Episode XXXIV: Stuff & Things

(In which Adam complains about his busy life and broken camera)

I sure am behind schedule on these postings of mine. I would like to blame it all on my ‘busy’ schedule. I would also like to blame it all on the fact that I don’t have a good camera to use. It’s much more fun putting together a post when I can use good pictures (that weren’t taken six months ago when my camera last worked). This will be my last post of the year, and maybe I will have a new unbroken camera by the next time I post something. For now, here are some random items of interest:

It’s Lovely Weather…

For a sleigh ride! I have been quite satisfied that we have had excellent winter weather leading up to Christmas this year. Last year I don’t recall any snowfall before I left for California, but this year the weather has been excellent. Last week there was an ice storm, and the icicles left all over the trees were spectacular (curses to my broken camera!) Then this weekend there was a lovely snow, and I went on my first Midwest sledding trip. It was so fun, I can’t believe I missed out all of last year.

Addendum:

Since the time I polled you all regarding my newfound sound sleeping, I have come up with two additional ideas (besides the ones that you all brought up). The first observation is that I moved into my condo at the same time that I got a new queen-sized bed. Could my sound sleep be explained by something as simple as a comfy bed? The other idea is that moving into my condo roughly corresponded with the complete and utter cessation of Homework and Projects and Other General Busywork that would contribute to stress. This, I suppose, would go under the already-established category of “Peace of Mind”.

My Broken Camera

It is really a bummer that my camera is broken. It is especially a bummer because it seems to have decided to park itself right underneath my computer monitor in lab, so every time I use the computer, I am reminded that my camera is, in fact, broken. It is really a bummer.

Episode XXXIII: Sports & Recreation

First of all, thanks to all who participated in the inaugural Epic Ballade poll, and shame on all who did not. I was surprised that the vast majority of responders said “Hard Work” was the decisive factor in my improved sleep. Interesting- I would not have picked that myself as a first choice. Of course The Truth is not decided by democracy, but the poll was interesting and instructive nonetheless.

Sports

It is a good year to be a Jayhawk, or at the least a Jayhawk fan. The always-stellar basketball team is currently ranked #4 early in the season, and the football team, until today, was ranked #2 in the nation. Even after today’s (close) loss to #4 Missouri, our football team has far exceeded our wildest expectations, getting off to the best start in their nearly 150-year history. As a sign at today’s game read: “KU football: A tradition since September”.

Recreation

As I write these very words, I am in the town of Dallas, Texas. I decided to take a little trip over the Thanksgiving holiday, and by a sort of a luck-of-the-draw, Dallas/Fort Worth was the chosen destination. I have already had quite a few adventures, and plan on sticking around for another day. For now, I will leave you with a photo from my Thanksgiving Meal that I had in Texas. It is an IHOP breakfast featuring Pumpkin Pancakes!

Episode XXXII: Rest & Relaxation

Alright folks, this post is designed to be an interactive post, meaning that you, the reader, are expected to do a little itty bitty bit of activity in contributing to the post. Do you think you can do it? Are you up to it? Ya think so? Okay, let’s get started.

One unexpected change that has occurred upon moving into my own condo is that I am sleeping better than I ever have in my entire life! Basically I have been hitting the pillow and falling asleep within five minutes, every night, no exceptions. In fact, I have even been doing things like consuming caffeine or sugar, or playing volleyball right before bed, none of which seem to have an effect on the rapidity with which I go to sleep. Even when I went through a bout of food poisoning, I slept great, with just an occasional trip to the restroom.

I have discussed my newfound sleeping prowess with a number of individuals, and they have submitted a number of theories on why I am sleeping so well. I will describe the theories below, and then your job, oh interactive reader, is to tell me which one(s) you think most likely, by participating in the inaugural Epic Ballade Poll.

Here are the theories:

A- Quiet. It is absolutely true that my condo is quieter than the Jayhawker Towers, which should allow a more peaceful sleep (in fact, it is remarkable just how quiet this place gets). However, it is not radically quieter than when I was at home in California, or when I spent a month at the Griffins’ out in the country, and yet I never slept this well at either of those places.

B- Peace of Mind. It has been suggested that now that I have a steady work environment, as well as my very own domicile, my stress and anxiety levels are down, and I have a peace of mind which leads to good sleep. While I see some value in this argument, I contend that I have always had peace of mind, but who knows? I guess it’s hard to be your own psychoanalyst.

