Oh my god, I just realized I have a problem. When is the last time I called someone? The last time I called Sadie, it had been so long that I had to look up her number. I guess Delphine and I are OK and comfortable, but more often than not, I'll call, let it ring 3 or 4 times and hang up quickly and let her call me back once she sees that I tried calling.

I got a call from Lisa yesterday. Lisa of the band, Lisa. Lisa who I haven't seen in two years, Lisa. Lisa who last time left a message, left her cell number, home number, and two email addresses, and I still didn't respond although I meant to Lisa.

Needless to say, her calling now was probably a big thing for her, although she mentioned she was back together with Denise, with whom I've had sporadic email contact in the past year, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I need to call back this time. But I reach for the phone, and it's, "Maybe it'll be better if I call tonight", "I'll call tomorrow", "Maybe I should call for New Years", "Maybe I'll wait a week, lull her into thinking I'm not gonna call back, which is what she was half expecting anyway, and then surprise her, but in delaying, also suggesting that there was something behind the delay". OK, I have a problem.

I finally got my 2004 Audrey Hepburn calendar. I don't know why I waited so long, usually they sell out by this late in the season, although I'm sure I could find one online. Got it half price, though.

Delphine, noting the Audrey Hepburn calendar in my kitchen, said, "I guess you really like Audrey Hepburn". I shouldn't have pointed out that that one was a 2000 calendar.

The "Stuff"
- Car is gone
- Yamaha drums, one of my Takamines, and my Riverhead "Squid" bass are in New Jersey
- S*die has my electric drums
- Meghan gots my Washburn AB-20 acoustic-electric bass
- I just "lent" my mint-condition Ibanez Artstar 120 semi-hollowbody to D*lphine.

All I have left in the guitar department is my cheap Peavey Strat-copy, my other Takamine, my Spector bass, and my mini Taylor, which I've named "Motel Kamzoil" (sorry, inside joke for theater geeks (think Fiddler on the Roof, trust me, it's funny)).

And now? I've got a spankin' brand new this.

We haven't got the man (mazel tov, mazel tov)
We had when we began (mazel tov, mazel tov)
But since your grandma came, she'll marry what's-his-name -
The tailor Motel Kamzoil

A couple months ago, I was thinking how The Beatles' "The End" may be my fave lyric of all time:

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love
You make

Just the simplicity of this final lyric of their career, I just wish they had credited it to all of them.

But, geez, without even standing a test of time, I think this comes pretty close:

In my dreams, I see myself hitting a baseball
In a green field somewhere near a freeway
I'm all tan and smiling and running from third base
- "My Slumbering Heart" - Lewis/Sennett (Rilo Kiley)

It just evokes such a beautiful childhood scene of the unadulterated freedom and joy. I fill the image in with the surrounding urban LA area landscape, the Summer sun in the hazy western sky, and the crowd of kids cheering for her as she runs home. Not one to be overly sentimental, she contrasts it with other lines in the song, like "It's become just like a chemical stress, tracing the lines in my face for something more beautiful than is there."

So I have to retract what I wrote before about SF Zen Center, in particular about the chanting in Japanese when very few people attending now, if any, are native Japanese speakers. It occured to me at the last Dharma Talk that the opening and closing chanting, or liturgy some call it, parts of which are in Japanese, is not just ritual tradition or granola exotification, but for the entire spiritual lineage of the school. It's a practical point of belief that they're all there. I'm glad I caught myself. My bad. I'll memorize it for next time, although I have been enjoying just listening, because when you have all these voices in unison, chanting at their lowest fundamental root tone, you can totally hear overtones an octave or more lower.

Typical me:

Q: So why didn't you shop for a bike and trainer before you gave up your car?
Me: (light bulb turns on) . . . oh yea.

I think I'll bleach my hair blonde again.

The clouds are gone.

The rain is gone.

There is no reason why I shouldn't have a new bike by the end of the day. Price range $300-$400. $500 is still reasonable, but I hate that $500 price range because I don't think of it as it as being better quality than the $300-$400 range. I think of the $500 price range as the high end of $300-$400 price range quality, and you're just paying extra for stupid shit, and you're too cheap-ass to bump up to the $600-$700 price range.

Those are my words of wisdom teeth for today.

Bleah, today can't decide if it wants to rain or dry out. I'm on a quest to buy a replacement workhorse mountain bike, and I've been eyeballing a sweet Cannondale for $699, and it finally occured to me why I've been balking. I can't afford $699 for a new bike!! Also, "workhorse" to me means sturdy and low maintenance. I ride somewhere, lock it up, put down my thang, and when I'm done I ride home. With this Cannondale, I'd have to worry about locking it up, where I lock it up, how long I lock it up, and still worry that it or its components won't be there when I return. So now I'm perusing Craig's List for used bikes, and also want to return to the bike shops with a $300-$400 range.

But every time the roads dry up, it starts raining again. Another day to think about what I want and what I want to use the bike for. At least I might get a trainer for my Peugeot off of Craig's List tonight.

The idea is supposed to be that I'm supposed to feel a lot lighter now, now that I don't have a car that I didn't even pay for, that I didn't even work for, that I didn't really earn or deserve in any appreciable way. Hmm, if I put it that way, I guess I do feel lighter. I was gonna say I haven't noticed feeling any different since I don't use it regularly, but I anticipate that I will feel lighter as time goes by, weighing in the convenience it brought against the material possessions thing and the pollution thing.

I guess my apartment feels lighter now that my drumset is gone. My bedroom is a little emptier, at least. And I'm two basses and one guitar down, too. That helps. I'm a few items of clothes heavier, as I couldn't resist the fact that New Jersey has no sales tax on clothes. I got a pair of 501 Levis jeans! I'm so early-90's!! You know you're old when you get a pair of button-fly 501s and they fit well, and you think that's a good thing.

"Lord, strike that poor boy down!"
Went to a Korean restaurant last night and I had a bottle of soju. Shit is stealth wine, I swear. When you drink it, it doesn't taste, smell, or feel like anything. But after I got home, not even side A of Van Halen's Fair Warning could keep me upright. That's some good shit.

It's strange how I don't even like David Lee Roth, but after he was fired, Van Halen just wasn't worth listening to anymore. They were pretty bad ass in the early days. Eddie, deservedly, gets all the attention, but listening to this old LP, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen were an incredibly tight rhythm section. I'm sure Eddie is not an easy guitarist to play under, but man did they hold it together. And with that now-classic LA studio sound.

My father is obsessed with atomic clocks. Clocks in general, actually, but atomic clocks in particular. He even got me and my brothers atomic clocks and atomic watches! The way they work is that there is a main atomic clock out in Colorado somewhere that sends out a radio signal transmitting the precise time, and all of these clocks (and watches) receive that signal and perfectly synch themselves with that signal.

It was a little creepy when my father called out that we were going to lunch at 12:30. I looked at my (atomic) watch, looked at the (atomic) clock on the wall, and across the room at the (atomic) clock in the kitchen, and they were all precisely synchronized to the exact time, seconds clicking off in perfect unison. It was creepy, like automatons, no life. My other watches, set four minutes fast, have no place in this world of meticulous, overbearing calibration.

I had set my watch (non-atomic) when I left San Francisco. But traveling across the country, time zone by time zone I had to knock off an hour, and each time, the zero second was a guess, imprecise at best. So it was a bit of a surprise when I got to my parents' house and compared my watch to the atomic time and found it a mere five seconds off. Of course, that was just lucky. A little bit off one way from one time zone, compensated the other way crossing another time zone; still, five seconds is pretty darned close. Five seconds?!! That won't do! Time to melt down that watch, strip it for it's springs and sprockets!

I don't know what it is about my father and clocks. Right now where I'm sitting at the kitchen table, three different clocks are within earshot, three others are in visual range, not counting VCRs, and I know there is one other one out of sight just around the corner.

It's not a mortality thing. Sure they're getting on in age, and sure they are shameless capitalist/materialists, buying shit like they have no concept of "you can't take it with you", but they talk rationally and sensibly about their own deaths. They aren't in denial about their age and their place in the life cycle.

I wonder if the fellow who discovered or conceived of the light-year realized the irony in measuring that length of distance using a term relating to time. If the theory is true that time stops at the speed of light, a particle of light travels a year, covering the distance of a light-year, but is the same "age" at the end as it was at the beginning.

New Jersey is cold and I'm enjoying it, not having to live in it. I complain about how cold San Francisco is, but that's because there's a possibility of being cold at any time during the year. As I recall, I often under-dressed when I lived here and in Ohio. Frigid cold weather was a test for me to see how much I could stand, wearing as little as possible, and although I never liked cold (ie, I preferred turning up the heat over putting on more clothes), I never complained about it. And reliably hot and humid summers was the trade-off for this. My winter dress was a hoodie sweatshirt and a denim jacket. When it got really cold, I wore a long coat over the hoodie sweatshirt, which wasn't much warmer than the denim jacket, but provided more coverage. When I was in grade school, I used to go to school without a jacket and I didn't understand it back then, but apparently there was concern among the teachers whether I was being abused, with my parents not providing sufficient winter clothing. They totally did, it was just my choice. Otherwise I was a pretty normal kid. Did I just write that?

Last night my brother and I braved the cold and went to New York to catch the musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie" on Broadway. I already have the CD and now I understand what's going on song to song, and I thorougly enjoyed it. Just from the CD, I wasn't sure what the take would be with the Asian characters and I was a little scared, but it was totally on the level dealing with any race/immigrant portrayal (*whew*). The only curious part is that the Chinese dialogue is in Cantonese, but the Chinese singing parts are in Mandarin. But having any Chinese dialogue suggests that the discrepancy wasn't a matter of ignorance, so I'm thinking it was a decision that Mandarin sounded better or fit better for those melodies. Or maybe the songs were initially written in Mandarin and then they realized that those characters in that context would only have been speaking Cantonese, but it was too late to change the songs.

