Mere Christianity

"The longest way around is the shortest way home." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Heal

A friend from college visited me this past week, so I've not done a lot in the way of training. June 3rd is rapidly approaching and I find myself worrying about the little details of the Lifecycle.
With whom will I tent? How will I get back from LA? Where will I stay? It is a hopeless waste of energy to think about these topics if I am unwilling to attack them with some complementary constructive force. And I am unwilling.

Sarah's visit made me realize what a charmed life I've been leading in San Francisco. In almost every way, my life has improved. As we visited Alcatraz, walked across the span of the Golden Gate, rode the historic street cars and cable cars, walked through China town and along the beach, I was repeatedly struck with the simple thought: "I live here." But I'm a visitor, too. This wont be my city for long; it is my city now. I like that.

On Saturday I went for my longest-ever run with my roommate, Alyssa. She and my other roomie, Eliza, are doing a half-marathon in July. On Saturday we did half of the half. I was amazed at how easy it was for me. I am truly in some sort of shape; the best shape of my life by a factor of ten, I'll wager.

Yesterday, the 9th, I went on a 20 miler around the city. I had time from my little ambassedorship/respite to heal from some previous intense training.

Thank you to all 31 of you who've donated thus far. I'm almost to my goal, pending a boost from my bosses. And thanks for sticking with me through this blog.

1000 moments

Moments are one of those ill-defined temporal phrases people throw around due to laziness in language and convenience. I've been thinking about how full my life is lately, and how I live in moments. They are, after all, subjective measures of time. No one has the exact same sense of what a "moment" is, and, therefore, I am not surprised that I am left waiting on hold for 10 minutes when an automated voice interrupts shitty hold-music to inform me that the faceless corporation I'm calling will address my needs in a "moment". You get my point.

So, I am left at the end of each day to filter through those moments and extract some essence of a lesson or grand theme. Most days it is all I can do to take out my contacts and brush my teeth before retiring.

I went to Needle Exchange tonight, routine for me on Wednesdays. I take the 31 Balboa bus toward downtown. At Leavenworth street I debus and make my way through the damaged masses of the Tenderloin. I'm not being melodramatic here; all the people I see look abnormal, addled, angry, tired, disturbed, sick, dirty, desperate, lost. From the bus stop it is only 3 blocks south, but somehow these moments spend on the streets of the Tenderloin seem to stretch to fill my memory. I pass a middle aged man with an army sleeping bag on his back. As I approach to over take him, he is talking to himself and zig-zagging across the concrete sidewalk. I give him a wide berth--I once bumped a drunk homeless guy on the bus at 2am and spent the rest of my ride with him vociferating curses in my ear. I cross a busy one-way street as a gaunt white women spins and twirls as if the street were a field of high grass. She pauses to yell into the stopped traffic and holds up a single fist. She believes in something, presumably, as her fist is a signal and the hoards will rise up at her command and aid her with the harvest. Who knows really? Just another soul who slipped through the cracks of this capitalist social system we got going--safety nets a-plenty. Where is she from, where are her parents, what did she go through, do her siblings call, do people worry about her, does she remember sitting on a warm summer evening watching the lightening bugs flicker and court in the woods? Or was it always that she was misunderstood? Did anyone ever love her and show it?

Some of the clients, as we are told to call them, are amicable and willing to share the details of their situation, drug of choice, addiction, mechanics of drug administration, sexual preferences and so forth. Some of them sing to us, some nod off as we try to ask them questions. There are those few that seem to be functioning members of society. They do have one common thread, they, at one point, lived in the moment. What was the trigger? What was that first moment when they allowed a needle into their vein?

I while back I watched an HBO documentary called TV Junkie . Briefly, Rick Kirkham, a former TV journalist, started to document his life at age 14 with a movie camera he received as a present. It quickly became an obsession, so much so that he had accumulated 1000 hrs of film by the time the documentary was compiled and produced. He film everything, confessed everything, hid nothing from the camera. It was as if the camera was his Jesus-figure, his confessional, his receptacle of atonement. I don't mind telling you, I cried (mostly for his bewildered baby son).

The above mentioned documentary provides the sober and clean world with a glimpse into a situation of spiraling drug addiction. The subject is somewhat atypical as Mr. Kirkham is a successful white male, which most of HBO's audience is, so they presumably would feel more empathy compared with, say, a homeless black junkie.

Oh, it as been said before: "we all have our addictions". Human self-destruction is fascinating and seems to violate laws of nature we though were concrete. Maybe our evolution has progressed so far that our heads are too big, too complexed for the rules of life to contain. We can't, however, escape pathology and disease in particular. We can quite think our way out of everything and avoid suffering.

