Holy shit, it's raining out there! In all my ten years in San Francisco, it has never rained in July! Summer rain. And it smells absolutely gorgeous! It's surreal with the low hanging fog not quite reaching my perfectly positioned apartment in the sunbelt. It otherwise not looking overcast, but it's raaaiining aaaall over this town! Well, maybe not quite. It's actually not quite overcast, either. I just checked and I caught a glimpse of Mars in the southern sky. Mars, of course, being unusually bright (being unusually close to Earth) for the next month or so.

This is a blog-worthy first. It's three in the morning, foghorn is bellowing in the distance, and San Francisco is experiencing thunder and lightning! When I first heard the rumbling, I couldn't believe it. Then when I confirmed it was thunder, I sat by the window waiting, and yes, full-blown lightning, streaks across the sky.

I'm not taking a shower tonight. I'm a night showerer. I don't deserve a shower after the pathetically little I did today. I did get one mix CD done today, and most of the track list for another, but then at the last minute I changed one track and now it's like 47 seconds too long, so I have to re-shuffle things. Then I have two other mix CDs that I'm also shuffling things about, trying to get them right.

Again I didn't get out to ride up Mt. Diablo, even though I made a whole production, complete with singing and dancing, to figure out which BARTs I could take my bike on at what time. I even sweetened the kitty (wha?) by ending the first act with a song about not having to do Mt. Diablo, that I could just go to Orinda and do the East Bay Hills or the East Bay Reservoir/Berkeley hills ride. I left the theater at intermission, obviously.

So I'm setting my mind to ride up Mt. Diablo tomorrow. I've been feeling kinda weak lately, but I raised my seat on my bike (apparently it slips over time) and when I went out yesterday, wow, what a difference. Just half to three-quarters of an inch and I get so much more power. I'm not sure what the physics of it is, but it probably has something to do with leg extension, momentum, and potential energy. It gives a completely different meaning to "bringing up the rear".

Hm, three days in a row. And you heard it from me here: Babe marketing aside, She Spies is a damn funny show.

Well, I seen the last of S*die for a good two weeks, blew off Han last night but couldn't join him anyway, hung out with Amy two days in a row after she got back from Vegas, Lance won the Tour de France, met up with ex-housemate Rosalie yesterday for burnch, I mean brunch, no I like "burnch" better, and I woke up early today to watch some of the San Francisco Marathon run by a couple blocks down the street until it started depressing me so I got a bagel with cream cheese from Noah's and returned home. I raised the seat post on my bike a half an inch, it's sunny and warm (sorta, 60s) but a bit breezy in San Francisco with the fog looming out on the western front, and today's the first day of the rest of my life. What do I want to do today?

Dear Meghan, we love you, too. And there was another mix in the mix. I'm glad to see we have a meeting of minds :)

As it happens, S*die sent me a nice email this evening, possibly in response to the veiled nastiness that was last night, and definitely in response to an email I sent her not long ago when she seemed to be down about herself, highlighting why I thought she was a pretty darned special person. It would have been easier to swallow if last night didn't happen, but we just aren't the friends we were, so I'm having trouble on the receiving end.

I wasn't planning on going to Kezar Pub tonight, but when S*die and Bob called, their plans having fallen through, we ended up going to Kezar Pub for the Tour de France. If I had to do something with them, I wanted something with a distraction to minimize my annoyance. It worked to some extent, but it didn't completely stop them from being annoying. They're kind of Dada-ists, but instead of an artistic irreverent "shocking for the sake of shocking", they are more of "antagonizing me just for the sake of antagonizing me". And they have a chemical misanthropy that they feed off each other to make the experience even more unpleasant.

You know you're having a pointless conversation when they ask questions, and you can think of two or more answers and it's basically a coin toss which answer you choose. It doesn't matter.

Mind you, I was probably just as annoying and antagonistic to them. Hopefully we've reached a meeting of minds. I just hope our meeting of minds includes that we do not like hanging out with people who are annoying and antagonistic.

It's a question in my mind whether I'm a crap friend because I drop them once they become annoying. Or find that they are annoying. And Bob has always been annoying, I just tolerated him because of S*die, but now they have that chemical tag-team thing going, they're basically one unit. But who continues to hang out with annoying people just because you once considered them friends?