C- Less Sleep. It is true that I have been spending less total time in bed, but I have difficulty determining which is the cause and which is the effect. Perhaps I am sleeping better, so I do not need as much time in bed, or perhaps I am not getting as much sleep, so when I do get in bed I fall asleep quickly.

D- Harder Work. I have indeed been “working harder” than I have in the past. I am working eight hour (or greater) days for the first time in my life, I am playing volleyball at least weekly, and am walking to school more often than I am driving. Perhaps, as Solomon had it, the sleep of the laborer is sweet.

So there you have it! And now you get to contribute! You should see a polling station near the top right-hand corner of the page. Check the box or boxes corresponding to the theory or theories which you find most likely, and let your voice be heard! Anonymity guaranteed! Please also feel free to suggest additional theories explaining my newfound sleeping success.

Episode XXXI: Shoots & Leaves

Last weekend I went with some brothers (say 10 or 15) to The Middle of Nowhere, MO for some camping on a friend’s sprawling property, which included a forest, cornfield, pasture, pond and stable (oh, and a house). In one sense we were roughing it, as there was no running water, fire pit, electricity, etc. On the other hand, we were a quick five minute drive from our hosts’ house, where they fed us a full (and I mean full) three meals a day, consisting almost exclusively of homegrown and homemade delights. Here are some highlights of the trip:

- We arrived at around 11pm. I stayed around the campfire until 4am, when it began to rain. It did not cease to rain, sprinkle, drizzle or at least threaten to precipitate for the remainder of the trip.

- For the first time ever, I went four-wheel-driving in the mud. I was sitting in the bed of the truck, and let me tell you, my t-shirt has some mud stains that may never come out.

- I shot my first firearm! That’s right; it took me just over a year of living in the Midwest before I started shootin’ stuff. We were shooting clay pigeons, and I got one on only my second try!


- I played the only game of pool (as far as I can recall) in which I won without even having to make a single shot.

- During a game of tackle football, one of the guys got his nose broken in half. Not that it came off or anything, it just got seriously broken. He returned from the hospital the next day in good spirits and health.

- On Sunday we took a side-trip to see the house of WWI General John J. Pershing.

- On the way back home we passed through the “home of sliced bread”, and stopped by Maxie, the World’s Largest Goose



Oh the things you will see (and do) in The Middle of Nowhere, MO!

Episode XXX: Stocks & Bonds

Today’s post is designed to inform, not to entertain. If you would like to be entertained, you should check out this beat-boxing flute player.

Stocks

Almost ten months ago I set up a Roth-IRA account, with which I could do my own stock- market investing. I am happy to announce that finally, I am back in the black! That is, my retirement account is no longer losing me money. The historical graph below shows how I managed to make an impressive 0% return on investment while the broader U.S. market made almost 10%.


And now, if you would like to try to replicate my results, I will give you two simple, tried-and-true methods:

#1: Pick amazing stocks. I do not mean, “pick good stocks”, or even, “pick great stocks”. I mean, pick AMAZING stocks. These are stocks that do things like go up 100% in one year, or 25% in a quarter, or perhaps even 10% in a day.

#2: After you pick out a nice little basket of amazing stocks, you must trade them like crazy. The more often you buy and sell, the heftier the brokerage commissions will be. In addition, the more buying and selling you do, the more likely you will be to miss some of the gains of your amazing stocks. In fact, if possible, try to trade so often that you break SEC rules and are assessed a fine.

A fairly easy game-plan, no? Only two simple rules! If you diligently follow these two investing rules, I can guarantee you many decades of financial stagnancy and underperformance.

Bonds

My favorite sports story of the year so far is about Barry Bonds’ record-setting home run ball. The ball was purchased by Mark Ecko (founder of ecko urban clothing brand) for over $700k. He then had fans vote on the fate of the ball, and the final decision was to imprint the ball with an asterisk and donate it to the Hall of Fame. How funny is that? The free market in action!

Episode XXIX: Odds & Ends

Do Not Ball In These Shoes

I am anticipating an approaching apparel crisis, unless someone can help me. You see, a few years ago I bought a pair of And1 street shoes, which were just the greatest shoes I have ever worn. A year or two later, I was fortunate enough to get an identical second pair to replace my aging first pair. Now, however, as I once again near shoe-replacement time, this particular shoe seems to have disappeared, both from internet and brick-and-mortar stores. So this is my request: if anyone happens to be shopping and they see a pair of shoes like the ones below (preferably in blue), please let me know immediately. I am looking for a size 9 ½. Thanks!

