fixation.

This is the plan, yes? “Step by tedious step, we stumble away from abject failure.” This...

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:03:00 -0700

This is the plan, yes? “Step by tedious step, we stumble away from abject failure.”

This is the plan.

Good to hear.

Edmund Fitzgerald

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:52:00 -0700

One of my favorite porters of all time, Edmund Fitzgerald by Great Lakes Brewing Company. This beer taught me that beer is more than just Bud Light and Miller Lite.

Absolutely perfect.

I've said things I didn't mean, but I'd already said them out loud - forgive me, if you can find out how.

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:30:36 -0700

The final thing I wrote in Los Angeles didn’t post. I’ve never really gotten the hang of the Tumblr iPad app, so it could have been my fault. It’s not in my drafts, it’s not here. The words felt so important at the time, but I’m not particularly broken up that they’re gone. It really upset me at the time. Three days later, I don’t remember what the words were that I so regretted losing.

I worry about that a lot. I love to write my way through whatever I’m experiencing. I write very differently when we’re in the thick of it versus when I have the luxury of reflecting. I’m a person with big emotions and it’s in my nature to be as passionate as possible about anything worth giving my time to, and I realize that about myself a little more every day. Sometimes I don’t talk about the big things because maybe they’re not so big. Maybe tomorrow they hurt more, maybe they hurt less, but living through things out loud validates them in a way that maybe I’m not ready for. When I say this out loud, when I write this down, something gets actualized, and maybe it doesn’t deserve that.

A good friend of mine is better than anyone I’ve ever met at realizing when I’m thinking my way through a thing, and I have always appreciated that he asks me what I’m thinking before he knows I’m ready to vocalize it. He’s also particularly good at realizing that I haven’t worked my way through it enough to communicate well, but it’s always seemed to me that he doesn’t mind being part of the process and that makes me feel comfortable enough to just start talking. That’s different.

I felt big things two days ago, and I wrote about them in a way that felt too vulnerable and raw and then I put those words into the world anyway. Now I don’t have the faintest idea what I was so scared of. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. I don’t know if those are feelings that deserved validation and reflection as they are, I don’t know if they’re ones that should have been laid to rest. It becomes more difficult by the day to prioritize and to know what’s real.

But through that, I’m focusing. Friends have been particularly kind to me through this most recent round of uncertainty. I’ve been selectively careless with some feelings and swallowed others and even if it looks like I’m spinning out, I promise I’m trying. The most rewarding thing anyone can do for me right now is believe me. I am trying. One day at a time didn’t work and now I’m going hour by hour. If it gets down to minutes, we’ll handle it then. But thank you to those who have listened, who continue to listen, who handle the minutes and the hours and the days as necessary. Thank you, thank you. I would be little without you.

Cameron Esposito: Tell your rape jokes. Expect to be challenged on them.

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:53:20 -0700

Cameron Esposito: Tell your rape jokes. Expect to be challenged on them.:

cameronesposito:

Seems like every 6 months or so - maybe once a year - there is a debate about rape jokes. Here’s how it goes:

A dude tells jokes about rape or deals with hecklers in way that includes rape. A woman hears these jokes or is the heckler. She publicly states that she is upset or didn’t like the joke…

Yes.

sexpigeon: Goodbye, San Francisco! With your miracle tacos,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:25:46 -0700

sexpigeon:

Goodbye, San Francisco! With your miracle tacos, with your drowsy sidewalks, with your perpetually open invitation to hang out and have drinks. With your startup dingbats, with your stupid lingo and little dicks. With your freezing beaches covered in dogs. Love you lots and lots, always, but goodbye.

Received this reminder of home from 22,069 feet above the state I love, my little body hurtling through air it can’t handle at 461 miles an hour. I am rewriting the story and the first line is “I’m not ready, but I’m showing up.”

The weather is warmer than I expected, I tell you, and you laugh and shake your head and remind me...

