658.2.

Late start, couldn't sleep last night.

"Bring It On," aimed at teens, was not a bad movie for what it was (a movie about cheerleaders attempting to win a national competition). There were some humorous moments, and the ending was not entirely expected. A simple four- or five-star rating system doesn't really cut it for me: movies must be taken in context. The "Scream" movies, for example, are among the best in their niche, while certainly NOT the best in the "all-movies" basket. Of teen-highschool-cheerleader-moral-dilemma films, this one rates four out of five. I found myself wishing, often, that they never tried to get serious about the star (Kirsten Dunst) love-interests OR the underprivileged inner-city cheerleader competitors. I found myself wishing said inner-city cheerleaders would just kick the crap out of Dunst and her palefaced friends. On the other hand, I really liked the "cheerleader love song," and the competition provided the whole point of the film. It wasn't "Election," but it was mostly watchable.

Pair of red-shouldered hawks today in a tree on Skillman. Are they still mating? Guess it makes sense, depending on gestation period... Noticeably more traffic an hour later than my usual time on my route...

Legs tired... must... rest...

650.5.

Shamelessly took the car in yesterday, because otherwise I wouldn't've come in at all. That was an amazing cold: hit like a ton'o'bricks Tuesday; I slept pretty much straight from 2pm to 7am Tuesday/wednesday, and again slept quite a bit wednesday afternoon/evening, and it's all but gone today. Still feel some effects, but felt well enough to bike in to work, and that's saying something.

Got pictures from earlier photo-ride, so anyone crazy enough to read this will be able to see some of what I'm talking about. My usual thumbnail grid - for a brief description of an image, hover over a thumbnail with the mouse pointer. Think I'll add a(n image-)map and other navigation later.

Surprised what appeared to be a duck and a pheasant taking a bath together in the roadside ditch this morning -- and they surprised me, too! Flew straight up and across about 6 ft in front of me. I guess if they mate, you get a phuck. <groan>

642.9.

Snow on Sonoma Mountain last night and this morning! They got 3.5" up in Ukiah - most since like 1922. Estimate the snow line at 1000' or lower, though the local newspaper says 1500. Maybe the base of the mountain is already at 500, 600'.

I think I may be getting another cold. Really hackin' and wheezin' this morning, after not enough sleep...

Weird movie "Jupiter's Wife" last night, about this NYC homeless woman, and this filmmaker guy who got to know her and started to track down her history. Interesting partly because she was at one time somewhat in the public eye, so he was able to find TV and newsreel footage from her earlier life (e.g. as the first female horse-drawn-carriage driver in Central Park), and piece together some of it. *** out of *****, because she's pretty annoying in her current state (and so's the producer/narrator), but it was thought-provoking... And at least partly confirmed something I always suspected - that the ranting of the homeless is based on real people and events; they mythologize their lives. And that irksome little knowing "mystic" smile while one spouts apparent gibberish, is indeed knowing, but it's no big cosmic mystery, just their everyday crap, twisted via aliasing and anthropomorphism. Gotta tell ya, I've had to deal with crazies in the street before; this filmmaker found a rare harmless one, and thus (I think) got a pretty inaccurate portrait of homelessness in general.

Funny though, in a later "True Hollywood Story" on Mackenzie Phillips, her dad "Papa" John Phillips, had the exact same post-too-much-LSD ramble and mumble...

So from my night of video and TV viewing, I have no more sympathy than before for (a) the crazy homeless or (b) the crazy rich.

Man. Feeling crappier by the minute here. Well, I'm already here, and not much difference between bike ride home now and bike ride home eight hours hence.

635.3.

Clothing was indeed still damp. Rode into town Friday for "beers" with ex-coworkers. Intermittent sprinkles as I explored beyond the new bike path (which is great for avoiding K-Mart and the McDowell/Washington traffic, but is not clearly marked where it turns off the erstwhile maintenance road, which becomes a rut next to a creek before fizzling out altogether), hefted the bike and myself over the fence, and tried generally to get to the downtown bike shop without being on major vehicle routes.

Got a rear fender, which is not noticeable except for the fact that I now have no Team Brown racing stripe up my back. And now of course I'm noticing the spray from the FRONT wheel.

