Weirdness

I had a weird day yesterday.

First, at work, the power went out -- just before deadline, of course. And on our floor, just in our office. (So coworker Tom came up with the brilliant idea of running an extension cord to the lawyers office next door, as they had power, but oddly, no phones.)

Strange, but not unheard of, in these old buildings.

On the way home, I stopped at the used book fair along the Southbank, locking my bike up against the rails along the Thames. Twenty minutes later, I returned to find people crouched low, crowded around my bike. As I got closer, I realized they weren't thieves -- no, they were parents. And they were changing their kid's diaper up against my bike. The diaper bag was perched against my wheel, their kit was on my back carrier thing, and the kid itself was clutching onto my chain. Why? I don't know. But they gave me a dirty look when I came to claim my poor bike... Me, I managed a bewildered look, but was too confused to be mad.

Weird, but parents are like that.

So I reclaim my bike, and head home. I'm riding towards the Vauxhall mess -- a train and tube station, oodles of buses, busy roads crisscrossing, a bridge... it really is a mess -- and see something that makes me wonder if I'm going nuts. There's a big black man, with dreadlocks past his shoulders, riding a white horse down the road. I speed up, to get a better look, and yeah, there's a dude riding a horse down a busy road -- even stopping at red lights, surrounded by cars. Forget cycling, I'm getting a horse and riding to work.

Thankfully, considering the weirdness about, I manage to get home.

Later that night, while trading emails with Nat, there's was a horrible noise out my window -- which I should say is not strange at all... it's a noisy area. But it sounded like a huge engine or something. So I pull aside the layers of my window coverings, and peer outside. There two motorcycles, speeding back and forth in front of my building, popping wheelies and skidding around corners a la Fast and the Furious. Except my street is essentially a parking lot and by motorcycles, I mean Vespas. As in, scooters. Yeah, hardcore man. Hardcore.

I was glad to get to bed without being abducted by aliens or spontaneously combusting or something. It was a weird day.