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:18:46 -0700

The weather is warmer than I expected, I tell you, and you laugh and shake your head and remind me that it’s summer and not all places are where I come from. My skin warms when we cross streets and immediately becomes too cool when we enter the shadow of buildings. I cross in the middle of the street so I can stay in the sun and you follow me without asking. I wish it was always going to be that way.

You tell me that there’s a version of me that you really like, and I don’t hear the rest because all I can think about are the versions of me that you hate. A few silences later I tell you that you don’t exist and you say “I’m right here” while grabbing my arm. It’s the first time we touch and it seems like you realize that, too. We are continuing to not talk about it and I start to feel like I’m about to break.

I tell you that I want to be a writer and it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Hearing it in my voice is disorienting and I want to repeat it until it sounds comfortable, but I suspect it never will. I scramble for an answer for when you ask me what I want to write and don’t find it in time. I make something up and you don’t believe it and you know that I don’t either.

The city and I are swirling at rates that don’t sync up. We’re too short, too tall, too fast, too slow. It always takes you the same amount of steps to realize I’m not with you. You never come back, but you wait for me to catch up and that will always be good enough. I ask where we’re going even though I don’t know where we are and you tell me I’ll know when we get there.

I tell you that I feel like I’m waiting for the universe to give me an answer in a speech I’ve given tens of times. The words fall out of my mouth in order in a way that’s calculated and rehearsed and somehow now that I’m saying them to you, I realize how unhappy I am. I tell you that I’m angry and I’m grateful that you don’t ask me at what.

The thing I’m waiting for is you and it takes a five hour flight and a bottle of wine before I realize it. I think about running away and wonder if I have the strength to just point at a map. I want to ask you to come with me and my throat catches me before I get the chance. I tell you instead that we should be pen pals. You ask me to send you a postcard every time I miss you and I tell you that I’m not sure I’m ready to ask you to hold on to any more of my feelings. You tell me you can handle it and I believe you.

We never reach our intended destination. We choose to fall down the wrong streets, our voices echoing off of things that are bigger than us. I tell you what you already know and I’m grateful that you listen. We’re smart enough to not make predictions. We’ll know when we get there.

Welcome to Adventure Week. I really like to blow off most of the...

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:18:49 -0700

Welcome to Adventure Week.

I really like to blow off most of the ideas I have. It’s not that I think I’m stupid or that I think I have bad ideas, it’s that I tend to be really ambitious and that means I end up inventing an awful lot of stress for myself. I’ll set a goal that’s too lofty and I’ll make my life just awful trying to reach it. I’ve got enough problems going on that I don’t have to invent more, but here I am, constantly doing just that. Inventing my own problems feels like it’d be easier to solve them, but it turns out it isn’t. Never is.

I rode to the top of Hawk Hill today. It’s a 22 mile ride with about 1300 feet of climbing. It’s what my cycling team does at 6 a.m. three times a week. It’s a great ride. The thing about it is that I’ve never conquered it successfully. I get dropped on the club rides because everyone on the team is easily twice as fast as I am (and that number increases sharply as soon as climbing is involved). That’s okay. I don’t mind being slow and I don’t mind being dropped. But I’ve never managed to make it happen for me. It’s a terrible climb. It’s more than my legs can take. Today, I decided I was going to do the fucking thing.

I’ve never been to the top of Hawk Hill. Ever. I’ve never driven there. That’s a deliberate decision. I wanted the first time I made it there to be with my feet. My team posts photos every day that are just stunning (they’re all this photo, basically, at different times of the day) and I always wanted to make it. Driving seemed like a cop-out. Being there was never the point. Getting there was.

And man, it hurt. Rough. Getting over the bridge during the week is difficult because the cycling side is closed, so you’re competing for space on narrow walkways with fellow local cyclists, both fast and slow, tourists on rental bikes, and pedestrians whose behavior is completely unpredictable. It’s not a great time. I had forgotten how difficult it is to get across the bridge during the day, and I’m really glad I had - I probably would have stayed in bed.