I don't mean to be PC-policing, but with decades of negative portrayals of Asians in the entertainment industry, I think it's only fair to applaud a single instance of a positive (ie, human) image of not only Asians, but Asian immigrants. And not only Asian immigrants, but Asian immigrant men! One of them steals the white girl away from the white male CEO! I was stunned, unrealistic as that may have been. Really. Even more unrealistic was that the white guy just civily stormed off with a hurumph, not engaging in violence or a string of racial epithets to salve his wounded pride.

Having said all that, the female lead, Sutton Foster, who originated the role, was adorable! I adored her. She carried the show and was incredibly dynamic and charismatic and funny. The show wasn't astoundingly fresh or original, at least three of the songs sounded vaguely the same and there were ideas that were reminiscent from other musicals, "Annie" is one that comes to mind, but for purely entertainment purposes, I loved it.

So driving across the country was simply brilliant, I must say. Highly recommended, given the right circumstances. What I enjoyed about cruising along, alone, behind a steering wheel for six or seven hours a day for seven days, I couldn't tell you. Maybe I shoulda been a truck driver. Maybe not.

I hated Texas. Texas just goes on and on and feels like it will never end. And I missed Austin. No, I didn't go there, loved it, leaved it, wherefore I missed it, but I was driving on a road towards Austin, and the next thing I know I check the map and I'm on a road awaaaay from Austin. I have never missed an entire city before, much less a state capital city. I blame Texas. I reluctantly backtracked through some pretty horrendous traffic just so I could get a gist of Austin, and once I was walking around, I remembered that this was where Stevie Ray Vaughn made his name, and all was forgiven.

Speaking of traffic, if you reach L.A. any time after around 3 p.m., welcome to traffic hell. How and why Los Angelinos put up with that, I may live a thousand years and never understand.

Speaking of LA, Louisiana this time, I was happy to drive into this Southern state which just elected a woman governor in a race that pitted her against a conservative Republican Indian American! It doesn't make it a progressive state per se, but it's a start. And boy howdy the severe weather I hit in Louisiana was exciting. Squalls that slowed traffic to 45 mph and tornado warnings, well, they crapped on what was supposed to be my "break day", but I'm easy. Wandering along Bourbon Street in the French Quarter was pretty much Fisherman's Wharf, New Orleans style. The rainy gloom probably made it bearable. The rain stopped just long enough for me to walk around and not get soaked.

Tucson made me giddy all over again. Driving in from the direction of Organ Pipe National Monument just had me romantically thinking of Tucson as the jewel of the Sonoran Desert. Of course having been there in April, and now in November, I completely missed the sweltering Summer heat. I went to Saguaro National Park East on my National Parks Pass, and I communed with the saguaro, singing 10,000 Maniacs' "The Painted Desert". How I'd like to be reborn as a saguaro in solemn meditation on the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, and the stars in the sky, "the stars were so many there, they seemed to overlap".

That morning before Tucson found me hiking in solitude in Organ Pipe National Monument. It abuts Mexico, so it's not on the way to anything. You have to go out of your way to go to Organ Pipe. I hiked an hour in a canyon and didn't see a soul and sang Peter Gabriel's "Washing the Water" to myself with abandon.

I met up with Kristin at Carlsbad Cavern. OK, I met Kristin at Carsbad Cavern. Either way. For someone whose name I wouldn't know for another 45 minutes, we hit it off pretty well. She was a wandering soul with a 45 day Greyhound Bus pass, trying to keep her channels open. She was 10 years younger than me, and 10 years ago, I was doing my best to keep my channels to the universe open, too. It's a good way to be. A good way to try to get back to, even if, in the end, you don't find the answer to the universe or true love or happiness.

The purpose of taking the far southern route was to stay warm as long as possible, but as a cold front pushed through even to Florida, I decided to head north through Alabama, finally succumbing to the allure of "Waffle House". I was disappointed by the meager selection for waffle options, but I made the best of it. I once had a gerbil named "Waffle".

Beelining up the East Coast was appropriate, as there is not much to stop for this side of the Mississippi. Very brief (and cold) stop in Montgomery for the Civil Rights Monument (they really didn't put much effort into that thing, the MLK monument at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco is much better), and then it was Georgia on my mind, South Carolina which might not have been there at all, and then North Carolina, which I wanted to give more credit for spawning Archers of Loaf and Superchunk. Virginia found me stuck in traffic in the Fredricksburg regional shopping district (I think all urban landscapes should be re-designated into regional shopping districts, it's the American way!), and finally at Meghan's, the end of the motels and the beginning of the end of the roadtrip. The end of my run with my cute Isuzu Rodeo. When I got it, it was cute, SUV's weren't being vilified yet, they hadn't become a yuppie symbol. It's still cute. It still runs great. It will hate me for giving it to my brother.

No back-dating. That was geeky.

Here's what the cross-country drive looked like en breve:

- Friday, November 21, San Francisco to Escondido, CA (Deer Park Monastery), 492 miles.

- Sunday, November 23, Escondido to Ajo, AZ (Organ Pipe National Monument), 341 miles.

- Monday, November 24, Ajo to El Paso, TX (Tucson and Saguaro National Park East), 535 miles.

- Tuesday, November 25, El Paso to Kerrville, TX (Kristin at Carlsbad Caverns), 569 miles.

- Wednesday, November 26, Kerrville to Lake Charles, LA (Austin), 488 miles.

- Thursday, November 27, Lake Charles to Slidell, LA (New Orleans), 252 miles (break day).

- Friday, November 28, Slidell to Gastonia, NC (Biloxi and the Gulf Coast drive), 660 miles.

- Saturday, November 29, Gastonia to Alexandria, VA (Meghan), 420 miles.

- Sunday, November 30, Alexandria to Philadelphia (brother), 149 miles.

- Monday, December 1, Philadelphia to Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 100 miles.

Man, I do not feel like I'm about to be driving for a week and then spending a week in New Jersey. Maybe that's a good thing, I'm not freaking out, just keepin' it real, holmes. I'm taking a bunch of stuff to store at my parents' house, but I'm hoping I'm not traveling in a packed car - that tends to be stressful if it looks like valuables in the car. No sleeping in the back of my car either, all motels. I'll keep the drums and guitars covered. And I'm leaving it open at the last minute to decide not to take stuff if it fills the car. Other stuff I'd like to take back includes: my blue Fuji road bike; a classic, ancient, hand-me-down K2 Pentax SLR camera (not as classic as the K1000, but a much better camera); a trumpet (??!!!); three beautiful CD shelves that my brother made for me in college and I wouldn't get rid of at any price . . . short of, like, $10k (any takers?); and a busted first generation 4-track tape recorder. Anything else?

And I'll be stopping at Deer Park for the weekend prior to taking the far southern route, so even though I'm envisioning this road trip with a "smile" (feeling light) anyway, hopefully I'll have an extra dose of good energy, rolling with any punches that may come my way.

As for the week in New Jersey in December, I'm not sure what I'm going to do to fill the time without my parents driving me crazy. I'm thinking: 1) I'll still have my car; 2) I'll have my Yamaha drums which haven't been played in earnest for almost two years; 3) I'll have my bike and my brother's old set of rollers (unlike trainers, you're really riding with rollers, ie, if you don't concentrate and balance, you crash); and 4) since I'm bringing my father one of my Takamines, I'll have a decent acoustic guitar (if he's serious about learning to play, he'll probably want me to get him a guitar tuner and put a set of light-gauge strings on. I'm so fucking considerate!). I think the week will go by reasonably quick.

I get on these astronomy kicks, and today I bought the latest issue of "Astronomy" magazine, found some interesting articles on the New York Times website, not worth linking to since the bastards change the articles into abstracts after a few days, and visited the Astronomy magazine website. On the website, I found an article about the Large Millimeter Array radio telescope that they're building in Chile. That's the same project that my old high school teacher, now radio astronomer, in Tucson left for Chile to work on when I was Tucson in April! He's not mentioned in the article, but his role sounded pretty important for the project. When he went in April, he was basically going to wander around the desert with a bunch of engineers and a map, and point at the ground at various places and say, "here", indicating where radar dishes should be located (that was his description of the job).

The Leonid meteor shower is due on Monday evening. Think I'll go out that night to catch them.

And I found out that bright smudge I saw in Gemini at 2:30 in the morning at the monastery when I was keeping watch on the fire was, in fact, Saturn.

After years of on and off solo practice, one thing I learned from the Deer Park experience was the importance of the Sangha, the practicing community. It makes sense to me now why the Sangha is considered one of the three jewels of Buddhism, along with the Dharma and the Buddha. So since then, I've been pushing myself to spend more time at the San Francisco Zen Center, and for now I've settled on going to the bi-weekly Dharma Talks. I'm thinking eventually I will also go once a week for the afternoon sitting.

I've been to the SF Zen Center before, but it always put me off and I never got involved with it. There was just something cold and affected about it. A lot of what I think is affected and puts me off is the failure to distinguish between what is essential Buddhist practice, and what are Japanese cultural accoutrements (SF Zen Center was founded by Japanese Zen "master" Shunryu Suzuki).

Bowing is basic practice, but the excessive bowing seems uniquely Japanese, i.e., affected in the U.S. I guess I can let the tatami mats slide, even though Buddhism didn't enter any geographic region with the understanding that tatami mats were essentially Buddhistic. Buddhism entered Japan and tatami mats were used in Japanese monasteries because tatami mats were what the Japanese used. They weren't imported from China or India, I don't think. But their use at SF Zen Center might be explained by Shunryu Suzuki, going by what he knew, ordered tatami mats for the various practice halls.

