ooooh! so many geeky!

You are the rare, the overlooked, yet incredibly useful dodecahedron: the d12. You are a creative, romantic soul. You often act without thinking, but make up for your lack of plans with plenty of heart. You easily solve problems that stump others, but your answers tend to put you into even deeper trouble. You write long, detailed backgrounds for all your characters, and are most likely to dress up as one or get involved in cos-play. You can be silly at times and are easily distracted by your own day dreams, but are at the end of the day you're someone who can be depended on.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

evidence

"Rebecca Does the Sheetiron, 2006" was made possible by a stunning array of supporting cast.

Friday
Being car-less folk, Paul and I were to head out on our dirtbikes around 5:30 Friday. Charles had our tent and sleeping bags already up at Stonyford. We would get there just about sundown, set up camp in the dark, sleep a bit, then get up early and RIDE.

5:40pm, we are gassed up and away, on our way on an ADVENTURE! Which lasts for precisely 1.5 miles when I realize that Paul has dropped out of my mirror. We limp back to his house on the streets as his bike (which he bought last Sunday since the XR blew up) is cutting out. Vapor lock? Or something worse? Ugh, and it is raining. Paul works like a genius and we are back on the road around 7:00, hoping for the best. It is a 2.5-3 hour ride to Stonyford, and it is raining, and it is all quite stressful.

But we go, Paul in front, as fast as we can on our little knobby tires, up to Dunnigan, which is just near 505 and I5, where we stop for gas. I have been stuck here before on the way back from Sheetiron. There is a weird restaurant. There is also a motel. I am getting the lazies. There's nothing quite as nice as riding through the rain with an open faced-helmet (which is essentially what a motocross helmet is) and feeling the painful repeated pinprick impact of rain on your face. And it is dark, and we will be either setting up a tent in dark and MUD in Stonyford, or sleeping in a warm bed NOW. It's a no brainer, we call Charles and tell him we will hotel, and meet them at Stonyford to ride out in the morning. He sounds skeptical. "we will re-evaluate in the morning," he emphasizes, implying they are thinking that it will rain, and they may just load the trucks and go hang out in Fort Bragg. After a couple of hours on a dirtbike in the rain on the freeway, that sounds fine too. I really, really want to do the Sheetiron, but feel pretty unprepared, and mud riding in torrential rain doesn't appeal to me.

Saturday
Saturday morning, we get into Stonyford around 6:15, and rush to get everything done, re-arranged, set-up, and packed in the right place in the right order. Order of operations is very, very important, as anyone with a riding gear fetish can tell you. We don't actually get out of camp until about 8, which is not ideal. Feh.

Paul and I decide to do easy splits. Saturday morning, there happen to be two easy splits, one not as easy as the other. We take this easy-moderate split since it promises creek crossings and pretty stuff. It takes me a bit to get my legs for riding on the tacky stuff, but it starts to make a little sense.

Here is what I know about riding on the dirt:
1.) Stay on the Gas, or Fall on Your Ass.

Unfortunately, I have lost any tiny bit of skill or knowledge I may have ever had about turning a dirtbike. Sure, I know what you're supposed to do. I have listened to advice and instructions, and can tell you how to do it. I *know* this, but my body does not do it. Well, fine, I run through some slippy and slightly rutty stuff and it's kind of fun and terrifying. I doubt anyone can see or hear this, but whenever I hit slippy stuff, I yell in my helmet at myself. What do I yell?

"GAS! GAS! ASS! UP, UP, UP! GAS!"

"Up" is just to remind me to keep my elbows up and loose, for all the good that will do me. Well, it sort of worked. I mean, I didn't bail.

Fortunately, a chunk of the San Francisco Motorcycle club ends up mixed in with us. I've been hanging out with the SFMC folks for a few years now, and they are the best. Really, I am delighted to be near them.

A little ways in, we get to a small creek crossing, which goes off without a hitch. I look at it with a little trepidation, but it is not a tough creek really, at least from appearances, and is much, much narrower than some I've crossed before. And the other side isn't as rutted as that nasty one we crossed last time. Lionel is standing on the other side and snaps a photo of me crossing. Cool! Can't wait to get his pictures.

