working on a dead man's bike
Last night, adventure was had.
Yesterday I took the second Language and Formal Reasoning midterm test and probably didn't do too poorly, thanks mostly to packets that were handed out in a lecture I skipped but which I photocopied from someone else which contained proofs for many situations, including two of the three we had to prove on this test. That was cool. After a couple more classes, I got a fish from Cara's room and then went to work with my violin and then practiced a song for church with Bill. While I was at work my mom called me and did exactly what a New York Times article I had read the night before predicted: she freaked out about her kid not wanting to necessarily spend all of Thanksgiving break at home with her. After practicing with Bill I called Ryan and he showed up and we quickly rehearsed some stuff for the CHS band show. As I was walking up to my room, I heard the phone ringing, and as I walked in, a very sleepy-looking Ernie was on the phone with who I could only assume was his mom, explaining to her why he slept through a big calculus exam. While Ryan and I were running through songs, Ernie's mom called me and asked me about how Ernie is doing in school and stuff, and I told her the truth.
So, eventually, Ryan and I got a set list worked out and some songs worked up (a bit) and got out the door. Ryan auditioned for the City High band show and got in as a solo act (ironic in a band show...), but a few days ago he called me with an idea: after he played a few songs by himself, I would burst onstage and join him in the middle of "I'll Fly Away" and then stay up there accompanying him. It went off pretty well, and I think everyone was pretty well surprised, except Lucas who saw Ryan setting a violin on the stage and knew Ryan didn't play it and realized it was mine. Also I couldn't hear myself too well, nor could I hear Ryan, and I was having problems watching him because there was a really bright yellow light right on the other side of him that blinded me whenever I looked at him. And right at the end of our second-to-last song he broke a string. Luckily I had my guitar out in his car so I ran out and grabbed it. We launched into "Star of the County Down" but it didn't work out so well: there is no strap on my guitar so Ryan had to cradle it and that made it hard for him to play and sing well and into the microphones; I was out of breath from running, so my recorder-playing was not good at all; and, worst and most noticeable, we messed up our arrangement so by the end I hadn't done a solo fiddle verse yet and Ryan just stopped but the solo fiddle verse is the best so I told him to keep going and he was so confused but whatever.
After that, Ryan and I went downtown for some reason and got coffee and stuff and then people showed up and it was weird and then we went to his car and went to get gas and accidentally had a really long conversation sitting at the gas pump without ever getting gas. Sometime a bike tire came rolling down the street out of nowhere and hit his front bumper. We got out to examine the situation and try to find the origins of the tire but we couldn't find where the tire came from. We wandered down the streets in every direction looking for bike racks that had a bike without a tire and found nothing. We went and stood across the street from where we were when the tire hit us and asked everybody who walked by if they had seen a bike without a tire. Everybody seemed either really confused or really concerned but nobody knew where the tire could have come from, until one guy said he had indeed seen a bike without a tire. He told us a guy had been wheeling a bike down the street on only one wheel. Ryan asked him which wheel the bike had and the guy said front, and our wheel was a back wheel! Jackpot! He said it was around the corner and to the right so we took off running. We didn't see the bike in the first block, so we started screaming, "Bike without a tire! Where are you?!" as we ran. Nobody answered. We ran about four or five blocks at full tilt screaming for the bike with no answer and then we were out of breath. We wandered around a while longer, asking everyone we saw if they had seen a bike without a tire. We ran into some really cool people, one of whom went to City High, one of whom was from Marshalltown, and one of whom had a lot of cans of beer. The City High guy was talking about Mr. Wizard and banjos. Ryan and I pretty much gave up on the bike without a tire and we tried rolling it down the street. One time some guys came and picked it up and started throwing it around and Ryan and I made booing "why are you doing that!" noises and pretty quickly everybody within earshot was making booing noises and it was cool. Those guys got in their car and drove away and then we heard harmonica sounds floating somewhere. It sounded really cool so I walked towards it and saw it was coming from a girl in a really flowy skirt who was dancing and holding a harmonica to her face walking behind two other people. I said "harmonica... harmonica... harmonica..." until she stopped and turned around, and then we talked for a while. The people she was with recognized Ryan and me from having seen us playing on the ped mall, and one said that harmonica girl was her sister Cat or Kat or something. Cat seemed really out of it, probably was on something, but was amazing at harmonica. She said that she didn't know what she was doing and from what I could tell she was just doing it totally without thinking about it and making it sound perfect, which fascinated me. By this point Ryan was exhausted and I was famished. We went to Tony's Grill (which is open all night!) and I got an english muffin and two fruit and fiber cakes. We were there for probably an hour and a half. Ryan fell asleep on the bench of our booth while I slowly downed too much food. That restaurant is pretty funny at four o'clock in the morning. We both crashed in my room as the sun was getting ready to come out and woke up in the afternoon sometime. Ryan said something incomprehensible and left, and I took a shower.