Trying To Ford the River, My Oxen Died

One day, on my usual trek to lab, I paused at a little rock monument and found that it was a marker for the Oregon Trail. Apparently the trail went right through what is now the university. Little did I know that almost every day I had been walking down a little piece of the Oregon Trail! I am in no way an expert on the Oregon Trail, but I do know that it was the greatest video-game ever back when I was in 5^th grade.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

One of the more interesting scientific articles I have read this year was a statistical analysis showing why Most Published Research Findings are False. In particular, “genetic association” studies (often publicized by the media), as well as “hot” fields where there are many groups working on the same project, are most likely to give false positives. Within the next couple of days, I happened to come across two different practical examples, the first being this article arguing that the influenza vaccine is not nearly as useful as commonly claimed, and the second this inflammatory claim that there is little-to-no scientific data supporting the idea that exercise helps you lose weight.

Episode XVIII: A Modest Proposal

Upon moving into my condo, it struck me for the first time that I have never personally owned my own TV. In fact, the living room felt a little bit naked without one sitting there. So I told myself that as soon as I started missing television, I would go out and buy one. Well guess what? Three months later… and I still don’t miss it a lick. In fact, I find I have more fun now without it.

By way of illustration, here is an overly-exaggerated comparison of an evening at the Jayhawker Towers (which had a TV) and an evening at the condo (which doesn’t):

On a stereotypical evening in at the Jayhawker Towers, I would get back from class and Flynn would be watching Law & Order. I would catch the tail end of it, then watch about half of the following episode before remembering what a depressing waste of time Law & Order really is. I would then go off to my room to get a bit of homework done. Soon I would be distracted by the sound of Flynn watching some random college sport, and I would get sucked into the game; before I knew it, I would have watched two hours-worth of a sport I didn't like, played by two teams I had never even heard of. Later Zack would come in while I was eating dinner and watch some movie, which of course I would have to watch with him. Finally, Zack or Flynn would watch some late-night comedy show on Comedy Central (or even worse, on BET). Only then would I be so turned off by the show that I would go to bed.

On the other hand, a stereotypical evening in at my new TV-free condo would probably go more like this: I would cue up some music- nothing too loud- and cook some dinner (that's right, I said I would cook some dinner). After finishing up the meal I would read the newspaper and a chapter or two of a book, play some guitar (or maybe even violin), do some edifying studying, and maybe have time for some yoga stretches before bed. I can tell you that almost without exception, this kind of itinerary is both more enjoyable and more rewarding than that of the former.

One caveat is that I occasionally use my laptop to play DVDs. However, this brings up another, more quantifiable difference in the quality of movie choice. It has been a lifelong goal of mine to watch every movie that has ever won a Best Picture Academy Award, and I can tell you that I am 41% of the way there. While I watched a ton of movies at the Towers, I only managed to watch one Best Picture the entire school year. Since moving into the condo, however, in a mere three months I have watched seven.

I guess the point is, I feel like my quality of life has quite improved since television disappeared from my abode. So am I encouraging you to immediately take your TV up to the second floor of your house and throw it out the window? Certainly not! But I am not discouraging that either.

Episode XXVII: A Civil War

It appears August is Civil War month here in Lawrence, Kansas. I caught the tail end of the festivities last year, including an appearance from William Quantrill; I attended a few of the events this year as well, although I missed an appearance from John Brown.

Kansas likes to claim that the Civil War started here, and Lawrence, along with some neighboring cities, surely have some pretty neat historic sites.

In honor of the Civil War festivities, I have chosen to release the following video, one that I recorded quite some time ago but wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to let anyone else see it. Nevertheless, here it is- you might call it a music video, but I prefer to think of it as a low-fidelity bootleg recording of an intimate concert (in a 75 sq ft. room).

The song is a “theme and variations” based on the popular Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Each variation is intended to convey some aspect of the soldier’s life; in particular, I loosely based the progression of thoughts on the novel The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.

So there you have it. If you have seven minutes and seventeen seconds with nothing better to do, check it out (or course, if you have dial-up, it could take you hours- or days).

