Recently in Bikes Category

A few days ago when my -er- friend was here, I took some pictures. I'm not sure he knew why I was doing it, though he allowed it. It was the light.

I'm not often up in the actual morning, and when I am, I'm struck by how different the light is. A few months ago I was visiting a friend on the West Coast, and every time we went for a bike ride, I kept commenting on the light. At any given hour, it seemed to slant or glow or do something that had me mesmerized.

Professional photographers always talk about light, and I've always assumed they were talking shop - it sounds so technical. But I think it may be more that they're in love with light - how it changes the way everything looks from moment to moment, like those paintings Monet did - the same scene, over and over again, at different times of day.

I have my own experiences like that. Not just of how the light changes, but how the traffic changes, and how the air smells different, and how all of that makes it seem like I'm seeing different sides of a personality. The park, the path, the deep-city streets. These places are not the same at 3am as they are at 3pm.

At 3am, there is a basketball game - 12 people, playing for real, on an unlighted court.

You would never know that if you weren't riding by. I felt privileged to see it.

In her 43rd year, she took a lover seventeen years her junior, learned to play the field, became adept at smoking joints, and got in trouble with the IRS.

Would you like that character, if you were reading her in a novel?

I was just reading a post by another blogger, and realized it isn't just me who's being introduced to herself in her 40s. I had a flash the other day where I looked at myself, where I was and whom I was with, and marveled that this is my life now. You don't think, when you're twenty, that your life in middle age will be anything to write home about. You also don't think, I expect, that you'll still be very much discovering yourself.

I think now that I may be discovering myself forever. In that last moment of breath, I may have a little flash of insight where something unfolds and I want to jump off and explore it. Why not, after all? It happens all the time now.

I only hope I'll still be riding my bike.

Yeah, um, right.

I can't even begin to tell you about my week, so I won't try. Let's just say that several of my ideas have been confirmed, and a few others shaken up.

a) Do not, repeat, do NOT sleep with anyone on the first date. Confirmed.
b) Do not alter one's mental state by chemical means. Shaken up, busted, then slightly confirmed again. Which means the jury is somewhat out and further (but more moderate) testing is required.
c) The one you want is the one you want. Confirmed.
d) You cannot have the one you want, at least not in the quantity that you want. So, then what? No fracking idea.
e) Lots of playing with boys and partying with -um- other boys = not getting enough (or even any) work done. Confirmed.
f) I hate saddle sores. Confirmed, goddamnitalltohell.
g) Am I really that pretty, holy crap, why am I having so much trouble with boys? Oh, right. Because the one who's giving me the most trouble is just as pretty as I am. Sigh.

I guess that about covers it.

I often have a post going in my head while riding, but when I get home it's gone, superseded (usually) by the need to eat.

Some nights I wish I could show you what I'm seeing. There's a section of the park that looks like Where the Wild Things Are.

There are bats diving overhead, sometimes quite close. I've been told we have them to thank for the relatively low mosquito count. Another reason to like them.

They fly rather like butterflies, I always think. Giant brown leathery butterflies. Tim Burton butterflies.

I keep waking up and being delighted to remember that it's Tour de France time, and I get to start my day with Phil Liggett's inimitable voice. There's something special about Phil, and it's rather magical to hear him every day.

I haven't heard from the boys in weeks, and I'm adjusting. I've done some riding with other people and a lot of riding solo, and what I've found is that I actually adore riding by myself. I really dislike the pressure that I've begun to sense from other cyclists, to ride more aggressively, to "kill it" on the hill, etc. I suppose I oughtn't to be surprised that people who race would exhibit a competitive streak in social riding, but I'm still annoyed by it.

I was talking to Boywich about it, and he was (as he so often is) clear and supportive on the subject. The thing is, my chief goal is always to be able to keep riding. That means: a) avoiding accidents (as much as possible), and b) not injuring my knees by pushing too hard in certain situations.

Add to that that I'm at least 10 years older than most of the people I ride with, and you end up with a situation where it's often a relief to simply be alone and ride the way I want to.

