"Fun" in Cincinnati

Since the folks got back to the normal routines of life (work and school), it's gotten a bit dull around here. Most days I find myself waking up after noon, and browsing the internet. My own corner of the internet is the forums for the webcomic xkcd; that's where I hang out most of the time. There are some fun people around there, and interesting topics of conversation, and amusing games. It's an all right place. But I found myself wishing I were talking to people I know. That was a problem, because my excellently long break came with a disadvantage: it started much later than most people's, and didn't coincide with them very much. Last week, I mainly stayed in and hung around xkcd and read books. I finished Professor Savarese's book Reasonable People, which I highly recommend, incidentally. I only finished it yesterday, which will give you a sense of my distractability as regards reading in my free time. Micah comes home at 15:30 or so from school, and Mom and Dad usually come home pretty late. So it gets a bit monotonous around here. I decided I was going to do something more interesting. So on Monday, I did. I walked the dog briefly, and then got on my bike to ride to Finneytown.
-The first thing I discovered was that I've gotten a bit out of shape, not riding my bike in the last few weeks. I didn't bring my bike back, and I only inflated the tires on Dad's bike just last week. So mostly I haven't been biking. Enter the Galbraith hill. It seemed endless. As I pedaled up, the hill stopped me in my tracks. I had to pull into an entrance and just let my heart rate come back down from the ionosphere. As I kept going, I had to do that twice more. By the time I got to level ground, my chest was burning and each pedal stroke was a victory. But through persistence, I made it to my ultimate oasis: Chipotle.
-When I got there, I sat down in my booth and just figured out how to breathe normally, which took me five or ten minutes. Then I ordered a root beer and a fajita, and ate. I couldn't eat the entire fajita, so I carried it around with me in a bag, and biked to Warder. Warder was pretty much as I remembered it. There was a little bit of ice trying to form at Near Bank, and someone had cut through the tree that fell across the trail at Far Bank, so that the trail was passable without climbing once again. It was pleasantly quiet. I checked out the area by the Ivory Tower (a tall pine I think I've mentioned). The clubhouse had been torn down. I know the guy who built this thing (though I think he prefers to remain anonymous). It was a cabin, built sturdily and painted black. It had a lockable door and a mattress inside and everything. Even a walkway paved with stones from the nearby creek. There was an awesome fire pit outside. This thing was professional quality. Lined with not just a few rocks but an entire wall of them, to dissipate the heat, it also had a small wooden floor around it and a very high-class large grate for cooking. There were solid benches around it. Any professional outdoor chef would have been proud to own this fire pit. But the house had been destroyed; the walls were scattered willy-nilly, and the furniture from inside was all gone. They even dismantled the fire pit and flung it all everywhere. I figure it was some really spiteful vandals. I haven't gotten any word back from the architect yet, but I offered him my condolences. Really, a shame.
-From there, I killed some time biking aimlessly, and then at 15:00 finally sucked it up and went to the Finneytown Secondary Compound. I was not there for the nostalgia - in fact, the place actively repulsed me - but rather for the academic team game. Unfortunately, the team had decided nt to wait outside for the bus, but rather in Mr Lorenz's room, so I had to go inside. A bit depressing, but I tried to pay very little attention to the place. We eventually left (on, as it happens, a short bus), and arrived at Cincinnati State for the match. The team was playing Cincinnati Country Day, who were a little late, but did get there. While they played, Mr Lorenz asked about how things have been going since I got myself the hell out of Finneytown. I said they've been going pretty darn well. He told me about stuff he's been doing. He completed his first longbow recently; it's seven feet high and has a range of 125 yards or so. He hopes to get it up to 150 with better string. This is the man who also built a working trebuchet. I only really got to talk to the team on the bus, because they were occupied the whole game. I watched with regret. They were afraid of the buzzer! That, and they just didn't have as many answers as the other team did. All told, the varsity lost painfully at twenty-something to forty-something, and the reserve lost 14 to 36. It hurt to watch. They don't normally do so badly, but Tim and Christian were both out sick, and Christian is their answer man, so they had limited resources. As it was, they had to bring in a non-member just to sub. Well, anyhow, we left. I got to talk to Joe Rebman, and a few of the other players whom I never knew that well last year, like David Whitehead. There was only one new player, Brian Lee. They need to recruit harder next year. Joe told me he enjoyed playing vibraphone in pit this year, and he's going to do it next year. He gave me a little update on what's been going on around Finneytown's neck of the woods. Apparently Keith came back to the school for a visit one day, and got kicked out for "nut-checking" a kid (nut-checking involves inflicting a certain pain). You know, I haven't heard from Keith since we graduated.
-We got back, and I biked home, but not before enjoying a cone of Graeter's. The bike back was downhill and significantly less taxing. I came in the door and relaxed.
-I'm going to go to the gym next semester. Of the two gyms in Grinnell, I've been in one of them just a few times and the other not once since enrolling. (I only visited it during my tour last April.) That'll need to change; I'm becoming domesticated. Now, I think the strenuousness of Monday's ride is partly because Dad's bike needs some serious TLC - the back derailleur is stuck fast, and the brakes are seriously misaligned - but I still do need to avoid ignoring my fitness. I like being in good shape. I hate being in bad shape. It makes me feel impotent and even a bit ill. The gym is among the many fun things I'll be participating in next semester. Last semester, I didn't do much because I was new to the whole Grinnell thing, but now I've got lots of fun opportunities that I either didn't know of before or that are only now open to me. I'll be working at CERA, that place that I visited and wrote about on 16SEP. I don't know what exactly I'll be doing, but I've already been accepted for work there. With my new krokay set, I'll be starting up the Grinnell Krokay Contingent. I'll also be in the newly formed Parkour club, which will give me considerable exercise. I'll also have a linguistics class (fun!), a fiction writing class (fun! - hopefully, but people have been telling me the professor is a bad professor, so I'll have to find out), a Russian class (slightly fun!) and a music class (fun!). And I won't have to start from scratch with friends, which is always good. I'm going to be busy - busy having fun.