Why not indeed. While I try to decide whether heading up to Oakland for a confluence of friends is a good idea, I'm making a casserole that may be disgusting. As a new member of a food co-op, I've got soooo much eggplant and other similar vegetables on the cutting board right now that I'm kind of grossed out. I know I need to grow beyond my meaty tendencies at some point, but sheez, I don't know what to do with so many veggies. Probably shouldn't have taken my first veggie box the same week that Bobby went out of town. I've been sick, alone, and overwhelmed by the food rotting slowly in my fridge. More freaky dishes using weird combos of veggies coming up!
In Urban Adonia news, I got to play transit consultant for some colleagues at UC Irvine today. They have a speaker heading down from LA in a few weeks, and asked how this person could travel without a car. I like giving people detailed accounts of how the impossible is, in fact, quite easy, so that made me happy.
Yesterday I re-read one of my favorite books, a collection of short stories by Willa Cather, and sobbed quietly in the bath about the death of a sweet young woman in "The Best Years." I love her stories, she was really good at conveying the emotional experience of small towners in the midwest and southwest, and made a cornfield bordered by sunflowers seem really magical to me when I was a teenager. Part of my midwestern bike tour this summer will be a kind of hunt for the scenes in Willa Cather's stories.
I met the LA City Council president, Eric Garcetti, at a shared street dedication in my neighborhood on Monday. Bobby and I made a bit of a spectacle of ourselves by showing up late, dressed all cas, on our bikes. Garcetti was making a speech and added a quip about how the new bulbout on the shared street made room for bicyclists, too.
My road bike has a flat tire, so I've been riding my folding bike around for the past week and a half. It's really not as bad as I'd thought. I'd really turned on the Loose Goose, deciding that folding bikes are a gimmick and that a cheap one like the Dahon Speed doesn't do the job. I still think the sucker's really heavy when folded up and it falls over a lot and stuff, but when it's unfolded it makes a pretty good bike. And it's easy to carry up stairs cause the seat rests comfortably on my shoulder. I think when I was dragging it around last summer I was folding it up way too much, it's really something that should be left unfolded as much as possible. Folding optional, for me at least.
