Recently in Bikes Category

I know, I know. It's been ages since I last posted, and I was just catching up on my blog reading, as well. And I noticed something that strikes me every year - lots of people's posts are about how much they want to stay inside all the time.

It always strikes me because I love to be outdoors at this time of year. To be fair, I have to be outdoors at all times of year, and in all weather - it's just how I'm built. I wither indoors.

But I love riding in the blustery cold, and I love the way the sky looks on days like today - layers of different greys, with black trees silhouetting themselves in front.

I love the way it looks like children's book paintings outside, and the way the downed leaves smell - especially the oak. I like the silence. I like the rustle and the snap and the lack of crickets.

I like wearing lots of wool, that slightly funky smell even, when it gets a little wet. I like wearing things I've made, the fact that my head was warm and comfortable tonight because I had on one of my earflap hats, which I'd designed myself and knitted out of some especially lofty wool last winter.

It's winter, gang, and I like it out there.

I like coming inside and seeing my cheeks all flushed. I ride along and feel myself smiling. I like being alone in the outdoors.

Strange words from a woman who lives in a large city.

Every time I sit down to write, I end up with something that is either too bright or too sad. The right note - which seems hard to get into blog form - is something like melancholy. The days, from one to next, can be very up and down, but there is also beauty here.

It's in the leaves that sail down, some twirling in mid-sail, others not. In the pumpkins and gourds and six kinds of squash and late, slightly soft apples all piled up at the outdoor markets.

In the cold, windy rides and the dark, quiet rides. In the layers of things I've knitted that all get worn, suddenly and frequently. In the way the cat curls up with one paw over her eye. It's a contemplative season.

Summer is all rush-rush; all about the body, heaving and stretching and pounding the pedals. It's all about sweat and flirting and tiny little skirts that leave little to the imagination.

November is different. It's not quite the onset of hard winter, where being underdressed means risking your life - or at least a few toes. But it's possible to find yourself wishing devoutly that you'd thrown on that extra layer in those first few miles before you've built up enough steam to keep yourself warm.

I'm feeling a little under-the-weather. Maybe because I just got a flu shot, maybe because a lot of people are sick, and so there's always something for my body to fight off. One poor friend of mine has already had pneumonia. I let myself sleep and sleep last night, though I'm not sure how much good it did me, since my dreams were bad and I woke up sweaty and angry.

I've been noticing little bits of things as I go about my daily business, filing them away like snowflakes for a dark sky. There was a large red ship running under the bridge while I was riding over it. One of those long, low industrial ones. A barge, really.

There are several streets that smell like donuts at night.

A cyclist's bag is a little like a Scotsman's kilt - you just never know. I met a fellow who carries hot sauce at all times. "In case of a hot sauce emergency?" I said. "No, I just think everything tastes better with hot sauce."

There was a woman twirling and twirling on the beach at Coney Island. She twirled and then got dizzy and had to sit down in the sand. It seemed to me to be a religious ritual.

I walked into a cafe, and there was a young man dancing to an old soul tune. I watched, delightedly, then went up and joined him. I was sad when an even better song came on a few minutes later, but he was gone and I had no one to dance with.

Yeah, I haven't been writing. I haven't been cleaning house. I haven't been playing with the kitten. I haven't been sending people things they're waiting for. I haven't followed up on six important things. I haven't followed up on six unimportant things.

I haven't been answering my phone.

I haven't been saying yes to anyone.

What I have been doing is riding my bike to lonely destinations and standing there, ill at ease, watching the sky change.

I've put hats on my head when it got cold, I've taken layers off when it got too warm. I've been to the grocery store (which was quite pleasant - the people who work there are often magically nice to me).

I bought ingredients for this soup I keep seeing (or smelling) in my head. It's the intersection of sweet and fiery. (Yes, I tweeted that already, but it bears repeating, because I think it's the ultimate personal ad for me. If I really had guts, in fact, I'd delete every word of my stupid Internet dating profile and replace it with that one phrase.)

Anyway. I will post a picture of the soup (maybe), and if it's good maybe I'll even tell you how to make it. Though if it's really good, it'll almost certainly be because I've made it half-consciously and it'll therefore be unrepeatable.

Anyway. Again.

I'm hurt and I'm angry and I want to build myself a marshmallow igloo to live in.

