Three recent moments:

116.

"I think I'll become a pro cyclist. Then I can retire at 33. Like Jesus."

"Careful. He had a better 401(k) plan. Jesus saved."

117.

We pull up into an L.A. strip mall for some Iranian ice cream at Mashti Malone's. In the parking lot there's a large dog sitting on top of a car, and he's created a commotion.

Except it's not a dog: It's a bearcat, a furry beast with a tail as long as its body. It prowls and snarls atop the car, occassionally taking swipes at curious onlookers. The owner holds it by its tail and reassures: "He's only playing."

I'm standing next to a prototypical L.A. character: The aging surfer, shirtless with kinky blond hair down to his shoulder.

"That's a bearcat?" Ellen asks.

"Yup."

"What's it doing here?"

"What are any of us doing here, man?"

118.

I'm in line at the bike valet after watching "American Graffiti" in Grant Park. Two hipster cyclists are passing out fliers to the weekend's bicycle film festival. The guy behind me accepts one from the lady hipster.

"So what do you think about Floyd?" he asks.

"Who?"

"Floyd Landis."

"Sorry. I don't know that much about the filmmakers."

Four recent moments:

112.

A man at the Jewel tosses a box of condoms into his grocery cart. He notices me noticing him, so he discreetly slides the box under a bag of diapers. The expression "closing the barn door after the horses have bolted" comes to mind.

In fact, I think it's time for a new idiom that reflects these modern times. If ever I see someone doing the equivalent of closing the barn door afte the horses have bolted, I'm going to say, "Looks like someone's hiding the condoms under the diapers."

113.

"This will be your first Fathers Day without your father."

"That's true."

"This was my first Mothers Day without my mother."

"But our family has a new dad to celebrate."

"And ours has a new mom."

"It's the law of conservation of parents."

114.

I'm at a Texas Roadhouse. I'm in Elkhart, Ind., where it's either Texas Roadhouse or Olive Garden, and Olive Garden doesn't sponsor a cycling team.

To my left sits a doughy middle-aged couple in polo shirts. They are discussing the persecutions they must endure for their views on immigration, and they run through a list of truths they must suppress.

"If they wanted to learn the language, they could, but they're lazy. Of course, you can't say that, because you'll offend someone."

"They're criminals just by being here. Why would we want criminals in our country? Of course, you can't say that, because you'll offend someone."

"Have you ever been in a Mexican city at night? Did you feel safe? Is that what we want our cities to be like? Of course, you can't say that, because you'll offend someone."

And then the woman says the thing that has me halting my fork inches from my mouth.

"I'd like to bring Ronald Reagan back just so he could kick. Their. Butts."

The things you're exposed to when you leave the city.

115.

"I need to shave."

"You could use my razor."

"And end up smelling like lavender?"

"You don't want to use the Venus?"

"No, I can only use Mars: Bringer of war and smooth skin."

The real punch line comes 10 minutes later when I am bemoaning all the hoary gender cliches -- that's H-O-A-R-Y -- employed by various newspaper columnists.

Three recent moments:

109.

"You hate oatmeal, but you like oatmeal-flavored Clif bars."

"And oatmeal cookies. Hey, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

"Oh, please."

"And oatmeal happens to be one such foolish consistency. It's so mushy -- blech!"

110.

"Only 28 days until World Cup!"

"How time flies. Seems like only yesterday it was 29."

111.

My new favorite sign of spring: The reappearance of the tai chi school that holds sessions in my alley. Sometimes they exercise using swords. Making my way through their ranks, bags of groceries in each of my hands, I feel like Neo from "The Matrix," operating in bullet time.

Three recent moments:

100.

My teammates and I stand in a long security line at the airport. We're cranky because A) we've had nothing to eat but trail mix and Clif bars for the past six hours B) we just endured a harrowing rigmarole with United customer service and C) we're in a long security line at the airport.

Suddenly, a woman shrieks. She's about 30 feet behind us.

Woman (shrieking): Oh my god! You're Richard Simmons!

Man (shrieking): I know!

Woman: Oh my god!