Episode XXVI: An Annual Anniversary

As I type these very words, on August 17, 2007, I am celebrating my exact 1 year anniversary of being in Kansas. I am celebrating by typing these very words.

I thought for a minute whether to post something thoughtful and provoking, or flippant and fun. After thinking for a minute, I started typing this flippant, perhaps even fun, post.

I noticed that many things during my stay have happened in threes, and when they haven’t, I have arbitrarily forced them into groups of threes so that my life would seem more cinematic. Here are a few of them:

Three Residences
I began my life in Kansas in a wild and crazy on-campus apartment complex. I then lived for three or four weeks at a lovely country estate just outside of town. Finally, I got my very own condo (only a one minute walk to the nearest Dollar General store!)


Three Spectator Sports
KU’s basketball program just about lived up to its hype, which is rather remarkable. It easily dwarfed the football program (in terms of quality anyway). And the third spectator sport? Watching all the rabidly insane KU fans in the stands.


Three Participatory Sports
I got to play dodge-ball for the first time since elementary school (but forgot to take a picture), I played a good deal of indoor volleyball, and I played more softball than was good for my health.


Three Big Vacations
Here I had to be particularly arbitrary, and count only the longest vacations. I took a trip to see the intersection of Iowa/Nebraska/Kansas/Missouri, and one to the Ozarks for some camping, and finally a trip to California (well okay, it was two trips, but it was the same place both times).


Three Vehicles
Of course Trusty Rusty (recently christened) was always with me. I also had a good time with the Departmental Van that Almost Didn’t Make It Up the Snowy Hill. And finally, I could never forget the one and only Thugmobile.

Hopefully the coming year will be full of many more interesting things in sets of threes; I can hardly wait.

Episode XXV: A Family Visit

I have been privileged to have my family visiting here in the Midwest these last two weeks. They spent two days staying with me in Lawrence, and two weeks staying with distant relatives and church friends in Kansas City.


Many good times were had by all. Some of the recurring themes for me:

Frisbee. I played quite a bit of Frisbee, including Frisbee in the rain, Frisbee on a tower, Frisbee in a KU fountain, and at least five rounds of Frisbee-golf.


Driving. I worked full-time while my family was out here, and when I wasn’t working, I was in Kansas City with the family and/or attending the two-week-long-meeting along with them. This entailed a great deal of driving back and forth, as well as some rather odd work-hours.

Heat & Humidity. Working in a lab that is about sixty degrees all day every day, it is easy to forget how much H&H there can be here in the Midwest. However, I was consistently reminded of this fact every time I would get into the steaming car to drive from Lawrence to Kansas City.

BBQ. I really didn’t eat that much BBQ, but it seemed like a good thing to write about after being in Kansas City for a couple of weeks. I probably had four meals’ worth of BBQ, and there was some very, very delicious food to be had. So now I can say that there is at least one thing that I like about Missouri.

Episode XXIV: A Painful Predicament

The last two weeks have been pretty mundane for me, so today I will simply whine about my recent physical deterioration:

The cycle of pain began about a month ago when a friend asked me to fill in for a missing player on his softball team, and I happily obliged. I played second base, and there was a play where the opposing batter tried stretch for a double: I easily tagged him out, but he slid hard, and his cleat went straight into my left shin (I was wearing shorts). A bruise developed immediately.

The following inning I myself was required to slide into second, which I accomplished successfully. Unfortunately, as I was still wearing shorts, I created a very nice scrape right on top of the fairly substantial bruise.

Then just last Tuesday the same friend calls me up and asks me if I will substitute for a missing player on his softball team, and I happily oblige. Near the end of the game, I single, but the first-base coach insists that I go for two. I have built up a good deal of speed, I am once again wearing shorts, and the throw is on-time, so I have to slide out of the way. My shin not only gets scraped up, but also a kind of rash, like a rug-burn except with sand instead of rug. To add insult to injury, the second-baseman tries to tag me late and slaps me in the face with his glove, sending my sunglasses flying.

So now I have a large scrape all up my leg, on top of a sand-burn, which is on top of a previous scab, which lies in turn on a previous bruise. The next day a friend calls me up and asks me to substitute for his missing partner in a sand volleyball game, and I happily oblige. The sun burns my shin, and sand gets inside the scab. When I wash it away, it reopens the wound a bit.