Second river crossing is a bit trickier. Normally, I like to size up an obstacle, and hit it from a right angle. Specifically, for a creek, I'd like to have a little running start. No such luck here. Even the small space where I'm wishing I could get my bike to in order to get optimal entry speed and angle, cannot be used as it keeps getting filled up with other riders who came after us. I have to nudge in, or may never get a chance, as new riders keep showing up.

First I watch a few SFMC guys go through. One guy goes down on a DR650, boots in the air and all as he splashes in, then fishes his bike out and drags it to the river bank with friends. Casey enters in a very strange way, trying to turn in the creek, and falls as well. So, what the hell, I go for it, (what else can you do?) and don't quite make it. I know the line I want, but somehow veer right and into a hole that I had wished to avoid. GAS! GAS! GAS! But it isn't really enough, and my bike stalls out. BUT. I have not fallen. Casey runs out to help and so does Lionel. The bank on the other side is fairly steep, and there are people and bikes on the sides. My job? To get out of the creek and up the bank without crashing or hitting anyone. Once up there, crashing is fine, just don't do it in the water, or where you might slide back into the water (possibly taking other bikes and people on the way).

Glancing behind me, I realize that Casey has somehow fallen completely in the water behind me. I don't know what happened, but as he gets up, I gas it, and the guys help guide me and the bike out of the water. Up the bank I go, and it's all I can do to get up the side without hitting all the bikes that have parked at the top of the ridge there. I glide to a stop on the thankfully wide, flat road and wait for the rest of the guys. Woo! I don't know how this could have worked out without Casey and Lionel. So far I have yet to fish my bike out of a creek, and it's not something I look forward to.

Paul arrives effortlessly, and I enjoy my early morning wet sock prize. Creek crossing in the morning means wet squishy toes the rest of the day. Yay! I soaked in it!

SFMC guys go ahead to take some hard splits, and we do the rest of the ride to Lake Pillsbury at a snail's pace set by me and my crappy dirt riding.

Lake Pillsbury lunch stop is always a trip. This place is in the middle of nowhere, and once a year the lot fills up with dirtbikes and we sit on the porch and eat our sandwiches while chickens, ducks and geese wander among us. Greg and Cindy show up. Greg is begging around for bike parts. What bike parts? Brake pads! He forgot to check them in his pre-ride prep, and they are completely gone. No one is carrying spare brake pads (imagine that), so he rides on. He and Cindy are having a blast. I haven't seen them in a long time; I have heard Cindy is quite a good dirt rider, and Greg looks great, having lost a ton of weight and just seeming more healthy and energetic. After lunch, we latch onto SFMC for Casey's cutoff to get into Fort Bragg at a decent hour. Paul and I have ridden a lot and will have a long Sunday ahead of us: 150 miles of dirt riding (like everyone else) and then a 3 hour ride home (unlike everyone else)

CRAPPY dinner in Fort Bragg, notice a new oil leak on my bike (sniff, sniff) which we will have to carry oil for now, and then to bed at a very decent hour. Stagger the fifty feet to Perko's in the morning for breakfast (which takes WAY too long, since they are shortstaffed) and then we are on the road again.

Sunday
The Sunday morning segment of the Sheetiron is a bit of a legend. The Tanktrapper, we have called it. I met Wayne in a ditch three years ago, and, not even knowing he was from SFMC or knew anyone I knew, handed him my basically new DRZ with the keys in it and told him to take it away. I had crashed something like 5 times in a couple of miles, and the ruts were so deep and overwhelming, everyone was crashing around us and yelling, there were puddles 30 feet long the entire width of the road. The first year I did it, I think we spent a few hours just getting through those first few miles.

Then, the next year, it was gone. Totally flat. Lollipop hill, we thought of re-naming it.

So there had been a lot of guessing about conditions this year. Heavy rains pointed toward ruts, but a man we met in the bar in Willits said it had been closed all year to the 4x4 drivers who are the ones who tear it up like that.

