Stuff I Did This Weekend

Blurry Snow Geese on 526 East of Allentown

26 February 2012

I took a day off from work on Friday in order to check in with my back doctor and then drive down to Chinatown in Philly for a few hours to say goodbye to a former colleague.  The three of us had met at the Brain Factory, a veritable prison camp for scientists.  When I escaped, one of the three of us already had, but the third, a visiting professor from Japan, was stuck there until this week.  The lab did its usual send-off for foreigners, which included the mandatory coffee-table book of university photographs, lest he forget what the place looked like.  But we two escapees waited until Friday so that we could meet for lunch in Chinatown, away from the lab and its bad memories.  He asked the two of us to sign the book, as other lab members had.  I wrote, "All U.S. labs are fucked up in one way or another. The [Brain Factory] is fucked up in every way.  They're not all like that."

After lunch, we walked him to the subway, and then the two of us wandered through the Reading Terminal Market.  I still had time on the meter, so we walked down to his new lab, on a high floor in a university complex, with commanding views of South Philly and New Jersey.  Well, they would have been commanding had the city not been hidden under a persistent mist.

Jack was at a meeting in Camden that was scheduled to end soon.  I left my friend to his work and went back towards the market, where I had just enough time to buy beans from Old City Coffee, and a mug that I'm considering bringing to work:

Nerd!

Then there were these:

Chocolate-covered onions.  Yeah, um, no thanks.

Now I had to go pick Jack up.  I say "had" because, after spending two hours reliving one bad experience, the last thing I wanted to do was drive to the campus of another.  Yeah, a chunk of the Lost Years was spent in a lab in Camden.  It was my graduate school experience that soured me on the scientific life, but I put most of the blame on my own personal shortcomings rather than the working environment.  After I left, as the years wore on, as I jumped from one lab to another, some good, some wretched, I realized that it's a combination of both, and that I have just enough of whatever it takes to stay on as a technician who can go home at night and think about something else.  Anyway, as I turned onto campus I figured that I'd remember every bit of concrete in the place.  Boy, was I wrong.  I guess fifteen years and moving on with my life will do that.  I couldn't even remember how to find the highway from campus.  You'd think I'd at least have remembered how to get out.

Get out we did, with only one wrong turn.  On the way home, Jack bought up my freshman year of college -- arguably the worst year of my life.  "Geez,"  I said.  "It was bad enough talking about Camden and the Brain Factory, so, thanks for that."

What saved me was knowing we were on our way to going out to dinner with some of the gang from my current lab at the Castle on the Hill.  That was fun.  I'm glad it's not taking me more than an hour or two to remember where I am now.

Saturday's wind was ridiculous.  Only Plain Jim and Al were dumb enough to try to ride in it.  Cheryl, Ron, and I all showed up at the gym for Andy's spin class instead.  In the afternoon I went to a town hall meeting to see my Congressional Representative about a local environmental issue that, despite years of work, hasn't been resolved.  It was fun listening to him answer most people's questions, deftly dodge a few others, and dispose of the apparent Teabags.  I wouldn't want his job.  After that, Jack and I wound up going out to dinner with two of our Terrys and a different Andy from the one in the morning.

Today the weather was much better.  Theresa picked me up and the two of us went to Winter Larry's ride.  There was a strong wind out of the northwest, but it was manageable.

We were at a red light halfway through Hightstown, on one of the ages-old standard southern routes, when a white SUV called out to us that no bikes are allowed on this road.  Larry wasn't playing dumb when he turned to say, "I didn't know that."  The driver said, "There's a sign back there."  Larry answered, "Thank you," and the light turned green.  We grumbled.  What sign?  We've been coming through here for years.  This is a County road.  The township can't make the rules, I was certain.  What if we were commuters?  We're vehicles, just like the cars are.  "He's full of shit," I said, with no evidence to back it up.

Kermit is a perfect bike.

On our way home from the rest stop in Hornerstown, we passed a field full of snow geese.  I pulled over for a picture, and as I did, the nearest of them took flight.  By the time I pulled my gloves off to turn on my phone's video camera, they'd settled down again.  I took a video, sticking my thumb in the way, of course.  At this point, Larry climbed onto the fence and started yelling at the geese, hoping they'd startle again.  They didn't, but that's not stopping me from posting the video.

Our route home took us back through Hightstown.  I kept my eyes on the signposts, looking for something, anything, that said, "no bikes."  When we got near the intersection of this morning's incident, Larry started looking behind him.  He said that he knew that there had been a sign many years ago, but that when one of our members had asked the township about it, he was told to ignore it.

Larry looked back again.  "I saw it," he said.  "A bike in a circle with a red line through it."

"Yeah," I said, "But on this side there was no sign," and I started singing:

As I was walking

I saw a sign there

And that sign said

No trespassing

But on the other side

It didn't say nothing 

That side was made for you and me

(Woody Guthrie, kids.  Look him up.)

And now, a random picture of an 11-month-old kitten trying to look regal: