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I don’t get folks who ride a certain sub-set of motorized two-wheelers.

It’s a generalization, I know, and maybe even a stereotype, but riders of the class of Motorbike Lite seem just a little … off …to me.

Occasionally, I’ll get the secret motorcycle wave (I’d show you, but then I’d have to kill you) from fellows aboard their Harleys and Hondas and Ducatis and such, but, for the most part, bikers ignore cyclists. Hogs blow past without so much as slowing down. Cafe racers nose-wheelie by. Vintage sidecars (with a dog riding shotgun!) sputter past, and the pilots — perhaps preoccupied scanning the road for the evil, dangerous cagers — don’t seem to notice little ol’ me pedaling along.

But the folks astride the next step down on the evolutionary scale are a different story.

I’m talking about the people on scooters and mopeds and even motorized bikes, who, with almost disturbing regularity, seem obligated to pull alongside and engage me in conversation like we’re long-lost besties.

I don’t get it.

Rarely does a motorist drive next to me and start to chat me up. Maybe there’ll be a brief visit at a stoplight, or some particularly witty fella will spout some platitude as he breezes past. Though drivers might be cursing a blue streak inside their plush cabins, infrequently will one actually engage me, especially on the fly.

But all the time the pilot of a scooter or moped will sidle up, match my speed and launch into some lengthy discourse about the weather or road conditions or the quest for spiritual fulfillment.

Just the other morning, 1:30 or so, I was riding home in relative silence. Spinning up a hill not far from my house, I heard the unmistakable whine of a tinny moped motor, then watched as a headlight bounced across a lawn, over a sidewalk, over a curb and into the street where, you guessed it, the handlebar turner pulled next to me, throttled back, then greeted me with a throaty, “HOW’S IT GOIN’, MAN?” I replied, “Fine, thanks,” before he “roared off” into the darkness.

I think perhaps it stems from a lack of identity.

Folks who ride bikes generally are referred to as cyclists, and some get a little uppity when they’re called bikers instead (though, curiously, the off-roaders are mountain bikers, not mountain cyclists). Biker, of course, is reserved for riders of motorcycles.

But what do you call the people who fall in between? Scooterers? Mopedophiles?

It’s hard to pigeonhole folks without an appropriate moniker, so they motor about in some sort of two-wheeled purgatory, not quite as dorky as cyclists and not quite able to hang with the cool kids and their crotch rockets.

Or maybe they’re just happy to find the one class of road-user slower — and more universally reviled — than they are.

One of the best things about being Lawrence’s preeminent, longest-running bike blogger is all the cool schwag that comes my way.

OK, that’s not entirely true.

For one thing, preeminence is subjective, even if, as far as I know, ever since Fat Man Biking hung up his keyboard a couple of years ago, I’m the only regular bike blogger in town. But there must be somebody, because all the schwag — all the promotional doodads and P.R. “samples” and outright bribes — that generally goes to the “working” press hasn’t yet come my way. That’s right: Not a single company, large or small, has attempted to get me to write about its lifesaving new geegaw by trying to buy my blog.

I’ve had a couple of offers to attend Interbike, the huge bicycle trade show, and a few cycling destinations — mountain and road — have invited me to come ride, but only on my dime.

But no freebies have been forthcoming, and I’m not at all happy about it.

However, I must give props to Nutcase Helmets, but not because it has sent me anything yet (I have to admit I’m rather fond of the “diagonal stripe” style in size S-M; just sayin’.)

Nutcase deserves some love because of the way it consistently pings my inbox with regular emails touting its lids (Nutcase Helmets designs and markets fun and funky bike, skate, snow and water sports helmets — and for the little loves in our lives, a special kids’ line — Little Nutty by Nutcase.) Each features a nifty magnetic buckle (each helmet, that is, not each email).

All the emails wish me a “nutty day!” and suggest I reply should I want additional info or samples.

Those Nutcase nutcases outdid themselves about a month or so ago with this gem in the subject line: Protect Mom This Mother’s Day With a New Bike Helmet.

Seems they think a brainbucket (Did I mention the magnetic clasp? The convenient adjustable spin dial?) is the perfect gift for mom.

