My date with Berta

Just past noon I saw her from across the parking lot and I just new. I wasn't shy and didn't waste any time, I jumped on her and rode her hard until the sun set behind the waves. She squeaked with joy...well, maybe it wasn't joy so much as her chain needed oiling...

Yes, my lovely bicycle is named Berta. And she is very aptly named. She's tough, powerful, fun, and she kicked my ass all over the place today. Early in the morning I watched the high tide and crazy waves destroy the seawall, then, as I was heading toward the showers to get ready for the day, I saw Berta there. All forlorn and lonely looking, and I just knew I had to take her for a ride. I mean, sure, while I was watching the waves destroy things I heard guys talking about how some bikers were knocked off their bikes when some giant waves made it all the way onto the bike path, but the tide had gone down about a foot or so by then, so I figured I'd risk it.

It was a beautiful morning to be sure, and Berta and I fell into a nice rythm. Until OH NO! The waves washed out some of the bike path at Manhattan Beach! Berta's stuck! Don't worry Berta! I'll come rescue you!


After about fourteen or fifteen miles we took a quick stop at Marina Del Rey to panhandle under the lighthouse.


At mile 17 Berta thought she'd like to stop in Venice and watch a choreographed roller-show that was going on. I must say, while Venice is interesting, it's not quite as romantic as I imagine the one in Italy is. I hope to take Berta there some day.


What's that in the distance? Roller coasters? Wanna go Berta! You bet!


We made it to the Santa Monica Pier! Now we can go on rides! WOO!


What do you mean Berta's not allowed to ride?!? She meets the minimum height requirement! Is this because she's black?


Wow! Mile 20! I wonder how much further this Marvin Braude Bike Path goes!


Oh, I guess not much. Looks like about we went about 22 miles and are now at Will Rogers Beach


Berta is sad, they don't like her kind here.


Enough of this crazy architecture! This path wasn't nearly long enough! Let's get on the Pacific Coast Highway and continue North!


Wow, what a view! Berta certainly loves it!


I'm here too! I love the view too! I think we're almost in Malibu!


Oh yeah, we're definitely in Malibu. I think it's about time to turn around. 30 miles is a good distance!


Mmmm, my reward for a 30 mile trek!


Stephen Colbert would have recommended these over the Blazin' Buffalo Ranch Doritos I chose instead, but too bad! Well, now it's time to head back home, hope we make it before the sun sets!


We made it! Berta loves a good sunset--almost as much as I do!


It's amazing to me how quickly my muscles remember things. I haven't been bicycling regularly in years. In fact, I can count back for you the last times I've cycled: last time was just yesterday when I did about 3 miles on that same trail. The time before was about a week ago with Kate when we went to Venice--about 34 miles, but let me tell you, it was hard as hell just keeping up with Kate. And I have a sneaking suspicion she was going slow for my benefit. Aside from those two bike rides, the only other bicycling I've done were those three spin classes I took before I left Hawaii several months ago. Then, the last time I biked was in 2005 when I was living in Houston and hadn't yet bought a car--I had to bike to work and back.

What amazes me is that even after that 34 mile ride with Kate, while it was tough and I was pooped by the end of it, my muscles didn't need much time to heal. By the next day I felt fine. And then just a week later I'm bicycling a more than 60 mile trip! Granted, I don't know that I've ever been in as much pain as I am right now. My entire lower torso feels like my bones have been replaced with rubber and my back and neck still hurt from that crick I woke up with this morning.

But you wouldn't have figured any of that by the way I felt when I started this adventure! Or even by the time I got the 30 miles to Malibu wherein I turned around! I was going almost exclusively up-hill, but I felt like I could go on forever! It was weird, though, when I stopped at that subway and tried to stand, both of my quads seized up into double charlie-horses and I fell crashing to the ground in agony. I was eventually able to walk on them, but it was the craziest pain I've ever felt.

But I'll bet anything that besides maybe a little soreness, I'll be fine in the morning and by the next day I'll be up for yet another ride! I'll probably have more neck pain tomorrow morning than leg pain.

The Memory Of Running

I finished a book. Called The Memory Of Running by Ron McLarty. It broke my heart...several times, in fact. Chapter 42 broke my heart the hardest. I've never had my heart broken by a book before. I've been moved, for good or bad, a few times before with books, but this was something else entirely. This was a wonderful book. I'd recommend it to anybody. But understand, many parts of it are very sad. I typically consider a book good or bad by the emotional response it gets out of me. Any book that gets a strong response from me--even if that response is a complete and utter hatred of that book--I consider a good book. If I laugh out loud or get so sad I want to kill myself, then the book was a success. The only books I consider bad are those that are blah. There's a lot of blah books out there. The Memory Of Running was not one of them.

