delight

Life is so delightful sometimes.

I've been riding my bike to work for six or seven weeks now. Getting started was the biggest hurdle, but once I started, I remembered why I love it so. It's so lovely to walk out into the cool morning air and jump on a bike, with the breeze in your face. 

My current ride to work is 2 miles, mostly downhill, on quiet bike streets, so there aren't so many stop signs or lights. I whiz along with my lunch and my purse in bike bags. I loved it so much after a week that I went and bought a new bike. (This was, of course, before I knew that we were about to buy a house. Oops.)

At work, there is a bike room in the basement, which requires an id and a code to get in, so I don't even need a lock. I ride my new bike to work. If I'm going to need to lock up my bike somewhere, I ride my old one,which clanks and clatters and takes a lot more work.

I've been riding my bike other places, too: to the other work location, downtown to a gathering, up the hill to Pilates. I'm trying to look at riding my bike not as exercise but as one of the viable means of transportation. Fortunately, it's such a pleasant means of transportation, absent rain or extreme heat or busy roads, that I choose it more and more.

...

Ten days ago, we went camping out at B.'s parents' place, up in the mountains. On Saturday, we all put on shorts and sandals and meandered a mile or two up the creek, wading through the water, climbing over fallen trees. The pups ran ahead, and then had to be helped down off high logs when they dared not jump down the other side. 

The sun was bright, and the trees made everything all dappled and lovely, and it was so delightful to wade through the ice-cold water that J. and B. and I took a creek walk the other direction the next day, dragging a tired pup with us.

Too bad it turned out she was getting sick. Poor little lady. (A few antibiotics and she's fine now.)

backdrop

On Monday, our second full day in El Nido, we took a tricycle to Las Cabanas beach, a few miles down the road. Whenever we asked anyone what to do, this is what they suggested. "Oh, go to Las Cabanas. It's the best beach." So off we went. 

It really is a lovely beach. The thing about Palawan beaches, and the reason we chose Palawan over all the other islands in the Philippines, is that it has beautiful sandy beaches, but then it also has all these little rocky islands and outcroppings out in the water. There's no here-to-eternity-of-water view until you get out past the smaller islands. 

We walked all the way down the beach to the end, and then we walked back, and on the way we asked about the zipline. The zipline ran from above the beach across to a small island. The tide was low, so we could have walked across the wet, slimy rock to the small island, but where's the fun in that?

Someone walked us up the steep hill to the zipline, and then we sailed out over the water toward the other island.

Unfortunately, there was a headwind, and no matter how aerodynamic I tried to make myself, I drifted to a halt most of the way over and had to be rescued by the guys running the zipline.

We had lunch on the beach, and settled into beach chairs. I read a book, and then I took a picture of the top of the book and the ocean behind it. I laughed at the picture, telling J. that I couldn't post it on social media, because I accidentally took a picture of a page on which a girl fended off advances by saying, "I'm engaged. To be married," and people might take it the wrong way.

We moved to open sand and laid on the beach for the rest of the afternoon, until we had to go do our fluo night dive. 

The next night, after a day of cruising the islands with a bunch of Russian 20-somethings, we took a tricycle back to Las Cabanas beach to catch the sunset. We found a little bench facing the setting sun, with a bench table in front of it. We ordered a ginger soup and some other food I've forgotten. I'd taken off my motion sickness patch, and apparently taking it off after a day on the water resulted in rebound nausea (I really wasn't made for boats). 

And after dinner, J. proposed. 

This was surprisingly surprising to me. I know that proposals are a thing these days, but I never felt like I needed one. I expected just to do what my parents said they did - have a conversation and decide that it was time. 

Spoiler: I said yes. 

We hadn't talked about rings, or wedding dates, or anything in other than general terms, and so J. did not have a ring. He tried to get an O-ring for the top of a scuba tank from the dive shop, but the person he asked seemed very skeptical, so he was ringless when the right sort of moment presented itself.

A few minutes later, he went to the bathroom and came back with a piece of toilet paper twisted into a ring, and I put it on and took selfies and he was embarrassed not to have had any kind of ring, but I loved the toilet paper ring. I loved the surprise. I loved the quiet moment between the two of us. I loved it all.