Man (shrieking): Where are you going!

Woman: Chicago!

Man (shrieking): So am I! I'm going to lead a workout on the plane!

At which point we turn with glares that say, "The hell you are, little man."

And we are no longer jealous of the people in first class.

101.

I like to use my keys as a poor-man's utility knife. They open not only doors and bicycle locks but also boxes, packages and bananas.

Yes, bananas. I don't like the way the tops get mushed when I open them with my hands. Plus, feeble cyclist that I am, I lack the upper-body strength to peel them unassisted. So whenever I have a banana I reach for my keys and use one to perforate the stem.

I don't often eat bananas or need my keys at work, so naturally when I have one this week I leave my keys on my desk. I realize this when I am about a block from home. I curse my banana-eating ways.

Fortunately, Bob has a spare set and is at home. Even more fortunate, when I get to his place he is in the middle of mixing Manhattans. He serves me one in a small jelly jar and we catch up. It is my first one. Not bad, but I'm not sure it's a drink special enough to have an island named after it.

When I get home a second time I realize I have a second problem. Because of burglaries in the neighborhood, the locks on our outside gate have been changed, and Bob's set doesn't have the new key. It's 11 p.m. Nobody's lights are on. My only option is to scale the gate and leap into the back patio. As I'm balancing on wrought-iron spikes, I realize that in my black coat and black watch cap I am a burglar from central casting. All I'm missing is a eye mask and a pillowcase of baubles.

If this were a better story, the police would be hailed and would arrest me for breaking into my own building, but this is not a better story, and my gymnastics go unnoticed.

102.

A 4-year-old boy and his mother roll toy trains across the bus seats on the 147. The boy has a cold and coughs. His mother reaches around and pats him on the back. He reaches around and pats her back in return, as if he feels bad that she feels bad that he feels bad. It is sympathy squared.

At 4 a.m. the El cuts through the Christmas fog. Its windows are dotted with condensation. I'm in the last car, the one I know to be the most convenient for my stop. Normally such a car would be mostly clubgoers and restaurant workers, but not on a holiday. This morning it's 100 percent crazy -- 95 percent if you don't count me.

Across from me a man flicks a lighter behind cupped hands. He wears clean clothes and has a computer bag. I'm about to give the white man's eyeroll of disapproval when I see in the window's reflection that it is not a cigarette but a crack pipe he is trying to conceal.

(It so happens that after all my time in Chicago, this is the first drug paraphernalia I've ever seen firsthand. Either the city's indeed not as wicked or brutal as it used to be or I'm not getting out enough.)

A schizophrenic sits in the corner. She has prim glasses and an explosion of frizzy black hair. She's a regular, as far as Red Line irregulars go. The first time I ever saw her I figured her for a professor lecturing into a hands-free device -- until I realized there was no phone. As always, her misanthropic rant this morning is animated, enunciated and profane.

Near her a man shadow-boxes with the rear window. His dreadlocks bounce with every juke and with every jive.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

This is the last such commute I'll make. In January I change floors and go to a day shift. After seven years working nights, suddenly I'll be able to say yes to midweek social invitations. I'll be able to make plans for a Sunday two months away. Come summer I'll enjoy the decadence of leaving work while it's still light out. The tradeoff is this: When on earth am I going to train? No longer will I be able to sleep in and still ride to Wisconsin and back before my shift. To get my rides in I'll have to start getting up at 6, maybe 5.

From one crazy train to another.

Five recent moments:

71.

"I'm seeing Sleater-Kinney at Metro. The crowd will all be short lesbians, so at least I'll have a good view of the stage."

72.

When I start a book, I like to get through the first 10 percent in the first sitting. Then, whether it's a good book or not, I continue to flip toward the back to monitor what kind of progress I'm making.

On my 30th birthday, I decide that this is a life hack I wouldn't mind. I don't want any spoilers, thank you, but I wouldn't mind knowing where I am. Halfway through? Nine-tenths? One-tenth???

Also, better footnotes, please.

73.

"I noticed you taking communion."

"Yeah, I didn't want to be the first to not take it. Also, I was sort of hungry."