But the chanting parts in Japanese I still don't comprehend. Why chant in Japanese? To me that is purely affected, perhaps for the exotic feel/sound (?), nothing to do with essential practice. From my observation, there aren't many Japanese who attend SF Zen Center anymore. The majority is English speaking, and what Japanese-speaking contingent there may be, they are versed in English. When Shunryu Suzuki founded the center, it probably made sense for Japanese and English to be used. But for American Buddhism to evolve, it can't cling to cultural facets that have nothing to do with Buddhism. If Americans can't get beyond the "exotic" aspect of Buddhism, the Asian cultural aspects, it will never find Buddhism itself. Just go perform your fucking tea ceremony dressed in your kimono.

(Thich Nhat Hanh expressed this same sentiment, perhaps a bit more diplomatically).

Deer Park had to split everything between Vietnamese and English because there were so many monastics that were more comfortable with Vietnamese, some who were only comfortable with Vietnamese (and maybe French, but we're not in France). And I appreciated that the architectural design of the new Meditation Hall wasn't some chinky owiento design, but was influenced by barns in Vermont (the Deer Park Meditation Hall is using the same design used in the Vermont Maple Forest Monastery). To me, that says Buddhism here in America is American, not some exotic, foreign, imported thing.

My ghost like to travel, so far in the unknown
My ghost like to travel, so deep into your space
- Peter Gabriel, "Growing Up"

The new Peter Gabriel DVD is out, and I'm checking it out to see if it's worth getting for other people.

But boy howdy have I fallen out of the loop. Not only did I get back from the monastery and S*die asked a clueless me, "Are you going to Modest Mouse tonight?" (of course, I remember Joyce asking me months ago), but Death Cab for Cutie is going to be in town on Monday. I'm sure it's sold out so I'm not even gonna try. Not that those things are any where near priority anymore, but if I had known in time I would have probably tried to score tickets. Pinback in December, though.

According to the Tiny Mix Tapes tour page, no band is going to correspond to any of my stops on my road trip back east the last week of November. I'm returning my car to my parents, and I'm planning on taking a far southern route since there is already snow in the mountains. I'm tentatively thinking of spending a weekend at Deer Park, and then continuing through the week through Tucson (to call Mark or not to call Mark, that is the question), Carlsbad, Austin, New Orleans (maybe spend a day there, what is there to do in New Orleans on Thanksgiving?), straight through to Florida, turn left to Raleigh, maybe visit Meghan in the Tonal Ring, stay at my brother's in Philly, and then arrive in New Jersey on December 1st.

OK, so my plans are a little bit beyond the "tentative" stage.

There was one thing that got my attention in that last conversation the night before I left the monastery, when we were flinging ideas and thoughts back and forth, vibing and relating and riffing off each other. It was new to me, I hadn't thought of it that way, but thinking back to it, I think he was right. I now smile at the way he put it.

We were in an existential space, one that I feel perfectly comfortable in, but causes him to wig out. By normative standards, it is completely useless thinking and most folk don't even go there. We even admitted that it was useless and futile thinking, but we still did it because that's just our psychological make-up.

The gist of it was that in our thinking, we get to a point where existence breaks down and becomes meaningless and unreal. I'm comfortable with that because one of my basic premises is that material reality is just manifestation, an illusion, symbolic of something we can't touch that really is real. I guess that's to say I'm jaded. But for him, getting to that space in his head was frightening and he didn't like it (maybe my comfort with it was simplistic and naive). He got to this problem that he needed at his core to understand. He needed a theory that made reality and existence make sense, and that theory had to be beautiful.

We weren't debating, we were just riffing and the vibe was mutually respectful, so although when he said that, I furrowed my brow in curiosity, I didn't express my base reaction that beauty has nothing to do with any objective existential theory, just as "happiness" has never been a goal of mine in life. But having heard him say that, why not? Why shouldn't a solution be beautiful?! Why shouldn't a solution have to be beautiful? It's wonderful!

He's still striving for his solution, but I already have mine; I'm perfectly happy with my deconstruction of physical reality. Is it "beautiful"? The cynic and skeptic in me is demanding some answer that allows for "no", and maybe I'll find it eventually, but at this point I can't get away from looking at my theory (or my way of looking at the same theory), and seeing it as pretty goddam beautiful.

I never think I have the answer, I never necessarily think I'm right, but whatever I have at the moment, I allow and allow myself to be happy with. But however my thinking changes or whatever permutations there are in my "theory", I think a very reasonable question to always ask will be, "is this beautiful?" And yes, it will have to be beautiful.

Backdating entries for now (below):

Speaking of fire trucks, on the drive home today, I passed several convoys of fire trucks going home from the SoCal fires. I saw engines from as far away as Truckee and Reno, and the Bay Area was well represented with trucks from San Francisco, Alameda County, Union City, Mountainview, and Richmond among others. On the side of two of the trucks were memorials scrawled for Stephen Rucker, 10-29-03, who died fighting the San Diego fire. Brave men. I wanted to applaud them.

A monastery custom that visitors often first notice with a certain degree of perplexity, but get used to real fast, is that whenever a bell or a chime sounds, sometimes even a phone ringing, but not windchimes, everyone immediately stops what they're doing and goes still and silent. This part of the practice of mindfulness is to always be prepared to clear and calm one's mind.

I considered if there might be a similar substitute at home for this, and I jokingly thought that instead of the sound of a bell, I can use the sound of fire trucks going by. I've been home just hours, and I'm thinking seriously that fire trucks might work!

I'm a little blissed out right about now. Not about being home, though. I think the monastery thing worked. I think I'll buy stock.

I need to go cut my fingernails now. That's not a religious metaphor, I really need to go cut my fingernails now.

Um . . . so I heard from a bunch of yokels locals on a dusty Escondido mountain road that the Marlins won the World Series, but they weren't really sure. Is it true? Is it? Is it?

I could have left yesterday morning, no problem. I'm not getting anything more out of these extra days except more of this simple life. Which is fine, I'm not staying to "get anything more" out of being here. It's just a coda. I did my week stay, and these extra days are just to end the piece. It has continued to be cold, especially in the mornings when it dips into the 50s, but today the sun came out a bit. Today was my last day of working on the tents and we managed, during my stay, to move all three tents and all the major moving.

As if to ease me back into returning to material life, this afternoon two monks approached me about driving them into town to buy new sneakers for running! Apparently there was a "second pair half price" sale at the Sports Authority. Yes, it still makes me laugh thinking about it. Just this morning I saw a group of monks head out for a run, so maybe these two were inspired to join them. It was an interesting cap on my time here, walking into Sports Authority with a couple of skinheads in dresses*. For most part I've found Escondido folk very accepting of the monks, no stares or funny looks, and treated quite normally. Even the hour and a half they spent choosing sneakers and the mess of sneakers they created in the aisle didn't evoke any disbelief or exasperation. They ended up getting some pretty high-end sneakers, the kind I would have gotten for a serious running season, but they only paid about $60 each because of the sale. But why did they need sneakers like that? It's not like they're gonna be pushing 7 minute miles on city pavement. But that's just me being a snob and I kept my snob mouth shut. I did opine that they were really good sneakers and should last them several years at least.

That took a while, and it's not like I'm not patient or had anything better to do, but I wasn't thrilled when we passed Home Depot and they wanted to go in to find something. Of course I agreed right away, but I knew that we would be there a while. I was impressed both by how well the monk explained what he needed and was trying to do, and the complete lack of patronization by the Home Depot worker. One of the monks I was with didn't speak English, and the one who did the talking had a pretty good command of English, but with a very strong accent.

* I got that term from Brother Kh*i over dinner. It wasn't a silent dinner and one of the Vietnamese monks mispronounced "monks" sounding like "punks" (Vietnamese has some guttural sounds), and Brother Kh*i, whose race or ethnic background I couldn't figure out, but was from Oregon and spoke fluent English and Vietnamese, turned to me with a faux surprised look and said, "Punks? Did he just call us punks? We're just a bunch of skinheads in dresses."

That actually wasn't the cap on my experience here. That night, after sitting, someone arrived and was going to stay in the same room as me and another person who had been staying since June. This person had stayed at Deer Park earlier in the year and was considered a friend of the Sangha (after I leave I suppose I will also be considered a friend). He lived south of San Diego and grew up in a tight-knit, conservative, Catholic (I think, I didn't ask him to clarify) Chicano community. Unfortunately, his belief system has evolved out of the community, which is where the Deer Park community has come in to provide a sort of sanctuary where he can be himself and speak his mind without fear of alienating the people around him.

After sitting, we ended up in the Tea Room and we just hit it off. With the other guests I shared my week with, one who left on Thursday, we didn't really talk. We just shared our practice there, and from the outside it may have seemed quite cold. But with this guy, we just started riffing off each other's philosophies, beliefs and ideas, explaining our backgrounds and experiences, and we spoke right through the 9:30 temple bell and Noble Silence. It was really incredible, and I think that really capped off my experience at the monastery, bringing me back to myself to remind me to take in the monastic experience critically. It's all fine and dandy that it was a great experience and that I loved the lifestyle and fit in like a fish in water, but I feel I've always been very critical about my belief system and never took in something just because someone said it was so, and I shouldn't do that now, either. Of course, Buddhism, and I still resist the identifying label of "Buddhist", is a pretty heavy and heady religion with some very esoteric and abstract aspects, so obviously there's quite a lot that I do take on faith. But it's important to be critical about the little bit of understanding and clarity that I can scratch as a human being.

We very unnaturally had to cut off the conversation since we still had to wake up at the 5:00 bell.

I've been here for one full week. I was supposed to leave this morning, but I decided to take up the monks' invitation to stay until Sunday because of the fire interruption. Some monks are already suggesting I "extend" my stay even longer! I feel like I've experienced quite a range of events here outside of the normal daily/weekly monastic life. But maybe that's part of it - to deal with the unexpected.

On top of the fire and the arrival of the Plum Village monks, a new group of guests arrived this evening (guest stays always start on Fridays), so I'm even experiencing what it feels like for a fresh group of guests to arrive. Last week, it was me, and this happens year round. All of the guests who arrived today are here just for the weekend. A bunch are college students, who, my guess is, are experiencing mindful awareness for the first time. And, of course, they're not very good at it, everything seems strange and funny to them. I gathered it was a professor that suggested it to them and they thought it would be a neat idea, having no idea what to expect. Fair enough, everyone is welcome, everyone needs to start somewhere.

