Where Chalk-White Arrows Go

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”

― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends


My high school graduation speech was titled "Where the Sidewalk Begins", inspired by my kindergarten days of listening to "Where the Sidewalk Ends". I stood up there, ready to end high school and take on college, not fully comprehending the sheer stress (pun intended) and challenges and sheer joy of experiences that were ahead. I began:

The path of our education has led up to this day.
That path might have been bumpy, winding, or a joyous ride, but I know it was very long.
Yet, as weary as the walk might have been, here we stand.
We made it.
...
Now we are ready to look both ways,
cross to the other side of the street,
and go make prints in the wet cement with our bare feet.

This is where sidewalk begins.

It's so cheesy...I know. It's even more cheesy now that I laugh at my high school self who hadn't a clear picture of what bumpy, winding, and weary meant. Or even joyous. But if I thought graduating high school was where the sidewalk began, does that mean college is where it ends?

Silverstein seems to think that it is not so. Or does he?

Colorado School of Mines has been the place where the grass grows soft and white. It has also been the place where the smoke blows black and the dark street winds and bends.

Maybe this is before the street begins? And when did my life take on so many road, path, street, or sidewalk metaphors?

Funny...in college I stopped looking both ways before crossing streets and also started jaywalking across them. And some of my favorite times in Golden have been walking with a walk that is measured and slow in the middle of the campus streets in the late hours of the night when no one else is awake and around to crash their car into me. 

What does that have to do with life and paths? 

I don't know. I'm just going to miss it.

Dead Batteries

I had two quarters in my wallet--just enough to make a 15-minute phone call on the pay phone to the only people whose phone number I have memorized. I told my parents that I was at a 7-11 off S. Golden Road and Quaker and asked if they could please come and get me. Why wasn't I in my car? Because I needed a working phone. I figured a working phone would be available at the King Soopers, which is one of the few places open 24 hours in Golden. The liquor store looked open, but I opted to stay away from there. Instead I briskly walked six blocks in the October night until I hit 7-11. Luckily I wouldn't have to walk all the way to King Soopers. Which brought me to buying a chocolate milk while I waited at the 7-11.

Why did I need a working phone? Because upon pulling off to the side of the road, I reached for my phone, and it promptly died. Well, crap, I thought. After praying for my car's healing for a little while, I admitted that my car was dead, my phone was dead, and with it being nearly midnight on this Thursday night, there was no way I could get home by sitting in my car on the side of the road. My only choice was to walk, and for who knows how long. This side of S. Golden Road is poorly lit, and there was construction going on, so walking conditions weren't that favorable. Worse, I was wearing my slippers. Even worse, I didn't have a jacket. (Good thing it wasn't that cold). Gah! It seemed that everything that could possibly go wrong did.

Why was my car dead? I had no idea. I kept asking myself that same question. I had just gotten the battery fixed, because just a couple of weeks ago that had died. But now, it was not the battery. (My dad later revealed it was the timing belt.) It was such a strange experience, for it just croaked right as I approached the large roundabout by Research Road. Switching from 4th to 3rd gear, it just wouldn't go. Pounding the gas pedal...and nothing. Well, crap. I had to decide whether I had enough kinetic energy to make it around the roundabout, and decided that if I tried, I would probably get stuck in the roundabout and have to get out and roll my car to safety. So that's when I coasted to Research Road and pulled off to the side of the road before picking up my dead phone.

Why was I wearing my slippers? And what was I doing out at this hour? I usually drop my friend off after Bible Study around 8:30, but my friends were having a movie night, so I stopped there for a few hours. Of course no movie night is complete without slippers. So that was why I was driving two hours later than I normally was.

Why did my timing belt break when it did? Funny thing, I actually thought the movie night was at The Unicorn House at first, so I showed up there confused before heading to the north side of Golden. Who knows where I would have died had I not taken that detour. Which brings me to the question...

Why didn't I take 6th? I always take 6th Avenue. It's faster, and I probably would've welcomed the extra minutes of sleep since I had class at 8AM  the next morning. But I remembered that part of 6th was closed for construction the other day on the way back. I'm really glad I took S. Golden after imagining if I just died out on the side of the highway with cars around me going 65 miles an hour.

Why was my phone dying? Because it was Thursday, of course. And Thursdays seem to always find a way to suck this semester. This Thursday was fine, even great until I found myself trekking in the dark towards some store that had a pay phone, more annoyed than afraid.

Funny, but the night before I had been trekking along also, but this time was fearful of rattlesnakes, other wild animals, and tripping in the dark. I had spontaneously driven to the base of North Table Mountain after getting the urge to just go somewhere. So my camera and water bottle tagged along the somewhat short trail that I hadn't walked up since first semester freshman year.

I remember it being harder freshman year. But I also remember not taking as many stops along the way as I did Wednesday...taking pictures is distracting. I took so many pictures that by the time the sun finally sank all the way past the horizon, my battery was almost dead. With the twilight dimming and me not wanting to use my phone flashlight app just yet, I scrambled down the mountain, careful to not be eaten by snakes and such. I took a different path (probably not a great idea in the dark), and beheld the volcanic "crater". I turned my camera on, hoping for one last shot, but right then the battery died. Welp, that's it then. 

With the sky darkening by the second, I stopped wasting time and really scampered back to the parking lot. I wondered if I would have time to eat dinner before IV Large Group. I didn't.

In short, dead batteries equal adventure in some sort and lessons learned in another sort.