Still had an hour to kill, so went to Red Devil Records, where the guy graciously (but nervously) allowed me to bring the bike inside while I browsed. However, he's got this near-life-size cardboard stand-up of Blondie, which he says is worth $500, but he props right near the front door. My rear tire accidentally touched it at one point. I felt very bad about it, and you shouldn't have a bike in a record shop, etc., but jeeze, I wouldn't prop anything that valuable right by the front door... I mean, knowing how clumsy people are (even without bikes), and knowing that in a good storm the wind could blow the rain right in there, I'd put it at the back.

I never liked Blondie much. Mostly image, not much ground (though perhaps some wind, haw haw) broken there (as compared to others of the mid-70s NY punk era).

Understand, I really like the store and the guy is cool. He knows my tastes somewhat, and has cogent recommendations for me that are often right on target. I consider it worthwhile to pay retail prices SOMETIMES for (a) supporting a cool local business, and (b) that personal touch. He also knows a bit of what I already have, thus almost talked me out of inadvertently buying a second copy of "No Teaser" (12th of the great "Teen Shutdown" series...), which, when I got home I found that I indeed already had it.

Anyway, got a boot of the Jam "BBC sessions" - second Jam bootleg, but really how can you have too much of this great neo-Mod band? Right when the Who were starting to suck, along comes the Jam with some great great albums (recommended: "The Gift" and "Setting Sons," though all are pretty good).

Rain off and on all weekend, but this morning I somehow again dodged a soaking. It's gonna get me good at some point here.

Hmm, best get to shower/coffee/work.

625.5.

"It's all too beautiful..." running through my head. What song is that? I'm thinking the Faces' "Itchykoo Park," but doesn't sound right.

Rain, as expected, but not too bad. I really need to get a rear fender - every time I go through a puddle, butt-debris. All clothing drying in the locker, prolly still be damp for the ride home. It doesn't much matter if it's actually raining (barring downpours) or just wet on the ground - I still get about the same amount of wet.

Like a postal worker, I must make my appointed round-trip. It would be nice to be better armed, though.

Oddly, the light of cold (& wet) reason this morning sort of illuminates the vehicle debacle. There's no getting around the fact that it just needs to be done, and it's not really like it's gonna break me. Good things will happen sometime later. If I'm going to take a certain delight in voluntary hardships, might as well lay back and enjoy the involuntary ones!

One thing nice, it hasn't led to heavy drinking, and it seems I've finally made the same night-before/morning-after connection with drinking that I made some ten years ago with cocaine.

It's not like I ever thought of drinking/drugs as a "solution" or an "escape" re problems. It was just a fully-conditioned reaction to them. Bummed? Drink! Like hitting my knee with a hammer. As it happened, I had pretty much the same reflex for happiness, boredom, payday, and just about any other emotion or situation. I can't believe that I ever took hangovers as a matter of course, though. The drinking (or drugging) itself was pleasant enough for the first hour or two, but it not only tended to turn sour before the evening was up, it would leave a sour taste in my mouth for at least a day following, and leave my brain fuzzy for as much as a week.

Now there's no excuse for my fuzzy brain, but at least I'm not actively adding to the fuzziness. After all, "Fur is Murder."

I think I'm finally seeing some weight loss, some slight reduction in flab. Though biking is my only exercise right now, so I don't really expect to get washboard abs or anything, I do expect, from the non-drinking and 40 miles a week of biking, a certain slimming effect. It's nice to see that happening, even if it is only imaginary.

It's easier to have a good self-image when there's less "self" to get your mind around.

Back to the quill and papyrus, then...

621.8.

Does anyone even read these stupid things?

Head gasket. $1500 - $2000, or more once they get it open. I guess I expected this, but I'm bummed nonetheless. This on top of recent housing rejection and continuing uncertainty, wimpy tax refunds (note: after 10% deduction into 401k AND $100 extra tax every paycheck), general life changes, and seemingly a million upcoming expenses, and wanting to have a worthy honeymoon, a dreamy camping vacation through all of our favorite desert lands and some new ones. It all costs money; money that I'm watching pour out of my bank accoutn before my eyes, a flow I can't staunch.

Bike shop *just happens* to be closed for the weekend - was hoping to take it in for maintenance, perhaps preventing disability of my only current mode of transpo.

When it rains it pours. Expect now for the real bad weather to start, jah? Or an injury that removes the biking option altogether.