I don't know whether it's simply on my mind lately or that I've only recently started to see it, but a lot of my friends have a judgmental streak - about what people eat, about the way they ride. I recently started eating a little bit of meat, and I've kept that information to myself for the most part. Several of my friends are what I think of as judgmental vegans, and I just don't want to deal with their reactions to it.

I have my own reasons for eating what I eat, and I don't feel that it's anybody's business. But I also don't feel like being on the receiving end of their horror. It's a turkey sandwich. Get the fuck over it.

I was watching a documentary last night, which followed a long and arduous journey through a wide variety of cultures, and the travelers simply ate whatever they could find, and they made no bones about it. They were, by and large, delighted by the people they met - many of whom welcomed them into their homes. And afterwards, when they talked about what they liked most about the journey, it was the people, the chance to just hang out with people whose lives and ideas were completely unknown to them. They found some kind of harmony in that, and they felt they'd learned a lot.

I suppose this all sounds simplistic, but I find that I'm chafing against that oddly persistent human desire for homogeneity - that desperate need to make everyone think and act just like you.

Sitting here waiting for the thunder to come. Well, we'd settle for the rain.

The cat has been lying on the floor looking like a wrung-out dishtowel. Or a flat noodle. She seems to be under the impression that striving for two-dimensionality will cool her off.

I gave her ice cubes. Not interested. I tried to introduce her to the wonders of the icepack. She was vaguely frightened.

Myself I'm so dehydrated that my brain isn't working well enough to remember to buy the Gatorade that sent me to the grocery store in the first place. I'd get it at the bodega, but I spent my very last cash pennies on ice cream in town. I meant to go look for a new bikini (Old Navy's having a sale, and the bottoms of my old one are too big for me even before they get wet), but I forgot.

I have no money; it's all credit cards. Sigh. Let's not even go there.

I ran into my sometimes-playmate randomly on the street yesterday, and nearly got run over because I wasn't paying attention to traffic. I was distracted by the proximity of the handsomeness. He smells so good. Cardinal rule #1: Don't look at the boys. It will get you smushed by large objects with four wheels.

Today I found myself staring at a skateboarder who was gliding by in the opposite direction and had to remind myself, verbally. DON'T LOOK AT THE BOYS! You are on a big street with rush-hour traffic and four firetrucks blocking the entire right lane, and there's a little black Accord with out-of-state plates diving out in front of you and nearly ramming itself into the bus that is also in front of you, and now you have to maneuver around four lanes of mess with oncoming traffic coming at you and the bus and the out-of-stater, plus firetrucks. DO NOT LOOK AT THE BOYS.

Yeah, right. I think I need to move apts soon. Maybe I can find one where there's a third tap in the kitchen, marked "Gatorade."

There are times when I don't know how I'm feeling. Okay, there a lot of those times. And when I do know, I often wish I weren't. Feeling, that is.

Lately things catch me by surprise - I think I know what I want, and what I can deal with, and then I'm thrown some sort of a curve ball, and what it does (other than require a lot of effort to knock it out of the path of my face) is to stick itself onto one end of something that I'm not really aware of, and unravel it.

And then I'm suddenly in tears (just a bit - I rarely do a full-on cry) pedaling through the mist, because a) I didn't know I was feeling that, and b) what I'm feeling kind of sucks.

Also, c) there's rarely a damn thing I can do about it.

I had a sudden moment of realizing how broken hearted I felt about most aspects of my life, and I wasn't prepared for that, and there was nothing much to do about it, except keep pedaling.

The scenery was rather good:

half-moon rising above parting clouds
fingers of mist with streetlamps pouring yellow sodium streams into them
trees and rain and mud on the ground
smells of river and drowned flowers
that view across the water, looking for all the world like Monet's unknown masterpiece - Park at Dark

I watched the shadows of tire and chainrings, rotating.

It was a beach day, and I brought my camera and yet took no pics. I never even pulled it out of my pannier. Why?

