Day 3: Eugene --> Salem

Mmm, road mirages. I think I've seen mirages before, but I never recognized one until last weekend when I looked at what I thought was a wet slick on the road, only to have it disappear as we approached in our car. Well, ha ha, the next day on the bike there was a mirage every mile or two. So on day three, when it's eight, nine in the morning and I start spotting them, it annoyed me. It wasn't even that hot yet; I felt like the weather was just messing with me for the hell of it.

Well, it never did get that hot and so I practiced deliberate indifference toward the false puddles. It was, in fact, cool enough to wear my hoodie all day, which saved me a lot of discomfort and sunscreen trouble midday. In general, day three felt remarkably routine; it was relatively no trouble at all. I kicked off the first two hours - Eugene to Harrisburg - like it was nothing. When I was hungry, though more frequent than at rest, it was normal hunger, not an "I need what's in that food" sensation. When I got back to Salem, I felt warm and fuzzy and happy to rest, but I wasn't spent - I could've gotten back on my bike and pushed onto Portland given enough time and patience.

From Harrisburg up to Albany I took 99. It was a little boring, but it was very straight, very flat, and of similar aesthetic and traffic quality to a typical country road on this trip. Peoria Rd. was nice, but I think 99 is the best way through.

On the outskirts of Albany I noticed something funny and figured out my back tire was squishy. I tried just pumping it up right there and it seemed to work, so I continued on. A sense that was it wasn't entirely fixed nagged at me though, and perhaps a mile later I knew I needed to check it again. It was squishy, but I thought maybe I'd let too much air out accidentally when removing the pump hose. If it was a puncture, it was clearly a pretty slow leak and maybe I could get to the park I'd stopped at on the way down before it became unrideable. I checked to make sure it was firm before getting back on. Again it took about a mile to fail, and I wasn't at my park, but I recognized the clock tower of the Albany Amtrak station, so I walked the bike over, sat in the shade, grabbed a few bites of an egg sandwich and started taking the wheel apart.

The repair went pretty well overall. While looking over the tire, I found a piece of wire stuck into it that was almost certainly the problem. The leak didn't show itself at first, but with enough pressure I was able to find it. It was difficult and painful to pop the bead back into the rim, but I eventually managed it, and the patch held.

Buena Vista Rd., despite giving me quite a lot of trouble on Monday, is really one of the nicest roads on the route, though I prefer riding it in the morning. I think I prefer everything in the morning.

Just inside of Independence, on River Rd., I found a wallet on the side of the road. It had an ID with a Salem address, and a business card for the Marion County sheriff's office. Since I would have felt weird either leaving a lost wallet or carrying it for two hours into the city unsure where to take it, I was glad to see the sheriff's office number. I called and they said to bring it with me and call when I was in town, after which they came to pick it up.

It turns out that the trouble with my camera was very mundane. There was no memory issue; the hand/exclamation symbol is a warning about bad photographic conditions. The picture that wouldn't take was a fluke. A random selection of the pictures I thought I took aren't there because I didn't actually take them: apparently the camera button has two clicks, and the first one is only focusing or something. I've been careful about pushing down all the way and all my pictures have been successful since then. So only some of the way down has pictures, but I'm taking pictures on the way back of anything that I recognize as something I snapped, then lost. Some of it, like the "entering Lane County" sign, looked better in the original direction and lighting, but what can you do?

Tomorrow I come home!

Day 2: Salem --> Eugene

River Rd. out of Salem was beautiful, though some insect flew into me and stung me. It sounded like a bee but I didn't see it. The next bee that tried to buzz around me, while I was applying my first batch of sunscreen, got an earful of Deadwood-worthy cursing. After that, they were everywhere; some bumped into me while others just buzzed closer than I liked.

