bintou and warthog take on philly

yesterday was the longest day of the year and i took full advantage!
i woke up at 5:15 to see the sunrise, went to a few farmers markets all over the city, walked a few miles back to my house before lunch time, and then took my lunch (a salad with pears, farmer's market strawberries, gorgonzola, walnuts, and a strawberry balsamic vinaigrette, yum!) to clark park for the summer solstice festival where there was greaaat music and art stuff and it was a beautiful day and oh man it was wonderful! a couple people i live with came and we played frisbee on the field and ran around and i got my feet nice and dirty which is really the way i like my feet best. at 2:30 i took my bike to this place called the divine bike church which is this awesome biking co-op half a block from my apartment. you can go there to work on your bike - its all do it yourself - and they have new and used parts and volunteers with technical expertice so you can fix up your bike and get what you need from them. after 4 hours of solid work (i now understand how to put bikes together), Warthog was finished and ready to ride. Yep, thats my bikes new name (the perfect combination of speed and good looks). When I finished i went back to the park to hang out with my friend sam and we saw some people having a drum circle which was pretty cool.

then i went with mirah, jack, and their two friends who are visiting from out of town to the West Oak Lane Jazz and Arts Festival. It took us like, an hour and a half to get there (its in north north north philly), but when we did it was pretty sweet. the mainstage had a band called Mandrill playing and was situated smack dab in the middle of a primarily black neighborhood. Actually, we were pretty much the only white people out of thouuuusands of people there. so leave it to Bintou to get into a dance-off with this 65 year old black dude in the middle of the crowd. Yep, it was all out and the music was fast paced and there were all these people standing around us and cheering it was so funny and pretty exciting. it must have been a spectacle. and i got lots of smiles from the people standing around when the dancing cooled off. definitely an experience i won't forget.

This morning i woke up and decided to take Warthog out for a ride. we ended up going out for 2 and 1/2 hours, first biking around the city and then heading on the bike path that follows the schuylkill river really really far. it was so beautiful i just kept going further and further. i love being alone in this city because i just do whatever i want when i want to and can just keep going further if i feel like it. i saw some pretty great things while i was riding. like at one point i was riding next to a crew team in the river, and on the front of their boat they had a djembe player keeping this great beat for them! i slowed down for that stretch so i could stay with the music. i also passed this really cute little black kid who was probably 8 or 9 who was riding alone and just BELTING a song at the top of his voice!

After my ride, i made lunch and then headed to the park to grab a coffee with sam and then read by my tree (which has the perfect, back conforming shape) for a couple hours. there was
1. a cool yellow beetle on my leg
2. a people-watcher watching people, with a joint
3. a dude playing flute on a bench on the other side of the park
4. one bite of fair-trade dark chocolate for eatin'
5. a huge bag of handmade colorful ceramic beads that some dude sold me on the side of the street for five dollars (the whole bag!)
6. a topless couple (man and woman) in jeans, having a beer in the alley behind their house on my way home

tonight i got indian food (buffet) with my friend amy which was so filling but sooo good. tomorrow its back to work!