Thursday, May 18, 2006

Shakopee

If you ever get on a jet plane which takes you 35000 feet above the suburbs of Minneapolis and looking through a powerful pair of binoculars u find a guy wearing an off white jerkin casually pedalling through the lush verdant countryside, that would be me.
Shakopee is a beautiful small town with neatly arranged houses (Edward Scissor hand types) and empty roads. I stay on the first level of a town house. My room has a big glass door overlooking green fields and I can see the stars when I sleep. On a typical day (there have been exactly 3 so far) I start out on my new Jaguar at around 7:30 for a half hour ride to my work place (about 4 miles away). My town house mate( a 26 yr American ) thinks i am crazy cause I take the freeway on my bicycle. But I always turn up the volume on my ipod when loud cars whiz past me. Today, after work (or no work) I was pedalling home and when I was close, I saw an innocuous hand written sign post which said "neighbourhood sale". I stopped for a moment and considered the alternative. I had pedalled 3.5 miles and was tired. But of-late I have taken up window shopping as a serious full time hobby (thanks to Target, Kohls , Cub, Rainbow which are a stones throw away) and I was curious what this "neighbour hood sale" could possibly have to offer because I hardly see any people here. I tossed a biased coin in my mind and went on to explore what lay ahead. After a while I saw a huge green playground to my right. There were kids playing soccer and baseball while watchful parents supervised from a distance. I stopped for a moment and enjoyed the sight.Cloudy sky with shafts of sun rays lighting up the roofs beyond the vast grass fields. Should I join them and ask to be allowed to play? But I had to find out what I could buy from the neighborhood sale and so I moved on after a failed attempt to click a snap on my Razr (not cause its not sexy but cause it was getting dark). To my left I could see the sun setting and and dark clouds casting huge shadows on a combination of brown earth and green grass. After a while the big road came to an abrupt end with just miles of fields and trees ahead of me. I t urned back and saw another small sign directing me to my left. I followed the sign through that neighbor hood for sometime. There were occasional signs and again groups of neatly laid cream houses with red roof tops. I pedalled for a long time in the winding roads and finally decided to get back home cause droplets of rain had started to fall. I reached home sometime back.Outside my place, my mexican neighbours kids showed me that smile which is permanently stuck on their chubby faces. I came straight to Joe's comp and started typing this.
And by the way, that neighborhood sale refered to the sale of the neighborhood itself. Most houses were empty.