Independence was a cute little intersection that ended River Rd., but then the trouble started. I was on Corvallis Rd., and I passed Buena Vista Rd. I remembered that road as being somewhere between Albany and Harrisburg, so I thought wow, that road goes for a long way and I could get on it now, but I'd rather ride different roads. I had forgotten about it by the time I met another sign saying "Buena Vista" and again turned away. Then I thought wait - that was a really straight shot, I bet I WAS supposed to take Buena Vista. Checked my directions and found I was right. I went back (up a hill) and saw that it was Prather Rd., and realized it was probably directing me to the town Buena Vista. I didn't want to take an unknown road, so I turned forward again. Then remembered I actually had seen Buena Vista Rd. already, and way too far back to feel like retracing. So I went back again and took Prather Rd., knowing that if I got to the town I'd be able to find the road named after it.

Eventually I got to Buena Vista Rd. I wasn't sure how far east the sun would be at this time in the morning, but I judged one way went southeast-ish and the other was some form of west. So I took the southeast one, and everything seemed to be fine for a long time. Then I ran back into Corvallis Rd. Corvallis Rd. was a loopy one, so I didn't immediately think disaster, but this wasn't the one I was supposed to run into. I asked someone for directions and realized that I had gone in a fucking circle, and between a bendy road and not knowing how far east the sun was, I'd never figured that I was going the complete wrong direction. Apparently I rode this entire loop over:

Upon learning this, I turned around and thought maybe I should have checked my direction when I was in Buena Vista since the road turned into Meridian Street. But as soon as I entered town and saw the sign, it made a 90 degree bend. What the hell kind of meridian is that? Now I just say "chaos theory." You misremember a detail from your directions, you end up riding twelve extra miles around 9-10 am. On the hottest damn day of the year.

As I finally got to the last road into Albany, it was too hot. Now I used to go to Bikram and so I know can exercise in supercentenarian temperatures, but I was also really tired of riding after that extra loop. Between noon and 1 I stayed under a tree in a park and then it was really too hot. I tolerate hot air temperatures pretty well, but the overhead direct sunlight was a killer and Oakville Rd didn't have much shade. I also unexpectedly had to cross Hwy 34, which is why I will be trying 99 on the way back up. I took a break in a shady cove just before it joined up with Peoria Rd, which was prettier. Peoria Rd. went slow and steady - constant water, frequent momentary stops in the shade, and a perpetual battle to stay covered in sunscreen. As the sun got more oblique, I noticed riding into Harrisburg about 4:30 that the heat was already more bearable. I really think it's the direct irradiation that bugs me.

Stayed for about an hour and then hopped onto the 18-mile Coburg Rd. Now that it seemed to be liquid-warm rather than baking-hot and the long shadows made everything look beautiful, it was actually pretty enjoyable. Riding into Eugene in the early evening felt like the reward I deserved after a long day. I rode down Coburg Rd., noting where it crossed Harlow, and over the Ferry St. bridge into downtown, where I got cash from an ATM, and then continued into West Eugene to meet my friend.

I arrived covered in a gritty paste of TiO2 nanoparticles, sodium-potassium-chloride-phosphate salt, dust, and variously sourced oils. Ate Taco Bell for dinner, grabbed some groceries at Fred Meyer, and took a bus to his apartment, finding out that my UO ID still works as a bus pass.

Then I was very sleepy.

Camera issues

I have no idea what is going on with my camera. A little red hand with an exclamation mark appeared in the window and it didn't take the picture - the click didn't happen. I changed some setting from "1 M" to 0.3 M." I took another picture and it worked. Then I called my mom to get suggestions and decided to look for old pictures that weren't mine and delete them, thinking this seemed like a memory issue. There weren't any - there were only 32 pictures on the camera and a bunch of pictures I did take were also missing, in random places throughout the trip. The last picture, however, was there.