Otherwise today was pretty ordinary, except with having the new monks helping out. In the afternoon, I drove into town to get money, because when I leave on Sunday, I want to be able to just get on the road and go. It's mental. It turned out to be an unnecessary excursion because all the ATMs are drive-thru, so it would have been just that easy to get money when I left on Sunday.

Evening sitting was cancelled (see?!), and there was a "Halloween tea" held that I didn't go to. The new guest orientation was held in the Meditation Hall, so I read in the Tea Room until they were done, and then did my sitting.

So much for normalcy. Today, 19 monks and nuns arrived from the root monastery in Plum Village, France. They actually had flown in several days ago, but because of the firestorm, they weren't brought up to the monastery until today. They came because the entire community of Plum Village monastics, several hundred in all, will be coming here for a Winter Retreat from January to March 2004, and there is apparently a lot of work that needs to be done to prepare for it.

No morning sitting is scheduled for Thursdays. Instead there are Dharma Talks, and we went down to the nuns' hamlet for them. I don't know if that's the norm - Sunday Dharma Talks with everyone up at Solidity, and Thursday Dharma Talks with everyone down at Clarity. That would be equitable. We also had breakfast and lunch down there and the newcomers were introduced.

The Plum Village extended Sangha is very international in nature (although I don't know what the Vermont monastery, Maple Forest, is like), perhaps because Thich Nhat Hanh is Vietnamese, but had to set up the monasteries in exile. There's a heavy Vietnamese contingent, but they come from all over. I think the monastics from Plum Village primarily spoke French and/or Vietnamese, and some knew English, others not so fluent. Anyway, without even a competent grasp on the names of the Deer Park monks, here was a whole new group of monks whose names I wouldn't remember.

Also a change was that the weather took a sharp turn towards Winter, maybe because of the fires. Someone mentioned that smoke from wildfires sometimes affects climates by blocking sunlight and lowering temperatures, and that certainly was the case. It was colder than it usually gets in the Winter months. It was pretty dreary all day.

In the afternoon, a group of us, including some of the newcomers, hiked up the mountain. One of the newcomers, Brother L*i, originally from northern England, was very happy about the prospects of hiking up the mountains and doing some rock climbing, which was a hobby before he entered Plum Village. In general, I was a bit surprised at the range of recreational activities the monks are allowed - hiking in the mountains, I saw a mountain bike outside one of the monks' dormitories, some go running (even though it is what I consider light running, necessitated by them having to run in their robes), and, of course, musical instruments are allowed.

That evening, I was invited into the library in monks dormitory and they even had CDs, videotapes and DVDs. The CDs were mostly world/ethnic music, and the videos and DVDs were mostly documentaries. The books in the library covered a nice range of topics, with The Tao of Physics and Stephen Hawkings' A Brief History of Time catching my eye. Seems downright cushy to me. No one had a telescope, but I'm sure they would allow that. The philosophy here probably accepts exploration of the universe as supplemental to Buddhist studies. I could even make that argument using the Lotus Sutra.

Afterwards, I sat on my own in the Meditation Hall, as there was no scheduled sitting. The one thing I would have liked would have been more sitting, as sitting is the single most important part of Buddhist practice, Shakyamuni having attained enlightenment during sitting. Maybe with the monastic lifestyle it's not as crucial since it's easier to maintain the mindfulness practiced during sitting all through the day. That's still better than living in the material world, having a strict regimen of sitting twice a day, every day, but not being mindful otherwise.

And just like that, the monastery is back to normal; normal functioning, normal day. The winds must have blown the smoke away, but it looked like the fire was out, too. Woke up to a bright and clear morning, morning bell at 5:00, sitting at 5:30, breakfast at 7:30, work at 9:00, walking at 11:30, lunch at 12:30, with plenty of time in between those things to fill with sweet simplicity and calmness, drinking tea, reading, contemplating the garden and koi pond, and appreciating the joy in that.

For work, I still was on the same project, moving the contents of three storage tents out back to make way for another guest building for the Winter Retreat. It's physical work, kinda dirty work with dirt and bugs, and on big things we had to coordinate and work together, so it wasn't really conducive for mindfulness, especially if we disagreed on how we should move things, but the joy of being at the monastery had gotten to the point that I was really enjoying that work. And even if we disagreed on something, that gave us a chance to reflect on how we didn't want to be, and we quickly resolved the issue within ourselves and got back to our common goal and working together.

I've always dug the idea of monks and nuns shaving their heads and wearing the same robes. I think the idea is to remove the distraction of vanity and uniqueness in appearance. I can get into that. I also think the head shaving has purification or renunciation connotations in it. I brought enough clothes for a week, but with the idea that I could stretch it out to two weeks. The clothes I wore on the first work day got dirty and those became my work clothes. Otherwise, changes of clothing are on an at-need basis. Same with showering, but I think working on the tents justifies showering afterwards if needed. As for sleeping, I just zip off the sleeves of my pants, take off my socks and crawl into my sleeping bag. Emulating simple.

The afternoon was basically off, and I went up on a hill overlooking the Solidity compound with my shakuhachi as I've been doing quite a bit. I'm not any good at it, I don't know any of the many complicated techniques to get various tones out of it, but I enjoy it because it's sad and moody sounding. Later in the afternoon, we had another spontaneous creative noise-making session with hand drums, various flutes, and assorted "found object" percussion.

We had sitting in the evening, and I don't think it was a good session. I don't think it was a good session for other people, too, like it was a collective unconscious type of thing. I know that by the end I was in such excruciating pain that I was sweating and not concentrating on anything except getting through it. Behind me I heard three of the monks fidgeting, which I think is unusual, and someone else told me later that he also couldn't concentrate and just had his eyes wide open towards the end.

I was invited to extend my stay until Sunday because of the fire, and I'll consider it. My mindset has been to leave on Friday and make it back to San Francisco in time for Halloween Critical Mass and Lisa's party, so I was resistant and skeptical to the suggestion, but I'll consider it. It may be a happy medium between wanting to stay longer, but not for a full two weeks.

The family whose house we evacuated to was in Oceanside, maybe a little less than a half hour west of Escondido. We were four packed vehicles, and it was a fairly grand house indeed to put up the lot of us. We entered the property through a gate, and I never did find out what business the family was in, but the property itself was a fruit orchard of various kinds, including pumellos and sweet limon.

I guess you could say it was a bit exciting, the whole scenario being out of the ordinary for the monastics. It sure wasn't what I bargained for. But it was after 10:00 and we quickly staked our pieces of carpeted floor in various rooms, waited to brush our teeth, and then it was lights out.

The next morning we woke up and . . . no, how about this: The next morning our hosts woke up to a houseful of monks, variously drinking tea, eating breakfast, reading, walking, sitting, playing foosball, whatever, their house was full of monks. What do you do when you wake up to a house full of monks? It boggles the mind.

Some of those monks were killer foosball players, you'd never guess.

But as it went, several hours of hanging around went by without any idea what to do, and the decision was made to return to the monastery! Why did we even leave?! But as long as we were down the mountain, they asked me if I could drive them to run some errands, picking up orders of supplies in Escondido. I was glad to, anything to not caravan anymore, so my car was the first to head back to Escondido.

Escondido was a sight, maybe the burned out pick-up on the freeway on the way back was portent, but Escondido looked post-apocalyptic. Everywhere was just an eerie orange haze. Before today, the skies were clear and blue except for the plumes of smoke, billowing and dissipating into the sky. This was something else. And it didn't get any better at the monastery. Needless to say, normal functioning wasn't going to happen any time soon. Needless to say, we should have stopped for burritos while we were in town as we were considering. At least I was able to get a cup of coffee.

In the afternoon, a group of us drove up the mountain to assess the situation. This time there were no nuns chanting and we were able to get to a rocky overlook at 2000'. There were some nuns already there, hanging out, and no fire in sight, just haze in all directions. The folks I came up with kinda went off, and while I was sitting on the rock, the nuns started chanting. It was pretty mesmerizing. It was great. Intense. That was an intense 20 minutes that I sat there with my eyes closed, listening to the nuns chanting.

When we got back down, someone asked me how it looked. I joked that it looked great, the fires were all gone, and predicted that tomorrow would be clear as a bell. And it was.

In the evening, I sat on my own in the Meditation Hall.

(backdated, and supplemental)

Mondays at the monastery are considered "lazy days", where only the bells for meals are invited (rung). The monks are free to pursue whatever personal growth/cultivation thing they choose. Nothing was missed today because of the fire, except meals, which were more of a scrounging in the kitchen for leftovers affair.

I went for a walk in the afternoon, and when I got back just before six, I was told that we were definitely evacuating at 8:00, and that they had found someone who had a big enough house to take in all of us who were left or who had come back from evacuating the previous day.

For me, it was a big whatever. Not that I didn't believe we were evacuating after so much back and forth, whenever I heard we were evacuating, I took it seriously. But I just didn't see what the big deal was. The smoke didn't seem so threatening and I thought the worst was over. I think other people were more sensitive to the smoke than me and could feel it in their eyes and throats. But really, the sky was clear except for the one plume of smoke over the ridge. How bad can that be?

So we finally evacuated, but we were sticking together and I wasn't returning to San Francisco. I had been having irrational thoughts regarding the fire and the evacuation along the lines of someone was telling me that entering a monastery was not an option. Like I finally decided to see if it's something I can do, and I get there and there's a fire and I have to leave. Who wouldn't take that as a sign?!

(Backdated entry)

My second day at the monastery began with the end of Daylight Savings time, and I still failed to wake up at the morning bell, not an easy task, mind you, as it sounds for a good 30 minutes, albeit at 5:00 in the morning. We had the extra hour which I used up last night reading in the Tea Room, rather than getting an extra hour of sleep. I took an extra hour of sleep by waking up late, and was late for the first Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, which was videotaped in the root monastery in Plum Village, France, and sent here.