At first, I thought they were suggesting cyclists should get lids for themselves to put dear ol’ mom’s mind at ease. I know my mother — a professional worrier, bless her heart — probably would feel better if I helmeted up every time I left the house, whether I was cycling or not. Come to think of it, she’d probably prefer I don a full suit of armor.

I read through the Nutcase release as saw that, no, they were suggesting a helmet for mom.

Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t ride.

So if anyone has any ideas for me for Mother’s Day, feel free to PM me. The woman is impossible to shop for and has everything she really needs, including the best son in the world (my brother).

I’m certain, however, she does not need a helmet, no matter how fun or funky. Even if it has a nifty magnetic buckle.

I like to pay particular attention to the Venn diagram intersection of bicycle and art.

I think bikes of all kinds can be artistic in their own right; some are absolutely beautiful.

I have admired pictures and paintings of and with bikes, and even a few by bikes. I recall a Kickstarter project awhile back that outfitted bikes with chalk dispensers. As a cyclist tooled about town, he/she left a colored trail behind. The project’s creators envisioned a large bike ride with each cycle outfitted with such a contraption. The result was to be a lovely kaleidoscope when seen from above.

Recently, I happened upon the work of another artist-cyclist, (http://www.wallygpx.com/), who uses a combination of a GPS unit and map to recreate bike rides. The result is an elaborate bike “drawing,” with earth as canvas.

It made me curious if my regular rides would produce the next American Gothic.

Though most of my rides are basically out-and-backs, I try to include enough variety that maybe, just maybe, an interesting picture might emerge.

I skipped the GPS and simply traced a familiar route on a Google map of Lawrence.

The result stunned me: My regular commute to racquetball became a poignant comment on the nature of man. Breathtaking.

Racquetball commute by ahartsock

Intrigued, I sketched out my regular work commute, and again was left speechless.

There, in unmistakable black and white, was, to my eye, the most graphic depiction of a soul’s yearning — for love? for understanding? — I’ve seen. I was moved, nearly to tears.

Work commute by ahartsock

Convinced there must be something to this bike-as-instrument-of-art movement, I tried to recreate all of my local bike rides over the past couple of months. I figured if my short little jaunts could create such beautifully heart-rending images, perhaps a greater sampling would be even more masterful.

So I sketched and sketched and sketched, then I looked. I peered. I squinted, turned the map this way and that.

But, nope, after all that work, as far as I can tell, it all amounted to little more than squiggles.

Random squiggles by ahartsock

I was riding back to work after dinner the other night, and up ahead I saw a flash as something darted from between a parked conversion van and pickup truck, right at my eye level.

I quickly deduced it to be a bat, which I see frequently and of which I’m quite fond.

However, it was a rather close call. Ecolocation or not, the beastie came out of nowhere and disappeared. Had I been a split-second earlier — or faster — I wonder if even the ecolocationest bat would have had time to dodge my noggin. I’m convinced I would have had bat in my belfry.

I had another thought, too, which resurfaced just a couple of days later, when I was riding in front of my son’s before-school track club. I lead out the kids — no passing the nice man on the bike — and other parents ride herd to bring up the rear. We had just left school grounds and were tooling along the nearby nature trail when I had to swerve abruptly to miss a tiny snake on the path.

I’m not a big snake guy, but I’ll admit even this one was cute — a bitsy garter snake, maybe 7 inches long and smaller than my little finger. It saw me coming and froze. It remained still as the lead runner came pounding down the path and … just about squashed said serpent. Never saw it. I almost turned around and shooed it into the safety of the nearby grass but didn’t think I’d be able to turn around in time to cut off the next wave.

Besides, once I saw the snake, I immediately channeled my inner Samuel L. Jackson and bellowed, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I’VE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHER* SNAKES ON THIS MOTHER* BIKE!” I glanced back at all those adorable, innocent, suddenly aghast faces and decided to pedal on, hoping the dozens of beating hooves that followed would scare the beast to safety — and that the little darlings in my charge wouldn’t tell mommy and daddy about the new word they learned at track club that morning.

The thought that entered my head in both critter near-misses? Are some animals just … dumb?

I don’t mean all members of a kingdom or phylum or class or order or family or genus or species (wow, that ninth-grade taxonomy sure sticks with a fellow). I think it’s safe to assume a snail, say, isn’t quite as intelligent as a chimp; everybody knows dogs are braniacs compared to stupid kitties; I’ve heard it said cows are smart and horses are D-U-M-B; and octopuses (or -pi, if you please) are bright, while squid are just delicious.