Because my eyes were closed and I had a hat over my face. Because I was watching my friend play in the water. Because I was there to relax, not to gather blog fodder.

Because I was hoping to find a new seashell to replace the one that broke (twice) in my necklace last night.

We'd both had terrible weeks, and we hadn't seen each other in a while. She's healing from a somewhat serious injury (she's okay; it's just a little scary) and hasn't been riding much. I'm healing from a deep well of stress at work and have been riding a lot, but not with people.

We just needed to ride, and sit in sand, and listen to water and watch it move, and foam, and froth, and fade. The gulls overhead, a tern here and there - black head red beak - waving grasses. A lot of poison ivy. French fries (I didn't eat them, but I ate a heckuva lot of cake later on).

We rode home, we ate dinner, we went out for beer. We sat outside in a crowded bar, but it was friendly, and we were in good moods, finally, after all this time.

I tried to write a post yesterday, but my server was down. Then I tried to tweet tonight, but the World Cup had apparently broken the living daylights out of Twitter (it's still limping a bit).

All I was gonna do was write you a little list of stray thoughts as they occurred to me. I suppose I could still do that.

My mileage has increased, and with it my appetite. I can no longer manage on 5 meals a day. Think I'm kidding? Spend a day with me. And bring your wallet.

I have: a) a tan that ends mid-thigh, and b) little callouses on my palm below my second and third fingers.

The cat has a new trick whereby she climbs into my lap, flops herself onto my torso (about 60% of which real estate she takes up), and lolls her head into my chest, while gazing soulfully into my eyes. What is she, a frickin' Harlequin romance novel?

I have taken to riding to a beach nearly every weekend, just to get away from the human populace. It is soothing. And then I ride to a honky tonk beach, to be amused by the human populace. I'd tell you part of a conversation my friends and I overheard at the latter last weekend, but it is unprintable. So was her outfit.

My baby sister turned 40 this year, and a couple of days ago a young man from the Internet asked me if I'd consider dating a guy in his mid-20s. Given that a man of that exact age had just left my bed, I had to answer in the affirmative. I suppose that sounds like bragging.

It's occurred to me recently that - until now - I'd never actually let myself consider what I want from men. So I gave that some thought. I don't have an exact answer, but I have some ideas about what I don't want, and that is a start.

I've started to think of myself as a bachelor. I've started to think that being single by choice is not the same as being celibate. It's been an interesting week.

PS. The birds are singing and that was my last lightbulb.

He: It's clear that you like men. But you never keep any of them for very long.
She: Men make women messy.
He: Here's to the fear of being trapped.
(from The Thomas Crown Affair)

She: It's too bad you couldn't have avoided this.
Me: What? Not get involved after he warned me?
She: Yes.
Me: He was just what I wanted.

Sensing a pattern?

Yeah, sure. That don't make it resistible or even something I much want to change at the moment. It serves its purpose. That being to keep me at arms' length. I have my reasons.

But it hurts, you say?

Well, you are talking to a woman whose legs are permanently bruised, scraped, skinned, and sometimes even rug-burned (yes, for that reason).

I have a certain tolerance. Make that resilience. I may not like pain all that much, but I sure do bounce back from it like a Weeble on steroids.

So I'm in that state where I'm drinking espresso at 8:41 pm and stopping in the midst of my 40-mile jaunt to visit a handsome fellow of my previous acquaintance (yes, like that) for a little free-form flirting, just to juice me up again, and then I get back on the bike and ride the rest of the way home dartin' and a swoopin'.

Finish up some work, have a brief bossy little meeting (I was the one being bossy, which is odd for me, but I was still in traffic mode), eat a clementine, blah blah blah. This is how we get on with life, folks, we just get on.

We move, we fly, we get pissed off and decide we deserve better; we recognize that we don't actually want to get too much closer than that and so we scan the horizon for another (un)suitable boy, and there aren't any, so we learn to play bocce ball and win our first-ever game, because, well, we are really quite deft at certain things. Rolling balls in uncertain directions over chalk apparently being one of them.

