Days

Tuesdays this quarter are the busy days; I teach two classes, one in the morning at my fulltime job as a tenured faculty in philosophy at Cascadia Community College and one in the afternoon as an adjunct or auxiliary lecturer at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Oh my, fetch me a doctor.

Nevertheless, among the other delights associated with this wealth of pedagogy, I also get a ride between the campuses around mid-day, a bonus that doesn’t figure in to my compensation as a state employee, but sure is a benefit not to be overlooked in the grand—or even small—scheme of things.

Take today, for instance: I got to pedal along the lake on a day way too warm and dry for October in Seattle, enjoying my increasingly slow (is that an oxymoron?) pace, making sure I stayed below the speed of sweat given that I’d soon be in a small classroom packed with students who had signed up for my course for, I assume, what I had to teach, not how I happened to smell.

And other than swallowing the occasional gnat, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride, even though I didn’t see two of my favorite Burke-Gilman trail totems: neither the Matthews Beach cat who periodically writhes on the warm concrete path just north of the entrance to the park (and which, I understand, has its own FaceBook page), nor the women I used to call the “Skatey Lady” for her proclivity to roller blade almost daily from Sand Point to Lake Forest Park always, even in the heat of summer wearing a thick down parka, but who now I think of as the Bar Mitt Mama since I always see her—when I see her—on a mountain bike decked out in those nerdiest of all bicycle handlebar accessories.

It’s not so bad being slower and slower; the way it works out, I get longer and longer to be out riding my bike.