Donations

I want to list the people who've donated thus far. Their genereous and thoughful donations have summed a princely $1385.00 in total. Amazing. That puts me more than 50% to my goal of $2,500.00 with about a month and a half to go...

Their names and associations are:
Bonnie St. Clair- friend of the family
Jeffrey Steinhorn - Top Cat Alum
Stas Golubenko - Top Cat Alum
Jonathan West - Top Cat Alum
Rick Maclean - Uncle Rick
Julie Rwan - West Coast Friend
Dawn Kilmer - Sister
Gary Prevost - friend of the family
Rachel Broyles - VT friend
Annette Riggs - PCRC Doc and good friend
Jordann Talbot - ME friend
Talia Baruth - West Coast Friend
Samantha klein - VT friend (CT)
Megan Estey - VT friend
Kirsten Cremer - VT friend
Esther Szalay - Timmy's Mother-in-Law and my friend
Mark Farina - VT friend (CO)
Tim Wheelock - VT friend (CA)
Natalie Wade - Sister
Alina Dini - West Coast Friend
Marlene Berro - Boss and good friend and responsible for my introduction to cycling
Arlene MacLean - Mimi my grandma
Marisa Debowsky - VT friend (NYC)
Melinda Nelson - VT twin and second to donate
Sarah Nelson - VT twin and first to donate

I want to thank all of you. Some of those people who donated did on faith alone, as they do not know me personally; simply astonishing. You have invested your hard-earned money in me, in the future, in helping those who are so much less fortunate than us. Congratulations to all of you.

Encouragement party

Milestones: 750 miles logged on my bike. $1000.00 raised. Thank you all for your support so far. if you've not donated, do it today. aidslifecycle.org/donate/5423

Yes, yes. The fund-raising party was successfully thrown. While "fund-raiser" is not what it turned out to be, it did provide me with some perspective, as well a fantastic evening with old, and new, friends.

Before I share lessons learnt via fund-raising parties, I want to thank all of you who came. Anisha & company, Ally, Emilia, Nina & company, James, Tim, Downstairs Dave, Sarah, Goreman, Liz, Talia, Shosh & company, Marcia & company, my roommates Mike, Alyssa, Jess, Eliza. Steph made a brief appearence with Baloo, her doggie. All donated generously, for that and your company, I thank you kindly.

The a few that said they would show, didn't. Overall, I guess I expected the party to be larger, more lively. But it was mostly my fault, as I did not do anything creative. Truth is, I was competing against an entire city chaulked-fat with fun shit to do, and people routinely take a better offer. Worst yet, a lot of people made very short appearences. I don't know what I expected... You get trapped into your own little world when you commit yourself to an undertaking such as this one (the ALC). You begin thinking the entire planet A) knows what you are doing, B) is as stoked about it and, C) commiserates completely with the difficulty of your fund-raising task. Plus, I take shit too personally.

By 12am, I stopped caring about how many people showed, or whether I actully raised any money. All I knew was I had a table in a cozy living room surrounded by old friends Ally, Tim, James, and new friends, Liz, Emilia, Dave. We had plenty of good beer, and cards. James brought out some of his talent and creativity, and we feasted on it.

Further enncouragement came fought the prevailing winds and arrived from the East this week. My mother finally got around to reading this blog. Her subsequent review (as seen as comments to some of my posts) has been very encouraging and inspiring. At the very least I know my mother is reading my posts.

Easter Ride

Crockett and Back

My natural and most stable state is to live week to week. Lately, this has been working in my favor. This strategy has the correct teeth to mesh with the gears of my current situation.

Life is sunny and fine and full here--a perfect respite from life in New England. I am very homesick, and become more so each day I spend here. It is just that the positive activities and people in my life right now deafen me to the homesick groans from the East. Life is good, indeed.

This past Sunday I rode with two fellow New Englanders, one of whom I met in a most random way. Nina and I met exactly 2 weeks earlier on Caltrain, on my way back from Santa Cruz. She got on the train somewhere near Palo Alto, sporting the instantly recognizable garb of the ALC6 participant: a orange logoed wind-breaker. At the end-of-the-line, San Francisco, I mentioned something about the AIDS Lifecycle to Dave and she perked up. Within a couple of seconds we were planning a ride together, so eager is the ALC6 participant for training opportunities.

Anyway, Sunday found me waiting at the predetermined spot, the Civic Center BART station. There I met Nina and Emilia (who was already on the train), and together we were whisked out of the city and into the East Bay.