Sunday morning leaving Fort Bragg, I am looking forward to it with trepidation and a little excitement and fear and a little adventure. I expect it to be bad, and take the wrong turnoff looking for bad conditions. Oops, no it is the easy road. We ride and ride, and finally I see the spot where I did my 6th and final get-off in front of all the parked bikes that first year. Lollipop Hill it is, again this year. Hmm. I don't know if it's good or bad. Somewhere in between would be good, a little challenging without being so totally horrible would be nice. Well, OK, at least we will make better time, which we need, at our pace. Stop for a quick vista and it starts to drizzle. Damn! Drizzle is fine, but just a little! Rain, I do not want. So we plug ahead, and finally find our selves down at the bottom with the "Road Not Maintained in Winter" sign. Yay! I love that sign! But we don't get to take a picture there; Paul is concerned about my front tire: it appears low. Indeed it IS low, so he puts some air in, and we will keep checking it to see what kind of leak it is. Incidentally, the oil leak seems to have let up a bit. Still, Paul is keeping his distance after I sprayed his bike on the way into Fort Bragg Saturday afternoon.

Next up, a gravel road which I remember "fondly" since:
a.) I have seen at least one guy stuffed into a fence on a surprise right hand hairpin
b.) this is where Eric broke all his toes the first time I went.
c.) Frank from SFMC stacked on a bridge here a few years back, which I think ended with broken bones or something.
(Later I found out Greg high-sided here on Sunday)

O-tay, on we go. Farther and farther down the road, and I am feeling worse and worse. I am supposed to be getting better and better as I ride ahead and get more confident, right? No, it is not working. Toward the end, I am fucking up all the corners and feeling horrible about it. I thought "I am steering this thing like a Goldwing in a parking lot! What the hell is wrong with me?" Deciding I had gotten myself into a bad headspace, I decided to pull out near the bottom for a breather, just before the highway. Into a nice little turnout, and as I pull the front brake lever and get wobbly feedback, I realize my head problem is really a flat tire problem, and I feel elated.
"My tire!"
"I know!"
"I thought it was ME!"
We decide it really must be changed, right now, and commit to it and begin de-gearing. This will take a while; we are not experienced trailside tire changers. But Paul can do anything, it just might take a bit in this case. We are about to plug ahead, when... who is the FIRST person to come down the road after we decide to do a tire change? Phil Douglas, hero, ISDE silver medalist, The Man, the Myth, the Legend. OK, I barely know Phil, but he is easily the coolest person I know. Well, one of the coolest anyway. And although I barely know him, he has been a hero to me several times.
He slows down to see what's up and I point at the culprit. We are about to change the tube. He offers to do it. We feel bad. He reminds us that he can do it in 4 minutes. I know this, I have heard the story somewhere before, but not from him. Phil is the kind of guy people talk about. He is so talented. As I recall, changing a tire in four minutes is part of qualifying for ISDE. "No really, I can do this really fast and save you a lot of time." Of course it is true; this will take us an hour. Phil can do it in 1/15th the time. And he does. It was fun to behold, and I was so very, very thankful. Phil is the best.
Other amazing and cool things Phil has done:
1.) Saved me from putting a seized chain through my case on the EX500 when I didn't know any better.
2.) Made my DRZ400 from a cool bike into The Perfect Bike For Me. People ask me what did he do to your bike? I say "Phil put his hands on it, and that is it." I have no idea; it is a black art, and Phil is a genius. The bike handles like a dream. (though at 36K, it really should go in for a check-up) Take your bike to Phil; it is worth every penny.
3.) Picked me up out of the dirt at Metcalf twice in about five minutes, and told me exactly how to ride out. I have a problem with falling the dirt.
4.) Raised two awesome daughters. This has nothing to do with me, but it is so cool to see.
5.) Oh, yeah. Silver medal in the ISDE. I mean, I GUESS that is pretty cool.

Anyway, we move forward, through a nice paved road (this I can handle) and into the gas stop. Unfortunately, everyone else is here at the same time. EVERYONE. We lose two hours here, but there is no gas between there and the finish, and Paul has a tiny stock tank.