And if you are not feeling sorry for me yet, let me tell you that later that day the same guy calls me up and asks if I want to help him extract honey from some honeycombs, and of course I say yes. I am promptly stung by a bee on my left ear. My ear gets really red, and about 50% too big, and I get a bit woozy.

It is, indeed, a hard-knock life.

Episode XXIII: A Dietary Plan

Due to a number of factors, including my newfound proximity to a Burger King, as well as a generous gift of free Burger King coupons, I decided it would be a good idea to imitate Morgan Spurlock in Supersize Me, in that I would eat Burger King three meals a day for two weeks. I am happy to report that as I type this I am eating my very last BK breakfast. I have survived!

One kind of ironic thing about the whole pursuit is that Burger King has always been my least favorite fast food restaurant in the world, and I had not eaten there for perhaps as long as three years. However, now that I have eaten here about 42 times, I can tell you that Burger King is definitely my least favorite fast food restaurant in the world.

I wound up eating at four different BKs in two different states, and overall the buildings were clean and the service friendly. One kind of neat thing was that there were witty statements posted around the buildings and on the wrappers and containers, such as this one:

The funniest thing about this wrapper is that I can not imagine how anyone in their right mind would actually want to steal your BK hamburger.

And that is really the point: no matter how nice the staff is or how amusing the wrapping is, the food is still fourth-rate.

Anyhow, the diet plan seemed to work! Despite the fact that an average meal there comes out to pack about 1,100 calories (based on the nutritional information), I can claim this to be a successful diet plan, as I lost just over 2.5 pounds in only two weeks. Eat that Morgan Spurlock!

Episode XXII: A Trip Home

A Visit Home

So I took a trip back to California, with the main item on the agenda being to attend Brian’s graduation and a related graduation party.

I accomplished both of those goals, as well as a few others, including:

-Eating good Mexican food

-Taking a trip to Bakersfield (a high priority for any California vacation)

-Playing volleyball late into the night

-Going to Universal Studios, Hollywood

-Coming in a distant second in a game of Risk!

-Coming in a distant second in a game of Monopoly

-Eating fancy cheeses and chocolates

-Surfing, eating and playing volleyball at Huntington

and most importantly:

-Having an all around good time with family and friends

I also managed to leave my MP3 player on the plane and break my digital camera at the beach. Luckily I didn't bring my laptop to California, because who knows what would have happened to it. The malfunction of my digital camera could pose a content problem for the future of this very photolog; for the time being, however, I will continue using my camera-phone and see how that works.

In the meantime, thanks to all the family and friends who helped make the stay a very pleasant one.

Episode XXI: House

Well I am happy to report that as of Thursday, I am a new homeowner here in Lawrence. I just closed on a condominium, a nice little place- 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, around 900-something square feet, and somewhere between 10 and 20 years old. It is part of a complex in which my place is on the top (2nd) story and someone else lives below me. Here are a few pictures I took before really moving anything in:








I still have yet to bring any food, toiletries or a bed, so I cannot consider myself to be moved in yet, but I can get by.



Incidentally, my back balcony is one of my favorite things about the condo thus far. Pretty relaxing and pleasant. The one bad thing that I found:



After a thorough search of the condo, I found only one member of the phylum Arthropoda living in my condo (well it wasn’t technically ‘alive’ when I found it). This, however, is a pleasant change from my temporary country abode, where I have found organisms from nearly every phylum, class and order living inside. I guess it is an unadvertised part of the country-living situation.

So anyway, now that I have a place I can call my own, each and every one of you reading this is invited to come and stay with me, at any time you like. Just let me know ahead of time.

Episode XX: Change

With the end of my first school year here in Kansas, there are a lot of changes occurring around me. Here I present a few of them; unfortunately, there are no pictures, as I recently moved and have yet to find my camera cable to upload my pictures.

1. From Crowd to Quiet

Summer in a college town means a small crowd around the city. Less of a line at the grocery store, less of a problem finding a parking spot on campus, and fewer restaurants open on-campus. It was kind of a bittersweet moment watching all the college kids pack up and leave town, as it reminded me that I myself can no longer look forward to blissfully lazy days of summer vacation.