I became acquainted with Emilia, and more so with Nina on the train ride out to Orinda. I love New Englanders, especially ones from Massachusetts. For the most part they are friendly, bookish, open, easy to talk to. Plus, I guess, we have somethings that are very visceral in common, e.g. a slavish loyalty to Dunkin' Donuts...

Nina found a great and initially easy route from Orinda to Martinez and back: 51.5 miles (total from home and BART station) and 4,000ft of total climb. The ride was beautiful. The scenery was strangely European, or fairytale-esque: rolling green gumdrop hills with cows peppering the lower slopes and even, occasionally perched at their tops. I've said it before, I am always amazed with the natural beauty of this place. It is as verdant as Vermont (this time of year): totally unexpected by me.

We were in reservoir country in the beginning of the ride. Everywhere there were "protected watershed" signs hung on fences lining the roads. Down and down we when, for miles and miles. From looking at the cue sheet for this ride and seeing that we were doubling back, we would be climbing all this on the way back.

On the way into Crockett we were met with a great view of the Carquinez Bridge, a suspension bridge on which interstate 80 runs, the main artery from the Bay Area to Sacramento.


Climbing (on a bike) has become an interesting obsession of mine as of late. The physics of climbing are rather interesting. When riding a loop (which you almost always do), you have to come to terms with the downhills, for you know you will climb every foot on the way back. The question is, how quickly will you climb? If you do a total of 4,000ft climbing in 50 miles, that could be easy if it is spaced out over all those miles. But, as it was with this ride, it is usual crunched into, well, hills. This ride has almost ALL the climb in the last 20 miles, which made it especially challenging.

So challenging, in fact, that I almost missed a dinner date I had with Jules, I was out there for so long! I actually left Nina and Emilia in the last 15 miles and rode as fast as I could to BART. Turns out, I did most of the climbing by myself...

Momentum

Bonita Lighthouse and Tiburon Loop

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

The solitary nature of my life is not easy to tell. Compared to my time in Vermont, I am considerably alone. When I arrived at UVM I started seeing Samantha almost immediately, and from that point on I was not alone until a year ago. February 14th I sent her a dozen anonymous roses, and that was the last "good thing" I did for her. I was, in her words, a bad boyfriend. She was right. I did not treat her as if we had a future, for deep down I knew we didn't. Disillusioned by my indecisiveness about our relationship and with UVM in general, she pulled out of her excursion into Northern New England and started to reconnect with her roots: Judaism (or identifying as a Jew) and New York values and culture. I realize now I caught her in the typical post-high school discovery phase, when the Jewish suburban girl ventures to Vermont to lead a "green" life, save the planet and date a local backwoods boy.
So it has been a year and 4 months since I've been out here, and I've been alone--just to reiterate. It is what I sought in Burlington quite often, and what I was able to get growing up in Maine . The rail-road tracks use to be my refuge. It is more than a cliché: the rurally raised, discontent youth taking his guitar down to the tracks and writing tortured prose and poetry. Clichés exist, sometimes, because they are unavoidably ubiquitous.

Since I've discovered cycling I feel as if I've returned to those tracks in Central Maine. I set out alone and spend time in a solitary state; me, music and my wandering mind. Signing up for the Lifecycle as given me plenty of motivation to get out and on the road.

I spent a solitary Friday morning with coffee and a book (The Selfish Gene) in Alamo Square Park. Later, my good friend Steph took me surfing for the first time. It did really well at first, popped up on the board and all. But, about 2 hours in I began to get sea sick.

Saturday morning I set out to tackle a headland ride I've been meaning to do for a while. It was suppose to be a small ride, but turned into a sizable day of riding. After crossing the bridge I continued up a considerable grade, probably 800ft in 1.5miles. My gearing was acting up, so I didn't climb this impediment as gracefully as I normally would. Yet, I cannot help but notice the constant and delightful improvement I made from week to week.I took this picture (left) at the top of the climb.

The descent down the back was incredibly steep. I was on my way to Bonita Lighthouse, perched on dark, sheer, distinctly Northern Californian cliffs located at that

famous opening to San Francisco Bay. This picture is from a lookout just North(right). I continued east into beautifully perserve landscape of hills and valleys with plently of winding trails for mountain biking and hiking. Would you believe that I'm less than 5 miles from a major city?

I rode through on tireless legs, jamming to my iPOD and thoroughly enjoying the warm sun. It is amazing how quickly the temperature rises as you move inland. After passing through a tunnel that bores under the most coastal hills of the headlands, I turned onto the road leading to Sausalito. I could've turned right and headed for home, but I just didn't want to stop. This is pattenly unlikely me. I catch myself really pushing while I ride.

