yesterday was fucking insane

this post was written in Denver on 23 July 04

yesterday was fucking insane.

I got up about 7:15 and threw on a dirty shirt and my skunked out riding shorts/three day underware and mounted El Scorpio. The ride in was thick and 87 degrees with a hazy sun. I killed a $1.30 coffee from the bitter 22 year olds-left wing-lesbian-mohawk-Dead Kennedy's-really trying hard but decidedly not dangerous-coffee shop next the the Brown Line and hit the fucking road.

Arriving at work I'm always soaked with disgusting over sweat. All the white people walking into 515 State look at me like they wonder why a perfectly able bodied white boy is such a slime dripped goat man.

At work I had to edit and heavy re-write 7 biographies of highly successful white men and all of the committies they're in charge of. This takes longer than you think. Inbetween all of this I had to meet with an HR guy on the sly to move forward on a possible job upgrade. I had to write essays explaining my reasoning and attributes. This takes longer than you think. Then I had to wrap up all of my work to cover next week, and get out by 4:30. On my way out the door I ran into the fella in charge of the department I want to work for and he said that he'd heard I'd met with the guy who'd hire me the day before. Was encouraging and then said he'd talk to me when I got back on August 2nd.

I got on my bike and agressively entered pre-rush hour traffic. The pre-rush is worse because with just a few less cars, the drivers in the loop drive faster to fill in the available space. At Ohio/LaSalle I was riding through the crosswalk at about 12 mph with 35 to 50 cars waiting in four one way lanes for the light to change. My front derailer has been fucking with me in shifting faster so it stalls and a strap on my backpack snapped and dropped the 8 or 12 lbs I was carrying, driving me to the pavement. I unclipped my shoes and got out of the street, wheeling El Scorpio to a parking lot, re-adjusting everything, through the one strap around my chest and got back on the street. I was anxious to get home, finish the packing, showering, locking up and getting out the door by 5:45.

In my car at 5:40 I crept through traffic to the blue line at the Kennedy, parked and climbed aboard. At O'Hare, I find my gate, my e-ticket, my bag's checked and x-rayed and I decided to swallow the valium my friend Ellen gave me. It was time to kick back. I wanted the vallium because I wanted to understand the hype. What was it about vallium that helped unemployed middle aged upper middle class women get through their day of leisure without cracking up? I got to my gate and found that my flight was delayed from 8:30pm to 11pm. I calming sedative of vallium lowered my slight frustration to the level of total apathy. Quickly bored with this, I decided to drink a beer to test the effect. It made walking around a very busy O'Hare listening to the Streets on headphones even more surreal.

the day ended by getting picked up by my sister and some kid she knows that has a car. the kid had just moved to denver and was super-freaked that he now lived among mountains. he picked me up because he had nothing better to do. Judging by the way he kept looking at me and smiling while the three of us were at this late night greasy spoon, the kid was gay. That makes me throw up in my mouth.