I kinda miss college...

San Gabriel River Trail: Trail of Terror!

Enjoying a hot Saturday afternoon on the San Gabriel River Trail, when all hell breaks loose!

What went through my mind:

0:00 Hey, this is a great idea! I can't believe I haven't done this before. I can show people what my rides are like.

0:13 Just keeping the camera looking straight ahead will be boring. I'll pan to the left!

0:19 And the right!

0:24 Well, I am going almost 20 MPH. I should show that, too!

0:30 Hmmm, I'm watching the road through the camera instead of watching the road itself. That might be a little dan--.... nah, who am I kidding. This is great! Safe and great!

0:35 Whoa, THAT was an unexpected little bump! Good thing it wasn't worse since I'm only hanging onto the handlebars with the tips of my left hand.

0:40 Hmmm... Road's a little curvy. That will add excitement to the video!

0:59 The mix of shadows and bright sunlight is making it a little difficult to see what's ahead. But hey, great video!

1:00 Hey, the trail isn't--
1:01 WTF?!?!? Why is the trail curving to the--
1:02 Maybe I should stop fil--
1:03 CLIP OUT! CLIP OUT! CLIP OUT! CLI--
1:03.5 I'd better stop filming. This is going to be embarrassing.
1:04 OH SHHHHH--

And then I ran into a chainlink fence. And two other cyclists saw me do it. They came up to me as I'm pulling myself up off the ground, my right foot still clipped in, camera clutched in my right hand, and the guy very slowly says to me, "Are you okay? Do you need help?"

Hehe.... maybe I do.

History

In the midst of end-of-summer cleaning and organizing, I come across this entry in my old writer's notebook, from January 17, 2001, a time when my life didn't make a whole lot of sense anymore.

I was sitting outside with my kids, on the grass of Garfield's field, and we were all writing.

But the sun... we're in the midst of winter and we've placed ourselves in the sun, as weak as it still is. I suppose you have a choice, really, when in winter to either place yourself in the sun to help make yourself a little bit warmer or to stay in the shade, or worse yet to stay inside, with artificial light that doesn't even oppose the numbness in your hands, ears, and nose.

It's such an obvious choice, really, to be in the sun. And not so difficult, most of the time. But I spent months inside AND in the shade, not even bothering to turn the lights on.

What a fool I've been, but I know I'd do it again. Sometimes that's just the way it goes.

Those of you who read this blog know that the year I was 25 was quite a year. I was living alone for the first time. It was my first year of teaching, which is stressful enough by itself, but those 365 days also saw the death of my grandma, the death of my dog, the divorce of my parents, and the beginning, ending, and re-beginning of an ill-fated love affair.

And to get myself through it all, I stayed inside and in the shade.

I know that you noticed. I spent years devoted to (and, I suppose, hiding in) nothing but teaching.

The legacy of that time still has not ended. Some of you I hurt the most during that time have, understandably, left my life forever, having given up on me, and they will never read this and never know how much I... regret.

But those of you who stuck with me -- thanks.

Chatting by the pool with Diane

On Monday, it was still so hot by 7:00 that I decided to take a dip, for only the second time in two years, in my apartment complex's pool, the placement of which prompts my very few visitors nearly always to remark, "Hey -- just like Melrose Place!"

After swimming a few laps, my swimming stamina already exhausted, I sat stoically on the pool's steps, enjoying the coolness of the water. And the quiet.

"Would I be encroaching on your space if I sat down? I'd like to get my feet wet," said a voice to my left, and I realized that the woman who had been sleeping facedown on her lounge chair was now awake and addressing me.

I, of course, told her it was no encroachment. She sat down.

"Do you mind if I smoke? I know that I shouldn't. I had quit until a few months ago. Life has been... well, that's a long story."

I told her I didn't mind. I didn't think the smoke would fall down to my level. I was still mostly in the water, you see.

"I've never seen you before," she tells me.

"I'm not around very often. Because of where I work, I leave pretty early and I come home pretty late."

"What do you do?" she asks me.

"I'm a teacher. I teach 8th grade."

Her face lights up.

"Where do you teach?" she asks.

"Huntington Park. Do you know where that is?" I always ask because, nine times out of ten, people have no idea where it is.

"Oh yes. I grew up for many years in Southgate. I remember it perfectly. That means you teach kids who don't have a lot of money. You have a very important job."

"I love it." I smile.

"You have beautiful dimples when you smile. Do people tell you that? My brother had dimples. You remind me a lot of my brother, actually. You have a very serene demeanor. How old are you?"

"I'm thirty-three."

"Thirty-three," she repeats. She has a wistful look on her face. "Jesus was thirty-three. My brother was thirty-three when he died. Interesting."

A pause. I've been sitting in the pool for several minutes without moving, but I'm not cold.

"I don't know your name," she says.

"Darron."

"Darron, I'm Diane."

And over the next thirty minutes or so I learned a lot about Diane. She's 51. She ran a marathon almost a year ago in 4 hours, 44 minutes, and 44 seconds. She has a boyfriend named Paul and they've been together since they were 18. She's moving into a rented house in Auburn, about an hour or so north or northeast of Sacramento, a quick decision made after visiting some friends who live there at the start of August. She's moving on September 11th ("We're going to create a new memory for 9/11.") with Paul and her mom, an 87-year-old mostly-still-independent woman who lives in Seal Beach. She quit her job two weeks ago, though she was hoping she'd be fired so she could qualify for unemployment. She flirted with the idea of going on disability, her doctor saying he would go along with it, but she felt too guilty.

Both Diane and Paul are moving up north with no jobs secured, but it's something she felt compelled to do. "I was alive, but I wasn't living. Ever since we decided to move, I have been alive again. It's all good. That's what I like to say. It's all good, and it's all God."

In our time together by the pool, Diane smoked half a pack of cigarettes. She told me about the thirteen years she's lived in this complex. She said "it's all good" at least thirty times. She introduced me to another tenant who lives on the other side of the pool, Dana, because "he isn't around very often. He doesn't know anybody."

I now know four people who live here, including myself, and our names all start with D.