Now I am considering another bike ride. Patrick's out in the backyard banging on things, and the cats are all taking naps. Nothing has been planned, and I think I might strap my iPod to my upper arm and see how far I can get on the bike path, and maybe take a few photos while I'm out there. There are a few details slowing me down, though:
- Where's the fancy strap on thing for the iPod? I had it at one point and thought it was ridiculous and that I'd never use it, and so I put it away... somewhere. But where?
- Where will I put the camera? And just what am I going to photograph? Let's not be so ambitious, Irene.
- It's kind of cold today, and windy, and so nice and relaxing inside the house.
- I have more recorded Gordon Ramsay shows and Top Gear's to watch. I think Helen Mirren is on the one from today (I think they're all repeats, but I never saw them the first time around, so what do I care?). Helen Mirren is awesome.
- My friend from work loaned me a DVD of "No Country For Old Men," which she said was amazing (exact words? I don't remember), and I was telling her about one of my favorite movies, "Paris, Texas," starring my favorite old man, Harry Dean Stanton (he was sexy in in his late 50s). And now I kind of want to watch that, too.
- What shoes should I wear? Yesterday I wore flip flops (bad idea; the space between my big toes and their little neighbors got rather chafed), but I want to wear shorter pants to save on wear and tear from the bike chain, and I don't have many shoes that look good with capris. Oh, I know! The old Converse!
P.S. I forgot to mention that my pretty sweater jacket that I ordered when I passed my math class arrived on Friday. I wore it for the first time yesterday out to lunch with my folks. My mother liked it, but I have to tell you that it's a bit more orange than I was expecting (I believe Donna and her friends at J.Crew had called that particular shade "Bright Flame." Excuse me for thinking flames are red. Anyway, nope it's orange (let's call it, "Blogger Orange"). I like it, though. Surprisingly, I think I can pull off orange. Well, maybe. We'll see when I wear it again.
...
Update: So it took me about an hour and a half (after writing the above) to get up and go for a ride. I did go, it just took me a long while to do it. No iPod; I decided that if I was going to be riding in traffic (which I have to do, just to get to the park or the bike path), being able to hear, oh, I don't know, car horns or screeching tires, would be a good idea. I also didn't take the camera - and here are the photos I didn't take:
- a million and one people walking their million and five dogs. I saw one lady walking four very cute white dogs with those funny little curled up tails. Almost every dog (yes, all million and five of them) barked at me, but I figured they were just saying hello. Hello, doggy!
- a lot of very fine examples of the best damn bougainvillea I've ever seen. Seriously, Long Beach/Lakewood harbors some of the prettiest crazy-ass climbing, creeping flowering plants I've ever seen. We have some, but ours is seriously stringy and anorexic compared to the plants I saw.
- some kind of long-legged sea bird. It had a long beak, too. At first I thought it was a heron, but I looked "heron" up on Wikipedia, and herons have a crown of some sort on the top of their heads. It wasn't a pelican, I don't think. It did have a crazy Loch Ness Monster shape to it's head and neck, though, so for me, this bird, whatever it was, will now be known as "Nessie."
- lots of other wild life. I rode through El Dorado park, and saw squirrels, other unrecognizable birds (I'm terrible at this bird identification stuff, aren't I), a stray cat, and a kajillion tiny little gnats. Some of them committed suicide by flying straight into my glasses, my shirt, my nose, my mouth (gotta get that breathing under control). Apparently it's gnat season. Lucky me.
- an old guy running along the bike path ahead of me. Now, keep in mind that it was extremely windy today, and our bike path, like many bike paths in Southern California beach towns, runs to the beach. Since I was heading towards the beach (Seal Beach, to be exact, though I was probably about an hour away from there at all points during my ride), I pretty much had the wind off the ocean in my face the whole time. Good workout, that. Anyway, there was a moment about 45 minutes into my ride (15 minutes after the time I had intended to turn around and head home, but instead had decided to forge ahead for a few more minutes) where I was bearing down on an old guy running ahead of me. He wasn't going very fast either. I asked myself, does this guy hear me coming (my gears need adjusting; the bike is rather loud)? What's keeping him going? And then I remembered what used to keep me going, back in the days when I rode a bike for fun, transportation, and exercising.
This paragraph needs a break. I haven't forgotten about the old guy or why I would've taken his picture, had I taken the camera with me. I'm just going on a tangent, here. Join me.
See, when I was a kid, growing up in Culver City, I was pretty old when I learned to ride a two-wheeler. I think I was 9, or 10. And in my neighborhood, there was a kid who terrified me. This kid's name (well, nickname) was Pepe. And Pepe, who knew I was rather new on the bike, used to revel in finding me riding along alone, and he would chase me. He was a bully, and he scared the hell out of me.
(This might be a good moment to describe the bike I had when I was 10 [tangent #2]: it was light blue, with a white banana seat with darker blue flowers on it. It had plastic streamers coming off the handlebars, and it had a white basket on the front with plastic flowers on it. I loved that bike.)
Anyway, I wasn't the smartest kid on the block, but after awhile, I realized that Pepe was going to keep chasing me, and I needed some defense. I knew I couldn't fight him, and I couldn't count on my brothers being around all the time. So instead of fighting, I decided to just go faster than him. And I decided that to train myself to going faster, that I needed a theme song.
Yes, they based "Ally McBeal" on my childhood.
Anyway, my theme song for speed? What was the no. 2 song in 1980? Christopher Cross' hit song, Ride Like the Wind. It truly was the perfect song for pushing me. And I did get faster.
So, back to the man on the bike path, who I was slowly gaining on. The wind was hitting us both equally, or maybe it wasn't (I'm not very aerodynamic on my bike, yet!), but the distance between us was slowly shrinking. I wondered what song he had playing in his head. I've figured out the best gear for hills, crossing the street, and riding straight into the wind. And finally I passed him, the running man.
He was wearing an orange sweatshirt.
He was wearing a Blogger Orange sweatshirt.
One thing I wouldn't have taken a photo of: my sore ass. My butt hurt from yesterday's ride, from the moment I sat on that bike today. It felt as if my cheeks have been pummeled or tenderized. Every crack in the sidewalk, tree root, dip in the road where two streets are conjoined: every flaw in the pavement was telegraphed from the tires right up to my butt cheeks. I'm not that sore anywhere else, and think this bike riding business is good for me, fun, and I definitely want to work up to longer rides (today I was out for 90 minutes), maybe even repeat last year's torturous and slow ride to Redondo Beach with Patty (and keep up a little better). But this sore butt part has to stop. I'm not kidding. And soon.
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