Information Blues.

Today after work I had no commitments. The weather was nice, and lately I’m all too aware that summer is almost over, so I seized the opportunity for a spontaneous hike.

I drove into the hills and ended up at Sibley. There’s only one trail there I haven’t walked, which is the Skyline Trail which connects Sibley to Tilden as part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail. I’ve seen the trail before, but could never picture how it went.

That’s what I find myself doing often when I’m in the hills: trying to understand where everything is. Which peak is that, what valley, how do they connect? I used to think of the Berkeley/Oakland Hills as sort of two dimensional, but I know now they’re vividly three. In the hills there is no such thing as a straight line; it’s more complicated. I know them pretty well from the front (bay) side, but from the other side I have almost no idea what I’m looking at. As a self-taught hills fan, hiker, biker and conceptual, amateur local geographer it pains me to admit it, but it’s true.

The Skyline Trail left Sibley and descended into the back side of the hills. The trail plunged down into twisted stream thickets. Bay leaves were already turning yellow and falling. The poison oak was burning red in a creaking grove of eucalyptus. The forest was dense; there were too many leaves, too much information to concentrate. It was quiet, but the breeze made it busy. I followed the traces of the wind through the trees; my peripheral vision was getting more and more active as I started to feel paranoid. I knew that if I ran into another human it would be startling, strange.

The first person I saw was a lot like me, going the other way carrying a water bottle wearing flipflops. He wasn’t paranoid; he seemed quite peaceful.

The trail kept going down and the brush was so dense I couldn’t tell exactly where I was. But I could hear a rush, like a waterfall, or maybe the wind, or no… the far end of the Caldecott Tunnel. Commuter traffic surging in and out, exploding and disappearing. I thought I saw primitive structures through the trees, and there were. There was a ring of old trucks, junk, unidentified structures above the east end of the tunnel. I passed a dilapidated shed on the other side of a fallen barbed wire fence. I passed a section of barbed wire that someone had covered with pvc pipe so it was passable, a trail headed up and over. All of these were great mysteries to me.

But I kept walking. And finally somebody overtook me: a 50something man in full speed hiking mode, gaunt and severe. He said nothing. The trail was loose and starting to climb up, and I thought I saw tractor tracks, and then I ran into the tractor, parallel parked in the apex of a crazy switchback. It looked like a futuristic dinosaur, yellow and biodiesel, and to my paranoid monkey brain I almost expected it to start moving. I kept walking and between the trees I thought I saw Grizzly Peak. I approached some unknown corner of Fish Ranch Road, trying to solve this puzzle, when I felt a pinch in my shoulder. The pain increased to a jab; I’d been quietly stung in the back by a wasp, on an unchartered trail at 7pm.

It was very confusing. I wanted to take my shirt off, as if that might explain something. I saw spider webs and wondered if I hadn’t been bitten by a spider. I imagined pygmies with blow darts crouching in the ferns. I started to look behind more often. And then I realized I should turn around.

I was walking back and nothing else was happening so I decided to go on an adventure into the abandoned shed. I stood at the overgrown path into the trees examining the leaves, and since none were poision oak, I took a few steps in, and peered into the dark of the structure. I considered calling out; what if somebody was inside? But I didn’t say anything. I took a few more steps, and saw in the dark a chair. I got closer and made out bare springs on the seat, the skeleton of a cushion. I considered turning back, then decided maybe I should enter the shed, see what really went on there. So I wiggled through a few more branches and then I was in the shed, standing on old wooden planks that looked like railroad ties. There I realized there was a vertebra sitting next to the chair, and in the corner a storage shelf with a few broken plates and a piece of bone, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark I noticed a rusty knife.

I emerged out of the undergrowth with wide eyes. I walked back to the top, and all the time I was wondering: where am I?

Lime Blueberry Coconut pancakes.

Is it wrong?

I rolled out of bed this morning to make buttermilk biscuits. Then I set to resurrecting my old hardtail mountain bike with a new crankset.

It’s an old Salsa A La Carte, tequila green, steel, handmade some time in the late 90’s in Petaluma. I bought it off ebay five years ago from a guy in Seattle who was going full suspension. It wears a mishmash of accessories: anodized red handlebars, 8 speed XT, sparkle red vinyl seat. Green and red like Christmas sauce, New Mexico style. Chiles and tomatillos.

I got it working again by 3pm, and by 4 I was out the door. I rode up Trestle Glen and into Dimond Canyon. Every so often I wonder what’s going on in there. It used to be a maintained mountain bike trail, but I don’t think anyone takes care of it anymore. I rolled along the stream canyon on treacherously overgrown goat trails. I was trying to re-familiarize myself with life on a hardtail; I didn’t trust it. I imagined the bike tracking sideways over a bundle of roots, I imagined myself somersaulting down into the canyon. I tried not to think about it. I tried to look ahead, to trust in the horizon rather than fixate on the myriad of details that were occuring beneath me. Let the bike handle those.

