Over the River

Last week was an odd and uncomfortable week. It started with my birthday - somewhat subdued by the fact that I was feeling ill and that my Batavus - a gift - had been stolen the week before. As the week wore on, the discomfort grew as the illness I was feeling turned out to be Lyme Disease.

This has always been one of those conditions that I’ve dismissed as a lack of gumption of the part of its sufferers. Something that is best treated by sucking it up and getting back to work and life. There are any number of illnesses that fit this bill for me - and every time I name one of them either I or a friend or family member is diagnosed with it as fate works to demonstrate the validity of the condition.

I now know that Lyme Disease is real and it really sucks. I had fever and chills for ages, aches and fatigue that were persistent and an overall feeling of malaise and malady that simply wouldn’t let up. I am still feeling like crap but I kind of feel like I need to get out and get back to life. It might not be the wisest decision . . .

While this illness was irritating me I was also trying to sort out replacing my bike. I had one in mind but it was pricey(ish). I was anxious and impatient to get my hands on it and kept peppering the owner trying to find a time when we could meet. This weekend wasn’t going to work but I thought I might do something late Sunday.

Shortly before 10:00 on Saturday I got a call from the police. They had a moped that they wanted me to see and ID. I was on the scene in minutes and sure enough it was my bike. The fellow who had it was using it as a bicycle - peddling the damn thing around. It can’t have been easy, that’s for sure. The bike has only one speed and weighs nearly 100 lbs.

He claimed to have found it on the side of the road and no have painted it to make it look better. I noticed that the paining was largely limited to those areas of the bike that had names or logos . . . I also know that he will have passed at least a half dozen posters looking for the bike in the few minutes before the police stopped him. I guess he didn’t have a chance to read them.

Here’s the bike with the current paint job:

I am going to have it painted I think. Orange perhaps.

In any case, I am beyond happy to have my bike back. I want to thank everyone who’s been helpful in my search and recovery - the gang at Moped Army who had lots of great suggestions, the folks who saw the posting on Craig’s List and contacted me with tips and clues, the Natick PD for taking this seriously and being totally helpful and most of all Rich Berg of Natick who spotted the rider and contacted the police.

Pretty crazy that everything worked out in the end - and that was thanks to so many people helping out and playing their own part. Now I can get back to making my bike the most awesome moped around . . .

Sometimes I feel like a total blockhead - not in a bad way but more in a comfortable, easy and familiar way. This is one of those times. I have a ton going on - all of which is pretty cool - but an equal number of distractions - most of which totally suck. On the plus side is starting work with some new companies, being touched and surprised by the unexpected kindness of others having an overall feeling of (perhaps unwarranted).

On the downside are the fact that I still haven’t found my bike (and at this point doubt I ever will), that I have been sick for the past several days - suffering from a fever in the midst of the recent stifling heat and that my mind has been in a fog of late - all of which have made it difficult to be as focused and creative in my thinking as I would like.

Being optimistic though - and starting to feel better and having found a new bike - I am expecting the fog to life and for me to be able to do more of what I want more effectively. At least that is my hope.

Update

At this point I think my Bat is gone for good and I’m looking to get a replacement - but that isn’t going to happen for a few more weeks :(.

So I bought a moped just a week ago. It was a birthday gift (which isn’t even until 6/9). I spent the past weekend getting it working and had only ridden it a few times. Then today, I locked it up at West Natick station and went to work. When I got home it was gone. Lock, stock and barrel. It’s really bumming me out.

Here’s a picture of it:

If you see it let me know. It wasn’t super expensive but it’s not like I can just go buy another one . . . and I have $100 in parts en route. What a shitty day.

Last week I went and bought a moped. It’s a Batavus Starflite. It was only $300 and it should do fine getting me to and from the West Natick train station every day. Every day that I drive it I’ll be saving $2 on parking and since it gets around 100 miles per gallon I should managed to save *some* money on fuel - not to mention the reduced wear and tear on my car.

Sure it’s 30 years old and it might not be the fastest thing on the road but I like it - and it seems that I can fix the thing myself (so far).

I don’t know what’s happened to me over the past few months but I have taken a total hiatus from almost everything: writing here and on my other blogs, writing stories, taking photographs, going out, attending events - everything. A few weeks ago (or maybe it was months) I did resume taking pictures and I’m treating that as the first step on the road to recovery.