I hurriedly zipped on my pant sleeves, put on some socks, and stepped outside, and *whoa*, it was balmy, the air smelled like burning, and the world was bathed in an orange hue. Strange climate, this San Diego, I thought.

I found out after the Dharma Talk that this wasn't normal San Diego weather, but there was a wildfire raging over the mountain ridge that lined the eastern valley wall. Those clouds rising over the ridge were plumes of smoke. So much for serenity and simplicity.

At 9:00, a monk announced that the regular Sunday "Day of Mindfulness", which involves interested lay practitioners coming up from the Escondido community and spending the day, would be cancelled because of the fire, and that the monastery would be evacuated at 10:00. This was my first lesson that something stated at the monastery isn't exactly written in stone.

Come 11:00, there was no movement towards evacuating, and although ash was falling, the smoke didn't look too bad, and we began the second Dharma Talk video. After lunch, the real vacillating began. I suppose the monks were trying to reach consensus on whether to evacuate or not; some being fearful and really wanting to, others not feeling the danger and not wanting to abandon the monastery.

If it came to evacuating, there were numerous Vietnamese families in Escondido who would have been honored to have monks stay at their homes, but another objection to evacuation was splitting up the Sangha (a Buddhist practicing community).

If it came to evacuating, I personally didn't feel comfortable going to a lay practitioner's home. It was one thing for the monks to invite me to stay with them at the monastery, but it was a different thing to stay at a civilian's home that welcomed monks, and probably would have welcomed anyone practicing with the monks, but without that clearly stated, I didn't want to assume it or even inquire about it. Considerate bastard, ain't I?

So I was ready to leave if it came to evacuation, but until then, I stayed and waited in case the monks needed my car to transport them somewhere. Also because I only wanted to leave as a last resort. The afternoon went on and it looked like they were evacuating, and eventually about 2/3 of the Sangha did leave. I stayed and waited to see if they would call up my car for use.

The monks that didn't leave, I think were ones that adamantly didn't want to leave, and they curiously broke out a garden picnic. We had tea and munchies and a guitar and flutes also came out. Some Vietnamese lay practitioners were there, and some nuns showed up from the nun's hamlet (Clarity Hamlet, the monks hamlet is Solidity Hamlet), and we just let our hair down kicked back and relaxed.

At one point, I was walking outside the garden, which was close to the parking lot, and one of the monks, Brother Un*, came up to me and asked if we could take my car to go up the mountain to see how close the fire was. That sounded exciting, so I agreed. In addition, three wise-cracking nuns and the other week guest piled into my car and we drove up a dirt mountain road. After parking, we still had to hike a bit to the vantage point where we could see the fire, but halfway there, we ran into a group of nuns who were chanting, perhaps praying for the fire to stop, and we couldn't get past them because we didn't want to interrupt or disturb them. So we didn't see the fire, just a lot of smoke which wasn't too discernible in the fading twilight.

While we were up there, another group came up telling us that a sheriff had come by and the evacuation was now mandatory. We headed back down the mountain, but towards the bottom we ran into a fire marshall who said that we probably didn't have to leave yet, but wanted an estimate on how many of us were left, and also advised us to stick together and the best place to be was at Solidity Hamlet, which was higher up and had a clearer view of the ridge than Clarity. From the road at the gate of the monastery, we could also see the glow of the San Diego fire to the south, which wasn't threatening us, but now I understand that these fires were national news. We didn't get news media at the monastery, so we didn't know how big or how bad things were. We just heard there were four big wildfires raging, and one was looming over us.

But there was movement to evacuate already based on the sheriff, and directions were passed out for a meeting point in Escondido where the people who left already were. Maybe families who volunteered to take monks in would pick them up at that meeting point, I don't know how it works. It didn't look like my car was needed, so I thought I would drive with them to the meeting point, and when it was clear I wasn't needed, I would take off for San Francisco from there.

We drove the eighth of a mile to Clarity Hamlet and stopped to see how the nuns were getting along with evacuating, and after a half an hour hanging out there, eating instant noodles, it turned out the nuns weren't evacuating, and the remaining monks also decided not to evacuate and we headed back up to Solidity Hamlet.

They decided to set up a watch over the fire. Four of us took two hour shifts through the night to watch the eastern ridge. With the sun gone down, we could see the glow of the fire on the other side, and if flames reached the ridge, we would evacuate. I took the 2:00-4:00 shift.

It was fascinating watching the glow over the ridge which would shift from one point to another. It was a gorgeous, warm, Summer-like night, and the sky was clear aside from the smoke of the fire, and I passed time by stargazing with my binoculars. I think I saw Saturn in Gemini, but I will have to consult with a magazine to confirm if it was. I thought I saw what looked like rings, but at highest zoom, it's pretty impossible to hold my binos steady enough to be sure.

my ghost like to travel: backdated entry
It was supposed to be a seven and a half hour drive from San Francisco to Escondido, just north of San Diego, but since I left at 9 in the morning, I hit Los Angeles at 3 in the afternoon. Read: traffic jam galore. LA is ass. I shoulda known better. So instead of getting to the monastery at 4:30, I got there at 6. They said to arrive before 5:00, but if that was impossible, then certainly not past 8:00, but since I'm terminally responsible and punctual, I started getting antsy when I realized I wouldn't get there by five. And to make matters worse, Murphy's Law was in full effect! Every lane I was in or switched to was the slowest moving lane. Really, I exaggerate not. At first, I was, "I can't believe this", and then I was thinking, "ha ha, Buddha's having a little fun with me", and finally I just smiled and relaxed and I'd get there when I got there, and figured the monastics wouldn't think anything of it. And that turned out to be the case, so that was a lesson in letting stress levels go up, because even though I told myself to relax, everytime the traffic let up, I drove like a demon to make up time.

From the start it was a pretty loose affair. No guide or instruction on where to be or what to do, just some helpful folk who directed me to Solidity Hamlet (the monks' hamlet) and then someone suggesting I go to the dining hall for dinner, which I found after a bit of wandering. Do as the natives do. The monks each have scheduled nights where they don't eat dinner, but many choose not to eat on Friday nights, too, opting for . . . whatever a monk would opt to do instead of eating. Food is set out on a long table, and you just go down the table taking what you want to eat. I think I had it in my subconscious from my reading a long time ago to take a bowl and I would only eat what I could fit into the one bowl. I didn't think of this, but that's what I did and what I ended up doing for my entire stay there.

It was a brilliant, warm, Summer-like night and I ate outside on a chair facing twilight, over-looking the new Meditation Hall under construction, with some other people - some monks, some civilians. Very peaceful and serene, no forced conversation, just eat and watch the evening set on. The vegetarian food was stunningly good! Eventually one of the monks asked if I was so-and-so, and I said, yes, please call me so-and-so. I think it was then when a monk, Brother Du*g, and I talked, and he asked "Feels like home?", "I bet you smiled when you saw the sign, 'I have arrived'". I had. I wasn't sure if word had gone around that my initial email to the monastery inquired about joining the monastery. Looking back, it's possible, even though the monastics don't engage in idle gossip. Maybe more than one monk saw the email.

After dinner, I was shown a bed in a room in a guest dorm (six beds in the small room, four occupied for the weekend, only three for the rest of the week), and then an orientation was given about the monastery and the practice here.

today:
The wake up bell was at 5:00. It was surprisingly easy to get up. Sitting in the Meditation Hall began at 5:30 with a half hour of guided sitting for newbies, then a short walking meditation around the Hall, and then another 30 minutes of self-guided sitting. It had been years since I'd sat on a cushion (I have my own little unorthodox set up at home). I can't even get into a half-lotus position. A brother helped me into a position with my legs folded in front of me (which is the same position I used when I did use a cushion), and then pushed a knuckle into my lower back to straighten up my spine. The feel of his knuckle on my lower back lasted longer than the push and it took a few seconds for me to realize he had already gone back to his cushion.

Breakfast was at 7:30, eaten in mindful silence, after which we washed our own dishes. At 9:00, we had working meditation, or working in mindfulness. The other guests and I worked on a physical project moving three tent-fulls of crap to make room for another guest dormitory that will be built for the monastery's Winter Retreat. It was grungy work (and the Black Widow Brother N*o found as soon as I got there wasn't encouraging), but that changed through the week as I came to enjoy it.

At 11:30 was walking meditation, which doesn't sound too exciting, but . . . no but, it isn't exciting at all. Actually, yes but - but it contributed to the cumulative effect of the entire practice. You walk slowly and mindfully for this chunk of time, and if you did this in the city, it would feel like a complete waste of time. There is certainly always something better, with a purpose, you can be doing in material life. The pace of modern, material life is much faster, and the walking meditation was kind of like a punctuation of the slowness and simplicity of monastic life. Still, I think it is possible to learn something of value in walking meditation that is able to be applied in material life.

Lunch was at 12:30, also in mindful silence, then the rest of the afternoon was spent in rest or "personal practice" - the monks are entrusted to be responsible for their own cultivation. I had brought along my shakuhachi which I hadn't played in a long time and decided to get re-acquainted with it.

There were musical instruments around. This isn't an ascetic monastery. There was a guitar, another monk had some hand drums and others had Asian style wooden flutes (horizontal design, different from my vertical, bamboo shakuhachi). Through the week, we would have . . . I wouldn't call them jam sessions; more like spontaneous creative noise making. None of us were particularly expert at our instruments, but we made a joyous, uninhibited noise, often trading instruments.

At 5:00, there was a chanting ceremony in the courtyard garden for pretans, or "hungry ghosts", which in Buddhist belief are beings in one of the realms of hell who suffer horribly from insatiable hunger and thirst. My personal belief is that pretans are human in form, and are people like junkies, corporate CEOs, and the like.

Dinner at 6:30 followed by 45 minutes of sitting in the Meditation Hall at 8:00.