I mean, isn’t it safe to assume that some squirrels are smarter than others? Same for bats and snakes and all other manner of creature?

What if the winged rat I nearly ran into the other night had been too stupid to take evasive maneuvers? Like the snake. It easily could have high-tailed it (Get it? A snake? High-tail?) into the nearby grass, where it would have been close to invisible. Instead, it opted to freeze — a blue-striped, black squiggle standing in stark contrast to the white concrete below.

I’ve had squirrels try to run between my turning wheels (and a surprising number run headlong at my rolling bike). Birds sometimes fly parallel to my path, their beady eyes panic-stricken as they frantically flap faster to escape. Unlike the ground-bound beasties, birds can, of course, fly in any direction, including, oh, I don’t know, up, to escape the more gravity-locked set, yet a few insist upon flying alongside until one of us tires or pulls away (or, presumably, breads and deep-fries the other). Once a deer that had been a good half mile away ran toward me and swam across the small pond that separated us, all the while heading straight for me. It sped up and slowed down to match my attempts to give it safe passage before veering off at the last minute, its eyes bulging in terror, leaping a fence and bolting into the nearby trafficway. Obviously it wasn’t the sharpest ungulate in the herd.

I’m a big fan of natural selection, so I can only assume all the really stupid animals didn’t stick around long enough to pose much of a threat to me or my bike.

But sometimes I wonder.

These are the kinds of thoughts that rattle around my hollow head as I pedal along on my commute. At least, they are until it gets pelted by some moronic bat.

I ride my bike on the ground, I’ve ridden through more rain than I’d like, and, since this is Kansas, I’m always riding in wind; frequently I’m suckin’ it, too.

Thus in terms of the classic elements, I figure I’ve got three of the four whipped (not including aether, whatever the heck that is; I reckon it’s to the elements like umami is to the tastes). Unless I develop a mysterious brain cloud and volunteer to ride my bike into the mouth of an erupting volcano to save the Abe Vigoda-led tropical villagers, I always assumed I’d have to leave fire well enough alone, at least when it comes to my regular commutes.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that is.

I was riding along Clinton Parkway on the multi-use trail on my way to racquetball. Because I was on the MUT and didn’t have to worry about traffic — except where the MUT intersects cross streets, that is — I lost myself in the vast emptiness of my own head.

Stumbling aimlessly through that void — “Heellloooo!!!!! Anyone home????” — I snapped to just in time to see a pickup truck parked on the MUT. I don’t think that’s one of the uses in the MUT’s multi-usedness, so I carefully rode around it and back on the trail.

A little farther, I spied a couple of cones and a two city workers, obviously blocking the trail and captivated by something ahead.

The makeshift road block extended into the street, forcing traffic into the center lane. So I hopped off the curb and into the now-vacant lane adjacent to MUT — right alongside a wall of flame like from the depths of hell itself.

It seems the city was burning off the native prairie grasses that grow along the MUT, and I was a singed eyebrow away from that broiling inferno. I pedaled on as flames leapt and ash and cinder filled the sky. My lungs burned with fiery, acrid smoke; every breath was pure torture. Flames crackled from my drivetrain. The rubber bits — tires, handlebar tape — bubbled. The sky was black as pitch, the air heavy with soot. The wall of flame, whipped by a ravaging wind, curled overhead. It seemed like I was surfing the North Shore — of Hades itself.

Then, as quickly as I happened upon this blazing hellfire, I was past it. I hopped back on the MUT, and went on my way.

(In the interest of interest, I should mention I might have exaggerated my encounter just a tad. But I did feel a slight rise in the ambient air temperature. I swear.)

Mass celebration by ahartsock

A couple of years ago, Kansas University’s men’s basketball team won the national title.

I was working that night on the sports desk, as I have for all of the past upteen-or-so-plus KU men’s basketball games over the last couple of decades, and as I hurried back to the J-W newsplex downtown after grabbing a bite for dinner at home, I found myself stranded in a traffic jam on Sixth Street as teeming masses teemed toward downtown in hopes of a massive postgame lovefest on Mass.

