Yeehaw, baby! I finally rode into New York, and it's true - riding in Manhattan is easier, and arguably safer than riding in New Jersey. I rode in for my first New York Critical Mass, having been self-disenfranchised of my home Crit Mass in San Francisco.

It was pretty exciting riding in. It's almost three miles from my parents' house to the New York side of the George Warshington Bridge, and from there I found my way to Riverside Drive which just goes down, down, down through the streets from 178th to 72nd St. It really isn't by the side of the river, the West Side Highway is closer to the river, and apparently there is a path that is literally river side that I wasn't able to find my way to. Will look for it soonly.

At 72nd Street, I headed east towards the center of Manhattan, and when I got to Broadway, it felt really familiar, <thinking>72nd and Broadway, 72nd and Broadway</thinking>, and then I looked closely at the shop on the corner whose fascade was covered with scaffolding - is it? It was! It was Gray's Papaya, my favorite hot dog stand in New York. For $2.75, you get two yummy hot dogs and a choice of a tropical fruit drink. Of course I had to stop for dinner.

From there I continued east to Central Park, realizing how easy it is to ride to the Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, which is called something else now, Rose Center for blah, blah, blah, on 81st-84th Sts. I'll have to check what exhibits are there. Anyway, New York Critical Mass convenes at Union Square in the East Village. It was about a 16 mile ride to get there, taking an hour and 20 minutes. A long way to go for Critical Mass, compared to the three miles it took in San Francisco, but it was exciting, and New York Critical Mass was something else!

Just from the sheer humongalopolous size of New York, you're going to have a large mass (don't forget the 'm'!). You just have that much larger a pool of cyclists interested to draw from. And taking it to the streets of New Yawk, taking attitude to the city that invented city attitude was incredible, mind-blowing. I never would have imagined that it could be pulled off in New York.

- Coming out of the Park Avenue tunnel, I saw a corker (a cyclist that blocks traffic from moving while the Mass is passing) sitting on the hood of an ornery taxi! Risky business even in San Francisco, as people get touchy when you start touching their cars.
- In San Francisco, sometimes I would advise pedestrians trying to cross the Mass to just take it slow and confident, the cyclists won't hit you. I decided it would be irresponsible to give such advise in New York; the cyclists just might hit you.
- In San Francisco, we try to be courteous to pedestrians and call out a warning to other cyclists if a pedestrian is trying to cross. In New York, I found myself holla-ing at pedestrians, forming a critical mass of their own to cross a street against a light, to let them know I was coming and I wasn't going to stop for them.
- The highlight for me was taking the West Side Highway, riding south and screaming and causing a ruckus through the Battery Park Tunnel, and ending up on the FDR Drive with glorious views of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge! It felt almost akin to riding on the Bay Bridge - just riding somewhere where normally only cars can travel.
- New York's finest handled things very well given the situation. I even saw a cyclist chatting with a motorbike cop. I saw a motorbike cop bump a cyclist in Times Square to get him to move because of an ambulance coming up from behind. I thought it was a reasonable nudge, but then the cop apologized when the cyclist protested. A San Francisco cop would have had the guy on the asphalt with a knee on his back and pulling out the handcuffs. Bastards. The cops handled getting the Mass off the FDR Drive and back onto surface streets very reasonably and professionally.
- I met a guy from fotolog named Adam who showed me the ins and outs of taking a bike on the subway.
- I dropped my fucking camera. I think all my camera dropping is a sign that I should drop photography. I'll wait until the cameras start breaking.

Cross-training. I've been mostly putting time on the bike trainer, set up in the cool basement with a fan clipped to a microphone stand right in front of me; set the resistance on the trainer, put on a mix CD, start a stopwatch, and climb through the gears, going up one every five minutes for 40-60 minutes, figuring it so that ten minutes are spent in the highest gear before dropping down to lower gears to finish off.

But today I hit the road for the first time in two weeks, finally going beyond "Exit 2" up 9W (it's Exit 2 off the Palisades Parkway), crossing the border into Upstate New York. I don't know how my brother used to go on 70 mile rides when he was in high school. That means 35 miles out and back. I'd have to look at a map to see where he got those 35 miles, not that I'd even try going that kind of distance. Friggin' nuts. I totalled 37 miles today, going 17 miles up 9W and turning back at the New York State Thruway, right before Nyack, NY - which is the extent of my geographical knowledge of the area. I recall spending a July 4th during high school years with my brother's friends at Carl Sapphire's riparian vacation house in Nyack, getting drunk (and asthma) on wine coolers and shooting off fireworks. Weird. It's a totally isolated memory.

