I am not quite that fanatical about bike riding just yet, but I highly recommend it if you can swing it.

Yes, there are some inconveniences, such as having to shower at work, frequently washing my bike clothes, making sure I have the appropriate food on-hand, and dealing with traffic, but the benefits I have found are:

• Exercise as a part of my lifestyle rather than something “extra” I have to go out of my way to do
• A break in the routine of get up/go to work/come home/sleep
• More restrictive diet, higher quality of food overall
• Health and comfort benefits:
  • Less pain in my lower back
  • Stronger leg muscles result in fewer knee problems
  • Increased leg and hip flexibility
• Most people in cars–not all, of course–smile at you
• Pedestrians usually smile at you
• That freakin’ endorphin rush after a particularly long or difficult ride
• Insights into my relationship with my body
• Insights into my FOO’s relationship with health and physicality
• A sort of community of cycling enthusiasts who are happy to help you out

This is something I have wanted to do for years! I haven’t really explored why it has taken me such a long time to actually get out and do this, but I think it has a lot to do with the relationships I have had over the years, both familial and romantic.

To say that these people were unsupportive would be missing the point entirely. In my family, there has pretty much always been an open hostility towards people who work on self-improvement. If you tried to eat better, you were mocked. If you tried to question commonly-held beliefs, you were derided. If you set a goal and failed, you were never allowed to forget your failure.

My romantic relationships grew out of that history, and thus I have never dated anyone who was fiercely supportive of me, who encouraged me to challenge myself, and whom I could trust with my life!

Of course, to have these things in somebody else, I must first work on them in myself… only then will a woman consent to provide ferocious support to me, because she knows she will receive that same level of support from me!

So, cycling brings a lot of things together for me. It’s not everything, of course, and I am still without a therapist to work on the other things in my life… but what I am also finding is that in working my body, my brain is starting to work again. The beast (which I do not believe I have mentioned before) is starting to stir, and wheels are starting to turn!

However, right now… it is time to relax.

So I dropped my poor Honda off at the garage for the third time in two months… it failed emissions testing because they couldn’t accelerate fast enough between 30MPH and 60MPH.

It’s possible that it’s the catalytic converter, which kinda sucks but I basically bought almost a year and a half extension on getting a new catalytic converter last year, so all things considered, not too shabby.

I really hope this takes care of things, of course, I’m a little tired of bringing my car to the shop!

So by the time I got to the garage, the sun had already set. It was still light, but it was fading fast!

I set the navigation application on my phone to go home, and it said 11.4 miles, and 28 minutes, I think… I should have known it was for somebody who actually had some strength and stamina on the bike!

Still 90 minutes really isn’t bad considering I’ve only had my bicycle for 3 weeks!

However, if I ever do ride at night again (very possible if I continue commuting through the winter), then I will want to make sure I have bright clothing and lots of illumination, to see and to be seen.

Right now, however… it is time for the James to be very unmoving.

[Edit] – I am getting a sort of a mental image of what shape my body will take when I do lose this weight, and for the first time in a long time–if ever–I’m actually feeling excited about this process! Yeah, it’ll be a whole HELL of a lot of work, but the payoff will be SO worth it.

After work, I was driving my car to get the exhaust system repaired, the last major thing I needed to fix before being able to get my car to pass emissions, and… a cop pulled me over about a mile from my apartment.

I have a summons to appear in court on October 22, and I didn’t have my most current proof of insurance with me… man, what suckage!

It was tempting, and I indulged for a bit, to think about, what if I had taken the highway, or what if I had taken an alternate route home from work, another 5-10 minutes, what if this, what if that, what if I had spent less money… and I was feeling really angry!

But really, this is what it is: I took a risk by not making sure my tags were taken care of, and I got burned. Now, of course, I should be able to take care of everything pretty quickly, and I’m hoping that taking care of the lapses, along with demonstrating the repair bills, will be a show of good faith and encourage leniency.

So, I dropped my car off at the garage, and I should be getting a quote on the fuel & exhaust systems tomorrow.

After that, I rode my bike over to the light rail and took that home. It was not too bad of a ride, but there was some rain, which was all too exciting for words. Also, I had left my backpack at home, not needing it, and I found riding that much more enjoyable. I will endeavor to not take the backpack from now on!

After I got off the light rail, I started riding my bike up Mineral, which covers 125 feet over 0.75 miles (3% grade). The first time I approached that hill (9 days ago), I was already quite tired and just didn’t have the energy to push up through. This time around, I did pretty well, making it up halfway before I just had to quit. Now, granted, there was a woman there, and this wasn’t particularly intentional, but instead of walking it up the hill from the get-go, I chose to attempt the ride.