I rode for miles and miles last night, and instead of getting tired or sore, my legs got stronger and happier. Okay, I felt a little stiffness in the muscles on the way back, but only because I'd stopped for a little while and sat down.

Today it is 85 degrees, perfect beach weather, and I am contemplating whether I can get back on the bike and ride there. I am totally jonesing for it, as we used to say in the bad old days. It's not just that I'd like to be at the beach - in fact, it's hardly that at all.

When I woke up my very first thought (other than Shut That Kid Up! to the parents of the child whose piping-high screams had woken me up from outside) was, oh I want to get on my bike right NOW!

I have work to do, and I am feeling surprisingly motivated to do it today rather than put it off till tomorrow (which will be thunderstormy), and I keep thinking, what if my legs blow up on the way there (or back). That would be bad.

But it's funny that not only do I still want to ride, I want to ride immediately. I don't even want to give them (legs) a few hours to recuperate. I only slept for four hours. I have no one to ride there with. I don't even care. It makes me think I should plan a big bicycle tour sooner rather than later. It makes me think I can totally ride across the country if I want to. It makes me think that maybe my love of laps is not primarily about the boys, but about the bike. About what I have jokingly described as my one true love, and my boyfriend, and -well- I'm not going to tell you his name, but he does have one.

He's certainly a lot more consistent than the human kind.

I'm gonna keep this brief and random because a) my ass hurts, b) my knee hurts, and c) there is compelling scifi television looming.

random item #1 - everyone here is talking about how beautiful it is out, and I have to say, I hardly notice the difference. It seems to make more difference to me that there are more people whom I have to dodge and avoid and ding the bell at, and this makes my rides a lot less pleasurable, despite (or just next to) the fact that it's warm enough to ride around with uncovered knees.

ri#2: I am poised on the cusp of being ready for a boyfriend, and I hate that. The cusp feeling. Not-quite-yet, but so almost that I'm getting frustrated by it.

ri#3: you know it's spring when all the cute boys are out, and they've broken up with their girlfriends, and we race around telling dirty jokes. Hey, it's my idiom.

ri#4: both my kitten and my eyeballs get very high maintenance in spring. Yowling, clingyness, and dry eyes.

ri#5: a big shout out to my darling girl Special J. It was lovely to see you.

ri#6: In the classic freelance nightmare scenario, I went from having not nearly enough to do to having 423 projects competing for my attention. Most of which are work to try and get more work, but at least things are moving.

ri#7: sadly, ri#6 means that I am really lacking in sleep.

ri#8: I am thirsty and I wish I had a dishes fairy.

8 minutes until Star Trek 8 minutes until Star Trek 8 minutes until Star Trek 7 minutes until Star Trek.

I was out riding with Da Boys tonight, and mentioned my recent 3rd-worst-date-ever, and they wanted to know why. What made it the 3rd-worst? (for one, there was his disdain for TNG. I mean, c'mon, it's Jean-Luc frickin' Picard.) And what was the all-time worst? And why on earth had I gone on a date that night instead of riding laps with them?

One of them (the very cutest one) said when he'd gotten my text about it being just a first date, he'd really wanted to text back, saying If it's just a first date, blow it off. Ride with us instead.

Dudes, I so should have.

So tonight when I got the LAPS TONIGHT text, there was no question. And the fact that I got to spend most of the night riding formation right next to the very cutest one didn't hurt matters. I mean, it's just riding, but oh the lovely scenery. And I don't mean the woods and starry sky, though there were those, too.

Shit, 3 minutes until Star Trek.

Someone offered me a ride home tonight (in a car, with space for my bike in the back), and I said no, though it was rainy and cold and I was on the fence.

Then I got on the bike and had the most glorious time. Well, maybe glorious is too strong a word. But I heard myself say, at the foot of the bridge, "Oh it's lovely out." I wasn't talking to anyone in particular - just the imaginary companion who hears all my best stuff. Maybe I was talking to my bike. I do that a lot, and I know I'm not the only one because I once ran into a fellow who was arriving by bicycle from British Columbia.