Has this happened to anyone else? I mean I consider myself a fairly active and creative person but it’s like I just went blank for a while there. My hope is that now that I’ve recognized the problem I can address it but I worry that isn’t going to be the case and my days of thinking and self-expression have come to an unfortunate and dismal end.

I sure hope that isn’t the case . . .

This is an open call for people interested in participating in Boston’s first (and perhaps the world’s only) air marching band. Unlike a rabble, the Boston Paper Hat Air Marching Band (BPHAMB - pronounced b-fam) will be a credit to the community and its members.

The first BPHAMB event will take place on Saturday, April 19th (Patriot’s Day) at 1:00PM on the Boston Common near the corner of Beacon and Cambridge Street. The event will begin with general aimless milling around, followed uniform craft time (paper hats for everyone!), instrument selection and finally a VERY brief rehearsal.

The proposed route will take the band over Beacon Hill, across Government Center and into Faneuil Hall for drinks and other refreshments.

Please let us know if you are interesting in attending this inaugural march. Send us an email and please note if you are interested in helping to promote, enlist, fold or fabricate our mobile sound system.

This has the opportunity to be totally KICK ASS so grab a friend, a sheet of newspaper, a bring your marchingest attitude down to the Common on the 19th.

SpotStory was a “side dish” at a WebInno event earlier this year. Their idea is to create a place for people to share and collect and comment on points of interest. It made me think of geocaching meets Flickr meets social networking - and all three are things that I enjoy.

Until this past weekend the site was in beta. I think I made one or two contributions but didn’t fool around with it much. I logged in on the past Monday to find that they’d taken off the wraps. Since then, I’ve been playing with the site regularly. I’ve added Spots from all over the place. The other day I posted a picture of the Picasso sculpture below of Flickr and someone posted that the same statue stands in Amsterdam - another Spot! And a tour!

Today I went through my photos of public art on the MIT campus. That netted out to more Spots and another tour. I’ve also had people post details on places I’ve seen and wondered about. Now as much as I like SpotStory, I’m not quite clear on the business aspect of the site and that may mean this is a short-lived service. But as long as it’s here, I’m happy to be an active part of the community.

If you’re into history, art and stories attached to specific places, I suggest you get on and check it out.

Technorati Tags: SpotStory, WebInno, GPS, Flickr, social networking, Picasso, MIT, sculpture, art, photograph, tours

This is the interior of what has to be one of the nuttiest vehicles I’ve ever seen. We used it to get back to the Venetian from Roy’s last night.

The exterior was equally silly.

technorati tags:Las Vegas, Limo, Absurd, newcommforum, flickr

I thought I’d get caught up on things over this past week of vacation; but that didn’t turn out to be the case.  Between writing up a summary of the MIT Communication Forum on Remixing Shakespeare, visiting friends, family and museums and facing slow or non-existent Internet connections I really didn’t do a whole lot of anything.

Vacation is over now though and it’s time to get back to work.  Slowly but surely I’ll be picking up the pace and responding to everyone.

There is so much great stuff going on out there that I’m falling behind in my posting.  Just from yesterday I have three things I need to write about.

The first was a really good meeting with Shawn Broderick of TrustPlus.  We met in Natick yesterday morning and had a good conversation about trust, reputation, identity and eBay.  I have to get my thoughts together on that one.

The second is Justin Kirkby’s survey on connected marketing.  John Cass mentioned it in a post the other day and I went to check it out.  Basically Justin wrote the book on connected marketing and he wanted people to provide feedback on the predictions he made on the topic way back in 2005.  Some of them were on target while others either haven’t come to pass.  One of his predictions was that marketers would hyper-localize (not his term) their search for - and targeting of - influencers geographically.  I think that what’s happening in virtual communities - and understanding and reaching the influencers there - has become much more important.

The last this is last night’s MIT Communication Forum on Remixing Shakespeare.  This was a really interesting event on the ways the Bard has been used, abused, modified and repurposed from his own day through today and beyond.  Summarizing it will be no small task as much of the content was video-based.

Of course on top of all of this there is that little thing called work . . .

It will take me a few days, but thankfully I am on vacation next week and should be able to give these topics some attention.

Technorati Tags: TrustPlus, Justin Kirkby, Connected Marketing, John Cass, MIT Communications Forum, Remixing Shakespeare