Most nights end with the temple bell ringing for 20-30 minutes starting at 9:30 to call for "Noble Silence" which lasts until after breakfast the next morning. Minimal talking during Noble Silence, heightened mindfulness in all things. Lights out is about 10:00-ish.

OMG, is riding season over?!! Unless I climb Mt. Diablo tomorrow, it just might be. Daylight Savings ends this weekend and that has traditionally signaled the end of my running season, now riding season, and heralded the start of my smoking season (mm, cloves). No ride on Saturday, even though it's supposed to be hot, because I'm leaving Friday morning to go to San Diego, Escondido to be exact, to . . . visit friends. Um. Visit "friends". Oh what the hell, I'm going to a monastery for a week to get a taste of the monastic thing. OK, you and you, stop laughing, and you close your mouth please, we are not a codfish! That should cover my readership.

It's something I've always wanted to try out, and I feel I need to do it now before I lose my car, and the reality of dwindling finances forces a dusting off of ye ol' resume. It's a branch Zen monastery of a famous Vietnamese Zen "master", whose name I won't try to cold spell. That will have to do. American Zen and American Buddhism drives me absolutely crazy. Ever peruse the hokey, new agey titles in the Zen section at your local Borders? *sticks finger down throat*. I don't know, it's a double standard. Pauline Christianity is criticized for depicting God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the whole cast of characters as being white, but then Western Buddhism is criticized for adopting Asian cultural affects and consider it a substantial part of the religious doctrine. But Western Buddhism is still young and looks like it will become sophisticated and develop its own character in due time. But it'll probably be the Germans who lead the charge. Wha...?

My major influence has been Japanese Zen, and I view Japanese Zen as being suspect as well. Maybe it isn't a coincidence that Japanese Zen has been the major influence on American Buddhism. But Japanese Zen, Korean Zen, Chinese Zen, Vietnamese Zen, ZEN . . . is just a tool. A practical tool. I think the hardcore stuff is Tibetan, the closest to what Shakyamuni Buddha touched and preached. Zen is nothing but a new age, feel good philosophy without thorough study of the sutras and doctrine, and it seems a lot of Americans, myself included way back when, get drawn to Zen and think that's it, when it's only just a tool. It's like learning to use a hammer and becoming an expert in hammering nails into boards, but never building anything to realization. I don't know. I'm writing this like I know, but I really don't know. But that's why I'm more optimistic about this place in Escondido, which has an international monastic order, over local Bay Area "Zen Centers" which I think of, without basis no doubt, as stereotypical liberal, white, bleeding heart NIMBY types.

Anyway, hopefully the week I spend there will open me up more. Like just about everything else I do, I'm self-trained, and that's not always a good thing. I really could have used guitar lessons. No doubt I'd learn a lot from group rides. Guidance is not a bad thing! Maybe I'll even be more open to the local places. Whatever.

I went for a ride up in Marin today. It was strange, I went almost 50 miles, but it sure didn't feel like it. Not the most challenging course, but 50 miles is still at the upper end of distances I've gone. I rode from the Golden Gate Bridge to Fairfax, 18 miles, almost all flat with just one very minor hill, then I climbed up Bolinas-Fairfax road, which had two consecutive almost 1000' climbs, followed by rolling ups and downs along a ridge leading to Mt. Tam. Not summiting Mt. Tam, the rest of the ride was a screaming downhill, then flat again, and all there was left was the minor climb out of Sausalito. I was tired, but I wasn't zoning . . . although that's debatable as evidenced by missing a sidewalk ramp and hitting a curb just outside of Sausalito. I thought I might have damaged my rim and my thigh which cramped up on impact, but it was low speed and all is well. Just embarassing. I don't think anyone saw it.

I did get a pinhole puncture in my tire after the first of those two climbs up Bolinas-Fairfax road, but it was so small that it just couldn't support the normal amount of pressure, but could maintain enough pressure to ride normally. When I got home and checked it out, that's when I realized how incredibly lucky I had been. Since I had been able to ride, I wasn't sure it was a puncture, even though I distinctly heard air escaping during the ride. So I pumped up the tire, and found that there was, indeed, a leak. I took out the tube, found the hole, and it was so small that all it needed was a patch. So I got the patch kit out, and found out the bottle of sealing glue was empty. Oh well. I'll patch the hole once I get more glue, but for now I had to put in a new tube. So I took the tube that I had been carrying with me on the ride and put it on, only it wouldn't inflate. What the hell? I took it out again and it was defective, couldn't even be patched, it was an inch long gash at the seams. So I got another tube and installed it, pumped it up, and all is well for tomorrow's ride.

About a half hour later while I was sitting on the couch watching the World Series (alright Marlins!), I realized that with a defective tube and an empty bottle of patch glue, if I had really punctured, I would have been SO screwed. What would I have done? I had no idea. OK, I might not have been that screwed, a half hour after that, I realized that someone would have helped me out, there were plenty of riders out at that time and someone would have had patch glue. But that's another thing! I left unusually early for this ride. I'm an afternoon rider, but today I left before noon. In the afternoon, there aren't quite so many cyclists out.

That was interesting. I left "early", but when I started out, there were tons of riders and oodles of group rides, ostensibly on the return, finishing up their rides. It was cool seeing so many cyclists out. That's what I've been missing doing all afternoon rides, when all the group rides are done and all you come across are other lone riders. Tomorrow, I'm thinking of joining a group if I can get up and get to the Golden Gate Bridge by 9:30. Ugh, I don't like the sound of that.

Pink Floyd was one of the bands that I grew up on. They're terribly out of fashion now, but these primordial ringings don't stop just because they're not the flavor of the month, so when I saw that Netflix had the newly released Dark Side of the Moon Classic Albums series DVD, I had to put it at the top of my queue. It certainly is a must-see for old-timer Pink Floyd fans, it will give you a new appreciation for the record. The editing is just brilliant, cutting between original footage, finished track, demo recordings, and current day re-creations of performances.

The "Money" sequence in the bonus features had me captivated. Roger Waters explained the creation of the opening rhythm track with all the *ka-chinging*, and then producer Alan Parsons recreated in a studio how they took that tape, using the original, and looped it for the master, using a microphone stand as a spindle for the loop tape to go around. Very low-tech by today's standards. I happened to have a guitar out (for the first time in over two months) and I couldn't help but start playing along with the bass line as I did as a teenager, but then, all in real time, cut to David Gilmour in a studio demonstrating all the guitar parts by isolating them and cutting everything else out. It was great fun trying to keep in time with this 7/8 signature bass line, while David Gilmour punched various guitar parts in and out.

It makes me wonder what music I'm listening to now will excite me just as much 20 years from now.

My condolences to fans of the Chicago Cubs. I saw that play in game 6 which turned the tide, and spun the team to face their accursed fate. I was convinced - it's a curse. That fan who forgot to consider that the ball may have been playable was the goat. He should hereby go under the nickname "Goat". As for the other cursed team, I'm no fan of the Yankees, but I hope they take the Red Sox out.

I rented a movie from Netflix by Shohei Imamura called, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge because I thought I missed it at this year's S.F. International Film Festival, but I was mistaken. The film never showed at the festival. But it was a great film, in certain ways it reminded me of another one of my favorite films, Bagdad Cafe, in that it was quirky (the quirky feel is almost exactly the same to me), with a host of characters who seem to mean something to some central thesis, but it's ambiguous what that is.

I first saw "Bagdad Cafe" as part of a film syllabus for a religion class, and like most of the films (and most of the students), when I watched the film, I was perfectly strained to figure out what the film had anything to do with the class material. It became clearer when we discussed it in class with the professor's guidance, but we were convinced, in part, because we wanted to be convinced (isn't that how belief goes?). It wasn't a discussion for skeptics. Relevant themes included "calling", Rosenheim (home of the roses, i.e. the Garden of Eden), magic, boomerangs, watching from a distance, and "too much harmony", among others.

I've been trying similar "observational skills" with "Warm Water Under a Red Bridge", and I have the African marathon runner, fishermen, tasteless food, sex/orgasms/water/neutrinos/the universe, the non-existent but real golden Buddha, waiting, and others, I'm sure. I have a feeling Imamura meant to connect these disparate elements in a non-obvious way.

I just realized that I usually stop riding after Daylight Savings Time ends, so there's just a few more weeks of cycling. Then what will I blog about?!! Hopefully something more interesting, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. I've gone on some pretty unusual rides this year, but I think today was the first time this year that I went as far as 40 miles and had some leg-busting climbs. Other 40+ milers didn't have any serious hills, and I don't think I've done a single ride over 50 miles. Pretty sad. Especially since I was floating on such an endorphin cloud for hours afterwards, and I only get that on the rides where I'm thinking beforehand, "Eh, do I really want to do that?" And all this year I've been chickening out and doing shorter rides.

Even last week, I climbed to Mt. Hamilton's 4000' peak in San Jose, oh, which I did do earlier this year, but it was at the beginning of the season and I wasn't up to form yet, so it wasn't very fun. Anyway, it was pretty hard that first time, so last week I truncated the ride by about half, and it was just not worth it. The grade isn't that steep, so the ride has to be longer to make it worth it, although the only way to make it longer is to add a completely separate, more challenging 1500' climb.

Today I did that Tunitas Creek Road course in the Santa Cruz Mountains that I abandoned several weeks ago because the road was so bad, and did it the reverse way so I'd be going up the bumpy road. It was just great, hard, the course goes all the way out to the ocean where it was sunny, but cold and windy, and I was struggling for a while out there waiting for a second wind. Most rides in the Santa Cruz Mountains have at least two major climbs, one going up to Skyline Boulevard from the east, and then after going down the mountains on the west side, coming back up. My second wind usually comes on the second climb, where either it has to come or I bonk.

