Some days the bike ride really does feel like a hamster wheel, and today was one of those, which is exactly what I wanted. I woke up with the sense that something wasn’t right, couldn’t shake it through reading, meetings, emailing, or writing, so at the end of the day, I put on my bike shoes and took my bike to the reservoir to do laps, one after another, listening to a song or two on repeat. Continue reading
personal
Red House at 29th & St. Paul
I meant for today’s ride to take me to Hampden for a little shopping and some coffee, but instead it took me around the neighborhood, trying not to feel to sick and tired for a bike ride. I walked slowly slowly, pushing the bike past row house after row house. But they aren’t all row houses here. Sometimes they’re like this red and stone gingerbread house on the corner of 29th and St. Paul. I turned the corner, and I was back to row houses, but the painted ladies with all their cornices and stuff, not the plain-fronted ones on Maryland, built after row houses were big money. Aesthetic injustice, it’s a scourge. I made it home, put the bike away, and tucked myself in. Tomorrow’s another day, for another ride.
Bank of America at 32nd & St. Paul
I wanted to go on a real bike ride today, but it was windy and rainy, and I just didn’t have it in me for that kind of ride. But I did manage to take the bike up and down the hill to the Bank of America at 32nd and St. Paul to finally close out my account now that my credit union account is all up and running and I finally have my direct deposit business sorted out. Continue reading
Beer and TVs at a Sports Bar in the Can Company
It’s nearing the end of the calendar year, and I have money in my FSA that I just haven’t had time to spend. That means it’s time for another trip to the spectacles shop, and none too soon, seeing as how the right temple of my current pair of glasses is held together by first aid tape. S. and I picked out my frames last week, so today I bundled up and hopped on the bike to the Can Company for the one hour eyeglass shoppe to put lenses in for me. But then my prescription was out of date, so I waited fo an appointment. And then I waited some more and some more, and finally, four hours later, I am looking sharp, as are things in a distance, and a whole bunch of grading is in the bag, and now it’s time to visit this weird sports bar for a well-earned beer and a sandwich. All these kinds of sports bars are the same, and tonight this predictable sameness is just what I want before I hop back on the bike and shiver home. The day was lost in a single errand, but I mostly did the errand so I could take a bike ride, so I say, success! Rides of five miles or less? Take your bike. But note to self: it is time to cover those ears, for real.
Sun Setting Over Druid Hill Park From the Reservoir Path
It’s the end of the semester, and I’ve been burning the candle at about fifteen ends, so by the time this Friday rolled around I was tired, tired, tired. Nope, I didn’t feel like getting on my bike. I felt like getting in bed with cats and starting a new book, but I also knew that once I started pedaling, I’d be glad to be spinning around. And, of course, I was right. Continue reading
Lighting Strung From a Piller at 2640 St. Paul
It’s time for the American Studies Association annual conference, and this year, it’s in Baltimore. That means I get to loll around my house and then just hop on the bike and roll down the hill to the Hilton instead of paying a zillion bucks a night to sleep there. That’s what I did this afternoon, and I hung out in those boring rooms with their uncomfortable chairs and their air walls that seem to transfer sound rather than actually make another room. Those rooms have hosted so many different conferences and meetings and endless chatter, and today’s was about the many layers of racial difference and ethnicity, nation states and colonialism, hybridity and difference. It was good, there was listening, and I saw familiar faces that reminded me that I am known. It was nice. Then I rode back up the hill to home, picked up S. from the train station, fed us some dinner, and walked to the old churchat 2640 St. Paul for a panel of really, really smart people who talked in this old church about racism in the 21st century. It was so good, and Andy Smith said something I really needed to hear: there’s a difference between a politics of recognition and a politics of self-determination. I snapped this picture and thought about how many different ways the same spaces can be used. So many means, so many ends.
Nat Philbrick in the Poe Room at the Pratt Library on Cathedral & Mulberry
Today’s bike ride took me down to Fells Point to meet V. for coffee and work–she wrote about women’s human rights, I graded papers about gender and social construction–before heading up to the library for a talk. I haven’t figured out a good way to get from Fells Point and points east to the west side without getting trapped between cars on Charles Avenue, so I took the long way around via the friendly bike route via Fallsway. Continue reading
Rally At the Baltimore City Detention Center on Eager Street to Protest Proposed New Youth Prison
So I’m bounding down the stairs to grab my bike and head over to Fells Point to meet V. for a writing session when I step off the last step and my ankle turns, leaving me crumpled in a pile on the floor. My first thought was that my older brother would love this, and my second thought was damn, I need to ride my bike, and there’s a march and rally later today, so a sprained ankle simply will not do. Continue reading
Dean Spade Speaking at the Radical Book Pavillion at the Baltimore Book Fair
I hadn’t been on my bike since Wednesday, which was far too long, but I wasn’t driving–I was just in New York, where nobody I know ever even thinks about cars. Oh, it is magical there! I didn’t have time for a bike ride, busy as I was with the fantastic Barnard Center for Research on Women conference and a side trip wandering through Harlem, visiting a couple national parks, but there were bikes and bike lanes everywhere, and C. reports the one on Second Ave is about to go all the way to the tippy top of the island. I can’t wait to bring my bike there and just go wild. Sigh. I took the train back to Baltimore, rested a bit, and then took my bike to the book fair to hear D. talk and lead the kind of discussion you hope to get at that sort of thing but rarely do–thing is, the state is the site of so much violence, we kind of need to think of strategies other than going to that same state for redress or protection if we really want all of us to be safe, in the most expansive sense of that term. It was a weekend full of reports, ideas, new plans, and old friends, such a treat. But it was good to ride my bike to the coffee shop, grade some papers, and then climb back up the hill, because that’s the sort of thing that feels like home.
Episcopal Church at Cathedral & Read
Finally the rain stopped falling this afternoon and I got to take the Surly out for an inaugural ride in Baltimore. I headed up a few blocks to grab lunch, then over to the coffee shoppe for some work–yes, I do have things to do besides unpack–and then to Mt. Vernon to meet V., my new colleague and future drinking buddy, for a large iced tea and some conversation. Man, the bike going downhill is a trip! I was seriously flying, and it felt fantastic, if a bit scary. I’m just not used to hills, but I won’t be saying that for long. Just being on the bike made me feel more at home, and I am seriously pumped to spend the next however many years doing laps, using gears, yelling on the inside for the Bolt bus to get out of my bike lane, it’s all I have. I was early to our date–the downhill ride took about three minutes, and I sat outside, looking up at the cloudy sky, thinking this church is awfully old and pretty, knowing that in the not-too-distant future I will take myself on a tour of the thing. So much new! I rode back on the uphill, grateful for my many gears and the part where I am not at all in a hurry.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 