Tooting My Own Horn

My commute back from UCLA home is almost always by bike. Just for fun, I decided to start counting my mileage this year, and I'm proud to say I've passed 230 miles for 2009. That's more miles than we've put on the car this year, and puts me on track to save at least 2,000 miles behind the wheel this year. It's nine kinds of awesome. Some of the recent rides:

17 January 09: K-town to Westwood roundtrip 21.02 miles (YTD 153.54 miles)

20 January 09: K-town to Westwood to K-town by way of 920 14.75 miles (YTD 168.29 miles)

21 January 09: K-town to Westwood to K-town by way of 920 13.40 miles (YTD 181.69 miles)

23 January 09: K-town, Westwood, Marina del Rey, K-Town 23.05 miles (YTD 204.74 miles)

25 January 09: Barnsdall Park out and back 5.45 miles (YTD 210.19 miles)

26 January 09: K-town, Westwood, K-town by way of Mar Vista 20.13 miles (YTD 230.32 miles)

You can follow along here.

a story about light

One other note about returning from Colorado:

My own story about light: Driving back to California from Colorado by way of I-25 to I-40, we spent a decent amount of time in the darkness with only the ribboned highway for company. Coming west past Flagstaff, through Kingman and falling to the Colorado River, you could see a haze of light to the north. At first, I thought it was Laughlin, tucked as it is into the nib of Nevada pressed against the river. Later, though, passing through the darkness of the Mojave, I wanted to pretend it was Las Vegas, some slow siren song of neon in the dark. I don't know if it was, but driving back on 40 - along that thin string Jenny saw from above - it was tempting to imagine it so.

It comes from reading something that a friend of mine wrote and being reminded of a piece in National Geographic not too long ago.

new year's resolutions

Would it be flip to say, Write more often? Probably.

But we're home, returned from Colorado. The Trojans are pulling away from the Nittany Lions on the radio in the other room, I've realized that my computer has another internet signal to pirate, and Kirsten is measuring stips of muslin to thicken the curtains in our bedroom.

It's a lovely climate here, though our weather mostly comprises thick fog over Wilshire on New Year's Eve (no, it's not Chicago, but few things are...). Class gets underway for us both next week (one of the many shocking things about 2009: the real world insists on resuming). And a batch of pasta dough is relaxing on the counter in our kitchen.

Dinner tonight is fresh fettucine with rosemary butter; maybe a salad with the last of the romaine heads in our fridge; and an evening turned back to reading, straightening our lives, a glass of wine.

So not a word about resolutions, I'm afraid: Keep it as simple as write more, and hope to convince Kirsten to publish the last two drafts she's hoarding somewhere in the folds of the interweb.

And for those keeping score, USC just opened the lead to 31-7.