They Looked Like Nice Bricks

 

One sometimes finds oneself doing strange things. In the last month, I have outraced a random third-grader on foot (eliciting the comment "You're the fastest mom EVER!"), cut the last several months' worth of milk jugs into chicken feather shapes (more on that in October), had a "Four Bike Day" (in which I found that I had ridden all four of my bikes in the same day on different trips for different reasons), and had endless discussions with Nimue about her Thinking Heart Rat.

This morning, I saw a pile of bricks with a FREE sign on them on the way to school with Nimue. Not just any bricks, either -- these ones had character. And they were right around the corner from the house. No way to resist, especially since I've used up my current supply of random bricks to hold up pots, weigh down the lid of the compost bin, support a set of drawers, etc.

Given that they were just around the corner, there was no way I was going to use the car, so I headed home, had Chad show me how to attach the bike trailer to my mountain bike, and went to get them.

People think it's weird to carry bricks on a bike. Seemed simple to me: ride bike around corner to free pile, load 15 bricks (the experimentally-determined maximum load before the bike+trailer gets too wobbly), ride back to house, unload. Repeat 5 times. I got a lot of strange looks and laughs, and one guy in a minivan even stopped and asked if I needed a ride. Nope! I live just around the corner. And I know what I'm doing....really....

The two older ladies in the yard I picked them up from also thought I was nuts, but were glad to see the bricks go. The bricks had apparently been salvaged from a demolition site up in SF 20-30 years ago, and the woman getting rid of them said when they pulled them out of the debris pile, there were postcards and letters from the 1920's mixed in. The bricks had history. Plus, they just looked like _nice_ bricks.