Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly... All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise... blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Thursday, September 16, 2004

I took a bike ride through downtown this morning. I had two destinations City Hall and the IDS building. Biking downtown is a completely different beast than other ciy biking. I suppose every neighborhood or section of the city has it's quirks and ways about it. Navigation downtown is a bit more treacherous because there are more cars in a concentrated area adn also I think because the drivers downtown tend to get more frustrated than the average in city driver. Parking is awful to find (or just plain expensive) and downtown is filled with more one ways than most people are used to I think. Personally I'm glad that I don't have to drive down there anymore - as treacherous as biking is I'm sure I'll get the hang of it and it is far less frustrating than driving.

First on my list was city hall, not to difficult as it is basically a straight shot down 3rd Avenue to Government Plaza between 4th and 5th Streets. There is almost no where to park a bike in Government Plaza - I find this surprising only because there is a brand new light rail station right in front of city hall and bike lanes (albeit on random streets) lining the streets of downtown. I chained my bike up across the street from city hall at one of the Hennepin County buildings. The room for parking permit applications is just up the marble stairs to the left and then down the hall to the right a bit. There were two women staffing the office and there were three of us there to get permits. I ended up deciding to wait til December to get a permit as they are issued annually with no distinction for when you purchased the permit. The only reason that I want one is for the winter months, so I figure I can wait.

Next stop was the IDS building. I'm still having trouble navigating myway downtown. Some of this comes from my winters spent during college taking the bus downtown. The bus takes different routes based on some obscure code of bus logic which is often best not followed when navigating through any other sort of transportation - be it foot, bike or even car. So first I went up 3rd again, then over at another street, then down Marquette because I was "remembering" that the IDS is at the corner of 4th and Nicollet. I'm really not sure where my memory was pulling that from, but it was sorely incorrect. So I biked/walked over to Nicollet and took that until I found the giant pictures of Adrian Brody (whose lovely personage is hawking some upscale menswear). I meandered past the little old ladies and past the boothes of vegetables. So many vegetables! I didn't buy any because I had to get up to the 45th floor and check in with Jillian. She took lunch when we got there so we went down to the closest french sounding chain. I looked through the City Pages for upcoming events (Wilco! SissorSisters! Pixies!) that I won't be attending while she ate her prepackaged salad. It looked quite good - as did everything else in there.

Back on the street I navigated my way up Marquette (using the bike path), past my apartment again and towards uptown to get the computer and end up here at Bob's. The sunshine is lovely today even though I'm fairly certain I'm going blind trying to type and squint at the same time. I've made my farmers market list - i want to buy everything there. I'm probably going back this afternoon to pick up some more zuchini and then maybe save the rest of the list for Saturday.

zuchini, banana peppers (hot), heirloom tomatos, basil, cilantro, beets, green onions, leeks

I was looking through recipes last night. I really ought to pick a recipe before buying groceries - it is most likely more effective than just wandering down there looking at all the lovely veggies and wanting to buy everything.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home