A day or two later, we did scrounge some O-rings from the dive shop, and we both wore those on our right hands until we got back to Gone West, by which time they had stretched out enough that they would not stay on our fingers (even my middle finger), and we ordered silicone rings online, in blue, which we are both wearing on our right hands while we wait for the jeweler to finish the rings she designed for us, which we will also wear on our right hands until our wedding day in August. 

It turns out that when you wear a silicone ring on your right hand and don't post an engagement announcement on the f@cebooks, no one knows that you are getting married unless you tell them about it. We may drop some more hints as time goes by. It's fun to have a little secret, although here I am blabbing it to the 8 or 9 people who read my blog. You're in the know, now.

And if we are friends on the f@cebooks, you can go see the photo of the book with the words, "I'm engaged," in front of a beautiful beach in the Philippines. 

below the surface

For a long time, all I could do was work. The job that I had in Universe City and then back in Gone West was all-consuming. I managed sometimes to take a weekend off, but work sucked so much energy out of me that I felt like I had nothing left to give. 

Then I was unemployed, and that takes everything you have to give, too.

But this last year was good. 2016 was so, so good to me. 

I have a job that I love. I hate the commute, but I love the work. 

I have a cute boy to kiss (hi J.!!). I flew to meet up with him one of the times he was in Spain, and we went to Croatia.

I climbed mountains. I camped. I hiked. 

At the end, we went [back] to Honduras, to Roatan. Back for me, the first time for J. and his parents and my parents. 

We ate frijoles and tortillas at least two meals per day. An ATM stole 512 of my dollars (error message with no money three times; turns out it withdrew the money each time but never gave it to me; I have complained to the bank). We drank a lot of drinks full of delicious juice and not much alcohol while sitting beachside. The two little Hyundais we rented struggled with potholes bigger than their tires (we lost one wheel to a pothole; oops). We ate lunch out on a dock over the water. I complained that the most beautiful beach has been taken over by beachside bars and lounge chairs and way too many people.

One day, J. went diving in the morning. In the afternoon, I met with a diving instructor to learn the basics for a discovery dive.

When we first put our heads under water in the shallows, I was worried. It seemed hard to breathe through the regulator, like I had to pull on it too hard to get air. But then we tipped forward horizontal. Everything fell into place. 

The parents piled onto the boat to snorkel, and J. and I and the instructor to dive. Out in the water, I watched the parents start to float off in different directions, and then I held my regulator and mask as the instructor told me to, and I dropped backward off the boat.

The instructor had me hold onto the mooring as we descended. We followed the rope down, blowing out to equalize our ears and masks. At the bottom, among the coral and fish, we swam. I was surprised to find that I wasn't at all bothered by knowing that my only air came from a tank through a tube. Just like rappelling, it was only scary until I did it. 

J. pointed out a huge eel snaking through the coral. A grouper sat under a shelf, underbite silently open. A lion fish waved its feather-like fins out of a crack in the coral. 

Far too soon, we had to ascend. I popped out of the water exhilarated and ready to do it again, despite being exhausted by the novelty. 

Also, I was pretty proud of myself for only using 10% more air than J. did, despite it being my very first dive.

good

I walked down to the waterfront tonight. I haven't done that in a while. Last year, when I was unemployed, I walked down there often, because I had to get out of the house somehow, and I didn't have money to spend. I watched a lot of sunsets over downtown.

As I walked along the esplanade tonight, there was a cloud of smoke in front of me. It didn't smell like anything by the time I got up there, though, so I didn't think much of it. I assumed someone had done something involving smoke and then walked away.

Soon thereafter, I stopped at a railing at a good turnaround point. There was a firefighter peering over the railing (just in a t-shirt, not in gear), and I realized that he was looking for the source of the smoke. 

I started walking back, partly following the guy out of curiosity. The smoke was more clearly a column now. Looking over the edge when I got there, I saw something smoldering in the brush. The firefighter was climbing down around the end of the railing. 

Another firefighter passed me as I turned to go. "Garbage," he said. "Smells bad, doesn't it?"

