There and back again

[rebeccmeister]

Yesterday was an utterly non-stop day: I woke up and went rowing with K. It was windy--gusts of wind, one of the most annoying varieties--so we ended up deciding to stop a bit early when we started to feel like we weren't going to get much more out of our workout (short, rate-work pieces).

After that, I went home and ate breakfast and then headed over to school to teach. The lab was a bit dull for me (computer simulations that required that the students--*gasp*--had to read a fair amount of text), but time passed quickly. Then I went to a meeting, gave a brief presentation at an on-campus research symposium, attended our department's weekly grad student seminar, and returned back to the classroom for round two of teaching.

My second lab contains some students who like to take their time going through the material, so I had to stay for the full three hours. I swung by the lab to grab my belongings, and then headed over to Plaid for a meeting of our weekly journal article reading group. The paper under discussion was quite interesting to me; it was an attempt to explain peoples' behavior in the context of certain types of economic games. I only wish I'd had time to read it before the meeting.

Then I dashed home, changed, and hopped on my bicycle again to meet up with M, K, and R to ride down to the monthly Phoenix First Fridays Artwalk. We had crafted a cumbersome bike trailer billboard to advertise the Tour de Fat, a bicycle and beer festival that's happening next weekend. The billboard worked phenomenally, except the gusts of wind from the morning hadn't settled down. Despite the bike pilot's valiant steering efforts, he was unable to control the bike sufficiently through the gusts of wind, so we decided to play it safe and arranged a ride for him to downtown. R, K and I then set off again towards downtown Phoenix along Washington Street, which is both the most direct route to downtown and also the route of the new Phoenix-area light-rail line that is scheduled to open at the end of 2008.

Well. Someone had misinformed someone that the bicycle lane along Washington was finished and open for business, when in fact it was not. So we had a bit of a wild ride, dodging traffic cones and ruts and holes and metal plates and the cars whizzing past in the single open lane. Eventually, we reached downtown and enjoyed adding to the general spectacle and socializing with friends and acquaintances. [I would really like to write a piece about the developed "scene" in downtown Phoenix and the architecture of old-houses-turned-bars, but I don't know if I'll remember to do so]

We took a slightly longer, but safer, route home, along Oak Street, this time accompanied by the billboard-trailer bike. The night was quiet and still for most of the ride, until we turned south for the final stretch of the trip, when the wind picked up again, but not as badly as before.

I slept.

This morning, I wanted to go to the Downtown Phoenix Public Market, but when I reached the bus stop on my bicycle, there were already two people with bikes waiting for the bus, which can only maximally hold two bikes. The bus only comes but once every half-hour, so instead of waiting for ages, I decided to repeat the downtown journey along Washington in the daylight. It wasn't exactly a pleasant ride, but it also wasn't as bad as the night-time trip, probably because I could actually see the potholes before hitting them. Somehow, bike rides like that are my form of thrill-seeking. I somehow enjoy seeing how annoyed I get at inconsiderate drivers, and I think I enjoy annoying them by the sheer dint of being there (a bicycle? on a non-bike-lane roadway? what nerve!).

The Farmer's Market was nice (busier than it has been), as was hanging out with crume at Drip Coffee Lounge. We always seem to end up having really interesting conversations about food and Arizona; conversations of the sort that I don't manage to have with that many other people here. On a whim, I decided to bike home again (Oak Street was too tantalizingly close, and the bus stop was too untantalizingly far away and inconvenient). So today accidentally turned into a second day of long bike rides. Go figure. Hopefully I'll manage to rest tomorrow, although I still need to pick up a few things at a conventional grocery store.

I guess this is probably how the Jolly Roger has managed to rack up 1000 miles over the past six months.

Comments

apropos of not too darn much

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

Even Martha Stewart gets into the hippie update swing of things.
Making your own bag out of an old t-shirt. Like woah.

I thought you might find this interesting.

Re: apropos of not too darn much

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Classic! No Impact Man mentioned t-shirt bags not too long ago. It's also a good idea for those of us who end up with a few too many free t-shirts...Thanks!

Re: apropos of not too darn much

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

I am slowly building up a collection of canvas bags that I can use for shopping. Most are dorky but useful. Great for shopping in the market or Trader Joe's. They are still too retarded/difficult for the bagger's at mainstream grocery stores to understand. I think until they change their rules and say, "we are charging you for the bags" people will use plastic. Of course we use our plastic bags as garbage bags around the house. A sort of recycling if you will.

Re: apropos of not too darn much

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

I find that certain reuseable bag types are easier for grocers to understand. I got this really nice, super-cheap reuseable bag while in Australia that's the same shape as a paper grocery bag, and that one is really easy for baggers to use. The soft, canvas ones take a bit more experience for the baggers to master because they get filled differently (they can handle more stuff--novel concept!). Usually I end up telling the cashier that I'll bag things myself, because I know where to put everything and then it's my own damn fault if the bananas get squished.

I used to use plastic bags as trash liners, but even though I use reuseable shopping bags I can never seem to use up all of the plastic bags that I acquire.

[crume.livejournal.com]

Here's the cupcake link: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/02/howto-make-monster-h.html

BoingBoing has a surprising amount of cupcake-related links. They have a root-beer one that looks tasty as well.

I'm glad you enjoyed our chat, I always feel rather ignorant about the subject. Well, I usually feel ignorant about most subjects, but food is probably doubly-so.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Those cupcakes are cute! I love the use of mini-marshmallows as googly eyes.

Cupcakes are certainly trendy these days...