I felt so lucky to run into him. I got to ask him about his journey. I've wanted to do bicycle touring for quite some time, and I haven't managed to get out there yet, and he was encouraging and open about it.

He asked how long a trip I was planning, and I said 5 days, and he said that was the perfect length for a first journey. His exact words were something like, "It's just the right amount of time to have no one but the bike to talk to."

I loved that. I remember, too, that when I said I'd been looking forward all winter to the reward of summer weather (which we got very little of that year - it rained a lot), he said, "No, winter's the real reward."

In the brief little spell of mild sunny weather we had last week, I remembered again the curse of spring cycling: crowds.

The streets were suddenly clogged with fair-weather riders. The pedestrians were out in foolish droves, jumping out in front of me and waving their arms as if they thought that was a game. Drivers were distracted by the promise of summer, and perhaps by the fact that short skirts had suddenly resurfaced on some of the pedestrians.

And then it turned rainy and cold, and once again I had my privacy. A small handful of cyclists on one bridge, and a lone cyclist towing a trailer on the other.

I really did feel that it was a beautiful evening. The rain was refreshing on my face. It was quiet for a Friday night. I like the sound of tires, theirs (4) and mine (2), on wet pavement. I like the way everything shines.

And then I like being finally warm and dry and having the cat come over to curl and purr.

PS. Yes, those are bike wrenches weighing down the yarn. I had unraveled a project I wasn't happy with and then washed the skeins to straighten out the ripples. I was so tickled by the usefulness of tools from one love/obsession for another that I took a pic.

There are days when I feel exceptionally beautiful. They don't come often, and I always feel just a tiny bit guilty for saying anything about them, for having the audacity to claim beauty.

But I also suspect that it's on those days that I come closer to seeing myself truly than at any other time.

Most other days my judgment is clouded by a lifetime of hanging back, of not wanting to be upfront about what I can do, what I know. It seemed always as if for me to step forward someone else had to step back, as if acknowledging that I have beauty, or talent, or grace, meant that someone else was going to suffer.

It's indoctrination, I know. It's not uncommon among women. It's also a crock of shit. This I know intellectually, but not with conviction.

I have this persistent belief that I can't be great and nice at the same time. And by great, I mean Great. As in, possessed of greatness. Special.

"Everybody's special, Dash." -Helen
"Which is another way of saying no one is." -Dashiell

It reminds me of The Incredibles, where the supers (as in superheroes) were forced to go underground, to hide their powers and masquerade as ordinary citizens, not just in between acts of saving the world, but all the time. Basically they were told that they had to sit on their gifts, not show who they were, because who they were made the non-supers feel uncomfortably less-than.

Have you ever watched the way kids treat the geniuses among them? It's not pretty. And I think it used to be worse.

These days there's at least some lip service to the idea that it's cool to be a geek, though I don't know how far down it trickles, chronologically. And there are still differences between chic geeks and real live nerds.

I'm one of the latter. I don't look it, but I am.

Tonight I spontaneously solved an engineering problem - quite by accident. Then I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed, "I'm brilliant!" After which I felt abashed.

One is not supposed to exult in oneself. One is supposed, above all, to fit neatly into some acceptable pigeonhole, within which one may exhibit a high level of competence without threatening other people, because it's confined to a limited sphere.

One is not, for example, supposed to be both an artist and a writer, and also to be good at science. One should not understand astrophysics. One should certainly not be able to immediately and intuitively arrive at the solution for a complex engineering problem that's taken a team of scientists years to unravel.

Man, I am so busted.

And worse, I was proud of it. I still am proud of it. It was a moment of gleeful insight, and those give me great pleasure.

I know for a certainty that some of the people I've dated have trailed away from me because I was simply Too Much. Too big, too much energy, too passionate in all senses of the word, too fast, too funny, too intense, too serious. Always leaving them behind. Not even trying to. Trying to be kind, to bring them with me, to invite them to play.

