inbetween and hither thither

When I was 19, I apparently began a fictional anthology set around the themes of weather and nostalgia and the debilitating repercussions of living with selective truth. I wrote the introductory chapter in one go while sitting on the beach and brushing sand off my notebook every other line.

At 20, two months after I graduated, I began a rough skeleton for a fictional compilation of critical essays on a fictional highly celebrated poet's master body of work. I had never read "Pale Fire", nor had I heard of poioumena or other variants of metafiction, but I was obsessed with the idea of unreliable narratives and over-interpretation of falsely conjectured symbolism and truly believed I was the first to tackle such a literary concept. Oh, the beautiful naïveté of being 20.

And then, at 22, I wrote the first two sections of a short story wherein love was a terminal illness. It was witty and searing and poignant. Those being the days before mainstream cloud storage, it also died along with my faulty hard drive.

Having stumbled across the handwritten draft of my oceanside anthological attempts earlier today, I can't honestly say whether I'm disappointed or relieved that none of my writing projects ever came to fruition, because holy hell, that draft was crap. Still, for every 1000 words, there were two or three lines that were worth keeping. So not a total loss?

Since then, my writing projects have only dwindled in scope. I had an outline and select passages written for a YA novel (also lost to the hard drive crash), then a David Foster Wallace-esque book title that keeps begging for a body of work to be attached to, and finally a creative non-fictional essay on death and mourning via a hydrogeological study which is 65% fleshed out and which refuses to gain any further weight.

Slowly, though, the words are coming back-- unbidden, but cautiously welcome.

Hold on to yer butts, friends.

"You know what your problem is?"

"I only have one?"

-OCEAN'S ELEVEN (2001)

The Austin Flyers is a women's cycling club I joined last year in the hopes of getting myself to 1) ride more and 2) learn Austin routes and terrain better. While I certainly accomplished both, it was in trace and meagre amounts-- but still, through our forums I learned about (and participated in) a number of local century rides (mostly metrics, so they were really only about 65 miles), so that alone was worth the membership.

At some point I discovered the Hotter 'N Hell ride and signed up for that. The event was over a 5-hour drive north, which means I left my house 6 hours before it started, which means I rode 100 miles (by myself) in temperatures that got *well* into the triple digits, on zero hours of sleep. My favorite story from that whole event is how I almost got pulled out of the ride at mile 70-something because I was on the precipitous edge of heatstroke without even knowing it, and how I wheedled the doctor into letting me keep going (though it took about a half-hour of stubborn persuasion).

That was the end of August 2011. Life got tumultuous after that-- work got insanely busy, I moved into a house that was way too big for me (and still is) and demanded to be filled with things, I switched jobs and effectively tripled my workload-- and then I was out of town a lot, and then the rains came...

In a nutshell: over the last nine months, I'd managed to do three bike rides.

Cue: two Fridays ago. Something possessed me to log into the Flyers forums and see if there were any big rides coming up. Someone had posted about OLALT, a 120-miler, so I clicked the event link and saw that registration was ONLY $49 and signed up without thinking twice. Because come on! $49 for 120 miles? Most metric centuries are closer to $100. Twice the miles for half the price, COME ON. The Asian bargain hunter in me couldn't possibly resist.

I know what you're thinking:

1. 120 miles? WHY?
2. 120 miles when you basically haven't ridden for nine months? ARE YOU NUTS?
3. 120 miles AND a full mile of climbing? ARE YOU SUICIDAL?

Oh yeah. So the route also advertised a mile, total, of climbing. Which, because my brain fails to possess the proper self-protective mechanisms, I interpreted as: "Oooh, fun!"

Either way. The fact that I lacked a training history didn't phase me as much as it should have. I have an unfortunate habit of jumping into things without any training or experience and doing surprisingly well-- climbing Half Dome, the Tough Mudder, rock climbing, bikram yoga. Even biking: I learned how to ride a road bike in January 2010, and then four months later, I did 100 miles in the wine country with, I don't know, maybe 200 miles of total riding under my belt? And I rode it in fucking flip flops on a 12-speed 1986 Bianchi with tube shifters.

This is not an endorsement for others to follow in my footsteps. I'm like that 117-year-old man who smoked 5 packs of cigarettes and drank like a fish every day in his life and is still kicking strong. I know I'm an outlier and one of these days I'm going to run out of luck, but until then, I'm going to push that luck right to the damn edge.

So! Let's talk about the ride, shall we?

