Reading (For Dummies)

I Like to Ride

I drove out to Rochester on Friday afternoon to check out their Critical Mass ride. I've never been to one before, and had considered going to New York City at some point. I thought I'd see how they were in a smaller city before taking part in the more extreme riding that Manhattan has to offer.

The timing couldn't have been better -- on Thursday I rode a time trial with the Triathlon Club and nearly got killed. Some lady in a nice red Chevrolet was blaring her horn as she was "stuck" behind me (I was cruising 25-30mph in a 30mph zone, admittedly in the middle of the lane, but the shoulder was torn up). I gave her the middle. When she finally did pass me, she opened her door to try and hit me off my bicycle. Yeesh!

I picked up Brent, a guy I had never met before, and left for Rochester. We got to RIT campus without a hitch, met up with 4 other riders there and started heading to the U of R campus. I was a bit afraid that the turnout would be abysmal given how many people started at RIT.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case. At the U of R clock tower, I met up with Tobin Fricke, as well as 35 or so other riders and an IndyMedia reporter. We left for our ride, a gargantuan pack of people ready to make the streets safer for bicyclists. Cars beeped at us, we cheered back, fists pumping.

We headed to Rochester's booming downtown (hugely better than Syracuse's downtown), and rode along Main Street, Monroe Ave, and a bunch of the other main arteries of the city. For the most part, drivers were polite. The few bad apples that revved their engines, honked horns, and yelled received some amusing treatment from our pack of riders, who dilly-dallied quite slowly in front of the inconsiderate drivers. On the whole, though, people were good. Police officers waved hello. Flyers were handed out with a short explanation of what we were doing. I cruised along at 20mph or so and shoved flyers on the windows of moving vehicles. A good time was had by all.

After two hours or so of riding, people were getting tired, cold, and hungry. So we went downtown to a pizza shop. I met up with my cousin Emily and had some tasty Chinese cuisine with her and her friend Kate. We shared all sorts of interesting linguistic exchanges on family, friends, politics, religion. I've missed my cousin a good deal, as much of a burly woodsman I've become to her cosmopolitanesque life in the city.

I have to admit that I had some reservations about heading to Rochester. For some reason it feels like it's Annie's city. The communicational black hole that has been my ex-girlfriend has always been a bit unsettling to me...the idea left me feeling something like Randall Waterhouse's return to his ex's town. This trip has definitely gotten me over that, though, and opened the highway to a nifty area full of hippies and bright ideas.

The Going is Getting

(Un)sanity has oozed back into my mind, inspired by endorphines, poetry, tea, and wine. I spent the earlier part of the week in training...40k bike rides and 8k runs on alternating days, culminating in a 32k ride (in 1 hour, 5 minutes) and 5k run (25 minutes) back-to-back, triathlon style, at the end of the week. A new friend balked at the reasoning for doing it. I guess I want to do mountains this summer.

Latter parts involved the Odd Poetess giving an impromptu reading in my kitchen, followed by the hecticness that is my life. For all the criticisms I dish out about other people being "too busy," I seem to have stumbled into a block of extreme doing myself. Mornings are generally phone call awakenings for appointments to get equipment, give hands to friends, give rides, etc. It feels somehow like a life I used to live way back in high school...being the willing errand-boy. Things are much nicer this time around, either I'm not getting screwed or at least I don't mind it.

Dustin has been a regular partner in crime. I went to his house again, this time bringing my camera and having the time to hang out for a longer period of time. I also brought my motorcycle. Dustin and his dad went to work on my valves, which were way out of whack (the valve clearance free play was on the order of 8 times greater than it should have been). Dustin's dad also made the suggestion of letting the bike run for a while...apparently the intake valve sticking open is, in his opinion, happening due to carbon deposits on intake side of the valve. I hit the front brake caliper with emory cloth, compressed air, new seals, new bleed nipple, a new piston, new pads, and even got it back together. Unfortunately after bleeding it still won't brake right...air must be getting into the system somewhere up higher now.

Motorcycle maintenance and a zen attitude aside, we took Dustin's Jeep out for a drive around his "yard," a ranch that would put Ted Turner to shame. Okay, not quite...but it is a fantastic piece of land, with ponds, streams, rolling hills, and enough room to live off of.

Dustin's parents could be summarized as the classic all-american folks. It seems that every time I go there, a home-cooked meal, hugs, firm handshakes, hunting and motorcycle stories abound. Combine it with a raucous sense of humor that flies in the face of the normal backwoods monster-truck type, and you might begin to get an idea. The last time I met folks at all like them was in Austria.

Best of all? They live a 15 minute drive from my new work. And the peasants rejoice.

Reality is not Objective

Friendster added a new feature lately -- joint horoscopes between oneself and everyone else on Friendster. The amusing thing? Click on one of your friends, and then read your joint horoscope with...yourself.

My horoscope for today seems to fit:

You and Reid can overcome any bumps on the road.

You're each focused on your own stuff at the moment, and you're both pretty ambitious about it. Whether they're work-related or personal, longer-term goals are taking precedence over fun (it's gotta happen sometimes). Your loyalty to each other, though, shouldn't be in question; if it feels like it is, you may need to do a buddy check. Send a quick note or make a quick call, and let each other know that you still care (awwww!). It's good to know you're there for each other when you come up for air.

