Commuting Chronicles 1

Halloween Commute

(Originally posted to "tal-rides" on November 3, 2006)

I have been doing an unusual commute this year, and looking for a good reason to tell about it. It happened Oct 31, 2006 - yes, on Halloween. It was scary, and I'm not making it up. But first, I get to bore you with the spec sheet on my commute.

I have a job teaching for FSU at the campus in Panama City, FL. Having been here in Tallahassee a long time, and after checking out the life style we'd be changing over to in PC, we decided to keep the homestead here on Lake Shore Drive and get a small second home in PC for me to use during the week. It seemed like a plus that kids, grandkids, etc, would have a place to stay if they wanted a weekend at the beach.

FSU runs a van service, from main campus in TLH to branch campus in PC. This supports mainly the faculty who teach an occasional class in PC on top of their usual classes here in TLH. But it also works for me. I can catch the van at 3:15pm on Mon or Tue and take it back to TLH on Thu evening. Once I got a bike set up with lights and a way to tote a few things, here is the commute:

On Mon or Tue: Depart Lake Shore on the bike about 2:45pm, arrive main campus about 3:10. The van operators let me put the bike on the van (behind all the passenger seats), so I load up and depart about 3:15. We arrive in PC about 4:30pm central time. I unload the bike, roll to my office, get ready for class at 5:00. (A plus is that I can get work done on the van.) After class and dealing with related matters, usually about 9:30pm central, I get my stuff on the bike and head out to our mini-home in Panama City Beach, near the intersection of Beckrich and Hutchison (aka Middle Beach Road). This part of the commute takes me over the Hathaway Bridge and thence (like a roach, scurrying but surviving among the dominant critters) through a succession of sidewalks (on 4-lanes with a curb but no shoulder) and poorly lit back streets to "home". Total miles: about 12 on the bike, 100 in the van. The 7 miles in PC are at night.

Then this is reversed on Thu or Fri: cycle to the FSU/PC campus, teach, then take the van back to FSU/TLH, then the bike home to Lake Shore. This time, the ride through the pleasant and relatively traffic-free back streets of Frenchtown are at night. Even the last part, on N Monroe and Lake Shore, work fine. I think that I am actually more visible, hence safer, at night than during the day.

The most important safety device, for me, is my mirror. I'd give up the rest, in this order, before the mirror: helmet, front light, tail light.

OK, if you made it this far through the boring specs of my commute, here's a story. True story.

I did this commute from Tallahassee to Panama City on Oct 31. The night part of the trip takes me along one particularly lonely stretch of urban/blight that is common in beach towns, places where the old dwellings of trailers are becoming abandoned but the properties haven't yet made it to condo status. There is also a large wooded tract on one side of this street. No street lights here. OK, I was peddling along, not too fast because of the lighting, when I heard a truly chilling scream from the woods. I could not tell whether it was human or other animal, but it was definitely not artificial. After a few seconds of alarm, I remembered it was Halloween and decided it must be kids making scary noises. (They were doing a very good job.)

This theory began to look bad almost immediately, because the screaming was moving - toward me, in the woods, at a pace I could not really believe would be kids. OK, back to being alarmed. Just then "it" emerged from the woods about 10 feet behind me. It was a large (I guess about 150 lbs) raccoon. It was not happy. And it seemed to think I was the reason for its unhappiness.

I had to go into full avoidance mode. I would MUCH rather be overtaken by a dog than this thing. I envisioned it hanging to my ankle all the way home, and maybe from there to the emergency room.

It's amazing how fast a 66 year old with a weight problem can accelerate under these circumstances.