Dancers are my favorite people

Yesterday was my first real test of biking around town. I rode down to Rite-Aid to pick up some bandaids and an extension cord. No problems there, except people kept giving me funny looks. Girls on bikes aren't exactly common around here. At one point I hit a big pothole and my chain dropped, which is somewhat annoying because on a single speed there's no derailleur to make it easy to get a chain back on. I managed just fine, partially due to the fact that Johnny's (that's my bike) chain was pretty loose. I might have somebody look at that and see if it should be tightened, especially since I lost my chain twice more yesterday. Anyway, while I was fixing my chain, a little boy noticed me:

"Mommy, what's that?"
"That's a bike."
"Can I have one of those?"
"You already have one, you just don't know how to ride it yet."

I was having a hard time getting the chain fixed and not giggling too loudly at the same time.

After my great shopping trip, which was mostly successful, the weather took a turn for the worse. I had planned to go exploring a little bit, but didn't really want to explore in the rain and wind. So I hung around the house reading about FDA regulations for human research subjects and watching movies on my laptop. There was a swing dance that night that I didn't want to miss, so I kept checking the weather report hoping to see some sign of it clearing up.

Around 8pm it was still raining and nasty out, but I had been inside all day and didn't want to miss the dance. So I pulled out my rain pants and fluorescent yellow jacket, packed up a change of clothes, double checked my route on the map, and rode off to the dance. The ride was quite pleasant, actually. I got to try out a pedestrian/bike bridge over the Genesee River, which was very nice. I'll be using that bridge every day to get to campus. I then followed a road that runs beside the river, which was also quite nice. It was about a 20 minute ride to the Tango Cafe Dance Studio, not as long as I had anticipated, so I had time to grab a cup of coffee and a wonderfully fresh chocolate chip cookie from The Mez which was downstairs from the dance studio.

After my coffee I was ready to go meet the dancers. When I first walked in there were only about 10 people there, which made me a little nervous. But it filled up fast and everyone was very friendly. The first person I really talked to was a guy named Matt, a student at RIT originally from Seattle, and he sort of took me in hand for the night. He introduced me to people and helped me get my bearings. I danced a fair amount and chatted a bit and had a very good time. The most interesting dance of the night was definitely the one with the deaf man. He managed to keep perfect time, probably using cues from me as much as anything to stay with the music.

After the dance, Matt invited me to join them at a place called "The Dinosaur". I was skeptical, but decided to give it a try. Apparently there is usually live blues music there on Wednesday nights and they go hang out and dance. Well, last night there was a one man band that somehow ended up beatboxing his way through a rendition of Kashmir. I'm not kidding. It was painful. But there was good beer and it smelled like fantastic barbeque, so I'll give it another try. According to the dancers, next week will be a guy with a didgeridoo, but he's actually good. I don't think I can miss my chance to hear a blues didgeridoo.

At some point during the evening I got an invite to a blues party on Saturday night, which is great. For those that read this and haven't been to one, blues parties are when a dancer invites a bunch of other dancers to their house and just plays good danceable blues music all night long. It's very fun. There's also a live big band dance on Friday that I may go to if I can get myself some shoes by then.

So after all of this excitement I rode home and got back around 1am. It was nice to go out for a night and get welcomed by a good crowd of people. I'm definitely making progress in the friends department.