Looks like it's going to be a perfect weekend up in Mammoth...clean, highs in the 50s, lows in the 20s. Perfect fall weather. Reading all the photographers' sites i can find, it sounds like the color's already peaked in the higher elevations, and the cold front that dropped snow a week ago really hit the aspens hard. Down low, under 8,000 feet it's either still green or just starting to go. Should be gorgeous.
Sure do wish I had a few more days to be there, though, since it sounds like there's a pretty good sized storm rolling in monday/tuesday. It's not supposed to be all that cold, and will probably take the last bit of snow hanging around from the previous storm with it. Sierra storms though, I just love 'em. Feeling the change in the winds, the high clouds and the moisture in the air the day before. Maybe sunday will be like that, if we're lucky.
A couple more hours, then on the road.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
thursday malaise...
Slow, quiet day here in the office. Pounding away here on the keys, drawing squiggly lines all over the screen in the name of AutoCAD. This job just seems so meaningless at times...making maps of buildings for a report that no ones going to look at, for buildings that are going to be demolished. Sigh.
All the talk lately of trips, of taking off for weeks, months at a time have me restless. I know some of it has to do with this being sick too, the feeling of not getting out, being confined, that slowing down i was talking about before. It's more than that though. It's the need to really get out for a time, and not a time insignificant, but a sizable chunk of time. It's that wanderlust, the pull of the 'out there', that seemingly unslakable thirst for experience. Experience...that's more of what it is. It's not a need to necessarily go far, but it does seem that after a while going far does become a necessity. An artificial necessity, but a construct that I have there none the less. I get jaded with what's all around me, and have to check myself sometimes. I forget the simply enjoyment of driving to somewhere like laguna and just walking along the cliffs and the beach all day, and instead spin myself up in to the idea that i need to get in the car at 5am and drive all the way to morro bay to do the same thing. And even then it's not the same thing, since I'm always thinking of the time i'll have to take to get home, of where to eat, of traffic. I forget sometimes just how good it can be down here. Especially now, with summer gone, dropping into the cooler fall and winter. Damp cold sand, cloudy afternoons, sweatshirts and coffee well into the late morning. I love this time of year, love the open and mostly empty coast, the damp, the fog. Summer's great, but fall and winter are some of my favorite times to be down there, albeit for different reasons than the summer.
That sort of rambled off track, but the whole idea is that I'm now really feeling the itch to get out. Sometimes I think the little weekend trips make it more difficult, other times i don't. I need those trips, the friday, saturday, sunday jaunts up to mammoth, to the wine country, out to joshua tree. I need that in my blood. Days are good, but my heart craves weeks, months.
It's not the first time i've talked about this. I just need to do something about it...
Off to Beachwood in Seal Beach for a MS Ride fundraiser, and a few good pints. Nice thing about having beer dork friends - when they throw an event, they know how to get the beer right. I know i'll be having Racer X, some beers from Moonlight, and who knows what else. All in the name of charity. Gotta love it...
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
sick, thinking...
Being sick has me feeling...I'm not sure really. Introspective? No, that's not from being sick, that's just a normal condition. Contemplative? Restless? Maybe it's something akin to restlessness. It's this feeling that I get sometimes, those few times I allow myself to slow down. Hmm...maybe there's something to that...when I let myself slow down, I start feeling that I'm somehow not capitalizing on anything and everything possible at that moment.
I'm not good at slowing down. Not good at it at all. I don't like it, the feeling that comes the second or third day of not doing anything. There's this sticky stagnation that seems like it's trying to catch up with me, pull me into that space that most every one else occupies. It's like gravity working to pull me back, like climbing up the face of a sand dune. Taking steps quickly will get you to the top; taking them slowly keeps you sliding backward, until climbing the actual thing seems pointless and you justify stopping with the explanation to yourself that "who want's to climb some stupid sand dune anyway?". After a while, the ones at the bottom of the dune can't even justify starting up the dune anymore, and instead look at the ones up top as some oddity, wondering why they'd want to be there in the first place. Forgetting it used to be them up there, looking down and wondering, just as those up top still are, why so few people are coming up.
