What should I bring?

Gah! It sneaks up on me every year. I need ideas.

As a single person with no kids living in a very small house, I ignore the damn thing as much as possible. I've never hosted a holiday meal, I have mutual-no-present pacts with all of my friends and family.

So when people around me start mentioning "Christmas" and "next week" in the same sentence, I'm invariably surprised.

But still, I do have friends and family, and they do like to sit down and eat together on festive occasions, and this year (next week...gah!) we're going to my mom's. I was going to volunteer a big pot of my fabulous-if-I-do-say-so-myself boeuf bourguingon, but my older sis was before me and trumped me with an offer of prime rib.

Younger sis then whumped me in the dessert category.

This leaves me holding the bag on some kind of potatoey, starchy side dish offering. Any ideas?

Just try and stay out of my way. Just try! I'll get you, my pretty!

From what I can gather, at least 90% of city bike-riders are also drivers and car-owners. So the concept of cyclists comprising a radical underclass that uses the roads for free and flouts authority is kind of a myth.

I mention this because it means that virtually all adult bike-riders are familiar with traffic law. They know how cars, drivers, and traffic work, whereas the reverse is decidedly not true: most motorists don't understand bike-riding. I've learned some things riding Clyde, and I want to share them.

( And your little dog too! )

I started out thinking that if I was super-cautious, I'd be safe, but it turns out that a mix of caution and aggression is critical to bike-riding safety in the city streets.

So if you're driving and you see a cyclist who's serious enough to be on the road at busy times in any weather, riding a bike with lights and a rearview mirror, wearing a helmet, using hand-signals, generally obeying traffic law and, you know, heading somewhere, the above will explain a lot of that cyclist's behavior. Most of us don't actually have flying monkeys to send after you. Unless you're on the phone.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by Emvira Gulch. Cue the theme.