My title is a direct riff on Pepboys, specifically the store on Erie Blvd.
where I arrived with the Element yesterday morning at 7:56 a.m.,
small-nail-in-tire. I joined the three others waiting for the service door
to open so could enter. It’s a stand-by kind of shop; I planned to wait on
the repair, even after I learned that it might take up most of the
morning–"should be no more than three hours…had an incident on the 690
on-ramp yesterday…twenty tire repairs ahead of yours." No problem, I
thought. There’s a Bruegger’s Bagels within walking distance (close enough
despite the other bad wheel–a jacked up knee), and I brought along four
articles from Cybercartography and excerpts for 712 from Susan Langer’s
Philosophy in a New Key and Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. At
least three hour’s worth, given that I also intended to enjoy an everything
bagel or two, make a morning of it.

Bruegger’s was all I expected it to be. I found a quiet corner table
and worked steadily through the four geography articles, which included Michael
Peterson’s "Elements of Multimedia Cartography," a surprisingly polemical
article on the shortcomings of paper maps, and Mark Harrower’s "A Look at the
History and Future of Animated Maps," a solid overview of motion in "geovisualization."
I was assigned to discussion-leading for Peterson’s article for class this
morning. Harrower’s piece covers the brief history of animation as it
converges with mapping–first done by Walt Disney artists to present invasion
animations in 1940 (35). I finished the bagels and hot tea, wrapped up the
readings for geography (more about specifics from them in another entry) and
move on, taking up Langer around 11:00 a.m. I was reading

Now, I do not believe that "there is a world which is not physical, or not
in space-time," but I do believe that in this physical, space-time world of
our experience there are things which do not fit the grammatical scheme of
expression. But they are not necessarily blind, inconceivable, mystical
affairs; they are simply matters which require to be conceived through some
symbolic schema other than discursive language. And to demonstrate the
possibility of such a non-discursive pattern one needs only to review the
logical requirements for any symbolic structure whatever. Language is by
no means our only articulate product. (89)

when the speaker volume was inched up just a bit. It was a slow
late-morning hour in Brueggers, prime for GNR’s "Paradise City." Only that
reading Langer with "Paradise City" all around…I packed up and walked back
over to Pepboys where they told me it’d be another hour and a half. I
continued with Langer, finishing the excerpt from _Philosophy_ and reading
through pieces of the chapter from _Feeling_ on "Prescientific Knowledge," and
the Monday edition of the Daily Standard before wandering around the store
looking at seat covers and air fresheners.

The tire was never repaired. After looking at it they decided that it
was too close to the wall to risk repairing. And they didn’t have the
replacement tire in stock, but they were kind enough to refer me to the Goodyear
location down the street. And so the much-too-long wait ended; I drove toward
the grocery store with the same small nail lodged in the same tire, feeling
unlucky except that I’d managed a satisfying amount of reading.