The Universe

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The excitement of my week(end) came mostly in the form of a clogged sink.  Noticing it was draining slowly, the Captain decided to snake our bathroom sink.  This resulted in a sink that refused to drain at all.  So he plunged it.  This resulted a sink filled with black, smelly water.  Apparently, it is called

Day-Maker #85

A young lady sitting behind me on the Metro tapped my shoulder.  "Oh, I was just gonna show you the rainbow," she said as the train passed by concrete sound barriers.  Then the blue and grey sky broke forth and I saw the brilliant rainbow!

And this was right after I had found Noah's ark.

Short Stories from a Quick Week

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I am slightly amazed by how quickly this week has gone by. Having a snow day helped. I am constitutionally suited for four-day work weeks and six hour work days. The two-hour delay was magnificent. The Captain and I used the extra morning time to hash out all the issues involved in the Boy Scout’s stance on homosexuality and women in combat situation. During these discussions I realized the immense temptation of the ad hominem (quite literally) argument. I kept wanting to protest, “But you don’t get it! Everything about you says PRIVILEGE!”

The Sound of Silence

My car makes strange noises.  I don't know how many people ride around in their cars in silence, but this funny thing happens on a car ride: the car makes noises.

When I have my music turned up and am "singing" the lyrics at an embarrassing volume, I don't hear noises.  I don't hear my engine when I accelerate, my wipers when it rains outside, my defroster blasting the windshield at 6am.  Or, if I do hear the sounds, they are so much the background that they don't matter.

Turn off the music and all of a sudden the sounds of my car take the forefront of my auditory perceptions.

I can hear 1.5 of my 3 loyal readers asking, "But, Beth, why would you ever drive in silence?"  (At which  point I ask myself: "Which of them is only half-speaking to me?")  I drive in silence because in the past few weeks I finally got the hint from God that I need more silence in my life.  Recently, the Pope has been speaking about the need for silence in the spiritual life, and I have encountered everything from old saints to new bloggers who are encouraging silence as more than part of prayer, but as a habit of life.

I decided to start placing deliberate silence in my life in the car.  I'll remember to keep silence as I drive, and my mind won't be racing from one task to the next, the way it is when I am alone in my apartment.  So I flip off the radio at least once a day and spend some quality quiet time with my copilot.

A funny thing happens when I go through life with silence:  I make strange noises.  (Okay, get your laughs out before you read on.)  Not the audible kind, but the background noises that sit in the unobtrusive parts of my life.  Most of the time I can ignore these parts of me, because there are so many other noises that take loud precedents.

I thought I was going to use the time of silence to get to know God better.  Instead, He is using the time to show me more about myself.  Which, I should have known, is part of the journey.  The learning process will help me grow closer to God.  And then, once I get to know my internal noises, I will be able to let them sit quiet while I sit with Him.

On Being a Day-Maker: I'm Half Crazy...

10 points for commentators who recognize the musical allusion of the title!

On Sunday, Percy told Julia and me that he needed to see a man about a horse. Then he rephrased : a bicycle. On Monday, I went with Percy to find the man with the bike. We arrived at the meeting place (a Catholic church) where we found a sketchy white van (thanks to the DC sniper, they will forever creep me out) and met the man who was selling his bike. He opened the van and pulled out a beautiful, red bicycle. Of the two-seated variety.

The bicycle man told us about the biking he'd done, the tandem rides he and his wife had ridden, how he started biking, where we could learn about biking, where we should ride, how we could find out more about this bike, his Element, his white van, his wife's car, Hurricane Isabel, and at least a dozen other topics, as Percy inquired about the bike and looked it over. We took it for a test spin around the parking lot, and I think at that moment Percy was sold. I don't understand how ideas come into his head, but this one ranks among the best. After an almost-intense debate about whether or not the bike would fit in Percy's car, we discovered that it did, and Percy made a purchase of a tandem bike.