Imagine my surprise when I came back and checked my cell phone, saw I had missed six calls from Ryan, called him back, and he told me that he had found the bike without a tire! I met him outside my dorm and was amazed by what I saw: he had indeed found a bike missing a back tire, and the words on the tire missing a bike were the same as the words on the remaining tire on the bike missing a tire. It quickly became evident, though, that the bike was bent and broken. We couldn't get the tire back on because the frame was bent, and the gear shift mechanism was pretty much totally broken. Actually, the whole bike was bent in funny places and scratched up and stuff. The obvious conclusion was that somebody got hit by a car while riding the bike and the back tire popped off and went rolling down the hill and hit Ryan's car. We were working on a dead man's bike. It was a lost cause, though, so we gave up and put the bits and pieces we had taken off in a plastic bag and tied it to the bike, then we drove the bike back to where Ryan found it and left it there.
Dorms are really weird at Thanksgiving break because everybody goes home. Only I-Chi, Magnus, Andy, and I are left out of the forty-plus dudes on my floor, and I'm probably going to my dad's tonight. It's very empty and lonely here.
Yesterday I took the second Language and Formal Reasoning midterm test and probably didn't do too poorly, thanks mostly to packets that were handed out in a lecture I skipped but which I photocopied from someone else which contained proofs for many situations, including two of the three we had to prove on this test. That was cool. After a couple more classes, I got a fish from Cara's room and then went to work with my violin and then practiced a song for church with Bill. While I was at work my mom called me and did exactly what a New York Times article I had read the night before predicted: she freaked out about her kid not wanting to necessarily spend all of Thanksgiving break at home with her. After practicing with Bill I called Ryan and he showed up and we quickly rehearsed some stuff for the CHS band show. As I was walking up to my room, I heard the phone ringing, and as I walked in, a very sleepy-looking Ernie was on the phone with who I could only assume was his mom, explaining to her why he slept through a big calculus exam. While Ryan and I were running through songs, Ernie's mom called me and asked me about how Ernie is doing in school and stuff, and I told her the truth.
So, eventually, Ryan and I got a set list worked out and some songs worked up (a bit) and got out the door. Ryan auditioned for the City High band show and got in as a solo act (ironic in a band show...), but a few days ago he called me with an idea: after he played a few songs by himself, I would burst onstage and join him in the middle of "I'll Fly Away" and then stay up there accompanying him. It went off pretty well, and I think everyone was pretty well surprised, except Lucas who saw Ryan setting a violin on the stage and knew Ryan didn't play it and realized it was mine. Also I couldn't hear myself too well, nor could I hear Ryan, and I was having problems watching him because there was a really bright yellow light right on the other side of him that blinded me whenever I looked at him. And right at the end of our second-to-last song he broke a string. Luckily I had my guitar out in his car so I ran out and grabbed it. We launched into "Star of the County Down" but it didn't work out so well: there is no strap on my guitar so Ryan had to cradle it and that made it hard for him to play and sing well and into the microphones; I was out of breath from running, so my recorder-playing was not good at all; and, worst and most noticeable, we messed up our arrangement so by the end I hadn't done a solo fiddle verse yet and Ryan just stopped but the solo fiddle verse is the best so I told him to keep going and he was so confused but whatever.