I called my mom back and she didn't have any more ideas so I just decided to go try and take pictures, see if the problem happened again immediately or if it was fixed. I took quite a few pictures around the university (of my favorite places there) and the same symbol appeared a few times in white, then went away. The click and the momentary freeze-frame kept happening so it seemed like it was working. I checked the photos and none of the new ones had appeared; the same 32 were there. I thought for a bit that maybe there were multiple storage spots in the camera and I was viewing the wrong folder or something, but I couldn't find anything in the menu that looked like that. So now I'm just blindly clicking the camera and hoping that pictures are being taken, the missing ones still exist, and we'll find them when we plug the thing into the computer. Otherwise the photo record of this trip is going to be pretty poor.

Day 1: Portland --> Salem

TIMELINE:

6:36 AM - left house in SE Portland
8:00-8:10 - stopped in Oregon City
10:05-11:00 - stopped in Canby
2:40-3:00 - stopped in Mt. Angel
5:30 PM - arrived at dad's in NE Salem

So I left Portland easily, as Clinton/Woodward hit the river pretty much right at the start of the Springwater Corridor. I spent the first couple of miles checking the half-mile posts and wondering how long I would care. Answer: about ten miles. I had my directions in my pocket at first, and at the top of nasty hill in Milwaukie, I noticed they'd fallen out. I didn't want to climb that hill again, didn't know how far back I'd lost them, and didn't want to waste time. I knew what I was doing out to Oregon City, so I decided to keep going and find more directions there. Luckily, a Best Western Inn was right there when I rode in, and they let me use their lobby computer to recreate my entire directions.

Oregon City was horrible. It was all uphill through the city, and the main road to Canby - Central Point Rd - was very difficult. There were long stretches of downhill coasting at 20-30 (?) mph, followed by equally long and steep hills, some of which I had to walk up. It was well-placed in the day, and I was also lucky that the clouds didn't start to clear until I got to Canby. I'm not looking forward to those hills during the third quarter of the last day in the afternoon sun when I do it the other direction.

I was surprised how quickly my strength rebounded. After about an hour sitting in a park in Canby and eating lunch, I felt practically new.

Just outside Canby, it was a series of flat country roads in between nice gardens. When I got to the longest straight shot - Needy Rd - it presented a series of medium-height valleys. Each hill on the other side, I wouldn't have wanted to climb starting from flat, but with the momentum from each preceding descent I could actually coast about halfway up. Eventually however I came across this confusing intersection:



It looks like a straight shot on the map, but there's just enough of a curve to make it look like a more or less equal three-way split at the intersection. My notes only said that Monte Carlo turned into Barlow, so I picked the wrong Barlow Rd and wasted several miles before I noticed the sun was behind me, and I was pretty sure all the temporary jaunts north were supposed to be done by this point.

So I got into Mt. Angel later than expected and pretty tired of riding. I knew I needed a rest, but I also knew I didn't want to spend a lot of time there. So I sat and leisurely but methodically performed each task I might want to do to prepare for the last leg: reapply sunscreen, eat an energy bar, take pictures, refill my water bottles, make room in my bag for my hoodie. It took about twenty minutes. I knew I was (give or take) around two hours out of Salem, so I mentally divided my remaining distance into the first hour - which I was ready to undertake immediately - and after I'd finished that, I'd have just one more hour left - no worse than a long cross-city trip in Portland.

The last leg was the weirdest. The terrain was pretty flat, hot and dusty. I'd tired out my legs and made good use of my lungs in the Oregon City hills, and through the midpoint of the trip my butt got sore and I needed my food and water more often. Now, my wrists and elbows started to ache. But after so long riding, so much physical demand, it was like my body said "ok, whatever. I'll do whatever you want." I was aware of the ache in my joints but it didn't bother me. It must have been some kind of endorphins, but it wasn't the same rush I'm familiar with after running - the pain wasn't entirely gone and there also wasn't any pleasure, just a lack of suffering.

