Mattress Critique and Critical Mass

Last night I tried flipping the McRoskey over and it’s the same on both sides: a bit squishier at the foot and head, more solid toward the middle. My affable salesperson said, upon being telephoned, that the mattress’s edges are manufactured differently than the center, so I’m persuaded that this mattress is not defective.

Next I vacuumed the part of my living/dining/bedroom that wasn’t covered with a bed and covered it with a bed. First I hauled the upholstered chair over a bit, leaving just enough space by my desk to sit in my desk/dining chair and uncovering 16 cat toys Hammett was storing under the chair (literally 16); then I turned the bed so one long side was against the wall, and then I dragged the mattress off the box springs and put it next to the box springs, so now my whole main room looks like Hugh Hefner’s bedroom minus the feathers and spangles.

There is one little rectangle of visible carpet left, fortunately enough for stretching. Otherwise I’d have to do it in the vestibule, lying on the Thelonious Memorial Bloodstain.

My back did start to ache a bit after I got into bed, but I writhed around a bit to loosen it up, and ended up getting quite a decent night’s sleep. I wouldn’t say I felt comfortable as such, but after a couple of weeks, I might conclude that this mattress will be just fine. It might even be fine on the box springs; maybe that was just too big an initial adjustment.

Today I offered the blow-up mattress for sale on Craigslist. It appears I won’t need it, and I just know I wouldn’t have been able to get myself to pump the thing up. Yes, there has been a lot of purchasing of this and that lately.

I think it started with Christmas, when I got so much wonderful stuff, including some gift cards, which resulted in even more wonderful stuff arriving in the mail in January, and then, before I knew it, a day without a box of stuff arriving started to seem oddly lacking.

I vow to return to a closer examination of my purchasing habits.

I also am going to pay myself back for the bed purchase using any money left over in the food and miscellaneous categories on payday. Instead of considering that to be money I can use for whatever I feel like buying, I will send it to my friends at the mutual fund company and note the amount as a payment on my debt to myself.

Locals will have seen the coverage of the March 30 Critical Mass ride in which cyclists surrounded a van containing a suburban family and broke the back window of the van by hitting it with a bike. My first reaction was indignation on behalf of the family and sympathy for the terror they must have felt, but it now turns out that the driver may have driven recklessly into a cyclist, knocking him off his bike, just before the window was broken.

It sounds like the driver got scared in the crowd and panicked and overreacted, and like the cyclists were also probably scared—a van can seriously damage a cyclist—and certainly overreacted, as well.

This is horrible, but I must say it: I looked at a photo of the driver and her two daughters and felt much less sympathetic. The mother’s face is a belligerent mask, and the two daughter’s faces are frozen and angry—probably not from being scared out of their minds by cyclists. Probably from spending their whole lives with a parent who puts her foot on the gas of her van when there are human beings right in front of it and then describes the incident in terms that suggest prior conflict of a legal nature: “If that's what the person alleges,” she snaps, “it's ridiculous.” “Alleges”?

I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of, “Goodness, I would never do such a dangerous thing!”

Having said that, I have rarely participated in Critical Mass myself because the confrontational mood puts my stomach in a knot. I have no trouble believing that cyclists were screaming and that they damaged property. I also have no trouble believing the motorist’s actions were reckless and harmful.

As we know, cars kill an enormous number of people every year (not to mention that they are helping finish off the ecosystem that sustains human life). Cycling is a good thing. If Critical Mass were the only tactic of bike advocates, that would not be so good. Fortunately, it is not. The velorution advances by a huge variety of constructive means, as well (such as my stint volunteering at the bike “road-eo”).

I saw about 1100 comments on the subject at the Chronicle’s website, most anti-bike, but relatively free from acrimony—unlike any kind of dispute that turns on gender—perhaps because most cyclists have had occasion to drive a car, and most car drivers have had occasion to enjoy riding a bike.