wheels, man. wheels.

If you've seen a blue blur streaking through the streets of the city, I have a pretty exciting explanation for you. Well, it's not really a streak ... if you've seen a really tall kid struggle embarrassingly up and down the hills of Atlanta, I can tell you what that is. Nick Campbell is with bicycle.

Sean Kiskel asked me a long while ago, "Nick, why don't you get a bike?" My response: "I find walking to be more stately." And I still believe this. There's a quiet dignity in plodding along unassisted by locomotive technology. It gives you time to think, to run through your day, and, if you're like me, time to imagine what you'd say to Jon Stewart when he interviews you. But it takes FOREVER. I live a five minute drive east of downtown and, somehow, it takes me twenty to thirty minutes to walk to any amenity: grocery store, train station, movie theatre, etc. And it's only getting worse. In the time I've lived in this area (about three and a half years) at least seven housing developments have come up less than a mile from Unit N with no concrete addition of infrastructure. If you keep putting condos up on all the land around the area, how will you build the things you need to help sustain them (gas stations, grocery stores, etc)?

When Erica moved to her new place off a major road that was not at all bike-friendly, she blew the dust off the Blue Devil (a blue mountain bike we bought together many years previous) and gave it to me to store. Now I use it. Jess saw my helmet earlier this week* and said my using a bike was rendering her world crumbled. But I get to places in a third of the time, sweating an equal amount (I'm still drenched in salt and my own filth but all at once while biking instead of steadily over a long period of time while walking) but still giving me more time to sit and watch Boy Meets World. Oh, that Rider Strong.

I'm probably not going to ride in Critical Mass and I'm not going to get all into my bike and talk about it like it's my nephew. I see this bike more like how people who buy jalopies their friends laugh at explain their hoopties: "It gets me from point A to point B." And it gets me there faster than my ADIDAS alone can.

* Jess saw me earlier this week at McCray's while we watched Katie perform live acoustic music. You should come and check her out Sundays at 8ish. She plays her own music and a few covers and she told me that if enough people come she'll cover "Thunder Kiss '65" by White Zombie. Or was it "Leggy Blonde" by The Flight of the Conchords? I can't remember.