Shawn Lankton Online

On Friday in a mad dash to do research I had a bicycle accident and busted my arm and my bike. The wheel was a little bent up, and the brake handle was busted. I took it to a bike repair shop to see about getting it repaired…

The price started low, but then I started getting calls every 10 minutes… “The blank is bent and needs to be replaced.” “If we replace your blank it won’t fit on your old blank.” “You know… now that I’m looking at it, the blank is totally messed up.”Before I knew it, the price was getting way too high. I told them to forget the old bike, I was coming in to replace it. Now, I’m the proud new owner of the beauty you see pictured above. Its a single-speed bike meaning that 1) I won’t ever have problems with gears, derailers, etc. ever again, and 2) I’m gonna have to pedal like a maniac to get up hills.

This bike is very clean and very nice, and I got a good deal on it. I’m really excited to get to riding!

First, I would like to say that I made it home safely… I’m fine totally ok, and back in Atlanta.

Now onto the story. Friday I left Siemens for the last time. The day was filled with goodbyes which were all pretty hard. I met so many great people at Siemens and am sure to miss all of them. Some of my closest friends even walked me out to my car and waved until I drove out of sight. What amazing people!

A little choked up, I started driving with my destination for that evening being Farifax, Virginia. Here I would meet up with another friend and ex-Siemens intern. Saying goodbye to Princeton traffic wasn’t nearly as hard as saying goodbye to my friends. As the night turned dark, I began to become aware of my drowsiness. Two nights of packing into the wee hours of the morning had taken something out of me.

Then something bad happened… I don’t explicitly remember the events leading up to this, but I vividly remember the moment when I became aware of a car that was way too close to my front bumper and going way slower than me. I can only assume I had been in a road-daze, or asleep. Instantly awake now, and with adrenaline pumping, I slammed on the brakes and began to swerve out of the way. I managed, to some extent, to avoid catastrophe, but unfortunately I hit the other car’s back right side with my left front side…

Then the fun began. I’m not sure what happened to the other car at this point, but I began spinning down the interstate. One or two revolutions on the pavement, one in the grass, and one more on the pavement left me resting somewhere near the shoulder. I pulled off the road and checked my pulse. Decidedly faster than normal, but still alive. No scrapes, no bruises… totally fine.

I got out of the car and looked around. One flat tire, one large dent, one muffler which has been ripped off of the exhaust. The other car was pulled over a few yards behind me. She was fine too (although she was pretty pissed!) And her car just had a dent in the panel of impact.

When the cops came, they pulled the cruiser up so as to give me some light. While they wrote the ticket, I removed the muffler, tied my exhaust back up so it didn’t drag the ground, and changed my tire for the (full sized, thanks BMW) spare.

The cops came back and gave me a ticket for careless driving (no argument here!) and told me I could be on my way. To my great surprise, the car was totally fine (although a lot louder than before). The rest of the drive to Farifax was made heavily red-bulled and without incident. I arrived a bit late, but alive.

I shared a very nice dinner with my friend Andrew and ‘crashed’ on his couch. The next day I slept way in (instead of leaving early as planned), and got on the road around 12:30. Again, with plenty of red-bull in the blood stream I made the final 10 hour drive back with no further collisions. Welcome Home Shawn! Tomorrow I leave again to fly to Phoenix. Expect more updates from the road.

My time in Princeton is coming to an end… 36 hours from now I’ll be on the road. At this moment, the whirlwind of farewells, packing, and finishing my work is tossing me around and causing some angst. I only slept briefly last night, and I fear that the same fate will come again this evening. These last days have been wonderful though.Fantastic farewell parties in Princeton were filled with all of my good friends here. There were some sad goodbyes, some goofy pictures, and some good times. I made my final trip to NYC where I met my roomates friends on whose couch I made my home almost every week for the past 7 months. They took me out for a vegan dinner. Isn’t that sweet? (I’ll be back soon kids!)

Now I’m almost packed with only one night left to spend in Princeton. A goodbye dinner with my roommate, goodbye drinks with a few close friends from Siemens, more packing, maybe the chance to visit a few more friends… oh yeah, and very little sleep.

I feel like I’m in the first eye-wall of this storm. The calm center will be the long drive home to reflect on the fantastic friends I’ve made, the amazing things I’ve done, and the rest of the storm, which is rapidly approaching.

Last weekend I spent Saturday and Sunday in New York. Saturday was spent ice skating in Central Park and dancing at an 80′s dance club (The Pyramid Club). On Sunday Naomi and I went to take some pictures near the Brooklyn Bridge. She is a “real” photographer. She has a “real” camera and “real” talent. I on the other hand have a whole lot of “fakin’ it” and a nice little point and shoot.

(Golden Swift)

(Brickadelic)
Regardless, I took some shots that I like. Later that day we met my friend Maggie and took the Staten Island Ferry in order to get some free entertainment and nice views of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan Island. We got both… Behold.