For such a heavily cycled corridor, 9W still isn't particularly bike friendly. Or maybe I've just been spoiled at the breadth cyclists are given in the Bay Area. There just isn't that much room out here. And for all the wildlife, cyclists should name the 9W corridor the Tour de Roadkill. It's distressing constantly trying to not ride over flattened animals. Poor things. Although I don't think anything will get as gross as when I accidentally ran over a freshly killed squirrel in Pleasant Hill (Bay Area) and upon getting to the BART station, finding bits of squirrel gut clinging to my brake cables. Bleah.

Another difference between here and the Bay Area is that I averaged 17.1 mph over 37 miles. In the Bay Area, my average averages were in the 15 mph range because of the landscape. It was a climber's paradise of sorts. 9W is a rolleurs paradise, and there is hardly a climb in the area worth calling a climb.

It has been sweltering the past few days. Humid and sweaty. I'm still getting used to it, but I ain't complaining. My room is the hottest in this house, but I remind myself of that apartment in Oberlin that was so incredibly hot, something in me had to snap to acclimate, and ever since then I've loved the heat, and nothing got as hot as that apartment. Rain is in the forecast, though, and that should bring things down a notch. I'm still getting used to the weather patterns.

Brain trust that I am, I chose these days to try out running again. I just don't eat that much, but when you're living with your parents - trust me, it's just bad. To counter it, I've been putting more time on the bike trainer, using my brother's old racing bike with the insane (read: really, really hard) gears, but as long as I'm out in suburbia and back in my hot element, I thought I'd see if I could still run. I measured out 3, 4, and 5 mile courses and did the 3 mile today, doing 8 minute miles. If I was an over-achieving prick about it, I'd be moaning about how sucky 8 minute miles are, and that does suck, but that's just peachy-keen for a first official outing (after a very short "feeler" jog two days ago). I knew plenty of poseurs in San Francisco who considered themselves runners, doing 10 minute miles.

I saw the new Zatoichi movie by Beat Takeshi on Monday. It totally ruled, but you have to be familiar with Beat Takeshi's style to appreciate it. Or get it. However, I'm woefully unfamiliar with the classic Zatoichi movies, so I can't give any needed perspective on this version. You just have to know that Beat Takeshi movies are about his style and aesthetic, and he is always the badass in his own films. Sort of like Clint Eastwood in the old Man With No Name and Dirty Harry movies. And dammit, don't analyze the dance sequence at the end, just get into it, it rules. Kitano probably saw this dance troupe, was blown away by it and decided to put them in one of his films. Oh, the next one is going to be a samurai film? Sure, we can do that!

I found out last week that Stephen Sondheim's Assassins was scheduled to close today, so my brother went and got us tickets for tonight's final performance. It was brilliant. I was blown away. I don't even want to think how it was staged back in 1991 when its first incarnation got panned by the critics and didn't even get my curiosity. I remember feeling that it was a minor Sondheim with a dry, bland subject matter - a black and white musical, perhaps, where musicals need to be in color. Odd though that most of the score is the same, and the score is as strong as any Sondheim.

They re-worked the concept, satirically framing the stories of the presidential assassins in a carnival shooting gallery, and they added better continuity elements to lead from one scene to another. But aside from the strong score and great conceptualization, I think what was most compelling was that it was really challenging. The first assassin probed is John Wilkes Booth, and he is made out to sound sane, reasonable, passionate, and . . . a dissenter. OK, we don't like the killing of the emanci-motherfucking-pator of the slaves thing, that goes beyond dissent, but there's room in this democracy for everyone's views, right? And then I think how I'm not too happy with Bush's views and would liked them squashed like a bug, and ergo the challenge. Booth's dissenting view is safely in the past with history written, and it's certainly not one I would agree with if I were living in that time period (pro-slave, Confederate South, fuck that shit, but here's someone willing to kill for that view).

There is a good deal of humor in the show, and the crazies are made out to be crazies, although that's sometimes relative, too. The two female assassins who plotted to kill Gerald Ford were loopy and flaky and might have been people I hung out with in the Bay Area, who knows? Aside from incredible performances all around, other interesting points include the juxtaposition of Hinckley, who was obsessed with Jodie Foster, and "Squeaky" Fromme, who was obsessed with Charles Manson, and having them sing a duet, and the bookending of John Wilkes Booth as the first story, and Lee Harvey Oswald as the last.

