Speaking Confidentially: Friday, 20 June 1997

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Biking and children

I love my bike. I love my bike more now that I have bike shorts.

Last night after RDC patched and switched the tires again, we went for a ride. We started around 7:00 and got back at 8:30. I love summer. I love solstice.

We rode south on the Cherry Creek trail, but before the reservoir a bridge was washed out or had been taken out. Until November! Until then, to go further south, we will have to ride on the road about a mile to get on the Highline Canal trail. So back we went to a Road with Cars to the Highline Canal, a Road with Bikes. My suspicion is that mountain bikes' extra-toughnesses are superlative on Denver bike trails. Despite its pavedness, Highline is a trail worth exploring. We once saw a bird photographer on the news, who'd seen dozens of species--and nests--along it. You have to wait and watch. Last night we rode without waiting but saw lots anyway. We saw a baby robin who had a short tail--not fully fletched before it fell or was ousted?--and maybe couldn't fly as strongly as it'd like to; RDC wanted to take him home. In the sections of the trail closer to I-25, we passed folks whose appearance inspired a twanging "Dueling Banjos." Also dogs, a turtle, several ducks, innumerable robins, sparrows, and chickadees, and breeders.

Breeders jogging and roller-blading with those strollers that are meant to accompany such activity and breeders bicycling and dragging their progeny behind them. I do not always feel as sarcastic about breeders as I did last night, but yesterday I was exposed to more children than usual. First were two adorable, coughing, sweet, drooling, sleeping little boys on the bus,* both under 2, at least one in need of a fresh diaper, with one parent between them. One was in a baby-backpack and the older nestled in his father's lap. The toddler's inquisitiveness and obvious affection for his younger brother led to his getting baby slime all over his hands, and thence his father's face, the family's clothing, and the railing of the bus. Then when I got home and went for a swim, I did a tiny number of laps in our tiny pool and mostly played with my neighbor, an elfin five-year-old who recently shed her waist-length red plaits and more recently the training wheels to her pink bike. She complemented my motorboat with her water-skier (though she declined a dolphin ride, as that entails being underwater), demonstrated her overhand stroke (not bad, and she did keep her face under), and challenged me to a splashing fight. Plus all the kids on the trail with their parents.

A dog, on the other hand, who has only a year or eighteen months of puppyhood before its adulthood, who probably doesn't get any more interesting at ten than at three, who sheds and drools and will never defecate independently (always needing to be let in or out), I would welcome. And a tiny bird whom I can't even hug thoroughly, who is even less reliable in his elimination than a dog, who is capricious and maniacally emotional and fears dental floss, is my beloved child, endlessly fascinating, and continually inventing new things to say and do. And unlike a human child, he'll never be quite capable of independent thought, never bring home a perfect spelling paper, never exploit anyone just because he can, never have a planet-saving career, and always it will be legal for me to put him in a dark room until he shuts up. Hmm. That's a no-brainer.

And how did I get here from the bike trail? Others have questioned my sanity or my thought process before, OMFB, many others.

Today I spent my lunch hour under a tree in dappled shade and sun in One Civic Center Plaza, as usual. Well: as usual for the fifth day in a row that the library has been closed for the Summit of the Eight. (And They decided to allow smoking, as part of being a good host! The food and entertainment are mostly USAn where they are not downright USAn West or Coloradan. If those elements of hospitality are native, why not smoking? Do I dare suggest corporate influence behind the change of heart?) I think I am going to cut down to one or two days a week in the library--or less especially until it's properly aired and cleaned. To think of all that lovely wood in a haze of tobacco fumes disgusts me. Instead of the 'brary, reading in the sun for me. I continued The Hundred Secret Senses, which is quite good, though tainted with more Anne Tyler than I perceived in The Kitchen God's Wife. I haven't read The Joy Luck Club (yet). However, unlike in Anne Tyler, these characters do take a little control over their own lives.

I read for most of the hour and then indulged in a power nap, the half-wakeful, semi-aware mental free-for-all of a noon nap. It's like the ten-minute nap I used to take while wired on caffeine at midnight and 3:00 and 6:00 a.m. during my otherwise all-nighters in college. Recharges the brain.

This morning's bike ride was much more successful than Wednesday's: I didn't get a flat less than a mile out and have to turn back with my tail between my legs. I shall join RDC at the DU gym after work. I can't believe the paunch I have developed. Today I'm wearing the undyed linen skirt I bought the summer of 1991, and the waistband is tight. I know I was thinner in 1991 than now, but I don't like such undeniable proofs of it as this. The summer of 1989, when a cessation of artificial hormones and a build-up of unrequited naturally-occurring ones led to an unnatural weight-loss and my lowest-ever adult weight (I assume lowest-ever; I'm not dead yet, but that was when I was 21). 1991-92, when stress contributed to a lack of appetite, depression to a lack of sleep, and academic procrastination to additional exercise. Spring of 1995, when I attempted to lose weight for my wedding (the least successful of the four thinner periods). Spring of 1996, when a lunch-hour Stairmaster with my initials stained on it in sweat led to the best shape I've ever been in, inside and out.
And now, I hope, summer of 1997, when I plan to ride to work through September at least and to meet RDC at the gym three afternoons a week after work.

Tomorrow RDC and I might go to Echo Lake to hike. I wonder how cold the lake is; it's frightening to think it might be colder than Grand. Cleaner than the reservoirs, I'd wager. I want to explore the Highline Canal more though. Apparently it goes to Cheesman Reservoir. That will easily wait for a cooler day. It was 92 yesterday and I think it was hotter today. Tomorrow is meant to be cooler, but I really want to see a lake, however freezing cold it may be.

While BJW was in Boston with CLH finding her wedding apparel (and allegedly muchos other garments as well), CLH suggested I do the invitations, as I did RDC's and mine. BJW asked and I said okey-dokey but I don't know quite what I've got myself into. She sent me on a ragged torn-off sheet of notebook paper a rough draft. N.B. she wants this sheet back, ragged side and all. So I sent it back, unable to resist jotting (a BJW word) this note: "Sorry to hear paper's so expensive you need this back." Note well again that I had ruined the verso with a list of fonts that I made while going through the Format menu looking for fonts suitable for a wedding invitation, and then notes to her also: I suggested she use both middle names or neither--she has his full and her initial, and of course I unfairly assume this is because she holds herself less important. Furthermore she had used his nickname, or what I had assumed was his nickname. In discussing this with her Wednesday night (and I really don't want to advise her paper selection, as I expect she'll be stupid about it), I suggested she use his actual name. "No!" she exclaimed, aghast. "Never call him that." That's when I found out he was christened with a diminutive, which is even worse than Jimmy Carter being inaugurated with his nickname. At least Carter was legally James, if he wanted to be. I asked her just how much of a redneck she's marrying, though I know that low class or not he's a nice man, which seems to be all she wants. She defending him saying his mother'd named him. Like growing up with such a one leaves no mark. And I should keep my mouth shut.

I cannot see keeping this up. Sanitizing my own entry, adding a link from the previous one, the upraised eyebrow: I don't want to deal. If I can't easily sanitize entries into impersonal observations without anything too personal or negative, I shall not post them. Ah, but a vanity press for my fascinating stories! How tempting.

*Also on the bus was a white man reading How Stella Got Her Groove Back! How very cool. Not only a man but a white one reading Terry McMillan.

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Last modified 20 June 1997

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