Monday, August 27, 2012

last Monday

Pretty girls on bikes, pretty girls clogging up Bergmannstr., as I pass, we grin at one another, until you see the child's seat on the back of my bike. Today the seat is empty, but you still turn your face away.

I have also lost interest in you. You are lost. I have begun to understand where I am, despite this city's size. I did not check the map once today, on my long ride to make an appointment in person -- because I am evidently too stupid to understand how to dial the office's telephone number correctly.

Also, on the way back, I derive a pleasurable sense of moral rectitude from pedantically waiting at traffic signals when no one is coming. That there are no witnesses to my strictness only increases the feeling of rectitude.

Pretty girls on bikes, why are you wearing tights in this heat?

Thursday, August 23, 2012

California stop

A word of advice for the Berliner Polizei set up in the Graefe-Kiez today:

Instead of pulling over the guy slowly cycling through a right-hand turn -- OK, yes, the light was red -- at one or two miles per hour, in a quiet and pretty empty neighborhood street, you might want to focus your attention on the busy intersection just up the way, and the packs of reckless young people blowing through it on their fake track bikes, no matter what the signal says.

PS: Also, why does it take four of you to write up a single traffic citation?

PPS: I know I said I was sorry, but I'm not.

PPPS: No, contrary to what you said, what I did was not "sehr gefährlich."