The University

Our noon basketball games made it into the news again, this time in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last Saturday:

After starring at UMass, Skinner played in the ABA, NBA and overseas from 1974-81. He was a teammate and roommate of Julius Erving on the New York Nets. Now 52, Skinner's playing style and competitiveness are still evident in the weekday noon pickup games he plays in against assorted BC professors, administrators, the stray assistant football coach and gym rats.

"Al plays like it's the NBA Finals, and he's behind," said Bill Toof, 59, the ex-BC ski coach now handling the football team's game analysis operation. "Al doesn't like to lose. One day I told our athletic director, 'Hey, when are we going to get a basketball coach? Al can't be a basketball coach. He's not a big enough [jerk].' Other [coaches] were full of themselves, impressed with themselves. Al is a genuinely nice man who is a competitor --- a fierce competitor."

Once again, they omitted the category of "grad student set shooters" from the list of Coach's opponents. What's a guy got to do to get a little respect around here?

Yesterday morning as I was riding up Commonwealth Avenue by Boston College, on the backside of Heartbreak Hill on the Boston Marathon route, I saw to young men gliding down the sidewalk on Segway Human Transporters at about 10 mph. It was suprising, to say that least, and I had no idea who these people could be. It seems like an expensive way to get to class, though I wouldn't put it past some wealthy BC students.

Then this morning I read an article in the Boston Globe ("On the Roll Again: Five Take Scooters on 4,000-mile Trek") that offered an explanation. It turns out that five twenty-something guys hopped on their scooters in California on August 9th and have been traveling at 10 miles-an-hour across the country ever since. It appears I was lucky enough to cross paths with them on the home stretch, less than 8 miles from finishing their journey.

I once test-rode a  Segway in an extremely vivid dream I had just after they hit the market. The dream was so clear that I genuinely feel as if I've experienced this innovative form of transportation, and I must say it was pretty fun. But when I woke up, the $5,000 price tag as a bit too real for my wallet, and it wasn't clear exactly how this human transporter could revolutionize the way we get around without first dealing with the bigger issues of SUV's and suburban sprawl.

While the Segway is a technological marvel, I still think the bicycle is hard to rival as one of the most efficient and pleasurable forms of transportation we've come up with so far. What scares me most is the idea that one day I will find myself stuck in traffic on a freeway somewhere and will wonder if my years of biking for transportation were just a dream, a foolish fantasy never to survive past my graduate school years. But I'm strangly inspired by the foolish journey of these Segway riders, and I wonder if we're all trying to get in touch with something deeply spiritual about transportation, a sense that how get around matters in more profound ways that we are usually able to realize.