Patriots and Pie

Today I felt mostly back to normal after my epic cold, so J and I decided to ride our bikes downtown for our near-weekly trip to the library. J has been burning through music books lately and I have decided to counter the daily inundation of election coverage by reading a few biographies/critiques on our founding fathers. Sure, the reading is a bit dry at times, but after feeling constant disappointment with current political climate, it's refreshing to get back to the basics. Rather than jumping right into a full biography, I decided to whet my appetite with Christopher Hitchens' Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography. I enjoyed it so much that I'm requiring J to read it so that we can discuss. Things I have learned so far? Thomas Paine was pretty awesome. He was a Quaker -- a recurring theme I have noticed in the history of progressive historical figures. Oh, and it kind of sounds like John Adams was an ass (but I'll have to verify that later through additional reading).

Since we were out on bikes, we decided to drop off our ballots instead of putting them in the mail. To make a long story short, I thought the drop box was on Morrison Street in SW Portland, but it was, in fact, on Morrison Street in SE Portland. Our bike ride turned out to be longer than expected and I realized that I am not feeling 100% better from my cold. I kept checking the rear wheel to make sure that somehow I hadn't acquired a couple of lead bricks on the way. I'm sure J wanted to die from my slowness. However, we did it. We voted. Thank god the election will be over in less than a week!

Since we were already out, I decided that our bike ride would not be nearly dramatic enough unless we made a third stop at the grocery store. We picked up apples (to celebrate fall with a pie or crumble), three boxes of tissues, cold medicine (since my ears are still stopped up), some veggies, and a Coke (for the caffeine/sugar boost that I needed to make it home). I took full advantage of the three boxes of tissues and was able to breathe on our way home. By the time we parked our bikes in the basement, I was feeling refreshed and actually was glad that we took the dreaded bike ride. I think I needed a little fresh air.