sacramento weekend

I took the Capitol Corridor Amtrak from Great America to Sacramento on Saturday night. R was running a marathon from Folsom to Sacramento on Sunday; I was heading up to cheer for her. There was nothing to see out the windows, since it was dark, but I had an ale and a cup of instant noodles in the cafe car, read The Year of Magical Thinking, and chatted with S, and I was happy. S said my liquid intake was "salty and dehydrating," and told me to drink more water.

O was in plaid pink pajama pants at G's house when I got there. We traded back massages as we watched the end of Bewitched and the beginning of The Rock, then ate corn that G exhorted us to condiment with any of seven spice mix bottles he placed on the counter, then made a sign for R ("You're Ruthless!"), then collapsed, O in an airbed, and me on a frameless mattress set underneath a University of Nebraska Cornhuskers throw.

In the apartment also were a University of Nebraska Cornhuskers slipper set, flag, poster, calendar, beaded necklace, hat, t-shirt, and an extensive collection of Oakland A's bobbleheads. Later, I overhead this statement from the bobblehead collecter to the Cornhusker fan: "Man, you should've seen the fucken game. We were up by fucken two points until the last second, then they scored a fucken field goal, I couldn't fucken believe it."

G, O and I intended to ride our bikes along the American River, find C halfway, and then meet R for spiritual uplift at miles 10, 20, and 26.2, but the freezing weather put a snarl in our plans (it was 35 degrees at the starting line). We left the house at 7 a.m. and rode 17 miles through Sacramento and along the American River to meet C. G rode a 1980s era red Specialized Sirrus. Both members of the L family wore $1 gloves from Target. None of us dressed correctly; G was in shorts, O in thin trainers, I in jeans, and C, when we found him, was bleeding from his gloveless hands. C called a few minutes before we got to our meeting point to say he had been in a bike crash, his hands had been too numb to operate the brakes. We found blood on his hands, face, pants, and handlebars. I offered my fingerless bike gloves, Richard's purchase from Bike Nashbar in 1993, to C; for some reason, C and G each wore one of my gloves, and one of G's.

We rode on. It was much better between miles 18 and 30, because we had stopped for coffee and biscuits in a half gallon of gravy, and because we slowed the pace so that I could ride with O as she explained the debate in the anthropological academy about the human ability to run for long distances. Harvard says it is an adaptive trait (not the term she used) resulting from a need to go long distances to track game; Wisconsin argues that long distance running is an ancillary result of bipedality rather than an adaptation in itself; the two schools bicker like girls.

I took some photos while biking. G noted that the bikers on the American River path were insane. If you happened to veer across the dividing line, they would shout, "Get off the trail!" and "Learn how to bike first!"

We met R at the town of Fair Oaks, at the top of a hill around mile 10. She came five minutes after we arrived, and as she sprinted downhill she tried to take something off her hand to give to George, but could not get it off before momentum took her past us and down to mile 11. Later, after her post-marathon bloat had subsided, R pulled a ring off her hand and dropped it into mine. She had made it just for me. It was a wide silver band, dimpled with a ball peen hammer, with [BANANARCHISTA] carved out. R has been calling me [BANANARCHISTA] since 1996; in 2001 she made me a balaclava with the word stitched on the back. I wore the ring on my middle finger and said that R and I were middle finger-married. Since C proposed to me in neck-marriage, only a few of my body parts are left for life partnership. Form a line, ladies.

We wanted to meet R at mile 20, but we missed her, and then we rode along the marathon looking at people's backsides, trying to find her. Our bike posse reminded me of Critical Masses past, in Chicago with R, in New York with L. R finished twenty minutes faster than expected. We searched for her among the throngs of limping people and turned to our combined 50+ years of experience with R's hyperrationality to deduce the most likely place she would be: on the sunny side of the capitol building, probably in the grass, possibly trying to borrow somebody's cell phone to call C. We found her on the grass on the sunny side of the capitol building, borrowing somebody's cell phone to call C.

O, G and I rode back to G's to get the car and drive over to meet C and R at the pick up point. G doubled up on bikes, riding one and steering C's home alongside his own. The ride was fast, sunny, cold, and among California drivers, and at several points I thought G and his tagalong bike were going to spill, including once when a Pontiac was tailing six feet behind him.

We tried to find lunch at three different places in Sacramento, and they were all either closed or overcrowded. A committee chose In-N-Out Burger in Rancho Cordova. I split a chocloate milkshake with G, who said, "I wish I always had somebody to split a chocolate milkshake with!" He meant that the portion was too large for just one peson. It was sweet. R walked as if her legs had been battered by clubs. C finally recovered from the shock of his fall, and had two cheeseburgers.

On the train ride back to Great America, I showed O the menu from the cafe car and asked what she would get if she could get anything from the cafe car. Her order: "Chicken wings, chicken nuggets, a pot roast sandwich, and a Cup o' Noodles to dilute it all." The landscape from Davis to Fairfield looked like my imagination of 1980s Russia. From Fairfield to Richmond, the Capitol Corridor runs ten feet ashore from the dreamy, industrial part of the bay that O called the "Delta." We made plans to tube on the American River with floating coolers of beer, but I said I was scared of the rapids; O heard "rabbits." She read Fahrenheit 451; I finished my time with Joan.

Mom and Dad picked me up. We had family dinner at a salad buffet. Richard explained to Grandma why Second Uncle's teeth were so screwy; we all noted his excellent Mandarin vocabulary; Mom said afterward, in Chinese, "Enamel!" I snapped a photo of a 6" turd of soft serve left dangling from the machine by the last user. Upon arriving home, I shuffled around Palo Alto, walking Boo, whining to my sleepy S. C called to announce: "These are the teams I now hate: the Jazz, the 49ers, the Chargers, the Cubs, and Utah." She proclaimed that men who did not understand sports were unattractive. She predicted Cal's victory over Utah in the Pointsettia Bowl, and declared it "a fitting end." As she explained this all to me, I punched myself in the face over and over with the boxing kangaroo pen that I had bought in Sydney.