I don't bottle up my emotions. But I don't exactly...what's the opposite of bottling your emotions?...well, whatever it is, I don't do that either. The thing is, I'm not 100% sure that I actually feel the emotions that I feel. I suppose it's more like...I don't know, I experience them, without any actual feeling. Maybe it's because I read a lot. The richest emotions I can remember having come from characters in books. So I feel these emotions...but they're on behalf of fictional characters. So I'm not really feeling them. It's almost like I'm observing them from others. I understand them, I recognize them, but I don't really feel them. There's a certain...detachment.

I love books. I love tv. And I love movies. But I think I love books more than the latter two. The problem is, I can't pick books. If you send me to a book store and tell me to get a book, I'm going to go to the sci-fi/fantasy section and pick something from there. Which makes sense, I do enjoy that genre. But I don't get the most out of that genre. I love novels I think more than any other type of book. I enjoy histories, biographies, and all the others, but I don't get INTO them like I do novels. I suppose it just has to have a narrative. I could get into a history better if it had a narrative to go along with it. Because I pick fantasy novels most of the time I can't pick books for myself. I enjoy the books I do pick (most of the time) but I don't usually get that much out of them. The Memory Of Running I didn't pick out. Someone gave it to me. The best books I've ever read were like that--books I found on an airplane, or on a bench somewhere. Or a book someone else just finished and handed to me. When I was a flight attendant I read more amazing books--because I'd find them on the plane all the time. And they were books I'd never pick out to read on my own. The True And Outstanding Adventures Of The Hunt Sisters. That's a book I found on a plane. I mean, just look at it--there's no way I'd walk by that in a bookstore and think "I HAVE TO READ THAT!" I mean seriously--it has a little girl in a pink princess dress on the cover! It made me cry. Well, not really, but inside I was crying. Great book. I had never read an epistolary novel before--certainly not a one-sided epistolary. It was lovely. And sad. But lovely. And I can guarantee you I'd never have walked into borders, seen it on the shelf and thought "I'm going to buy this and read it". Nope. But it was lying there, on a plane. Somebody forgot it, and I had just finished my other book, and wham!

When I was working as a flight attendant I got an idea. Do you remember The Yellow Bike Project? I don't know if it was very big or well known--in fact, it may have only existed in this small town. But I remember reading about it in the paper when I was very young. I remember it because I was an avid bicycler--back before I was old enough to drive a car. I used to bike everywhere, and I loved it so much I never thought I'd want a car. Anyway, The Yellow Bike Project was this guy--this philanthropist--who had a bunch of old bikes (or got a bunch of old bikes somehow) and he fixed them up, painted them all yellow, and then left them around town. I think they said on them something like "feel free to use me, but please leave me when you're done". The idea was, you could use this yellow bike, and because it was old and painted an ugly yellow color, you weren't likely to steal it. And you could just...go for a ride. And then when you were done, you leave it wherever, and someone else could take it. This old guy would drive around and check on the bikes, make sure they were in decent running condition. If something would break, he'd fix it. One time he said he had to bring one of the bikes back down from the top of a giant hill at the end of a road. He couldn't believe someone would ride it up that huge hill--and then not even have the satisfaction of going back down. Anyway, my reason for mentioning this is when I was a flight attendant I thought I'd like to start The Yellow Book Project. There were always so many books lying around in airports, on planes. We'd do our best to get the book to its rightful owner, but realistically, we rarely were able to. And since I got so much pleasure from reading these books, when I was done, I'd either give it to someone else to read or I'd intentionally leave it in a public place for some other lucky person to find and read. I thought, "what if I mobilize on this idea?" What indeed. I thought I could start up a website--wherein you could track the books, if you wanted to (kinda like Where's George). I thought I'd make simple printable yellow book-covers for the books I'd find, On the book I'd write that the book was donated to The Yellow Book Project, and please feel free to read this, then when you're done, please leave it in a public place. For added fun, you could look up the serial number on the yellow book jacket I'd made for it and you could see where the book had been. You could even add where you found the book, and where you left it once done (if so inclined). I figured I bet I could find a bunch of places that would donate old books to this cause. Friends of the Library has tons of classic books for just ten cents each. I could even make the jacket-covers available on the website--so you could print out your own, complete with serial and databasing and donate your own book by leaving it in a public place.