After that, Ryan and I went downtown for some reason and got coffee and stuff and then people showed up and it was weird and then we went to his car and went to get gas and accidentally had a really long conversation sitting at the gas pump without ever getting gas. Sometime a bike tire came rolling down the street out of nowhere and hit his front bumper. We got out to examine the situation and try to find the origins of the tire but we couldn't find where the tire came from. We wandered down the streets in every direction looking for bike racks that had a bike without a tire and found nothing. We went and stood across the street from where we were when the tire hit us and asked everybody who walked by if they had seen a bike without a tire. Everybody seemed either really confused or really concerned but nobody knew where the tire could have come from, until one guy said he had indeed seen a bike without a tire. He told us a guy had been wheeling a bike down the street on only one wheel. Ryan asked him which wheel the bike had and the guy said front, and our wheel was a back wheel! Jackpot! He said it was around the corner and to the right so we took off running. We didn't see the bike in the first block, so we started screaming, "Bike without a tire! Where are you?!" as we ran. Nobody answered. We ran about four or five blocks at full tilt screaming for the bike with no answer and then we were out of breath. We wandered around a while longer, asking everyone we saw if they had seen a bike without a tire. We ran into some really cool people, one of whom went to City High, one of whom was from Marshalltown, and one of whom had a lot of cans of beer. The City High guy was talking about Mr. Wizard and banjos. Ryan and I pretty much gave up on the bike without a tire and we tried rolling it down the street. One time some guys came and picked it up and started throwing it around and Ryan and I made booing "why are you doing that!" noises and pretty quickly everybody within earshot was making booing noises and it was cool. Those guys got in their car and drove away and then we heard harmonica sounds floating somewhere. It sounded really cool so I walked towards it and saw it was coming from a girl in a really flowy skirt who was dancing and holding a harmonica to her face walking behind two other people. I said "harmonica... harmonica... harmonica..." until she stopped and turned around, and then we talked for a while. The people she was with recognized Ryan and me from having seen us playing on the ped mall, and one said that harmonica girl was her sister Cat or Kat or something. Cat seemed really out of it, probably was on something, but was amazing at harmonica. She said that she didn't know what she was doing and from what I could tell she was just doing it totally without thinking about it and making it sound perfect, which fascinated me. By this point Ryan was exhausted and I was famished. We went to Tony's Grill (which is open all night!) and I got an english muffin and two fruit and fiber cakes. We were there for probably an hour and a half. Ryan fell asleep on the bench of our booth while I slowly downed too much food. That restaurant is pretty funny at four o'clock in the morning. We both crashed in my room as the sun was getting ready to come out and woke up in the afternoon sometime. Ryan said something incomprehensible and left, and I took a shower.
Imagine my surprise when I came back and checked my cell phone, saw I had missed six calls from Ryan, called him back, and he told me that he had found the bike without a tire! I met him outside my dorm and was amazed by what I saw: he had indeed found a bike missing a back tire, and the words on the tire missing a bike were the same as the words on the remaining tire on the bike missing a tire. It quickly became evident, though, that the bike was bent and broken. We couldn't get the tire back on because the frame was bent, and the gear shift mechanism was pretty much totally broken. Actually, the whole bike was bent in funny places and scratched up and stuff. The obvious conclusion was that somebody got hit by a car while riding the bike and the back tire popped off and went rolling down the hill and hit Ryan's car. We were working on a dead man's bike. It was a lost cause, though, so we gave up and put the bits and pieces we had taken off in a plastic bag and tied it to the bike, then we drove the bike back to where Ryan found it and left it there.
Dorms are really weird at Thanksgiving break because everybody goes home. Only I-Chi, Magnus, Andy, and I are left out of the forty-plus dudes on my floor, and I'm probably going to my dad's tonight. It's very empty and lonely here.