I rode underneath the bridge, covered in graffiti. I saw sleeping bags stowed on shadowy concrete ledges. I wondered what I was doing; it felt like I was off the map. I crossed back over the stream and started climbing the other side on impossible, washed out switchbacks. I marveled at deer trails: are those mountain bike trails? No, that’s too crazy. I made it to the top on the other side. Are those mountain bike trails? Inconclusive. Two trails led back to the bottom in a slick wash. The entryways looked like the top of a slide.

Dimond Canyon is a strange forest. There are tracks everywhere, like it’s all been explored and charted. Yet it’s wild and quiet, with a mirage at the top: a driving range. The place feels secret, yet it’s covered in markings. You feel alone, but still you wonder: who’s in this forest with me? What do people do in that rogue canyon next to the city and below the road?

Okay I missed retelling softball #3 versus the really cool hippies with the Down’s Syndrome catcher. Well we lost, 9-10.

Softball #4 was crushing. We were the visitors and we came out strong in the first inning. Hit hit hit hit. Our manager has noticed my luck, as I’ve been ascending the order: I started out dead last, unlucky #10, but my bat has been slowly rising. Monday night I was the 6 hitter. That’s right, I was almost in the heart of the order. The heart’s basement.

So in the first inning the top of the order was already on base and the heart of the order was beating. I came up with the bases loaded and took the second pitch the other way, smacked through the gap between the second baseman and first. I don’t know what it is, and it’s perplexing, but my stroke has become the other way. My natural disposition has been to hit the ball to right field, which for most right handers is a lot harder than left. My strategy has been pretty simple: wait. Wait for the ball to come. And then I think I might be just slapping it, poking it to right. It’s not very manly but it gets the job done. Sometimes.

So I smacked my ankle biting liner to right and rounded first. The throw came in to third and got bobbled, so I advanced to second as the ball followed me there. I slid in hard, like a snow angel in the dust, laying on my back, bulldozing the bag. I ripped the knee out of my gray jeans and began bleeding. “Scottr!” chanted the dugout. “Scottr!” We scored seven in the first inning.

But then The Seamen started coming back. They responded with four runs in their half of the first. Then we shut them down with a series of incredibly lucky line drive catches. Like, 3 line drives, mercilessly hit, crushing line drives, hit right back at the pitcher and somehow into his glove. Violent drives turned into outs. My next shoetop liner didn’t make it through, but we scored some insurance, 8-4. Then all hell broke loose.

The Seamen started bleesting in the fourth. This guy with a blacked out hat and an extremely wide, swaggery stance hit one so deep to right center it ended up in the eucalyptus trees above the bathroom. It was a cannon blast. They were hitting thundering drives all over the place. The fluorescent yellow softball was getting slaughtered as every hit sounded like an iceberg cracking. Or sometimes their hits sounded like huge pieces of styrofoam that were being turned into mush. The plate umpire couldn’t resist, he started complimenting their skills, “Nice tomahawk!”, “That ball was crushed!” And it was.

The hitting just wouldn’t stop. Our team grew tense, and a few bloops turned into hits. And then a cascade of more blasts came. And more bloops. And blasts!

Our poor pitcher, he takes things way too hard, he actually thinks about calculating ERA in slow pitch softball. He was suffering. He took the cascade of blasts squarely upon his shoulders. He started walking guys. He fielded a comebacker and while trying to remain calm chucked the ball over the shortstop’s head into center field. The runs came down like rain as he turned red, screaming, “FUCKKK!”

Come on dude it’s just City League; the mercy rule got applied in the fifth, 24-8.

If the first Berkeley City softball game I played in went surprisingly well, the second was strikingly poor. But I suppose I was due for a correction.

First, the other team was short a man. They took the field and started warming up as the umpires kicked dirt. We sat in the dugout counting our opponents before realizing they only had nine. The umps asked where their last man was, and they pointed to the street, “Ahh, he’s comin’ man!” But they were lying.

So they had to forfeit; the umps wrote in the book: The 3 Outers win it, 7-0. Then they walked away and left us to scrimmage.

Our opponents were a group of urban twenty somethings. They had real baseball gear, Nike stirrup socks, quivers of bats in bags, Yankees hats. They thought highly of themselves.

My first at bat I hit the first pitch and lined it to the shortstop’s feet. It felt like I smoked it until the drive turned flaccid and wilted; I don’t think I got the barrel of the bat on it, and it was more of a tennis swing than softball. As I was running to first I felt the cramp in my left quad that had started out as big as a cherry grow into a ragged plum. I pulled up lame, out at first.

Earlier we’d been throwing on the side and somebody said something and as I looked left the ball sailed over my head, out into the street. I ran off the grass in my cleats onto the sidewalk and when I hit the concrete I executed a plastic spike slide; I was skating out of control on my left leg and as I tried to stop felt my quadricep twinge. I didn’t think it was a big deal, and went back to throwing, but as the game wore on my muscle felt more and more ragged until I was trotting, straight legged around the bases.

Cramped and meaningless, battling the boys, I grounded weakly to short, twice, grimacing.