Words are inadequate

Yesterday I was poking around on Maps, like you do, seeing what my bike loop actually looked like, and I noticed a couple of potential shortcuts / alternate paths. I couldn't quite make out whether they were viable from the satellite view, though. Today I tried them out.

I enjoy being able to do this. The first time I noticed myself enjoying it, I had routed myself through DC instead of around the Beltway, which sounds like it ought to have been a mistake but actually worked out really well for me. When I lived in McLean I drove halfway around the Beltway every Monday afternoon for counseling. There's no traffic going into DC in the afternoon, so the first third or so of the route was clearer than taking the Beltway. And sure, the BW Parkway leading north out of DC was often clogged, but no worse than the northwest corner of the Beltway. Plus the Parkway had trees, for greenery and shade, and just a generally better vibe all around.

(As a result of finding/learning this route, I also finally understood why, half a decade earlier, I'd gotten a set of Mapquest directions from Arlington to Anne Arundel that included "Make a U-turn." At the time there was no proper way to switch from eastbound to northbound, you had to get on going south. I didn't try it myself at the time: I looked at those directions, said "this is dumb," and just took the Beltway around. Also, to my knowledge there is still no way to go the other direction, from south to west, without a U-turn.)

It feels good to be able to take an existing route and tweak it to maybe work better. It makes me feel like I've got some amount of ... mastery, maybe, of the area, of my trip. Like I know what I'm doing well enough to start messing with it and to have some idea of what the results of that might be. Not unlike cooking, I guess.

In the event, one of the two new routes absolutely did not pan out. I'd hoped to be able to avoid or at least delay a particularly nasty climb, and while the new route would avoid the uphill stretch I hate it introduces a much longer and still bad climb. The other... might work at least as an option. It goes up and over a nice cyclist/pedestrian bridge, which isn't great, and then into a maze of residential streets that I failed to navigate today (popped out onto a more major road that I'd wanted, and that I usually avoid). But now I know, and no harm done.

The doctor went remarkably well: as predicted in and out in about ten minutes, with a new sleep-study referral for a CPAP which will hopefully suffice, and also referrals for chest x-rays and bloodwork. Will get those taken care of next week.

Got the bike out again yesterday. Rode around Queensborough, a small neighbourhood that's almost like a tiny city, technically part of New West but across a bridge and on the same island as Richmond. Also went well; Q'boro is pretty flat, and without constant uphill and without smoke in the air I felt much less like my lungs were about to give out.

I may try the ride along the skytrain line again tomorrow; will see how I'm feeling. There's a dessert place out by Metrotown that I don't think I'll get to tomorrow but is a good thing to have as a goal in general.

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Reread Gideon and Harrow in preparation for Nona the Ninth, with which I was less impressed. To quote Douglas Adams, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic." As with Harrow the pacing is really not working for me: half a book of buildup that I don't much care about and cramming in all the action / interesting stuff in the last third or so is not my speed. I'm still on board for Alecto the Ninth whenever that comes out, though. And I may like Nona better on first reread; that certainly happened with Harrow.

And today I watched Margin Call a movie... okay, The Big Short is a movie about the 2008 financial meltdown, Margin Call is set during it. Specifically it's set during about twenty-four hours, at an unnamed big financial firm, when they discover that their mortgage instruments are a house of cards about to collapse and what are they going to do about it? The characters are all varying degrees of amoral which makes it really interesting to watch as they try desperately to work out how they're going to get through this. And the movie does a lot with nighttime office scenes, shadows and glass and harsh fluorescent tubes, and with a sharp script that only occasionally shows the distaste the writer must feel for the banksters. I liked it more than I expected to, I think.

Tonight I see how cookies do in the toaster oven.

I'm doing alright, I suppose. No lonelier than usual.

Woke up on time this morning, got myself together, headed out to yoga in sub-zero weather.

About two-thirds of the way there my rear brake stiffened up in the open position. I squeezed it to try and loosen it... and it stuck closed.

