Irish Wheels are Smilin'
Riding my Segway in the Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade this morning was unbelievably fun. Everyone waved, as if I were a legal entry, and I glided by about 20 of Denver's finest without their thinking to enforce city ordinances which technically ban Segways from street or sidewalk. ("But this is NOT a motor vehicle," I told one cranky motorcycle cop who stopped me on a deserted sidewalk on a Sunday morning several months ago. "It's a personal mobility device." He let me off with a warning.) I usually feel like a ridiculous dweeb riding the Segway around downtown, lacking only a propeller on my hat. But on parade day I felt like a Duke of the Future, leaving a wake of appreciative comments. "Oh, that's one of those things!" "Hey, look, it's a Segway!" One guy ventured out into the street to take my photo, so I handed him my camera and he took this one. Thanks, mate!
Saturday, March 12, 2005
2:30 a.m.
In the middle of the night, after checking out a few of the "656 new items" that Bloglines has caught in its net for me, comes the time when I want to write something. This is a fraught moment, because if I get too wired with writing, I'll be up for another three hours and tomorrow will spend the whole day muttering, "I've got to have a nap." So something short and not too wonderful would be fine. A few words saying it's great to be back in balmy Denver after five days in New England, socked over and over this winter with Currier & Ives storms. Just that bit, looking up "Currier & Ives" in Wikipedia, then wondering if it's a good way to suggest the old-time fury and beauty of snow and sleet and wind battering the windows of my parents' home in Cambridge--and I'm off, about to be sleepless for hours. So screw that. I love the middle of the night, when everyone is asleep, no buses or walkers on the 16th Street Mall below my den window. I love the bloggers dancing with and chewing up this young writer I've never read, Jonathan Safran Foer, who made the mistake of getting gushingly profiled in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. But now I'm playing with hyperlinks, stirring the blogpool with my own little cursor, and that's the royal road to Not Enough Sleep. So enough. It's dark out. My strategy of wearing no bathrobe in order to get cold is working. Warm bed sound good. Me sleep now. Me post, me post, me post, me say g'night.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
