Why the weird title? Because it is about 18 million degrees out, and if I want to go to the bank, the grocery store, the whatever, I have to choose between the bike and the car.
The bike is hot. I sweat. I pulse with the heat. When I have to stop at a red light, I can feel my blood moving. No lie. I can see my heartbeat in my hands. The waves of heat shimmering and the car exhaust and the interminable waiting. If I look up through the top of my sunglasses, it's like the sky is a ceiling, the sun a slow moving coal burning its way across.
The car is not as hot. Except that at the moment it is over-heating. Especially when I run the AC. So not only is it hot in there, I'm afraid to turn on the AC, and also nervous that it'll overheat regardless of my precautions. That's just how I roll.
To get to school I take my bike and a change of clothing. I have an hour or so before I teach, so I cool down by the time I get to class. Which is a good thing, because teaching in the summer is a tightly condensed affair already. I don't need the added frustration of being gross, sweaty. We only get 11 classes in the summer. 11. The first day of class I told them, "okay, so you only have to put up with me ten more times."
On Wednesday I brought in a friend as a guest speaker. His name is Tom Grozan. He teaches journalism at Cooper City High. He also worked for the Sun Sentinel for like ten years. His lecture was about how to apply journalistic techniques (research, establishing an angle for the story, the idea of a narrative thread) to their creative writing. He did a wonderful job and the kids seemed to really like him.
My favorite part? After his lecture, I went up with him and we fielded their questions together. Tandem-teaching. I've never really done anything like it, and it was an interesting experience. I think the kids got a lot out of it, because he approaches writing in a different way than I do, so they get his perspective and my own, and also I have a more intimate knowledge of their writing and he was relying on more general writing technique kind of stuff, so with our powers combined, we were super-instructor for a few minutes. I highly recommend it, this tandem-teaching, at least once.
I thought that perhaps by writing this I would be able to come to some sort of conclusion about my bike vs car conflict. Alas, I have not. I did, however, change the formatting of this blog. Pretty swanky, eh? The picture is one Bobby took when we went to the Bok Tower Gardens (http://www.boktower.org/) a really, really beautiful little place. We stopped by there on our way back from the NSAL competition and it was a lovely way to end the trip.
I could also always walk to the store, bank, etc. Slower, but possibly less sweaty. I love walking, incidentally. It allows me to be quiet and lose myself to my thoughts in a way I can't otherwise.