The bike is meant to provide transportation for Percy and a roommate to and from school next semester. In the meantime, the roommate is out of state for the summer and I am riding "stoker." (The front seat is called the captain; the backseat the stoker.)

We followed a bike path yesterday from a park to historic Jamestowne, a 14 mile ride that went by gloriously fast. We started learning each others' balance and cycling habit, and Percy is learning to communicate the minutest of details, such as "I'm braking now," or "Stop pedaling." I am learning to play a constant trust game, since I can't see ahead, steer, or brake, and thus discovering how hard it is for me to give up control.

In general, riding a tandem bike goes as smoothly as riding a normal bike, with the added factor of compensating for someone else's balance -- as he is compensating for the balance as well. The tricky parts are the starting and stopping, which require more coordination and balance. Our starts have become smoother over only two days, so it shouldn't be long before it is flawless.

Today, we went down to CW and on the parkway. We saw more people and therefore got more stares. Normally, I hate when people look at me, but today I just felt awesome. I know the look of people who just saw something that made their day -- I wear it often enough -- and we were definitely a day-maker for several people. Including a car of little old ladies who smiled and laughed and waved. We managed to keep up with them for a few seconds, but 25 mph is still a challenge. We'll get better though.

Slugs

Cute, huh?

Imagine this: You are traveling home down I-95 from DC to the southern suburbs. You crawl along in traffic with only your radio for comfort, watching the HOV lanes fly by at 65mph. The next day, as you head down 14th St on your way out of the city, you see commuters lined up to pay $4.75 to ride home. And you think, I'd pay to have one of y'all (you're from Virginia!) in my car. Meanwhile, those in line watch enviously as motorists start their trip.

This is how I imagine slug lines formed, and I have some support in this theory. (Click that link, and you can read it.) Today, as I stood in line for the bus, I watched the line depleting in front of me, vanishing into cars, whose drivers held up fingers and called out locations. People speak their own language here -- "Old Hechinger's" has not stood in the parking lot for years, but commuters still use that term. As far as I can figure out, D.C. is the only area where this form of travel exists. Much as I hate this city, I also love it.

The man in front of me obviously wanted a slug ride over the bus and got seriously ticked when drivers only went up the the requisite HOV-3, rather than filling the car. It struck me that slugging has rules, similar to walking on the left and standing on the right of the Metro escalators.

I had a few moments of wondering what I would do if I made it to the front of the line and someone called out my home. While the idea fascinates me and I have never heard of there being any danger in slugging, I still couldn't imagine getting into a car with a complete stranger.

Commuting

I must be the one with the ponytail...

Courtesy of xkcd.com :-)

Chivalry Isn't Dead

Less than three hours after I scribbled the lines for my last post into a notebook on the bus, the world decided to prove to me that just as sexism is not dead, neither is chivalry.

It start Wednesday when one of my fellow interns (who makes me look chubby) walked a block and a half to get a case of bottled water for our meeting. On her way back to the building we were in, a man on the street offered to carry it for her and proceeded to do so.

Then, yesterday we attended a conference in DC. I left early, floored by an impressive migraine. Upon reaching the elevator at the same time, Congressman Price ushered me in first despite his obvious hurry and two (male) interns held doors open as we left. On the Metro, a man offered me the empty seat ahead of him.

These are mostly $15 stories, not worthy of blogging, but after yesterday's post, I figured I should mention them.

Warning: Satire

Lake Ridge is a strange place. It sprang up as a suburb of Washington, DC at a time when suburbs were springing up and successful yuppies saw the hills and trees and single through-street as a blessing compared to the metaphorical constipation of the nation's capital (or Capitol, as the case may be). In the time since its birth, Lake Ridge has grown by leaps and bounds, removing its hills and trees and stubbornly reaffirming the beauty of its bumper to bumper single through-street.