I smiled at him, but what I was really thinking is how familiar it smelled. We burned our garbage in Liberia and in Rwanda. I know that smell, and it feels like home.

(Side story that I may have told before: I was at a music festival during my college years. It was very hot, and things sometimes got thrown on the ground and trampled. At one point I sniffed the air and said, "Ah. Smells like rotting garbage in the hot sun. I remember that smell from Liberia. It smells like home." One of the people I was with said, "Don't you think it's a little messed up if a smell like that makes you feel at home?" But I do not, in fact, think that is messed up. I never have.)

Walking back along the water, I thought of a conversation I had with my mom last summer, while I was unemployed, about how things could change at any time but it's really hard to enjoy all the free time of unemployment when you don't know when it will change. 

But change it did, and it's all so different now. I have a job that I love, I just agreed to buy a car that won't make me feel like a bug about to get squashed on the highway, and a cute boy brings me turron from Spain. If I could tell the me of a year ago how it turned out, she never would have believed it could be this good. 

desert

Far out past the mountains and the high desert and the mountains again, there is a strange little desert, a few square miles of dry, cracked earth. 

Most of the year, it doesn't rain at all. In the spring, it sprinkles now and then. 

There are bluffs to the east and a mountain to the west. The wind blows in gusts that seem like to bring down your tent, and simultaneously the sun shines so hot that you can't be inside the tent during the afternoon. 

The cracked ground beneath your feet is like cement: gummy and thick when a moment of rain passes through, hard and unforgiving when dry. 

The dust covers everything. It gets on your hands and into your sleeping bag and behind your ears and in your food, and pretty soon you stop seeing it and start thinking of dust-covered hands as clean. The desert is clean, right? It feels clean, seared by the sun.

During the day, there is hiking up into the mountain, or up on the bluffs. It rains on the mountain, and I take off my shirts to get rid of the bottom cotton layer, not caring that the group is milling about, caring only about getting warm again. Back at the edge of the desert, there is a hot spring, and we all crowd into it as the sun sets and the air cools.

My tent is a refuge from the constancy of people, all having too much fun. "It's like a little Burning Man," we say doubtfully, as we go to bed and the young crowd who cares more about partying lights fireworks off above the campfire. 

The noise of their party abates right around the time that SHO calls quietly outside each of our tents. The sun is coming up, and it's worth rolling out of a warm sleeping bag to watch the golden light of morning begin its sweep across the desert.

The eastern rim seems like it's right there, so close, but after a quick rain shower, it's a muddy, sticky 7 miles away. Two cars get stuck. We push the little one out, two of us, nearly falling on our faces when the tires finally catch and it takes off without us. Far off in the mud, we watch them put snow chains on the SUV, which works, too.

We all pile into the only 4 wheel drive, and drive far to the south around the worst of the mud. The sunroof is open, and we stand up to stick our heads out, beaming into the wind. "This is my crazy thing for the weekend," one person grumbles, before admitting that it's great fun.

Up on the far bluff, we talk about rattlesnakes. I've only seen one before this trip, up on a butte outside of Universe City. "I saw a documentary once about a kid who got bitten by a rattlesnake," I say. "His mom knew exactly what to do, because his dad was a doctor who studied antivenom."

At that very moment, there is a rattle off to my right, between me and the edge of the cliff. It's our second rattler of the day, a big one, and some people (not me) get close, filming it. 

"How was it?" my friend asks when I pick up my car on the way home.

"It was amazing," I say. "It was totally amazing."

back on the bike

Yesterday I girded up my courage and rode my bike across town to a women's soccer game. (The girding part was for the biking in the city, not the attending of the soccer game, although when my roommate offered me the ticket, he said, "You won't be the only girl there. [Girl I'm seeing] will also be there." Yes, right. Because my primary concern about attending a women's sporting event would be that I would be the only woman there. I love living in a town where groups of men attend women's sporting events just for love of the sport.)

"I almost got hit by a car and then as I was looking at the car that almost hit me, I almost hit pedestrians," I announced when I got to the game. 

"The key word there is 'almost'," J. said. "You are fine."

