10 days, 10 good-byes to DC

My last 10 days in DC starts tonight when I return from the southern front...  My goals as a goodbye to my home of the last 7 years (and 7 days, to be exact!):

1. Yoga every day - I started my practice in DC shortly after I moved, and I can't think of a better way to center myself before uprooting my life.

2. Visit Charm City, my favorite DC neighbor, in hopes that it will rub off on me.  :)

3. Enjoy the sunset one more time from my kitchen window, before I become homeless for a week, which brings us to...

4. Getting drunk on friends' couches.  Instant place to sleep!

5. Go running in the arboretum.  The friendliest place in DC, where runners say hello without fear of assault... oh, and there's pretty trees and fish.

6. Dance Dance Dance.  I may have to re-live the time we were asked to stop dancing at Wonderland "because other people need to dance too".  One of the highlights of my existence.

7. DC cuisine: Leopold's, Tabard Inn, Sette Osteria... don't you want to take me to lunch and/or dinner??

8. Black Cat, Saint Ex - not on a weekend.  Pharmacy Bar - always.

9. Bike the perimeter of DC.  Right team?

10. This space defined by all of the wonderful friends I have to spend time with this week.  To be continued when you come visit in London!

Black Cat Black Cat School of Dancing

...to the sounds of our pop founders: MJ, Prince & Madonna.  If you haven't heard DJ Dredd spin, this course is a pre-requisite for all 200-level dancing and higher and mandatory THIS SUNDAY!

$12, doors at 9pm.

Rollin' with Obama

Courtesy of mr. neal becton.

The week after work

...spent packing and saying goodbye to material possessions.  Alternately, manic-ly reclusive and needing people.  It seems to be baby-making time in the world of my friends, so I'm also seeing beginnings of lives and big life changes all around me, as I'm about to leave the country, solo, for as long as possible.

Getting rid of the extras: TV, VCR, dining table - keeping the essentials: bike, clothing, unearthing arts articles from when I used to be an academic to take for inspiration...

My student visa is in the mail - it's official.  I feel weightless and I don't know if I like it.  Looking forward to being grounded again.

I'm such a sucker for animals.

We are the Internet

Who chose these people to deliver this message?? And why were casting calls held in Baltimore?

Now that's more like it!!

USD vs. the Pound, last 120 days.

Maybe I can even buy you all a beer when you come visit.

Episode 5

Bike repair #2 - Kellan's turn

What do you do when, at mile 45 out of 132 of your bike trip to Harper's Ferry, your rear derailleur explodes with a force that bends one of your spokes on the side of a narrow busy highway in BFE Virginia?

Apparently, you do not call someone to pick you up. You save the little exploded bike bits for posterity, shorten the chain so that it fits snugly in the middle of your back gear set, and ride it single speed - all the way there, and 65 miles back the next day. Up huge hills, along more highways with semis passing 2 inches from your face (not recommended)... you also ride with the wheel slightly bent, oscillating and dragging on the left break pad. And you stay very close behind your pack-mule girlfriend (called "drafting" - cuts down on wind and makes biking easier) and let her know often how little you are pedalling.

As Erik put it eloquently, "We solved the shit out of that one! Give me another problem so I can solve the shit out of that one too."

Buy my stuff, yo.

Check out my e-garage sale.

petworthgaragesale.wetpaint.com

Couch, tables, shelves, nightstand, mirrors, wall prints, lamps, you name it.

More to be added soon. I'm selling this stuff now, so email me!