The climb up Hawk Hill is mean. Mean mean. It’s brutally steep to start, and then it evens out into a manageable incline for a bit, and just when you’re ready to pack it in anyway it turns steeper. You can see around the ridge by that point, so the top of it is in your sights the whole way. You can’t lie to yourself. I haven’t figured out if this is a good or a bad thing. And you trudge. On and on, slogging through. If you aren’t quick, you are going to get passed. There’s no shoulder. You can’t get up Hawk Hill without wanting it.

I wanted it.

People ride Hawk Hill all the time. It’s the most brutal Marin ride you can get without a second climb. It’s the fastest, most effective choice you can make if you want to climb your ass off but need to keep your miles or time short. It’s a blessing to city cyclists on a time crunch. I am not the first, I won’t be the last. I’m not the fastest. (I’m 543rd out of 634 riders on Strava for the climbs, for reference. So I’m not the slowest. I’m well above the median. There are 542 other people who were further above it.)

I’ve quietly declared this week to be Adventure Week. (To myself, mostly.) I am sick and tired of saying I’m going to do things and not doing them. I am tired of letting my unemployment and my fear and my everything get in the way of being the person I want to be. I am tired of everything. So I rode Hawk Hill today. I’m going to get up early tomorrow and get in the pool. If the weather cooperates I’d like to do Paradise Loop on Thursday. And on Saturday, I leave for LA, for my first vacation by myself. I am owning Adventure Week.

I’m slower than the dudes I ride with, but we did the same ride today. I’m getting there at my own pace. And maybe I’m slower than everyone. Maybe I can’t figure it out, maybe I’m not built for it, maybe I was never meant to do any of it. All the failure and all the roadblocks just make it that much sweeter when I get there.

missioncycling: Debating. Might not be home for dinner....

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:30:54 -0700

missioncycling:

Debating. Might not be home for dinner. #missioncycling by ahschacter http://bit.ly/13mKjF5

Anyone who’s ever seen this sign and didn’t immediately think “I bet I could just buy a change of clothes along the way or whatever” isn’t one of my people.

You’re going to see it all over the internet today, but...

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:47:08 -0700

You’re going to see it all over the internet today, but just in case you haven’t yet, you should go read the new Hyperbole and a Half. Laughed, cried, read it twice.

michalva: Cute coffee gif by Steffen Lyhne. Adorable, and...

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:13:38 -0700

michalva:

Cute coffee gif by Steffen Lyhne.

Adorable, and absolutely the thing to motivate me out of bed on this weird weather day.

Photo

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:32:23 -0700

My paternal grandfather passed on in 1995, the day before my tenth birthday. I don’t remember...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:07:30 -0700

My paternal grandfather passed on in 1995, the day before my tenth birthday. I don’t remember much about it, to be honest. I remember that we all spent a lot of time in the hospital, that I missed my first (and what would have been only) track practice, that a younger cousin was playing on the back of a chair and fell off and broke her collar bone in the ICU waiting room, and that I rode alone with my older brother to get milk and donuts from a nearby convenience store.

What I also remember is that my father pulled nine-year-old me aside and told me that if there was one thing he wanted me to learn and remember for the rest of my life, it was that honesty and direct communication are the most important things in the world. It’s been eighteen years so I can’t quite remember how the whole conversation went, but the gist was that sometimes bad things happen, and what you have to do is be honest, no matter how much it hurts.

It comes as no surprise to me that the very first thing my father said to me today when we spoke on the phone was that he had cancer. He tends to deliver bad news the same way I do - little exposition with no small talk. My mother and I have a habit of leading out with “everyone is okay, but…” when we have to make unfortunate phone calls. If I had called her directly after totalling the van two weeks ago and made small talk for 30 seconds, I’m pretty sure she would have lost her mind when I got to the important “by the way, no one died” part of the conversation. My father and I communicate far less frequently than my mother and I do, so we don’t really have a precedent for these sorts of things. No small talk, no beating around the bush, just an announcement that he has cancer and will be starting radiation therapy tomorrow.