(Water Laser)

(The Left Eye of Liberty)
All of these shots have been ‘worked on’ in Photoshop, but, hey… Half the work of a “real” photographer is in the darkroom anyway, right? These photographs make me feel somewhat like a serious photographer. I like them… hopefully you do too.

Ok, we are led to believe that danger lurks around every turn and we should be living in constant fear of many things/people/groups that aim to destroy us and our way of life. “Therefore,” says the powers that be, “we need to erect ridiculous and often ludicrously complex security measures for everyone in order to protect ourselves from these villains.”

Ok, that sounds pretty good! I don’t like villains, so whatever we need to do to stop them seems reasonable. The problem is that I’m not convinced that our excessive security is stopping the bad guys. In fact I think its only annoying us non-villains.

At work I’m required to carry and ID badge. Ok, that’s fine. If I forget my ID badge at my desk when I go out to my car, I’m not permitted back into the building without filing out a form and wearing a Visitor badge. Now, the guard knows me, and saw me leave. So after wasting both of our time can we say that anyone is safer? No. If I were a criminal I think I would just wait to follow someone else in and bypass the guard altogether. “Policy,” you say! “*#%@s Policy!”

Policy only serves to annoy those who choose to follow it, and you can bet that criminals won’t! In this case what are we doing? We’re lulling ourselves into a false sense of security by submitting to these inconvenient policies that protect no one.

Another experience was at the airport. We all know now that terrorists want to use liquids and gels in their vile schemes (but only if they’re more than 3oz)! Sure, whatever you say… It’s policy after all. I pack my bags and head to the airport. I take some toiletries and some Indian food I prepared. I get to the end of the line and they inspect my toiletries and food. “Oh no! This is a big problem,” exclaims the woman. My deodorant was actually 3.25 oz… oops. So she takes it. What she didn’t take was my 16oz Tupperware of Indian food.Now you tell me, is it easier to make a bomb look and smell exactly like a stick of 3.25oz partially used Old Spice deodorant OR look and smell exactly like a one pound tub of home-made Indian food?

So what happened here? Clearly the TSA woman should have taken my food as well. However, this mistake is the norm! ‘Airport security person’ is not a great job. These people aren’t “vigilantly looking for terrorists,” they’re casually looking for scissors, pocket knives, nail files, and toiletries and bottles of water over 3oz. That’s all they find, so that’s all they look for. I’m quite sure that if terrorists decided to try to sneak 100 ‘curry-and-vegetable-bombs’ onto planes next 9/11 that 90 of them would succeed. So once again, we’ve protected no-one and annoyed everyone!

When will the insanity end?

On Wednesday I was invited by my friend Naomi to a very fancy party to commence the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. This party was held at the MoMA in Manhattan. We arrived (dressed to the 9’s and looking sharp) to a very long line of attendees waiting to get in. Of course being celebrities ourselves we were spotted by ushers and allowed right in. (Ok, it was because Naomi is hooked up with the Clinton Foundation… but it still felt cool). The place was packed with politicians, NGO leaders, philanthropists, leaders in business, social workers, and tourists like me!

The food was laid out, the wine was free, the conversation was stimulating, albeit outside my area of expertise. After meeting some big-shots we went to look at the artwork. Because the party was at the MoMA guests could observe the galleries as a break to schmoosing. Let me just say that some of the stuff that passes as modern art is total crap pretty interesting. One of my favorites was a room in which the lights blink. (5 seconds on, 5 seconds off) Just next to that was a fish tank half full of water with three floating basketballs. Comments guessing at the social statement/significance are welcome!

During the course of the party I only managed to see one really famous person. Mr. Bill Clinton, the undisputed awesomest celebrity in politics. In fact, I almost walked right into him. I saw the crowd part and started long-legging it into the opening. I realized that the crowd had parted to make room for Bill to move. So I had entered his clearing! Oops. All in all it was a very exciting night.

The fascinating thing about cars is how futile their entire apparatus is when sliding on wet roads. Last night, as I was driving home I turned a corner. I turned the wheel back and waited. It was immediately apparent that something was amiss. The car, which at this point should have been going straight, was now pointed completely opposite of the way it ought to. Its direction of travel, however, was pretty much right-on. The entire experience of spinning down a country road with a forward velocity of 40mph and an angular velocity of about a turn a second is so novel that it didn’t exactly register at first.

About the time that it started to sink in, I was thinking, “this is pretty awesome!” It was at just that moment when my cute little car went careening off of the road, into a ditch, along side of a tree, and over a sign (that coincidently enough decried that the road was winding). There must have been some kind of tree-snake festival occurring just when I arrived. I was just getting used to not spinning anymore when about three snakes fell onto my windshield! Needless to say, the first thing that came into my head was, “Snakes on a Car!”
Later that night, the cops came; we pulled my car out of the ditch; I searched through snake-infested underbrush for my side view mirror; I went home. Ah life can be an adventure.