Instead, I gotta live here. I got invited to three parties yesterday, and I went to the one I'd been invited to first, and it was not as much fun as I'd hoped. I couldn't help but wonder if the other two were better. One of them, at least, might've held the possibility of getting fresh with a young boy (that was who invited me).

On the other hand, marshmallow, ya know?

I'm probably not ready to make myself vulnerable in any way, not even enough to have some well-deserved and really quite needed boy-type-fun.

"Jean-Luc, blow up the damned ship!" - this I hear from the other room. (Not actually a whole other room, but it's essential to small-apartment living to think of your various subspaces as rooms.)

Yeah, Jean-Luc, blow up the ship.

I went to the beach this weekend and discovered something. I like my own company. Sometimes I like it a lot better than the company of other people.

There was a good-looking guy on the beach who really wanted to talk to me, and I put up with it for a few minutes then devoutly wished he would leave. I asked him to leave. He didn't get it at first. Eventually he did, but by then it was getting too dark to stay.

Not that I mind dark beaches, but this one is isolated, and there's a certain line that I walk with regard to personal safety. To stay longer would have been over the line.

Anyway.

I rode home solitary and quite gleeful in the pitchdark. Boywich bought me a really fabulous light not long ago, and I hadn't tried it out yet, and it is wonderful. I felt safe and self-contained and happy.

Then I met up with some friends a few hours later and...again wished I were alone.

They were being irritating, making a big fuss over something that was no fuss at all. There was a brief errand that needed doing, and not one of them was willing to get off his ass and do it, so I did it. Maybe it's just that I like being in motion, but I don't quite understand that sort of lethargy. I have trouble getting out of bed (because it's warm), and I have trouble settling down to work (I'm avoiding it now), but I don't have any trouble riding a bicycle. If I could, I would gladly wake up, eat, and ride the rest of the day, every day of the week. I wish someone would offer me money to do just this.

On a day that includes a lot of miles, my legs may get sore, but I invariably feel better at the end of it than at the beginning, and I'm nearly always raring for more the next day. I've said it before and I'll say it again - born bicycle tourer.

I don't know what it means that I didn't enjoy anyone's company except mine yesterday. Maybe it means nothing. I had a perfectly good day, except for the parts where I was with other people. I wasn't cranky. I felt good and complete. I made all the lights I never make, and when I got to the beach my favorite birds were out in force - tiny scurrying sandpipers. I just wanted to watch them and play with them and talk to them.

More about fall.

This is, for me, the most evocative time of year. It sends me so easily into other times and places, some of them the ones where I felt I fit best, even if only for a moment or two.

I get on my bike and I ride without much idea of where I'm going - and it hardly matters, since where I'm really going is into my imagination, and the pedaling is just the means of getting there.

I think of leaves, and apples, and the smell of hay, and fires lit outdoors, and people singing. It sounds like something out of a movie, but it really was my life at times. I don't know why I've never been able to bring it back, but I haven't. And so I think about taking a long - a very long - bicycle tour, and living in a tent for a while, and seeing different land and skies every day.

It would be best to do that with a companion - preferably one who's a better bicycle mechanic than I am. But I also think I should take some classes, so that I don't have to wait forever to take this trip.

It occurred to me the other day that I do a lot of things by myself simply because I don't want to spend my whole life on the threshold. I think sometimes that's the reason people get married - because they feel they need permission. They feel they need a partner to buy a piece of land, and to put holes in the walls of a house. They need a partner to feel they can exist, that they have a right to make roots in the soil.

I don't know if I'm capable of roots. I've never quite felt I belonged anywhere, or to anyone. I was barely able to accept the responsibility of adopting a cat, and I sometimes worry about her. What do I do when I want to leave, on the bicycle, loaded down with food and shelter and nothing very much else?

I know that Boywich would look after her for me if I asked him to. He lives far away. It would be a big logistical nightmare.

I sometimes wish she were a dog. A dog could happily come with me. Wow, twice I tried to write "dog" and it came out "god." Twice. A god could happily come with me.

Interesting.

I rode a lot today, and it felt great. The weather is cold, and it finally cleared up enough that I don't have to wear raingear, or even bring it. My feet were cold, and I had to wear wool around my neck. I realize I love this time of year, and not just because it's nearly that brief fleeting time in fall when everything seems crystalline and ideal. We haven't even had that kind of weather yet, really. It's been cold and cloudy instead.

