Archive for August, 2007
So I'm having this dream. I'm back at college, riding my bike up the hill to an early morning class. A single-strap bookbag threatens to strangle me as I stand up to crank the pedals, my legs burning, hands tugging backwards on the handlebars. My eyes are bleary from a late night studying business cases and eating cheap pastries pulled from the grocery store discount rack. I'm thinking about the litany of classes waiting ahead, and how there's little chance I'll be able to sneak a nap in between the cracks of my frenetic schedule. I finally pedal up to the bike rack. I drop the bag, lock the bike, then grab my stuff and head for the door of the building.
First order of business: breakfast. Strangely, my usual 6 a.m. bowl of Corn Squares has been replaced by a catered continental spread, replete with poppy seed bread and unpalatable granola smothered in yogurt. My fellow classmates seem oddly grown up, queuing in front of the breakfast donuts and chatting about world events. Something doesn't seem right....
Then it hits me. I'm no longer 19. This isn't the college I attended as an undergraduate. But what am I doing here? What bizarre sequence of events has banished me back to the academic world from whence I came, five years ago, eager to experience the corporate maze?
Eventually I awake out of my fog to realize that I chose to be here at 6:30 a.m. I chose to go back to school. What madness was this?! Goodbye free time! Goodbye family outings! Hello homework! Enter exams!
August 17th, 2007
When we lived in Kansas I rode my bike constantly, mostly because there wasn't a lot else to do (other than garden). My Sunday tradition was an epic bike ride of dirt roads and lots of farmland.
Since moving to north Idaho I've done less cycling, probably for two reasons. First, there aren't a lot of paved roads in my county, and I'm not willing to navigate the area's substantial hills on my brother's old department store "mountain" bike. Second, there are so many other things to do: hiking, kayaking, skiing. But somehow in the last couple of days I've spent a lot of time on my bike. My brother Nathan showed up in Spokane and Friday we took the Centennial Trail to Post Falls, where there is an excellent swimming hole beneath the dam. Today I made my first international bike tour: a 36-mile round trip from Copeland, Idaho to Creston, BC. Copeland is about 20 miles north of my house, so I drove there, parked at an elementary school, then road on State Highway 1 up to the border. I received very little harassment from the border patrol, which was unusual (note to self: if I ever need to bring anything suspicious across the border, do it on a bicycle). The road surface on the Canada side isn't quite as smooth as Idaho's, but it's only about 6 miles from the border to Creston.
The nice thing about Creston is that it still has a lively downtown area, and on Sunday most things are open. Turns out the town has quite an international flavor as well, which I learned when I made a pit stop at Black Bear Books to enoy a peach soda. The man sitting next to me had three cell phones sitting on a nearby table. One rang: he spoke in German, giving what sounding like a phone number. A minute later, another phone rings, this time the conversation is in Spanish. He explains to the caller that he's on his way to Calgary and has stopped in Creston. Then his grandson walks up and the man reads him a book in English. Minutes later I leave the book shop and outside on the street two teenagers are conversing in French. I had to remind myself where I was for a second... this is Creston, right?
Below are some pictures I took near the border crossing at Porthill. The day was a bit hazy but the fields are full of some plant (not sure what) that smells great, kind of like lavendar fields.
August 5th, 2007
For most of the years I attended Brigham Young University, I was among the most conservative of the Mormon school's clean-shaven youngsters. Now, looking back as one who passed through the veil of BYU's brand of conformity and beyond into a world of more independent thought, stories from BYU provide no end of amusement.
Two days ago BYU's student newspaper posted a story about students who were caught perpetrating illegal acts by BYU's ever vigilant Honor Code Office. The Honor Code folks were tipped off by photos from Facebook, the online social networking site.
My favorite account was of six female students who were turned in to the Honor Code office after they posted photos of themselves hanging out in their own dorm rooms "dressed immodestly". (At BYU, dressing immodestly often consists of shorts above the knee and sleeveless tops). According to one of the students involved:
She didn't consider the pictures bad or immoral, but was surprised when approximately 50 pages of pictures portraying the girls dressed immodestly were given to BYU's Honor Code Office with a note reading, "Thought you should know."
I can just see the consternation on the Honor Code official's face when he reviews these photos... of students in their own dorm rooms! So now apparently it's illegal to dress immodestly in your own bedroom at BYU. (laugh, choke).
Ah, BYU. Wish I was there. Read the original story here.
August 2nd, 2007
