September 22, 2014

• The Grind

  Sometimes you just have to ride to stay in condition to ride.  We have a couple of trails that lend themselves to conditioning; they're called Lower Workout and Upper Workout.  Neither is particularly fun but, as the names suggest, they do the trick.

  Neither Mike nor I felt much like riding Sunday so we decided to crank out a quick one close to home.  I don't know why but Sally has dumped me like a bad habit.  I haven't heard from her in weeks and she doesn't respond to my email.  I'm devastated.

  I like riding with Mike but he's not much in the conversation department where Sally excels.  Mike does have his good points though.  He pushes me to ride harder and faster, which I'm able to do since I'm not talking.  And, he's good at fixing things if something breaks or goes flat on the trail.  He can also pontificate for miles (while I'm breathing so hard I'm sucking up gravel from the road bed) on the advantages of a 26" wheel over a 29er or the value of the new long-cage derailleur he installed on my bike.  Yeah, like I said, I miss Sally.

  So, we rode up Lower Workout, and then we turned around and rode back down.  I ran over a stupid lizard who committed suicide by running under my back wheel.  If cats have nine lives, lizards have two.  This guy had already lost his tail to some other near-death event and perhaps found life untenable without it.  Thankfully, I didn't witness the drama, never even realized I'd been a party to it.  Mike, the aforementioned conversationalist, caught up with me and described the unfortunate lizard's missing appendage and his death throes.  Have I mentioned how much I miss Sally?

  

  The above photo was taken before the grading described below.  The green orange grove is gone now.

  At the base of Lower Workout grading has begun for a new housing tract, a fire station, and two schools, where orange groves once flourished.  I guess the developer didn't get that memo about the severe water shortage in these parts.  The firefighters may have to fling dirt on any blazes that erupt.  The whole project is within two inches of the San Andreas fault which experts predict will most assuredly slip and slide to the tune of a 7+ magnitude earthquake within the next 100 years.  There is a single, two-lane road that crosses two narrow bridges to access the development.  Only one of those antiquated bridges is slated for replacement.

  I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, barely managed to stay in school long enough to get a high-school diploma, but even I can see that this project is flawed.  Of course, I don't stand to make a bunch of money on developing said project, which may have removed the rose-colored glasses through which others are viewing it.

  People from Orange County will buy the spacious houses, because at $450,000 a pop, they are a bargain compared to the 1000' townhouse that money would buy in Laguna Beach.  They will move in with their 2.2 children, along with their pedigreed shitsu (sic), and then call animal control when they find a rattlesnake curled up under the patio grill.  They will watch in horror when that formerly adorable pack of coyotes carries Fluffy off for breakfast, traumatizing their 2.2 children.  So, they will replace Fluffy with a Rottweiler who will be carried off, in the dead of night (thankfully) by the mountain lion who has been living in the canyon just above their humble 3,500 square foot home for his entire life.  Again, Animal Control will be called and the offender will be tracked down and "relocated".

  On to other things:  I'm reading (actually listening to on my MP3 player) Most Dangerous Book by Kevin Birmingham.  It's about the life and times of James Joyce.  I've never read any of his writings and this doesn't encourage me to do so, especially Ulysses, though I may try The Dubliners.  I gather he was like many of today's comics, mired in the scatological and vulgar.  Lest I sound like a prude, let me say that I am a fan of Larry the Cable Guy, Louis C.K., & Jim Jeffries.  I don't mind trash but I'm not into that obscure, artsy stuff.

  To offset the obscure art of Joyce, I'm reading the collected short stories of William Faulkner.  He writes about low-life in the American South instead of Joyce's low-life in Ireland.  Like reading Shakespeare, at first it's a struggle.  But once you adapt to the language, it's almost like you've lived in that place in a previous life.  The human condition is recognizable in any setting or dialect.

  I'm also reading Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding.  It isn't easy reading, but like Dickens, it's so worth the effort.  It is laugh-out-loud funny and sometimes shockingly politically incorrect.  The more one reads great books, the more the appetite is whetted.

   

  • 8:57 pm
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