Thunderstorms were in the forecast, so though I had planned to ride my bike back to work, I opted to drive instead.

Big mistake.

As I inched along Sixth Street, I considered ditching my car on a side street and hoofin’ in the last few blocks so I could make deadline. I didn’t, however, and made it back to work in plenty of time. There was a bit of rain, I recall, but no storms.

I vowed the next time KU played for the title, regardless of the forecast, I was going to ride.

Four years and, this season, many surprising victories later, I found myself making good on my vow. Anticipating more teeming, I rode to work just about every night KU played, but I have to admit my resolve was tested a bit by my 11-year-old son. He surprised me the afternoon of the Kansas-North Carolina game — which KU won to go to the Final Four — when he implored me not to ride.

Why?

“I don’t want you to get beat up,” he said.

Perhaps I exaggerated the drunken disorderliness of the last celebration. Though most folks downtown were pretty responsible back in 2008, there was a bit of mayhem, especially in the wee hours.

I explained to my son, however, that no matter how much pillaging and plundering and general debauchery I witnessed, the only actual encounter I had with any of the pillagers, plunderers or debauchers came during my ride home two nights prior to the 2008 championship game. After putting the paper to bed just before bar-closing time, I pedaled toward a close-to-downtown bar, my head on a swivel as I watched hundreds of well lubricated folks still reveling in the victory. As I approached the bar, I saw a man who had been standing outside, beer in one hand, cigarette in another, fling the butt down and sprint right at me. I looked left, then right, plotting my escape. I slowed, hoping to hop on the pedals at the last second and lurch past him and away to safety.

As he drew close, he let out a bellow, extended his left arm … and screamed, “*&%# YEAH, MAN! HIGH FIVE!”

Still leery he might try to knock me off my steed, I gingerly give him a wimpy high-two and pedaled away.

This year, I had even less physical contact.

Despite the thousands (as opposed to maybe dozens I see on a typical night) of folks still milling about, the only person who actually acknowledged my presence was the driver of a car I crossed in front of on Sixth Street the night KU beat Ohio State to advance to the title game.

She honked, and as I braced for what I was sure to be a rant of some sort, she leaned out the window and cooed, “I like your bike,” before disappearing back in the car, behind a wall of giggles from her and her passengers.

Though I escaped injury entirely and detection for the most part, there is a certain sense of vulnerability to riding a bike through such a beer-fueled horde. Cars can provide some sort of protection and a quicker get-away. But as I explained to my son, on a bike I feel more maneuverable. And nobody was going to jump up and down on the hood of my bike.

I guess if I ever feel too threatened by riding through such occasional Final Four celebrations, I could always move somewhere they don’t have to worry about such things.

Like Columbia, Mo.

I’ve never taken so much as one class in meteorology, but thanks to countless hours spent in the Google University classroom and staring at my beloved Weather Channel/weather.com, I consider myself a pretty fair forecaster.

Although, it has dawned on me as unusual that the yahoos who give us their informed best guesses in the guise of weather forecasts refer to themselves as meteorologists, which, in my mind, would be like taking medical issues not to a doctor but to a healthologist. Whatever they call themselves, they’re forecasts are neither very fore or cast.

Then again, I seem to recall a stretch of three recent days which featured wild, windy weather that culminated in a tornado outbreak one day; even warmer, windier weather the next; then a pretty if short-lived snow event on Day Three (and that day, of course, the temperature topped out around 55 degrees). Who could forecast that?

Every Kansan I’ve ever met exaggerates all the time, so it’s no wonder the oft-repeated mantra about Sunflower State weather is similarly hyperbolic: I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait the full five minutes for the weather to change.

Anyway, given the mercurial nature of the mercury around here, it’s always a good idea to keep a close eye on the weather, especially when venturing out on the bike.

I distinctly recall a recreational ride several years ago. I merely glanced at the blue sky and headed out. I made it to Lone Star Lake in record time and was enjoying myself so thoroughly — and was so surprised by how easy a time I was having — I continued on to Globe, then Overbook. I paused for a drink and a snack on the side of the road, swung my bike around for the return ride … and stared into a gray wall of fury. A front had blown in, giving me a lovely tailwind, but it had brought with it a mother of a storm, which made up for lack of lightning (thank goodness) with buckets of water, through which I slogged for a dozen or so miles.

