Archive for October, 2009

Not having a car prompted me to try riding the bus to get to and from work. I never really saw it as a possibility to get from point A to point B in the metro via the bus, because, well, nobody I knew did that and the thought never occurred to me. (what am I, some kind of jobless hippie?) Minnesota has a pretty crappy public transportation to most other cities I have been in (with the exception of Dallas, which is just plain old crappy all around) and further the nearest bus stop is at least a mile from my house, and I have always been sort of lazy. But the Friday following me loosing my car, I set out determined to get home from work in Bloomington on my own, sort of as an act of defiance to prove to myself and others that I remain independent and also as a personal challenge, sort of palliating to the personality trait that makes me want to sit in front of Best buy on thanksgiving in the freezing cold for 14 hours awaiting being one of the first people in line to successfully wait to get whatever people get on thanksgiving (I haven’t bought anything meaningful for going on 4 years now).

So I find the bus route and ride the bus. I was successful and very proud of myself. I quickly discover that all of the buses have bikeracks on them, and metro transit encourages people to use them, for no additional cost.

Its like a lightbulb went off in my head. I can bike to work via the bus.

People at my work have proudly biked to the office ever since I started working there. They always had these smug “I am better than you” attitudes, with cool bikes and cool helmets and stickers saying their bike gets 20 MPB (Miles per burrito). As much as I would ridicule their choice to take the bike, I wish I was that person. The trouble is home is 40 miles away, and at that point a 3 and a half hour bike ride each way to and from work daily starts to sound like a waste of time and energy, especially if something bad happens like weather or a sudden catering of tacos at work I somberly discover I will probably miss (I wish the company would cater something else than Jimmy/Papa Johns sometimes…)

So, I would take the bike to work. First day taking the bus from Anoka to Bloomington went off without incident. Same on the subsequent way back. I gleefully did this a few times, all the while listening to a small five dollar MP3 player / radio I bought off woot recently (which, paired with NPR, which I also just started listening too, has been my best friend ever.) One time, I decided I was going to push my limits, and I took a bus to Northtown (which happens to occur at a much more frequent interval than the Anoka bus) and traveled the 10 or so odd miles home from there on bike.

Some of you may think that this sounds ludicrous. After all, I could fix up “my” new (new ownership, old car) Jetta and use that to get to work. I do know how to drive a stickshift. But, despite the cold weather, I find it very rewarding to bike. On the bike, I get exercise and stamina, I get the feeling of speed, and I see my home (I wrote earlier about how the entire Minneapolis metro I consider my home) much more up close and personal than I ever have seen it by car. I get time to ponder life, listen to NPR, the ability to take a sudden turn into the woods or a parking lot to see what is there, and much more. And I still move at only about 1/4 the speed a car moves.

Not to mention the mental and social rewards. Mentally, I feel superior for commuting by bike, something most people won’t consider. It is sort of that extra option most people except for the really crazy ones wont think of, like using Linux on your desktop, traveling by train on vacations (as opposed to air or by car), making pizza dough and pizza from scratch rather than ordering or warming a premade one up, or fixing a cars air suspension with duct tape (not that we would do something like that.) Socially, I end up nearly every other day with a few hours to spare in the heart of Minneapolis, free to explore Nicollet mall up and down, chat to people I have never met before (just yesterday some 18 something girls decided they needed to sing me “Say my name, say my name” while we were waiting for the bus), and I generally get some time ziping around the city free of worry on my bike. Personally, I have time to read books and type things like this during my idle time on the commute.

There was a video that was running through my head for a few weeks before this car fiasco. It is a 2 or 3 second clip of a guy jumping off of a diving board probably 100 feet in the air. For the few seconds he freefalls, he can twist any which way and he is completely immune from any kind of restriction on his movement (with the exception of the restriction of gravity, which would be a very nasty restriction if he wasn’t diving into a pool of water). The bike gives me that sort of feeling, the feeling of freedom, the freedom to see the world without the restrictions of traffic lights or defined roads.

So I bike now any chance I get and it makes sense. I bought a small netbook (which has windows 7 on it now, pretty cool) and a MiFi (it makes a portable wifi access point from the sprint 3G network so I can use the internet on the bus). I got a book I picked up at Barnes and Noble to read (Douglas Adam’s final unpublished works, under the title “The Salmon of Doubt”). I learned the layout of Minneapolis and browsed the Borders on Nicolet Mall (I have a blog idea brewing about the sheer amount of published text there is out there based on this visit). Minneapolis made me want to learn what was going on that I could participate in, so I joined a bunch of interest groups on meetup.com so I have something to do. Biking (and my trusty MP3 player radio) gave me a surge of energy to do some extra exercise, and as such I have spent every day for the last 7 days exercise at least 30 minutes (sometimes an hour and a half) at the gym on top of biking. I raised the desks at the cube at my work a few feet and now I work standing just so I can say I can.

I still have my Eurpoean trip to plan, want to learn ASP.Net, Actionscript, make a YMT music video, learn a second language, and maintain this exercise and diet, as well as put in mad overtime at work while my work offers it. And all of those are still in progress.

Overall, I feel much more active and connected to the community. And it is all credited to me loosing my car and having to learn to stand on my own two feet.

So good riddance, car. You need more than a car to pick up girls, and you were a crutch and a money vampire anyway. One day I’ll get a Prius again when I am old and like the idea of comfy chairs better than getting out and living, but until then I will sit and dream of something more awesome, like a Delorian.

A friend of mine named Jereck recently challenged me to a philosophical discussion online where he asked me what I felt was wrong with the world. My answer was something along the lines of 2 basic concepts, firstly lack of accountability and second that nothing in the world is black and white but people can’t understand things unless they feel they only have a binary choice. I then go on to blame one of the causes, or at least one of the symptoms of this on Television Entertainment turning money driven fantasy into what amounts to false memories of events, incorrect development of problem solving solutions, unrealistic expectations of the world, and in general learned behavior. I’ve written about the TV problem before.

Jereck mostly agreed, and proposed that we fix the problem. Jereck supposed that a strong new political party would somehow cure the problems of the world. This is preposterous, and I made every illustration to say so. There is no way you could realistically introduce another political party and make it come to any real power in todays world. I personally feel that if I am going to change anything, I am going to change the people close around me, and hope the change benefits the world in general.

Jereck then made a good point – I seem to be caught in the overall trend of humanity that nobody thinks they can make a sweeping positive impact in the world. It is what it is, you simply live in it. You are a product of the world.

On thinking about this, I feel he is right, that I have lost my faith in humanity, at least humanity as I know it. Oh sure, I see the occasional beauty in it, some sort of art made by a positive thinking individual, some amazing feat that is inspiring like the existence of a castle or a skyscraper, but I seem to have lost faith in people in general. Maybe this happens to everyone and I am just later at coming to this realization than most.

Recently in my life there has been alot of shakeups that has caused me too loose most or all faith in people’s ability to be more than their impulses. I used to trust everyone I met implicitly until they proved otherwise, but now that I have let people take advantage of my trust and have it come back to me and hit me in the face so much, I just don’t have any faith in humanity anymore.

First, blaming myself, I lost my car. That makes me depressed.

Also involving my life, I have had people close to me steal stuff out of my own house, a best friend vandalize some of my property because he was expressing rage for his girlfriend fooling around on him, I was left by a girl I used to respect solely on her moral character until she went back with her harmful cheating ex and basically scuttled any independent personality she had by doing so, and I’ve been stood up for bullcrap reasons on events I have found very important.

Taking a few steps out of my view, I see people that mean alot to me around me depressed, and as a result of being depressed doing extremely emotionally risky actions which, while technically ok, send ripple effects of pain and stress throughout the entire social network of friends. I feel powerless to help people experiencing the collateral effects, and I don’t know what to do. It gets worse, because these sorts of situations are like disease, nobody wants to be around it for fear they may catch the stress and the depression. So the friends I would like around are no longer around and I am left with the stressed out and the stress causers.

I also am frustrated that so many people I know express the desire to overcome their situation and move on to better ways of living, but often cite excuses for why they can’t do a particular event. They would rather they keep on keeping on with the same day to day activities they are doing. For example, I have no car, therefore I can’t get a job. Well Brian doesn’t have a car and he work 40 miles away from home and he seem to be doing ok using the bus. Why can’t I?

I can’t loose weight. I can’t get a girlfriend. I can’t learn French. I can’t understand politics. I will never find anyone that loves me. I can’t get a job. I can’t find anything to do with my time. I can’t overcome my hormones. I can’t be blamed for something because I was intoxicated. I can’t afford the GED. IT IS ALL BULLCRAP. These people (like most people) all want stuff to just land in their lap from God. Newsflash, it isn’t coming. Life is ticking away one second at a time. Thats one second less things you can do in the world. You could have used that time to improve yourself, to get more skills, or do something worthwhile with your time. Plant a tree or read a book to a kid or watch a sunrise. Just make the next second count.

Ok, I am on a tangent. Lets more nationalize the problem – A great many people are only voting for and making policies based on their own limited understanding of their world, and out of fear or selfishness make opinions and spread the word, unaware that words have power, including the power to influence and harm others. I am reminded of a recent case where a jury during deliberation consulted the bible in order to determine the ‘moral’ path to take regarding a defendants execution. If you don’t understand how grossly preposterous this is, ask me and I will explain it to you.

Point is, I see all these people who all feel that they are qualified in making opinions about situations they have done no research to become an authority on both sides of the subject. I see this the most in the context of religion.

Then there is this whole weak personality thing were people can’t take any criticism. Therefore none is ever given. “You did your best”, “Its the inner beauty that counts”, “Its not you, its me” those are all 9 times out of 10 a lie people feed you either because they are not strong enough to tell the truth or they fear that you are not strong enough to receive it. Therefore, everyone is wandering aimlessly in the world unaware of what they are doing that works and doesn’t because nobody ever gives any real feedback, or if they do you wouldn’t know what was genuine and what was not.

Finally, people have lost all manners. Apologizing for mistakes is alien. Striking up a conversation with a stranger is a shocking almost offensive thing. Living in a large city like Minneapolis, you could go your entire life without making any real friends. I find it shocking that so many people I know feel there is hidden meaning to compliments enough to justify not using them unless you in fact do have an ulterior motive. Riddle me this, is it really all that bad for a person (lets say a guy) to compliment someone (lets say a girl) unsolicited? Why does it always have to mean something?

Ok, what I am getting down to here is my network of friends which used to support my personality has all but died. I am left with only a few people I trust. I find it hard to trust new people like I used too, since trust seems to have a track record of demonstrating that that trust is misplaced. I feel like my influence or presence in the world has gotten incredibly small as a result. And I need to solve this. I need to find a way to get me happy again. And that is really hard to do when by default you used to but no longer see people as by nature good.

This is not to say I am unmotivated to fix the problem and am throwing in a white flag. On the contrary, I have been spending a great deal of time researching other countries and ways of living, researching different skills and languages hoping that it will give me some kind of insight on some new way of looking at the world I am not aware of, and I have as a result of me using the bus dedicated more time to keep myself in shape, as well as visit and explore Minneapolis as to learn more about my home and meet more of the residents of the city.

This also does not mean I don’t believe there are good people in the world. People have done selfless things to myself and to others before. I particularly enjoy the people I know via the internet, ironically through what most people would consider unethical online groups (I’m looking at you, PLA folks). Some of the nicest most selfless people I know have helped me on my vacations I have taken across country, and made those vacations the best experiences I have had in my life.

I just wish people in general would try to do something nice for a change, thinking of the big picture. Thinking about the future or outside their own little world bubble. Maybe they do and I just am stuck in a social blackhole where we all don’t see the superior world around us. I wish I had a clearer understanding of what I am missing out on. I wish I trusted strangers again.

But maybe the only way to correctly interact in life is with paranoia.

You know who’s awesome?

Hobbes is awesome. (Wing Commander 2, 1991)