September 27, 2000


fall is in the air.
You could really tell today. I went out clubbing with Kim and Ben last night, and stayed at Peter's afterwards; when we got up to go to lunch this morning, real honest-to-goodness autumn air hit me as soon as we left the house. There was just the slightest hint of a chill in the air, and it just *smelled* like fall. See, fall is my very favorite season ever, which is why I'm going on about it. I grew up in southern Wisconsin, where fall was pretty symbolic ("better get your outdoors action in now, before winter hits"), and there was -- and still isn't -- nothing in the world like looking up through the multicolored trees on an October afternoon and seeing the bluest, brightest, clearest sky you'd ever see. I love autumn. I love the trees changing colors and the smell of the leaves and orange and brown and yellows everywhere you look. I love Halloween. I love carving pumpkins. I love ghosts and ghoulies and goblins and candy corn on all the shelves. I love it i love it i love it.

hurray for beautiful fall rides.
I think I'm going to love fall even more than usual this year, since I'll be out riding in it. Today, Peter and I had lunch and then we needed to go to work (oh yeah, that thing I have to do, almost forgot about that). Rather than taking the direct route up Lawrence Expressway to Central Expressway (home of all that is evil), I took a more scenic route today. Peter talked me into it, and I'm soooo glad he did, because it really didn't make me that much later and it put me in a wonderful mood. Both of us hopped on northbound 85; he took an exit shortly afterwards, and I continued up onto northbound 280. I spent about 10 miles on 280, and it was a wonderful 10 miles. It's up amongst the foothills along the San Andreas faultline -- nothing but valleys and hills and little houses and trees and beautiful scenery. Since it was lunchtime, there was relatively little traffic, and I could hold a pretty consistant 80mph while still admiring the views all around me.

So, ok, you guys have been reading me blather for a while; you know my obsession with reading travelogues of other riders. No matter how many accounts of "you really feel closer to your surroundings" that I read, it never *really* hit me until this morning's ride. I was zooming along, feeling the autumn air hit my legs and making my baggy jeans ripple, and little gusts would zip up my arms once in a while and for some reason my right ear was in the wind and I could smell the trees and the tar on the road and the diesel from the trucks and it was *so damn good*. At one point I smelled pine needles -- I have no idea where along 280 has pine trees -- but it made me think of Christmas all day today.

mushy crap.
I really like riding with Peter.

Peter, if you're reading this, I really appreciate all you've done to help me in the past 6 months as I've learned how to ride. It's all been worth it for me in the past week: riding along the side streets with you, coming to stops alongside each other at the lights, shrugging together at stupid drivers, catching glimpses of you in my sideview mirrors when I pull ahead, zooming alongside you on the freeway. I love meeting you somewhere and parking our bikes next to each other in the same parking spot. I love it when I put my helmet on and you bend down to kiss me on the nose before I put the visor down. I love it that you keep talking about getting headsets for our helmets so that we can talk to each other while riding together. Thank you for not strangling me any of the millions of times that I got frustrated when I first started. Thanks for riding really slowly around your neighborhood with me, and for going out into the intersections to block any traffic when I was still stalling the bike every other time I'd start up from a stop sign. Thanks for the times when you've spotted me when I wanted to sit on your bike, just so I could whine that it was too big for me. ;) Thanks for waiting for me to do any sort of maintenance on your bike so that I could watch, and also, thanks for putting up with my taking 80 million pictures of you unscrewing bolts and removing wheels and changing your oil.

You rock, babe, and I love you.

ok, i'm done now.
So, I took a passenger tonight for the first time. Sort of.

See, I used to play the viola from fourth grade until my freshman year of college, and I recently realized that I really really miss it. So I found an orchestra to play in, and tomorrow night is my first rehearsal with it. Now, it's still definitely riding weather, and, hell, the viola's only a wee bit bigger than a violin, much smaller than a cello. There's really only one logical method of transporting it to rehearsal. That's right; the viola's riding bitch.

I bought a nice (blue) bungee cord net while we were at Road Rider last weekend, and decided I'd better try this whole arrangement out prior to leaving for work tomorrow. I needed to go return a movie anyways, so I got the net and the viola and plodded out to my bike. It actually works really well; I stick the viola on the pillion seat, perpendicular to the bike, wrap the shoulder strap around the taillights, attach the net to the taillights on one end and to the frame of the bike on the other (so the net is stretched out over the case), and I'm all good to go. I hopped on and the viola and I had a nice little date together over to Hollywood Video. Now, granted, the viola is not the heaviest thing in the world, but I was surprised at how little difference it made. I can tell that I need to compensate a little if I make a really sharp turn or U-turn, but otherwise, I don't even notice. Now I just need to remember not to lane-split when I'm carrying it, since it does stick out a bit on the sides. Ah well.

Sadly, I'm pretty convinced it didn't stay in tune, however.


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