I guess I never understood that "friends through thick and thin" thing, that BFF thing. So yea, I am a sucky friend, but not because of this case. In the past, it would be substantive relationships with substantive grievances that I would drop when I couldn't take it anymore. That's wrong. If the word "substantive" is somewhere in the equation, you work on it. In this case, it's not a substantive relationship (ie, it's too irreverent, ie, no respect), and they're not substantive grievances when it's annoying just for the sake of annoying.

They bring out my potential for being obnoxious. And I don't like being obnoxious. And they certainly show that petty obnoxiousness is not below them, either. Damn, I'm bad. And I can just go on and on!

OK, I think I'm done with going to Kezar Pub to watch the Tour, unless I can drag other people along. Or unless something big happens. It's just starting to feel a little obsessive, and don't I have better things to do with my time? No? Actually, no, I don't. Watching it has served its purpose of inspiring me to get out of the apartment and hit the road, and hit the road today I did, doing a ride with two respectable hills I suffered up. The ride ended at Kezar Pub where I was meeting S*die, sans Bob, and it was a weird feeling riding through Golden Gate Park at the end, thinking "can't wait for beer!!" After we parted ways, I tore home only to collapse perhaps from exhaustion and beer. If beer is the reward for riding, and going to Kezar Pub the inevitable end of a day's ride, that can't be a good thing. I want to get to the point where I'm not suffering up what should be easy hills. Mt. Tam tomorrow.

You have no idea how badly I'm jones-ing for instant noodles.

I sold a bunch o' CDs at Amoeba before meeting a bunch o' folk at Kezar Pub for the Tour de France. I only got $18 in credit because they were shite CDs. I picked up Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti" re-mastered used for $18.39. It felt like I got it for 39 cents. Woohoo! Dear good god what an incredible album!! I had such good taste for a 13 year old.

Catching the Tour de France (10 stages into it) last night with Amy got me a little fired up about it. Today was a rest day for the Tour, but I went to Kezar Pub because they were airing a recap of the first ten stages. Tonight I've been going through the live reports on cyclingnews.com for the details (Kezar is airing the Tour, but it's a bar, so no sound). Basically I'm reading through the images that I saw at the bar. Joseba Beloki's crash, the one that Lance avoided by riding off the road down a steep dirt embankment, hopping off his bike to climb back onto the road and remounting, appears to have done Beloki in. It looks like it was a bad crash and I think he's out of the Tour. Too bad, I really liked Beloki. He's been living in Lance's shadow during the TdF, cursing him because if it wasn't for him, he'd be winning the Tour. Maybe multiple Tours. Damn good rider, deserving of name recognition.

And as last year, the Tour has inspired me to get on my bike. I've been weak this year, my strength and maybe my general health seems to be in a decline. So I'm easing into it. Yesterday I went out for less than 10 miles, but climbing O'Shaugnessy, which really isn't that hard, and then up to Twin Peaks. Today I felt like crap all day so I didn't get out until I was heading to Kezar Pub, but I went more than 10 miles at least and tackled the Fillmore Street hill, always a benchmark of potential. Tomorrow I think I'm meeting Delphine at night, so I'll go to Kezar during the day, but I also want to put in even more saddle time, maybe cross the Golden Gate and climb the Headlands.

Listening to Rilo Kiley is making me smile. At the show last week, enough people knew where to start clapping along on "With Arms Outstretched" to get everyone clapping along. It's a great singalong song.

Amy and I confirmed last night that Kezar Pub is airing full Tour de France coverage on OLN. So for the next week and a half, with a few exceptions, that's where I'll be at 8:00.

Oregon . . . the state with the small town feel.

No extended roadtrip, I drove straight back down from Portland yesterday, clocking in at almost the exact 10 1/2 hour mapquest drive. I always calculate drive times using a 60mph standard, so if I see a destination is 196 miles away, I think it's three hours and 16 minutes away. I usually drive 65-72 mph, but it probably evens out with gas/food/warshroom stops. It's a pretty accurate system.

Portland is an amazing city. Oregon is an amazing state. Many thanks to Tiffany for letting me crash on her couch for the weekend. Portland trounces San Francisco. San Francisco reeks and Californians are total assholes in comparison. I'm not specifying that any individual Californian is an asshole, but as Californians, we are generally self-righteous, elitist assholes. Any correlation between being Californian and being a specific individual asshole is purely coincidental.