But I love winter riding, I really do. Sure, the layers make it a little fussy when I have to pee, and it takes longer to get out of the house.

But I like the slower pace of riding in cold weather. It's never about sprinting, when it's cold or snowy out.

It's just about getting there, and enjoying the ride. I feel calmer, and less hurried. I feel glad to be outdoors, and I check every face that goes by to see if it's anyone I know. It often is. There aren't that many people who ride year-round, even though the winters here aren't all that severe, usually.

I like the kind of miles that are just about moving along, getting where I'm going, and looking at what's going by. I think I'm a born bicycle tourer, though I've yet to try it. I like spending time with my bike, in the same way that I like the company of my teddy bear, and my cat - quiet companions who suit me.

And then, just when I was getting really lonely doing my solitary ride, I ran into some friends, and we rode together for a bit. And I felt...complete. Like there was nowhere else I'd rather be. It didn't last long; it got cold, and we all parted ways, and I went home and cooked second dinner and ate it. And now I'm thinking about whether to bake oatmeal cookies. I don't know. I have knitting to do. I'll make some tea and see where that leads.

I was telling a friend last night that I could make a list of a thousand things I like about fall. Maybe I'll just give you a few each day.

1) & 2) The smell of leaves as they've fallen to the ground, and the way they twirl on the way down.
3) The crunch of acorns under the tires.
4) Squirrels chomping on nuts with their little hands.

A boy from the Internet (whom I've never met and don't plan to) asked me what superpower I would choose, and I said, without hesitation, "flight."

A few weeks later, I was having a conversation with someone who knows me quite well, and when I told her about how I'd sprained my ankle, and it was taking forever to heal, she immediately gasped and said, "So you couldn't flee."

And I had to laugh, because she was so on the money.

When I wish for the power of flight, I usually mean the ability to fly, in the air, like the birds do. But lately I also yearn for the other kind. Escape.

When the going gets really tough for me, not just tough, but screwy - as in, people are acting weird and I can't deal - I have a powerful desire to flee.

Lately I've been thinking very seriously about leaving not just this apartment, or neighborhood, but the whole city, and in fact, this whole section of the U.S., and really, when it comes right down to it, why not leave the country, and if I'm honest about it, I am highly interested in the search for Earth-like exoplanets.

You think I'm kidding, right? All except Boywich. Boywich will know that I am not kidding. Boywich will be imagining the spacecraft I'm constructing in my head, along with the biohabitat I'm going to need to transport, and what can be built out of native materials on my own private planet, and so on.

Boywich says to me: "You know, sweetie, when you're as intelligent as you are, AND as sensitive as you are, it makes being around other people very difficult."

Yeah, tell me about it. Sometimes I feel like a radio telescope at a rock concert. Ouch.

I rode a lot of miles today, most of it in heavy traffic, and at one point I was a two-truck and two-bus sandwich, trying to maintain balance while hovering and waiting for the flatbed tractor trailer to make a left in front of me (pinned by the buses on the right and the other truck behind). I look at my life and just can't believe it sometimes.

So I wake up and think, I am gonna ride to the beach! Then I look outside and notice that it's cloudy and threatening rain.

I go and put on some good music and make some mediocre coffee. (Sorry, Stumptown; I know you mean well, but you just can't compete.)

By the time I'm back at the computer, cup in hand, it's pouring outside.

I am desperately trying to remind myself that I like riding in rain. But I know that at least some of that has to do with wearing a lot of Gore-Tex, and I also know that there's a burgeoning hole in the inner thigh of my Gore-tex pants.

And then I think about the impending winter. I like riding in winter. There's something bracing and adventurous about it, and I always forget that the streets get less crammed with wobbly and/or obnoxious cyclists, and that it's quiet when it snows, and that I get to imagine that I have the world to myself.

It's interesting, that phrase - world to myself. I use it a lot.

What's odd is that last night what I wanted more than anything was to not be alone in my apartment, in this city full of weirdos doing weird things weirdly right in front of my wheel.

I am always astonished to find myself getting lonely. I think I should be beyond that, immune. It's true that I enjoy my own company. It's true that I like to have space. It's true that I've lived alone so long it's impossible to imagine comfortably sharing a place with another human being. It's true that I don't think I ever want to be married, and I'm certain that I don't want children, and I don't like the fact that I'm currently friendly with my neighbors. I know that sounds weird.