On the way home tonight I saw all these things I wanted to show you. An art installation of colored lights that created, as a byproduct, two long beams of reflected color on the river. Like a more cheerful version of the 9/11 memorial.

A driver was kind to me. She (I like to think it was a she) waited for me to get over, when I was expecting to have to wait for her. I was surprised, and turned around while we were stopped at the light to mouth "thank you."

I'd like to do a PSA campaign telling drivers that it's good luck to be nice to cyclists, in the same way that chimney sweeps were considered good luck in Mary Poppins's London.

Wow, that was a mess.

For those of you who didn't notice, the blog was down for about 10 days due to a minor catastrophe at the hardware level. It's all fixed now, and there doesn't seem to be anything missing, and anyway, it's just a blog, not somebody's lifeblood or my novel or anything.

But still, I missed it.

Which kind of surprised me since I've been finding it hard to blog, and I've been posting more intermittently than I did for the first - oh - 6 years of this thing. (Yes, I know the archives don't go back that far; Boywich has the early years saved somewhere safe-ish, and one day he'll get around to revamping this place and adding in all those files, but that has to be done manually and it's a big job, and he's a busy boy)

All of which is to say, hey, sorry girlwich was a blank white page for 10 days. I had things I wanted to say, too - things which would not have fit into 140 characters and so did not appear in the twitter stream. And while I don't remember those would-be essays, I have a minor amount of faith that if there were important ideas in there, they will percolate through my consciousness and reappear.

For now, what I will give you is a random series of thoughts (as opposed to the elegant triumph of organization that's the rule in blogland?).

It snowed again. Fuck. 20 inches. The roads are shite, as they say in Ireland, where it rarely snows at all.

I rode my rollers in the hallway tonight, for a scant fifteen minutes. It's hard riding rollers, and it's only about the third or fourth time I've ever done it.

I also walked, clad in waterproof garments and a certain amount goose down (bad vegan!) and several knitted items, to a pal's house to watch Carl Sagan tell me about Mars. I love Carl Sagan. We're on a first-name basis. I call him Carl and try to remind myself that: a) he was married, and b) he's no longer with us (so sad!). Such a dreamboat, that Carl. Shut up, I'm in earnest.

I am knitting the most brilliant sweater ever devised by mankind (forgive me; I've been thinking in hyperbole all day - watching Carl will do that to you), but I have reached a point of confusion. It's a hazard of seat-of-the-pants design. Yes, I'm calling myself a designer. No, I'm not proposing to make a career of it. But almost every successful piece of knitting I've ever done had its origins in a little drawing on an envelope. That's how my brain works. I'm creative and I don't follow directions very well.

During the last big snow (what, like a week ago?) I happened to walk by a mosque during evening prayer, and the chanting was being piped into the street through a loudspeaker. I stood under the streetlight for several minutes looking up at the falling snow and listening to that haunting melody.

This time, I walked past the mosque again but there was no music, and I was sad.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I am funny and rather brilliant and a mostly delightful companion, and I feel that I deserve an equally delightful boyfriend, and I am somewhat perplexed as to why one hasn't materialized yet. Maybe it's the funny hats.

When you ride the rollers and it is going well, you reach this state where you are floating in mid-air, scarcely aware that you're pedaling at all. It's quite remarkable, but I wish my glasses wouldn't fog up just at that moment. It kind of kills the mood.

I tried, I really did. I went to a party last night (small, intimate) and another tonight (big, anonymous). I had two scoops of ice cream.

I rode my bike in dresses (one black and flowy, one purple and tight). I put on makeup.

I flirted with an unsuitable boy I'd never met and pined (against my will) for another I'd already messed around with and discarded.

Last year I hid in the house and watched a succession of terrible, heartache-inducing movies on TV.

This year, I had the opportunity to be out and socialize. I thought it would help. Nope. Still grumpy. Still hate being in the human race.

