ride on,
I had first started the day off poorly, by missing my Psychology class. Insomnia had kept me up the night before, until about 5 am, and so running off of 3 hours of sleep didn’t seem like it was possible. I didn’t even remember waking up to turn off my alarm. Stressed and feeling out of place, I knew that walking was the best way to relieve my mind. I didn’t have any specific destination in mind. I thought it would be nice going to the beach, so I found myself on the way to North Avenue.
However, as I got off at the stop, I decided against taking a bus and just turned whenever I wanted. My stop, Clark and Division, was one I’d only been to a few times, so it was an area that was more unfamiliar to me. With Bling Bling and Coral Beach in my sweaty palm, I began down Division Street.
2:27 — My first color match was with some old, faded canopy of a restaurant I’d never heard of before. I also wanted to stop to pet somebody’s dog, and it was shady, shielding me from the 80 degree weather.
2:32 — Division Street began to bore me, so I took a right on the next street, which was Wells Street. Apparently, I was now entering Old Town, an area I’d only been to once before when I was a sophomore in high school. There were a lot of people sitting outside on their laptops or reading books or doing paperwork. I stopped at a Starbucks to charge my phone and figure out what else to do when I found my second color match.
The man in front of me had a backpack that was nearly the same shade as Bling Bling, so I tried to take a subtle picture without seeming creepy. The barista helping me at Starbucks was very kind, and I sat in the corner. While in Starbucks, I took note of a man watching the news across from me, with no headphones, but quite enough so it didn’t disturb anybody else.
2:43 — I exited Starbucks and took a left on Scott Street, awkwardly trailing behind a mother walking a dog with her child. I discovered that Scott Street was a residential dead end, and tried not to seem like I was embarrassingly lost by finding another color match and snapping a quick picture.
I decided to walk most of the way back to my dorm instead of taking a bus or the CTA the whole way, so I began to walk down Division Street for about a mile.
2:47 — I saw an ad for Tinder on the side of a building and thought it was funny because Tinder is shitty, and the ad was promoting illegal activity. Naturally, I took a photo.
2:50 — I passed Near North Chicago Public Library and went inside. Nobody was in the aisles of books, and it seemed like everybody there was only present in order to use the computers. The children’s section was intimidatingly large, so I headed in the opposite direction. I found a book that seemed really interesting that matched Bling Bling, but I couldn’t check it out, so I want to see if it’s in the library here at DePaul.
2:52 — I found bird footprints in a section of the sidewalk and thought it was cool.
2:54 — I passed an intersection we crossed during immersion week. I also saw many people in wheelchairs going down the bike lane, and wondered if that was allowed. I suppose it makes sense.
2:55 — I passed a grate on the ground and was confused, because I could hear the CTA. I then realized the noise was coming from the grate, underground, and thought that was amusing as well.
2:58 — I passed an intersection of Mohawk Street and Alme Moody Walk, which was an honorary dedication. I later on looked up Alme Moody and discovered that she was a black woman who founded Near North Health Service Corporation (renamed Winfield-Moody Health Center after she died of cancer in 1994). Winfield-Moody is a private clinic that only hires no more than 9 people and rakes in millions in revenue annually.
2:59 — I passed a bike chained to a lamppost that was overflowing with flowers, and the fence next to it had flowers woven in as well.
This was a memorial dedicated to Bobby Cann (1987–2013), a man who loved cycling and lived his life very philosophically and pensively. One day on his commute back from work he crossed paths with a driver who was under the influence and he lost his life. I visited the website on the memorial, www.rideonbobby.com which had his eulogies, but also information on bicycling safely, and driving under the influence. There were bike lanes all along Division Street, and I wonder if those were built before or after his death. There seemed to be a lot of people who cared about Bobby Cann. As I took this picture another man in a wheelchair came down the bike lane.
3:02 — I passed a high school called Noble Academy where students were running laps around their track. It confused me because their track was not even a quarter of the size of my high school’s track, but they had a huge, empty plot of grass right beside the school that could provide a nice area for a running track. The academy’s colors both matched my paint chips.
3:09 — I found a hidden sort of strip mall area along Clybourne that I went into because it reminded me of my hometown. It seemed like a very relaxed area for wealthy people. A man was sitting in his convertible, sipping tea and on his phone with the engine running for no reason. There were expensive pizza restaurants and jewelry shops. Also, their trash cans were a scam, because even though it had separate areas for trash and recycling, they very obviously went into the same bag. What a joke.
3:15 — Because it was so hot and humid, I walked to the North Clybourne stop and went underground to take the Red Line back to Fullerton. It smelled like pee (as most underground Red Line stops do) and the CTA was extremely crowded. It was also the fastest train I have ever been on. It was extremely bumpy and going way too fast, and a few people in my cart fell over. I also found a boy from one of my classes in the same car, which was awkward because we said ‘hi’ and then pretended we were busy on our phones.
3:20? — I got off the train and ran into some friends who were apparently a few cars down. I then walked up the agonizing four flights of stairs to get to my dorm and took a nap.
DISTANCE: 5.40 MI
DURATION: 1:09:21
What is a map?
A map is a projection that helps us discover or understand a certain area without actually being there, to put it into my own words. Krygier and Wood argue that a map is a proposition, something that claims or proposes a certain idea or location, but I disagree with this. A map does not propose anything, but just exists. It is up to the viewer to imagine what the map is trying to say. But, a map is not made with the purpose of sending a message. A map is made to simply help people get from one place to another, or to familiarize themselves with something. A map is just another inanimate object that I believe Krygier and Wood are trying to make too big of a deal about. The first mapmaker did not create a map because he wanted to propose something. If he wanted to send a message like that, he should have written an essay or a novel.
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