Second half of the day is not so nice. Mendocino National Forest roads are usually quite beautiful, but this time around, the fog is too thick to see the views. In fact, it gets so thick that at times, I can't even see where the road is going. Snow on the side of the road is usual and nice, but this year, it is raining on top of this, and then hailing. It gets so cold, that at some point, I can't feel my fingers. My limbs are stiffening up as I shiver, and this is BAD. I want the bailout. I feel we've done our time, and we have a 2.5 hour ride home on top of this. But we plug ahead, unsure of the bailout directions, and it gets colder and foggier. I am miserable and FREEZING.

But onward we go, and finally to the gate for the last road. It takes a while, but we get through it. I warm up a little as we get near the bottom, where I know there will be one last water crossing, though it is not on the rollchart. It is not a difficult water crossing at all. Finally, we are at the bottom.

Back into camp, and we are wet and miserable. It is raining again, and muddy. The plan is to get our gear, and get on the road. I'm soaked and it's going to be miserable. As we fuss around with changing our clothes and bike-gearing in the mud, the SFMC guys stepped in with ANOTHER godsend: Wayne has room in his truck, and they insist on getting us back home in the truck. Really, we can ride home in the rain. There is nothing to prove here, but it will SUCK. REALLY suck. We are so lucky, and so grateful. Bikes loaded up, and we hit the road, and the rain goes from drizzle to torrential downpour. Holy crap, are we lucky. These guys have their shit together and take care of their friends. I am so lucky to be considered a friend.

Back to Berkeley around 9:30 or so, and I spread the wet gear all over the house to let it dry before we deal with it later. And we are totally wore out. And it was a blast.

I could not do all of this without my friends. And I'm sorry for all the troubles and inconveniences, but so very appreciative. I am just a girl with a lack of skills and a sense of adventure. I always say what I lack in skill, I make up for in enthusiasm. Well, that and a network of friends and acquaintances who are incredible, nice, and talented folk. Without them, all of my bad ideas would never come to fruition.

Thank you all!



-The Score-
Sheetiron 2006:
-The bikes have taken a beating: the XR never even got to go (blown motor) and my DRZ has finally shown some real wear, in the shape of an oil leak and odd squealing (wheel bearings maybe?). Feh!
-I did not crash at all, which leads me to believe I was being too cautious, and not challenging myself enough.
-Paul didn't crash either. He is a great rider.
-I need a lot more dirtbike practice, possibly school or something. I am tired of sucking so much.
-Our room at Super 8 smelled like biological waste. (I've stayed there several times before without problems though)
-It's just not the same without James there. We will be sure to complain about that when we see him next week at the ISLE OF MAN!!!!!

fucking weather

all you had to do was wait TWO more days before raining again.

I hate you!

Hey Joe

Joe Rocket, I see you have a zooty sportbike. That is so cool!
I see you are lanesplitting. That is so cool!
But why are you so slow, and in my way? That is so not cool!


I am very appreciative that you took the time to eliminate your fender and move your plate behind your wheel. The fender weight was probably costing you, like, 10 horsepower, and I can only imagine how slowly you'd be splitting in that case.

oh, and by the way

My mandarin teacher was so totally frothy about me yesterday at our final.

So my pronunciation is very good, but I really need to get my vocabulary up and practice listening and responding. It's really a lot harder to engage in extemporaneous conversations than to give scripted dialogues. I can only pick up about 10% of the words I hear, it is so fast.

2 tortoises, no hares

Sunday 280 to San Jose: fuck you, pig, I know my rights!

Then, Mother's Day breakfast at my folks' house, very nice, very relaxing. The weather finally picked up, and I felt like I was on vacation for a couple of hours.

Sunday afternoon, Paul got a bike for the Sheetiron. Paul likes to make fun of my DRZ. It's so gutless, it's so slow, blah blah blah. See, we have different needs for a bike. I see it as a Tortoise and Hare thing. I don't need a hare. I don't have the patience for a hare. I don't have a garage for a hare. Mostly, I hate pushing a hare off the freeway or back over ten miles of single track. A tortoise will do me just fine. And it has. The bike has 35K on it, which is a lot for that sort of bike, and no problems. Sure, it wanted its valves done at 27K, but what bike wouldn't need that from time to time?