I never actually started that project. I really wish I had. But this is just one of dozens of ideas I've had over the years that I thought would be a good, fun thing to do--and never did. Well, I have a lot of free time right now...so why don't I do it now? Any thoughts?

Side note, it just occurred to me that Yellow Book is well known as a yellowpages type directory. So maybe The Yellow Book Project would be...well...misleading at best. Anybody have a better name in mind? The Neon Green Book Project?

As with all things, there must be a beginning.

So I've started a blog. I'm not really sure why, and I bet you aren't either. I don't follow anyone else's blogs, and there are so many out there at this point, I can't even imagine anyone will have the time (or interest) to follow mine. This might very well be like twitter--to me. I started a twitter account, not really knowing why, and I still haven't posted a single twitter update--yet, even so, I have five followers. How can someone even 'follow' a non-existent twitter? Well, I guess it's existent, just not...I dunno...used.

This blog isn't going to be like other blogs. Of course, considering I've never followed anyone else's blogs, I suppose I really don't have the data to back that statement up. I'm just assuming it's not going to be like other people's blogs. The things that pop into my brain don't always make sense--not even to me. But I've always felt like I should write them down, because otherwise they don't get filtered out and I keep rambling through the same old thoughts time and again. I'm hoping this blog will be like...like spring cleaning. It'll help me air out and get rid of all the old crap that keeps surfacing in the deep, dark recesses of my brain's basement. Recycle all that old stuff to make room for the new.

I also move around a lot. Well, maybe not a lot. But I would say more than the average person. And I like to go on 'adventures'. And I like to take pictures of said moves/adventures. So there's a decent chance that some of my blog posts will be normal--wherein I talk about whatever 'adventure' I was just on complete with accompanying photos. But those blogs will probably be few and far between. Believe it or not, I don't really do that much. A very large part of my life involves lying in my bed staring at the ceiling and doing nothing. Quite literally, nothing. No brain, no tv, no book, no nothing. One time I remember after looking at the clock and realizing I was staring at the ceiling for four hours straight that if my life were ever The Truman Show, it'd be one boring-ass show. I didn't hum, there was no music in the background, no sound at all. I wasn't doing anything, or even really thinking about anything. I just hit the off switch for four hours.

Admittedly, I haven't had such a long zone-out time for a while now. But I do have short ones every now and then. I'll be in a McDonald's parking lot and I'll open my door, swing my leg out of the car, and just stop. I don't get out. I don't get back in. Nothing happens in my brain. I'm just sitting there, half in my car, half about to get out and walk into McDonald's, and...nothing. Then, after a few minutes, I resume my course. Does anybody else do that?

What amuses me about facebook, twitter, and blogspot is that it's taken stalking to a whole new level. Don't you remember back in the day when you'd see a girl at school, and you'd follow her for a bit. Just until you've followed her long enough to find a way to get her name. Then you look up her address in the phone book. You find five people with her last name in the phone book, so you borrow your dad's Cutlass--you know, the one with the tinted back windows--and you drive to the first house with your Canon (with that telephoto lens you bought out of that magazine) and binoculars for a good old fashioned stake-out. After several hours you find it's the wrong house so you go to the next one on your list. You spend days just to get a couple snaps of them doing something menial and you know where they are for a limited amount of time. Now, things are much better. I can be a complete stalker from the comfort of my bed. All I do is surf to the facebook, and I can find out EXACTLY what she did that day, complete with pictures! That's not enough? I can check out her twitter and see what she's doing THIS INSTANT! Amazing! My hand is all orange from the Cheetos and I'm sitting in my lounge-around sweats and I get instant status updates and awesome around-the-house pictures! Totally speaks to the fat, lazy guy inside me.

By the way, that above story was embellished. Neither of my parents have ever owned a Cutlass. And I'm sure some comedian already came up with that idea for their stand-up routine. But I truly find it amazing. I think "hmmm, I wonder what Jennifer has been up to lately" and BOOM! I've got her facebook, twitter, and blog that tell me everything interesting (and many boring things) that have happened to her in the last two years.

I don't write right. I suppose since this is at the bottom of a page, you already know this. But I figured I'd let you know anyway. My thoughts don't appear in my head grammatically correct, and since I'm not being graded on this blog, I don't feel the need to 'fix' my thoughts into grammatical correctness. I end lots of sentences with prepositions. I start sentences with words like 'and' and 'so' which I know you're never supposed to do. And I really don't care if it bothers you. Well, I care, but not enough to change. I'm writing this pretty much exactly as it floats out of my mind. If you were my English teacher, I'd consider editing and fixing the grammar for you. But you're not.