If you want something done right...

So Frank, how does it feel to be engaged? Not so different, it's a weight off my shoulders but now there's the immense production of getting hitched to worry about. What does feel different is that since I've gotten engaged, I've been increasingly worried about Laura's well-being and she mine.

While I was doing my deliveries this morning I got several calls from her. She was extremely upset because she fell three times trying to climb the Williamsburg bridge. By 8:30 this morning, the DOT had yet to put down salt so that now the cleared snow which had melted slightly was now frozen in icy patches. This is Laura's first winter on a track bike and it is a tricky thing to ride a slick, fully inflated, 25mm wide tire on ice and snow. You need to put your weight roughly in the middle of the bike and hover your butt in front of the seat to get leverage in your pedal stroke but not too forward so that you're rear tire will skid. It takes a lot of fucking up to get it right and doing it for your first time on a 40 degree incline while trying to get to work must be just awful. To add insult to injury, Transportation Alternatives chose this of all mornings to stand at the bottom of the bridge and remind bike commuters to slow down on the bridge and watch out for pedestrians. I don't think anyone was going that fast this morning unless they were out of control or had a death wish.

The whole thing pissed me off so much that I bought a 20 lb bag of rock salt from a hardware store on Mott and Delancy and salted off the two major turns on the bridge, both of which still had lots of snow and ice on them. The DOT had done a little bit of salting by that point, but I just decided to really lay it on thick. I coulda just called 311 and bitched to the DOT, but it was way too satisfying to just dump out a crapload of salt on the spots on the bridge they always miss.