Riding On Bikes With Boys

Looks like the drenching rain of December is giving way to unseasonably warm weather, and I am enjoying as much of it as I can, riding my bike furiously up and down the hills.

On Wednesday, New Year’s day, I rode for the first time up Old La Honda, trailing what must have been a larger group from a major outfit around here. It was very tough, especially since I hadn’t the slightest idea of when it would end, which makes it never end. I wanted to ride on all the way to King’s Mountain Road, but made it only to La Honda. I couldn’t even manage the puny hill leading up from there.

Biking to Work

Taken advantage of the first day of sunshine to actually ride out to work. Uneventful ride, since there weren’t many cars around. The only bikers I saw were those that were finishing up their morning ride, so I had two Alto Velo zippies flashing by.

Biking is really a different way of getting there. I start the day full of energy and commitment.

Brand New Year

It’s still dark and cold, and the day has that New Year Smell about itself, that smug quality that all brand new things irradiate.

I want this to be a better year than the four that preceded it. I want this slavery to end; I want to be a part of the society I am living in; I do not want to be a misfit any more. Huddled together in the same room with people that busily chatter in their native tongue, unwilling to give up the only culture they appreciate for the one that gives them only money, not values. Put into the same pot as terrorists.

The Day After Christmas

Somehow yesterday was the toughest day of the year.

Nothing worked as usual, everybody was busy with their family, and I felt like the only person on this planet that quite didn’t get the point of it all.

Christmas has always been a challenge for me. It’s the worst time of the year for light intensity, and the weather tends to be bad, no matter what. And on top of that you disrupt my pleasurable routine and replace it with a state of suspension.

Biking on Foothill

It was rumoured to be a rainy day, with a thirty percent chance of a drizzle. In the morning, indeed, it was cloudy and wet; and once in a while you would see a sprinkle hit the pool, the tiny drops barely able to grow circles on the perfectly smooth surface of the water.

But then the clouds broke, like in summer. The front had passed and left us alone, and I was able to bike. Coincidentally, FedEx left a package from Performance Bike on the doorstep like a Moses delivered through the Nile. In the morning, I rode for an hour. Foothill up, foothill down. And then back home, trying to get Christmas organized. The afternoon brought some beautiful weather, and I thought a second ride would be appropriate.

Torrents

It’s been raining all day, in the first of a series of torrential flows that mark the beginning of the rainy season. Well, at least it’s in mid-December and not in November, like last year.

The rain feels so odd here. So out of place. Especially when it’s not drizzling, but pouring like it was today. We don’t see much of that, haven’t in the last seven eight months.

When it rains in California, the gutters explode. The water shoots from all sides, draining into rivers that gush over streets first, then highways, and then even freeways. The state, at least from San Francisco South, is not used to rain and takes each occurrence of a severe storm as an unplannable catastrophe.

Waking Up Early

4:30 AM. No alarm clock is bugging me, no need to wake up, the sun won’t be shining for another two hours or three.

And yet, something immaterial makes my soul levitate into consciousness. All of a sudden I function in wake-state, and the logical flow of my mind is restored where it was interrupted.

The transition is sudden, and sometimes it feels as if there had been one single moment when it happened, as if the soul were not, as it seems, a flowing entity, but one that makes leaps to reach from one end of the chasm to the other.

California Rain

It’s official now: the rainy season started. California will be enveloped in clouds for a considerable portion of the next four months, drowning us in three quarters of the annual rainfall.

And yet, although my biking will have to be cut back, it is not all bad. You should see the clouds lit afire by the setting sun, or the pink watercolors you’d see in the morning looking east. I sometimes try to catch those paintings with a camera, but they are as elusive as hummingbirds – of whom we see more now that they rely on the feeder to get through the winter.

Foothill Expressway

The day is gorgeous, albeit a little chilly. Another two hours or so, and I’ll be on my bike, riding to distant lands and trying to get back into shape.

Distant lands? No, my standard route is still unchanged. I leave the house, a few turns left or right, and I end up on Foothill Expressway, the Peninsula’s major biking thoroughfare.

Sometimes it feels as if everybody has to ride Foothill. In the summer, the packs of bikers are such that the main highway is cramped into one single car lane, while the buzzing of chains on gears can be heard from afar.