- Bill Bryson, Best American Travel Writing 2000
Tried out my new MP3 player today. I can't really recommend this device a Treo 10 with somewhat limited (and frequently perverse) functionality, it's basically a 10GB hard drive with headphones but I got it for free from my web hosting provider as a thank-you gift for referring my clients to them. So, it's a nice boon. My workouts, as it happens, have always pretty much been hostage to local DJs. That is to say, a little White Zombie or Live comes on, and I'm kicking ass. A lineup of ear dross, and I'm dead in the water. I've also been getting a little sick of static, commercials, etc. So, last week, I ripped my entire CD collection (with the obvious exception of all the annoying bits). Now I've got 1,250 songs on my hard drive AND I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Muhahahaha. From that, I isolated a subset with high energy and up tempos, for workouts; now I've got 35 hours of thrashing exercise music in the palm of my hand.
Incidentally, since I now won't even be listening to broadcast (or even Internet) radio while working out and of course I'm still erecting a hugely effective barrier between me and the other people in the gym, on the mountain, etc. I reckon this qualifies as another big step down my road toward becoming one of the Freemen of the Internet.
Moreover, I now take all my music with me when I skedaddle on out of here adding a gross weight to my luggage of 0lb 0oz, and addtional volume of 0 cubic inches. Also as a result of this, I went and sold back half my CDs. I even sold some books the pile I've never gotten to, and (in honest moments) knew I was never going to. (DeLillo's Underworld, anyone? In hardcover?) I also dumped three fourths of the minor mountain of computer books.
On the way back from the gym, I found myself shouting at squirrels again. The Stanford campus is full of this race of death-taunting squirrels who, I swear, LINE UP at the edges of the bicycle/pedestrian paths, wait for your approach, and then just DART right out in front of you. I swear to God, it's a contest to see who can wait until the last minute to sprint out under your wheel. My only defense against becoming a killer/maimer is to keep my hands on the brakes and to shout at the little bastards a lot. Right after such a bout of shouting, I came upon an intersection of path and roads one of the several that I customarily blow right through, pedalling full out. (My position is that this is a college campus, and the damned motorists can yield.) And today, as I blew on out in front of advancing cars, I realized: I'm one of the squirrels.