Rented A Car

I rented a car for the weekend... a KIA. I wanted to get some bigger errands run. I use Enterprise because they will pick me up at my house. I have rented from them about once a month since I sold the Element. If I have a photography shoot, I rent a car as most of my jobs have been in the Inland Empire or Los Angeles or even further north. Austin and I were driving and I had the experience of CAR SEDUCTION. Cars are powerful and give the driver a sense of freedom. Car Seduction is the reason it will be a long hard withdrawal from the automobile as a major means of transportation. Car Seduction is not as potent when I am riding with my DAD in his Saturn. I am not exactly sure why that is, maybe because it is a bare bones kind of car... a 5 speed, 4 cylinder engine that gets better gas mileage than a Prius. So I am not Sans Automobile this weekend. What was up with Enterprise and the brown wrapping paper on the car?

I Rode With A Brace On My Thumb

I got brave and rode my bicycle to the grocery store. This involves going down a fairly long steep hill. I have mentioned that in general I like to ride pretty fast down this hill. But without full functioning of my left hand which operates my front brake, I am leery of going fast. I rested the heel of my hand on the handlebar and used my middle and ring fingers to brake. I have index shifting and found it impossible to turn the grip without excruciating pain, so I did not shift my chain rings at all. This little foray into a bit of a handicap got me thinking about really how physical bike riding is and how one needs most body parts to be functioning to do it with ease. I googled for some kind of hydraulic or "easy" braking systems and came up short. I think children have the same problem with brakes, their hands are weaker and smaller and so they have a hard time with hand brakes. I rode one handed back up the hill as my left hand was sore.

Injured Thumb

I jammed my thumb Saturday and am so bummed, mad, hobbled, etc. I tried to stop a 110 pound black lab from running away. Silly me. Dogs will run. He bounded toward me and I put my hands out at chest level to grab his collar. My thumb took the full impact. My thumb made a weird popping noise later when I pulled on it. Lesson learned is; let a dog go... especially a big one, a dog will do dog things like run and there is no stopping it.

Fortunately, it is my left hand because I am right-handed. This is not my x-ray, I just thought it looked cool. The bruising covers more than half my palm now and around the thumb. I am guessing that the recovery will be about 6 weeks give or take. I am not sure when I will be able to get on the bicycle again. I walked to the post office and found that crossing over 10 lanes of freeway to be very unpleasant. It is much better to get across that overpass quickly.

Wet Weather and More

This is the second hail storm in 2 days. This hail was white, the hail yesterday was clear and looked more like little ice cubes. Lisa's yard flooded and some water flowed into her house. A concrete swale got blocked up and the water poured down the hill in her backyard. We worked frantically to dig a trench and divert the water away from the house. While trying to find the best place to divert the water, we found that another neighbor's yard had also flooded. We worked for nearly two hours and I was completely drenched and cold. I have a rain gauge in my yard and the cumulative total for the week of storms in now nearly 6.5 inches.

I did not ride the bicycle today. It was cold, so I shopped with my Dad who is also my neighbor. He drives a very efficient Saturn.

More Rain

The good thing about the rain is that the chapparral on the hills will turn really green. I love the soft bright green of the Ceanothus. San Diego County has 1,003,441 acres of chapparral. If you want to know more about the chapparral, check out the CALIFORNIA CHAPARRAL INSTITUTE : http://www.californiachaparral.com/

But the rain is hard for biking. Imagine being next to this car. Fenders would not help.

Rain - No Biking Today

There are a couple of things that make it hard for me to bike. One of those things is rain. I just do not like to bicycle in the rain. I had some packages to ship, but since the post office was closed, I did not go. Had it been not raining, I would have biked. I don't like to bike when I am not feeling well. Fortunately, that is not often. It easier to get in a car when you are not feeling well than it is to get on a bike.

Easier to get in a car when it is raining too. So I borrowed my neighbor's Prius. I couldn't figure out how to start it. After a brief lesson, which was "...put the key in your pocket, put your foot on the brake and push the power button", the car was running. Sweet... the MPG indicator read 99.9.

Watching Laundry Dry

Part of not owning a car is about slowing down. Our culture lives life at a frenetic pace, and even admires those who maintain that pace. I am enjoying expending my own energy to reduce consumption of energy produced by a power plant. A dryer is an appliance that sucks a lot of energy.

The photo on the top is the way I "hung" my laundry at first. I just threw it over the line. I was bothered that hanging it was taking more time than using the dryer. My attempts at speeding up the process by chucking the clothes onto the line were not too satisfying. The bottom photo shows how I hang it now. I have more clothes pins and I take a bit of pride in hanging it. I made a taller pole for lifting the line. When I was growing up, clothes lines were around... my grandmother had one on her porch. I remember somewhere, some one's yard, running between bed sheets hung on several lines in a row. I love the smell of laundry dried in the sun.