The rainy season weather would still probably prevent me from moving there, but good lord! it was nice. When someone told me that aside from the rainy season drear, there were several months of straight "nice" weather, I was thinking San Francisco "nice", Pacific coast "nice". But lo, it was Summertime nice! Short sleeve shirts at night nice.

So here's a rundown of the various cities:
Tucson pros: decent riding; good star-gazing; desert heat/culture; saguaros
Tucson cons: no idea what I'd do there
Portland pros: great people; cycling culture; a river runs through it; incredible beer; vibrant creative scene; very green; no sales tax!
Portland cons: I'd probably kill myself during the rainy season. Really.
San Francisco pros: I know it and I happen to be here (I'm lazy)
San Francisco cons: Everything else (OK, it's not that bad)

The no sales tax thing in Oregon really got my attention in a guitar store where they were selling Rickenbacker basses on sale for $995. $995!!! for a Rick out the door. That is just unsane!

Last night I decided at the last minute to go see Rilo Kiley at Great American Music Hall. While I was there I realized I had failed to inform Joycee of this show, thereby letting her down. I also let down Cass, who during the afternoon expressed the possibility of bringing her kids to the show! But I <Austin Powers accent>really, really, really </Austin Powers accent>didn't know whether I'd go until the last minute.

It was really crowded. I remember seeing them opening up for Superchunk, who had a smaller crowd, filling Cafe DuNord, filling Bottom of the Hill, selling out Bottom of the Hill, and now respectably filling Great American Music Hall!! I'm glad they are getting big. I have no problem seeing them three feet from the stage in the past, and now being able to get no where near them. I do think they need to do something to bump up their stage show to the next level. Their stage presence is still appropriate for smaller venues, but they need to do something more now. Their material is strong enough, but their stage presence needs more to translate to bigger audiences.

I spent today with Pasha, who gave his presentation at his conference in Monterey on Sunday, and was back in Fremont yesterday. Again, spending time with him was spectacular and made me wonder how things may have been different if we hadn't missed these past ten years. Getting back together with him, it was like not a day had passed. But we don't know what it would be like if we got together with ten years having passed.

We saw 'The Incredible Hulk' at the Metreon, both of us being Ang Lee fans, and it was incredible, far beyond either of our expectations. Not perfect, but Ang Lee shows that he can very capably handle comic book, action story material. In clips I had seen, the CGI looked so fake, but in context of watching the movie, it was more than easy to not even think of it. The action is more kinetic than I've seen in a long time, certainly much more than in 'Matrix: Reloaded', in which the action was generally as lifeless as a spirograph.

This evening, Amy and I got together for drinks at Movida to . . . well, I thought it was just to finalize meeting up in Portland this weekend for her apartment search, but we ended up not leaving until well past 11:00. She's flying there on Friday with Lisa. I'm making a roadtrip out of it, leaving tomorrow, and I'm not prepared at all! I was hoping to leave early tomorrow to head up to Crater Lake to spend the night, but at this rate I'm going to get there pretty late, thereby delaying leaving for Portland on Friday. But I have everyone's contact info, the hotel, Lisa's cell, and Nina's, so hopefully every little thing is gonna be all right.

I can't make an intelligent decision to move to Tucson until at least having been to Portland.

I'm glad I got out today. It looked cold and windy out there, but once I got out, it was windy but pleasantly warm. Another "heatwave" (burning in my heart) is forecast for the days coming, so I'm planning on another ride before heading up to Portland to visit Nina and hang with Amy and Lisa to find Amy an apartment. In my daily perusal of the road atlas, I realized that Crater Lake is on the way up to Portland, so I think I'll leave Thursday to Crater Lake, maybe ride around it and hope to avoid another Lake Tahoe debacle, and then head up to Portland on Friday. It's a good plan.

I haven't thought of any extended planning after Portland, but I should. Seattle? Head east to Yellowstone? Another sweep through picturesque Utah? It all depends on how I feel, so I really can't plan. Just no taxing the car with 22 hour drives like from Grand Canyon back to San Francisco. That was truly brutal.

My unemployment is getting no sympathy when a day like last Thursday comes along and people at Beale St. are praising the lord for the three day weekend and I go, "what three day weekend?". Boy, did I pay for beer that night.

