I am no kind of super cyclist, and have no pretensions to anything but to be the most modest and lackadaisical of pedalers-about-town. My housemate Tim recently proposed that I join him volunteering at Slide Ranch, that it was in Marin, that we'd bike there. I foolishly thought Marin meant Marin Headlands, just over the Golden Gate. No doubt this is because I, having no ambitions as a biker, truffle about under the entirely baseless and plainly stupid assumption that no one else does, either. I didn't even look at the proposed route until 8am Saturday morning as we were about to leave. A long and hilly and windy way along Highway 1. I thought he had to be joking. He wasn't joking. There wasn't another way to get there. If you haven't driven that way lately, allow me to remind you there is no shoulder or bike lane. Allow me to remind you the hills go on for decades.
I'll skip the part about me huffing and puffing for close to four hours and stopping ALL THE TIME. It wasn't very glamorous and I am not a secret genius cyclist. I ride an old mountain bike my Mom gave me. I'm happy it has so many gears. But we did get there eventually. (And Tim is basically the best cheerleader ever, in the best possible way). And it looked like paradise.
I ate everything I could see and then sat in a yurt for three and a half hours and taught children how to card wool and spin it into yarn. I am such a sucker for kids. Top prize goes to a three-year-old named Leo who couldn't card wool but liked to pick it up and show it to me. We would agree that it was nice. We would agree that it was pretty. I asked him if he knew what animal wool came from. He got very excited and said "SEEP!" No sh's for him.
There was a potluck dinner and I ate about 2.5 plates of food, drank two beers, and went to sleep at 7:30. The sun hadn't even finished setting yet, but I curled up in my sleeping bag and fell asleep with the moon in my face, framed by grasses.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment