Tag Archives: Work

I descended a dusty gravel ridge

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So I’m working full-time again. As of January 2 of this year, I am the substitute Technical Services/Electronic Resources Librarian at a college in Brooklyn. I love my (challenging!) job and my (fantastic!) coworkers and I hope this stint will lead to a permanent position in the (awesome!) department… but what I’m really here to write about is my bike.

I love my bike. My boyfriend got me a 2012 Salsa Casseroll for the winter holidays and I’ve been riding it for a month now. I fall in love with it all over again every morning and then again every night. I miss it when I’m not riding it and I’m frustrated when I have to walk somewhere. (For 5 straight days two weeks ago, I couldn’t ride my bike — my fault, not the bike’s — so I took the subway to work and walked the 3 miles home. What do you mean it takes 3 times longer by foot to cover the same distance!? my mind kept yelling.) So now I not only look forward to work everyday but I also eagerly anticipate my commute.

…Unless it’s raining heavily or the winds are blowing at over 50 MPH. Then, yes, I’d rather be somewhere indoors but only because I hate being wet and fighting the wind to stay upright.

So when I realized this morning that my bike needed to go to the shop for some adjustments (derailleurs, brakes), I dreaded the possibility of having to leave my bike there overnight because I’d only be getting in around closing time. Instead, I spent about 15 minutes in the shop as the mechanic fiddled with some knobs and tightened some cables… after he ogled my bike and his buddy let out a wolf whistle. (The attention wasn’t expected but it was definitely appreciated.) It was a painless experience and I left with my bike, ready to tackle another day of commuting duty.

I’ve been consistently riding in to work at least 4 days out of the week. (We had a flurry of three-day weekends that I’ll miss going into a strictly-five-day-workweek March. I also had off-campus meetings that didn’t lend themselves to being bike friendly, as I stuck around afterwards to grab lunch with colleagues and/or travel back to campus with coworkers.) This would have been another one of those weeks — what with an off-campus meeting first thing tomorrow — but I think I’ll suck it up and bike there. It’s under 8 miles of mostly bike lanes. The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow, too. (High of 46°F! As much as it worries me that this winter can barely be classified as winter, I love that the mild weather keeps me on my bike.)

I smell the rose in her hair

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I don’t know what’s going on with me lately but I’ve been seriously considering packing up and moving my life to a different city… on a different coast.

This started, I think, because Alex is applying to grad schools all over the country (and even one in Canada). One of the schools is in Boulder, CO, and my interest in the city was piqued after looking at the Department of Philosophy website.  All of the faculty and students have such exotic hobbies: rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking, trail running, skiing, snowboarding, and so on.  The photos of Boulder didn’t help, either — have you seen the Rocky Mountains?  They’re breathtaking!

However, after doing some more research into the city, I realized that’s it’s not for me.  The city is too small (~94,000 people, which is minuscule compared to the 8 million in NYC!) and it’s mainly a college town.  This is great, of course, because I want to work in a university library.  However, I have a feeling I’ll get tired of the young crowd as I get older.  And aside from all of the winter sports, there’s not much else to do — and I don’t play sports!  So I can’t even participate in those.  In the end, I realized that I admire Boulder for what it is and I envy the people who have made it their home… but, in the long run, I will not be happy.

So I started looking elsewhere, closer to the coast.  I considered Seattle but, for some reason, it just didn’t do it for me.  It was probably all the fog and rain that the locals (and transplants) complain about.  So then I looked south of Seattle and found Portland, OR.  For some reason, Portland made sense.  I looked at the universities, I searched craigslist for apartments, I read about all of the microbreweries, I learned about the famous Portland Farmers Market, I found out about its eco-friendliness, I discovered it’s the best city for bicycling in North America, …  It all just adds up and appeals to everything that I value.  And because it’s not an outdoors-only type of atmosphere and there’s more to the city than the colleges and universities, I won’t grow to resent it as I get older!

I am thisclose to applying for a position at Portland State University.  There’s nothing to lose, right?  Best case scenario: I get the job and move to Portland.  Worst case scenario: I don’t get the job and stay in NYC.  It’s a win-win situation.