The mental weirdness had started partway between Canby and Mt. Angel, but peaked here. Every so often, I would "wake up" and think "yup, I'm still riding my bike." It was as if I suddenly noticed it was unusual, yet had been doing it for so long I couldn't process it as anything out of the ordinary. I had little sense of progress sometimes - I couldn't tell if I'd been riding for fifteen minutes or forty minutes since the last road change, or the last time I "woke up", and in the course of an eleven-hour day, couldn't care too much. The ride stopped seeming like something with forward movement, as I'd rightly thought of it in the first half, and became a cyclical, immanent state of being like the fact that one must prepare meals, eat them, and do the dishes repeatedly in everyday life. As much as the amount of distance covered and time elapsed, I think it was this shift in my state of mind that made the hills of Oregon City seem so very remote when I remembered them. Really? I was gritting through those nasty hills this morning?

STATS:

Miles traveled: ~70
Hours on the road: 11
Hours in the saddle: 9.5
Bottles of water drunk: 7
Energy bars eaten: 6
Emergen-C's consumed: 2

After I finished, my wrist and elbow joints felt swollen and hot, and I felt like I had a post-run endorphin rush only it lasted for more than an hour. My hunger for dinner was different; it wasn't hunger pangs in my stomach, nor the cranky dissatisfaction I associate with low blood sugar, but a primal certainty that I needed food in order to live. My tiredness cast itself in life-and-death terms too; I felt like the sleep I needed was far more than the sleep I normally get and would have to be a temporary death, a complete dropping out of the world. I woke up at 6 because my dad was getting up to set up his moving sale, but I took another nap later in the morning and hunted down protein all day. I was surprised how little soreness I had in my muscles. About 24 hours after I'd arrived, I felt totally normal again.

I'm glad I planned this trip out to be so lengthy. I get to do this again, and then I'm in Eugene, yay, and then I get to wind it all down by going over it in reverse. Tomorrow, it looks like there are some tricky hills just outside Salem, but nothing like Oregon City. It looks to be a steady grade up out of Harrisburg into Eugene, but quite possibly some mild up-and-down like Needy Rd. We'll see.

And the fun begins

Tomorrow I get up 6AM, whip up a quick-but-hearty breakfast (oatmeal, egg, yogurt shake and black tea), and hit the long long road to Salem.

You know what's a real trip? Getting up an hour and a half earlier than usual to the first cloudy day in a week. I kept stressing out because I had "so much to do" and it felt like late afternoon already... then saw it wasn't even two yet. Plenty of time. I even hung out with a couple of people briefly and fit in a run, not to mention lots of leisure reading in the morning.

This trip has ended up being more expensive than I'd hoped, but a great deal of it is in good investments (bike stuff, sweatpants), and what is money for if not things like this? I think I'll still be able to buy three new pairs of pants this summer, which were the most important items I wanted. Also, I have a LOT of bulk food, so I could probably cut down on my consumption of perishables and save money that way.

Funny thing... while working out my directions, I noticed that Oregon City is just like West Eugene - a bunch of streets named after early presidents in order. And High St., and Willamette, though not quite in the same positions.

Everything is packed except my lunch, purse, and phone. My breakfast and tomorrow's clothes are laid out.

Here we go.

My visit to Reed

I love Reedies. I rode in from the Steele side, and drawn into the sidewalk was a chemical drawing of psilocin. Not even psilocybin, but the dephosphorylated, bioactive psilocin. How geekarifically specific! There were some other chemical drawings too, but I the sidewalk was pretty worn and I couldn't tell what they were. I think one might have been another tryptamine though.

I talked to the registrar, financial aid, and business affairs. The registrar took a couple of classes off my transfer credit (Reed doesn't have a WGS department, and Phys 162 hardly counts as physics) which dropped me down to freshman standing. I will have seven semesters of financial aid, which schedules me to graduate in December, but hey whatever. I can also petition for an extra semester if needed, which they say is typically granted for transfer students. In mid-August I can start talking to department secretaries about possible work-study as a lab assistant.

Then I went for a run through the campus, and read another chapter of the Iliad on the banks of the pond.