After the game (we won! yay! and there were MANY other women there), the group of us raced through the city - it turns out biking is faster than the train in downtown - and ended up on a pier reaching out into the river, watching the sun set. Periodically kayakers would debark at the end of the pier, pick up their watercraft, and drip-drip-drip their way past us up to the parking area.

This afternoon I met two friends around the same spot, only we went south on our bikes, along the water, and then west toward the mountain. 

I wore sunscreen two days in a row. 

I might have a sunburn anyway.

In April.

"We live in California now," someone said at the game last night, and it appears to be true. California no longer has rain, and we have California's former weather.

I rode my bike for 27 miles today. My legs are sore and my butt is sore (I need a better seat), and it feels pretty awesome to be tired and sun-swept.

random tidbit

Walking in the grass on one of those days where the sun is warm on my back and the wind is cool on my face, with a long, soft skirt brushing around my ankles, ranks up there among my favorite things.

student

On the train, riding out of downtown toward my martial arts studio, I thought about how much I love this city.

I love the blunt, graffiti-ed back sides of buildings against the train tracks.

I love the way the clouds hang over the bridges.

I love the crowds on the train.

I love the familiar smell of my martial arts studio.

For the first time, waiting for class to start, I looked around the studio and felt at home.

It isn't the same as my Universe City studio. That was my introduction to martial arts, and it cannot be replaced. I feel a fierce loyalty to the people there that goes beyond just a gym. And there is something special about it, too: the kung fu bow when you step onto the floor and when you leave, the counting in unison, the instant focus when the instructor starts talking, the cheering each other on, the way the whole class yells responses. ("Ready?" "READY!")

But this one is starting to feel like me, too, in a different way. This gym is younger, on the whole, and more casual, and the people in it go out to watch fights together. They have a permanent table at the Mexican restaurant around the corner. They feel like people I might end up keeping as friends outside the world of martial arts.

BJJ class was good, and afterwards we lined up again. We only really line up at the end of class when there is something to be given out - a belt, a stripe, something, and I look forward to seeing who gets something. Someday I even hope it will be me! (Okay, it was me a few weeks ago when I got promoted to the non-beginner class in bjj. Someday I hope it will be me again!)

Okay, it was me.

Remember how I was all embarrassed when I got student of the month in Universe City?

I am student of the month here now, and I feel almost more embarrassed. Student of the month is for kiiiids. Give it to a kiiiiid.

And it feels a little excessive to be student of the month in two studios in two different cities, albeit two years apart.

At the same time, as I tried to explain to my roommate, I work hard at martial arts. It's kind of my thing. I am there every single time I am allowed to be. School may have always come easily to me. You may find me surfing the internet on the weekend when I should be cleaning the house. But when I go to fight, I am all focus. I watch carefully and I imitate and I practice and I get better. I am that annoying person who shushes other students when they try to keep talking over the instructor, who dances around cheering people on at the end of class when we are all exhausted, who is told to start at the second step, or the third step, because I clearly need to work harder.

It's nice to have other people recognize how hard you work. Apparently both the stand up and jiu jitsu coaches agreed.

I got a bumper sticker, and a set of patches to put on my gi, and there is a plaque in the studio with my picture on it.

All of this gave me the courage to ask a coach to roll with me. I haven't dared before, because no one looked available, but I really wanted to try it, so I finally braved it, and it was so fun! She went easy on me, of course, but I wasn't instantly defeated. It was fantastic. I love this stuff.

letting go

I never learned to ride my bike with no hands when I was a kid. 

I'm not sure if this was because it scared me - it did - or because I wasn't the most coordinated of children - I wasn't - or because I grew up riding bikes on bumpy, sandy dirt roads in Liberia - I did - but I just never could let go with the second hand. 

One hand, fine. I could do one hand. Two was just scary.

It wasn't until the summer after college, or maybe the summer after law school, some summer when I was living in the basement of my parents' current house, that I learned to ride no-handed.

My parents' neighborhood is full of flat streets with very few cars. It is basically perfect for riding a bike no-handed, and whichever summer it was, I finally learned to let go of both handlebars.