74.

I'm driving to Ohio with Gus and Conrad. I take a turn behind the wheel, and Gus does Sodoku puzzles in the passenger seat. I realize that this is the problem with Sodoku: Unlike a crossword, there's no potential for collaboration. At no point is Gus going to ask, "What's a one-digit number that's not 3, 4 or 6 and is also not 1, 5, 8 or 9? And if it's 2, then what's a number that's not 1, 2, 6 or 9 and is not ..."

75.

"I'm not sure which is worse: dating or looking for a job. They both have the same, insufferable interview process, the same 'I enjoyed meeting you, let's do it again' follow-up e-mail, the same sense of lonely rejection."

"But if you don't get the job, you can't go home and hire yourself."

Four recent moments:

61.

"... but then working for Marvel would mean living in New York City."

"Gotham!"

"Did you just say 'Gotham'?"

"Yes."

"Gotham is DC."

"Oh. Of course."

62.

A fat woman in flowing, fat-woman clothes gets off the Clark bus at Bryn Mawr. She's shaped like a pear -- an overripe pear that's been dropped once or twice. From behind thick, ugly glasses she squints at the noon sun. Teeth are missing. On her left arm is a constellation of sores, but also a large homemade tattoo: "LOVE."

63.

I gather that one sign you have a gambling problem is when your poker playing makes you late for other, more important responsibilities. Is it a problem, then, when your poker playing makes you late for other, more important poker games?

64.

"As soon as I could once again remember the lyrics to 'El Paso,' that's when I knew I was sober enough to get out of bed."

Four recent moments:

40.

On the train a young woman is reading "He's Just Not That Into You." She pulls a pen from her purse and underlines a passage about why the titular he should absolutely not be called or e-mailed, no matter how tempting. She writes a check mark in the margin.

Something tells me she's having a rocky week.

41.

A jet ski enters the lake from Diversey Harbor. He is going too fast to avoid being obnoxiously loud and loathsome. He also is going too fast to avoid getting tangled in the line a fisherman has just cast into the waterway. "The catch of the day!" I yell from the bike path and give a thumbs-up.

42.

A fire truck arrives at the El station the same time I do. As its crew walks through the station, two young women at the fare machines leer over their shoulders and ask to be hosed down. Casually and jovially the firefighters make their way up the motionless escalator, at the top of which is the biohazard that they have come to clean up: a small pool of blood.

It's not messy enough for a shooting -- not that I would know -- so I presume it was a stabbing, but I can't find any information to say one way or another.

43.

On the return trip, four college girls board at Addison. It's an hour after the game and they are dressed in Cub red and blue. A redhead among them has two Band-aids in an "X" above her left eye. One of her friends peels back the bandage to inspect the wound and confirms that, yes, she's going to want to go to the hospital to get this checked out.

The tears begin. She blubbers about how she's not crying because she's hurt but because she's ruined the night for everyone and she can't believe she has to go to the hospital and who will pay for that? Insurance? Really? All of it?

As I wonder whether she was hit with a foul ball she makes a tearful, incoherent call to her mother. The friend who has been rubbing her back and saying kind things takes the phone and translates: "Hello, Mrs. M--. This is Molly's friend Laura. Molly was at a club and somehow she fell and hit her head and she has a small cut above her eye, but it's really not that bad. It's really not as serious as she thinks. She's going to be fine."

It's hard to tell whether this is the whole story or if there was more mischief involved than Molly would want her mother to know about.

The two other friends are behind me and are getting impatient. One whispers to the other, "I want to fucking slap her so she'll stop crying."

Sith happens.

After work I killed time at Cambridge House, one of River North's last diners. It's doomed for demolition within the year, so as I read and sipped my coffee I took note of all the usual late-night characters. The tourists, the young couples taking breaks from clubbing, the second-shift employees from neighboring hotels picking up their burgers and francheezies. And the truck driver who scolds the waitress for having missed "American Idol" because, Honey, now how is he going to know what happened to Vonzell?

