Things I see while riding, things I see while running: One Digit

(via AudunV on Flickr)

 Tuesday afternoon, last week.

I’m cruising home from the ear/nose/throat specialist, fighting the wind on Venice Blvd.  If you know me in real life, well you might wonder if I was getting checked for eligibility for ear reduction surgery.  No dice – Kaiser told me my radar dishes are a preexisting medical condition – I’m stuck as Dumbo.

The light at National turns green and I get up on the pedals.  Just as I plop back in the saddle and settle into a cadence, the old skool Saab in the lane over from me pulls past slowly.  He’s reading – it looks like he’s reading a xerox handout for a class.  You know, 50 pages from some book that the prof xeroxed so that people wouldn’t have to pay an arm and a leg for a rare book.  So I yell at him “no reading, just driving!”

He looks around, see’s me in the mirror, waving my index finger like a nun.  He sets his reading down, rolls down his window, and sticks his arm out the window, extending one digit, pointing to the sky.

It’s his thumb.

Best feeling all week.