Below are some pictures I took from Tiburon, a rich little town at the end of the loop I tacked on to the Lighthouse ride. I talked to my sister while I was on the phone and told her I would post these pictures I took while we spoke. These are for you Natalie...

At the end of the day I was pretty impressed with myself. I did 55 miles and 3600ft of climbing, averaging 14.3 miles an hour. Strong enough for now, but I've got much greater challenges to train for! Aidslifecycle.org/5423 donate today! and thank you.

Get your money's worth

San Francisco to Santa Cruz via Highway One

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Getting your money's worth...

Not by going to Costco, by riding your bike to Santa Cruz; I run on cheaply on 3 Clif bars.

My training needs to fit around my life, you see. So, when Ally told me about a birthday party I "simply must attend", I decided to combine training with pleasure. It is 80 miles from SF to Santa Cruz. I would've been my longest ride, and I'd be doing it by myself.

Sometime in the middle of the week I saw my downstairs neighbor Dave, a very well-rounded, very smart, atheletic Stanford alum. It was on my way out for a ride and the subject of my inpeding journey came up. To my great relief he offered to go with me.

So Saturday morning we started out around 9am from San Francisco and into uncharted (for us) roadways south. We hit hills immediately south of the city, and the climbs increased in length and grade until, around mile 25, we ascended up a sizable knoll separating the towns of Pacifica and Half Moon Bay. It was hell so early in the ride. The scencery was straight out of the California tourism commercial: winding roads, steap kaki-sided cliffs topped with green velt and a pewter see beyond. The day was full of fog for the first part of the ride, but peaked out and through the fog to let its beams dance on the distance water. I was too hypoxyic to enjoy it then, but it is beautiful to recall now.

The road flattened out after Half Moon Bay, however we never escaped the constant uphill downhill motif of Rte 1. The amplitude of the hills decreased, thankfully, so we could enjoy the sights of coast.

The miles past, 50, 60, 70. I officially passed 500 miles on my bike odometer. I also surpassed my original distance record of 55 miles. The last 10 miles into Santa Cruz presented us with some of the steeper hills. Thankfully, there were introduced by equally impressive down grades. It was actually possible to get enough momentum to make it up 3/4 of most the hills before gearing down and pumping.

I could go on and on about the night that followed. I could tell you that Dave, Ally, company and I drank heroic amounts of booze, and that I fell asleep at 9:30pm. But I'll let some pictures do the talking.

Dry spell

If you've been keeping up with my log then you know I've not quit or dropped of the face of the Earth. If you haven't, then you probably suspected I did.



The weekend of the 10th and 11th I took a glorious little respite in Wine Country, just North of the Bay Area in an area know as Russian river. It was Mike's (my friend Julie's long-time boyfriend) 30th birthday. I met a great group of people and made an enormous ass out of myself, in my usual fashion (road rage). It was all wine and song and, then at 3:30am on the 11th, some tequila. F-U-N.

During that next week I was kinda all business. I did two solid rides on Monday and Thursday after work.
Thursday's ride was particularly interesting, as it included a small hike on some trails (I got lost in the Presidio). It involved me lifting my bike up onto my shoulder, and while grunting prehistorically, hiking about 1000ft through the woods. Again, F-U-N. But I get ahead of myself. I started out going through the Presidio on my normal route to the Bridge, but I decided to go west. I rode into the Sea Cliff area of San Francisco, a very exclusive neighborhood with big beautiful homes behind big beautiful gates. Robin William's main residence is in this area, just to give a measure of the caliber of the inhabitants.

Anyway, I found my way up a unexpected, huge hill (well, it is San Francisco so it was not COMPLETELY unexpected), but I was rewarded well for my efforts. That the crest of the hill sat the Palace of Fine Arts. Yeah, never been inside, but the outside is awesome, especially if you like neo-Greco-Roman architecture (and I do). Plus, there were great views of the Bridge and the Downtown Area. I love this about living in a city. I feel like all this things, these most famous things, are MINE. It is weird, cause they are most definitely not. But still, I look at the bridge and the Palace: those are mine.

So, I departed from that hill top with all the monuments I "own", went on my little trek and took a picture of a big golden sunset. It was just me, my bike and the glory of creation in front of me. It is strange that I always seem to fall in love when I am reverent of the natural world. It brings out the goodness in me, and that has been missing lately. Oh, that sun set: I got it with my Sony digital camera. Now that is mine too, yours if you want it.