I want to say that without both Booth and Oswald, there would be no story here, no musical. Both were necessary to make the subject of presidential assassins compelling. And Sondheim hammers that home with all of the assassins showing up at the Dallas book depository to egg on an unwilling Oswald, pleading that not only will it lead to his own immortality, but also to theirs. Booth points out that when Hinckley's room is searched after his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, they found every book ever written about him (I thought they should have pulled a "Back to the Future", and when Booth mentions that Hinckley shoots Ronald Reagan, Oswald should have said, "Ronald Reagan? The actor?!"). Fascinating stuff anyways.

I don't know if it was because this was the last scheduled performance or because it was a flawless performance, but I have never seen a Broadway audience get up on its feet for a standing ovation so quickly at the end of a show. It was a brilliant, ingenious show. You'd think that there would be more hubbub, at least a mention, at a show's closing. Sondheim showing up to take a few bows, champagne being cracked open at close curtain. Something, right?

I don't know who it was who lived across the street here, but apparently someone died. Presumably it's been family members stopping in and removing things according to a legally executed will.


Hours later, the rain came pouring down. More people moving stuff out.

Rainy day cooled things down today. Ah, rainy Summer days. Unlike the miserable Winter rainy season in SF. I loved it, but I'm sitting here in the suburbs without a job, not being forced out into it. Poor baby.

My brother found a movie theater showing second run films for $2 and we saw "Kill Bill, Vol.2" tonight. I saw it without having seen Vol.1 because all the reviewers said you can watch Vol.2 without seeing Vol.1 because the story is circular, but none of them had actually done it. They were right. And I liked the movie.

Well, granted that I take Quentin Tarantino films with a grain of salt and I don't watch them with the same standards as other films or I might end up hating them, which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I ignore most "Tarantinoisms" in his films which might otherwise bug me - basically everything which is pretentious and tacky that he foists on his audience as ironic and tongue-in-cheek or claims is homage. So yea, I let a lot slide to like his style (I don't think I liked "Pulp Fiction", but I don't even remember it. or seeing it.). But I left Vol.2 thinking it was excellent despite its faults. The only hyuge problem I had with it, which I won't let go of and would dock stars from a review because of, is that Uma Thurman gets blown away with a shotgun at the beginning. If not a messy exit wound removing most of her back, she at least should have had a gaping hole in her chest, which somehow healed itself by her getting the shit kicked out of her even more. For the rest of the film, I kept thinking, "But what about that gaping shotgun wound in her chest?". Otherwise I really liked it and will now make a point to eventually check out Vol.1.

I drove up two hours to Mt. Tremper in upstate New York today to visit a monastery I had heard about, but their Sunday schedule had been cancelled for a Dogen conference that had been going on since Thursday. I stuck around for the closing of the conference and then for a dedication of a hermitage that was just completed for solitary confinement . . . actually, I have no idea what it will be used for. And then I stuck around for free lunch.

I talked to a few people. An older (she implied it, really I don't think she was that much older than me) Chinese American woman, originally from Berkeley who came east to attend Barnard College and then stayed out here. An older German doctoral candidate who saw me drive in with my road bike strapped to the back of my car chatted me up because she's a cyclist. And a younger white dude from Toronto talked with me a little while walking back from the hermitage blessing. All in all it seemed like a nice enough monastery, but not enough to travel two hours regularly to get to.

Oh, but the head honcho impressed me, the "Zen Master" whatever (who the hell feels comfortable being referred to as a Master? You don't see doctors who are the top of their game calling themselves Master Doctors or "I'm a Master Lawyer"), whose book I read last year and was blown away by. He had a New York accent and reminded me that one of my goals out here is to pick up a regional accent, but he was a charismatic old fella who gets your attention as soon as he opens his mouth. Otherwise, I may or may not go back to feel out their normal functioning.

Anyway, that German woman who chatted with me about cycling gave me a recommendation for a cycling route, and I think she may be pretty hardcore because the course ended up being a 42 mile killer. I was looking to do and was prepared for something about 30 miles, and she said it was about 25 miles, and I guess it was my fault since as big as a map geek I am, I could have seen from the map that the course was longer than 25 miles. Way longer than 25 miles.

