I am pissed. I just learned that my county would rather provide shelter from the weather for its employees who smoke (and drive up healthcare costs) than let those citizen-terrorists on bikes park out of the rain near the county building.
So I have to go to the county building today after a lunch meeting. Rather than drive, I hop on my bike and dodge traffic and the shards of cars swept into the so-called "bike lanes." I get to the county building and it’s starting to rain.
I look up, and the massive front of the building has an extended cover running across the front of the building. In the center is an entrance. To the right are hardworking county employees (they wear badges) enjoying their hard-earned cigarette breaks, as well as what looks to be like regular citizen smokers (no badges).
I am over by the single bike rack, away from the building, in the rain.
On the other side of the entrance is an entirely unused half of the massive building front. It’s under cover.
Having finally acquired enough sense to come in out of the rain, I put these observations together and start to haul my bike up to the porch so that I can lock it up (not to anything, just to itself) on the porch, out of the rain.
Crisis! The rent-a-cop stationed inside at the front of the building rushes out to tell me that I cannot put my bike there, and that I have to use the bike rack out in the rain. I ask her whose rule is that and she says "County Sheriff’s.
So there we are — she has her hand on her radio, ready to call for backup in case I do something threatening like park my small bicycle under the roof, where no one is walking (there are not even any doors that open onto this spot).
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the county, they are struggling to cope with the exploding costs of trying to maintain the roads they have, much less pour down a few miles more.
You don’t think these two things could be connected, do you?
