MicahPaul

At times, everything just seems to synthesize into perfect harmony.
These times are fleeting, but while I’m here, what better than to blog about it, right?
Right?
A bunch of little loose ends all connecting in a short period of time.
My time spent in Chicago, I feel, has culminated in the realization of so much possibility. Many aspects have been belatedly and unexpectedly emerging. Such adventure is the gift that keeps on giving.
So if I start segueing from the abstract to the tangible, what is the method, and at what point does it become monotonous?

This past week was the first of classes at the University, all of which promise to be rather interesting. There’s the French professor whose native language is Spanish and who also speaks English, Portuguese and Japanese. There is the very African professor teaching the National Security class who insists that capitalism is bad because it “distracts women from their God ordained purpose of bearing children.” (Yes.) The Kazakhstani European History professor who informed us that the unwritten course objective is to form a Communist brotherhood and start a Communist revolution in the State of Minnesota. (He has since consistently referred to us as “comrades.”)

After stagnating since Chicago, the bicycle has decisively asserted itself again into my life. On a whim and a call from a friend, I went to Coldsprints last night, a winter roller racing series here. It looks like this:


reaching into the damp suitcase of pain

Originally uploaded by bestkept



To my absolute surprise, not only did I qualify, but I made it to the quarterfinals before being knocked out by an actual track racer. The races are essentially 20-30 seconds of hell. The rollers have very little resistance, so you immediately spin up to very high speeds (I averaged 41 mph) and then you have to spin like the dickens for 500 meters. Painful, yet addictive.

Tonight, given the balmy 20°F weather, I went on a Saturday Night Ride, a weekly informal group bike ride occurring every Saturday night year-round. It was an excellent ride.
This compounded with a No-Name alleycat race tomorrow night and StuporBowl, a very big winter alleycat next Saturday, makes me excited to bike.
And for the long term: look out, Paris-Brest-Paris 2011.
At the time I was in Weiser House, there was much talk of the Free School they were in the process of founding. A free school is essentially an organized school where anyone may teach a class and anyone may take one. They are generally free as in beer, and free as in speech. I think there are some very exciting possibilities here. Which is I was most delighted to find tonight that there is a burgeoning Free School here in the cities. It is called EXCO, or Experimental College, and they’ve got a bunch of excellent looking courses happening this spring (registration open now!).
Looking through the course listings, I found the very interesting course entitled “Gentrification and Minneapolis Neighborhoods“. Two peculiar points of note: a) I was really made familiar with the concept of urban gentrification in my time in the collectives, and b) one of the course’s instructors is my friend Andrew Bender Dahl, whom I met last summer going on Saturday Night Rides, whom is radical, whom I had been meaning to catch up with. Oh, life. You’re so cheeky sometimes.
What else has really come together? Ah, one last thing, which also happens to have been inspired by Chicago and realized with bikes: I came upon a couple of guys who apparently raid a dumpster full of Naked juice quite regularly. I’m going with them on Tuesday. Lots of free juice, conveniently preserved in the cold weather: good. Meeting new people here as a result of a chain of events and things learned in Chicago: yes. Bicycles: for sure.

So what is this? Surely this post cannot synthesize as well as life. But the question is, how interesting or boring is this stuff? I am quite interested in your opinion. (also known as “comment,” for which a mechanism has conveniently been implemented) Blogging again, I am met with the same dilemma of where to go with this: I can stick with very thematic posts, essays if you will, but inspiration for these tends to be sporadic. Or I can go the more “report of my life” style. But this is always much more boring for me, as I imagine it must be for anyone who attempts to read it. I mean, the only really fun part of this post, for example, was coming up with what little cohesive stuff it had, i.e. the first paragraph. I have this very active drive to write again, but I have so far lacked any cohesive thematic ideas to write about.

It will come, it will come…

P.S. In the middle of my qualifying round at Coldsprints, a lace on my left shoe wrapped around the pedal spindle. I was going 45 mph at the time, which didn’t bode well for the shoes. Rather than just breaking a lace, the grommets got entirely ripped off one side. Whoops.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 1:46 and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.