I emerged on the far side where blue skies and chirping birds awaited. As I neared home, I encountered another cyclist just heading out. She gave me a most curious look as I pedaled past, my clothes still plastered to my body, hair soaked and, as far as I know, still dripping water on bone-dry pavement.

Since then, I’ve become quite proficient at reading radar and sonar and NexRad and all manner of meteorological dart-throwing devices.

Truthfully, though, a more esoteric skill is deciphering not the raw data, but the plain-language forecast.

I’ve taken a few such forecasts and translated them into more practical definitions, especially for cyclists.

For instance, when a summer forecast says “warm,” it really means, “blazing, melt-your-teeth hot.”

“Cool,” of course, means “colder than a witch’s zit.”

A few others:

Rainy: cats and dogs.

Breezy: windy as heck.

Windy: breezy as $*&%.

Unseasonably warm: see warm.

Slight chance for storms: unplug your electronics; she’s gonna blow.

Partly cloudy: can’t see your hand in front of your face.

Partly sunny: partly cloudy.

Mostly sunny: not even a hint of the sun.

Mostly cloudy: batten down the hatches.

Gorgeous: are you kiddin’ me? I’m not falling for that. Chances are, we’re in for rain, snow, hail, tornadoes, tsunamis and maybe even tropical frogs falling from the skies.

And then there’s POP, a meteorological term of such insidiousness it has its own acronym. The POP — or probability of precipitation — is especially tricky for cyclists, because it actually has two values depending on whether or not the cyclist has looked at said POP and, based on that figure, has decided whether to ride his/her bike.

I’ve calculated the formula for both and present them here:

If the cyclist did, in fact, go for a ride, the adjusted POP — when he/she is either at the farthest point from home on an out-and-back ride, or precisely midway between points A and B on a destination ride — is (100-POP)+POP. Thus, if the published POP is a mere 20 percent, (100-20)+20=100. Thus, any cyclist foolhardy enough to go for a ride with just a 20 percent chance of rain is 100-percent certain to get drenched.

However, if said cyclist were to keep the bike garaged for fear of rain, the adjusted POP is ((z4)-sin(POP)/y)0, where z and y, of course, don’t matter since, if I’ve counted all my left and right parentheses right, everything is multiplied by zero, guaranteeing that even if the skies are roiling and the wind is howling and lightning is streaking across the sky, if a cyclists chooses to park the bike and drive instead, there’s not a POP in HECK a single drop will fall.

Of course, he or she could always wait a couple of minutes. That’s bound to change.

I was driving — yes, driving — somewhere the other day, and I crested a hill on a lightly traveled road, with a commercial parking lot to my left and a private drive off another parking lot — I think it belonged to a church — on my right.

Just before I reached the driveway, a car rolled through the stop sign to my right, directly in my path. I’d seen the car coming, so it was easy to tap the brakes and avoid a collision, and as I did so, I gave the horn a little honk, not in anger but just to let the offending driver know that I was there and maybe next time she might consider actually stopping before barrelling into traffic. Consider it community service.

The driver seemed surprised as she glanced in her rear-view mirror. Without pause, she raised her right arm to the mirror so it (the arm) would be in plain sight, then slowly, deliberately … flashed a peace sign.

Honestly, it was twice as many fingers as I was expecting.

She smiled with her eyes, let the gesture linger, then turned right at the next intersection; I turned left.

As we parted, I thought, “What a lovely gesture.”

And it was.

I’ll admit I’ve communicated nonverbally several times while I’ve been on my bike, using all manner and number of digits, though I’m a bit ashamed to admit one gesture (and finger) make up the bulk of my sign language. Call it half a peace sign.

In the heat of a moment, it’s too easy to flip the bird. It’s quick and dirty, and it gets the point across. But it also tends to breed a bit of ill-will at least between two people, if not cyclists and drivers in general. I reserve the right to dial up the middle digit to express my displeasure at having my person (and, yes, I do have a person) jeopardized by dolts, especially dolts who are deliberately endangering.

However, I plan to give this peace-sign thing a spin.

The way it was wielded my way the other day bore little resemblance to its hippie-dippy origin. But it spoke volumes. The peace-signee quickly, deftly signalled, “Oops. Sorry. My bad. Please forgive. Have a nice day.” Two fingers, a split-second; ’nuff said.