Just wish I could ride my bike, alone, forever, into the quiet chill blue starlight. It's all I love right now. (that, and the cat)

Someone stuck a paper heart onto my helmet as I was leaving the party and I pulled it right off.

A dear friend of mine said to me last night, after we'd blasted through an intersection to make a light that was turning, "You know, you really ought to be racing."

Every other time that someone has asked me if I race, or why I don't, I've demurred - I'm too old for it, I have knee issues. This time, I didn't. She is herself a racer, and a damned strong rider. She's younger than me; she trains very hard. But she's in a position to know.

She went on with some specific recommendations: sprints, no climbing.

It probably isn't wise.

But last night I dreamed I was with a group of people and we were being chased, and the safest thing to do was to get to the roof and fly away to a distant mountain ledge. I didn't, because I was the only one of our party who had that ability.

My dreaming self is always a flier; it's a basic characteristic, like hair color.

Earlier that evening we'd been talking about our families not understanding the risks we take. That it stems from their own worldview, from their need to feel that life is stable and predictable and safe.

In my case, at least, it's been a challenge for me to believe my own perceptions of what's possible, and to follow my instincts about what to do with my life. It's difficult when what you feel born to do is something that everyone in your family, all your teachers and other authority figures considered completely impossible, not even worth trying. Now I marvel that it never occurred to me to push them on that: Why? Sure, it would be hard and there'd be the possibility of failure, but why isn't it worth trying?

Because I'd get hurt? Oh for gods' sake. I've been hurt so much more by not trying, by denying who I am. Better to take the leap and fall on my face.

I rode over a lot of ice patches last night. When my friend noticed that I seemed to be aiming for them, I explained that I was trying to improve my bike handling skills. I could tell she wasn't criticizing; she said I seemed to know my bike really well.

It occurs to me that I may be trying out strategies on the bike before putting them into larger practice in my life. Taking the risk of falling in order to find my strengths, and to develop them.

Yep, it's one of those weeks where I keep making drafts and more drafts, sitting next to my (you guessed it) drafty window, where the cat bravely offers to keep me company on the adjacent big fluffy pillow.

I guess when you have fur, drafts don't scare you.

And then I get distracted by the fact that my lunch is ready, or my second dinner, or I need another cup of coffee, or this chair hurts my butt, or the outdoors exists, and so on, and I don't post the thing, because really I am not so sure about that draft, and there it languishes next to the three other drafts I wrote this week, and the hundred-and-something other ones I wrote that will never see the light of -er- cathrode ray tubing.

Yes, I know, hardly anyone has CRT monitors anymore. Shut up and let me have my literary devices, willya?

Anyway. At the risk of injecting yet another unpublished draft into my Folder of Oblivion, I am going to set forth a list, in hopes that my beloved list format will put me at ease about publishing the damn thing.

1. They have promised us 8 inches of snow, and so far all we've got are flurries.
2. I rode around with snow tires and a fender all ready like a badass boy scout, and I hardly even got flaked on.
3. I had a little talk with my hairdresser, and we agreed that growing my hair out is an awesome idea. Then he cut it so that the right bits will grow out in (it is hoped) a non-driving-me-crazy sort of way. It was a big step. I've had the same haircut for years.

4. See? I need a whole extra space between paragraphs after that.
5. Lemon ice cream. Lemon ice cream, I tell you!
6. I am 1.5 hats through my 3 hats of gift knitting that must be accomplished before I get to cast on for the Incredibly Cool Sweater Design I drew on an envelope.
7. I deleted my online profile and then when I went to resurrect it, thinking, what if Mr. Fabulous is looking for me there? the site first wouldn't let me log in, telling me I must've typed in the wrong username (I know my own name, you bastards), and then when I finally got in through a backdoor, it chided me for having disabled the account. "You will now not be able to disable your account again for a period of...one week." Whoop-de-fracking-doo.
8. I haven't written about boys in a while, I know. It might be because I haven't met anyone of interest, or anyone who seems interested in me. And there's been less strife in the former-boys department. I seem to be able to be around the ex-lovers without feeling sad or needing to drag them home by the hair.
9. In point of fact, I had dinner with summerboy this evening and had a pretty darn good time, laughing and joking around. I was only slightly annoyed at him for still looking cute. Don't boys know they should immediately go to pot after you cease to be involved with them? Really, it would be just great if he'd get horribly ugly. How about some gooseturd-colored contact lenses? Try, really try, to gain a hundred pounds (he's skinny, so it would take a hundred). Take up smoking! That's an instant turn-off. No? Oh well, it was fun hanging with you anyway, cutie.
10. Squirrel!