Another startling phenomenon of the community finds its roots in Lake Ridge's roots: coming of age in an age where a "car in every backyard" meant one to stay at home in the backyard while the master and the mistress took to the roads for their separate and lengthy commutes, Lake Ridge was built for cars. As the world goes green, Lake Ridge recycles and buys organic food and insists that walking is for exercise and "Mexicans" (mostly from El Salvador). Public transit? The community kindly looks the other way as business men and military personnel board the commuter bus, ignores the local bus that spread from Woodbridge, and wonders when MetroRail will extend to Potomac Mills.

Because the only way to get anywhere in Lake Ridge (especially if one happens to be white) is a car, motorists do not know how to react when they see a pedestrian, even if she is headed towards, or waiting at, a bus stop. Struck by this unusual sight, drivers lose control of their hands, flailing them about until they make contact with the horn. The sound brings them to their senses again as they pass the pedestrian, and they carry safely on their way.

At least, this is the only reason I can discern as to why a young woman in a business dress would have such an experience. After all, we live in a post-feminist world where men view women as equals and do not objectify them. By some evaluations, sexism has gone the way of racism and the Kennedy half dollar, views that are only exacerbated by a few back-sassing women who refuse to see any changes in the female situation since we won the vote in 1920. The reality is, we've grown in leaps and bounds -- but as long as women still get honked at multiple times in the 30 seconds they stand at a bus stop near the single through-street of a D.C. suburb, we still have some distance to go.


It's a good thing I know some really quality men, or I might lose hope for this world.

Commuting Strategy, Take 2

Working just outside the confines of the normal 9-5 hours means that 1) I miss the commuter bus to Arlington and 2) I miss rush hour (kind of). Therefore, I eschew public transit in favor of the temporally and economically wise drive of my own. While I enjoy the flexibility in the margin of error (one minute late means one minute late, not half an hour), I miss the time on the bus and train to read and pray and let my mind wander. You have to pay attention when you drive!

I get an odd feeling every time I exit the highway on the way home. I can take the HOVs partway there and back, since you don't have to be a HOV outside of the delineated rush hour hours. Thus, I enter the highway in the morning and exit in the evening in the exact same lane. Traveling 65 miles per hour in opposite directions.

It's HUGE!

I have shared my personal space bubble with more people in the past 4 days than in the previous four months. Okay, maybe that's not quite accurate, since there was an Encounter in there, but be that as it may, I have shared it quite a bit recently. And my personal space bubble is extremely important, guarded and huge.

However, if you want to get anywhere in the Metro area during just about any hours of the day and you don't have a car to protect your bubble with a metal, traffic-braving, can't-be-parked-anywhere cage, you will find yourself sharing space with all sorts of people.

I am a commuter, something I never wanted to be. Now that I am, however, I find that the whole thing fascinates me, and it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. Granted, by the end of the summer, I might be singing a different tune.

It's funny how we keep family, co-workers, friends at a physical distance all day long, and then crowd as close as we can to perfect strangers in order to fit everyone on a train. Or the agony we suffered in middle school when we had to sit beside a stranger on the bus, compared to the relief in simply finding a seat. The composed manner in which businessmen conduct themselves, until they have to sprint to make it to their chosen transit before it pulls out without them.

And the cross section of people! Men in business attire and backpacks, women in suits and sneakers, soldiers in BDUs, a smattering of humanity with suitcases and travel plans... and at least seven pro-life interns scatter throughout the Metro system. I like the freedom and self-sufficiency, as well as (parking permitting) the relative cheapness, of a car, but the people watching on buses and the Metro is unparalleled.

Take for instance the fact that the 7am bus to the Pentagon was completely silent, whereas the 9:45 bus to Springfield was filled with a variety of conversation. The knack commuters have for looking around without actually seeing anyone. The confident stride of a seasoned commuter versus the meander route of the confused tourist. The perpetual school groups in matching t-shirts or name badges.

The major downsides are the temporal and financial drains. I think we should extend the metro to Potomac Mills and save me a bus ride.