This happened several times last winter but it always loosened up pretty quickly. Not this time. (I took it in to MEC and the guy shrugged and said "yeah, sometimes they get stiff in cold weather." Bleh.)

Got an Evo (carshare with a bike rack) and took it home. I could have driven to yoga, but if there wasn't an Evo around when I got out it'd be stuck there, and I figure it's better to have it stuck at home.

This after I tried to go to yoga on Friday and managed to forget my yoga shorts at home.

Grr.

Still biking. Grateful for my good green raincoat; it's been Wet here, a good serious drenching downpour for a couple of days. Six-plus months in and about once a ride I get a moment of panic when I realise that I'm not wearing my bag and where did I leave it? On the bike rack behind you, goofball. Biking beats waiting for the bus, and sometimes even beats riding the bus.

Still getting out to yoga, at least three times a week when I'm in town. It's gotten harder. I think that's a result of having a better idea of what I'm meant to be doing, what muscles want stretching or tensing in what poses. Three or four a week seems about right; more than that and I start ... "getting bored" isn't quite right but it's not wholly wrong either. It becomes harder to get myself out the door to the class.

Still playing viola. I've started learning fiddle tunes and techniques. I'm somewhat startled by my ability to repeat a bit of a tune after hearing it once or twice.

Still living in a basement suite, still visiting Erin up north one or two weeks a month. Still unsure where I go from here.

I'm doing ... alright, I suppose. I don't have a good benchmark for what "alright" is.

Currently reading Freedom and Necessity, and enjoying it, as expected. One thing I hadn't expected: the print feels tiny. Unsure if this is just a natural result of Getting Old or if it's actually small. There doesn't appear to have been an ebook release, which makes me a little sad.

Gonna be a busy fall, bookwise. Just preordered new books from Kat Howard, Ann Leckie, eBear, and Steve Brust. Need to get on with that Great Big Dragarea Reread prior to late October. At least the eBear won't demand my immediate attention: reading Book One Of A Trilogy is a mistake I try to avoid making when the author is known to write bound book-fragments.

I biked for an hour and a half yesterday, going to a small get-together that may be the kind of thing I'm looking for. Mostly, a good ride, if overly sweaty, and tough going uphill. There's an exhilaration in a steep downhill, though, and a long gentle decline makes for a pleasant coast.

It occurred to me last week that my hip problem likely isn't just from wallet-induced sciatica. It's also possibly a result of babying my right ankle (and hence leg) for several months after I twisted it pretty sharply (CW: depiction of trauma, neither graphic nor permanent). So there's that.

Erin pointed out awhile ago that I do a lot of railing against the Confederacy (sometimes on FB, sometimes in person). I grew up hating everything about the South: the weather, the people, the history, the culture. I've mellowed on that a lot in the last decade or so, but Treason In Defence Of Slavery still gets me wound up. I think it's that it's a reminder of everything I hated about the South. Or maybe just that it's a part of my upbringing that's still acceptable to hate.

And in actual significant news, I've lost a friend over the breakup. One that I know of, I mean. I'd hoped for some compassion and understanding but it was not to be. I'm sad, and a little surprised, but only a little: she's prickly, far more invested in Emily's emotional state, and I suspect skeptical of the whole poly thing anyhow. (A conclusion I draw from sentences like "Since November I've watched you break up with Emily in slow motion.") Losing friends I care about doesn't get any easier. Especially not when they've been good friends and sources of support in the past. Oh well. She's not quite burned the bridge, I guess. She's poured gasoline on the bridge, offered me a book of matches, and walked away. Best I can do is not actually light the fire and be here if and when she changes her mind.

Overall? Still flailing around, still trying to sort out what I want my life to look like and how to make it look like that.

And I'm still here.

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Way back in the mists of time my then-girlfriend Steph made me a mix tape with, among other things, David Mallett's sublime folksong "Arthur". And Arthur, where are you now, we need you / We've been much too long without a leader. It took me an unconscionably long time to get around to picking up anything more by him.

