Did you pickup the hitchhiker? I don't know. How's my tire?

As I drove to school this morning, I saw a pair of hitchhikers on the North bound ramp of I85. A horseshoe mustached man and a round, blond haired woman made me think about the time I was compelled to pick-up a hitchhiker walking along the side of the road. I was driving back to Georgia after 9 months of school at BYU. With my 1993 VW FOX loaded to the brim, except for a CD case, map, and food in the front seat, I decided to detour myself over and visit my cousin Kevin Kortman in Fort Collins, CO. As a reference point, it usually takes me 32 hours to get from Marietta, GA to Provo, UT. I was planning on taking three days to make the trek; it took 5 days.
When I decided to detour to Ft. Collins, I passed a lanky, scruffy looking man hitch hiking along the side of the road. I thought about stopping, but in the end, I decided that it wasn't a good idea and passed him. Less than a mile later, "*clocsh* flip-flip-flurr-floprr-flip-fliprr" the outer sidewall of my tire detached itself from the body. Changing a tire is an annoyance that is easily remedied with the appropriate tools and mind frame of "I'm reinforcing my manliness by changing this tire." The thing that I always forget to include in the emergency/tire changing toolkit is a way to clean yourself up after you've done what you need to do. Also, if for any reason your not able to quickly change the tire or do the repair, it's likely I will sweat my clothes to wet and further require a towel or washcloth. Finally, the notion that "I am so manly" changing this tire is somewhat negated when you're worried about getting grime on your pants or ruining a shirt, or messing yourself. The repair took longer than I had hoped mainly because I had packed my trunk tightly with my stuff before leaving under which were the tools and tire needed to fix the one that had "broke." With my belongings on the asphalt, I see the lanky vagrant get closer and closer. Just as I am putting on the last lug nut, the man is 200 meters away. It was a sign that I should have picked him up the first time.
The particulars of finding a repair shop and the trip to the next town with the syphilitic man that had his vehicle taken from him by his ex-girlfriend that he had just helped move into her new apartment, which (of course) was the reason he had to walk back home that night is for another post, if you'd like. This is one of the reasons that the 3 day trek took 5, two were eaten up walking 12 miles on dirt roads from Quinter, Kansas, to Grainfield and hitching a ride back.
The point of this was. I saw some hitchhikers the other day. I thought about picking them up, but I did not. They may have been decent. I guess I'll never know; my tire didn't blow out.

ee cummings

So before I get into anything else, I wanted to give a nod towards the late ee cummings. He is my favorite poet, though the likes of Walt Whitman (principally), Edgar Allan Poe (due to my father reading his work to my sister and I growing up), and Homer (from sheer mythical influence and fantastic inspiration) have all left their mark. I wish I had read more poetry. It's not that I cannot read some now, but I feel that my poetic peak has passed. If you're interested in e e cummings, and have any other authors that you think I might be intersted in, please leave a comment.

I have the complete poems of e e cummings; however, I am very interested in purchasing his lectures given at Harvard, i: six nonlectures. The lectures are e e cummings speaking about his life and some of his influences. It would have been so exciting to listen to these live. That's one thing that I really enjoyed about BYU and even PCOM-GA now, the lectures and people speaking. The likeliness of a poet speaking for the medical school is pretty low, but the medically centric guests are engaging.

I think that I'll make another post later on some other authors that I enjoy.

Why not?

Why not? Ever since Katie started her own blog, I would always excitedly look at her blog page to see what she's been up to. I know what she's been up to, for the most part, but I still enjoyed seeing what pictures she posted or the project she worked on published. Secretly, I would also love it when she posted things where I was involved as well. With her small business starting and our not working together anymore at Mater, I figured, it was time for me to post things on occasion as well.