A post about biking and movies.

One of the things from which I derive joy is taking bike rides. I also like watching movies in the theater. So the several times a year I find myself riding out to the local theater to catch a movie are always a good number of hours of enjoyment. I always take my sweet time leaving because being late just runs in my blood, but I always make sure to leave right around an hour before the show starts to make sure I can make the ~11 mile ride without too many problems. I purchased my tickets early for the 10:30 showing from the theater's website and I ended up walking into the mall at 10:26. Perfect timing of course so I went ahead and had my water bottle topped off at the concession stand before heading into what I expected to be a packed theater. Nope, not even close. I grabbed myself a great seat and watched a film starring A Man Dressed Like A Bat, which turned out being a very enjoyable movie that I won't spoil in any way.

After sitting through the credits to the bitter end because it's a thing I do even though there was nothing after the credits of the third installment of Christopher Nolan's A Man Dressed Like A Bat, I got up and left the theater. According to the same clock I saw when I entered, it was now 1:34 in the AM. No problem I think, time to hop back on the bike path and hope I don't run into any bears, which I have an irrational fear of doing. Lucky for me there were no bears, but there was a bit of rain. It wasn't a lot of rain, so I was OK with it, but there was just enough rain to know that I had missed a bigger chunk of this storm while watching A Man Dressed Like A Bat do his thing.

Not too many minutes after starting the ride home I noticed the sky to my right occasionally lighting up. It wasn't particularly impressive till I passed the portion of the bike path that runs under the main drag, which put all those main street lights to the other side of me. It was then that the light show got a lot more interesting. From behind the trees that lined the path I could see the clouds and empty sky brighten several times in a two or three second period and it was quite a sight. The damned trees blocked most of it, but I kept riding and glancing to my right every couple of seconds trying not to miss too much of it. Right around that time I saw a very bright couple of lightning strikes just as I passed a very open area where the trees had been cleared and rows of some foodstuffs or another had been planted in the fields beyond.

The clearing had come and gone in an instant so I got off my bike and walked back to it. I killed my headlight, not that it was anywhere near bright enough to rival the lightning. I didn't see very many arcs, but there were a couple. Mostly it was the sort of lightning that just lit the clouds up in that dark red color that they get for reasons I don't know. It reminded me a lot of 4th of July fireworks; the strikes were that rapid. It must have been loud as hell where it was happening, but where I was I couldn't hear anything over the relatively quiet music of my mp3 player. After watching for a few more moments I got back on my bike and continued riding back towards home. I kept looking to the right as I went, but the storm was traveling in nearly the opposite direction I was riding so it never got any better. I still enjoyed the hell out of what I did see though.

Also, typing this out gave me an excuse to use a semicolon on the intenet! Did you see it?

Mother Nature is a giant gaping cunt

I felt like seeing The Avengers today. I also felt like getting in a ride. The theater is only a touch over 11 miles from home so the plan was to kill two birds with one stone by riding to the movies. I checked three different weather sites to see how it was going to be. Two of the three said it was going to start raining well into the movie, so if I felt the need I could just take the bus home from the movie while the third said it was already raining despite the fact that it obviously wasn't. Encouraged by this I went ahead and hopped on my bike.

By the time I was out of the driveway it was already sprinkling. Whatever I won't let a little mist stop me. I continued on and get to the bike path in under five minutes. The rain had started properly by this point, but it still wasn't a bad sort of rain. Fuck it, I can ride through this I thought and went ahead with the plan. Not five minutes later it had started to downpour properly and I also realized I forgot my keys, so I wouldn't be able to lock my bike up when I got there. Fuck it, plan derailed. I'll just hit the store for some dinner foods. On the way to the store the rain continued to get harder and I was glad when I finally went through the front door.

Inside I stalked the aisles, dripping rain everywhere I went. I checked the soups. Nothing interested me. The prepared foods were almost gone and non were my thing anyhow so I grabbed a prepackaged meatload dinner with a side of garlic mashed. Along the way I hit the frozen food section for another couple of nights worth of dinner. Adding a loaf of bread I figured that was enough and checked out.

I headed to the door and dropped my receipt into the little thing they have there that contributes 5 cents to the cause of your choice for every receipt put into the box. Unsurprisingly my cause of choice is the rail trail box because yay, biking. When I got outside the rain had gotten even harder than it was when I arrived, so I gave it a few minutes to lighten up. Not a chance of that, if anything it got worse, so my impatient side said "fuck it" and I took off. All over again I got soaked through and miserable, but wouldn't you know it... right when I turned onto the side street that would ultimately lead me home (this being less than a half mile from home) the rain halted. That was 20 minutes ago and the rain has yet to return.

So fuck off, Mother Nature. You're a cunt of the highest order.;