Back in the saddle

How easy to fall off creative writing, expressive writing, to settle for single sentence flashes, maybe 160-character text messages. I feel the gap in my life though, so blogging seems in order. My life still has not recovered from the end of my marriage, but I need it to, as soon as possible. I find some moments of happiness a few times every week, but the rest is dread and worry. H.P. Lovecraft passages keep slithering into my mind, about days in darkness, huge slimy stairs, gibbering demons, and cliffs to climb. There must be a way into my life that feels alright, but my vision has grown dim.

My children still shower me with good love, my family is kind to me, and most of my friends tolerate my pro-longed somberness, so I am grateful to them.

Juicy Green Friends

oh hell oh heck, my life, my love, now
trees still befriend me, daily, intensely juicy green.
nature advances grace without mercy for asphalt,
financial insecurity or beauty conceptions, in her own way
healing fear and trembling, the ultimate illness.
feel that happy tree cry, freed from conception of rain & sun

Robot Rescue Visions

Got dreams, unfadeable visions. Got dreams to hold onto. I've got power dreams, to live by. Big, bright, happy dreams with calypso melodies dancing across elaborate partially shaded jungle forest backgrounds, fun dreams twice the size of Texas delivering ten thousand twisters per rapid eye movement. Magnetic dreams that draw all good people towards them, even the worst good folks, fiery, unashamed, modular shareware dreams used to save dying robots in remote galaxies. Toots feels me, inspires me with 400-watts of sub-woofin' amplification.

Riding the 32nd Annual Tour of Napa Valley Sunday with Quintan & my pops this Sunday, 100-miles, 5000' of climbing, it's going to be killer. Starts & ends in Yountville, yum. Shana may meet me there after for some Bistro Jeanty or Ad Hoc. Now my mouth is watering.

Rode the Tour de Max out of Palo Alto last Sunday, also with Quintan & my pops, 75-miles, 7,000' of climbing. Quintan demonstrated extreme team sportmanship by letting me wear his only gloves because I had forgotten mine and am prone to numb hands. He rode gloveless, and both he and my pops took turns letting me draft them such that I felt super-stoked with the teaam feeling of the whole deal, brotherly love, agape, less pain by any other name. Truly surreal climb from the beach at Highway One up Tunitas Creek Road to Skyline. Tunitas Creek Road is a redwood butterfly paradise road frought with potholes that seems like it won't ever end. I had conversations with three cyclists and two butterlies on the way up the steeper section of the creek edge, which almost took my mind off the agony & visions of death. It's a tough 10-miles, but it does end, after which you get to descend the giant laughing devil head of a road know as King's Mountain Road. My dad had said "After King's Mountain Road it's all over but the cheering", his exact words, so I pushed it fierce down that lucipher asphalt, passed a shiny silver BMW that was stuck behind some other cyclists, passed everybody in a skeletal final exertion fit verging on convulsions. We then arrived at the bottom of Sand Hill, and it turned out that it was not actually all over but the cheering. We still had to ride from Woodside to Palo Alto. Many hot, tortured miles ensued, and my face wore that deeply repulsive mask of mega-pain, mainly lower back, right on into the finish line. They had no massage tent at the end, so my poor pops had to hit my back himself, which helped much, thanks Pops. I had forgotten the pain and was feeling like King Dick within about an hour.

I then promptly drove to San Jose to visit my good old friend Jennifer. Our college highlights include seeing AC/DC (what a show) and Neil Young (1991) at the Cow Palace, and I once got a speeding ticket driving her light blue Colt 100-miles an hour coming into Eureka. Her mom had laid out an amazing assortment of snacks, including two kinds of chips with two kinds of dip (carefully covered with Seran wrap), Reese's peanut butter cups, Cheetos, pretzels, and four kinds of cookies, too much. I also availed myself of a 20-oz grape soda and a slightly effervescent mango smoothee. What a sweet mom Jennifer has, although she did not come downstairs to say hi, and what a relaxing pad, complete with a sunken living room covered in orange shag carpet and knick-knacks from the 1970s, including those cool little metal sea gulls on pieces of drift wood that I always liked so much as a kid. We had a great visit, real nice in the San Jose afternoon heat, letting those post-ride endorphins do their shadow thang.

Tour de Max 2008

Whelp, I avoide the sag wagon and rode the whole 75-miles and 7000+ feet of climbing. Very beautiful ride with friendly people, right past my old Stanford stomping grounds, all the way to my sacred Pacific & back, glorious, but painful for me, undertrained as I found myself.

By the time I finally made it home the pain had worn off just a bit though, and the super-stoked to have finished endorphins were swimming happily down my worn out rivers of blood. I acturally felt and appeared (to my wife) taller. What a wicked ride. Someday I hope to be in good enough shape that that course doesn't hurts so bad, and I can power through it less than the 7.5 hours it took me.

Don't know if I could have pulled it off without my team too. Quintan & my dad took turns letting me draft them and just hanging near my slow ass in general, very encouraging. Also, I had forgotten to bring gloves, and Quintan was nice enough to let me use his while he rode barehanded - killer team member to have.

