Today is shaping up to be a lazy, possibly useless (the good kind of useless) Sunday. It’s raining really hard outside right now. I was lucky to get to my destination (the Nob Hill Satellite) right before the storm began, or I would have been soaked. Although I enjoy the fast internet and ginger cookies here, the storm makes me wish I was at home in my pajamas, instead. An hour ago, when I was in my pajamas at home, I wanted to be elsewhere. Never satisfied…
I do have some things to do, though. I need to finish going through the pile of theses and dissertations I got through ILL last week, since they’re due back soon, and I can’t renew any of them. However, the only thing worse than writing your own dissertation or thesis is reading someone else’s. One of the dissertations I have on my pile is 900 pages long, on how various groups have used the South Platte River valley in Denver as a “crossroads”. Interesting, and all, but 900 pages? Not only did someone end up writing that much, someone’s committee had to read it and sign off on it. In my role as a reader, I mainly have to deal with the abstract, and, most important, the bibliography. Thankfully, the other documents I have are much more reasonable in length.
It would be easier to concentrate, though, if I wasn’t so sore and tired. Yesterday, I went for a 20-mile bike ride on the Paseo del Bosque bike and walk trail, which runs through and near the cottonwoods along the Rio Grande. (This is the path depicted in the above photo, but I took it earlier in the week.) This may have been a bit far. I felt great after doing sixteen miles (from Central to Alameda and back), and decided to go a bit further to make it an even 20, and I think it was that last little bit that did me in. It wasn’t for nothing, though — not only did I get to clock up a nice, round number, I also ran into my friend C., who I haven’t seen much of since he finished his M.A. He was going on a 40-mile ride that afternoon.
The bosque trail, I have to say, is much more pleasant than the other bike trail I’ve been on in the last few weeks, mainly because it’s surrounded by trees and some water and other things that fall under the category of “nature.” The bike trail that starts near where I live, the Paseo del Noreste trail, runs along a giant concrete trash-laden arroyo, and there’s precious little shade. At the crest of the trail (at least, the crest I got to), you get the majestic sight of I-25 running on one side. Interstate and concrete arroyo versus trees and dirt and shade: not really a contest, here. This is probably why there’s a lot more people on the bosque trail (which leads to me feeling a bit more safe) than on the other trail, at least in my experience so far.
Anyway, I’ve taken three rides on the bosque trail this week: one 14-mile trip, one that was eight miles, and then yesterday’s 20-mile trip. All of these trips were tiring, but they were much, much more fun than going to the gym, and less frustrating than riding around my neighborhood. It’s good to be free of cars every once in a while. [1] At the moment I took this photo, I was very glad to be down on the trail and not on the bridge above. It’s difficult to see in this photo, but traffic was heavy and moving very slow on Montano. There were a lot of idling motors, an occasional honk, and some yelling up there, but below, just the sounds of the water passing by the trail.
I’d been occasionally tempted to go on the Bosque trail before. K., one of my neighbors, has proposed several times that we take a walk on it some weekend, but we were never able to coordinate a time to go (plus, she is a chatty walker, and I am so not a chatty walker — this could cause problems). Now that I’ve been on a big chunk of it, I can say that I’m glad I biked it rather than walked it. I was surprised at how little time it took to complete these rides. Even though I don’t have the fastest and most efficient bike in the world (the evidence being how many people on other types of bikes passed me en route), the fact that I had successfully biked from Central to Alameda was impressive, to me. Had I driven this distance (something I do fairly often), it would have seemed to take forever, what with the traffic lights and the other traffic and the idling and the slowing down and the speeding, etc., etc. Biking to and from those streets (on this trail at least — doing this on the street would have been a real pain in the ass) seemed so easy and calm, in comparison.
I was a little worried about taking my bike on the trail, since I would be clearly outnumbered by people on other sorts of (faster, more hardcore) bikes. While there were a lot of People in Spandex riding the trail, going by very fast on their narrow, narrow tires, or people out getting Serious Exercise on their road or mountain bikes, I didn’t get many odd looks due to what I was riding. Except on the few times I was going fast enough to pass other people — then I got a few looks of you passed ME on THAT bike? On one of my rides, I saw not one, but two Townie bikes out on the trail — one of which was pink with flowers, and the rider had attached more pink silk flowers to the handlebars. My friend M. suggests that we should all get together and form a gang. A slow, comfortable, fun, but slightly inefficient, gang.
Last night I was thinking about going to this thing, but I was soooo tired and would have been cranky and/or knocked out after one beer. So if any of you out there reading this went, sorry about that.[2]
A year ago today, it was wet and grey, as well, but I was here then, and that seemed a lot better.
[1] I’ve been going to the gym a lot more this summer, because I hate walking when it’s hot. Going to the gym is efficient, for sure, and it allows me to watch closed-captioned episodes of Celebrity Fit Club while walking on the treadmill, but it’s not what I would refer to as a pleasant place. I feel like I’m exercising in a giant, sweaty, crowded hamster wheel.
[2] Then again, this is not the first one of these meetings I’ve thought about going to and then decided to not, at the last minute. This is because I find the idea sort of intimidating: a lot of new people, who are presumably all better photographers than I am (and who definitely have better photo equipment). I get easily intimidated in non-school environments where I am the least knowledgeable person in the group (or, more likely, I just think I am the least knowledgeable). This is particularly true when it’s something I want to be good at, like photography. It’s like I need to feel basically competent in order to open up enough to learn enough to be more competent. Which doesn’t make that much sense, really, but it’s something I struggle with. Let me tell you how long it took me just to go to the bike store….