I have long said that one of the major issues I have to overcome is my desire to assign equal importance to every single thing in my life. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so the saying goes, but I don’t think anyone ever expects someone to take it to the extremes that I do. I am a perfectionist. I care about something or I don’t, and if I care about it I’m going to give it everything I have. I will go to the ends of the earth for you if you ask. I do not have a threshold; I do not break. I will figure it out, whatever it is.

This one, though. This one, I’m not sure about. Cancer keeps taking people, invading their bodies and making them not understand themselves. I’ve watched person after person get taken down piece by piece and I am sick and fucking tired of it. We are approaching the fourth anniversary of losing Harry’s father to cancer, the one year anniversary of losing a friend to cancer, and today is the day I will remember as the one where I found out my father has cancer.

I am sick of saying that the world isn’t fair. I am sick and goddamn tired of watching human bodies succumb to a disease we can’t figure out. Human beings are incredible. We are limitless. Together, we can accomplish anything. But we can’t fix this. I can’t fix this. It is incomprehensible to me that we can’t figure this out.

I don’t have an eloquent way to wrap this up. I don’t know what my feelings are and I sort of have to figure that out before I work on vocalizing whatever it is I need to vocalize. But, cancer, fuck you. Fuck you, for real. It’s not eloquent, and I couldn’t care any less.

Harry: "this go hard yo i listen to this when im in that lax mood i either do that or smoke some blue dolphin [weed]"

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:27:43 -0700

Harry: "this go hard yo i listen to this when im in that lax mood i either do that or smoke some blue dolphin [weed]"
me: the way you wrote that looks like one of jean-ralphio's raps that has one too many words in it
Harry: that's awesome
It's just a youtube comment I copied
me: hahahaha
perfect
Harry: your response flows like a rap line too. It's got a real nice slant rhyme like you're landing a comeback
me: I just make a parks and rec reference and all my boys go OHHHHHHHH
I would suck so hard in a rap battle
my name is jen and I'm here to say that I'm super fucking nervous in every way
I wish I had a dog, you look real pretty, I miss eating bread... man, this rap is shitty.

toothpastecomics: From Toothpaste For Dinner Relevant.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:49:16 -0700

toothpastecomics:

From Toothpaste For Dinner

Relevant.

Today wasn’t an easy one. This is the exact email I...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:35:32 -0700

Today wasn’t an easy one. This is the exact email I needed.

Going to LA in four and a half weeks to spend three days in a downtown loft, alone with a sketchbook and no obligations and a gym and a rooftop hot tub. Realizing we just got back from vacation, of course, but the last week has just been a killer. It is so nice to have a break to look forward to.

People spend their entire lives trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Any runner who has ever...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:32:51 -0700

People spend their entire lives trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Any runner who has ever laced up a pair of shoes and traveled a mile in them, huffing and puffing, has thought “Maybe I could race Boston someday.” I’ve thought about it. Me, with my terrible knees and my 13:00/mile pace - I’ve thought about using cycling as my cross-training and trying to figure out how to run a marathon.

And think of everything it takes to get to Boston. That’s sacrificing countless nights because you know you have to get in bed and do your morning run instead of doing what everyone else defines as fun. That’s looking at menus and thinking about what your body needs for fuel rather than what looks tasty. It’s years of reading and learning and trying and running, all to just qualify for Boston. It’s running marathon after marathon until you hit an unbelievably fast goal time, and your reward is running another marathon. You could run your entire life and still not get in.

The runners who worked their asses off to make that marathon and came in at 4:09 were not welcomed by excitement and hugs and kisses and encouragement. They were welcomed by bombs, by destroyed bodies and detached limbs. This was their payoff for all of their hard work.

