Today, a long bike ride around town with my honey. Perfect weather for me, a world-class sun-hater, overcast and cool. As a lifelong pedestrian, I'm still not used to this bike thing. I can carry it off okay, if you saw me pedal by you might not give me a second glance, but inside I have virtually no bicycling instincts. I am constantly aware of floating biomass and a troublingly exposed ass. I feel like a clever bicycling chimp circling the big top to the sound of a woozy, demented calliope.

We crossed the Hawthorne bridge, which would've been very picturesque if I hadn't been obsessed with gruesome fantasies of skidding into traffic, mangled beneath the wheels of a late-model Saturn driven by a cell phone-yakking Cinnabon regional manager wearing a disastrous Ann Taylor ensemble that makes her look like Vampira with an eating disorder. Later, a very fun ride along the empty riverfront, a nice continuous paved path in front of some condos that had the unfortunate institutional aspect of yuppie halfway houses. I liked this the best, no people or other moving obstacles to cause me anxiety, and nice views from beneath big iron bridges and of the rusted relics of moribund heavy industry. I like urban ruins (minus the silly thrillseeker aspect), and the plangent sound of waves just makes it better. Cities, despite their density, are paradoxically lonely places.