Bike Quest

While anxiously awaiting our home inspection on Saturday (nothing gives me more of a thrill than following someone around a home that is trying to figure out if all the light switches are wired properly.

M: Can you do that again?
Inspector: What?
M: Do the thing where you turn the light on and off.
Inspector: Okay.
M: (Claps joyously).

And trailing after him/her as she tells us all the things that are wrong with our new home.

Inspector: You've got a whole in your chain link fence big enough for a rat to climb through, climb up your chimney and gnaw away at your insulation.
M: Is that likely?
Inspector: Absolutely.
Inspector: It appears like you've got a non-functioning door bell and you've got a family of talking bears living in the crawl space beneath your front porch.
M: I never understood the Care Bears).

and in the meantime we've been discussing various luxuries of living in our new home including my Lance Armstrong like determination to bike to work. I think once I here one person who believes in my biking plan I'll be able to commit to it fully.

M: I'm planning on biking to work.
Mom: Oh. That's not a good idea.
M: It will be shorter than public transit.
Mom: You're not much of a biker remember?

M: I'm planning on biking to work.
Brother: Promise your big brother that you won't bike to work.
M: Can I promise but then continue to bike anyway?
Brother: (Deep sigh that implies my impending doom if I choose to bike).

M: I'm planning on biking to work.
S: I'd rather you didn't.
M: Don't a lot of your co-workers bike to work?
S: Yeah, but, I'm not so confident in your biking skills.

It's fair to say that all I need is a little encouragement and I'll be purchasing spandex before the week is out.

An aside involving a conversation about the word dither.

S: Why did you allow me to just finagle around when I needed to be going to class?
M: I don't think that's the word you're looking for.
S: What would you have said.
M: Dither.
S: Dither? That's not even a word.
M: I'll prove it to you. (Reads confusing Wikipedia entry).

Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise, used to randomize quantization error, thereby preventing large-scale patterns such as "banding" (stepwise rendering of smooth gradations in brightness or hue) in images, or noise at discrete frequencies in an audio recording, that are more objectionable than uncorrelated noise.

S: That's not real is it?
M: I'm confused.

Then the good Old Webster's (a pretty crappy dictionary when you get right down to it but who pays attention to something like that) pulls me through: to act nervously or indecisively;

M: I'm not sure dither means what I thought it meant. F-ing post-modern world.
S: I'm going to class now.

For those that do bike to work, I assume that it's sort of an accepted reality that you draft off cars/grab onto bumpers when necessary while blaring Power of Love on your iPod? Do cars frown on you pouring champagne all over them to celebrate you winning the Tour de DC? Will they allow me to bring said champagne into work? So many questions and so few answers. F-ing post-modern world.