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I came up with this name biking home from school one day. In minneapolis there's a converted rail bike path that runs from about my house and to my then high school (it's supposedly being developed to the river and past, but building a path is contingent upon raising funds). Senior year I had a pretty chill schedule, taking 3 classes at school (2 of which were 'college in the school,' netting me double the credits of a normal high school course, allowing me to only take three periods worth of class), and so whenever I felt like it I'd ditch hanging around in the commons playing cards with friends to head home after lunchtime. A damn nice path, it took me to about 20 blocks north of my house with no stop signs and very little other traffic of any sort at that time of day. Then I'd climb up out of the rail bed which was sunk below street level for whatever reason on something reminiscent of a freeway exit and head home on Bryant.

The exits I'm talking about were pretty fun. They were maybe half a short city block long, and brought you down 30 feet maybe. Without spinning you got pretty good speed up, and then had to gamble that nobody was coming from behind where you would be unlikely to see them until too late and turn onto the path and you'd be cruising already. It was a great feeling on a beautiful morning to drop off the street and onto your own private bike freeway, getting rid of cars and people and stop-signs for fresh dark blacktop and greenery, with bridges running overhead every minute. Like biking down a venetian canal a little.

The two best parts of the bike ride oftentimes were a lumberyard that was at the same elevation as the bike path, fenced off. This is only because the second attraction was Kix Field, the prettiest soccer field in the cities, fenced off as well, sat right off the path a ways further down. I've played a few times at Kix Field, but you can't just go there and mess around. The Women's National Team practiced there when they were in the cities I'm told, we'll get to that later. But it's immaculate, sunk down from the surrounding city at the same level as the path, an oasis of soccer amidst a decent but far from beautiful area of town. The only reason Bennet lumber was fun to go by was that I'd imagine that it was also a soccer field, in fact it's probably big enough for two fields and a pretty building.

One of the things that I love to imagine is that I grow up and become groundskeeper on a soccer field. Something just pulls me towards puttering 8 hours a day on the turf, trimming it, feeding it, aerating it: perfecting it. Then playing on it whenever it isn't otherwise occupied. The little building that I imagine would double as bathroom/refreshment facility and my personal place of residence. On the sides of the field I could have my personal garden, full on windows throughout my house looking over the field complex. I'm pretty sure that it'd rock, and it might not be mine, but it would be as good as mine.

Ok, so the name. Leanside. I'd been thinking about whether I wanted to start my own company to do web-ish stuff (I ended up not, I got a sweet job at a little web development shop called slantwise, an ironically similar name, the summer after having come up with the name). This is spring of my senior year in high school, as of now, 5/07, I just finished up my sophomore year of high school. I think I was entering the path on Park, and here the ramp wasn't just one shot but a switchback. There must have been a lack of space, because normally there were two ramps at each entrance, one going each direction. The second leg turned back on the first, as is the case with most switchbacks, and coming off it I was pointing the wrong direction. So at the middle of the ramp I needed to turn 180º, and once again at the bottom to get on the path going the right way. This isn't a road, but a bike path, so it's maybe 6 feet wide. That gives me 12 feet on the outside edge of each turn to keep myself from hitting the fence or leaving the path. But slowing down is no fun, and breaking while I turn on 20+ year old tires (I inherited my Dad's old Schwinn Le Tour, mostly with it's original parts) tends to lead more often than not into a skid, which when maneuvering in tight spaces is also less than a good time.

I don't think I was ever crazy enough to try and take the turn at full speed, so I'd usually ride my breaks until I needed to bank around, let them go, and go for broke. Then ride my breaks to the bottom of the ramp and repeat, this time checking to make sure nobody was coming in either direction as I arrived at the threshold of the path. Again, stopping is no fun, and nobody ever rode this path, so I'd slide through the turn and hopefully end up pointing west with a good bit of speed built up so I could pop into high gear no problem and head home. It would be about five minutes until I got to the soccer field and looked upon it with reverence, thinking about how sometime I'd show up with the full moon and jump the 20 foot black chain like fence (they really didn't want fuckers to sneak in and tear up the persian rug like grass) and just play. As an aside, one of the coolest things about doing this would be that the field is surrounded on three sides by 30 foot retaining walls, and blocked off from the path with an absolutely ridiculously big fence. You shoot high of the goal and the ball bounces back to you, and it's never going to get too far away.