I discovered a funny way that my short-term memory works, though. Maybe it's from years of killing brain cells with alcohol (**mmm, alcohol**). I memorized the route as she plotted it on the map, and also the little things she mentioned about it and to watch out for, but my short-term memory has almost zero recall before things actually happen. It was always after the fact that I thought, "oh, that was what she was talking about blah, blah, blah". For example, there was one intersection where I stopped for several minutes, at a loss which way to go, and after I chose (the correct way), I recalled her mentioning a certain unmarked sharp right turn and a sign leading to Woodstock. And it was too late that I recalled her mentioning a downhill that "you will be braking most of the way". It would have made more of an impact if she called it what it really was: a screaming suicide plunge. It was out of control, man. I was jamming on my brakes and unable to slow down to a comfortable speed. I came way too close to oncoming traffic on those small laned mountain roads than I care to, but the option was to risk going off the side. I hit 41 mph on a road that was far from smooth. It was a seriously bumpy, teeth-chattering, hand-jiving ride all the way down. The only times I've gone over 40 mph have been on long descents on a smooth road surface. That was just nuts. Yea, I'd like to see you doing the hand-jive while riding a bike.

Zen Mountain Monastery main building, Mt. Tremper, NY.


Blessing of the hermitage.


And ta-da! Here's one of the things I love about the East Coast. Rivers, streams, creeks. Just love crossing them, seeing them, thinking about what they are, what they do, what they symbolize. What do they symbolize anyway?

I don't know what's up with distances and scales here. I went for a ride up Rte. 9W and it felt like a full on ride, but I barely clocked 15 miles. I think 9W is a "standard ride" around here, the equivalent of the Paradise Loop back home, all cyclists do it at one point or another. I only went up to the second exit and returned along the awesome, wonderful, stupendous, splendiferous Hudson River Drive (will take camera along next time for river side views). I pushed the whole way, partly because the free-flowing car traffic was giving me a rush, partly because my brother used to do this ride when he was in high school, and he would go 35 miles out and 35 miles back. I was trying not to feel like a wuss, even though there's no comparison. He hasn't ridden in years and has switched to running, but if we both got on bikes now and headed up 9W, he would probably kick my ass. On the other hand, I might be able to beat him in urban riding because I think I have more of a "watch it, buddy, I'm riding here" attitude than he does. I don't think he carries a chip on his shoulder when he rides. He has too much to live for. He's a far better runner now than I ever was, too.

More pics:

Driving through Wyoming was pretty neat. The state is really high up, 5000ft-8000ft on Rte. 80, higher than any point on Rte. 80 going through the Rockies (which I did in the dark again, I also did it in the dark when I moved to San Francisco 11 years ago. I'm good at doing it in the dark). I wonder if that fact contributes to the "big sky" feel there is.


Sun rising in Wyoming.


Big sky.

I went and saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" with my brother yesterday.

I thought it was OK. Important material, definitely appreciated as mainstream media wouldn't touch it, but as a documentary, I think "Bowling for Columbine" was stronger. And being a knee-jerk liberal lefty from San Francisco (from San Francisco?, did I just say that?), nothing came as a huge shock.

I thought he could have made a more effective film by tightening it up and shortening it. Keep the focus on Bush, and at the end, bring it back to Bush since indicting Bush and his cronies is the point of the film. Instead he went for the emotional sucker-punch, which was great footage, coupled with that of the Iraqi woman, but too tenuously, I thought, connected back to Bush.

I'm not saying I could have done it any better, it was still quite a good doc and it keeps interest for the whole two hours. But critically, and pulling for the cause, I thought it would have been more effective if he didn't leave it on an emotional point, which in a documentary style as blunt as Michael Moore's seems a bit contrived having it at the end. We know how much it sucks to have our children, friends, and troops dying for a cause that isn't just. I would rather leave the theater outraged, reminded of the material presented at the beginning of the doc.

The movie makes some great points, though, especially regarding the primacy of power, money, and corporate influence in the Bush administration. It was a funny point when he says the American people pay Bush $400,000 per year, while the Saudis have been giving him and his corporations $14 billion over the course of many years - who do you think he's going to listen to first? If nothing else, though, the American people have the right to know material like this and come to their own conclusion. Bush's people are so shrouded in secrecy and confidentiality, but who is he working for?

On an aside, I'd like to see someone make a t-shirt with a stencil of Cheney, and the words "Fuck off" printed on it, and kids should wear them to school. The friggin' Vice-President said those words in a public forum, kids can't repeat what the Vice-President said in public? It's not some foul-mouthed rapper or pompous, arrogant sports star, it's the Vice-President.

When I was in California, I was starting to be proud, er, not embarassed about being from New Jersey. Now that I'm here again, I have a feeling I'm gonna be wondering a lot where/if these people were educated, or whether they're really from West Virginia and getting to the point where they are proud, er, not embarassed about being from West Virginia.