At the ripe old age of 43, I'm just now starting to fully understand that saying, "That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger" (or something like that). I've always relished hardships (when they weren't TOO hard), when I've undergone them voluntarily. As long as the car sat in the driveway, an unknown, it was my own glib choice to do the bike-exclusive commute. And I was saving money - enough to be ready to pounce on a new home, if something good turned up. Enough to buy a new car and not sweat it too much. Enough to weather a month or two of unemployment. Enough, at least, to do one of those things.

Now that the car is in the shop and I know it's a BIG expense, and it's no longer a happy little "voluntary" thing, the bike ride is just a way of getting to work, isn't it.

And I just don't understand what I could have done differently, really, to have avoided this. The temp gauge was never pegged in the red, it was just (apparently) running very warm. They "fixed" an overheating problem in September 99 - so why did this come up again so badly?

Pedal on, dude. It must be done, and it will make me stronger, and this is just a setback, albeit a large one. And hey, I was ahead there for a month or two - I actually HAVE the money to fix the car; this has almost never been the case with prevous car trouble.

But I'm mighty tired of the feeling of dark, dark despair, not getting what we want and getting what we don't want.

It certainly helps to have Terrie with me through stuff like this. I honestly cannot imagine life without her.

617.9.

Well, dropped off the car. I have a bad feeling that this is gonna kill the savings, but it must be done. Poor ol' Mustang, I don't know how much of its current troubles are the fault of Ford, and how much are the fault of Blake's Auto Body (who attached a clip from another Mustang when this one was "totalled"). One thing that's a little annoying, I had it in to Dave's about 6 months ago for an overheating problem, and now it was overheating again, and finally (perhaps) blew a head gasket. Aren't they supposed to fix things more or less permanently, when they fix things? Not in today's customer-service-oriented world. The customer can suck lemons.

This morning was of the type I've been meaning to photograph, frost on the ground and a mellow sunrise. But though I had the camera, didn't have the heart for it.

From Dave's, I took the Lohrman-Magnolia-Marshall-Skillman route. Not very pleasant once you cross Petaluma Blvd, but other than that, not bad. No big uphills, a couple of "nice" (but not in low 30s/high 20s!) downhills.

Liking my job -- I'm finally busy -- but starting to actively hate the company. They keep having these mandatory meetings, and the meetings almost always turn out to be pointless, at least to me, the lowly drone. Latest is a mandatory quarterly meeting, 8am to 8pm, in Burlingame (twelve-hour day plus an hour and a half commute each way), with a bloody DRESS code - no jeans, t-shirts, tennis shoes. This kind of stuff is WHY I'M NOT A SALES PERSON.

No other place I've worked has created such hardships for its (development- and engineering-type) employees. No other place I've *heard of* has done so.

Meanwhile, there are several deadlines looming.

Granted, the annual meeting is a "treat," and I'm sure "they" feel we owe them bigtime for that.

I would only object a little IF there was a solid reason for me to be there in person - and maybe there is - but if past experience serves, I could as well be in Katmandu and get exactly the same value from it.

Oh well. They pay me, I do what they say. To the showers....

610.4.

Late start. Chilly but still. Wind last night was pretty annoying - I'd like to say I dislike it more than rain, but in the midst of it, rain is worse. Worst of all, I guess, would be windy rain in the dark .

Vulture atop a telephone pole, head uplifted (but wings not spread), looking towards the sun. I've gained a lot more respect for vultures in the past few years. They're actually pretty majestic creatures (and the largest birds we typically see hereabouts).

Car goes into the shop tomorrow. Think I can keep riding most days even with the car available. The tough ones are when I'm late, when it's cold, and when it's rainy. Rain is the only one that really should stop me...

602.8.

Breeze picking up as promised in weather reports, probably about 40 degrees, just before sunrise. No frost. Geese and vultures out in force this a.m. Pair of black and white goats on Fair Ave. Oddly, no barking dogs today.

I hate when someone's walking in the same direction as me on the overpass. They don't hear me coming though I whistle a merry tune loudly as I approach. Can't really go off the curb around them because the road traffic is coming towards me (and the curb's pretty high, so I'm committed to facing them past the onramp on the other side). If she'd suck it up and plaster herself against the fence, I could go past safely and continue on my way. But NOOO, she's taking every inch of the sidewalk with her massive bulk, trundling along there at .31415 mph... And of course if I get OFF the bike to walk it past her, I'm a double-wide too.

