Travel log ii: anomalies

16 June 2008

1.
“Walk like a dog across Alma.”

I could have sworn that was the mechanical command from the pedestrian traffic light. In Salt Lake, the walk signs just chirp for crossing. But not so in California.

The voice repeated: “Walk like a dog across Alma.”

I didn’t. But pedaling down Lytton I considered: I sort of look like a dog; hunched over my handlebars, panting in the beating sun.

Incidentally, it doesn’t say that. But a month of crossing at Alma and Lytton, and it still sounds to me like a game of Simon Says:

“Walk like a dog across Alma.”

2.
I call the cyclist Algernon because he has long curly hair that looks like an Algernon’s hair, and because of his penny-farthing bike, which looks like the bicycle of an Algernon.

I first saw him a few weeks ago, riding at the far end of Bryant. He waved and smiled and I realized I had been staring at him balanced on that ridiculous thing. The penny-farthing is really a graceful looking bicycle: the seat is perched on the enormous front wheel with a thin frame bending to hold on the back wheel, which is tiny and looks like an afterthought; the whole contraption reminds me of a picture I once saw diagraming the butterfly's proboscis.

And I rather expect the thing to capsize at every moment, but today I saw him trundling away full speed down University Av. Apparently Algernon has everything under control.