But I got to be pretty good at cutting those corners quicklike, leaning and twisting the handlebars, gears clicking real fast from my not moving the pedals, wind whooshing. It was a kick. But one day I decided I was going to skid my back wheel coming through the turn. Not too fast, because I'd end up dead, but at a nice controlled speed. The idea was that I pivot around my front tire which ends up out in the main path, but on the right side instead of the left where I would end up just trying to turn normal. Having to head into the oncoming traffic lane was almost cheating, why not try and get this turn to happen right on a dime. In short, I managed all right, balanced the bike under myself all right while the back tire slipped and somehow managed to stay upright, skidding around onto the path. It was pretty cool. We'll come back to this here moment in a second, because you see I'm trying to weave two good stories together and right here I'm breaking into the second, cliffhanger style. For future reference, remember this point in the story as leanside, just a mnemonic device.

So now it's a few years later, and I just bought the leanside.com domain a week ago maybe. I have 3 now, way too many really. I had station11.net for a while before wanting a 'professional' domain, it's my first, and is my 'blog,' but mostly one I registered when I came upon a sweet deal and had way more webhosting than I needed and nothing to do with it but mess around. Maybe after all this I'll tell the story of that name, it came about much the same way as leanside, just popping into my head at some completely random point after I'd wanted a name for a project for which I couldn't come up with a good name. And between mnemonic point leanside and actually buying leanside.com I'd bought fidness.com for a pet project of mine, one which will hopefully be my windfall, maybe just earning me enough money to buy out Bennett lumber and start a new life as a pitch manager.

But the other day me and a few friends went to a movie. I sat with my girlfriend Ally, at one point awkwardly putting my hand around her shoulder (to both of our discomfort, I don't know about that gesture. We ended up holding hands and playing with each others fingers under the armrest for most of the movie, which was way better). On the other side was Hudson, a cool kid who I'd sat with at dinner a few times through other friends and talked too, he was cool. Just a few nights before I'd told Ally of how cool I thought it'd be to tend to a soccer field, exclusively, making the ground as good as it could get. Talking to Hudson, it came to what he was going to be doing that summer.

He said something about how his dad worked for a sports complex, and he got to tend the fields. I was jealous, and so picked further at the topic. They were apparently the nicest set of fields in the state, so imagine my jealousy as an abacus and flick another 1 bead across. The fields were in minneapolis (flick), so I asked about where. He didn't know exactly, but eventually mentioned something that lead me to ask 'Kix Field?' and he went 'ah, yeah' (flick a 10 bead this time). The fucker works on the field I practically idolized twice a day biking past (another 10). We probably spent five minutes talking about how he just gets to hang outside all day fertilizing, seeding, mowing, aerating, and perfecting this beautiful field. Go back and read that previous sentence and flick another bead for every other word. I was floored jealous, but hey, my job now is good and entertaining, and as much as I still think that his job would be super cool, I know for a fact that my job has to be just about as cool and it's probably a lot harder to get. But too bad I have to sit inside staring at a computer screen every day.

Now back to the leanside mnemonic. The memory of coming out of this turn is still pretty fresh. One of those crystallized moments, frozen in time and filed away somewhere in the frontal cortex. The name leanside popped into my head and I decided it was gonna be the moniker of my future professional endeavors. I didn't end up totally on the right end of the path, but did better than usual, my front wheel a little bit over an imagined halfway line and my back wheel a few feet shy, still well in the right half. The back wheel didn't come as far as it could have, so I was pointing a bit to the left, but was turned around as far as I needed to be to hit the pedals once more and just tick the handlebars to the right and be in the right spot from then on.

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And ha, at the onset of me writing this it was just going to be a sentence or two wittily describing the name but somehow it turned into one of my hot air narratives, totally full of shit, but fun to write none the less. The only reason I was writing it in the first place is because while I was renewing my first domain for the second or third time the registrar's checkout process got me with the 'register other domains' box and I needed something to put here ^_^. what's ten bucks anyway, this name and now story is way cooler, not to toot my own horn or anything.

–5/11/07

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