quadruple coincidence

I was using the photocopier in the library, photocopying flyers for Critical Mass.

"Hey, are you from Estonia?" asks the guy at the circulation desk.

I'm wearing my Estonian T-shirt that Kenny bought me.

"Oh, no--but I've been there a couple of times! Why, are you?"

"No, but I've been there a couple times, and I'm cycling through the Baltic this summer!"

I hand him a Critical Mass flyer. We exchange email addresses.

"Hey, did you just buy a book on half.com?"

"Yeah, uhh, I think so..."

"Your username is urtobin ?"

So of all people in the entire country, this book happened to come from some other guy at UR, who I just ran into, who also happens to be a fellow bicycling and Estonia fanatic.

critical mass!

We had a great Critical Mass ride tonight. About 25 people showed up at the University of Rochester at the appointed time—what was different this time is that I think a majority of the riders were not UR students (UR is in the midst of final exams). We had five ride over from RIT, two people even came from Syracuse. One girl had found out about it at a tattoo shop. ("It was ironic, because I was getting a bicycle tattoo at the time," she said.) About an hour before we left, I posted a spur-of-the-moment message to the local Indymedia mailing list; at our meeting point a woman showed up with a boom mike and a tape recorder and interviewed a bunch of us; said she'd email me when they piece was finished. I checked out the Rochester Indymedia site, and someone had posted our announcement. One guy riding is part of a "Oswego Punk House" co-op not too far from here—definitely a new stop on the Tour de Co-op. I distributed 200 flyers for the next critical mass (May 27—I won't be here, unfortunately), mostly to fellow riders to spread to passersby. I've started putting flyers on parked bikes. We biked for about 2.5 hours, I gave a small speech at the Liberty Pole, met a lot of neat people. Very successful overall. Looking forward to summertime Critical Masses—we'll have them end at our co-op for a feast.