Entries this day: Bike Work magnet

Bike

3:26pm JST Sunday 8 August 2004

I just had a flashback about my bike. Not really sure what triggered it, but during a lesson with Naotoshi, I recalled pushing my bike up a hill through trees and crazy stickers and undergrowth up near Oberlin University where I went to hang out with Abbey Tennis.

Abbey was in class at the time, and I just went for a ride along their trails and ended up going past a golf course and then to an overpass railroad tressel. I decided it would be cool to ride my bike across the tressel.

It felt like a good challenge, and maybe a little bit breaking the rules because riding bikes on railroad tracks just isn't the safest thing to do. But, considering there were trees growing between the rails, I figured these tracks would be on a list of Top 100 Safest Railroad Tracks To Ride Bikes On.

And maybe I was trespassing because I was certainly on railroad track property, but maybe it had been reclaimed by the government as public property, but .. in any case, it was a good challenge. I could barely climb up the hill without using my hands to grab trees, so it was pretty fuckin' hard to get my bike up there. Had to pull branches out of the frame and spokes and turn the handlebars sideways and the wheel the other sideways and lift up and down and all around and got the bike up.

Onto the railroad tracks I emerged from the trees and tried to ride on the tracks. It took a bit to get started, and I'm sure I had to drop to a way low gear (this was 1.5 years ago, mind you, do I've forgotten some details) but finally I got the satisfying thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump style of riding on the ties. Awesome.

There was something cool with the edge of the tressel, like the ground had slumped next to the concrete support column, so the ties were being held up by the rails, well above the dirt. Kinda scary to ride across that part.

I completed my journey back and forth across the tressel, having examined the aging process and trying to memorize the date stamped in the concrete and wondering how long they thought the tressel might last, and if they are still alive and about my moment within the long history of the tressel, that now had trees growing between the rails on either side.

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So; I had a flashback to that moment, and I emerged feeling really sad that someone has stolen my bike.

Work

8:44pm JST Sunday 8 August 2004

Work was pretty alright tonight. I'm heading to Magnet's house tonight cause he's about to kick it outside Japan style later this month. We hadn't hung out in a while and I'm always up for a free dinner.

Even though I chowed a lot today; there was a ton of food left over from the party last night, which was apparently fun, but not incredibly so. My last student was cool, which I'm thankful for considering I had asked to have my last lesson closed (different concepts of "last" here) I think she got some good information about asking what animals eat and what animals are. I taught her"I think so it eats" but to lose the so. And something else I'm sure.

I performed the doomsday algorithm a few times today 4 out of 4 times successfully for years in 1960-1970 range. Awesome.

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Make that 5 out of 5 now.

magnet

10:18am JST Monday 9 August 2004

Watch a footbag video of dudes doing incredible stuff with footbags. Really incredible skillz. Made me, Dan, and Jesse look like HSW (wusses) in comparison.

Watched cartoon network until I fell asleep deeply until morning.

Jimmy showed me some sketches of Thunder Rabbit and Scout Seven that he made after reading Eclipse. Cool stuff. I have never previously seen a drawn interpretation of TR and Scout.

I studied a bit of Japanese this morning (reading my 地球-宇宙 book) and now I'm on the train home. Gotta be at work in four hours.