I always thought of "Inches and Miles" as the quintessential Dave Mallett breakup song, and I guess it still is. And all things have endings, and beggars have their pride. For my money, though, "Fire" captures the end of a long relationship perfectly. But time here is frozen, the clock ticks no more / Just the ashes and cinders and smell.

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Still biking, still getting out to yoga between four and six mornings a week when I'm in town. Prayer-twists are now absolute hell on my upper thighs, likely as a result of biking uphill to yoga. On the bright side I'm enough of a regular now that the teachers think it's worth their time to offer corrections. My flows and backbends seem to be working better. (It's hard to think of it as "worth correcting" when my traitor brain insists on interpreting it as "having been noticed doing something wrong." Always more internal work to be done, I expect.)

I'm still enjoying biking. I'm slower than most of the cyclists I encounter, which is okay with me, and I'm nervous on busy roads. But I like the wind on my face and I like getting where I want to go faster than waiting for a bus and faster than walking. I don't like overheating and feeling like I'm swimming in my shirt. July and more so August are going to be awful for that, I expect. But then it'll be fall again and things will be better.

I went to see a physiotherapist about my weird hip problem while biking. It seems to be a natural consequence of having favoured my right leg for ages, due to a long-standing hip ... "injury" isn't really right, but it's close enough, I guess. So I'm finally getting that taken care of, all manner of fun stretches and pokings and proddings and foldings.

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Been starting to think more seriously about tattoos, again. Two data points doth not a trend make but this does seem to towards the end of a significant relationship. I think this time it's more to do with seeing all the gorgeously inked folks at yoga every day.

I can't remember how old I was when I visited Grandmother Taylor's old hometown, and the house on top of Crow Mountain where she grew up and, more relevantly, the cemetary. Must have been high school, but I remember it as being summer weather, which doesn't track with any time in high school. Maybe it was just winter in the south being as bright and warm as it is. Anyway, I've got a distinct memory of looking at gravestones of people I'm distantly related to and deciding simultaneously: that I wanted to be cremated and not left behind; and if I was going to have a markerstone I wanted it to have the epitaph from Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea on it:

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.

That and bits of Richard Siken's Love Song of the Square Root of Minus One (especially blackbird over the dark field but I am invisible) have been rattling around in my head for months. I suspect they signify. I've got what might be an image in my mind, but no ability to describe it yet. Contacted one highly-recommended local artist; not yet heard back from her.

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Taking a look at a potential place this evening. It's a shared basement, but it's in a great location (Cambie and King Ed), and it's cheap-ish and supposedly big-ish. The roommate seems alright if a bit more social/talkative than I like. She's also connected with several of the local communities that I'd like to tap into. It is possible that this will be exactly what I need and have been looking for.

It's much more likely that it will drive me nuts and I'll desperately need to find my own place in short order, but this will give me a couple of months to catch my breath anyhow. Not that there's likely to be anything findable. This fucken town.

The tops of my thighs are serious about letting me know that they have been Used. Yoga this morning may have been an error in judgement; even on a good day 'powerful pose' is the devil incarnate, and today even the prayertwists were rough. Hoping for good things from the "continue to work/stretch those muscles rather than letting them freeze" plan.

Had my first dropped chain yesterday. I turned to head up a steep hill, shifted down to low gear in front, and couldn't figure out why I was pedaling and still losing speed. Walked up the hill, took a look, and convinced it to reseat on the gear with minimal fiddling. YAY I FIXED THE THING.

First ride in the light rain this morning. (Not that Vancouver really gets any other kind.) Rather pleasant, honestly. Kept me cooled down, kept me alert, feet didn't slip off the pedals too many times. Suspect I'm gonna want a rear fender sooner than later.

I spent some time yesterday and today studying the city's map of surprisingly comprehensive bike paths. Makes me want to get out and ride the seawall. Or Stanley Park. Or, hell, just through some of the more pleasant and interesting East Van neighborhoods.