Reed itself is beautiful and so is everything east and south, so it's pretty astounding how ugly the neighborhood just north of the college is. Crossing Powell at 33rd in the hot sun is a singularly unpleasant experience, and Holgate has a bunch of nasty curves right around there - but I don't think there's any better place to cross without going out to 42nd.

Fragments of dreams

I had a weird series of dreams this morning, four distinct fragments that did not seem to cohere, yet were all remembered upon awakening. Here are two:

***

I'm helping to set up a party and there's a young man and woman in charge. They're in their early to mid twenties, but the dynamic is as if they were much older or I were much younger. It's not with Lost Rocket's folks, but the house looks the same and the "of course I'm here four hours early" thing is very similar. I feel like I'm being very helpful for about an hour when I do something stupid, I think standing on the table or something. The man really gets on my case about it and I apologize but I tell him I feel like I've been very helpful so far and he's being really harsh on this one mistake. The woman says that quite the opposite, I've been an annoyance and a hindrance the whole time. I angrily tell them that fine, I will leave and not come back until the party actually starts, and I do. I'm aware of the fact that even though they made me feel like a little kid, I'm actually an adult and can do that. Later, not at the party but on the street, they see me and want to take my picture and seem to pretend nothing happened. I flip them off, forcing them to take my picture that way or not at all. They opt not to take the picture, which is what I hoped they would choose, and I've also made the point that they can't just hurt me like that and then ignore it.

---

I'm in the grocery store when I see my grandma Pat. At least I think I do. Then I go closer and there seem to be two of her. The one I saw has a rounder face and then there's one with a more square jaw and I conclude the second one is actually my grandma and the other is her sister. I go over and say hi to her, then my dad shows up and we all chat. Then she says something and it sounds rather philosophical, when I realize she's quoting a song, some 90's hit I know. (When I wake up I realize it's Glycerine.) My dad does that funny I'm-about-to-change-the-subject laugh and says he'd better get going. I say "why, 'cause grandma is quoting 90's pop?" He goes off and I say I ought to get back to my grocery shopping too. But when I go back to my aisle I can't remember a thing I wanted to buy.

***

In other news, I found someone to stay with in Eugene, so it's happening! This is gonna be really fun.

Week long crazy bike road trip

I'm going to ride my bike to Salem on Friday and spend next weekend with my dad. Then, if I can find a place to stay, I'm going to hop back on the bike Monday and continue on to Eugene. Inconveniently, Dancing Physicist has already gone home and so I can't stay with him, but I still feel like I want to go back to Eugene, so I'm thinking of calling up a couple of people I met who actually live there. It's a bit of a long shot, but maybe it'll work. Otherwise I'm just going to Salem and back, or cooking up something like camping on the coast, but I don't know how much fun that would be. I'll take a rest day at my dad's on the way back, and then be back in time for my sister's birthday.

If Dancing Physicist is around for long enough and gives me the green light, I'd love to do a multi-day bike trip, camping on the way, out to the Wallowas later in August. I love the idea of just going the places I want to go on my own power. I don't need extra money and I don't need anyone else besides at my endpoints. Get me intrepid enough with a tent, and I wouldn't even need that.

Things to do this week:

- Get bike supplies (road pump, patch kit, a couple tubes, and H2O bottle cages)
- Plan my food and make energy bars
- Talk to several offices at Reed
- Go to Harry Potter, and hang out with sister while others shop for her birthday

Fair warning: this is a long one, and sentimental too

So while I was listening to music last night I wrote a long mopey thing that I thought of as my next blog post, but wisely left until the morning in case I decided it was too mopey (and hormonally inspired) for the eyes of others. I've decided to post it anyway. Don't think I'm depressed.

***

I was listening to music. Joyful music, the Cocteau Twins, music that has always been associated somehow with my brightest dreams for the future. So I listened, and the visions filled my head, and I felt buoyant... until a dismal revelation crept up on me, and I realized "the future" is already here, and I'm so terribly off track.

