2010-08-16 - 1:43 p.m.

After pizza last night, went for a long bike ride. Up Falls Road, only loud pickup trucks thundering along beside me, then through Hampden, over to Hopkins, down through Wyman Park, through Remington, and back home.

Hopkins was the halfway point, and so I took it slow through the campus, for a rest, the tight brickwork underneath nearly the same as the city asphalt. I heard shouting. I thought it was a crazy man, a drunk, a nutty fucker. Then I got closer and I saw a guy about my age, maybe younger, with long blond hair. He looked like a hipster, or a college kid: red plaid short-sleeve button shirt, khaki shorts, leather sandals. I thought he was yelling at a girl, but I could see no one. I zoomed past him and he gave me a sideways, disgusted look. He made his way onto a lawn in front of a building and now he was yelling louder. He spread his arms wide open and, looking up, screamed, "Was that a question? Was that a question?"

I found a campus cop, a short black woman, and told her about it. "There's a guy acting crazy back there," I said. We could both hear his shouting. "He's either schizophrenic or on bad drugs. Seems like he might hurt himself." It may have been a shift change. She was disinterested.

But, the contrast between crazy and peaceful was stark yesterday, because even as I flew down Maryland and then St. Paul, even with all those cars, trucks, cabs all around me, with the light almost gone it was mostly just wind in my ears, all downhill, the sweating all done, the hard part done, just eight o'clock and home to go.

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