several bicycle-related events this weekend. yesterday, riding up to andrew’s house-to-be i was showing off my new fixie stop on gravel and broke a spoke on my rear wheel. fortunately, i was able to get andre to help me repair it and get it back together again. then i took the opportunity to go down to columbia city and donate my mountain bike to bikeworks.

today was a day where i once again realized how beautiful the bicycle is. there was a small boy, maybe 10 years old hanging out at bikeworks, obviously bugging the mechanics on duty and handling all the bikes, his mother had dropped him off and sent him over to replace his broken bike. one could only guess that he’d probably be there for a few hours after andre and i left. i hope he gets a bike.

the bicycle is one of the finest inventions of man. it is simple enough for anyone to understand, inexpensive enough for anyone to own, and the most efficient method of transportation available to the modern individual. i can’t imagine living out of the city – the suburbs are for the car and their design is anethema to the pedestrian, the cyclist, and the bus. wide streets with large intersections that encourage speeding and huge distances from home to work to shopping – it’s an environment where cycling cannot flourish. the worst part about it is that the people who live out their lives in the suburbs are unlikely to ever know a different way; to be able to see their community from the saddle of a bike.

tonight i’m going to head downtown and do a poker race with the point83 crew. it looks like it’s going to be a nice night for a bike ride.

so, if you weren’t aware, one of my hobbies is gaming. i started out with video games – atari 2600, nes, snes, pc gaming, and currently i have an xbox and a gamecube. but beyond that, i also enjoy pencil and paper gaming. i’ve been playing dungeons and dragons for over a decade now. magic the gathering was the first of about five collectible card games that took all of my spending money for a few years. i even larped with the camarilla folks for a year – oh the nerdfest!

ever since i went to the united kingdom back in 1997 though, i have been in a contentious struggle with one of the most expensive games ever: games workshop’s warhammer 40,000.

it’s a ‘wargame’ in the loosest sense of the word, designed for relatively fast play and with little attempt to be anything other than fun. you pay gw $5 for a little metal and plastic piece – of which you need about 60-70 – that you can assemble and paint yourself before pushing it around a board for a few hours.

it doesn’t sound very fun does it? turns out, that’s my problem with it. i really struggle to enjoy the game, in fact back in 2001 i sold out of the game, got rid of what i had and i’m currently using 60% loaned stuff from my old buddy haukaas. still, i keep playing. i spend money on it, invest tons of time, and when it comes down to the game i somehow fail to have fun. i get frustrated with the poorly written rules, but also to a large extent i get caught up in the competition. i want to win, and when i start losing i start furrowing my eyebrows and withdrawing from the game a bit.

i turn into a poor sportsman.

now is that the game’s fault? probably not. there is an aspect to pencil and gaming that is personal and intimate. you spend two to eight hours with a couple friends, hashing out poor rules and trying to derive shared enjoyment from the game. if someone is bitter or ill-tempered the mood is incredibly tense. at times i am that guy and i don’t want to be. i know i don’t have much invested in the game at hand other than trying to make sure we all have fun, and if that’s not the goal then what am i there for?

okay, let’s get this out of the way so i can actually blog about interesting stuff. you see, every time i sit down and think about blogging i feel like there’s always this hidden subtext, that it’s this postured and constructed version of me. now, i’m not suggesting that i can evince some ‘objective self’ onto this page in the internet, but at least i should get to the point of why i am here, writing this. plus, the advantage of having zero readers at this point means that it’s going to be purely archival data, dug up at a time when it probably won’t be relevant.

theory: i am a hopeless romantic.

let’s look at the facts. dana actually dumped me almost a full year ago, probably more than that in her own heart. a year is a long time: three hundred and sixty five days by twenty four hours by sixty minutes. i still hope that somehow, someday things will work out. not in an abstract sense, either, but in very real and practical hopes that she will show up at my door to explain that it has all been a big misunderstanding and can we finally talk again?

i know that is an unreasonable thing to expect, but still i go to bed each night vaguely unsatisfied with a life where that has not yet happened. i do not deal well with unresolved conflict. we pass each other at lunch, and i want to look her in the eyes and find out what happened then, what can we do now, why? i keep thinking of things i should have said differently last month, or six months ago, or last year or eighteen months ago – words that i somehow think could have avoided this, if only i had done things differently. i give much more credence to my cleverness than i ought.

so that sets up the basic dramatic tension in my life right now. my heart is wrestling with a love for a woman who does not have any interest in speaking with me anymore and in all likelihood never will. awkward. it is a story as old as love itself, the very definition of asymmetry and the source of a million poems and songs throughout history. in some ways the sheer banality of it simply depresses me, yet is there anything to do in this situation but be human?

there are few other times in my life where i thought my heart had been broken, that my trust had been discarded and an important relationship rent. i still remember, and with some i remain on good terms and others have most likely forgotten my existence. i no longer feel pain when i think about those experiences, yet i know that they played a vital part in shaping the man i am today. i know that time will make a liar of me. it seems inevitable at this point that i too will fully renege upon my promises and i don’t know what will happen then. i guess i will find out.