The visions. Oh they're not so literally visual, like a screenplay in my head, but they're flashing images - colors - emotions - little scraps of knowledge. I think I'm with someone, someone I love. I think I wanted to fall wildly in love. Look at my love life now, it's in chains. The best of my love waiting for someone who may or may not ever come around, and the scraps of feeling for the person I was with before just reminding me, just barely tempting me to go back and get one more hug from someone who really shouldn't take me back, although he would, but I won't, because I'm not that dumb and I've been through the damn cycle too many times. And there's bright colors, sunlight, flowers, rivers, tall grasses, it's summer... an Alaskan summer, I'm almost sure. God, all this time I think I just wanted to be a copy of my mom.

But I'm not. I never will be. I never could be.

There's a Portland moment too, one that actually happened, one that happened to me. I was in the bedroom, the one that's part of the kitchen now, and this must have been before the addition because a sunbeam is coming through the window that goes into my sister's room now, and little dust particles floating in it. They look like magic - they look like gold. I was alone in there, I think I can even remember a dark blue sheet, or maybe that was the paint, but that was the color in the room. Yeah, there are Portland dreams too. Some house where we went to a party once, who knows who it belonged to, but it was the perfect Portland house, with a backyard and grapevines or whatever kind of vines and I think an arbor somewhere. Maybe a porch swing too, or maybe that's just me making things up. If I had some David Garza right now it'd be the perfect color, a translucent yellow-green that screams warm summer evening with friends and drinks. I can imagine the upstairs, I don't know if I've even been in a house that looks like this, but I just know there would be teenagery bedrooms all dark with oh I don't know, Nirvana posters, but one window lets in light, gently rather than directly. More dark blue, fresh air, a casual attitude toward cleaning and a place that just kind of absorbs it. Roommates who don't care, roommates who are just laid-back carefree laughing Portland twentysomethings. How am I ever going to be one of those laughing Portland twentysomethings?

I want my kitchen to look like the kitchen of friend of mine from New Day School. My parents say we called her Purple Sara but I just remember she was the Sara without an H at the end.

None of it involves science. None of it involves college or even a whiff of the erudite. Then again, none of it involves a job of any kind and those are rather necessary. God, I've been into science for so long, I get so absorbed in it, but what if it's just the /wrong direction/? None of it sure as HELL involves sitting around a house with only two windows that open, never so much as getting dressed some days except for my run, with all my friends busier than I am and putting all my energy into loving my body, as if that could be fulfilling. Yeah yeah, a body out of whack will screw up everything else, and it's great that I'm getting some exercise now, and I'm sure it's good that I decided to stop giving a shit about my weight. But really, I am so conscientiously listening to this body because I have nothing better to do, and it is NOT ENOUGH.

I want somebody else to love my body too. I want to love their body in return. And their soul, their mind, their love for me. In the middle of a dust-mote-ridden sunbeam pouring through the open window at nine in the morning, or eight, some quiet hour before our friends have awoken on a weekend, before the clock commands anyone with sense to get out and do things - but there we are, already arisen, because life is better than sleep, better to open our eyes, enjoy each other and enjoy being alive.

Nature. Love. A reason to get up in the morning. There's really no reason for me to get up lately except the fact that I wake up. No wonder I sleep until 9:30, 10, 11. I'm sure a lot of this is just due to my unusually dramatic hormone shift this month (my headache is coming back too). Also, I'll meet new people and get really busy at Reed. But boy do I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of giant mess on the opposite side of the planet from what I dreamed of as a kid. Yet every single thing I imagined belongs in this very time zone. How can I break through this invisible barrier? Did I just come twenty years late, or forty? Would I have just had different, irreplaceable dreams then? Oh I don't know, I don't know.

***

A few after-the-fact notes:

* My love life in chains does not in any way imply that I'm closed off to love. I'd be incredibly happy to meet a nice Reedie boy and fall for him. Just that it's a little hard to believe, right now, that I could let myself go fully and fall into that stuff of my dreams. I want to, but it's just a little hard to believe in right now.

