"You gotta be crazy." I hear it all the time. Coworkers, the UPS guy who's always hanging around my work building's loading dock, or anybody else I engage in conversation who can't fathom the idea of riding a bike in New York City tell me that I must be crazy.

I guess I am. It's really unsafe out there and it's really frustrating, too. One second I'm flying down Lexington with plenty of space on my left and right and the next moment a bus is pulling out in front of me while a cargo truck behind me lays on the horn. All I wanna do is cruise safely--why is everyone honking at me?

Some days are better than other. Last week was terrible. I had so many close calls--looking down a one-way street at a red light, seeing nothing, and proceeding only to realize that I had looked down the wrong way of the one way. Getting bumped by a minivan going around a cab. Getting threatened by a cabbie in an SUV who pulled next to me (setting off the alarm: danger! asshole is attempting to contact me! i feel threatened!), basically threatening to commit vehicular assault if I continue to get in his way. And a bunch of the usual stuff--getting honked at and yelled at when riding in a lane, which is perfectly legal--just making me a whole lot aggravated, angry, frustrated, upset, and scared. And, also, violent. I've started feeling like it's more necessary to have my u-lock accessible in order to brandish it at an aggressive driver.

This morning I reminded myself that if I take off somebody's sideview mirror (called "u-lock justice" by people who probably talk about it more than they do it and do it more frequently than they should) because I'm pissed at them for driving like an asshole, it's not going to help me a half a mile down the road when somebody passes me on the right and then attempt to turn left across a lane--my lane--of traffic.

Reminding myself of this during my ride to work today helped me to stay calm and remember why biking is fun and that I can chose to have it be more or less fun.

In other bicycle-related news, I've been meaning to replace my chain before it damages my chainring and my cog. See, under stress, chains stretch and then wear down the teeth of the chainring and cog to the point where a new chain won't evenly and smoothely sit on the old chainring and cog. This is undesirable and it means that you should have spent $20 on a new chain several months ago, but now you've got to spend several times that on a new chainring and cog. I've been having odd dreams lately, and I dreamt that I checked my chainring for wear and found it comically, unusably, wacky-in-a-way-that-only-dreams-can-provide worn and destroyed.