This Sunday is the 32nd Annual Tour of Napa Valley, 100-miles, 4,300' of climbing, should be easier. Starts & ends in Yountville, yum.

Live Fast, Die Young

"Live Fast, Die Young" from Bull Rider, by Johnny Cash

That looker of a wife of mine said to me, as we merged onto 24E off of 13S, "Whoa! Feels like riding in a go-kart!" A heartfelt and hearty thanks to the engineers at Ford and Volvo, as well as all the motorcycle riders I ever saw pop wheelies on the freeway. Racing along the trees at break-neck speed becomes a state of mind, alert & engaged.

Friday night: Rebecca's Soul Train "Takin' It To The Streets" themed party. Paint yourself a mental picture of at least 40 Mission hipsters dressed to the nines in bona fide disco wear, starting from 24th Street and Bartlett, shaking their asses off in the front of the library, on the BART, at Embarcadero BART station, in the middle of Market Street, turning the Historic F-line into a party extraordinaire. The F-Line operator even let us take over the PA system for Soul Train pep talks. People joined and left us all along the way. Rebecca organized us into the two Soul Train rows with that charismatic dance instructor voice, better than most could have, what with the wild whiskey pounding dancers. We hit the Castro sometime after midnight, which seemed a good time for Looker & me to hail a cab. After the cabbie heard about our evening, he turned us onto the side of himself that raps, the MC Mars side. He freestyled for 5+ minutes, rapping all about our soul training - hands down dope shit, reminded me of the teenage rappers on the J-Church that used to pound the windows for bass while tapping the grab bars with a pencil and flowing big fresh. We bought his book of short stories, Don't Take Me The Long Way . So surreal, so so so surreal, and chock full of levity.

Saturday: Went to see Bret in the UCSF chemo ward. The doctors diagnosed him with rhabdomyosarcoma (bad) a couple months ago, leading to chemo-therapy Round 2 of 4 last weekend. It felt great to be able to suit up and show up for Bret. That ward leans towards depressing the smile smack off even the most jocular human. The view from the eleventh floor went on forever and a day, striking beauty. Heavy stuff this cancer, but a profound blessing for me, a chance to feel true friendship, up along the rough wall of bonding pain & fear transcendence. Bret's boy turned four months old today, such a wise little being. Whoa Nelly that's a lot of love swarming over us. Makes me cry sometimes, but not too much. Maria told me long ago, "Crying is honest. Crying is good." Smart woman let some wisdom slip there, and mine, well, they might just flood Big River.

Drove the family up to Megan & Paul's cool 440-acre co-operative land trust community later in the afternoon. Megan & I had talked about a visit for the past ten years, so you might say we'd looked forward for a minute. The place, called Monan's Rill, rides Mount St. Helena about 1,100' up the southeast side. Exceeded expectations with a dramatic, gutteral, sub-sonic auditory hallucination. Trees, rattlesnakes in the middle of the trail, owls, flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers, and valleys, and rocks, big moss & lichen covered monoliths, the moon, the planets, the hip people, the shiznits by any other name. Gumbo played extra well, sharing all he had in a breathtaking display of emotional growth. A boy about a year his junior grabbed the hat off his head, and then demanded the tricycle on which he sat. I expected Gumbo's typical response would have consisted of throwing his new friend to the ground without hesitation, before deliverance of a well placed farewell kick prior to speeding off, but instead I overheard him cry "let's share!" Sweet, yo, very sweet.

Sunday: Rode from the San Francisco Ferry Building to the Larkspur Ferry and back. Took a detour and checked out the San Francisco National Cemetary, which I had never visited before. The oldest stones I saw marked folks' graves that died in the 1920s. No birth dates for most of those. Maybe they didn't know, didn't care. Our culture overrates quantitative analysis, tricknology promoting social inequality, trying to make a dollar out of shame. That's right, I said kill your television, a jillion pixels of high definition or not.

Watched the swimmers at Aquatic Park, promised myself once more that I'd try that sometime.

Laurent crapped out at the Larkspur Ferry, and I used the opportunity to chase that original 11-year old man coming of age ride or die quality of thought. Back then, in 1981, I just up and gave up on Saturday morning cartoons, preferring instead to start my morning by striding out into the brilliant Santa Rosa sunshine, picking up my yellow Ashtabula BMX style dual-tube framed killing machine half-way down the walk, having been left unlocked and ready for fast escape. I would ride to Kelly Beardall's house, and then we'd rip the world to bite-sized pieces in wolfish ways, travelling where our inner magnets led us, with the mandatory 7-11 pilgrimages. We sprinted when we felt like sprinting, jumped off every handicap ramp, layed down a 20' 180 degree slide at every stop, gave everyone the finger, lived on the bikes until dinner time, loved the bikes, took bruised and scraped up succor in the dried out creek bed with one vertical side. So I intentionally got lost, rode without direction, ignoring posted bike routes, choosing scary looking streets full of cars, stopping, sprinting, stopping, sprinting, observing the unfamilar, loving that pain in my legs. Got home and worked in the yard the rest of the day, then the standard Sunday night volunteer gig. The weekend still felt young and corruptible, so I did my best to lead her astray as she convulsed, and clung, to her long, last moments.