My tortoise just does the job, and gets me there. I never have to worry about "it wasn't built for that." It's built to do a lot of things just fine. Not to do a few things really really well, and then blow up in-between unless you rebuild it first. I do not need a high-maintenance girlfriend.

So now Paul has a DRZ. We'd match, except his is yellow, and way, way cleaner. At least until Saturday. After watching the XR failure from 2 years ago at Stonyford, I'm relieved. Not that nothing can go wrong, just that the likelihood has gone down for THAT failure.

Now that it's a reality, we have a lot of prep to do.

campmor! say it ain't so!

Boo. I was previously so enamored with campmor. They have a super cool catalog (I love the line drawings), and good prices, and lots of good info on their website.

But they fucked up my order this week, and will not make things right.

Order placed Monday morning for several items, payed extra for next day shipping.

Received the order today. Of the two important items in the order, only one arrived. The other, though accepted through the order and email confirmation process, was, according to a handwritten note on the shipping invoice, no longer available.

ugh. I am leaving Friday. I want to pack Wednesday if possible, but must pack by Thursday.

Now the website tells me that it's now available in red, not the black color I chose. So I call, and they say, OK, we'll send it out, two day service, but it will leave tomorrow. Which means, maybe, it should arrive Friday. There is a REASON I paid extra for it to be delivered early this week. I ask them to overnight it, they tell me OK, but they will have to charge me for this.

No. That doesn't make sense since I've already paid extra to have this delivered TODAY. Now you want to charge me more to have it delivered Thursday (which adds up to 3-day) I'm escalated to Customer Service, who insists on charging me and tried to convince me he's cutting me a deal. Wait, whose fault is this? THEY accepted the order, confirmed it, and never bothered to advise of a problem until I found a note in my box? I've already paid the extra. It wasn't available, he says. But your website, and my email confirmation, said it was. He said "you placed that on the website, did you talk to a person who told you it was available? It wasn't."

Ahem. So your website is useless, and that's just fine with you. What-ever. You're right, I failed to get a human signed and notarized confirmation in triplicate.

Bottom line: I'm not paying again for shipping on an order that is ALREADY late.

boo. I was so enamored. I'll think twice about ordering from campmor again, and definitely won't do it if time is important.

Good customer service? They should have called me when they picked the order, to advise of the problem when they discovered it. I could have told them to send the red one on the spot, and no one would be out any time or shipping costs. Instead they wasted time, shipping money, and customer goodwill. Feh.

The sky is pink. And it is NOT falling.

cnn
Reuters

"The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Bush said.

The president came out to defend the administration's domestic spy program after USA Today reported the National Security Agency was secretly collecting phone records of tens of millions of Americans from phone companies to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity.

How the hell this president can be so bold and just out and out lie about things that are very very obviously untrue is beyond me.

"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," What? No, you're just recording all their phone activity. Ahem, that's not personal life, I guess. Not in Bush's mind? (sorry, did I use "Bush" and "mind" in the same sentence?)

"Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates," Bush said. "The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."

OH! OK, phew! You're only spying on BAD guys! So if I'm not bad, I have no reason to worry! Thank God! But, wait...

"domestic telephone call records from millions of Americans beginning shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001."

Millions? So, there are MILLIONS of al Queda operatives in the USA? Shocking. But I won't worry, 'cuz if I'm worried, that must mean I'm a terrorist right? Uh, not worried!

Keep your head down, don't raise a peep.

I keep getting these stupid mails and bulletins from military folks, slamming on anti-war and other protesters, saying they shouldn't be speaking out, that they're somehow unpatriotic or unamerican. Next military person that tells me they're fighting for the USA, that protesters are too cowardly to fight for, might want to re-examine what exactly they are fighting for. A country that tightly controls freedom and monitors everyday people and their telephone conversations? Not so much worth fighting for then, is it? Protesters? That is what you ought to be fighting for, the right to call out and struggle for change as needed, that is the essence of our Great Democratic Experiment. There is nothing so American as protesting.