What happened next was kind of interesting. I passed her, then crossed a side street (I was riding on the sidewalk since it was getting dark and the roads were wet), and then had to wait to cross the main street. She caught up to me then, and I started going up the hill again… until I just couldn’t. (I was still about 1.5-2 miles from home and didn’t want to expend it all on the hill.) The woman then called out to me, “Tough to make it up the hill?” or something like that, only I couldn’t hear her initially because of the traffic.

Hold on, there is an interesting part still coming!

She then commented how she thought about riding a bike, but that she would find the hill difficult, too. I don’t remember my response, really, but then she asked if I rode the light rail, to which I replied, no, I had just dropped off my car, but I live not too far away and have just started riding to work. She then repeated, almost word-for-word, about how she’s considered riding a bicycle to the light rail but that riding it back would be hard work, and I said, “Yeah, it would be a workout!”

I don’t remember what she said to that, but she excused herself and started walking towards the apartments. I thought it was a little strange that she seemed to be walking toward the fence where there was no gate or anything like that…

The last I saw, she was actually climbing the fence!

So, the interesting part (to me, anyway): she repeated herself with almost exactly the same words, phrasing, and inflection, and this is something that always stands out to me. I’ve come to understand it as something that is generally not a conscious behavior–not that I can psychologize anyone after talking with them for a few seconds, but people who do this do not seem to be aware that they have repeated themselves.

I don’t recall feeling anything in particular during this exchange–I hadn’t quite hit the endorphin rush (that came after I made it home and was singing at the top of my lungs in the shower), but I was in pretty good spirits.

When this woman excused herself and walked towards the fence in order to climb over it, the first thought in my mind was, “I haven’t done anything like that since I was in my mid-teens!” Immediately after that was, “Man, she must have really wanted to get away!”

Frankly, I’m quite happy about that! Not because I think she’s a bad person or anything like that, but in the few seconds I spent with this woman, I got that she lacks a particular kind of awareness that I personally find unsettling, and whatever else may have led me to try to be “impressive” was overridden by the weirdness of the repetition and her climbing act.

It just occurred to me that if I am trying to be “impressive,” that might be an even earlier warning sign to me, that I’m already picking things up that are just at the edges of my current level of awareness–the way she walks, the clothes she’s wearing, etc.

On my way home after my haircut, I saw a gentleman standing at the corner of the intersection I turn into to go to my apartment. As I turned, I saw he had a blind man’s cane (I see more blind people with canes in this area than I think I’ve ever seen in my life).

He was pretty clearly intending to cross the street, but I figured it was probably going to be pretty difficult as there aren’t any aural indicators that it is OK to cross, so I made a loop around the median and pulled back up to the intersection, parked my car, and asked if he’d like a hand.

As we crossed, he commented that he was just talking to somebody on the phone about “good people” in the world, saying that there don’t seem to be too many.

A part of me wanted to say that there are more good people in the world than it seems, but I didn’t… and in retrospect, I think that was right, because the blind guy is going to have experienced a lot more about just how good people generally are, because his disability puts him in a position of vulnerability that the majority of us just take for granted.

I don’t recount this to pat myself on the back or anything, though I do feel proud that I stopped to help out. What struck me about this guy, and what I felt somewhat sad about, is that we do live in a world where somebody taking the time out of their day to help somebody out is considered a novelty.

So let’s make some more good people… we have our work cut out for us!

You do not project what you can see
It is when knowing is worse than not knowing
  that you impute to the world
    that which you hate and fear
      deep
      deep
      down.

When The World is filled with devils
  it is but our souls that take on the
    forms of daemons and ghouls
  ready to make a timeless torment
    ever waking, eternal.

When Rejection is feared at every turn
  and you do not approach for fear of the same
    it is you who reject
  but blame those who have not even
    yet spoken.

When a life after death seems a bliss
  it is a sign that death has already come
    and the bedraggled corpse toting your
  suffering mind from point to point
    is merely waiting to descend to oblivion.

When a Mighty Power can make All Things Right
  if we but entreat and plead to It...
    are we not that power, holding
  dominion over our populace, withholding the
    drops that would slake their thirst?

We ask, Who watches the watchers?
  But who are the watchers?
    They are not eyes disembodied except
  that they are eyes that do not recognize
    the body.

An eye, flaming, unblinking, on a stem, in a far-off land
  A watcher... a bringer of death and darkness.
    Disembodied for centuries, almost timeless.

One can only pray for death if one has murdered.