The ingenuity of students never ceases to amaze

Okay, so it's been some weeks since you've heard from me, and I apologize for that. But I've been busy, you know?

The other day I noticed that a few spokes on my bike's rear wheel had gotten a little bent, so I went up to the Bloomington Community Bicycle Project (an open workshop where you can use their tools to fix your bike) to straighten them out, and that place was PACKED. There seemed to be a lot of students there, and not all of them had bikes, so I'm guessing they were there for the Earn a Bike program. It's a great program where you do volunteer work for them, and they give you a bike after you've put in so many hours. Of course, all the bikes they give away are donated to them in the first place, and who knows how many they have left, if any.

Still, it's nice to see some action being taken. The student population seems to be getting the most creative about things. I heard that most of the students that couldn't get home after the spring semester ended opted to enroll in summer sessions so they could get some more student loan money. A temporary fix, to be sure, but at least they're finding ways to survive while they're stranded in Middle America. Fraternity Row has turned practically all of its lawn space into gardens, as well as several of the open grassy areas on campus. It's good of the campus to let the students use their land like that.

But it gets me thinking about the fall. This town is built around the university. What's going to happen when students stop coming because they can't afford to get here? How are the local businesses going to handle that? How many university employees are going to get laid off because there aren't enough students to teach? And how will those people survive if they can't move somewhere where they can get work?

All this thinking about the future gets me worrying about the coming winter. I'm thinking I should pick up a 20 pound bag of rice in case the currently minor food shortages (o noes, i cannot eat doritoes!!) get worse with the cold. Is there a proper way to store those?