(The bike looks pretty tired in the mornings too. Yes, N., that is your Thomas Jefferson wig in the background.)Meet up is 6:15 at a cafe down the block. I bring my bike inside and ask for an espresso in a cappuccino cup, which I pour two fingers of half and half into and gulp down with a blackberry scone. Fuel for the next three hours and 42 miles of biking.
(Dawn roll-out on Cesar Chavez Blvd. Photos are someone else's from other rides.)
My companions today are six Googlers and one Oracle engineer, all male, ranging from the 23 year-old marketer who keeps a single flip flop strapped to his seat and brakes erratically in the pace line to the 60 year-old who teases me for pulling the pack at 20 mph. I don't actually go that fast. He's just being nice.
The craziest rider hauls a baby trailer behind his bike. Only it's not a baby in the trailer, it's a 50 pound goldendoodle named Muppet. Bryan has shared dogsitting duty, so if he bikes to work, Muppet must bike too. I ride behind Muppet for ten miles or so. He stands, looks seasick, and spends the rest of the ride curled in a ball.
(Muppet wants to hurl. Photo credit: dgolds)
Our shepherd is a broad-shouldered 6'4" Teuton perched on a featherweight Specialized Roubaix. He wears a traditional wool jersey with "craigslist" emblazoned all over it, and sweeps behind periodically to make sure his wooly creatures don't wander from the path.
Sometimes I keep my eyes on the jersey four feet in front of me, sometimes I fall two hundred yards behind the last rider, sometimes I drift into a conversation with another rider. Topics today include: the Boston seaport, a mutual friend (my Lawyering TA!), Target's collection of consumer data (the 23 year-old marketer says, "If they know your age and race, they know what color boxers you wear"), Texas topography, what a user experience design engineer does, and how to dress like a watermelon. The answer is pink top, green bottom, and seeds. Everybody is so nice.
The route is becoming more familiar on my fourth ride. Notable passages are (1) a quick, breathy climb up Cortland Street; (2) a terrifying, clenched descent down Cortland Street; (3) a man-sized pothole on a awful stretch of half-paved zombie-flesh asphalt in front of South San Francisco auto repair stores with the most stunning view of the green behemoth, Mt. San Bruno; (4) the road through San Francisco International Airport; (5) the bike path just past the airport, on the bay, with jumbo jets touching down just to the left:
(6) the dart through the Marriott parking lot; (7) a good for nothing bridge where I took a 0 mph tumble a month ago; (8) and too many other beautiful instant vistas to name.
Waking up at dawn is the hardest part. But then this is how you start the work day.
My telephone tells me which way I came and how fast I went, and then it draws this picture:
After the last stretch through the East Palo Alto salt marshes, I turn off on the Oregon Expressway overpass. The route passes right by my parents' house. I go home. Boo greets me ecstatically at the door, literally leaping with happiness. We collapse on the ground and I scratch him for ten minutes while Dad dresses for work in the other room. Dad says hello and leaves. I shower, and still naked I eat a ramen-sized bowl full of lotus root and mushroom stir fry, celery and carrot stir fry, beef and potatoes, and brown rice, get in bed and play half a round of solitaire Scrabble on my phone before pulling on the eye mask and shutting down immediately.
An hour later, I wake, check my email, pull on my sweaty plastic clothes, and take Boo out to play soccer. At the field I run into an older woman with a corgi. I say, "Can they meet?," and she says, "Oh sure!" and I squint and look into her face and say, "Mrs. Warren?" I do not recognize the aged face of my AP US History teacher but her Marblehead, MA accent remains as distinct as ever. We chat. She's forgotten me, and then when we part I forget to tell her that she was one of the best teachers I've had.
(You taught me all about this man, but now all I know of him is his hair.)
I stop by Grandma's house on the walk back and sit with her and rub her creaky knee while she eats tofu and vegetables and watches a Chinese language program about scabies. Somebody has given my 89 year-old grandmother a Kate Gosselin haircut, so I tease her and compliment her stylishness. I ask how she has been and she says she is the same. Nothing changes because nobody takes her out. I tell her I have to go to work.
Work by noon. Here is a fire, put it out. There is a fire, put it out. This fire we lit ourselves - put that one out too. Text S. romantic thoughts and safe travels. Relearn the parol evidence rule. Eat more: grilled chicken, spinach salad, brown rice, two bowls of cereal, apple, three slices of supreme pizza. Spend even more money on bike shit online: click, click, fifty dollars gone?! Type out claptrap in easy-to-digest, numbered list form. Rush out at 7:49pm to catch the 7:53 train, which comes at 8:03.
(Caltrain bike car, go multimodal transportation! I prefer the ground level seats, so I can hover over my bike when drunk SF Giants hooligans threaten to crush it.)The conductor is horn-crazy tonight. He lays it down like its a musical instrument so that we toot all the way back up the Peninsula to San Francisco. Infuriating, because the bike car is the engine car, and I am trying to talk to S., who can hear nothing. I say, "Sorry for the noise, I'll just text you what I want to say," and she says, "What??" We repeat this comedy three times over the bleating horns until I catch the tail end of her sentence - " . . . meaningless expressions anyway" - what does she mean?? - and then the spirit leaves me and I deflate. The conditions just never seem right for this. The noise, the fatigue, the travel. Maybe its better to talk when there is quiet and spirit and peace. I exit 22nd Street, bike two more miles through Potrero and the Inner Mission until I open the gate on Guerrero, pick up my bike, and walk it up the stairs.
N. and Z. are stretching on the carpet on the landing. N. is a parkour trainer and Z. is a dancer. Z. begins stories, "I was doing a back handspring when . . . " N. does elbow stands and Z. stretches against the banister.
I join them, alternating between uninspired toe touches and corpse pose. I insist they eat slices of my orange, and have to explain to Z. how Chinese people are pushy as a way of expressing love. We talk about dating versus being in a relationship. Z. laughs at me for saying I have accepted the "partnership model of social structuring" because I guess it is total nonsense no matter how you slice it - as language or as an idea. N. shows me the PVC parallettes he made to practice gymnastics skills. I do handstands against a wall, reinjuring my wrist. Z. explains the advantages of an all-glass dildo. (Mostly thermal conductivity, turns out.) We play with N.'s Hypercolor shirts, wrapping them around our faces and exhaling.Z. is showing me her OKCupid photos when S.K. rings the doorbell. He is just in from New York and is staying with me for just ten hours. I force him to look at OKCupid as a condition for giving him a glass of water, and then force him to talk to me about his life plans before finally releasing him to sleep at 3 a.m. EST. Then I shower again, finish the half-played game of Scrabble, and read one page of Red Badge of Courage before closing my eyes and shutting down instantly.
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