The spectators break my heart as much as the runners. You have no idea how much we need you, spectators. We come around corners faster when we see you all screaming encouragement at us. I don’t know what it does to the body, but seeing that a complete stranger has given up part of their day to cheer on another complete stranger always makes me forget everything I’ve been obsessing over in a race. I’m checking my pace and listening to my breathing and checking my heart rate and checking my pace again and then I hear someone tell me I can do it, knowing they believe that, and everything is gone. When I’m at my most tired, hearing someone tell me that it’s going to be okay is the best thing in the world. And thinking about this happening to a single one of the hundreds of people who have cheered me on in my lifetime is enough to reduce me to tears, even though I never knew their names and have likely forgotten their faces.

All I want to do is be angry for awhile. Angry for the runners who worked so hard and the spectators that were there to be welcoming, friendly faces at one of the most physically challenging moments of their lives. I want to be angry because someone ruined all of that for everyone.

I’ve checked in on all the runners and Bostonians I know and I even double-checked to make sure on runners that I didn’t think were there but who knows, they could have been. If I forgot to check on you, I am so, so sorry. I hope you’re okay. I’m grateful that the people I know are okay. I hope your loved ones are, too. And if they are not, know that their efforts were deeply appreciated by everyone there today. The Boston Marathon is one of the greatest events in the world, and they all deserved better than this.

When it’s windy and your body is broken and your front...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:34:07 -0700

When it’s windy and your body is broken and your front wheel on the real bike is being weird and you can’t eat any goddamn bread or drink a beer, you might as well throw yourself on the single speed, bruises and ripped up body and all, and ride your ass 7.4 miles through the prettiest little city on the prettiest coast. Fuck it.

No carbs, no sugar, day four.

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:33:52 -0700

Cut link provided because no one gives a shit about your nutrition decisions. Crappy attitude provided because I can’t have any goddamn bread.

Hello. I am a person who hates anything you could refer to as a “diet”. I think that people should know where their food comes from, know how their body works, listen to that body, and just eat real food. Eat that cake and drink that beer if you want it, just understand that either a) you will likely be carrying that cake with you for a few days unless you have great metabolism or b) you could ride a bike or something to get rid of that cake. Low-fat, low-carb, eat an unreasonable amount of grapefruit, master cleanse - not interested in any of them, ever.

So here we are on day four of me not consuming carbs or sugar. Why in the good hell would a girl whose dietary foundation is a layer of beer possibly subject herself to this? Fact of the matter is that as much as I think I understand my body, I still have a couple of questions. It’s become apparent to me that maybe I just don’t process carbs with any actual skill. Cycling food is laden with them but I still bonk constantly, no matter how rigid I am with my “eat before you hunger, drink before you thirst” plan. You know how some people say they can’t drink too much beer because they feel too full? I have never understood those people. I could throw down a pound of pasta in a sitting and still have my brain think it’s hungry. Something’s not lining up.

Within two weeks of each other, I pulled a ligament in my shoulder and then I got my body tossed around the back of a minivan after a high-speed collision with an 18-wheeler. Cycling season is not starting off well. Riding my bike is more taxing than I need it to be. So if I can’t train as hard as I’m supposed to going into May, I at least have to figure out this nutrition stuff while there are no stakes. I’m not going to bonk on a ride from some nutritional experiment if I’m not riding. So.

PEACE OUT, CARBS. What’s up, meat?

The actual plan is not particularly rigid, but it involves no carbs and no sugar. It’s going to end up throwing me into ketosis, which is fine. It’s not a weight loss strategy. My eventual goal is to understand what makes my body feel full so that I can be a stronger cyclist. If my hypothesis is confirmed and my body exclusively responds to protein, well, I’ll figure that out and fill my jersey pockets accordingly when I’m racing. But I cannot continue feeling as bad as I do after a 70 mile poorly-fed ride, because that takes me out of all activity for too long while I heal. Have to figure this out. I have no desire to turn on some lifelong low-carb strategy, because beer is the best thing on the face of the planet. Once I’ve figured out this weirdo little body, then I’ll figure out the actual gameplan.

