I Hate Crosswinds, and Other Random Notes.

Internet service is out at the apartment, for reasons my feeble computer literacy cannot fully fathom. I can't call the service company until tomorrow, so forgive the brevity and utter lack of polish from this post, as it comes from my graduate lab at the library and will see nothing resembling revision.

I just rode back from the beach, and feel a need to share my displeasure with crosswinds with the world (or all eight of you that read this). Headwinds on the way there (heading east, obviously) are all fine and good, as, while they make the outbound trip a bit arduous when I'm full of energy and prepared to cope, they speed me on my merry way home, when I'm tired and it's getting dark and cold. Tailwinds on the way are fine too, as they hasten my ride there and hence get me more daylight time. Let it not be said that I am a pessimist in such matters. Crosswinds just bite, however. They are a general impediment for both trips, as well as an affront to my general constructions of fairness and justice. Fie on them. If I wanted to travel north, I'd move.

While I was at the beach, I found a cool looking piece of driftwood. It is, of course, probably the defining character of lifelong inlanders that we find driftwood novel, there being no shortage of it or anything like that. I was considering sanding and polishing it and trying to pass it off on some unsuspecting hippie as "art," but I suspect that plays better in places like Columbus, where people can't just get their own certified Atlantic driftwood and then spend 99 cents on sandpaper at Home Depot. Alas--my fledgling career cut cruelly short. I was going to take a picture of the driftwood and the nifty conch I found nearby and then post them, but suddenly remembered that I'm the last person in the Western Hemisphere without a digital camera, so I can't. My birthday is in August, by the way. And you'll just have to take my word on the aesthetic merits of the shell and wood.

Being a novice to this whole coastal experience, I'm encountering ocean birds (terns? herons?) with which I have no familiarity. Among one species, I've concluded that the ones with brown speckles on their heads and the ones without are probably males and females, but have no better idea than a coin toss to determine which is which. I've also noticed that two different species of bird will occupy the same stretch of beach with nary a peep of discontent from either: peceful coexistence, ornithology-style. Warms the heart, I tell you. I'll have to write more about this when I ascertain some clue as to what I'm talking about. I'd take pictures in the hopes that someone more knowledgeable could help me out, but (refer to previous paragraph).

And thus ends my daily musing on things coastal (But not grammatical--have you ever seen news publications use "thusly" instead of "thus?" Fills me with blind, lashing-out, English-scholar rage, I tell you. The former is not a word. "Thus" is already an adverb, hence adding "ly" to it is a redundant illiteracy which should be punished with a terse rap of a ruler across the knuckles, preferably by a stern-faced nun with dark rimmed and thorougly out-of-style glasses. It's the formative equivalent of "extremelyly;" it further violates the natural and sensible trend of the English language to contract and abbreviate words rather than have them expand and sprawl, much like this rambling and, it must be conceded, increasingly unwieldy sentence and parenthetical.) Whew.

Okay, brain is out-o-gas like like a Shell station in 1972 with a line full of Buicks and Oldsmobiles queued up around the block. I'm hopping on the bike and heading home. Another post is waiting on my computer, and will be tranferred to the blog tomorrow if I can sort out my issues with the Thin Air Network in an amicable, nonviolent, and unlitigious manner. Think of this post as "snack food" until then. Don't read it too many times, or you'll spoil your appetite.