Anyway, i get annoyed with being sick. It's a funny thing, I think. I could care less about the physical illness, I'm more annoyed by the fact that it slows me down from riding, running, or just being out. I'll get out and walk when I can't run, hacking and sputtering the whole way, just because I can't stomach the idea of lying prostrate and reading another book. I'm a firm believer that, in the vast majority of cases, exercise does nothing but speed recovery, and that lethargy simply prolongs it. And even if not, at least it feels better to be out and enjoying the evening, the changing colors of the trees and the different feel of the air now that fall's coming.
Last night I, for the most part, pulled the lethargic thing...read, drank tea, read more, drank more tea, and finally went to bed early. I was trying to do all i could to get better quickly, as much as it killed me to just be sitting on the porch or inside, looking out. I think it worked though; I'm feeling, if not 100%, then closer to 75% today. And after work I'm going walking, at the least, though I'll probably ride to kick the remainder of this thing. And then cook, homemade chicken noodle soup. I may not be the only one sick with this now, and if not, it's kinda my fault...so i'll take care of the nursing back to health then. And if not, it's still going to be fun to make a homemade soup, all the chopping and simmering and smells and warming of the house now that the evenings are cooler. Mmm...
I absolutely cannot wait to get up to mammoth this weekend. I was going to write "for a variety of reason, all of them good,", but somehow good didn't seem the right descriptor. Somehow, I'm finding myself unable to come up with proper adjectives from time to time lately. I'm finding I can express feeling far more cohesively writing in situations, and actions, than in actual words. More metaphorically, i suppose, than literally. That's not exactly right...I guess it's that I'm more comfortable, when trying to covey emotion, using prose than effusive language. That's still not it on the nose, but it's somewhere along to figuring it out. Guess i'll just have to work on writing more to work though it.
I'm not good at slowing down. Not good at it at all. I don't like it, the feeling that comes the second or third day of not doing anything. There's this sticky stagnation that seems like it's trying to catch up with me, pull me into that space that most every one else occupies. It's like gravity working to pull me back, like climbing up the face of a sand dune. Taking steps quickly will get you to the top; taking them slowly keeps you sliding backward, until climbing the actual thing seems pointless and you justify stopping with the explanation to yourself that "who want's to climb some stupid sand dune anyway?". After a while, the ones at the bottom of the dune can't even justify starting up the dune anymore, and instead look at the ones up top as some oddity, wondering why they'd want to be there in the first place. Forgetting it used to be them up there, looking down and wondering, just as those up top still are, why so few people are coming up.
Anyway, i get annoyed with being sick. It's a funny thing, I think. I could care less about the physical illness, I'm more annoyed by the fact that it slows me down from riding, running, or just being out. I'll get out and walk when I can't run, hacking and sputtering the whole way, just because I can't stomach the idea of lying prostrate and reading another book. I'm a firm believer that, in the vast majority of cases, exercise does nothing but speed recovery, and that lethargy simply prolongs it. And even if not, at least it feels better to be out and enjoying the evening, the changing colors of the trees and the different feel of the air now that fall's coming.
Last night I, for the most part, pulled the lethargic thing...read, drank tea, read more, drank more tea, and finally went to bed early. I was trying to do all i could to get better quickly, as much as it killed me to just be sitting on the porch or inside, looking out. I think it worked though; I'm feeling, if not 100%, then closer to 75% today. And after work I'm going walking, at the least, though I'll probably ride to kick the remainder of this thing. And then cook, homemade chicken noodle soup. I may not be the only one sick with this now, and if not, it's kinda my fault...so i'll take care of the nursing back to health then. And if not, it's still going to be fun to make a homemade soup, all the chopping and simmering and smells and warming of the house now that the evenings are cooler. Mmm...
I absolutely cannot wait to get up to mammoth this weekend. I was going to write "for a variety of reason, all of them good,", but somehow good didn't seem the right descriptor. Somehow, I'm finding myself unable to come up with proper adjectives from time to time lately. I'm finding I can express feeling far more cohesively writing in situations, and actions, than in actual words. More metaphorically, i suppose, than literally. That's not exactly right...I guess it's that I'm more comfortable, when trying to covey emotion, using prose than effusive language. That's still not it on the nose, but it's somewhere along to figuring it out. Guess i'll just have to work on writing more to work though it.
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