6 things involving bicycles

1. At the aluminum plant where I am teaching this week, little old men ride around on three-wheeler bikes, bringing things to and fro, partially because it is a major security headache to bring a vehicle on the grounds and partially because it adds to the grand surreal nature of the place. The look sweet and ridiculous, taking off into the massive impossible structures of the plant on total granny bikes wearing hard hats and goggles.
   
2. The rack of bikes made me think of Flann O' Brien's The Third Policemen, a beautiful book about murder, weirdness and bicycles, where bicycles and their owners became intermingled
   
   The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.
   
   
3. At one point in the book, they speak of a scandal where the bike of a coquettish woman sits idly by a wall, trying to look small and unassuming, trying to get a man, to which the owner is not married, to ride it.
   
4. The bikes at the plant are more akin to the Amsterdam white bikes, abandoned after each use, awaiting the next user.
5. I would like to mount a milk crate on the front of my bike for a basket, in fitting with the free nature of the bike. I bought a proper bike basket, but I can't figure out how to mount it on there with all the brake cables and whatnot in the way, and I am usually pretty good with figuring out these sorts of things. All I need is zip ties. And a milk crate.
   
6. On my way to getting some new shoes I saw the local surreal biker. He has a bike with an elaborate apparatus on the back with compartments where he can store things which is topped off with cage sitting above the rider's head, where his dog rides, catching the breeze.