While riding to Vancouver to “the facility” where I cut open cores and stuff, I got spat on by a homeless woman. She was walking towards me on the sidewalk as I rode in the street. I usually give a half smile to the homeless if they make eye contact with me while riding, because I feel sympathetic towards them. Not hugely sympathetic, like giving them change or anything, but sympathetic enough to give them a half-smile. I give quarter smiles to other pedestrians I make eye contact with while riding, because I can relate to them being outside on the streets with me, but I don’t feel bad for them. So they only get quarter smiles at most. A lot of the time, if I’m not in a good mood, they get a grimace–just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyways, like I was saying, I was riding up to Vancouver to cut up some cores. Actually I was already in Vancouver, which always seems to be under a rain cloud. Portland could be sunny and dry, but if you’re in Vancouver, it’s most likely raining or about to start. But on the bright side, Vancouver is much smaller than Portland, but practically touching, which makes for a short commute without having to live in a big city. I think a lot of people like this idea, but don’t end up doing it, as you can see because Vancouver doesn’t have that many people in it. If everyone had this idea then carried it out, Vancouver would be large and therefore wouldn’t work for that little city short commute plan. And then if it was big, that would mean that no one would have had that plan in the first place, and no one would have moved there. But then that would mean it was small, and would work for the little city short commute plan. But then people would move there and make it big again. The cycle is never ending…Basically the logic becomes illogical if a large number of people did the little city big commute plan, so very few people do it. Instead, they live in suburbs 15 miles away and drive 45 minutes to work each way.
So back on topic, I was riding my bike last week and I felt like doing some big rides on the weekend. I know it’s a little early to start base, but that’s not what I was planning on doing. Nothing wrong with doing a little riding on the weekend to stay in shape and focused. Later in the week, I did a 3.5 hour ride on Friday and a 3 hour ride the following day–both shorter than I had wanted because my legs were super sore and aching from lifting for the first time on Thursday. DOMS always gets me even if I lift light the first couple times. I could lift the bar only and my legs would still be sore the next day.
But I still did want to go big on Sunday. But I didn’t. But, I did just start three sentences in a row with the word “but.” That’s way too many times. Quinn, Jim, Gavin, and I went to Lost Lake out by Hood River instead. I had tried to convince Quinn to ride to the top of Mount Saint Hellens with me on Sunday, which is something like 150 miles or more, but he thought it would be a better idea to go free diving in a lake instead.
Quinn used to do a little competitive free diving back when he was living in Hawaii, and built up to over 100 feet. And I have been diving a bunch, especially this year, so we were set on going big in a different way.
All four of us drove up there and Quinn, Jim, and I got in the water with wet suits, masks, weight belts, and fins. Cool things we found were: a sunken boat, lots of beer and soda cans, newts, fishing lures, and…..CRAWDADS. BOO YEAH we found lots of them. After going down below 25 or 30 feet a couple times, Quinn and I decided to stick to shallower water instead, because at that depth the water dropped to slightly above freezing, plus there wasn’t anything to see down there anyways except mud.
Sticking closer to the shore lead us to collecting almost 100 crawdads. The rest of that day was spent talking with southern accents, as well as the next night when we made a huge pot of Jumbalaya/gumbo–not sure which name to call it by, but I think Gumbo is the correct one.
Shucking the poor guys.
The carcasses.
Now this heaaahhh crawooodady dun had himself a heck of a hard taahhm, I do reckin. But the looks of him do give me a heavy hankerin for some bug gumbo ifn’ I evaahhh did haveaahhh one.
As I passed the homeless woman, she stopped walking, glared at me and spat as I passed. I think it was a direct hit. I was shocked. To her, does this mean I’m the man? I was still wondering why she was so pissed off at me as I got to the facility a few minutes later and got off my something thousand dollar bike and inspected my something hundred dollar rain cape. No spit on it. Luckily I was in Vancouver and it had been raining.
KENNETT PETERSON 