Passed the fearsome 600... Not too bad... passed 500 on 1/18 - 20 days ago (so THAT's why I'm blogging this!). Avg 5 miles per day (haven't ridden weekends much since it's been my commute -- it's closer to 8 mpd if I only count the days I actually ride), not a big deal, but satisfying to have the numbers rolling consistently rather than in spurts of 15, 20, 25. Considering it took a couple of months to get to the initial 100, and from there to 200, etc. If I'm spending ANY time defending/justifying my mileage, it's really too much time, isn't it.

599.1.

Remind me -- it's February, right? Once again, I rode home in a t-shirt, carrying two sweatshirts in the pack - figure it's close to 70 degrees out right now. Made the King hill in 6th gear -- usually, I wimp out about halfway up and get down to about 2nd for that last part.

I always try to take the long way when I start getting close to a mileage milestone (e.g. 600, tomorrow); whe I left work I was thinking I might do the full-on Pepper Road -> Spring Hill run, but then I just sorta automatically turned off Pepper onto King... It's a no-turning-back difference of like eight miles, so no small decision... Maybe tomorrow.

592.6.

Very foggy, enough so that the glasses were pretty much glazed over by the time I got to the downhill on Bailey, and I had to stop before heading into the 1/4-mile high-alert zone (going east on westbound Petaluma Blvd.), where the oncoming headlights would completely blind me...

"Chased" a pheasant for about 50 feet along a front yard on Skillman. Graceful as those guys look in flight, they're only slightly less clumsy than a quail, on foot.

Pleasant enough ride. Wonder how long I'll be able to keep doing this (i.e., if we're going to have to move to someplace thirty miles from work and the bike will sit rusting in the garage/backyard).

Lots of unknowns at this point -- that's just one of 'em.

585.0.

"Late" start today. Slept to the unheard-of hour of 6:30, and didn't get on my bike till about 7:45.

It's quite a bit warmer at this hour .

Bad news that pyra's on the rocks...

573.3.

Tuesday, I took 24 pictures on the ride home; will post them somewhere after developing. Nothing spectacular, but I tried to get a sequence of pix showing the entire ride from Rainsville, Liberty, Center, and King, and some of the critters I see every day. Not my normal ~3.9-mile ride - actually about 6 miles, and a lot more work when I stop every quarter mile (e.g. at the bottom of a hill when I had some momentum...) to take a picture. For whatever reason, couldn't post to blogger that day, but it got me to

577.4.

Finally broke the string yesterday and drove to work and back. Quite cold this morning and beautiful with frost on the grass, but too dark to get a picture on the ride in. I've been working 9+ hour days this week, working on other people's files and trying to get it done quickly so I don't get blamed if anything's late. Anyway, that's why I'm riding to work in the dark. I will get that frost-and-sunrise picture one of these mornings... I'd been figuring 20-30 minutes for the standard 3.9-mile ride; timed it today, not stopping anywhere but also not pushing it, at 23 minutes.

I unofficially consider some of this time to be part of my working hours. If I was an employer, I'd give people SOME credit for exercise time, maybe 30-40 minutes a day (ha! maybe 46 minutes precisely) , because it does make for good workers. I will stay and work 10, 11, 12 hours if I need to, but on a normal day, if I don't have crucial work to do, I consider seven-hours-plus-biking a pretty good day.

567.2.

Early ride, crisp and clear (and dark!). A dog started to follow me on Fair road, right before the little down-and-up.

Barking dogs don't scare me. Silent dogs scare me, esp. when I can't quite make out the dog's shape, and can't really look back to get a closer look...

But whatever it was, I lost it on the downhill.

Need better lights - perhaps a helmet light would be enough, since I could aim it independently of steering... It would also provide more 'binocular' vision (hence, depth perception). Need to get the reflector back on, too, in case the taillight batteries die.

Started bringing the (non-digital) camera. Got a picture or two last night, will ride in a bit late one morning and try to catch some of that light. Maybe tomorrow.

559.3.

Had planned to take the car in this morning, after checking the oil and water yesterday (they told me to check for milky oil, indicating water in the crankcase, and the oil didn't look milky to me), the car seemed to run okay. When I started it this morning (after loading the bike and rack onto the back), the car starts fine, but the gas pedal is at the floor with no effect on fuel delivery to the engine.

This just gets better and better.

Finally found out Friday that we didn't get the house we'd hoped for - major disappointment. Now we're forced to continue looking at places, which can be pretty depressing: $1500 for a house not much bigger than our current $900 rental.

