"Is this some kind of joke?"

For anybody who regularly follows my writings and blogs, this apology is for you. You know that I haven't been posting lately. I've been a little consumed with this past week's nearly sixty hours of getting about in the last four days. It's all part of this program I'm involved with, and while it's useful, it certainly wears on the person not yet willing to submit to automobile culture.

I leave our place in Long Beach before seven am, ride my bicycle to the train (the LA Metro, a train line I still habitually and unconsciously call the "subway" when I talk to folks) and cruise to Huntington Park, in former South-Central LA. From there I bike to my first destination. Later, I bike back to the subway, cruise down a few stops, exit the train, and bike it over to my second destination. Then, much later in the day, I bike it to a third subway stop and train it home, with an arrival time often closer to ten pm than maybe desirable.

It makes for an active and sweaty day, for sure. I'm sporting quite a bitchin' tan, but if this pattern of sun exposure would continue for too much longer, I'm sure I'll end up with that gross orangey-old-man-elephant skin that longtime shirtless male residents sport with alarming regularity around the Southland.

Monday and Tuesday this week were exceedingly hot and surprisingly muggy, and made me feel like a grimy mess. I mean, of course I bring a change of clothes, but by break time at six or six-thirty, I'm as gritty and greasy as a Panamanian commando. Wednesday, though, as I carried my leaden bike downstairs and outside I noticed the telltale dots of sprinkles on the sidewalk: it was beginning to sprinkle. Out loud that morning to no one in particular I said, "Is this some kind of joke?"

I may have omitted a word when transcribing it here, but you get the idea.

Then yesterday, Thursday, of course it was fully raining. And nearly 75 degrees. Which meant I was both rained on and sweaty.

Sometimes I need to vent. I try and be one of the regular beacons among my cohort for positivity, so I try my best to limit by complaining, but at one point I got almost completely fed up with the constant slick and grimy feel I can't ever seem to remove from my hands. Someone, trying to soothe me as I usually do for them, suggested a spot I could leave my bike (their in-laws) and ride with her for large portions of the ATMs (Advanced Traffic Maneuvers).

That suggestion did the trick, but not in the sense that I took her up on the offer. Everybody is so interested in helping me and supporting me and wanting to give me rides and worrying about my welfare that my only response is to be even stronger, and to double-down on the biking and the being annoyingly positive. I guess I'm just trying to model proper mature self-reliance.

Or a stubborn, independent, and recklessly dangerous streak I posses. To paraphrase Stubblefied from Villa Incognito, You're only truly living when things are at stake.

Upcoming things: I'm going to do a rundown of posts I want to put up here in the next, eh, month maybe, seeing as how that's how it may turn out.

Corrie and I went to SLO last weekend to take pictures in our wedding gear at Montana de Oro. So we have some good pictures from that and I had something to say about visiting a small town area when coming from the Big City (I'm sure it won't be original, so I may skip that part...).

I have a post about sap, the circulatory essence of plants that I've been hatching since last December, which is silly to not have written it yet.

I have two entertainment posts I wanted to put up, one about the animated television show Bob's Burgers, and one about the Disney animated feature The Fox and the Hound.

I also had a comparison of two novels that illustrate certain feelings I have about writing fiction that might be interesting.

Then there's some weird stuff I don't necessarily know where to use, like Little Albert, and the shooting that almost happened on the subway yesterday that I got to watch.

So, those are the posts I've been thinking about on the back burner since, I dunno, a while. My weeks will continue to be full for another two, and the three days of which I'm not in indisposed are full of other stuff  to do (since I don't come home during the day). Take this weekend, for example. I have five domestic activities to do (laundry (my nice stuff), Tux's food, stuff like that) and twenty-one other assignments or activities that need to be accomplished by Sunday night at ten pm.

And then we leave for New York two weeks from today.

So posting could be light. But I'm always thinking about my Caliboy Network...