Still looking up.

After sitting at a desk all week, there's not too much I like doing more than loading some new music and riding my bike aimlessly around the city for a few hours. The weather was kind on Friday after the storm and I don't think it got over about 100. I rode down to the springs but the water level was still pretty low. I ran over to the Green Belt to check the water level but it was pretty dry there, too. There were some puddles in the crevasses but nothing substantial. Since I was the only person out there, I ended up doing handstands on the rocks and inspecting various things on the ground.

When I was a kid, I used to sit on my driveway on hot afternoons and fix my eyes on one position in the concrete. Aside from being generally absent minded, I did this to see how many different worlds were alive on a different scale. It usually took a little less than a second to find 3 or 4 miniature storylines unfolding on the alien landscape. I'd put my face right on the surface to get a terrestrial view of the landscape before becoming an obnoxiously omnicient cameraman with some particularly bad commentary. As I remember it, I'd spend about 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon with my miniature buddies before being distracted by something else. If using 75 years for the average human life expectancy and 90 days for the average life span of the common Texas ant, I spent about 6.34 ant days with those bugs in a small part of my Saturday afternoon. I must have considered this to some degree as a kid because I was always more than able to provide life-changing, truly awesome situations for those poor ants. They were troupers, a great cast.

After playing on the rocks for a bit, I took my usual route to the recreational fountain next to the Long Center and watched the kids perform a ballet with the water. As many years as I was tortured for being the smallest kid, I miss being able to look up at the world. The fountain was a veritable oceanic circus to these kids. I must have made a subconscious note of this because I ended up peddling downtown to watch some skyscrapers go up.

I parked around 3rd and Colorado in some fancypants new residential area and watched the housewives do what they could to keep the local economy afloat. I watched the construction crew across the street haul load after load up and down the 40 story scraper with their monster crane perched precariously on the roof. It was nice. I was a comfortable ant again.

I burned across the bridge and headed over to Freebirds for a monster burrito. I made a quick stop at a custom guitar shop and wondered how anything less than 10,000 years old could possibly cost so much. I still don't understand it, really. Why not donate the money or teach yourself how to make guitars if you want to spend that much? A piano is one thing... but a guitar? Really?

I got my burrito and decided to take Riverside to Alameda or Alta Vista through Travis Heights. Those are my favorite streets in Austin, side by side. They're hellacious on a bike, but they remind me of the houses up in New Hampshire where I used to spend my summers. It's quiet and clean and... just generally fantastic. On the way down Riverside, however, I performed some impromptu acrobatics for the birds. I wanted to go from the road to the sidewalk before turning the next corner because it was more of a switchback... more than a 90 degree turn. There was a spot in the road with a tapered curb that I incrorrectly assumed was all asphalt. It seems the road crew who recently made the curb only made half of it out of asphalt. The other, taller half connecting the asphalt to the sidewalk, was dirt. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but it was like quicksand after the hard rain the day before. My front tire went about 8" into the mud and it ran into the face of the sidewalk underground. I flew over the handlebars and thankfully saved the burrito in my backpack. I landed on my hands (gloves!) and my shoulder took most of the impact. I have no idea what happened to my bike but the seat looks to have taken the worst of it. It must have gotten airborne, too. I ended up with a kind of scary looking shoulder and a sore palm. Thankfully there was no audience for the performance, but it certainly would have been a good show.

Johnny's dog helped me eat my monster burrito after I rinsed all the mud off when I got home. I was back on the bike and riding again yesterday. I blame the music. I blame Ariel Ramirez.

My week started today. Johnny got back from New York this morning and I no longer have the house to myself. I'm gonna update my COT sheets and do some work before the rest of the world starts moving in a few hours.