Once we betray those ideals, we might as way lay down our weapons and admit that what we have is nothing worth protecting.

black and blue

So Saturday night, we were headed down to San Jose, on 280, on our dirtbikes. The plan was to crash at my folks' house so the ride to Metcalf in the morning would just be 15 miles. We were going to meet Charles at 8:30 in the parking lot. Right.

Wrong. Somewhere between Magdalena and Foothill, Paul toasted his motor. I mean, he didn't do anything, it just happened. Well, anyway, fortunately I have some incredible friends.

Charles once again showed me how lucky I am to have such great friends.

And since I would only be in the way hanging around Paul's garage on Sunday while he tore down the XR, I proceeded to San Jose, and then Metcalf in the morning.

Then all the crashing and all that.

Then, this:




Who doesn't love a good bruise?
Yeah, I need to replace my elbo guards, which are AWOL.

And Paul, well, he has bigger problems. The bike is TOAST, and surely won't be back up by next weekend for the Sheetiron, if at all. So what to do... working on creative solutions now, and I'm hoping this won't just end with me crying about missing the Sheetiron again. I have faith. Hmph.

worthwhile

The other day I realized that I have never, in my adult life, had a positive net worth.

There have been a few articles lately on CNN and other news sites about the crippling weight of student loan debt. I have to say, it's fucking bad. Really.

What exactly is the point of discouraging kids from going to college for a better education, to a better job, to more taxes to the government and a more competitive workforce?

What indeed?

And of course Bush hacks away even more aid recently. I know that's not what he SAID, but it IS what he DID...

As debt goes, it's not a bad one. interest is tax-deductible, and the rate is low. So low, it's not worth paying off early. But still, it's there, and it's bullshit.

Same thing if you want a house: debt forever. Now I'm seeing the ARM foreclosures. And laughing. "we didn't realize what we were signing." ha!

Anyway, I guess I should be happy that I'll have a positive net worth later this year. But I'll never be debt-free. It's just not the American Way.

Vroom, whack, thunk!

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."
-Grace Murray Hopper

really.
I'm just really sore.
My head is all wonky because I couldn't sleep well last night. I have a very large black bruise on my thigh.
In fact, my whole leg is sore, and in order to not let it stiffen up, I thought it would be wise to go for some walking last night, and rushing through bushes and hopping fences as well. In order to accommodate that, we had to split a pitcher of margaritas. This helped loosen up my pained muscles, and drown Paul's XR650 sorrows.

What happened before that was that I went to Metcalf to ride my bike around in the dirt a little. Just a little, I think only 2.5 to 3 hours?

It started innocently enough with a request to be dumped off at the TT track, where I figured I could just run around in circles being slow and sucky on my own. I even knew better than to take the bait at the hillclimb, which Charles totally lied about. (big as the hill he crashed on at Sheetiron, my ass!) but when we ended up at the GP track, I got bored of Charles telling me to try it followed by my own chicken-ness. Well, I can't really see all that well, but it looks too hard for me. What the hell, says I, what the hell indeed.

It's OK, I know I have to crash. I suck at this. Like, really, and it's totally terrifying, which really just makes it worse. Hesitance leads to too slow, which leads to crash. Terror leads to death grip on the bars, which means crash. Feeling out of control makes me unable to stand up, which leads to really being out of control, which leads to...

#1: uphill, bumpy, trying to tell myself to stay on the gas but feeling like it's not going to work. I feel like that a lot, and often it works out anyway. Besides, what can you do? Switch off the TV and give up? Nope, there it is, there's a 99% chance you're going to fail, but nothing to be done except hope for the 1%. I like those odds! At least you're doing it! Bumped into a grass hill, I crash somewhat lightly. Somehow, Phil is there. I don't know why, was he stopping for a picnic? By all rights he should have been flying over my head or already up at the top of the next hill? I don't know where he came from, but Phil is the best, and I learned a lot just by watching him push my bike down before trying to pick it up. Smart man, used the grass hill for half the leverage. I probably would have just thrown it over with much effort only to find it on its other side, but now in the middle of the track. Much coaching on how to get my bike out of the hill, and I was up and on my way down again. The trails were dry on Sunday, but at some point in the recent past, there was water pooled up into muddy sludge at the low points, which means peaked ruts, which is where
#2 I try to choose a path through the ruts at the low point but I choose wrong, or gas wrong, or, uh, shit, I don't know. I crashed pretty hard that time, probably poor throttle control for that condition? Whatever, I crashed, under the bike, Phil is behind me and helps me AGAIN. This time he has to tell me how to scoot down so he can untangle me from the bike. I know I hit hard, and I know I'm done for a bit. When you start crashing repeatedly, it's at least time for a break. Phil coaches me on how to take the next turn, and I try to take his advice. Much attention to throttle control and lean (or lack thereof) on that turn and up the hill. If I could have instructions on every inch of track, that would be cool. Hmph, up at the top, and I'm sitting out until everyone is ready to go back to the truck.