* The co-op where one of my friends at UO lived was very very close to my Nirvana-postered Portland house. They still exist.

* I love my mom. She's the best. And I'll always remember that she thinks it's funny and interesting when I talk about chemistry.

* Yeah, all my friends are busier than me and I'm bored. Lost Rocket is in New York right now I think; I forget for how long. Senor Evergreen is leaving to go on a road trip across the country and won't be back until the end of August. My other friend (he'll get a blog name soon) is going on the second half of that road trip so I've still got a few weeks with him but like Dancing Physicist he doesn't have a cell phone so he's a little hard to get ahold of. Dancing Physicist himself is in Eugene and Fidelity has been out of town a lot so I still haven't seen her yet. Bother. Knee-Man lives close to me, but he doesn't always answer his phone and well, what do we have in common anyway? I imagine he'd be game for a bike ride sometime though... and there's a couple other people I know from MLC, but it's always hard to establish a new friendship with someone you haven't seen in a while. They've already got their own stuff going on. Gosh I need to go to Reed and find people who like to do the same things as me.

Downphase is also a pain in the ass - er, head

Headache... dull diffuse headache that almost doesn't even deserve the name but it's distracting - it's better when I lie down or when I put my head down low, and I think exercise would help too, eventually I will get around to running today. Drank two liters of water and it helped out my digestion, but not the headache... I blame low blood pressure. Estrogen raises it and progesterone lowers it, so it figures when progesterone gets rolling and estrogen drops, the BP will have to go down... well I can theorize, but I'll never really know.

Downphase likes different food

I think I just crashed my way into Week 3*, in part because I am desiring entirely different food than I did a couple of days ago. The cottage cheese I was eating for breakfast didn't interest me this morning, and the green pepper that looked so crisp and inviting when I bought it seemed boring, crunchy, and watery today, its delicate vitamineral content wasted on my palate. I'm not even sure I care for another meal of rice and beans. A cup of stovetop chai, on the other hand, tasted like exactly the right thing.

I want ice cream and other junk that I don't have, so I channeled myself into thinking about my shopping list for this weekend. What are some healthy foods that appeal to me, and that I will eat in moderation? I was surprised at some of things I came up with. Bananas, to start with - a fruit I'm generally not so hot for. Oatmeal. Yogurt, which I like in theory but lost my taste for (coincidence?) a couple of weeks ago. Noticing the themes here, I went on to theorize that potatoes, pasta, and avocados would fit right in (though avocados may or may not be available). I might buy some Gardenburgers too. Instead of merely-functional protein and complex, interesting flavors in my vegetables, I want the blunt satisfaction of thick-textured, creamy, mild sweetness.

I'll save the ice cream for my next up-phase, when I'll eat less of it and enjoy it more.


* where 4 Weeks exist and Week 1 = menstruation

An art piece I appreciate

http://creativeface.net/berlin_co-berlin_10021-0

It doesn't take much to turn a fashion shoot into a gruesome spectacle. If beauty and fashion celebrated health, as they should, this wouldn't be possible without fundamentally altering the spirit of photo.

I like this comic

A few of the best:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1060 (displayed by my Phys 162 teacher one lecture, and my introduction to the comic)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

One that actually references current events:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1077

And although the entire series seems to carry a theme of "my eventual fate,"* this one in particular stands out:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=868


* Seriously, think about it. I decided to do undergrad at a place that has quals followed by a thesis.

Recipe for red & black chai

Mostly the name is snappy, but this combination has a really nice flavor too:

Red & Black Chai
Boil 3/4 cup water in a saucepan. Add 1 bag rooibos chai and 1-2* bags black tea. Allow it to brew for a minute, then add milk slowly, keeping the mixture hot. Remove the teabags and add 1 tablespoon sugar. Add more milk to adjust the volume if needed and heat to desired temperature.