On top of that, I was reminded a few weeks ago that cyclists call the third front chain-reel the "granny gear", implying even your grandmother can make it up hills in that low gear. I'm not serious enough of a cyclist to not have one, but pride demands that I make all effort not to go down to the granny gear. Passing people on climbs is not really anything if you're doing it granny-style.

My endorphin high may have been helped by the perfect weather. Sunny and 70s, except right by the coast. That was weird. It was very sudden that the temperature just plunged between 5 and 10 degrees. I stopped for a rest out there and it was too cold in the shade and to stop for too long. Then riding back inland, same thing, the temperature jumped right back up to summer-like, with attendant smell and feel.

Yay! I might be getting rid of my car. Being contradictory is nothing new to me, but I'll be glad to be rid of the SUV-urban cyclist contradiction. I got my car before they became this big yuppie status symbol phenomena, and the idea was that it would be useful to lug around music equipment. But now, especially since I'm not doing music anymore, there's no justifying having it. So I'm gonna give it back to my parents and my brother back east since they just got rid of the two cars that usually get them through the winter.

I volunteered it, but I'll be a little sad to see it go, especially into my brother's care. He's a sucky driver and he just totalled one of those two winter cars. I've had it for ten years and I've been a lot of places with it, and just about every person who has been important to me has had their ass in the passenger seat. Ah, sentimental value. But it's a love-hate relationship I have with it. The hate is that it is a gas-guzzling SUV. The love is the familiarity and that it was mine.

But no, no attachment. If they want it, I'm glad to give it back. I'll drive it to New Jersey once I talk to my brother and figure out the logistics, and while I'm at it, I'll take back a bunch of music stuff that I'm not anticipating using anymore.

Woof, two movies in two days.

Yesterday I saw Concert for George. Terrible title, probably referencing George's "Concert for Bangladesh", but it was a tribute concert staged by Eric Clapton for George Harrison exactly one year after his death. All of the musical people close to George brought together to play George's songs, with notable exceptions.

Ravi Shankar featured an original piece that was a play on George's name, suggesting a closeness with Krishna, performed with an ensemble of Indian instruments. Ringo Starr did "Photograph" which George co-wrote (I didn't know that) and "Honey Don't", George being a big fan of Carl Perkins. That's OK, it's Ringo, and maybe it was George who suggested Ringo sing it with The Beatles, but I think I would have like to have heard Ringo sing one of George's songs. But maybe he tried and realized, with his limited vocal range, he couldn't pull it off. Paul McCartney's rendition of "Something" was moving, and Billy Preston's "My Sweet Lord" was a show stopper.

George Harrison was my favorite Beatle because he was so easy-going and had a calm, concentrated energy about him. Eric Clapton did a great job capturing a perfect spirit for the concert, both solemn and humorous, emotional but not smarmy, holding it at the Royal Albert Hall, with muted lighting, starting it with a Hindu prayer and incense, and the flowers at the end could bring a tear to the eye.

And on Monday I saw Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion, which is a great documentary about Tibet. It sums up what's been going on to date. It's heartbreaking and can be depressing, but that wasn't the point of the documentary. As said in the film, they don't want to defeat the Chinese using force or kill them, but they want to liberate Tibet from China through knowledge and awareness. So it helps if as many people see this film to know what's happening. If you have a cursory knowledge of the Tibet situation and would likely sympathize, then this is a must-see. It really helps to see the context, the land, and the people.

My only complaint is that they show a political map to locate the Tibetan Plateau, and they use a map showing Burma, but it's labeled "Myanmar (Burma)".

I had a nice, peaceful day. How 'bout you? I had very little human contact, too. The Giants got eliminated from the post-season (bah!), and the A's didn't eliminate the Red Sox when they should have. They lost 1-2 tonight when they should have won 3-1. Eric Byrne failed to touch home plate, and Tejada of all people stopped running home because he thought there was interference and should be given home. He was tagged out as he leisurely strolled down the baseline and raised a stink when they called him out. I agree with the call just because he didn't even try to make it home safely, thereby avoiding any conflict if made it. If he got called out, then the manager could appeal that there was interference and he would've been safe.

I did get out to the bike shop. The brakes on my B bike were still giving me problems, and after taking them apart and looking at them from all angles, I realized I wouldn't be able to figure it out, no matter how long I squoze the calipers or twiddled with the springs and bolts. After a bit of fiddling, the guy at the shop fixed them with a wrench that I don't have, and used them on the part that I didn't want to go near, so I didn't feel bad about not figuring it out.

I also got two anime DVDs, one of them really cheap used. Still, this whole anime kick I'm on is getting out of hand.

Welly, welly, well, when I went to turn on my only friend today (my computer), it was having a little trouble. OK, let's not mince words, it was having a lot of trouble. Aw, screw it, it was kaput en la cabeza. The first clue was when the screen came up a color that I hadn't chosen for the background. Next was all the familiar desktop icons were gone. You know you're screwed when the "Start" button doesn't work to shut down or restart. My entire afternoon was spent scanning the disks for errors, getting through to Dell tech support, and then speaking with an Indian guy to fix the derned thing.

Long afternoon short, the A's beat down the Red Sox again (why do they even think they can win the World Series?), I patched a tube on my B bike, did assorted cleaning, and I didn't have to re-install Windows or any drivers. The damage is, in fact, minimal compared to the feeling of dread and doom when you turn on your computer and it doesn't do exactly what you expect it to do. I lost all the websites I saved as Favorites in IE, my Earthlink dial-up is a little funny, but I can deal with that, and I can't figure out how to turn Norton Anti-Virus back on. Probably a bunch of other stuff is gone, too, that I'll find out about in time. I'm glad I didn't have to re-install Windows, thereby losing everything on my hard drive. Wake-up call to back everything up somewhere. To you, too!

Is it just me, or is anyone else addicted to online? After the whole afternoon of my computer being sick, I had to go check my usual haunts of websites to make sure everything was alright or if anyone had missed me. Everything was fine, Netflix can somehow go on without me, and no one had missed me. Bastards.

Geez, riding is all I'm doing these days. I went to Kings Canyon National Park yesterday, and what did I do? I rode. I wasn't even planning on riding much since I figured the altitude would kill me. The first thing I did was test the altitude and did a short ride from the Grant Grove Visitor Center to Panoramic Point. On the map, it looked short and sweet and it seemed reasonable to assume that there would be some climbing to get to a "Panoramic Point". It turned out to be a 1000' climb over 2.2 miles! I kept thinking, "it burns!!" in regard to my lungs (apparently a quote from some movie that Katie kept saying a while back). I even stopped once, and as a rule it's bad to stop on a grade because you lose momentum, but there was no let up in the grade, and I just had to stop. But wow, what a view as a reward! There was a parking lot up top, and then a walkway up for another 50-60 vertical feet, and I just rode right up the walkway since I was on a roll and not a soul was around. Kings Canyon and the high Sierra spread before my eyes, looking almost fake in its grandeur and stunning silence.

In my mind, the important thing was that I made it all the way. Even though I felt a burn in my lungs from the altitude, I was able to do it. So in my mind that meant I should ride some more. Brillig. I drove down Rte. 180 into Kings Canyon. It's just a road that goes 30 miles down into the canyon, a vertical drop of 3500'. It isn't decked out to be a major tourist draw like neighboring Sequoia National Park is with its Giant Sequoia redwood trees. Unless you're planning on camping or hiking, it's just a drive in and out. But I love shit like that, winding canyon roads, towering granite cliff faces, not a whole lotta people.

I drove 25 miles in, rode 15 miles out and then back in again. It was an arduous ride, but it behooves me that the statistics aren't that impressive. 30 miles total is no killer ride, the total vertical climb was 1600', also no biggie, and the altitude was between 3000' and 4600', below where lungs start burning. I'm not sure what made it so hard.

I was just about to write that I wasn't dying, but I just remembered, I was. I actually drove in 5 miles too much. Five miles shorter, I would have started at Boyden Cavern, the low point at about 3100'. Where I started, at the Grizzly Falls picnic area, was at 4200', but that five mile stretch runs along Kings River and there was an illusion that it was flat, and driving in I didn't feel it was a 1000' climb, and riding out it didn't feel like a 1000' descent. But riding back in from Boyden Cavern to Grizzly Falls, boy howdy, I felt it. If I had started and ended at Boyden Cavern, it would've been a perfect ride, but those last five miles/1000' was not fun. I got through the last two miles by watching my odometer, counting my progress by hundredths of a mile. My theory is that you can get through anything if you break it down into small enough increments. Concentrating on 200 hundredths of a mile is still better than thinking about how much you're suffering.

So Noe Valley Cyclery didn't do a perfect job on my brakes. I found that I still had to tweak the adjustment myself, but they did the part I couldn't figure out. It's doing well now. I gave it two pills and it will call me in the morning.

After a week of thick fog barely burning off late in the afternoons, the forecasted warm weekend didn't quite happen. So having had enough of it, I left town and went down the peninsula, where it was at least sunny, for a ride. It's always a trip. I think the sun was just starting to break through in the Mission when I left, but once I got onto 280 south, it was back in the fog and it was like driving on a gloomy overcast day. But then you drive south through Daly City, through Colma, and shortly after you pass Rte. 380, you're back in glorious California sun again.

I tried to do a ride from the 51 Bay Area Rides book, but this is the only one I've tried that turned out to be a wash. The ride starts in Woodside and climbs 1600' on Kings Mountain Road to Skyline Boulevard, and then goes down Tunitas Creek Road to the ocean, but Tunitas is so pitted and poorly maintained that after several jostling miles and 500' descent, I turned around and headed back up. I was going almost as fast going up as I was coming down.

Bummed about not doing the full ride, I went up Skyline which is not so fun because there isn't much shoulder to ride on, but is fun because the Santa Cruz Mts. feel like a playground for bikes and motorcycles on weekends. The trick is to not get hit.

