I'd like to share a little commuting home story. I was sitting at a red light, waiting patiently with the rest of the crowd. I was on my bike, of course, with about 10 or 15 scooters. It was a long light so there was plenty of time to take in the sights, so to speak. Oftentimes the lights have countdown timers so you know exactly how many seconds you have to wait. This one was counting down from around 90 seconds, which is a really long time when you're waiting for the green.

Anyway, one of the scooters that was waiting had a dog sitting at the driver's feet. That's a pretty common way for people to transport their dogs. They've got the dogs pretty well trained. I've seen scooters stop at a light, the dog jumps down and pees on the curb, hops back on and they're ready to go before the light turns green.

This evening, however, was a different story. The dog on this scooter was just hanging out, waiting for that green light, just like the rest of us, when a stray dog wanders down the street and stops to investigate the interloper. It starts out with just a little growling but by the time the counter is down to 20 seconds or so the snarling had begun. I decided to get myself out of the middle of the dogfight before it really got out of hand and was ready to high-tail it (get it? High tail) as soon as the light was green.

I didn't turn around to see but I could hear the fight escalate. No one else was quite as quick as me across the intersection and the woman with the dog never did catch up. It certainly livened up my ride home.