Information Blues.

There’s a stupid phrase I kept reciting on my trip home for the holidays: go big or go home. It stuck in my head like a disembodied Gen X koan. Since I was already home, my only option was to go big.

Often when I’m back in Encinitas I try to live like my regular life in the East Bay. But that’s inachievable in North County San Diego. I end up feeling a little weird, stomach removed from my normal diet of pressure cooked beans and five course hot pepper meals. I aim for a life of thoughtful moderation, but in San Diego I decided this isn’t advisable. Especially with my Dad peer pressuring me to eat VG’s donuts at 4pm. We sat on the cliff above Pipes observing the big swell, and I watched him eat two buttermilk bars and a choc on choc cake.

Ah, xmas in San Diego. This means mucha cerveza, multiple volleys of Maker’s Mark, endless supplies of chocolate dipped macaroons and whipped cream. It means detailed tacqueria surveys, full of potato tacos, chile relleno burritos and Orange Bang. I went big: I have become a pickled jalapeño, with enough macaroons in storage to perform an unsupported Devil Mountain Double.

Xmas Day I went big on xmas music. I torrented Phil Spector’s Xmas Gift to You, Juanny Cash’s Xmas, Elvis’, Louis Armstrong’s… Xmas dinner I filled the house with John Waters’ selections for the season. This was when my relatives learned that Santa Claus was a black man.

I went big, I went home. I enjoyed myself, wrapped up in a cozy era of satisfaction.

I am 31 and optimistic.

This morning as I was leaving on my bicycle I noticed it was drizzling. So I brought up my favorite Doppler and read the signs: chaotic cyan, trailed by a gap, then somewhere off the coast, swirling indistinctly in java animation: a yellow wall.

But come on; I want to ride my bicycle! So I met up with Simeon and told him, “Oh, yeah, the Doppler’s fine. There’s a gap coming right after this drizzle…” Just to be sure we stayed close to home, riding the tops and fronts of the Berkeley/Oakland Hills, rather than the sultry, challenging behinds. At the bottom of Old Tunnel Road the wind started whipping while the rain paused. We started riding the escalator up, spinning easy, chatting about Brouwerij Corsendonk when the rain returned. But this time it was horizontal, riding the wind; my computer said it was 39 degrees out as icicle drops needled my eyes.

At the top of the hills, rolling along Skyline to find our early exit, braking power dropped to 50% and my shoes filled with ice water. It was a giddy sensation and I couldn’t help but laugh: so cold and fresh, I’d never experienced anything like it.

But then I started shivering, which is pretty sketchy when you’re engaged in the subtle act of steering, and then at the bottom of Trestle Glen, 2 miles from home, my rear tire flatted.

But it’s the day after my birthday and I feel so thankful. When I finally made it home I drew a hot bath and served a quarter of the remaining pumpkin cheesecake that lovely Kamil baked, and the comparison between the weather at the top of the hill and the weather in my tub couldn’t have been greater. To move so quickly from utter misery to deep comfort, with tingling toes, brought into relief the scale of experience, and doubled the sweetness of the bath, tripled the delight of the cake.

Yes I’m 31, but I need to work on my Doppler analysis.

The ride to work this morning was so fresh it was almost unbelievable: brisk, clean sun after a yesterday of blustering rain.

I wore my quallofirm shirt. It has 3/4 sleeves and off white buttons the size of nickels. The fabric is fluffy cotton. When I ran across it I had no idea what it was; it seemed sorta tropical with the airy weave and short sleeves. I could imagine somebody wearing it to paddle an outrigger canoe. It has sparse, diagonal navy blue lines and a quirky handwritten word that repeats every so often: Quallofirm…

The first day I ever wore it I was at work when it finally occurred to plug this mystery word into google, find out which exotic use this shirt bore. I found things like this:

Pillows for Your Bed…

* White Goose Down for shape-ability… luxury
* DuPont Quallofil® & Quallofirm® for choice of feel
* 100% Latex…long-long lasting shape & support
* Feather…for those who remember wagons across the prairie
* Buckwheat-hull pillows for neck problems
* Polyester for economy
* Body Pillows with case
* Cervical Pillows, both large and small
* Lumbar Cushion (hot/cold)

OMG, I wore a pajama top to work! And what the hell is a cervical pillow?

So today I’m rolling the quallofirm® top over black jeans that shrank a little too much, became vaguely highwater. The sleeves on all my limbs are too short, I must look like a puppet. And then you throw in the Pancho Villa/Confederate General/Meher Baba mustache I’ve been cultivating, and I don’t know what you have but an outlier, an odd duck riding his bicycle to work, constantly remarking to himself about how frrresh it is out.