June 17, 2006
Trees are the Enemy... and further tails of Manhattan
Today I could have died. Kirsten and I hit the trails at about 10:30 this morning and really tried hard not to fall off. The city forest has these amazing mountain bike trails, but they are not for the faint of heart. At some places there is barely enough room between trees to fit my handle bars through, and frequently these situations happen at sharp curves. I have a great "tree" burn, if you will, on my left arm from scraping up against some bark in just such a place. There are also placed that go down suddenly, sharply, and towards a creek (not a tiny creek, a good sized one, thank you). If you are not on your game and make sure you are turning with the very tiny trail, you will end up IN the creek... with the rocks. We finished and I realized I wasn't breathing deep enough to get sufficient oxygen to my brain, so we took a minute, made sure I wasn't going to pass out, and did it again. Getting back on the horse and all that. So so so fun. I may go back tomorrow.
We could be heard swearing loudly throughout the forest. We had several interesting exchanges, as follows:
Kirsten: [yelping/screaming noise]
Me: Reverse trajectory!
Kirsten: Be careful!
Me: Motherf*cklove!
Kirsten: Are you still alive?!
We also talked about how perhaps we should have played more video games for our eye hand coordination, then decided if you played video games you most likely had an ass made of marshmallow and wouldn't be able to do this course anyway, especially, Kirsten asserted, since there are no quantum physics involved in. This confused me, but she explained that even if there was a video game of this trail they wouldn't feel the jarring that takes place riding over tree roots, piles of logs, bridges and rocks... or in one instance, snakes. This may not make sense to you, but it was perfectly logical at the time.
After all this we went back to our respective houses, showered, and met at the local Indian restaurant (Kirsten's idea), Cafe Tandoori. Such a good lunch. After this I went, got blood drawn for some tests, dropped stuff off at the post office, picked up my pictures, and spent some time working through my pictures and dealing with my email backlog, before then picking up my mother, going to get one of my prescriptions and hitting a garage sale. All this on five hours of sleep and a dull headache. After that I took a much needed three hour nap.
So.... would you like to see my pictures? Yes? Well okay.
First of all there is this self-portrait I took in the bathroom at PS1 in Queens. I though you all needed to see my "fierce" face, since it's the one I had on most of the morning on that damn trail. Morty wants me to do a self-portrait series, so, here is a start I guess. Also, I love my hair right now, so there is no threat of me doing the bald thing anytime soon. I just thought certain people (mostly named Jose) would appreciate that. Granted, this may displease Eb, but I am used to dealing with that.
So, this time I just sort of wrote the stories with the captions, so use the links below the pictures to read about what they are.
Liz Tubergen also has an awesome picture of this statue entitled "The Virgin Birth" here, on her Flickr.
More of these here.
Little India, riding the subway, etc.
Just look at this, the density of the blacks and whites, it's almost abstract. I can't stop staring.
How intoxicating is Linnea? So freaking intoxicating.
All my ladies.
See the rest of this set here.
Battery Park at Dusk: Lynnette Progression
See the rest of this set here.
Yes, there are more coming at some point. Someday. When money grows on trees that are not the enemy.