1. I don't sleep well as a general rule. I *really* don't sleep well the night before anything important. "First day of school" syndrome. So I got about 3-4 hours of sleep before this.
2. Sort of like how in the days leading up to your dentist appointment, you brush and floss every hour in the hopes of hiding the fact that your dental hygiene has been anything less than impeccable? I logged 140 miles in the four days preceding OLALT, with the last 20 of those on a hill route so I could get a "taste" of what the Lake Travis ride was going to be like. Those 20 miles made me seriously reconsider what I'd signed up for.
3. Showed up to the event 15 minutes before it was due to start. There were maybe 12 riders there. Only one other person was female. I parked my car and sat there for about five minutes and contemplated turning around and just driving back home.
4. As I was getting my bike and everything ready, some of us were talking about the climbing aspect of the ride, and this guy was all, "I know! Blah blah blah 6000 feet!" and I almost fell over, because I had been doing the elementary conversion of one mile = 1600 meters = 4800 feet. For eight days, I had been quietly flipping out over the idea of 4800 feet. Suddenly I was faced with the reality of an additional 1200 feet. WHAT HAD I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO.
5. However! I kept up with the big boys, the alpha pack, for the first 35 miles, which I thought was pretty awesome, especially considering we had a Cat4 climb right after the first rest stop, and not only did I keep up, but I was actually at the front of the pack for a few miles after.
6. Confession: my motivation for pushing hard to keep up with the pack was so that I could draft. Totally valid motivation. Especially when the headwinds picked up.
7. At about mile 18, we had a 200-foot descent to the bottom of the dam, and it was that segment that encompassed everything I love about biking. We had a wide shoulder and the drop ended in a graceful concavity that fed into a long, smooth stretch that overlooked the water-- I didn't touch my brakes once. This was probably the highlight of the whole ride.
8. And then, of course, we had to climb back up. It was surprisingly easier than I anticipated.
9. After mile 60, some of us were given the wrong directions and ended up doing an extra 7-8 miles, which of course included a bastard of a climb.
10. Shortly before the 80-mile checkpoint (so, around mile 85), there was an ugly hill. The photo above* was taken from the top. The photo above does not come close to indicating how ugly that hill was. The photo above makes it look like I'm laughing. I was not laughing. I was swearing. A lot.
11. Somewhere around mile 90, we hit a two-mile stretch of unpaved road. In case you've never biked 90 miles in one go: your body is kind of fucking sore by then. Your body kind of isn't in the mood to be absorbing the continuous shock of riding over gravel and rocks FOR TWO MILES. Also, uphill (nothing major, but it was enough). I almost cried. I literally almost broke down into tears. I was solo at that point, which was good, because the vehement conversations I was having with myself were not conversations anyone should have been overhearing. It was basically two miles of expletives. And once I finally reached paved road again, I tore out like a bat out of hell.
12. Related: fury and righteous indignation apparently act as fuel sources for me.
13. At the 100-mile checkpoint (107 for us lucky ones), I debated throwing in the towel. I'd done my miles, I'd done my climbing. The ride coordinator kept talking about this horrible hill in the final stage, how there would be no shame in walking it because it was so bad, and after our mini-Roubaix action, my arms and shoulders were on fire, and not in the good way. I wanted to be done, but I was too stubborn to quit. I figured they could pry my body out of a ditch if they needed to, but I wasn't going to take the easy way out.
14. I was totally deceived. That horrible hill? It sucked, I won't lie. But that was hardly the worst part of the final stage. The worst part was the non-stop climbing for the 4.5 miles after that hill. I thought I had run out of expletives after the unpaved road bit. I was wrong.
15. AND THEN IT WAS OVER!
16. And as soon as I'd changed out of my cleats and back into flip-flops and had taken a few minutes to become human again, I wanted to do it again.

I'm surprisingly not that sore. My left shoulder blade and left hip have been complaining a little this morning, but otherwise I'm okay. Which only reinforces a suspicion I've held since I fell in love with road biking two-and-a-half years ago: that I was built, physically built**, for this. I'm not going to win any races anytime soon, if ever (I have a deep and abiding fear of turning corners), but much in the same way that other people are naturally designed for running or swimming or climbing, I do feel like I was designed for biking, "ideal body type" be damned.

So, why do I do these rides? It's just where I belong.

Though I do need to start building up a better arsenal of epithets.

One Lap Around Lake Travis - 2012 (route via MapMyFitness)

 

*My heel is too high and I need to drop my shoulders. I know. I tried to work on that the whole ride but I was mostly focused on not dying.

**More anatomical proof: out of pure vanity, I decided to ride OLALT in shorts that were designed for a spin class (significantly higher cut on the leg = significantly less nerdy tan lines***). A sanitary pad would have provided more cushioning. And I was fine.

***Next time I'm just going to ride in a bikini.

I'm just saying, I spent money so I could own cute underwear that goes wholly underappreciated. Fuck no I'm not wearing shorts under my dress when I ride my bike.

@ Pecan St. Festival, which was annoyingly devoid of pecans.

It had been a wonderful day. We'd driven to the coast and meandered up the PCH, stopping somewhere to walk along the beach and bask in the sunshine and the salty ocean air. We saw a dolphin surface in the distant waves, a perfect glistening arc, and he laughed at how I couldn't keep a normal gait but instead skipped and hopped and shuffledanced about the sand and driftwood and outcrops of long-weathered boulders.

