I'm bad-ass too!

Editors Note 7/25/08: Since this time the bike that I talk about has been stolen and I currently own 3 bikes. 2 Klein bikes, each purchased used by me for $1000 a piece and one fixer upper Cannondale.I commute to work everyday and have attempted numerous long rides including 2 hundred mile rides. It's safe to say, I'm bike crazy.

I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like

I just went on an afternoon bike ride with a co-worker and I feel so great.

About a month ago I bought my bike and I've been riding it to and from work everyday since. It's about a 3 mile ride each way, so a pretty easy and short ride. It only takes 15-20 minutes each way, compared to a 40 minute bus ride. Also, it's hundreds of dollars cheaper than a car and is only about 5 minutes longer a ride than driving a car.

Kayla (my sister) was my motivation for riding. She is the most bad-ass person that we all know and we tell her so too. She rides this little cheap children’s BMX bike that's probably 10 years old. It's falling apart, the handlebar brakes don't work, she pops tires left and right because she rides on the sidewalk (even though she isn't supposed to), it's rusted out, and it weighs a ton. Kayla has also been hit by numerous cars and has brought this damn thing across the country and back. The bike probably cost her less than $50. We tell her everyday that she should get something new but she has the Costello stubborn gene in her, so she needs to be right and refuses to admit defeat even though it's clear to everyone that her bike is complete garbage.

So after months of talking about getting a bike I finally did. It's a $600 bike from REI that cost me $400 because it was a 2006 model. I opted to buy a new bike instead of a used one for two reasons:

1. REI has a 100% guarantee on everything they sell to members of their co-op, of which I am a part of. This means in 2 years I can tell them I don't like the bike anymore and get my $400 back towards a new one. This works, they don't even ask questions, and you can do it anytime. My friend Lauriel returned boots 4 years after she bought them originally and they gave her a full refund.

2. I really wanted something I could rely on for a long time. I'm going back to school in the fall and so my funds are going to be tight again, so I want something I can depend on.

I've loved the freedom of having my own form of transportation again. I haven't had this freedom since I last owned a car, about a year and a half ago. I have to say I missed it.

I'm Sick

I haven't posted in over a week, which really isn't a big deal when you consider the last stretch of non posting was about 8 months, but I assure you there will be multiple posts today. Why? Because I am sick and staying home from work, so what else am I supposed to do? Also, I have a whole bunch of thoughts just floating around in the old noggin after this week, and so I need to open them up to the world... or to Todd, Tim and Michelle (who, I would assume, are the only folks who take the time to read this shit).

So right now I'm sitting at La Crema, a coffee shop about 5 blocks away from my apartment. I just had some quiche and a Mexican mocha latte and I'm just thinking... WOW! I took a sick day and I am out of my bed, out of my house, and it's ok. No trouble here. It's very weird to me, I haven't really taken a sick day from work or school since high school. That was almost 5 years ago! Sure I've been sick, but I've never in that time taken a day off because I was sick. Sure I've skipped classes in college and taken personal days in AmeriCorps, but really I haven't actually called in sick to work for 5 years.

When I did stay at home because I was sick in high school I felt obligated to stay in bed. That is what was expected by my mother. But today I'm out at a coffee shop on my computer. This is a new step in adulthood for me.

This new step is helping me reflect on where I've come in the past few years.

5 years ago I was just graduating high school and I had virtually no real direction in life. I was going to be a computer science major, I don't even know why. I guess just because it was something I knew a little bit about and showed a bit of an interest in. I really didn't know anything yet. Really I don't know if I was ready to go to college right after high school. I had no real reason or motivation in life at the time. I don't know why. It always seemed like my friends in high school knew what they wanted (for the most part they actually did, isn't that weird, how often does that happen) but I never did.

So I spent a year and a half in community college barley scraping by and highly uninterested by what I was doing and where I was living. I remember sitting in my room night after night trying to imagine a future for myself, but I really had no clue as to what that would be.

Everyone knew I was unhappy with where I was going. My grandfather kept pushing for a change in major. He and my grandmother thought I should be a theater major like my friends. I was slightly more interested in that but knew it was only because of my friends that I was even considering it. It wasn't right for me and I knew it. My father caught wind of this and instead tried to persuade my to go into the Peace Corps. I didn't know anything about it and was honestly very scared about leaving home for an extended period of time, so I looked for a way to let my father down carefully, I found that there was a bachelor degree required.

My father is not easily dissuaded though. He found AmeriCorps and suggested it to me. Hesitantly I agreed to apply, not sure what I would do if I got in.

This was a very important and sometimes turbulent time for me. I had a girlfriend, Caity, who was very in love with me. I also had some very close friends that I knew if I left, I would probably grow apart from. I also knew that I needed to do something about my life. AmeriCorps was my only option at that time, I needed to learn more about life.

I think that's something some people don't understand about me back at home. I needed to leave. That was my only option, I had no motivation in life, no direction, and I didn't truly care about anything. I needed to believe in something, in myself. Everyone else was moving forward in their lives and I was stagnant in mine. So I left and I fell in love with being gone. I fell in love with being part of a community that cared more about American progress than about who was getting voted off of American Idol.

Anyways, back to my story, AmeriCorps NCCC was a huge step for me. Being in a completely different part of the country and doing service for communities for 11 months made me realize how much more was out there and that I didn't just have to live and then die. There is actually a whole bunch that you can do in between. Actually after that year I enjoyed Habitat for Humanity so much I wanted to be a carpenter.

After my first year I went back with the plan that after Christmas I was going to move down to South Carolina with my friend Brain and build houses for a volunteer organization. This was a great plan except that it never happened. The friend that promised the job fell through and left
us in a tough spot. So I decided to move out to Denver with no plan. I was just going to find a job and a place. Maybe I would eventually go back to school. One month into living on my friend's couches an opportunity to do another year of AmeriCorps came up and I took it. This was all the way in the northwest, where I had never been.

I was an environmental education team leader who knew nothing about the environment, and looking back, wasn't much of a leader either. But I learned about the environment and developed some of the strongest relationships I have ever had in my life. After that year I knew I was ready to live on my own, but I was still missing something.

Back home I went for 6 months. I was ready to go back to school. I knew the direction I wanted to go finally. I did a semester back at home, finally enjoying learning for the first time in my life. This is no joke, I have never enjoyed going to class as much as I did that last semester back at home. I was taking classes that I liked and even the ones I didn't have any interest in I still excelled at. In June I moved out here, to Portland.

I have settled back into "normal life" in the past few months, but this is temporary only until school starts in the fall. Now I have goals, I know how to reach them and know to expect sudden changes in those goals at anytime. This is what I was searching for 5 years ago, being an adult.

None of this might have made sense to anyone but me. Hell, maybe no one will even make it all the way through this post. But I'm sick so cut me some slack.