Around 12:30 a.m. I took my place in line at the theater, surrounded by college students and middle-age fans quite amused by the sounds of their own Yoda voices. (The dorkiest of the young dorks had quite fetching girlfriends in tow. WTF? I screwed my fists into my eyes to make sure I was indeed seeing what I was seeing and it wasn't a sleepy-headed hallucination, but it was true: They were hotter than a summer day on Mustafar.)

A dozen screens were in use for the midnight show. It took awhile to flush them out. Then there was a problem with the digital projector. Then there were 20 minutes of trailers. My 3 a.m. show didn't start until 3:50. When I finally got home at 7, my alarm was going off, still set from when I'd woken 25 hours earlier for time-trial practice.

Two recent moments:

25.

I'm riding home from a trip up the North Branch Trail. Three large, snow-white feather dusters float across the road about 20 yards ahead. They belong to three bounding deer.

In the woods to my right are a dozen more deer, and their tails are also in full plumage. They look like ghosts wandering through the trees. I stop and watch with a woman walking her dog. She says she thinks saw a coyote, so this must be how deer express their sense of danger, much in the way our species might knock knees and urinate.

26.

There's a young boy and his young mother in the seat ahead of me. The boy turns around and looks at me.

"Can I see your game?"

"My what?"

"Your game!"

"Oh, this. It's a radio." I show him my iPod and give him one of the earbuds. It's playing Portishead, which I assume isn't his thing. I scramble to think of something from my library an urban 4-year-old might like. "'Hey Ya!'" I think. "Everyone loves 'Hey Ya!'"

But by the time I find "Hey Ya!" his mother has yelled at him to turn around, which he does, leaving the earbud dangling on the seat.

He starts to cry, and I realize that the iPod wasn't even on. I'd paused it so I could eavesdrop on three gangbangers who were comparing experiences in Cook County Jail. (Memorable quote: "You don't even realize how much you stink until you get outside, and then it's like, 'Fuuuuuck!'")

Three recent moments:

20.

I'm a reserve striker for Arsenel. We have a safe lead so the coach puts me in with five minutes to go. When the keeper bobbles a cross, I leap high into the air and tap it in for the first goal of my career. It's such a glorious goal that after I wake up I lie in bed for several minutes to replay it over and over.

My dreams need a TiVo.

21.

A teenager enters from the end of the car. An older man wearing several layers of clothing stands and blocks his way. He opens the outer coat to reveal what I take to be a badge. His partner sits the boy down and gives him a cursory patdown. I can't hear but I can follow his lips: "You can read the sign, can't you?" (The sign says, "Do not board between cars.")

The three of them get off at Sheridan. The partner tugs discreetly at the boy's shirt -- not enough so that the boy will notice, but enough so that he can be grabbed easily if he were to bolt -- and once they are on the platform frisks him more thoroughly. During the frisking the boy rolls his head and makes a face at the people watching from the departing train.

22.

Later in the day, three girls enter my train. I know I'm getting old when I peg them as high school students and they turn out to be from Northwestern.

I know I'm getting really old when the Aragon show they have just seen is a band, The Used, that I've never heard of.

I know I'm getting really, really old when they tell the three boys hitting on them -- three boys from Decatur who are staying in a hotel downtown but are mistakenly on a northbound train -- that Decatur is "ghetto fab" and I have no idea whether this is a compliment or not.

It's all just so Andy Rooney. I feel like my ear hair has grown a centimeter since these girls entered my train.

Cubs baseball is on the air!

WGN 720-AM, five minutes ago

And Ron Santo is already annoying me.

Three recent moments:

13.

I'm in a coffeeshop. Tables in the center of the room are reserved for a speed-dating event. Around 6 p.m. women start to gather. They chat nervously about the process, just as the Christians of Rome might chat nervously about why they've been herded into the Coliseum and whether that was a lion they just heard roar.

As if dating isn't humiliating enough. As if speed-dating doesn't multiply the humilation enough, compressing a year's worth of rejection and disappointment into a single hour. This coffeeshop has broken new ground in the field of humiliation: speed-dating with spectators.