I Drag Myself into the Town

I headed down to see my dad's new house late night Wednesday. I rolled in around 2:30AM in a move that reminded me somewhat of High School travel-mode. It was a fitting description -- I was to head down to NYC and see some folks from my native habitat in their now-native-habitats (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens). I left Thursday morning for my first unguided trip to the islands.

Being my typical unplanned self, I made a majority of contacts while on the road in the afternoon. Everyone was busy, no-one home. Most people couldn't even tell me where they lived nor how to get there. It was a precursor of what the city life is like. So I decided to drive down to New Jersey and visit Marykate.

MK helped me by giving a plan of action for where to go in the city. I arrived, made phone calls, arranged to meet people. Got stood up repeatedly. Met up with Jason (New Hampshire upbringing prevails over city jet-set life in Jay's case), then finally Mary, who was sort of the main reason for visiting in the first place.

I went to town to see how she was doing after a late-night conversation of the stressed-out sort. Sometimes I feel like I can help just by being a basalt pillar of sanity for people. It's a silly thought, but it lets me sleep at night.

Mary and I went off for some music and bar scene funness, including visiting her favorite band and boyfriend at the Bulgarian Culture Center (416 Broadway). It was pretty amazing music from Macedonia, sung in Greek and a variety of slavic languages, with DJ accompaniment at points.

The following day was a late start wandering around Manhattan with Mary, meeting Lindsay for lunch, swinging by Jay's work, and hanging out in New York's public spaces (libraries, parks, sewers). Towards evening, we ate sushi, drank wine, asked existentialist questions of ourselves, and explored the texture of a loaf of bread together.

The visit, questions, and ideas broke some of the neurons in my brain. I always like when that happens, but I knew that a longer stay in the city would send me into a catatonic state. So I went back to New Paltz on Saturday. My countrified brain needs the humility that comes from rushing water and a lack of people that don't know me.

SUOC was in town, climbing the Gunks. My dad's place is a 2 or 3 minutes drive from the cliffs, so I met up with Bert, Jonas, Ed, and Ben from the club and crashed in various place on my dad's floor.

Another night of little sleep (I had been getting about 4 hours per night in the city) took us all to the cliffs. My climbing sucked even more than usual...I'd like to blame it on not sleeping and dealing with city experiences, but that isn't the case. I've never climbed much, and it's been a while since I've climbed anything outside of a gym (or freaky experiences in Deutschland). More frequent visits to the old man's are in order, I guess. As are less frequent visits to the Citay.

Relay for Life

Friday Night and into Saturday morning was SU's Relay for Life, a 14 hour track-walking event that started at 6pm. You do the math to figure out when I finally got to sleep.

SUOC was in full force. 13 of us raised money for the event (nearly $2,000), 12 of us actually showed up to walk. It was super-neat to see so many people coming together over such an odd thing as the human body's inability to copy protein strands correctly anymore. Still, both my grandfathers ended up dying of the problem, and my mom was able to recover. The prospects of cancer in my genetics are part of what drove me to be the vegetarian that I am today.

There were a lot of odd names during the Lumaria lighting (where all the names of the friends and family who have died of cancer are read). There were quite a few last names of people I knew, and even a few people I knew hunched over the small white bags, as though the bleached paper and sharpie marker provided some conduit for peace. Not really sure what to say or even think, I walked on.

...and walked, and walked. After a 3am "speedo run" (naturally, a SUOC concoction), some people managed to pass out in a massive pile on the floor. I stayed deliriously awake for an hour, then walked some more. Was it worth it? I'd say so. Thanks to everybody that contributed to my fund.

I Can Take a Road That'll See Me Through

I was on the road again over the weekend, this time going to New Jersey with my "Scuba Buddy", Al. I deposited him in Philadelphia to be with his beau, and headed over to visit a place I'll never be again.

I rolled into my dad's driveway at around 10pm. A front was coming through, chilly wind and rain blowing. I put on my rain jacket and walked around back. The real motivation in going down was to clean out my dad's house. It is being sold in less than two weeks, and I had a lot of papers in my closet still.

Moving my stuff out was one part depressing, one part invigorating. My dad got the house shortly after my parents divorced, and it was kind of nice having both of my folks within walking/cycling/driving distance (they lived 10 minutes away from each other). The downside, of course, was a constant nagging guilt every time I was at my childhood stomping ground -- I was in a constant state of worry that one parent would feel neglected when I didn't choose their house as my base for Jersey visits. In a sense it's quite fortunate that one moved...trips to the folks can be a little more compartmentalized. And we won't even go into the merits of having a parent living in New Paltz.

Later Saturday evening I met up with some old-skool friends for a birthday party. It was originally intended to be one of those pagan circle things, but continuing rain made us abandon any hope of having the fire pit operating. Instead it was cake, wine, and catching up on old times.

The rain really didn't stop the whole trip down. The Delaware and Schuykill Rivers flooded, closing Route 30 back to Philadelphia. It made for some interesting detours trying to pick Al back up on the way. That and an unexpected illness -- I woke up Sunday morning feeling like I weighed 500 pounds, my whole body aching, and my sinuses feeling clogged -- made me want a slightly faster departure than I had originally intended. After a 14-hour nap Sunday night, most of the symptoms have gone away. Roads really do wear you out, and I've been on them a lot lately. That shows little chance of changing...