Peace, man.

I feel better already.

Don’t think me a hater, but … I abhor Valentine’s Day. Abohrers gonna abhor.

It’s not a reflection on my sweetie, mind you. I so do not abhor her (abher?). In fact, I’m rather fond of her.

My loathing is directed instead at the holiday itself, a crass, commercialized money-grab that makes all the other crass, commercialized money-grab holidays — Christmas, Grandparent’s Day, Arbor Day — look genuine by comparison. I’m convinced only a slim minority actually enjoys VD. The vast majority agonize over what to do/buy to prove our love; lament that we’re not loved as much as we love; or unnecessarily bemoan our lonely plights.

Meanwhile, the card-makers, jewelers, chocolatiers and florists make out like bandits as everybody else only can hope to, well, just make out.

I consider VD gifts to be something like a Rorschach test, more a reflection of the giver than the givee.

I have to say I’ve given some memorable Valentine’s gifts.

One year, I made a shoe-box mailbox like we used to make in grade school. Then I bought boxes of the cheesiest packaged Valentines I could find — we’re talking dozens, if not hundreds — and on each one wrote a different cheesy VD message: Love you. Stuck on you. Be mine. Holla. Then I stuffed ’em inside the box and put up the flag. I was quite proud, though I recall the reception wasn’t quite as warm as I had hoped.

Recently, I got a bunch of pewter hearts — or maybe they were lead or mercury; nothing says I love you like blood poisoning — and hid them so they’d be discovered throughout the day: by the sink when she was getting ready; at her place where she ate breakfast; in the seat of her car; in her workout clothes so they’d fall out when she changed for her lunchtime workout. At least I got a Facebook shoutout for that one.

But I’ve also had my share of clunkers. Too often I went the flower-and-chocolate route. Other VD gifts were so meh, even I can’t remember what they were.

Thus the Rorschach evaluation of me seems pretty accurate: inconsistent at best.

Which brings me to my wife. She’s thoughtful, practical and deliberate, and her gifts reflect that. (Not to mention loving and beautiful and smart and pretty and … )

This year, for instance, she decided to get me a new remote keypad for our garage-door opener. I know this because I mentioned the other day that I was headed to the hardware store to buy one, and once I chipped enough of the resulting frost off my face to ask why the temperature in our house had dropped about 7,500 degrees Kelvin, she informed me that it was because maybe somebody else — one of the countless many suitors lining up in hopes of being my Valentine — already had decided to get me a new remote keypad for our garage-door opener for Valentine’s Day and, without saying so, suggested that buying one for myself would ruin, well, just about everything.

So I didn’t, and she did, and a couple of days later, there at my place at the dinner table I found — surprise! — a new remote keypad for our garage-door opener.

A lesser woman might have been deterred, scrapping the idea and resorting to Plan B, but not my wife. She realized just how much a new remote keypad for our garage-door opener would mean to me.

Ever since I got the old one, I regretted it. In a word, it sucked. The trouble is, our garage-door opener is so old — I think it originally was powered by a couple of oxen plodding around a pole — there are only a very few remote keypads that can be retrofitted to make it work. The one I bought was a pain to program and fickle to operate. I couldn’t begin to count how many times over the past several years the infernal thing would start to open the door, then stop. I’d push a button, and it would reverse. Push another, it’d start to open again. Then stop. Push. Reverse. Stop. Push. Open. Stop. Or it wouldn’t accept the open code, blinking its little lights so tauntingly I seethed every single one of the 10 seconds I had to wait before I could try to enter the code again.

I’m generally not the type to get angry at inanimate objects, but that thing made me so angry, not a week went by that I didn’t consider ripping the thing from the wall and buying another.

But I never did.

Recently, however, it went belly-up for good, and because all our handheld remotes are in our cars, I had to make sure I had some alternate way into our house whenever I rode my bike anywhere. It was inconvenient, at best, to cram my mess of keys into a jean pocket for my commutes to work, and on more than one occasion I almost forgot. Once I had to throw a log under the closing garage door (I’d press the inside button and race the door whenever I exited; the opener is so old, it doesn’t have electronic sensors to keep it from closing on obstructions) because I remembered just as I hit the driveway.

