into it. We ended up separated and I never saw him ride into the maelstrom’s face, but I gotta wish him well.
Yeah, welcome to cycle commuting.