* In cycling, drafting means following another cyclist very closely to take advantage of the reduction in wind drag.

They say in order to love the city you have to leave it, that returning makes you appreciate it all over again.

Bullshit.

All going away did was make me realize how difficult and annoying and stressful (ad infinitum) life here is.

I went to visit a friend, and now I feel how very much I miss him. I went to a place where things are prettier and air is fresher and there are green things and an ocean, and now I feel how little of any of that there is here.

And what there is here instead is: Noise. Lots and lots of noise.

I hadn't realized how much static-level stress all that noise produces in me on a daily basis. That and the overall nastiness of people. I don't know, I really don't, whether people are bastards here on a larger scale or whether that is the true nature of man, and people elsewhere bother to cover it up more often.

But I tell you, I do not like these people. I do not like them in a crowd, I do not like them being loud. I do not like them in cars, I do not like them in bars.

I lost my sunglasses. I played in the cold foam at the water's edge. I rode in rain and then in sun. I hung out and cooked and watched movies and laughed and got sad. I did not knit, or read, or eat too much of anything when I wasn't truly hungry.

I watched some sunsets. I played with birds. Big birds and little ones. I visited a cat and two more cats and worried some about my own cat, who was being watched by a friend but who I knew would be sad and scared and confused.

I had two bad airplane flights. I wanted to take a long bike tour. I thought about how people get into our spheres and make little houses for themselves there. All I can think about now is how come I don't sleep so well or ever feel that relaxed here?

When I got home I overtightened a bolt on my bike and broke it. I fixed it. I spiffed up the bike with new grips and a bell. I don't think very much will change, though.

Okay, okay, yes. I'm having difficulty posting. I've taken pictures for posting, I've written drafts and then been unaccountably dissatisfied with them. I've tried for holiday spirit, charming curmudgeonry, and several other tones. None of them work. It's all just a big jumble of flat-colored jellybeans here, and I don't know how to make an amusing anecdote out of it for you. A friend asked me today what I've been up to, and I had absolutely nothing to tell him, other than that I've been sick.

Sometimes I just don't feel like talking, or writing, or sometimes my head is just not a place I am able to discuss. And when one has little money one tends not to go out and do fancy things, so there isn't much to describe.

I've watched a bunch of movies on TV, including some enjoyable old ones that I hadn't seen before. I acquired a new crush on a TV actor, one which will make no sense to anyone but me, I expect. Which is fine. That way I can have him (imaginarily) to myself.

I received some cycling gear as gifts, and I'm glad to have it. I knitted some gifts from stash (plus one trip to the LYS because I had a dearth of "manly yarn"). Dad liked his Fair-Isle hat, which was nice, because I wasn't sure he would (not manly enough).

It's getting cold out, serious cold, the cold that separates the men from the boys and all that jazz, except that if last year is anything to go by, a lot of those selfsame men will be riding the subway to work, leaving me the little lone solitary cyclist slugging it out in the wind and snow.

That's fine with me. I like the quiet. I had company for the ride home tonight, and we went slow and easy, my preferred winter speed. I tend to ride at sunset this time of year, so I look west and see a lot of pink striped sky draped around the Statue of Liberty. Then I look east and there's the low sun blazing on the metalclad tops of the famous buildings: Empire, Chrysler.

Things are rough and beautiful these days, which seems fitting for winter.