path and then it's just a little jog and you're there. Want me to ride it with you?" (They did.)

Other conversations are not about bicycling at all.

Two very shy persons staying an hour past their shifts to discuss a favorite video game.

Two women sharing their experience of transitioning from male to female.

A high school honor student and juvenile delinquent discussing normal teenage life.

Whatever the topic of the moment, being in the valet places you among a diverse, thoughtful group of people that includes all ages, races, gender identities, socioeconomic backgrounds, bodies, types of cyclists and more. It's good folks, working hard, talking and learning from one another. We ride more, and enjoy life more, from being together. Indeed, Yay Valet! offers a rare and unexpected—yes, even magical!—space forone of X-Files "Lone Gunmen". When he
explains the beeper to his wife I needed the oxygen. It's like "Doctor Who vs
hackers" :-)

~~~
gabrielblack
Debugging of networks with logic analyzer, counting round trip with the
oscilloscope's divisions, what glorious times ! :-)

------
frereubu
I highly recommend this book. It's easily accessible, fun to watch the story
spin out, and recalls the magic of early UNIX and dial-up internet. Cliff
Stoll is quite a character - check out his TED talk to see what I mean.

~~~
jhbadger
"Early UNIX". Ouch. The events of the book took place in 1986, at which time
UNIX was more or less like what we use today. Except for the absence of modern
scripting languages, a modern user could use UNIX from 1986 with very little
problem. I tend to think of "early UNIX" as things like