Information Blues.

Today was me day. A day for me. Well, it wasn’t in plan, but that’s what it turned out to be.

The anatomy of a Scott Ralston me day: you start by making pancakes. Today it was buckwheat, because the American Coot had planted the seed. I walked over to the new Whole Foods to buy buckwheat flour. New WF does not sell bulk foods! Instead they use the room to scoop in house gelato and sell tiny chocolates that look like jewelry by the pound. i.e., yuppie stuff instead of hippie stuff! Well, you can still buy organic buckwheat flour by the half pound, for only half your paycheck.

I made pancakes and fake sausage. I talked to my mom. I watched the Mets get eliminated from the playoffs and watched the Phillies dance and jump and swamp eachother with joy as I re-indexed my new X9 medium cage rear derailleur. I was going for a mountain bike ride.

The summer passed, and I didn’t ride El Corte de Madera once. That was because my trail bike (named Corporal Clegg) had an exploded mechanism and my cross country bike has a bent crank. But I fixed the Corporal, and for me day took him for a fall ride at Skeggs Point.

The route: Methusela to Manzanita to Crosscut to Crossover. Gordon Mill to Virginia Mill, South Leaf to North Leaf. Then get slow and low on El Corte de Madera Creek trail, all the way back up to the top.

I levitated over the rocks and roots on Manzanita thinking magic carpet. I emerged from the trees at a sandstone point where you can see Neil Young’s ranch. I raced through the forest, cutting like a razor through the leaf carpet. Leaves and sticks got caught in my linkage and buzzed like cards on a bmx. I went so fast down old doubletrack logging roads that my eyes grew teary even beneath fancy technical eyewear as I launched long, low flying jumps over water bars.

I finally ate that package of experimental shot bloks in “margarita–with extra salt” flavor. I needed all of the hummingbird nectar I could get to make it back up to the Point. I dropped a blok on the ground and was so bummed that I picked it up to brush all the bark and leaves off and eat it anyway–hey, it’s me day! But then I noticed later my tongue and throat had become kinda swollen.

Oh well, there’s nothing like a 2000′ climb to remedy a mild case of swelling as my blood had to make an emergency re-allocation to the thighs. I stopped to eat another experimental Cliff product, this one a shot in Apple Pie. (Thank you, dmo.) It felt like I wasn’t really in my granny gear but unfortunately I was. It could not get any easier, it could only be over, and eventually it was. The Corporal and I emerged from the bottom of the forest back to the blue sky as we counted our blessings and also our grins as we felt lucky and happy for another day of adventure.