A Headwind and A Recurring Theme

I set out on two wheels this morning thanks to an uncharacteristic (but nonetheless very real) traffic jam on Congress Street yesterday afternoon. The sign outside of those Charles Street condos that haunted Storrow Drivers for years popped into my brain, amended as follows: If you were on your bike, you'd be home now.

Also, there was the promise of 63 degrees and sun. So off I went. You see where this is going. I wound my way peacefully through the neighborhood and out onto the bike path that winds along the river only to be met by a furious wind, throwing sand in my eyes and ache in my ears. Oh, I thought to myself. This is the real test. I hadn't had to fight the wind before and oy, it's way harder.

It reminded me of something that seems to be coming up a lot lately. Last night I was talking to the librarian about the neighborhood protest of the proposed branch closing. He was talking about how impressed he was with the showing and organization at the protest. "Isn't it funny," he said, "how we liberal, intelligentsia types don't really show up until our backs are right up against a wall?" I'd been thinking a similar thing a few days earlier. I hadn't ever looked at a city budget proposal until they threatened to take the library away. We may yet lose it, a cruel demonstration of the high cost of cluelessness.

And a few days before that, I found myself waffling about whether or not to submit an application for the choreographer's showcase that the Portland Ballet puts on every summer. It wasn't until I discovered that the VCR wasn't playing nicely with the video camera that I went into high gear, racing all over town looking for ways to get the situation sorted out, forgetting entirely my ambivalence and apprehension about the whole thing. Just like when my trig teacher said, after a few weeks of, at best, lackluster performance on quizzes, "you know, maybe trig is just more than you want to take on as a math student." You can probably guess how that ended.

Throw a roadblock up in front of me and I transform into an unstoppable accomplishment machine. When there's nothing in the way, though, good luck getting me to do much of anything.