Finally, we'd ended up back in Sherman Oaks at some nondescript Thai restaurant that was picked solely based on the fact that 1) we happened to be walking by it and 2) it was open. After we ordered, I confessed that I wasn't much of a foodie-- or that, if anything, I was an emotional foodie. "I remember a meal more fondly when it's with good company", I explained, which I guiltily felt gave the food an unfair advantage. He agreed whole-heartedly with me, however, and proceeded to relay one particular meal that stood out to him not because of what he had eaten, but because of with whom he had been eating.

I don't remember anything about that story other than, it was with a group of his close friends. Maybe they sat outdoors? I was too focused on the way his voice sounded like a smile, or on the dimples that formed when he did smile (which was often, that day), or on when he was going to kiss me and how he might go about doing so.

The food was fine, of course-- good, perhaps, even. I visually remember eating it-- we were sitting by the front window, which was to my right, and I'd ordered a tofu dish with spinach (I think he ordered a curry?)-- but the other nuances were lost to details like the way the smallness of the rectangular wooden table, combined with his almost comical height, forced a physical intimacy of our knees and feet and arms; or how the late February sun set early and cast its final warm, honey-golden rays over us as we sat and talked and listened to and watched each other earnestly. The way my heart beat nervously in those half-second pauses of infinite possibilities; or how it thrummed, as we left the restaurant and stepped into the slowly cooling dusk: what now?, what now?

*****

I found and picked up "Death by Pad Thai: And Other Unforgettable Meals" while I was aimlessly wandering through the library stacks on Saturday and have subsequently been racking my brain for my life's most memorable meals.

There's a distinction here, of course, and the book touches on this in its introduction. I'm not as interested in the best dishes I've tasted (though there are many), nor in the best meals based purely on culinary perfection (of which, again, I am quite lucky to say there are many):

"For what makes the subject of food the scrumptuous stuff of story is not the perfect balance of the recipe or the genius of the chef; it's the narrative of what's humanly at stake as we sit down to eat; what thoughts and emotions are stirred, revived, put in play, by the table we're called to, by those who call us to it." (Douglas Bauer)

That Thai meal (was it a late lunch or an early dinner? Does it even matter? (No.)) has stayed with me for years, even though I can't recall a single thing about how the food tasted. I'd like to tell you that it's the sentimentality of the scene-- oh, the early flutterings of love!-- that makes it so quick to surface, but the truth is a bit more... well... meta. This was the first time I'd ever talked with someone about the idea of a meal being memorable for something other than food, and, on par with the rest of the entire day's (and evening's) conversation, he got it, and without even having to try.

(The sentimentality does bolster its standings, though.)

Still digging around for other examples, which surely must exist. I suppose I'll post the anecdotes as they come rambling in.

In 2004, after class, one of my favorite English professors sat down with me to talk about the theses I'd submitted for an upcoming essay project.

The problem, she explained, wasn't the theses themselves-- they were solid topics and interesting enough, and all my papers in her classes up to this point had been steady "A" work. The problem was that they explored questions I already knew the answers to.

"I want you to challenge yourself", she said. "I want to see you struggle on the page. I want you to ask questions about things you don't understand, and I want to see your thought process as you try to figure it out. I don't care if you find the answer or not. But I want to see the struggle."

In front of me, now, the words lay out like a jigsaw puzzle: some assembled fragments, mostly disjointed and scrambled pieces. I know what the final picture is meant to look like, I know what my end goal here is, but I can't get all of the words to fit just yet. I want to hide behind the curtain until I have something finished, something polished, something certain to display to the world, because who wants to watch the labored attempts at establishment?

Except, the struggle is where we connect, as a community. We are all works-in-progress, we are all in the midst of a journey to somewhere, we are all dealing with questions whose answers we don't yet have-- and perhaps never will.

One step, one piece of the puzzle, one word at a time. Everything in its right place, one keystroke, one pen scribble, one wineglass, one shoelace, one moonrise at a time.

I totally forgot I created this until just now: http://dottedlinegirl.typepad.com/community/jobs.html

Sometimes, I actually do find myself quite funny. Good job, 2006-me.

I never remember to pack floss when I travel because I never remember to floss, period. But inevitably, there's something about being away from home that makes my teeth start to riotously picket for invasive cleansing, so I end up buying a damn pack of floss which I use religiously until I'm home again, whereupon the floss gets added to the ever-growing collection of spooled waxy string. A floss graveyard, if you will.

I suppose I could just keep the floss in my suitcase and travel bags, but that would be *responsible*. As would actually just using the floss after my travels are over.

But, seriously: what IS it about not-home that inspires improved dental hygiene in me?

Still better than Christmas.

-Roasted red pepper stuffed with Mexican cauliflower rice (vegan, grain-free, seed-free)
-Vegan lime margarita cookies/frosting (sufficiently dosed with Jose Cuervo)
-Raw, grain-free granola (walnut-based; second picture shows the first failed batch)
-Salmon with red chard, pine nuts and raisins; purple asparagus that turned green upon steaming; and mini purple potatoes
-Vegan burger made from the leftovers of the roasted winter medley + millet, slow pan fried. Could NOT get enough of this one.