Information Blues.

I was riding my mountain bike in Joaquin Miller Park yesterday afternoon. The weather was balmy, the plants were blooming, the view was clear out the bay. I rode a lap through the park from the top: zigzagging in the redwood mulch on Big Trees, across Sunset to the Horse Corral, scared myself bad at the pure, breakneck speed on the condemned rollercoaster that is Cinderella. I can’t ride Cinderella enough, it is the purest kind of fun, a narrow racetrack through the bushes down a hidden creek valley. The plants blur, my eyes water, I exclaim wildly, over and over. When I reach the bottom I have to pause to reflect, get the final hoots and hollers out and wind down.

I took a diversion on the Sinawik Loop before climbing back up to the top for another plunge. I was trying to entertain myself with an optional rock garden on Sunset—-mountain bikers like to believe we can flow through roughness like water, it’s sort of like believing you’re a ninja and possess supernatural powers of movement. I was flowing through the rocks when my rear derailleur hit a rock and exploded. The hanger sheered off, the derailleur cage bent in half and my chain turned perpendicular.

Oh well, it was a noble death for a piece of machinery that had brought me a lot of satisfaction: in the trees, with me and a vista de la bahia. It was the kind of place you might spread your ashes, except that I was only spreading aluminum dust.

So I went home and made brownies and drank a Brickmaiden and watched Pan’s Labyrinth. And Ask Doctor GTI is back, so everything is okay.

This morning I woke up to George Bush on NPR speaking about his “War on Terror” and hit snooze a few times and started to dream that I was in the Middle East and he was talking to us in realtime and then he was talking only to me and I started yelling at him, asking why he couldn’t see that he was digging us all into an enormous hole with his fake war against ghosts and scarecrows, that what’s happening now would affect our entire lives.

After witnessing the A’s lose to the Giants today we went to Juan’s Place and I ate a Grilled Vegetarian Super Burrito (aka the Wet Thigh) at 4pm. I’d eaten thousands of calories yet hadn’t fit any bicycling in all weekend and was feeling low with a losing baseball hangover. But the GVSB sitting in my stomach was so big and powerful it tried to convince me to stay home. This super burrito wanted to sit on the couch and crawl into my belly, lodge itself in fat; it was sending out eye-glazing coma chemicals.

But fuck that, fuck that super burrito. I decided to fight. I roused it from my belly and told it good, “We’re not sitting around, we’re going for a bike ride! We’re going to ride Skyline along the ridge, and you’re going to burn! You’re going down!” Yes, I intended to torture my burrito.

It seemed like an absurd challenge to go for a real bike ride with a GVSB in my belly. I knew I couldn’t push too hard or I was liable to lose the burrito out my throat. I pictured it boiling in the prototypical cannibal’s kettle; if I turned the heat up too high it might realize and jump out. I needed a simmer, so I took it slow, touring pace, and stared at the trees. I was sweating out green sauce and running on beans. I was carrying a few more pounds than usual, but I didn’t let it worry me.

After I’d climbed up 800 or so feet the burrito really started to cook. I was re-tasting the Mexican flag—-red sauce, green sauce, sour cream. I could tell it didn’t like it because it was kicking me in the stomach, resisting combustion. I was kicking back; my thighs were burning, sending out licking flames. The burrito started to move, sucked down by the intestinal vortex. I could feel a bottleneck, a cramp where the burro had wedged. Easy now, work it out.

When I reached the top the light was turning orange. The sun was descending on Mount Tam and the wind began to blow south. I was on the racetrack now, turbo-powered by Juan Mejia. The road dipped and turned and I cranked and burned and whittled that burrito down into an enchirito. It was a satisfying feeling, bombing down Claremont, knowing that I’d gone from bloated to just full. I’d extracted my revenge on a super burrito, though all the other ones I’ve ever had have kicked my ass.