Beer is the choice of the rugged cyclist
Sep. 8th, 2012 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceMy grokling Ruth and her husband (hee!) were coming over from Santa Cruz for lunch. It is, um, 25 years since she and I have lived as close as this; mostly she's been in another country. Now suddenly we're both in the same other country, and indeed more or less in the same bit of it. *bounces*
So, they were coming for lunch. So I was up by six-thirty to take the overnight dough out of the fridge. Note to self: dough is a very poor conductor of heat. Cold dough takes for ever to warm up. I thought an hour would be enough; in fact I left it four hours and really it probably wanted longer to become properly active again. Sourdough is forgiving, though, and always leaps up in the oven.
So I went to the farmers' market and bought many vegetables, and also eggs; and came home and baked bread and made salad and soup and other salad and dug in the fridge for my home-made pickles and put pine nuts into the oven to toast. And Karen came into the kitchen to talk to me about something scary (don't ask me, I don't remember), and so I burned the pine nuts. Shrieks of horror, please to imagine.
So when Ruth and Deniz turned up, the first thing I made them do was march around to Lucky's with me, where I bought more pine nuts and also bacon and cheese and drinky things. And then I was all chop-chop sizzle-sizzle as I made a frittata with potatoes and kale and cheese to go with the salads after the soup. And I toasted the pine nuts (again!) on the cooling breadstone, which may be the way to do it, and made pesto for the soup, and also bacon croutons; and lunch was taken on the terrace, among the enormous dragonflies. Deniz noted that a palaeoentemologist friend of his had been telling him about fossil dragonflies the size of seagulls, and I came over all smug because I know about those, because of research I was doing for Steampunk!Mars (Martians are holometabolic, hush), and I even know why we thought before that they couldn't be that big. (It's all about the breathing, but we were wrong.) (Obviously.)
Anyway. They came for lunch and then, in the way of lunch guests, they went away, shame boo. So Karen and I went down to the bike shop, and now I have a helmet and a lock. The helmet is very light, and the lock is very not. There is probably a market for a supertough lock made of superlight matter, I'm just sayin'. And then we came home and I helmeted up and went for a ride on my bike. Once around my safe little lap and then on, out into the world, little grasshopper, fly! (Don't be deceived, Sunnyvale streets are very quiet at the weekend.) (Also, at almost every time else.)
I'm very interested, how cycling requires a total different kind of awareness from pedestrianising. Presumably it all becomes second nature after a bit, but at the moment I'm very consciously aware, and conscious that I need to be aware, of traffic before and behind, parked cars that might suddenly open their doors at me, road signs and signals, all this stuff. And the surface of the road and the noises of the bike, and and and. It is very much like being thirteen-year-old me again.
Anyway. I'm really only writing this 'cos it's that time of the evening when I should probably be working - I have beer! I'm at the computer! I am obliged to work! - but the day has kind of elected itself off, I think. And I've read all my internets, and now I'm going to go and read a book. Or possibly scout for more bike-related matter first. I want one of those neat little gadgety cycling computers, that will say how far I've gone how fast and so forth. Yeah. Metrics.
So, they were coming for lunch. So I was up by six-thirty to take the overnight dough out of the fridge. Note to self: dough is a very poor conductor of heat. Cold dough takes for ever to warm up. I thought an hour would be enough; in fact I left it four hours and really it probably wanted longer to become properly active again. Sourdough is forgiving, though, and always leaps up in the oven.
So I went to the farmers' market and bought many vegetables, and also eggs; and came home and baked bread and made salad and soup and other salad and dug in the fridge for my home-made pickles and put pine nuts into the oven to toast. And Karen came into the kitchen to talk to me about something scary (don't ask me, I don't remember), and so I burned the pine nuts. Shrieks of horror, please to imagine.
So when Ruth and Deniz turned up, the first thing I made them do was march around to Lucky's with me, where I bought more pine nuts and also bacon and cheese and drinky things. And then I was all chop-chop sizzle-sizzle as I made a frittata with potatoes and kale and cheese to go with the salads after the soup. And I toasted the pine nuts (again!) on the cooling breadstone, which may be the way to do it, and made pesto for the soup, and also bacon croutons; and lunch was taken on the terrace, among the enormous dragonflies. Deniz noted that a palaeoentemologist friend of his had been telling him about fossil dragonflies the size of seagulls, and I came over all smug because I know about those, because of research I was doing for Steampunk!Mars (Martians are holometabolic, hush), and I even know why we thought before that they couldn't be that big. (It's all about the breathing, but we were wrong.) (Obviously.)
Anyway. They came for lunch and then, in the way of lunch guests, they went away, shame boo. So Karen and I went down to the bike shop, and now I have a helmet and a lock. The helmet is very light, and the lock is very not. There is probably a market for a supertough lock made of superlight matter, I'm just sayin'. And then we came home and I helmeted up and went for a ride on my bike. Once around my safe little lap and then on, out into the world, little grasshopper, fly! (Don't be deceived, Sunnyvale streets are very quiet at the weekend.) (Also, at almost every time else.)
I'm very interested, how cycling requires a total different kind of awareness from pedestrianising. Presumably it all becomes second nature after a bit, but at the moment I'm very consciously aware, and conscious that I need to be aware, of traffic before and behind, parked cars that might suddenly open their doors at me, road signs and signals, all this stuff. And the surface of the road and the noises of the bike, and and and. It is very much like being thirteen-year-old me again.
Anyway. I'm really only writing this 'cos it's that time of the evening when I should probably be working - I have beer! I'm at the computer! I am obliged to work! - but the day has kind of elected itself off, I think. And I've read all my internets, and now I'm going to go and read a book. Or possibly scout for more bike-related matter first. I want one of those neat little gadgety cycling computers, that will say how far I've gone how fast and so forth. Yeah. Metrics.