Songwriters: Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Phil
Selway, Thom Yorke
Original Release: Hail to the Thief
Year: 2003
Definitive Version: None
When I lived in Cleveland, I
quickly found a morning routine that was enjoyable. My alarm was set for 8
a.m., but I honestly can’t recall many times that I actually awoke to the
alarm. My eternal clock was set so I would actually wake up about 7:30.
The value of waking up
without the assistance of an alarm is not to be underestimated. My current job
requires me to get up at 6. I always have to have an alarm now. It sucks. I never
feel rested; in fact, I feel as though if I had just 30 more minutes on my own,
I’d be fine, but I can’t afford it—either in the morning or in going to bed
earlier than I should at night.
But some of waking up
without an alarm in Cleveland—perhaps a lot—had to do with my energy. The
downtown branch of the Cleveland Public Library opened at 9 a.m. on weekdays,
and most of my research involved materials that couldn’t be
borrowed—particularly microfilm. So when I awoke, I was eager to get up and get
going. It was all about maximizing my research time.
After showering, I’d have my
breakfast—cereal—and sit in my papasan chair and watch a little SportsCenter
before heading out. One morning, I was flipping around the channels when I
found SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon. I had read a lot about that cartoon
and decided to see what the fuss was about. I laughed a few times, and from
then on, SpongeBob—not SportsCenter—became part of the morning routine.
Because I moved to Cleveland
in April, it wasn’t too cold to walk to the train from my apartment. It also
wasn’t too far. The closest station for the Rapid, which is Cleveland’s
light-rail line, was about a half-mile from my apartment, about a 10- to
15-minute hike through a fairly quiet residential neighborhood. I used to walk
every day. But one rainy day, I discovered the Circulator.
The Circulator now is just
one of a few hundred or so useful services that have been ended due to rising
gas prices and dwindling tax revenues, but in 2003, it was a minibus that
traveled a few of the main streets in Lakewood, where I lived. It would shuttle
up and down the street every 15 minutes or so to take people to a different but
still reasonably close Rapid station.
The Circulator stopped close
to my apartment on each side of the corner of my street, so it was perfect.
Soon enough, I was taking the Circulator to the train station every morning,
and that gave me extra time to read the paper.
Being a newspaper guy, I
still wanted the paper, so besides cable, my one regular expense in Cleveland
was home delivery of the Plain Dealer—until someone started to steal it off the
front step of my apartment building. I arranged for my delivery person to have
it delivered to the auto shop my landlord operated next door on the street
corner. So my routine now expanded to walking next door and picking up my paper
before heading off to the library.
I’d read the paper on the
bus and train, and if I got a seat on the train, I’d leave the paper on it for
someone else to read. It was paid for; why let it go to waste by just tossing
it in the trash? If I stood the whole way, which was fine—the Rapid was NEVER
crowded like the L can get, so I could lean against the railing in the
doorway—I’d leave the paper on top of the trash can at the downtown station,
again for someone else to take.
The main downtown station is
at Terminal Tower, which is a three-block walk—one block north, two blocks
east—to the library’s front door. Like clockwork, I’d arrive at about 9:03, so
the doors would be open, and I could just head straight to either the fifth
floor, where the baseball collection was, or the microfilm room on the first
floor and get my day rolling.
After I had my routine down,
I realized how much I loved being in Cleveland, and I was happier than I had
been in a long time.
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