Specifically, I used:
Yogi Tea Chai Redbush
Stash English Breakfast Tea
2% cow's milk
Bulk cane sugar

*I only tried it with 1 bag of black, but if you wanted more caffeine, I think the flavor would still be good with 2.

Socially disabled... or just too weird

So I just finished calling just about everyone in my phone and failed to get my sociability on. Most of them were already busy. Senor Evergreen feels like chilling at home, which is fine, but there was something else he said that bugged me. He said it seemed like the last couple times we've hung out, we didn't really do anything.

That's not completely fair - the last time we hung out, we played disc golf and then helped his friend move. But it does touch on something that's been bothering me in general, and Senor Evergreen is just the first person besides myself to say it out loud: I feel like a boring person to be around. I never have ideas for activities. I spend so much of my social time going "I dunno, what do you want to do?"

Yet I feel kind of helpless to do anything about it. My budget it too tight to go check out new things if they cost money, and I'm not going to school or work or anything in the day that exposes me to new people who might introduce me to new activities. And I'm not intrinsically boring, I just don't know how to make the things I enjoy on my own - like running, reading, and geeking over chemistry - social. Or maybe I'm just not objectively that compatible with my friends in Portland, because come to think of it, Dancing Physicist and I shared all three of those activities (replace chemistry with science of all kinds). Heck, Fidelity likes those things too - I just haven't gotten to see her yet because she's been busy.

It's sad to think that I don't actually have important things in common with my friends, especially when I really really like their personalities. But it's almost like a replay of what happened with LS, then Knee-Man, though thankfully I'm not dating anyone right now that I'm suddenly feeling alienated from. I could even say the same about the people I "dated" in 8th and 9th grade. Eventually, personality or one initial bond isn't enough. You need things to talk about or do together that you're both into and that don't "run out."

Oy. This is something to really think about, isn't it.

Spoilers for the Iliad, book six

So the big head honcho in Troy is named Priam. His son Paris got everyone into this mess, and another son Hektor is the great warrior everyone takes seriously. Now, amongst the people killed, I'd noticed quite a few others were named "the son of Priam." Guy has a lot of sons, I thought, but I wasn't counting.

Then lines 242-246 of book six came along:

"Now he entered the wonderfully built palace of Priam.
This was fashioned with smooth-stone cloister walks, and within it
were embodied fifty sleeping chambers of smoothed stone
built so as to connect with each other; and within these slept
each beside his own wedded wife, the sons of Priam."

FIFTY sons? Plus twelve daughters elucidated in the next few lines! The dude must have a freaking harem, and a big one at that!

Multidisciplinary fitness

I was inspired to start running by a very specific incident. I was sitting in a tree on campus sometime in January and Dancing Physicist suddenly called to me. He was in a red sweatshirt, loose pants, and running shoes. We would later run into each other all over campus, but since I'd just moved into the dorms this was one of our first chance encounters and it amused him. We chatted for a minute, and then he told me he was just going out for a run and bade me goodbye. As he bounced away I thought two things:

1) he looks so happy to be out running!
2) that's something I should be able to do with my body.

You know what else I should be able to do with my body? Push-ups. Normal people can do those. So I naively think "okay let's start doing push-ups." Except that push-ups are quantized. My running abilities were atrocious in the beginning, but at least I could gasp out my block-and-a-half and work from there. Where do I begin when I can't even do one push-up with my knees on the ground?

A-run-run-run, yeah

I'm loving my running. Today was my fifth day in a row and I have no intention of stopping tomorrow. I should probably take a rest day sometime soon but for now I'm on a roll. I've been logging my distances, and my runs generally come in around 1600-2000 meters (1-1.25 miles). One of the things I like best about running several days in a row is that improvement - farther, faster, or easier - comes so fast. I'm thinking I'd like to train for an endurance event. I could probably do a 5k already, though it's still quite a bit longer than I'm used to. Maybe I'll look for one of those, or wait a bit and shoot for a 10k later.