March 19, 2007

  • Fog City

    I wasn't happy with my performance yesterday. I was sluggish towards the end and I was wiped out when I was done. I attribute this to being sick and being off the bike because I was sick. But I'm not sick any more and my solution for these woes: more biking. I biked for an hour before work, I biked over lunch, and then I biked for a couple of hours after work.

    Before work I went to the Presidio and then the Marina. Took a couple of tourist photos:

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    San Franciscans will always take your picture for you. I'm sure that when the big one comes, you could walk up to a man trapped under a beam with blood spurting from a wound in his head and ask him to take your picture for you he would say "move a little to the left so you can get Alcatraz in the background." and then take first one picture and then a backup one.

    Over lunch I went through China town up over Russian hill to the bike shop and to get a gear adjustment and then over to Chris's to visit with him and little Sofi for a while. Delightful! There was a huge anti war protest in the financial district today and 45 people got arrested. I showed up towards the end of the protest and caught this puzzling sight. It's Gandhi in effigy but it totally reminds me of the Kind from those Burger King ads. How conflicting!

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    After work I just wanted to go home and lay around but I knew I needed to put a few miles in on the bike. I did the Marin Headlands and they were foggy. Way foggier than the city was today. Here it is laid out before me. Yuck

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    And when you get to the very top, there's this crazy downhill down towards Point Bonita where your way up over the Pacific and in the fog, when you can't really see where you are, it's terrifying. But fun. There was no point to taking pictures up at the top because it was too foggy to see anything, but once I finally got under the fog I took a few pictures.

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    Had a nice ride home and dinner tasted delicious. I think it's the rides that you have to talk yourself into the whole time that are the most rewarding. It's easy to go biking on a pretty day. But schlepping your butt into the foggiest place on earth because you know you need to -- now that makes you feel like you've done something. Note to new riders: you might think that those of us who ride a lot never want to skip biking and just go home and sit in the hot tub. Think again.