Day three I felt like a rockstar. Everything was great on day three. Day four is here and I’m not hungry. At all. I made food last night because I was supposed to, and I ate some of it. I woke up at 8 this morning and had no appetite; I continued to have no appetite at noon but made lunch anyway. 3:30 is here and I could not care less about eating for the rest of the day. It’s not just “I’m sick of the food I’m allowed to eat”, it’s that I have exactly zero desire to eat anything whatsoever. There is no physical desire for food in my body at all. I’m about to go to Pi Bar because I love the people who invited me, and I’m going to have a glass of wine (3 carbs), and that’ll be fine. I should probably order food. Don’t care.

There’s benefit to all of that, I guess. I’ve always had blood sugar problems and I’m hoping this turns into an interesting way to separate mental and physical cravings. Scrolling through Facebook I saw a stack of photos of people eating cake and bread and drinking beer and doing all sorts of things I like, and I thought, man, cake would be great. But that thought wasn’t accompanied with any sort of action. There wasn’t a second step of “I should go get some cake”. Not hungry. No cake.

It’s a little bit depressing, if we’re being honest. I love food. Food is the best thing. Not wanting food is really frustrating and not who I am as a person. But I’m keeping it all in context: this is the fourth day. Four days! Yesterday, if everything I know about nutrition is accurate, I had exactly three carbs and they all came from eggs. My body is confused and mad and can’t figure out why I’m doing this to it. I could quit and give up and decide it’s not for me, but I knew this sort of thing was coming. It’s okay.

And while we’re talking about bodies, just know that all of my bruises are coming in really well. Awesomely well. If anyone needs a woman who looks really selectively jaundiced for something, you go right on ahead and let me know. Offer valid for a limited time.

I know I haven't said enough how I will protect, and how each day matters.

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:20:00 -0700

We left Breckenridge a little after 6 a.m., with 4.5 hours to spare before Kurt’s flight back to Cincinnati. That’s far earlier than reasonable, considering Denver is only about 100 miles away and the roads were empty. Our waiter from two nights earlier had expressed disappointment that we were leaving Tuesday morning because we’d miss the snow on Tuesday afternoon, and we told him we were totally okay with it because we just cared about having an easy trip home.

I sat in the backseat of the van and read an email out loud to the boys, which spawned a conversation about 90s bands and who put out albums when and who covered that song was about the guy whose girlfriend died in a car crash. I wondered out loud what pieces of information I had forgotten in exchange for being able to immediately know that I was being asked about Pearl Jam’s cover of “Last Kiss”. I posted a snarky Facebook status writing a letter to the gods of fog and snow commanding them to ease up so I could get on my airplane and go home. Ten minutes later the three of us were sitting in the back of an ambulance, because we totalled the van by plowing into a semi at speed.

I have a hard time pinpointing what makes me choose a topic to write about. I’ve been writing about my life on the internet for over fourteen years. That’s meant a lot of things over the years. It started with a hand-formatted page on my website when I was thirteen. I jumped onto LiveJournal pretty quickly because it was easier than actually maintaining a website. I maintained a mildly popular Vox account that was largely about food, marriage and my cat. I started a Blogger account when I moved to San Francisco and abandoned it shortly thereafter in favor of this Tumblr account.

That’s fourteen years of writing, five years of writing here. I don’t like to consider myself a “blogger”, per se, because I feel like that’s a title that brings some obligation with it. I’m a terrible beer blogger, what with my website I haven’t updated in well over a year. I’m a terrible professional blogger because I only get to it once a month or so. At a certain point, if you’re a “blogger”, you’re supposed to have some sort of focus, and if you don’t update regularly enough your readers are going to stop coming back. That feels like a lot of pressure for someone who basically wants to post photos of puppies and attractive men and occasional 4,000 word rants on her feelings expressed through stories about families and sexuality and politics.