Steps to Having an Awesome Week at Mines

Having all my tests (well three) the week before break was great. I highly recommend it. Or not, thinking back to that week. But this week was pretty great. But it didn't have to be. There are a few things that made it awesome.

First off, there was no Lon-Capa due on Monday. Or Math worksheet due on Wednesday. Or CompSci assignments until Friday. I know, awesome. The only thing I had due were a few NHV readings and this stupid dumb idiotic Boulderish paper about me and the environment for NHV. I know NHV is called "Nature and Human Values" for a reason, but seriously? I hoped it wasn't too cheesy, because I wrote it at 3 a.m. But that was the only night I stayed up that late. It felt weird to get to bed early the other nights (1 a.m.). But it was nice. I even woke up early one morning to meet friends to get the Word in during breakfast. Yeah, awesome.

If you live around here and have a beating heart, you probably know that the weather this week was the best it could have been. Mid-70's....sunny....need I say more? It's impossible to be depressed when it's like that. It was a perfect time to go fly my kite that I got from Career Day... I'll have to find some time to do it this week. Most of my friends got some level of sunburn, except me (Thank you, genetics!). I studied outdoors a couple times. Yeah, awesome.

I got the rest of my scores back, and they turned out alright. Well more than alright: my NHV Synthesis paper received the highest grade I've ever gotten on a "test" thing at Mines. Which isn't saying much, but at least it gives me a mark to shoot over for my next Calc and/or Physics exam. Like I told you before, I made a lot of stupid mistakes on my recent Calc test though. Yeah, awesome.

But classes are going well. Kuo (physics) is great, telling us how wrong the two years of highschool physics I took were in a big booming voice. Mrs. Walker (Calc II) is great, and partial fractions and differential equations are kind of fun. Hellman (Intro to Computer Science) is great, running back and forth of the lecture room making CompSci fun, inserting bad puns, all while wearing a shirt with a binary joke on it. Even PA with Bhakta is alright- I'm learning not to cross my arms, and playing games is fun, right?

I picked the perfect day to go back to Chem Lecture on Friday. Racicot blew stuff up for a half hour and that's it. Oh here, just look:

He asked if there were other visitors and I raised my hand. "What are you doing here? Trying to get me fired?" "I...." "Just kidding." "Okaaay...". I hope and am almost certain he was kidding (or that's what I've chosen to believe). Why else would I come to Chem lecture besides to have fun and re-live old times of Racicot blowing stuff up? I know, right? Did you see the bright magnesium and then the huge flame hit the balloon that eventually exploded into a huge fireball? Yeah, awesome.

I officially started Capa on Monday and the math worksheet (due next Wednesday) quite early also. Which made my weekend pretty awesome to enjoy. Hmm, I should do that more often- start homework early. It would do me well, and I've been meaning to all of freshman year pretty much. But it works and I highly recommend it. I finished off my week with two hotdogs, three and one-half baseball games, adding in binary, and serving tacos to 75 Maplians.

Yeah, pretty awesome.

3....2.....1.....Dodgeball!

PA is an interesting creature at the Colorado School of Mines. First and foremost, its name. We are forbidden to call it PE, because apparently everyone in the world would think us to have Petroleum Engineering class where we have to wear closed toed athletic shoes. Strange, I know. But Petroleum gets naming rights. Secondly, PA is plain amusing accounting for the fact that we're all a bunch of wimpy nerds put into a strange gym-looking room (the field house) forced to do athletic things. Funny...I don't feel exercised at all.

At the beginning of the year, we were told this was to be our fun class that will be the easiest to pass, so make friends 'cause it will be boring if you don't talk. So we made friends. And we talked before class. And our coach took forever to show up, so we waited- sometimes until 10:15. But once he got there and took roll call, we played dodgeball (sometimes after running/walking two laps). And while pretending to play dodgeball, we stood in the back talking and exercising our voices and social skills..if we have any. This is how it's been for 10 weeks, except the nice days in September that we played kickball outside.

There is a specific strategy for dodgeball, and I think Mines students have figured it out. After waking up at 9:50, get there all groggy and walk to the nearest wall. When a kid yells "3...2...1...Dodgeball!", don't run up to the line. Stay behind and stand in the back of a very large person for a shield, but not too big that you can't see what's going on. When numbers start dwindling, and it looks like you'll have to do something to avoid being the last survivor, try to catch a ball and fail. Or throw a ball so the other team catches it. Then you'll be out of the game. Sit back, relax and enjoy the show that is The Wizard (some weird kid) yelpping as he gets hit. Some kids will try to jailbreak the team while out by making a basket on the other side of the court, but that is pointless- you'll only have to go back out and play.

Oh, once in a while we hustle. Sometimes the team I'm on wins. But usually dodgeball is a very good display of poor athleticism, except for the few former baseball players who throw curveballs that go right towards your face. PA is mostly a waste of time: I get a better workout walking to and from PA than the actual class. We never do anything. Except for that one time we ran a mile, which was more like crawling for some of us who were gasping for air and holding our sore limbs. Easy A.

I'm starting to make my schedule for next semester. I think it'll be fun, with a dose of horrible red boxes from Physics on Lon-Capa. Or however you spell it. I think I'm gonna try to get PA only once a week at 8 a.m. Which might be stupid, because no one is a morning person, and we'll be playing dodgeball even more lethargically. We might even be able to play while sleep-walking.