Greedy Gull at Contemplation Point

We have finally gotten our bike situation in order. That is to say, Colin finally managed to fix the falling-off pedal of his (not) nearly-new bike (after considerable rage and cursing) and I finally got around to paying $18 at the Nearly New Bike Shop for a new chain and its installation. I thought it was a good deal, especially since they did it on the spot while I waited and pumped up the tires too. To my shame, I don't know the first thing about bike maintenance. But maybe I'll learn (yeah right). Biking here is clearly superb. We haven't done much on the city streets, but we don't really need to, as there is a great bikepath all along the lake--or at least farther than I'm likely to be able to go. On Friday, we went to a place Colin says is called Contemplation Point, where this picture was taken. It was a really windy day, and waves were splashing up everywhere.

While we were sitting there and contemplating, a low-flying seagull went struggling past. Struggling because it was flying under the weight of a big chunk of something, bigger than the poor bird's head but locked determinedly in its crooked beak. Bread maybe? It's hard to see in the picture at right, because the zoom is not quite what it needed to be. But this poor bird was a slave of its greed. It would land and make convulsive shaking motions as it tried to swallow the prize crust. But it rarely had more than a few seconds--certainly not long enough to put the food down and break it into bite-sized pieces--before another one of its greedy tribe would come up hoping for a cut, or preferably the whole thing. So Greedy would take to the air again, fighting his way north against the strong wind (because there were fewer birds up there) or giving up and being blown south again down towards Foster Beach, where a whole crowd of scavenging gulls were waiting.

Colin and I watched this drama with mirth and sympaphy for probably ten minutes or more. The bird could neither put down his prize nor swallow it and there he was in a terrible trap of greed. Fortunately, he did not seem contemplative enough to feel miserable. Probably it was just a patient practical problem of how to avoid his fellows long enough to finally swallow the thing down. All the same, it was hard not to view it as a moral lesson, especially since by the time we left he still hadn't resolved his difficulty. Below is a sidewalk painting that was in front of our bench. I thought the lotus flower made it look vaguely Buddhist, and so an appropriate illustration for the story of the greedy gull.


By the way, papa, in case you can't tell: yes, the bike in the picture is still the little purple Schwinn Sidewinder you bought for me in October 2004. It might seem an extravagant thing to move a bike from New Jersey to Chicago, but hey, I didn't have to pay for it.