Web Check

So, the third floor apartment and the tiny, narrow, circular staircase to reach said apartment rather prohibit inside storage of my bicycle. Therefore, my bike rests each night in the public bike stall across the street with a varietal mish-mash of other bikes. Outside storage leads to a number of irritations, including rust degradation and wet bottom syndrome after a rain shower, but none so threatening as the early morning web check. Apparently Charlotte's descendants and friends have decided to set up shop across the street. So each morning I carefully check the handlebars for silvery, little webs and often take off my shoe to break them up before pulling my bike out of the stall. Until today, this worked fine, although it often made my skin crawl. Anyone who knows me, will know that spiders are my biggest freakout fear. I can now handle the little non-threatening ones without running away screaming - years of living as a single taught me to deal with them. That, and the wonders of a vacuum cleaner with attachments - just sucks those little buggers right up...until someone told me they crawl right back out. Damnit.

This evening, my thoughts residing elsewhere in my head, I bent down on auto-pilot to unlock the chain from my tire and as I stood up, my hand swept through a big web and its very large, orangey-brown, leggy resident when flying straight by my face. I can only imagine how idiotic I must have looked to the other daily biking commuters --screaming, bouncing back, jumping up and down and waving my arms around trying to locate said large beast. I never found him and it took me a good five minutes of thorough searching to finally mount my bike. My skin is still crawling with every stray hair movement...