·.•dougie.°•˙

35 miles
56.32 kilometers
5.953772826e-12 light years

Just plain forgot to post this one.

Mountains. Tired. Breathtaking beauty. Pics forthcoming.

113 miles
181.86 kilometers
19.22218084e-12 light years

This is going to take more than one day, but I had to post it all at once since I probably won’t get any cell reception in Big Sur. So, 3 days?? Maybe more if I take a day off, or do some exploring or who knows what…

25 miles
40.2 kilometers
4.252694876e-12 light years

I had to post this all at once cuz my phone died on the beach :)

Thought I would take the day off, but I am already bored and itching to get back on the road. Ha!

20 miles
32.2 kilometers
3.4021559e-12 light years

This is all this blog was ever supposed to be about: a nameless, faceless, emotionless, subjectless, free-floating, ever-increasing quantity of MILES KILLED on the open road.

And perhaps a few aphorisms here and there.

30 miles
48.3 kilometers
5.103233851e-12 light years

Two days of moderate to heavy cycling after almost two months of rest has reminded me of something: I am incredibly out of shape! But my ankles aren’t making any noise at all (knock on wood, cross your fingers, throw salt over your shoulder, toss a penny in a fountain, rub a fat man’s belly, etc.)

Chillin’ at a lighthouse hostel now. Color me horizontal!

30 miles
48.3 kilometers
5.103233851e-12 light years

Actually ended up being more like 3.912479-e12 light years (23 miles). Don’t know how I botched that calculation.

Feels damn good to be on the road again. Not saying I’m gonna keep it up, just saying it feels good. There’s really nothing like the mild endorphin high you get from climbing your first 500 feet of elevation in almost two months, and the joy of your first descent which causes you to ad lib a little tune called “I got a breakfast burrito” (still high, of course. Think of the melody to “I got a golden ticket” from the musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the satisfaction of stopping at the bottom, right by the ocean, to eat (you guessed it) your long-awaited, much-ballyhoo’d breakfast burrito.

Almost forgot why I came out here in the first place.

18 miles
30 kilometers
3.06194e-12 light years

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, not necessarily because I’ve nothing to say, but more because I’ve been happily preoccupied with some much-needed human, immediate, familiar company. Sorry Internet, but for all your power and practicality, you really can’t compete with a good conversation, a warm embrace, being understood (that’s right, Internet, I don’t really feel like you understand me. Sometimes it’s as if you don’t even know I exist). But I am alone again, so it’s to the Internet I return to make sense of this journey-cum-predicament.

After cycling around hilly San Fran, my heels still hurt every now and again, and I have to make some tough decisions on how to proceed. I would, however, prefer to keep the content of those decisions from being categorical or ultimate. So as of this moment, I have made a tough but minor decision to attempt to cycle out to the Montara hostel, a whopping 18 miles outside of San Francisco. This will be my first legitimate attempt in six weeks, and I am pretty confident I can stick it. From there, I have trouble imagining what will happen next. I might just sleep on the beach and then go home; I might suffer the transportation cluster-fuck required to travel to San Diego. Just don’t have to foresight or motivation to figure it out right now. Wish me “buena suerte” on this pecuniary attempt!

Sitting at a cafe, out on the sidewalk, a man dressed entirely in black, with long black hair and beard, covered in tattoos, walks by with a child, probably 9 years old, presumably his son, as he is dressed head to toe in black as well. As they approach, I can tell they are deep in conversation, but they are too far for me to hear. As they come closer, the first intelligible words come from the boy’s mouth: “But does anyone worship Norse gods anymore?” After a reflective pause, the man begins his reply in earnest: “well, in earlier days…” and like that they are out of earshot again.

High point of my day in terms of hope for the future. Happily shedding my bias against the city by the bay.

Last night I went to a raging dance party/art show in a convenience store. The DJ and his dancefloor were tucked neatly in an aisle between the canned and prepared foods, paintings were “hung” amongst the potato chips and candy bars on the shelves, we drank beer straight from the commercial fridges in the back. 29 revolutions around the sun, something new every damn day.

All thanks go to Portland for an awesome birthday rager!

Tomorrow afternoon I am hopping on a train to San Francisco, that fabled city by the bay, where only ten years ago, having escaped the wastelands of East Palo Alto, I spent a month in a hostel in the mission, sharing a room with a recently-released convicted meth dealer and his 14-year-old runaway girlfriend, whose mom came angrily/tearfully looking for her every now and again, and a musclebound native American dude in daisy dukes with a hunting knife strapped to his thigh, who stole food from under my bed at night, and breathed on me, and a young Filipino victim of the dot com bubble burst, homeless and penniless, dulled to a nub, unable to raise his voice above a whisper, hands chapped and cracked from washing them with the harsh soap of public restrooms, where I watched too much TV, and made too few phone calls home, and wore shoes that didn’t fit, and clothes from the bathroom waste bin, where I woke up the morning I decided to leave to the scene of the coroner assessing the deceased junky in the alleyway by using a pen and gloved hands to roll his limp head around on the pavement, where I fell in love with the dissociative fugue of public transportation (riding on city buses for a hobby is fine), where I swore I would never return. 

All that aside I am actually really looking forward to San Fran this time around.  I plan to do it right, as they say, and I won’t be doing it alone, which makes a world of difference.  My achilles are both feeling much, much better now, but I have run out of time and I won’t be able to cycle to San Fran before Caitlin and I are supposed to meet up, and also “feeling fine” doesn’t necessarily justify hurriedly cycling 700 miles down the coast: I still get a few aches and pains every now and again.  My goal at this point is to be right as rain by the end of our San Fran sojourn, and then do a slow and lazy 4 weeks from there to San Diego.  That’s A LOT of time to do 600 miles, so if anyone has any suggestions of things to do between those two cities, I am more than open.

I’ll close by saying what a wonderful city Portland is, and how grateful I am to Robin and Byron for putting me up (and putting up with me), and to Inky and Eddie for keeping me company, and to Malloy for being the first human being I interacted with in a week, and to Alan and Doug and Kelly for making me feel at home, and to Clifton for being the first person with whom I have ever had to use my education in order to converse, and for showing me his fascinating “process”.  And thanks in advance to Marvin and Dru for putting me up in San Fran, and to my grandmother for connecting me with them.  God how I wish I had made that connection ten years ago, but then so many lessons would have been lost.  I suppose that’s life.  Ta for now!