Urbana-Champaign Bicycle Commute

Bicycling infiltrates academia! Today's emailed "food for thought" of the day to the entire college, not from a cycling commuter (I don't know if she rides a bicycle)... and happy birthday, Theo and Englebert!:


“When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.”--H.G. Wells
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1903: Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author, (Baby and Child Care) is born in New Haven, Connecticut.

1921: Satyajit Ray, Academy Award winning filmmaker (Apu trilogy), is born in Kolkata, India.

1924: Theodore Bikel, Austrian-Jewish singer, actor, (Fiddler on the Roof), is born in Vienna, Austria.

1936: Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey), Anglo-Indian singer, is
born in Madras, India.
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The Rider

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.


--Naomi Shihab Nye