Monday Morning Blues

Nothing gives me the Monday morning blues quite like coming off of a good weekend. Everything was perfect over the past two days. Great weather and lots of quality time with my children. Now I am faced with another Monday and a full work week ahead of me. I guess the bright side to this is that the weather today is completely nasty. If I had to stay home with my children today, I suppose we would have gotten cabin fever after a few hours.

My soleus muscles are very sore today. Plus my left shin hurts in a new place in a strange new way. When I walk down steps, the pain is in the front, above the bone after I plant my right foot on a lower step and bring my left foot forward. While my shin is moving forward a feel a dull ache.

I debated taking this morning off, but my coach had an excellent quote of the week in my training plan. It inspired me to get on my bike in a very subtle way. I didn’t do the workout as prescribed – strong effort, hard on hills – but at least I rode for an hour. I could have gone longer, but then I wouldn’t have had any time with my kids this morning and I would have been very late for work.

It is just as well that I head to work today. I need to go to an optometrist to get a new pair of glasses. The left arm of my frames broke late yesterday. It is now being held together by some Crazy Glue. I brought the tube with me, because it only holds for a few hours at a time. In truth, I am glad the frame finally broke as I hate it. The frame and lenses are 11 years old and out of style. I was only wearing them, because the two sets of frames I bought after these broke and were lost in a river respectively.

Right now I am riding on the F train heading into Manhattan. The crowded car I am in is being forced to listen to a religious sermon by one of NYC’s multitude of unstable individuals. I don’t quite get what he is saying, but he quotes lots of scripture and talks about how he has never killed anyone. I could argue with that as listening to him is killing me now. To the left is a picture of him. Notice he is violating one of the subways 10 Commandments - "Do not lean on the door". Perhaps he will go to subway hell for that.


I wish I could fake him off the train like I did to some crazy person many years back. I was with my girlfriend and her two friends from suburbia in middle New Jersey. I an extremely drunken fellow got on and started making very lascivious remarks and gestures to the women on the train. The highlight of this was when he walk up to a woman, thrust his pelvis towards her face, grabbed his crotch and said “I want you to suck my cock”. After this he started to walk to my party.

I started to gear myself up to shove him away if he got close to us and take whatever other course of action necessary to keep him at bay. Fortunately at this moment he realizes he is not sure where he is and asks “Yo man, how do I get to East New York?” Calmly looking him in the eye, I tell him to get off at the next stop. For some reason he listens to me and staggers off the train when the doors open. It doesn’t take long for him to realize I told him the wrong information, exhibited by the fact that he curses and turns around to head back into the train. Fortunately the conductor closes the doors right in his face before he is able to get back on. I should probably put these tales on The Subway Chronicles.