Every weekday morning in 2010-11 I would roll past this sign post near the corner of Henderson Hall aka the UW Applied Physics Lab aka 1013 NE 40th Street, on my way to work at MadFiber in an old bakery Wallingford-Fremontish.
You may recognize these signs you see after the roundabout right turn you take off the U-bridge northbound and down around under the bridge onto join the Burke-Gilman already in progress rolling towards Fremont.
We’ve done it a thousand times. Some of us have done it 10,000 times.
In 2010-11 I was a clueless, stressed out former bike messenger with no health insurance and a kid on the way. I stumbled into a MadFiber gig with 87’s recommendation. I was not paying any attention to Henderson Hall and had no clue of Applied Physics on my daily robot commute.
Fast forward 15 years and I’m a clueless crusty old former bike messenger with pretty good health insurance and a kid named Junior as well as a Junior-Junior too.
Henderson Hall is now on my electric ass bathtub radar as I have keycard access to APL and deliver their mail. This sign post sings out to me almost daily, retrospectively, phantom nostalgically, Seattle cyclist cyclically, roundaboutedly coming back around to me.
The shadow of the BITCHE$ somebody sometime scrawled on the sign is still visible in the right light. I'd like to think it was there in bold black ink circa 2010. This makes me smile as I mumble it to myself, repeating it repeatedly, cracking myself up like that guy at the bus stop you steer clear of.
I am without sufficient information and can neither confirm nor deny any allegations. I have no recollection of the events in question. However sometime in the last few years this BITCHE$ sign got into my hands. Taken out of context and put back in. Offering a new life in a new zipcode. A new chapter. Part TWO redux into part THREE.
EXCEPT BICYCLES BITCHE$
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