I feared I’d be locked out of the house at 2 in the morning or, worse yet, in the middle of the day with nobody around to let me in.

I know I could have had a spare house key made, or stuffed a handheld remote in a bike saddle bag, but that would require a calculated purposefulness that’s well beyond me.

So, yeah, in this case, a remote keypad for our garage-door opener was just about the bestest gift anybody could ever give me.

Meanwhile, she’s off the hook for this year, and I’m still wrigglin’ on it.

Back in my younger days, when my legs were bigger and lungs better — or is that, when my legs were better and my lungs bigger? — I used to try to find the biggest hills in town up which to ride my bike.

I’d go miles out of my way to seek the tallest, longest, steepest ups the city had to offer.

From behind the wheel of a car, it’s difficult to appreciate just how vertical some of our city streets really are. When the horsepower is self-generated, it’s easy to realize — and, of course, exaggerate — just how hilly it is around here.

Before and/or after work or just tooling about town, I tackled all the obvious candidates. In the interest of fairness, I went up all the ups on the same bike — my fixed-gear. Some bikes are geared so low you really can climb up a wall. But on a fixie, there’s no hiding from elevation gain.

Several access roads to the Kansas University campus, especially the numbered roads on the east side, are among the obviously notable inclines.

I used to like to test my legs on two pretty good challenges on Ninth Street — westbound, over the few blocks before Iowa, and again farther west on the short-but-oh-so-steep rise between Lawrence Ave. and Crawford Drive — but in the interest of self-preservation, I pretty much skip that route these days. Cresting the Ninth Street hill at Iowa gets a little dicey on the drunk-clogged streets at 2 a.m.

My regular commute offers a choice between two other, drastically different, climbs: the not-so-steep-but-long-slog that is the climb up Lawrence Ave. from Princeton to Trail, and the abrupt rise into Fall Creek Farms west of Kasold, up Tomahawk Drive.

And while none of those molehills compares to, say, the Mount Washington Auto Road — 4,500 feet of ascent over 7.5 miles — or Mauna Kea (13,790 feet of rise over 41.6 miles) … well, they’re the best we’ve got. (And it’s probably appropriate to say here that my ability to climb like a sprinter is a perfect match to my ability to sprint like a climber, which is to say I’m all-around slow under any condition.)

Over the weekend, I stumbled over a new favorite bump.

I don’t know how many times I’ve rolled near it, but I wasn’t exactly sure where it ended up; I figured I’d Google-map it someday to make sure it was, in fact, a through street, but I never did.

Sunday, though, I decided just to ride on up Fifth Street, west of Colorado and South California (behind Carquest and Jayhawk Pawn and Jewelry on Sixth). It’s a quiet little road that seems to end abruptly in the trees at the top of a deceptively steep hill.

From the bottom, it doesn’t look like much, so I approached it casually — just spinnin’ along.

After a few dozen yards, the incline grew. I stood on the pedals. No worries.

It turned up. I bore down.

Still yards from the top, I realized my mistake: The darned thing just gets steeper as it goes along. It’s not a steady hypotenuse; it’s half of a “U” — gradual at the start, closing in on straight up (not really!) at the top.

I approached the peak and saw a woman walking her dog. She smiled and said hello. I tried to return the greeting as nonchalantly as possible as I pumped my bike left and right, bearing down on the pedals.

I swear that grin was the smirk of an insider, her way of saying, “You’re not from around here, are you? Welcome to life on the side of the mountain.”

Eventually — everything was in slow motion — I crested, but not before making my bailout plan. Since I wear clipless pedals that attach my shoes to my cranks, I kept telling myself to make certain I unclipped if my momentum hit zero. If I couldn’t get out of the pedals, I was sure to flip over on my back before log-rolling tail-end-over-teakettle back down.

Maybe it was the effects of the cold/flu/crud that kept me off the bike all of last week that made it seem to steep, but the view from on high convinced me there was some serious steepness to the road behind me. A similarly vertiginous downhill sealed it.

So for now, at least, I consider that stretch to be the steepest incline in city limits, at least that I’ve tackled.

If anybody knows of a steeper stretch, I’d love to see it, so please drop me a line at ahartsock@ljworld.com or leave a comment down below.