Reading: The Blind Assassin

Moving: biked 20-25 miles

Watching: "North by Northwest"

Learning: it's not the muscles but the butt-bones that take the pressure

10 September 2000: More Miles of Rain Asphalt and Lies

Frookies original chocolate chocolate-chip are better than Frookwiches, which are a pale imitation of both Frookies and Oreos. I have to find that recipe for home-made Oreos.

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On Labor Day RDC and I took our bikes out for the first time in ages. I hadn't ridden mine since May, when I last commuted to work on it, and I don't think RDC had ridden his all season. We didn't go far, just to Alfalfa's for smoothies (Deep Blue Dream, packed with blueberries and fantastic) and across 12th to the Cherry Creek Trail, to Confluence Park and up the Platte River Trail to Park and thence homeward. So my sitting bones were hardly in shape for what I forced on them today, which was my ever-increasing poundage on an at least 20-mile, nearly three-hour ride. Which means I averaged just over 6 mph. Well, let's say it was closer to 25 miles, and I left after 11:30 and returned before 2:15, and I did toodle around in the state park and drain a water bottle (and, um, eat a hot dog, because I was desperate). There. That's still pitifully slow, of course.

Anger, however, is a superb motivator. This is why I worked out so hard and often when I was at Hateful, Inc. It wasn't just that that Lifestep and what it did to my body were the only bright spots in my life at that point. It was that I hated Hateful and was extremely stressed. And yes, I was more upset this morning than I have been in months.

Of course, the anger had dissipated well before I reached the dam, replaced by memories of the two? three? times I ever rollerbladed that far, which memories might never be superseded by the several and several more times I've traveled that trail by foot or bike. Fear again. At the top of the golf course before the dam, I stopped to drink water and watched an older man with no padding at all zip down the curving, steep grade toward the highway underpass. By the time I'd sucked my bottle dry and followed, he was away down the southwest leg of the trail. Sigh.

Anyway. On my bike I zipped merrily and safely along, down and through and up the southeast leg and into the park. Two wheels good, eight wheels bad! I'd've been such a good sheep.

My bad mood hadn't evaporated so much that I didn't sneer at the "personal watercraft." How I do loathe jetskis.

The spring before we moved to Denver, we saw the Cherry Creek Reservoir and state park on CNN for some reason. I thought happily that I could swim in natural water right in the city. Ah ha ha. In our first weeks here, we rode to the reservoir. I saw the water filled with motorboats and jetskis. I saw the itsy-bitsy area roped in for swimming with motorized vehicles moored close to. More to the point, I saw the posted levels of bacteria on the bathhouse wall. So I've never been in the water there. My suspicion is that even with municipal overuse, the drinking-water reservoir might have a better chance of cleansing itself if gas-chugging, oil-spewing craft were not allowed to ply its waters.

I really miss lakes.

Moving on. One of the great things about this ride was seeing Pike's Peak. Since we moved away from our stretch of the Highline Canal, I don't see it often. Dot Org is on a high enough floor for it, but a building blocks the view to the south (and no one seems to think asking that building to move is a reasonable request). We can see from north of Evans to south of Devil's Head, at least. The day was gloriously clear and sunny, and I looked plenty at Pike's Peak from the top of the dam, at DTC to the left and downtown to the right, at the Arapahoe peaks with just wee smidgens of snow on their shoulders. It's the 10th of September. The earliest snow I've known--this is my sixth fall in Denver--fell on the 20th. I can't wait for it.

And it is fall. The leaves are changing, not on all the species and not on all the individuals of a species, but they are changing.

By the time I turned around at the reservoir, my sitting bones were already protesting. I had half the ride yet to do, though, and I did it.

At the junction of the Highline Canal and Cherry Creek trails, I veered right onto the Highline. I zipped over the bridge and around the golf course and north to Iliff and imperiled my life crossing Iliff to land at the further end of our previous customary walk. I've missed it. We walk in City Park now, and even if we walked the whole perimeter, which we don't, that would be only 3 miles instead of 3.4. The only good view of the mountains from City Park is the absolutely fantastic, relatively famous one from behind the Museum of Nature and Science (recently renamed; it used to be the Museum of Natural History). And the trees are different. City Park has lots of trees, of course, but different species, catalpa and silver maple and even a few oak trees, and lots of crabapple. Our former stretch of Highline has stately, huge cottonwoods at regular intervals on the east side, and on the west, constant mountain views from Pike's Peak to Long's Peak. Another reason I elected this detour is that it's noticeably downhill the whole way. I suppose it's farther than going on the Cherry Creek trail, but from the pumphouse at the southeast corner of the golf course and except for the bit crossing the road, all the way to the end of our former stretch, I barely had to pedal (and I wonder why my overall speed was so low!) And then once on the road again, there's an actual hill to zoom down. Of course, the whole way from the reservoir to downtown is downstream and downhill anyway.

Unfortunately, my whole route home was not. I don't go all the way downtown but leave the trail at the mall. As I waited to cross First, stopping for a light for a streetside supposed bike route, I dismounted. This was probably a bad idea, because I think remounting hurt more. The uphilledness between Fifth and Tenth is really not much at all, even for my out-of-shape legs accustomed to Denver flatness. My tush hurt, was all. I did get to pass again the two houses whose front yards I wish to emulate. I should take pictures of them. And maybe enlarge them to lifesize and glue them to my lawn to spare myself actual gardening. And I discovered someone's curbside peach tree whose fruit are going to waste. I wonder if anyone would notice if I lifted some.

Ooo, speaking of peaches! I discovered a possible reason our nectarines are not as sweet as they might be. We allowed too many fruit to set. Having less fruit on the tree means more sugar per nectarine. There's a proportion, like 30 to 40 leaves per fruit. Who am I, Proginoskes, that I am going to count all the leaves on my tree? I might have an easier time counting next year, of course. The tree needs pruning, for its sake and that of our roof. I don't think it ever has been pruned, either, not professionally or even by anyone who read a book about it: nectarine and peach trees like to be open in the center, and this tree has one main bole growing straight up.

I might appreciate having less fruit for other reasons. Saturday I raked and shoveled quantities of fruit in various stages of rot. The long grass is yet in the patterns I raked it, I think because it's been glued by fructose. By Sunday night, scores of windfalls had fallen again. We must get a ladder and a fruit-picker; this waste is unconscionable.

Why is it spelled "unconscionable," when it's about conscience not consciousness?

Anyway, when I got back from my ride, RDC was napping. He's had what I had, sort of, though he's focused on different symptoms. I thumped my bike downstairs into the furnace room (since we haven't secured the garage yet), stripped and peed and lay on the floor reading whatever came to hand (These Happy Golden Years) until I realized that continued immobility would result in rigor mortis. We went for a little walk in the park, little because of his continued weakness and my being totally spent. Then I grocery-shopped.

I shopped in that state you're just not supposed to shop, ravenous and empty and weary. I bought eggplant parmesian from the deli and, home again, immediately heated it up--at 4:30 in the afternoon. Blake ate his supper while I sat in the kitchen doorway and read--I had to keep an eye on the temperature in the oven yet Blake dislikes eating alone. And I finished These Happy Golden Years. LIW drops a lot of hints that Ma didn't like Almanzo before they got married, maybe only because of the unbroken horses, and I wonder if Ma ever did warm up to him. Does diphtheria have the same effect on men that mumps can have? Does anyone else ever wonder why they only had two children? I don't have The First Four Years, and I don't remember what killed their son, only that LIW didn't seem to mind much. Maybe because the house burned down a few days later.

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Last modified 14 September 2000

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