I watch and listen, pretending to read just like all the other non-participants along the room's perimeter. I know the decent thing to do would be to leave but I can't. It's like gaping at the proverbial car wreck, except it's a dozen car wrecks. It's a demolition derby of human relations.

It's a strange thing to watch relationships be born and die in just five minutes with all the boring parts edited out. It's reality TV reality.

14.

I'm using a trial membership at a neighborhood gym. It's located in a historic hotel, a relic from the days when Edgewater was a resort community for Chicago's wealthy, before the El was extended north and brought in all the riff-raff. The weight machines and treadmills are in an elegant ballroom, complete with chandeliers, high ceilings and marble floors. It feels like "The Shining." I expect blood to start dripping from the walls, or maybe tropical-flavored Gatorade.

15.

I'm riding down Lawrence on my way to poker. It's night, so I'm wearing my reflective vest and balaclava and have turned on the blinky atop my helmet. A guy sitting in a parked car across the street thinks it looks pretty silly and yells, "Where ya goin' there, spaceman?"

I don't mind being regarded as looking silly, but I take exception to being heckled for it, so I do something the guy isn't expecting at all: I do a quick U-turn, roll up to his open window and threaten to break his fucking nose.

...

No, of course I don't. I may be capable of willing a broken nose, but as you might guess I am not capable of threatening one, let alone do the actual breaking. I wouldn't even know how to. Ask him to wait while I unlock my U-lock and then club him with it?

But I do make the U-turn, roll up to his open window and with a well-practiced glare ask, "What's that, friend?"

I'm pretty sure he was slack-jawed to begin with, but now he is slack-jawed and mousy. "Nothing," he says. "Sorry."

And that's the great trade-off of the balaclava. Although it makes it harder to hawk loogies on Hummers (but not impossible), it lets me adopt a personality contrary to the nice, timid guy that I am. It keeps my head warm but turns my heart cold and vengeful.

Three recent moments:

10.

I am shopping for a wedding card. I know I am in Andersonville because at least a quarter of the selection has a same-sex theme. I know I am holding the world's worst wedding card when I pick one up that says "May you have a blessed marriage ..." on the front and "... and many more!" on the inside. Perhaps there was a mix-up at the card factory, and somewhere out there there's a birthday card whose inside reads, "... and for God's sake may it be your last one."

11.

A student from my alma mater calls to ask for a contribution. First she wears me down by asking about my job and cajoling me into reminiscing about my college days. I'm too preoccupied with the eggs I am frying to remember much. After about 10 minutes I am so fatigued that I almost beg to give $20 so I can hang up and have my lunch. Finally she makes her pitch. "Today we're suggesting that alumni give $250." I laugh out loud, but she handles it with I've-been-calling-journalism-majors-all-week-I'm-used-to-the-guffaws aplomb. We split the difference at $30. I had, after all, just an hour earlier found $10 on the ground at the groceria when I was buying my eggs.

12.

I'm on the Red Line to Evanston. Two elderly riders are communicating in sign language. I turn down my iPod to eavesdrop.

Three recent moments:

4.

A young office assistant reads the Bible during his down time. Propped open on the desk is a paperback novelization of the "Doom" video game. I speculate he is writing a book report. "The Bible. 'Doom.' Compare and contrast. Attach Venn diagram(s)."

5.

Sandy tells us the handles his mother uses to keep track of his friends. One is "the handsome one," another is "the reader," a third is "the one who smiles."

I am "the quiet farmer."

Which is fine -- I've been called worse -- but couldn't I be known as "all of the above"? Don't I smile enough?

6.

The coffeeshop is playing Creedence Clearwater Revival. It's not popular behind the counter. "At least it's not Kansas," one employee says.

"Right," says a colleague. "You want to avoid those bands named after states. Y'know, Boston, Chicago ..."

This don't be that place ... I tol' you, this don't be that place.

A server at the Wiener Circle

Three guys from nearby public housing were flirting with her and had asked whether this was that place where the wait staff yells and cusses at the customers. By the time their dogs and fries were ready she had conceded that this indeed was that place, but that the yelling and cussing didn't start until 8 p.m.