All talk and velociraptors

When I was a kid I rebuilt my first bike with  my dad and my brother. We found a pretty choice BMX frame at the dump and got to work on it. We greased the bearings, oiled the chain, sanded the frame and trued the wheels. We called it the Halloween Bike because we spray painted it bright orange and found a black set of handel bars. Current events have brought these things back up for me.
My dad has always been self-employed, putting ads in local papers as a catch all handy man, prouder of me when I work my way up a level than if my education grants me access. His parents were of the Depression, and you could see that in his paint stained pants and pre-existing-condition-no-insurance staunch Republican stance---in his scrap metal side venture and vocal disdain for planned obsolescence.  The bike he taught me to ride on was an old Schwinn from the fifties. I think he's really into reselling lead soldiers online right now, but for awhile there, he had a solid E-bay business where he fixed bikes and sold them to Chicago college students.
Till the wheels fall off I can fix a flat, but other than that I've built only one more bike in my life, back at Uni--even so, the smell of grease, and WD40 will always make me remember that first bike with my Dad and my Zack.

My new coloc--A GIRL!!!!!!- showed me this bike coop where I'll be fixing up a cruiser three days a week. The deal is remarkable, 15 for the membership, parts, labor and education, and the bike is pay what you can. So I'm working on this velo and it's so cool because I've never worked on a cassette crank--I'm learning all kinds of technical language and a practical skills. Admittedly, my new ride is far from sex on wheels, but I'm going to put my time in on this one and pay the difference on another beautiful blue racer the shop was hoping to use to turn a profit. It's tubeless, so I'm planning to replace the tires and rims, ride it for awhile and give it back to them to sell when I leave Paris. Can't say how long this will all take, should be fun though!

A short time ago, in a galaxy near you, I was teaching English three times a week from behind my computer screen. It's kind of weird leading a course via the internet--mostly because I've never really had lectures modeled for me by other proctors. Back at University, the biggest class I was ever in had 30 people and even then the professor knew everyone's name and we all spoke freely.

-->The class I'm referring to was Existienalism, my second class with Sebastien. Oddly enough, the person whom I habitually sat next to would always draw pictures of Seba and write things he said out of context beneath the images. It's so weird that I'm writing this from a room that I share with him now, in a different country--no less, because when all of this was my here and now,  I didn't have a crush on him.......although upon honest reflection, it was slightly more important than it should have been for me to impress him with my intellect each time we spoke... frankly, I didn't give it too much thought, at the time. I guess that's how I managed to not screw it up.

On to my classes again, I think the most important aspect of language acquisition is to be sure you practice speaking, which is impossible when there are 60 some odd persons in attendance.
I had some fun with it, though.
It made me smile to mentally fill in the blanks of the following section with the singular or the plural of "suck."
If not now, when? If not me, who?
That's droll enough, but I actually had to stop a few times  to keep from cracking up while reading this next section out loud because filling in the blank  with "blank"was just as hilarious in my mind as using the ongoing action form, the past tense, or the infinitive of Fuck. Try it!
Blankety, blank, blank, blank--pilgrim. 
Damn, it feels good to be a teacher.
But you're all clever girls around here, you who know me so well rest assured that I'll not trans-mutate into a grammar genie. That's 'prolly why I'll stay all talk and velociraptors till the sky falls.


Off to test the fences, be well.



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