2. From Student to Worker

With all my classes over for perhaps the rest of my life, I am settling into life in the lab, which means fairly hard work, but it also means that when I am done and I go home, I have ZERO homework, projects or tests to worry about. It is kind of a liberating feeling. So yes, for the first time in my life I am in somewhat of a 9 to 5 job, and I suppose it's really not that bad. However, I am still not, and never have been, considered a full-time employee. Rather, I am paid a stipend, and expected to work hard enough to complete a successful research project (which means: pretty hard).

3. From Small Apartment to Country Home

The Jayhawker Towers kicked us out May 22nd, and while it was a fairly nice place, I doubt that I will miss it. I am temporarily staying with a couple from church, who live out in the country in a very nice house, on acres and acres of land. It is great to drive out there under a dark, starry sky, and to see the fireflies out at night. The place is also incredibly quiet, with no cars or neighbors within earshot. This is certainly a welcome change from being awoken 2-7 times every night by my roommates or neighbors.

It really is a nice place, and if I ever get around to it I will post some pictures.

Episode XIX: Lab

Hooray! I made it into the lab that I wanted, as did my buddy who was trying to get into the same lab, so we are both pretty happy about that. There was not too much time to celebrate, however, for we have already begun working hard (or at least sort of hard) in lab.

Here is a quick look at the major members of the Lundquist lab (I stole the pictures off of the web):

And the new additions:

So my organism of study is C. elegans, a tiny, nearly-microscopic worm that is see-through, but we usually add various genes to our strains that make certain neurons fluorescent. Here is a typical picture.

In other news, next week is finals week for us, and after that I believe I will be completely done taking required college courses for the rest of my life. From here on out it is mostly just research and weekly seminars.

Episode XVIII: Stress

Today I do not have the heart to write about anything exciting, because I am in the middle of a nervous waiting period to see if I will be admitted into the lab I want to join. The problem is, one of my buddies wants to join the same lab that I do, and it is unclear whether or not the professor will accept two new students. We have both talked to the professor this week, and the due-date for lab choice is this coming Friday, so I should know my fate within a week.

Wipers

Okay, I guess I can muster one fairly exciting story:

I was driving down the highway from the Lawrence area to the Topeka area when out of nowhere, a massive rainstorm hit, pounding the windshield and making it difficult to see. For a brief moment hail started to fall, and then suddenly, my windshield-wiper blade just flew off. Of course it just had to be the wiper that covered the driver’s side, so I had to drive in the pouring rain, on the highway, leaning over my passenger just so I could see out the windshield. Fortunately the pouring rain only lasted for about five more minutes; nevertheless, I rate this to be the fourth most stressful driving experience I have experienced to date.

Episode XVII: Sport

I have been fortunate enough to have a number of entertaining, quality sporting activities at my disposal here in Lawrence.

NCAA

First, of course, there are the official college sports, which I have been watching a lot of this year, as I purchased season tickets to all the Jayhawk football and basketball games. I confess that I really never understood the allure of college sports until this year. Following the basketball team has been rather exciting, even though they ‘only’ made it to the Sweet Sixteen this season.

However, now that the basketball season is over, I have been seeing a lot more of the basketball players hanging around my apartment building. In fact, just the other day I was in the computer lab sitting next to one of our star players, and then the very next day he announced that he was going to the NBA.

Recreation

I have also been doing quite a bit of athletics myself. The Rec Center here is an excellent building, containing four basketball courts, two racquetball courts with all-glass back walls, a rock-climbing wall, running track, two pools, a sauna, and an absolute ton of workout machines. I particularly like the open gym volleyball, which is very similar to what I had back in CA (granted it’s a bit less competitive, but more friendly). Unfortunately, I have found nothing that even moderately resembles second-Sunday Anaheim volleyball game.

I have also played on an intramural dodge ball team and am just starting intramural softball. Our softball team, composed of biology grad students and professors, has played one game and lost 4-15, but at least I managed to score a run.

Huffy the Bicycle

Just this morning I walked outside and could not, for the life of me, find my bicycle. I usually park it in the rack right outside the apartment building, but I frankly can not remember the last time I rode it and where I might have left it. There is a possibility that someone decided to steal it, notwithstanding the fact that it is a 10-year-old Huffy, with no rear brake, a faulty front brake, and is no longer able to change gears. If this is the case, then it marks the end of a fruitful five year period of service during which I often rode my bike on campus but never once locked it.