I need a lot of space around me, and I often can't get enough, so how can I possibly ever feel lonely? That conundrum deserves another cup of super-sugared espresso.

In the process of obtaining it, I discover that I've forgotten about the oatmeal I put on the stove, which happens pretty much every time I make oatmeal. And which also reminds me of fall. I don't eat oatmeal in summer, so the fact that I felt like making it today suggests that my body can feel winter approaching. And I've been knitting a little bit, at night, too.

I don't know what to say about winter, except that the feeling of impending winter has a particular flavor to it - a kind of melancholy that is both enjoyable and like a faint bone pain. It feels like loneliness, in fact. Standing on a windy headland, loneliness is beautiful. Sitting in the apartment on a humid Saturday night, it feels like living inside a crinkled piece of tinfoil - loud and stale and too-shiny.

Every time I look out the window now, it's raining harder and harder.

I get up and think about eating that oatmeal. I like winter, I think. I just have to find my way back to it.

She put a gun in my face.
And cocked it?
Yeah.
You've come back from worse.
(Scene between these two)

Several friends, to me: Hey, why don't you stay off that ankle for a while longer?

I do everything the hard way. People who know me well know this about me, occasionally nudge me about it, and then back off. Because they know I am not going to listen.

When I was a kid we went on a lot of nature walks, and I remember the park rangers telling us we had a choice back up the mountain - the ranger way or the candy way.

The ranger way, obviously, was straight up the steep slope. The candy way was a gentler, probably safer, traverse. Either way you'd get to the same place. I'm not sure that rule holds as true in life. I think when you take the ranger way, you end up someplace different.

The ranger way has its drawbacks. It's lonely. It can be scary. The park has a spooky element to it around midnight. You don't want to stop.

But if you don't take these risks, you miss out on the low-hanging mist with its visible edges. You miss out on the loud crickets and the solo horn player and the figures appearing suddenly, vaguely threatening shadows, coming out of the trees and onto the road.

I could sit home. I could watch endless TV and eat too many snacks and pine for the right company. I could ice my ankle and stay off it and risk nothing.

No, I couldn't. I really couldn't.

Life for me is a soft tug-of-war between solitude and sociability. I've heard it said that if one is recharged by being around others, one is an extrovert, and if one is recharged by being alone, one is an introvert.

I guess I'm half and half.

I had the loveliest day yesterday, perhaps because it contained both good alone-time and good together-time. The first part of the day was a slow curve into wakefulness. I don't like to leap into consciousness. My friend's new baby always wakes up cranky, as if the process of moving from one state of being to the next is distressing, and I feel the same way.

It takes some hours. The cat gets fed while I'm still mostly asleep and can barely walk because my calves have tightened themselves into rubber bands overnight. Then there's the snoozing. Then there's the waking up from a tangled dream. Then there's stumbling around making coffee. Then puttering and chatting with Kitwich.

Then I hung about musing gently about where I'd ride.

Then a sudden burst of packing and pumping (air), and I was off, rolling gently toward Brighton Beach. It's not always magical at Brighton, but when it is, it really is.

There were the Russian elderly, with their intensely characteristic faces. There were the young people playing volleyball in their bright colors, so handsome they looked like Baywatch East.

Every direction I turned my camera there was a short story unfolding, most of them narrated in Russian. I loved the two ladies on the bench - one with cherry-icee hair and one with bright lavender.

I asked this couple for permission to take their picture and they wanted to see how it came out. "Look how cute you are!" I said, handing them the camera. They were snuggling on that bench like teenagers.

There were two guys walking together, pulling a lot of beach equipment behind them - chairs and umbrellas and surfboards - the white one was deeply sunburnt and his friend was too dark-skinned to show any sign of sun. Ebony and Ivory go to the Beach, I thought.

Later, riding home, the friend I'd arranged to meet called and invited me over for dinner. We went out for beer, to a new bar (I'd been there once before and liked it), and there was plenty of room for us to sit, and just enough people for it to feel like we were Out.

She got tipsy, and I had some of that good stout, and we talked about life and art and the difficulties of managing both of those together. There was a bike rack out front, and a bouncer keeping an eye, and it felt so welcoming. We thanked him when we left, and he gave us a brilliant smile.

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.