Strangely enough, it was a busier weekend than usual, and not at all because everyone else had three days off. On Friday, Pasha flew in and the day was spent with him and his cousin and his cousin's wife, and driving Pasha down to Monterey. Then on Saturday, before I was able to get my bearings, Delphine got me to commit to go with her down to San Jose to her imaginary best friend, Julie's housewarming. It turns out Julie is not imaginary, and is actually a real person, so I need to stop referring to Julie as Delphine's imaginary best friend. And that night was birthday dinner for Delphine's friend Lan at Old Krakow House (or "Old Crackhouse", for short) in West Portal, and ended up at "New Wave City" - '80s music at DNA Lounge. As Friday was "Pasha day," Saturday was "Delphine day."

I reiterate that I was a child of the '80s but I hated the music. I can sing along to most of it if the lyrics are in front of me, but it would be a mistake to associate me in any way with the '80s. At best, the 80's are a study, and the extent to which I get carried away in the nostalgia is purely coincidential. Peter Gabriel's "So" record, albeit quite excellent, is still probably my least favorite of his oeuvre.

Today was a groggy, foggy day, when plans were made early (pre-coffee, before the cylinders in my brain were firing) to meet Amy in the Fillmore for the Fillmore Street Fair and to catch a movie. By late in the afternoon, it was just time for us to go home because of the cold. Don't get me wrong, time spent with Amy is time well spent, but planned better, miserable cold and foggy days like today should have been spent driving out of town and hiking in warmer, sunnier climes.

There was a time when I could make friends and maintain them. Pasha flew into town today for a conference down in Monterey, it has probably been ten years since we've seen each other. We had been out of touch during the entirety of that time until I emailed him last fall. If there was an argument that Mark (high school physics teacher/music mentor in Tucson) and I had knowledge of what was at the core of each other, there was no question about Pasha and me.

His memory of events from college stunned me, things that I had completely forgotten or put out of my mind, the details about me he brought up were often embarrassing recollections. He does have a great brain, but it was a bit of a shock because it showed that I did have an impact on his international college experience. And the conversation was still easy, we could still talk about anything and be honest. He asked why I dropped out of contact and I told him. At the time, he didn't know and he tried to come up with some reasons. When I told him the real reason, I don't think he was entirely satisfied with it, neither was I, stupid reason, but then he just let it go and the conversation went on.

It was nice being with someone you can ask anything and who can ask you anything without fear, although I dodged reminding him why I got suspended after my first semester at Oberlin, and I did keep my long-sleeve shirt on all day despite the heat. Things he probably knew about at some time, or not, but understandably put out of his mind, and if asked, I didn't want to answer.

Really good people. Really good times. Marked by immaturity and inexperience of being college-aged. But that's when things were exciting and new, and not redundant and cynical. I'm a bitter old man.

He mentioned having run into Amina in Dhaka of all places around five years ago. I resisted asking how she looked, but I didn't like the reminder of her continued, actual existence somewhere, cheapening the iconography of her that is seared into my memory. I was comforted at Pasha's confoundment of why Amina went and surprisingly married Waleed. At least I'm not the only one. Really, it's all water under the horse's mouth.

The friends I had at Oberlin were certainly precious, and I was certainly too immature to appreciate and hold on to them. All of them had their impact, but I think Pasha, Amina, and another person, Myung Soo, had the biggest effect on me. They were the ones who really challenged and changed me and pointed me into new directions. With Myung Soo and Pasha it was mostly academic and intellectual. Amina matured my notions of love, and she changed my perception of life and even my personality. I think I was a different person before and after I set eyes on Amina, and I do think it was for the better.

{{another button}} once again proving she's a goober. But a lovable one at that. Why we didn't get a shot of us for memorabilia's sake, I don't know. Just darn! I have gotten a haircut since then. That was the afternoon we spent swilling beer in the Adams Morgan section of DC before the Virginia Peter Gabriel show. Good times, good times.

I really didn't take enough pics that day, but I'm glad button got this to conjure the memory. It was apparently the first sunny day in a while during the most rainy June on record (at least in New York, but I think it was the same idea in DC). The bar handed out free shots for a bar-wide toast to the sun. I was driving my parents' tank of a Mercedes Benz. Button being incredibly generous regarding what was probably a palpable fear of Gypsy, i.e., man-eating dog, hehe. The 24-hour military presence around the Pentagon aimed at possible terrorists, i.e., the general public.