I used writing for years as a way to work through my thoughts on things that were important to me. A sort of second-tier importance, to a degree, because I don’t write about the things that are really on my mind. I tend to share 95% of what’s going on in my life with everyone around me and keep the final 5% to myself. It makes me feel like a desperately private person, though I know I’m anything but. I refused to write about my divorce because it felt disrespectful and I didn’t want to share it. I’m very selective about how I discuss being unemployed. I don’t write about any problems that largely lie with other people, no matter how much they’re plaguing me, because it isn’t my place to share other people’s business. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know how I’d write about the real, big things. Writing those feelings down actualizes them and gives them a weight that they don’t always deserve.

So I don’t know how to write about the wreck, as much as I’d like to. If this is the way I work through things, I should do that. I just can’t remotely imagine what I’d say.

The facts don’t matter. The facts are that we were driving from Breckenridge to Denver in a minivan, there was a wreck up ahead of us that was stopping traffic, and even though our driver was leaving ample room and going at the same speed as the rest of the highway, we just couldn’t stop. We knew it was coming. The brakes and the wheels and the traction control didn’t do their job, and then we were on the other side of the highway, spun off by a 45-miles-per-hour impact with the back corner of a semi. We don’t know how many other people were involved. All three of us must have instinctively closed our eyes because our memories are identical: we knew we were going to hit the truck, and we thought maybe we could just slot in between the truck and the car next to it, and then there was a lot of sound and we opened our eyes and were somewhere else. We tried to drive the van off to the shoulder and realized we couldn’t because we were missing wheels. There was broken glass everywhere. Panels on the inside and outside of the van were in places that they were never intended to be. I didn’t know what really happened to the van until I saw the photos later, and even now as I look at them I still really don’t understand it. A two ton machine threw itself at machines that were bigger and smaller and everyone walked away healthy. Blood was lost, bruises and fear developed in their place.

There is no value in thinking about how we could have died. It’s really compelling to do so, but it doesn’t help. The idea has come to me quite a few times in the last 32 hours. I thought about it while we sat at the airport bitching about our snow-delayed flight (“at least we’re eventually getting on an airplane”), it was my first thought in the morning (“at least we woke up today”), and it comes to me every time I shift around in bed to try and make my overstressed body more comfortable. Two of my favorite people picked us up at the airport last night and I have never been happier to see them; I made a phone call this morning and cried when I got off the phone because I was so grateful to have heard his voice on the other end of the line.

I’ve always tried to turn tragedy into positive experiences. Wallowing is an ineffective strategy for me. Sometimes it feels good, and I like to give myself time to mourn, but I try to translate things into positive action as quickly as I possibly can. When someone I care about dies I’ll immediately call everyone I love and think about how grateful I am that they answered the phone. In a particularly painful series of moments last autumn I sent emails to a few of my closest friends and called out why I need them in my life so badly and expressed my gratitude for all of the things that they are. It’s not a process that does what I really need it to do - get my mind off of the situation at hand - but if I can’t stop thinking about it, the least I can do is make something positive come out of it.

I can’t begin to count the number of times I said “we’re okay” yesterday. On the phone, in text messages, on Facebook, in person. Over and over and over. It never once felt like a blowoff and I never intended it to be. We are okay. Before we left San Francisco I found out how much I owe for last year’s taxes (more than twice what I have in my bank account and twice the amount of money I’ve made this year). I tore a ligament in my back on my 28th birthday by picking up my phone and it hurts a lot. My race season is going to be difficult because I just keep getting one setback after another. But we’re here. Home. In San Francisco, where we belong. Harry is at work and I’m in bed and the sun is shining and we left Denver. We’re okay.

I’m not used to vacations. I’ve never made enough money to make leisure travel an actual...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:39:40 -0700

I’m not used to vacations. I’ve never made enough money to make leisure travel an actual option, so the number of actual vacations I’ve taken since I became a self-sufficient adult ten years ago are relatively few. Which is not to say that we don’t travel, just to say that there’s always a purpose. We fly from San Francisco to Kansas City or Cincinnati to see our family. We get out of the city for the occasional weekend but it’s often centered around a race, so we’ll drive somewhere one night, race the next day, and either come home that day or the day after. I have little experience with waking up in a place and not knowing what to do.

