Disaster averted

I nearly suffered a crushing defeat early this evening, the kind from which one's morale can never fully recover.

Cycling a relatively brisk pace up to my Middle Eastern bakery of choice for some falafel and hummus, I jogged onto Clark Street for the stretch run of my journey. Since there is some ongoing road work at that particular stretch, narrowing the space available to traffic, I went onto the sidewalk to ride past the huge cemetery.

But first, some background: The triangle bounded by Clark, Southport and Ashland is something of a black hole of public transportation. Far removed from any train line, it suffers the additional misfortune of having bus routes terminate there, meaning it's quite difficult to go much north of there if you don't want to go along Clark. So this area forms the CTA's own Bermuda Triangle, where buses enter but never emerge. Or so it seems. This is why, among other reasons, I never take the bus that way. In theory it'd be convenient for me to hop a bus on Ashland to the Middle East bakery, since both my apartment and the shop are a block from Ashland. Except that, of course, the line terminates about 12 blocks too far south. Since I have the benefit of being two-wheeler, I just bike up Clark, and I always overtake at least one and often two or more Clark buses en route.

Today, however, I was alarmed when a Clark bus passed me! That just doesn't happen. The 22 is always bunched up, with two or even three buses running as if in convoy. But because the CTA insists on having bus stops every block or two, and traveling by the bike has the advantage of playing hard and fast with traffic rules, I always -- always -- pass this emblem of the public transportation system that is supposed to dissuade me from wanting to get around the city any other way.

Instinctively I broke into a dead sprint after the bus, but to no avail. It kept pulling away and I feared all was lost. But after liberally interpreting several stop signs and traffic signals, I managed a mile later to finally pass that cursèd bus at the finish, just before I turned off Clark to stop at the bakery. Victory, snatched from the jaws of defeat!