But now that I use my bike for commuting, I have a milk crate attached to the back of it. The milk crate is full of books (heavy) and a gi (heavy) and my daily snacks (heavy), and so the bike is more top-heavy that it would otherwise be. That, and I'm always riding next to cars, so letting go of the handlebars seems ill-considered.

Today I rode my bike home from bjj, 32 blocks down our beautiful street (we live on a bike route street and my martial arts studio is two blocks off it), and I found myself, despite the top-heavy milk crate, sitting back and letting go of the handlebars and reveling in the letting go.

amateur

Twice before I have hiked a particularly beautiful trail through the Cascades, but both last year and the year before we hit the pretty part at the end of a long, painful hike and there was no time to stop. This year, I was determined to just sit for a while in the pretty meadow, so I gathered up some friends, ordered up a permit from the Forest Service, conceded the need to get up at a ridiculously early hour, and off we all went.

The day was charmed. The sky was blue until we headed home. The temperature was cool until we hit the meadows. The smoke from the wildfires across the mountains had miraculously lifted. The air was clear all the way to the mountain near Gone West. The route we took this time was only 12 miles, and all four of us were fit enough to be fine with the length.

The company was perfect, too. I have been realizing how very much I enjoy spending time with people who, like me, talk in stories, and all three of my companions did just that. We kept a constant flow of stories up through the trees and over the lava and through the meadows.

I kept saying, at every view, "[State of Happiness], you're so pretty." Over and over, I beamed with happiness. It was perfect, just perfect, all of it.

We hit the pretty meadow in time for a late lunch, and we sat among the sparkling obsidian to dip carrots in hummus and pass around sour candy. I laid down and put a big piece of obsidian under my head as a pillow. The sun shone warm on my head as I drifted almost to sleep.

The beautiful thing about hiking a 12 mile hike that begins at an obscenely early hour is that part of the day remains upon completion of the hike, and we took advantage of that remaining time to head to the nearby hot springs and lounge in good hot water.

I may or may not have felt dizzy by the end of this, but it was not until I'd driven all the way back to Universe City with increasingly sharp hunger pains (restaurant tally on the drive back: closed = 2, full to the brim with bingo = 1) and ordered food that finally, finally came and tried to eat it and found myself feeling sick to my stomach that I realized that I was incredibly dehydrated.

When I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, it was not my muscles that ached (12 miles. please.), it was the rest of me. I was actually afraid to look at my camelback to see how little water I'd drunk yesterday.

12 miles. 8 hours of hiking or lying in the sun. 1 hour in hot springs. 3 hours of driving.

1 liter of water.

What an amateur. I know better than that.

So today I spent the whole day force-drinking myself. I haven't had to do that in a while.

free

I feel free today, in that way that you feel free when a great source of stress has suddenly gone away. It's almost better to have the stress and then feel it go away than it would have been never to have it in the first place.

After the stress went away, I took a book and a journal over to my usual coffee shop for lunch, and I sat outside thinking how very happy I am just now. 

It helps when the sun is shining - oh, how it helps - but it is more than that. Summer is coming, and I foresee lots of hikes and outdoor happy hours and little weekend trips and just general being. Life is so great now that I have learned to enjoy just being. 

I mean, not all the time, obviously (cough, winter in Universe City, cough). I am learning to let myself live the unpleasant feelings, too. 

But I love that I can now just enjoy standing on top of a mountain, or sitting drinking chai, without always wishing for something more than would make it better. Those moments are already full. They need nothing more. My lunch break today was such a moment.

tuesday

I like Tuesdays. They might be my favorite day of the week, other than Fridays. Fridays have an advantage because they end with some freedom, but Tuesdays are nice, too.

I like Tuesdays because they are relatively slow days at work, so I can catch up from Monday.

I like Tuesdays because I don't have fighting class in the evening, so I have several whole hours to do whatever I want.

Probably most of all, I like Tuesdays because one of the bakeries in town makes a swiss cheese and red onion bread on Tuesdays, and I'm developing the habit of stopping by there for coffee or lunch, buying a loaf of bread, and sitting in the bright little annex for a few minutes.

Bliss.