We flew into Denver on Thursday night, which turned out to be a total waste. We figured that since we were going to Colorado, we might as well make A Thing of it. If you live in the middle of the country this might not make much sense, but people living in Pacific or Eastern time will get it - man, time zones are weird. And sometimes it makes more sense to just go the night before or something. If we had left San Francisco at a reasonable hour of the morning we would have gotten to Colorado in the afternoon, so we left the night before. We thought we’d have about four hours in Denver between when our flight landed and when the bars closed, so we booked a swanky hotel downtown and had plans to visit places that were recommended to us. Then our flight was late, as flights are, and we got to Denver at 1:30 in the morning. Thanks, weather.

We drove to Breckenridge on Friday morning and I’m pretty overwhelmed by how beautiful it is. It’s very different from Tahoe and I’m not really capable of vocalizing why. I’m sure people who ski and actually go on vacations would have better things to say about it, but this just strikes me as “different”. The three of us are staying in a small studio with two electric burners and a comically tiny sink. Somehow I managed to pull off oatmeal, bacon, eggs, toast, coffee and tea this morning. Never doubt the power of women who have spent the last five years throwing dinner parties out of a 42 square foot kitchen.

I can do whatever I want today. Literally anything. Could yesterday, too. The boys are out skiing and I don’t do that, so the world is my oyster. There’s a brewery in town that I love (I have been there twice). I hear there’s a coffee shop that actually pulls a good shot but I haven’t checked it out yet. I went to the grocery store and realized that the way I eat and cook means I no longer understand grocery stores the way most of the country does; that was a really startling realization. There are about eight hot tubs and two pools within just a couple minutes of where I’m sitting now; there are two gyms. I have entertained all of them. I will likely go to the gym after writing this, then sit in a hot tub, then take a shower, then make grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for the boys when they come back after three hours on the slopes.

I ran out of things to do yesterday around 11:30 in the morning. On day one. We went out to breakfast, I went to the gym, I got in the hot tub, I took a shower, I sat down in bed and watched a little bit of pre-March Madness coverage. I looked at the clock and it wasn’t even noon. I drove to the grocery store, I tried to get an espresso but couldn’t find parking, I came back to the hotel. It occurred to me by 1:00 that I have no idea what to do with free time anymore. And that’s crazy - I have lots and lots of free time. I’m basically unemployed, always. Somehow, though, I always have things to do. There are people to meet and things to respond to and I am constantly overwhelmed by my lack of time to do anything for me. Now I’m in Breckenridge, Colorado, alone with all the time in the world, and I have no idea what “doing things for me” should entail. I went to the gym. Now what?

I actually sat down and drew yesterday. I’m working on this little checklist of things that I would usually write off as “I’m never going to do that”, and improving my drawing skills is one of the top things on that list. So I drew. I drew the entertainment center and I drew a teapot and that was awful so I drew another teapot. And when that one still wasn’t great I just drew a lot of circles. I was only drawing for fifteen minutes, but if I could make myself draw for fifteen minutes every day I’d be unbelievably happy. Baby steps.

I feel like I’m always looking forward to the next thing. I’d blame it on the 2.5 years I’ve spent looking for a job, but even I’m starting to get a little tired of that story. I’m always looking at what’s next. I’m thinking about how our diet is going to change the second we get back to San Francisco rather than focusing on all the great food and beer that are available to me right here and right now. I spend most of my life planning the next part of my life. I have no idea what to do today but I know what I’m going to do Wednesday. It makes little sense.

So today I’m going to get off the computer and I’m going to try and figure it out. And I’ll do the same thing tomorrow. I’m going to go to the gym, I’m going to play in a hot tub, I will likely check out the steam room. (Steam room!) I might head into town and check out the brewery again. I might see if the coffee shop is open on Sundays. I will stop being so overwhelmed by the possibility of everything there is to do and I’ll just start doing something, instead.

Breckenridge is absolutely stunning. It is the perfect place for me to be, right here and right now.