Biking in the city

I'm tired of apartment hassles. It's been over two weeks, and still no phone. Stuck in a conundrum of Kafkic proportions, only too common these days when dealing with gigantic phone company-corporations and impersonal rental companies. Neither seems to believe what the other is saying; the phone company says a visit from one of their technicians could cost nothing, or could cost $100 (they won't know until they actually visit). Perhaps I can do without a phone--I'll just use a mirror to signal down the street to the pizza joint.

Saturday I did finally get my internet hooked up. The guy was an hour and a half late, but was kindly. He said the saddest part of his job was finding bird nests full of eggs or chicks in the cable boxes each spring.

Naturally, my wait for the cable guy took up the bulk of Saturday's beautiful weather. It's rained 28 of the last 35 days or so in Minneapolis, and I was itching to be on my bike. Few pleasures quite like sailing down to the river. I explored Nicollet Island. Someday I could see myself having a house there, when I get old and decrepit and take to smoking a corn-cob pipe and sitting in a roughly-hewn rocker among my crocuses, reading Whitman to young undergrads on pilgrimages.

I headed over to Brian's, but his apartment was dark, his bike was gone. Sadness. The park outside his apartment was filled with folks playing ball and grilling, and I was alone in the city.

But as I ascended the streets toward Riverside, what should I see but Brian, heading toward me. We smiled at each other with a block between us. He had just been to my place and had himself been denied. Such can be the magic of Minneapolis summers.

Posted by jason at June 15, 2024 07:56 AM