I feel so terrible when I'm such a pain in the ass. It's a struggle, and I really feel bad for needing the help. Particularly from people who hardly know me.

Well, you don't know until you try. Though I feel bad for the impositions, I'm glad I get to regret crashing instead of regretting sitting out the entire time. I don't even regret crashing. I just wish I could do it more.

But, I live so far from the dirt. I've always wished for a little dirtbike to practice on, something less big and heavy, and less, um, necessary for my commute. Not that someone couldn't ride my bike faster, as some guy WAS on Sunday, on exactly the same bike (though cleaner, and, oh my bike is geared for the street, which is a very weak excuse). But, for me, a girl who's terrified of everything, and never could do any sort of sport, something small, and regular practice to take the edge off, that would be nice. Why does it take me so long to move so little on the learning curve? Sports were never my forte. Sigh. Well, anyway, but I keep doing it, just not often enough. Sheetiron in two weeks, and I am pretty disheartened. Not as disheartened as Paul, I assume, but I have a different set of problems. I can't even throw money at these problems, they are all me this time.

But you do it, that thing that you're scared of. That's what makes it different.
I sort of walked away from the one thing I was ever really good at. What's the point of doing something you already know you are good at? Hmph.

Well, just ouch. I hope this heals up before I get to the Sheetiron, which is another issue.

what I was thinking just now.

Old ladies adore my boyfriend. I think that's great, since I plan to be an old lady one day, and I can't wait to see him through the eyes of an adoring old lady.

That's planning ahead.

This past Saturday, Paul and I got up early-ish and scurried down to Market Street to catch the Earthquake Cottage on its last display day. The shack itself wasn't much to look at, but the photos and info were interesting, and the fact that you could see the old wood in most of it, stories and all. These shacks were built as a part of a permanent answer to an immediate emergency need. These shacks provided previous slum dwellers who'd lost everything with a permanent structure and the option to take their house out into the "country" (sunset district! See, it IS the suburbs!) and make a new life. What do we have for Katrina refugees? A couple bucks for a hotel, and then out on the street see-ya-later!

Some of these shacks have been cobbled into homes that are still lived in today.

Then.

My folks came to the city and picked us up and we all went to meet Paul's mom at the de Young Museum to see the Arts and Crafts exhibit. It was very cool. Everyone should go. Arts and crafts: very cool. Tower view, very cool. Getting stalked by the old Filipino security guard who kept telling me and the people around that I looked like the Mona Lisa? Not quite "cool," but it made for laughs later.

I worked Saturday night for New Wave city again. 550 Barneveld is a great space, but it's way too far from the rest of the city. It seemed slow. I got some reading done.

Sunday we went back to Berkeley and worked on getting the dirtbikes back into dirtbike trim. Paul had finished the SV tune-up (it idles so much smoother now) and installed the high-low horns Charles bought for my EX500 years ago. These are COOL. Loud. Fuck you mister cellphone driver!

Monday Paul did his part in the ongoing battle against highway litter and picked up a nail on his commute. Charles heroically arrived to save the day and feed him Mexican food. Or something. I don't know, but my boyfriend looks pretty hot in his fancy work outfit with a tiny jack under his Yamabego. All is well now, new tire has been installed.
So the XR can go back to dirtbike.
so we can *finally* go dirt riding this weekend.

*finally*


tonight?
Indian food... mmmmmm.... Priya