Asbestos & roadkill

Not sure I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I’m a cyclist. As in I ride a road bike for as many miles as time and body affords. For those of you that ride, you understand the attraction to the sport and the calm that it can bring. I’ve been riding in Colorado since 1989 and I love my rides, especially Red Rocks, Boulder to Lyons, Squaw Pass, Independence Pass and Mt. Evans @14k!

I’ve been on Twitter since March 6th, 2008 (according to whendidyoujointwitter.com) and I enjoy sharing/collecting the amazing amount of information in the twitterverse. I’ve found more useful posts, white papers, case studies than I could have ever found had I just been using Google alerts. Twitter is an awesome resource.

Most of my rides are in the foothills or the mountains and occasionally I get a whiff of the lovely smell of asbestos (brake pads on semi trucks coming down the mountains) or roadkill. Now, needless to say, you’re breathing is somewhat labored as you ride uphill and taking a big deep breath of either smell is enough to make you want to lay down in the road in the hopes that you’ll be run over very soon.

Most of the content I get from the Twitter users I follow is very valuable and yet sometimes, I end up with some useless updates. Things like ‘I’m picking up @timm at the airport’ or Chelsea football club scores. In a consistent stream of valuable information, these little things can put you mentally in the ditch. Not a big deal, but can be very irritating.

I guess over time you just get used to the potential inhalation of those fumes and the nausea it can cause the same way you get used to random meaningless tweets. It simply comes with the territory.