Anyway, I went and returned the rental truck the other day and had trouble finding the place, despite knowing the name of the place and having mapquest directions (am I the only one starting to get disillusioned by mapquest, or am I finally getting disillusioned by mapquest?). I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions...oh wait, I'm a guy, I stopped to look for a phone but ended up asking the attendant if he knew the place, and he didn't specifically. But he thought the address number was curious. When I asked if the numbers went down or up going west, he replied, "Sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down". Indeed.

Further down the road, I found a phone and called the number I had, and it turned out the place was right there next door from where I was calling, "Oh yea, there you are, I see you", she said on the phone. All of the workers at the drop-off location had the name of the place nicely embroidered on their shirts. However, there was not a single sign outside on the building indicating the name of the place. I'm back to thinking New Jersey as a mutant state. With only West Virginia to look down upon.

I brought my bike to get home from the truck place in Lodi. It's odd. I grew up in this area, and Lodi always seemed way out there - definitely driving distance, along with Hackensack and Patterson. But it's only about 13 miles from my parents' house. In San Francisco, that distance would get me as far as Sausalito without the return ride. But this distance from Lodi to my parents' house still seemed like a big deal. I wonder if it's my old perceptions of scale and distance around here that made it a big deal to ride those paltry 13 miles, or if it was my unfamiliarity with riding in this area. Maybe it was the semi-bike-unfriendly roads (car traffic isn't unfriendly to bikes, they've just never seen it). Maybe I'm just weird.

Moving pics. How this:


became this:


happy as a clam near the Great Salt Flats in Utah.


Isn't that special (Nevada):

On my last day in San Francisco, I was ranting about Brita pitchers and how unnecessary they are and how little they really do, but we think we're getting such huge benefits out of using them because of some corporate cultural sheep mentality. In fact, for the last several months, I drank water straight from the tap and it was perfectly good water. But, oig, when I tried New Jersey tap water, *bleah*. Out came the Brita pitcher and a ride to Walgreens in Fort Lee for a new filter. New York City has reportedly good tap water because they get it from the Adirondacks. If you ask for water at a New York restaurant, you're getting tap water and you'll hear no one complaining about it. New Jersey apparently gets it from the Hudson River.

July 3, 2004; 10:38 A.M. - Crossing the Mississippi River. Eleven years ago, there was flooding here and neighboring towns were in a state of emergency, including Davenport, Iowa. Looks the same to me. I had probably just told Carly that I wasn't going to stop in Chicago.


I think my bottom line is - try the tap water. If it tastes bad or doesn't feel right (hard water), then go for the filtration.

I drove across the country in just over three days. Three full days of driving and then arriving around noon on the fourth day. I don't recommend a solo haul like that. I did the same thing when I went to San Francisco eleven years ago, driving from Oberlin, Ohio in three days. Man, was I messed up when I arrove at my friend's apartment. This time I expected it and have the leisure to succumb to my body's rhythms to get back to normal, whereas back then I had to find an apartment and prepare for starting school. Was that really my life?

It's probably gonna be a while before I can sing along to a song with the word "San Francisco" in it without choking on the word. Interpret that however you like.

Plowing across the country like that allowed for mostly through-window-landscape shots. What could be more boring? So I'll smatter them about, as I am wont to smatter.

July 1, 2004; 11:02 A.M. - Nevada, 15 minutes or so outside of Reno.


July 1, 2004; 12:39 P.M. - Really, Nevada is a boring state to drive through. It's basically this for five hours. I love desert, but not boring desert. This is boring desert.

It's raining in New Jersey. Night-time low temperatures in New Jersey don't go down as far as San Francisco's daytime highs. I've got Dire Straits' live LP playing on the turntable and it sounds great. Stereo systems sound better in houses than in apartments for some reason. I'm clipping my fingernails with the special Japanese clippers that have the sides that prevent clippings from flying all over the place. You can get them in San Francisco, but I don't know if they have them here. And I'm thinking about Nebraska.

Nebraska - where I got out of the truck at a rest area and felt Summer for the first time in eleven years, with the possible exception of two Summers I spent in Bangkok. The humidity was high, the light glowed as the sun set, there was a smell of something burning in the distance, the interstate buzzed, there was a river flowing by, and I kept swearing I felt mosquitos on my arms. It was glorious, it was Summer, and I swooned. I bought a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine and felt it going down my throat.

For eleven years, the weather was. . . nice. A placid little microcosm where if you could tolerate a few minor idiosyncracies, it was perfect. No humidity, no extreme heat or extreme cold, rain isolated to a few months in Winter. It got old, man. Save it for Eden. Summers should be sweltering, Winters bitter, things should change, complement, dichotomize.

Never once in San Francisco did I buy a can of soda from a vending machine and feel it refreshing and cool down my throat.