Books, Breads and Bikes: October 2018

With summer passing into a very abbreviated autumn, the bike riding has gotten chillier and more infrequent. Although I make use of NiceRide bicycles as much as I can, sometimes it is tough to beat the warmth and free time riding the bus or train provides. It is probably indicative of having grown up in a town without public transit that I am just learning how vital it can be to know the efficiency and usefulness a reliable public transportation system engenders to those who choose to, or can afford to use it. Sitting on the bus gives me a few extra minutes to look at the paper, or scan my email, or catch the latest news - those meaningful distractions that make up a working day for most people which I am not privy to when I am riding a bicycle.

So I should tell stories about losing my keys on the bus, or how sometimes the other bus riders are rude, or how sometimes the bus or train feels like a little microcosm, how the bus is packed with school kids sometimes, drunks other times ... maybe something about the homeless people trying to live on the trains, or the business people trying to save gas money with their daily multi-modal commute. As far as I can tell, the larger an urban area is, and the more people it caters to, the closer it becomes to an ecological presence of its own volition, nearly alive in the cement and steel that guides sentience through it.

Since my foot injury in 2015, I have gotten a NiceRide membership and accrued over 1,000 station to station commutes. I can't really vouch for how far each one was or how fast; I can add in the 190 I made in 2013 and the 145 I made in 2012, but an exact number doesn't exist. The better discussion is probably focused more on my health and my overall well being, the money and carbon saved from utilizing that resource, and the congeniality of a non-profit organization who made an effort to accommodate my needs. For which I am thankful. Thanks NiceRide, you rock.

After moving to Minneapolis from Saint Paul I have slowly adjusted to my new kitchen, which is smaller and has its own idiosyncrasies. There have been a few decent bicycle rides since May, and time for fishing as well as continuing to volunteer while hoping for a reasonable outcome to my ongoing employment crisis.

I did lose my keys on the bus once, last year. They fell out of my bag on a Tuesday morning, and I didn't notice until 9:45 pm the same night. That was a long day.

The next day I took flowers to the lost and found window at Metro Transit, to thank the driver or rider who found them and turned them in, rather than making my life worse. It took some phone calls and the landlords were not enthusiastic about my emergency maintenance call, but once the keys were found, buying flowers was the least I could do.