Since we're about to put down another month's rent here, maybe I should just let the car sit for another month (or two, or three). I'm enjoying the daily bike rides, the weather hasn't been horrible, and I could make a little interest on the money I'll eventually spend on getting the car fixed.

Otherwise, a fine morning; low-lying Tule (too'lee) fog, no frost and no rain, and I got in just before sunrise, with peach-colored highlights low in the eastern sky...

555.5.

Heavy rain at times today, but I managed to sneak past it again. Very small lambs on Bailey Rd; big red-shouldered hawk on western Skillman.

551.7.

That was actually the eighth day in a row, today is the ninth. Taking car in on Monday. It was raining pretty hard this morning, but again caught a window of relative dryness, and got in to work well before 7.

Note to self: need rear fender to prevent unsightly butt debris. Really don't want to turn the bike into an RV, but in daily commuting, there are certain necessities, and only so much fits in my day pack. Have so far resisted saddlebags and the like...

Note 2 self: get replacement batteries for the taillight. It's been running for only maybe 12 hours total, but it would be better to have the batteries than not. (The headlight battery, I can charge every other day in the garage.)

Seventh day in a row today riding the bike to work and back. Finally hit some
rain (earlier, we had some major downpouring and even hail, but I managed to hit
a window where it was little more than vertical mist). Mild rain is no big
deal, unless it's also dark and the cars have their lights on, which tends to
leave me blinded for moments in a fantasy world of floating jewelry unless I
remove my glasses (which I prefer not to do).

Closing in on 550 miles since I bought the bike in June - pretty major recent
escalation in weekly mileage, though, since the car hasn't been an option.

I am seeing some very slight physical benefits, finally, from this (in, uh,
combination with a month of not drinking 9 Pyramid Hefeweizens every other day
and eating significantly less meat).

I love the time on the way to work and back, even when it's dark, when I have
20-30 minutes to just pedal and zone out. I love seeing the same dogs running
along their fencelines and barking at me every day. I love seeing the
occasional hawk up close on a wire or soaring high above, the pheasants from the
pheasant farm, the horses and goats and cattle. I love the sunrise/sunset,
towering clouds or creeping fog, frost on the grass or just plain grass getting
greener thru the winter.

I love turning down a ride home on a day like today, and making it home soaked
and tired. I love not wimping out and getting in my car for the four-mile
commute. I love knowing in advance where the puddles and potholes will be on my
various routes.

I pack into my ear/neckwarmer, sweatshirt and gloves, sweatpants, helmet, and
backpack, and I'm snug and self-contained. Got my clever blinky LED taillight
and 10-watt headlight always on. The cars are the enemy, but I know how to best
avoid them.

More than when I was riding maybe twice a week, even when those were 20-mile
rides, this daily eight or so is a groove.

One of these days, I'll take the digital camera along and stop and take a
picture every quarter-mile or so, and post it on my site - hopefully I can catch
one of those frosty sunrise days.

Mental clarity really hasn't improved a lot, but I think there's a sort of
temporary discombobulation at breaking up the old routines and starting new
ones. I still tend to run out of mental energy when I don't get an
early-afternoon nap (which of course I usually don't). I notice much more that
I need that morning coffee. Mostly, I like when I realize at work that I've
already thought something through on the bike, or catch myself smiling for no
reason...

Arranged today to get the car fixed, but not all that enthused about its being
available to me again.

544.2.

It's become pretty much a matter of course to get on the bike and go to work.

Issues arose at work yesterday, so I came in early today - before sunrise, at least. Riding home last night and riding in today, I thought about this.

I've run into this frequently in my "career" in the corporate world: In the heat of the moment, some people;s first reaction is to seek to fix blame, focusing on the problem rather than the solution. Thousands of pages of documentation, and three or four things missing or wrong suddenly make us incompetent.

Pretty early on, I started to basically ignore blame like this, choosing to focus on the solution. I may appear to not care about the problem, because indeed I don't. I don't care who's wrong or right, who blew it back in 1897. I want to arrive at the quickest and best solution, and allow us all to get on with our lives.

Nice bike rides today and yesterday; nothing much to say about 'em other than that. Looks like rain again today, but I beat it this morning...

532.9.

The expected rain has arrived. Heavy at times today, but mild enough during the ride home. Better not to wear glasses, which get so covered wit hdroplets that when a car comes the other way with lights on I only see a million tiny stars. Will save my goodwill points for getting a ride home when it REALLY rains, meanwhile, I need the exercise.