Leaving Town

I spent the better part of today biking from one school district headquarters to another. I had left my car at the shop for some final repairs, and I was trying to drop off a little form which had to be filled out by the payroll departments of all the school districts and charter schools I subbed at over the last year. I met a lot of secretaries with names like Mary Lou, efficient names, names that scowl. I walked a lot of halls, and was told many times that I was in the wrong building. And the whole while I was worrying about the 10 other things I still have to get done before I pull up anchor from my home of almost 3 years.

This is what preparing to leave feels like. I wish it felt like death or birth or something big. But largely it feels like sorting mail, making phone calls, getting a hundred forms notarized in a hundred different offices, organizing and reorganizing. I wish I had more time for more important things than administrivia.

I've certainly had some poignant goodbyes already, and there are more to come. CO Springs has become a really great chapter in my life, dense with good and interesting characters. I got to say goodbye over coffee to Moses, my earliest room mate, last week. I had a send-off with my REI coworkers at a local bar called Kinfolks, where Andrew (my shop boss) and his blues prodigy child slipped in a verse of Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited for me. I learned how to make tabouli and stuffed grape leaves from Melanie and then grilled out with her and my 3 other best CO friends on Sunday. Last night I rode home from work with Greg, my touring friend and supplier of many bike parts and other things, and said goodbye to him and his wife and daughter and dog. I'm having a fairwell dinner tonight with a group of guys I've met with on wednesday nights ever since I moved here. And the Allises, good family friends, are cooking me a meal tomorrow night.

So here's to CO Springs. Or rather the people I know and love here.