Gail and I got up with the sun today and hopped on our bikes. I finally got Gail's bike put together last night and nothing fell apart on our ride! That's a good thing.
We braved the surface streets for about 3/4 mile and used a pedestrian underpass to get over to the corniche bike path. Friday is the holy day here and traffic is very light at 6 in the morning. The bike path is narrow, but adequate. We rode the entire corniche out to Marina Mall and the Heritage Center. The picture through the trees is of the palace. It's unbelievable!
Most days I never see the water here, just apartment to work and back, so it was nice to get back down to the corniche. There were lots of walkers and joggers and a few other cyclists. There was also a group of young kids playing cricket in one of the parks at 6am! A little further down the path we got to the open beach and to my surprise there was a lot of people out swimming, lounging and playing volleyball.
I guess it makes sense. The middle of the day is incredibly hot and it's tough to do much of anything in the middle of the day.
The pic of Gail is right outside our building. We walked out into the humidity and the camera lens fogged up instantly. We weren't in the middle of a fog bank.
The pic of the two of us has a funny story. I spent way longer than it should have taken figuring out the timer on the camera. When I finally got the ten second button pushed, I scrambled across the path to get with Gail. When I got across I thought, "dang, I didn't look to see if other bikes were coming!" Well sure enough, as soon as the camera started blinking a guy came flying down the path and will forever be preserved in our blog.
Gail snapped a couple pics of me sporting my Radioshack jersey. These were down near the Dhow Yard and getting a little to close to the fish market for Gail's liking!
The water was beautiful, and we made it home safely before it reached 100 degrees...just 96!
Now some of the other stuff that I've come to realize about our new home.
1. Personal space is a lot like spandex, a privilege, not a right!
2. Stop signs are more of a suggestion to look both ways before blowing through an intersection.
3. NEVER cross the road if there are cars coming. They will never stop at a cross walk and will start honking 200 meters before they reach the cross walk.
Reasons to Honk:
Good Reason:
1. Would you like a cab ride?
All the other reasons
(this list is a work in progress, as I discover new reasons every day)
1. Move your ass (even if there are twenty cars stopped in front of you)
2. Move your ass (the light turn green .25 seconds ago)
3. I'm about to cut you off
4. You cut me off
5. I need a loaf of bread
6. Get your slow walking, pedestrian ass across the road before I have to apply my brakes.
7. Hello gorgeous! (mostly for the tall white girl)
8. You're parked in the road, why?
9. Hi
10. And my favorite! I'm about to blow through a blind intersection on a food delivery motorcycle without slowing down or looking! beep, beep
No joke, sometimes I thing that the car horns are physically wired to the brakes!
That's all for now folks. Keep following!
Mark and Gail
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