It usually happens that when something goes wrong with one bike, something also goes wrong with my other bike. I have two road bikes, which is kinda stupid, but I haven't been able to part with my 14 year old steel frame, workhorse, "B" bike and replace it with a mountain bike. Friggin' sentimental value. It was on this "B" bike that the brakes were squealing like a vampire bat on acid, so I made a big production out of cleaning the pads and wheel rims, and when all was said and done, a piece of the caliper spring assembly that pulls the brakes apart when you let off on the brakes was busted.

I went to Noe Valley Cyclery this time, and Larry noted that it had been a while since I had bike trouble since I hadn't been around. At first he thought I might need a whole new front brake, with an estimate over $100 for a higher end one, but when he took a closer look at it, he ended up being able to fix it. No charge. When he rolled my bike out and asked if there was anything else, he noticed a very, very subtle side-sway looseness to the rear wheel, and took it back to see if it was either a broken axle or just a loose bearing. It was a loose bearing. He tightened it. No charge. I ended up buying a pair of cycling gloves and a shop water bottle and gave him $20 for a $16 charge.

As I rode out of Noe Valley, the brake squeal was worse, like a cage of vampire bats having acid poured on them. Cleaning the pads and rims were decidedly not the answer. People were looking at me as I came to stops, it was pretty horrible. Fingernails on blackboards had nothing on this ungodly shriek. I decided it was time to implement a tip I got from Frank at Avenue Cyclery a while ago. I bought a box of chalk for $.86 and rubbed chalk all along the rims. Worked like a charm. The bats are sleeping peacefully, thank you.

So I finally opened that envelope of photos that my parents sent me a while ago. The reason? Well, they sent another envelope chock full o' photos of my brother's wedding. I think they may have sent a whole damn roll this time! So I got this thick thing in the mail with my address written in what is probably my mother's handwriting, something I probably haven't seen in a decade, and was too intriqued not to open it. So once that envelope of worms was opened, I figured I might as well open the first one, which had only three photos, some of which were dupes.

We're not a close family. We're cordial, but displays of affection are uncomfortable. I could have done without the photos of my brother kissing his wife. That's just how it is.

Looks like our little heatwave is forecasted to end, and with apartment windows wide open, the chill Bay Area night air feels mighty good. Did I just say that? Well just fuck me because this isn't normal. By the end of the week, the fog will be rolled in and windows will be shut tight for the night, no more Mars, no more Milky Way at the beach. I swear I can hear a foghorn.

I had to bring my bike in today to get my rear wheel trued. It got injured early on yesterday. I'm not sure what happened, but I was riding through the tunnel that goes under Rte. 101 just across the Golden Gate Bridge and something jammed the rear wheel. I thought a water bottle fell out or my shoe jammed the wheel, but in the tunnel, with no bike lane and car traffic, I couldn't look down to see. I think I was skidding and was just trying to keep upright until I was out of the tunnel. I couldn't figure out what happened, but the rim was so out of whack that the only way I could keep riding was to effectively disengage the brake.

I went to Avenue Cyclery on Stanyan. The best cycleries in the city are Noe Valley Cyclery and Avenue Cyclery; best service, no attitude. When I came back for my bike, Frank proudly showed me how perfectly he trued it, and charged me $12 on a $15 quote. I should note that the wheel had been built by Toby at Noe Valley Cyclery, and I like to think that if it was able to be trued so perfectly, it was because Toby did such a great job building the wheel. On the way out, I asked the guy up front if they had a fridge in back for liquid tips. He said he thought Frank didn't drink, but I've had good experiences with the other mechanics, too, so maybe I'll bring a six-pack on Friday near closing time. Oh, that's Critical Mass night. Oh, that's Rosh Hoshanah, the Day of Reckoning, right? Gotta lot o' reckoning to do.

According to my watch, it's 11:20 p.m. and 87 degrees in my apartment. This is the kind of weather I purportedly love, yet I grumble as I get the fan out of the kitchen and bring it to my living room because it's too hot just sitting in front of my computer. But it's an acclimation thing, if it was like this all Summer I'm sure I'd be perfectly chirping, and come September I'd be looking forward to the cool down and leaves changing color, bracing for Winter. But it hasn't been like this all Summer, just the odd few days here and there. I don't have a point here, in case you were wondering. I think I heard the New York tri-state area just experienced one of its wettest Summers on record.

I was planning to go for a ride in the Santa Cruz Mountains, down by Woodside, one of the Bay Area's weekend cycling hot-spots, but as soon as I stepped outside I scrapped that idea - way too hot. Tackling those climbs in these temps is a recipe for getting fu'd up. So I drove to the Golden Gate Bridge and rode up into Marin from there. It was still pretty freaky hot, but at least it was flat. I wanted to see how far it was to ride to Fairfax.

It was actually pretty neat. I rode through towns I had only heard of in weather reports, like Corte Madera and Larkspur. It was all flat except for one quick and easy 300' climb, and I rode through San Anselmo, which I was familiar with, having spent some time there hanging out with a woman soon after I got to the Bay Area. Sherilyn Chew, I wonder what happened to her. She was so adorable, she was a French major or something and she used to mutter to herself in French. Or with a French accent. I forget which, but it amused me to no end.

I'm pretty sure I recognized the road that went to her house, but I'd be surprised if I could find it. Never would I have imagined that I'd be riding my bike through San Anselmo, much less ride to San Anselmo. It was about 18 miles to Fairfax.

I watched the entire four hour plus live coverage of the San Francisco Grand Prix bike race, which is no longer the San Francisco Grand Prix, but the, um . . . something corporate. God Bless America! I learned last year that it's not worth going out to watch it unless you: a) go early enough to get a position on one of the hills where the riders go slow enough to actually see them; and b) are with other people so you can reclaim your place if you need to go pee or get coffee or snacks. The disadvantage of watching the live coverage is you have to listen to local ABC sportscaster Martin Wyatt, who for the third year in a row has shown how inept and incompetent he is to cover: a) a cycling event; and b) any sports event that can realistically be called "international".

Wow, those riders are incredible, what an exciting finish. I swear, to ride on that level you have to transform your body into some kind of organic machine. Their muscles and their metabolism just ain't normal, and I'm sure their attention to nutrition must be virtually scientific.

Hm, Enon released a new record yesterday (and they're going on tour with Irving). I need to scour my CD collection for stuff to sell.

Enterprise Season Three Premier: the last scene where Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) disrobes? I'm having trouble uncrossing my eyes.

God, I love how the blog*spot ads at the top of the page "know" what we're writing about. I was creeped out at first, but like government surveillance and identity theft, you just get used to it.

Riding, riding, riding, all I'm doing these days is riding. And getting hopped up on anime. I did two 25 mile rides on two consecutive days. The first one was supposed to be longer, but I cut it short because . . . I just ran out of fuel. I didn't bonk, I just ran out, and after doing two of the four hills on the course, I abandoned and headed for the nearest BART station. I still want to give the full course another try soon. Yesterday it was all about flat and easy. I took BART to Dublin/Pleasanton and took the Iron Horse Trail all the way up to a barbecue in Concord, where I proceeded to drink the rest of the afternoon away with good food and good people, mostly Beale St. crowd. The Iron Horse Trail, and actually all the recreational trails in the East Bay system, was awesome. Just . . . pleasant. God, those rich people got it good.

To get to the barbecue, I turned right off the Iron Horse Trail and took the Canal Trail, which is named after the canal that it follows. It was so neat, the East Bay has canals, and I was admiring the canal at one point when my wheels got just too close to the edge, and it was one of those moments when you're still alright, but you know you're about to go off the edge and you brace yourself for a crash. It wouldn't have been a bad crash at all, but it's never pleasant to go over on your bike. I've fallen over at a standstill and that still sucked, scraped my knee and misaligned my brakes. Anyway, the moment was long enough for me to decide not to crash and control roll down the embankment and stop at the fence at the edge of the canal. *whew* I clicked out and pulled my bike back up to the path where there was an old man walking down the path and saw the whole thing. I said, "Whew, that was a close one", making conversation. "You mean you didn't mean to do that?". Haha, thanks gramps.

After a full day out on Tuesday, including Japanese food, seeing "Dirty Pretty Things", getting the new "New Type USA" (anime) magazine, free day at SFMoma (but not the Chagall exhibit), NTN trivia at Beale St., and picking up Season 1 of "Sailor Moon" on DVD because I am officially now a hardcore anime junkie, I have hardly left the apartment for two days. Not that I've been wasting the time, and not that it was planned that way. I woke up at 5:30 this morning hoping to hit the road and drive out to Kings Canyon National Park and do some riding amidst the gorgeousness, but for some reason that just didn't happen. Then around 8:00 I thought of driving down to Pinnacles National Monument and hike some paths, but that also ended up not happening. Then in the afternoon I thought of BARTing out to the East Bay and riding a course I thought up a few days ago. Didn't happen.

I'm gonna try to do the Kings Canyon thing tomorrow, again, but I won't be surprised if tomorrow's a verbatim repeat of today.

"Dirty Pretty Things" was a great movie, Audrey Tautou showing that she's not merely an Audrey Hepburn knock-off, but does have a wider, more diverse acting range. Of course I love Audrey Hepburn, but I never considered her acting and probably never will. I love to watch Audrey because it's Audrey. There may have been a little bit of that going on in "Dirty Pretty Things", Audrey Tautou trying to pull of a Turkish refugee in an English-speaking role. I don't really know what a Turkish accent sounds like, and I certainly couldn't tell if it was obvious that she wasn't pulling it off because of her native French. But even if I could, I might have forgiven it because it was Audrey Tautou. You have to admit, though, it's pretty hard when you're French trying to speak English with a Turkish accent. That would be like me trying to speak Japanese with a Chinese accent.

Right, so here I am writing about "Dirty Pretty Things" and only focusing on Audrey Tautou, when the main protagonist of the movie is Chiwetel Ejiofor who was incredible. I can wonder right and left about Audrey Tautou's performance to finally consider it "very good", along with the rest of the ensemble cast, but Ejiofor's performance bears no wondering.