05 September 2008

Day 20: 31,217 words and 16.1 miles

I did some good race training on the wildest course one can imagine: the City of Boston.

Downtown is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucking vortex. The grid (such as it is, and it really isn't) does like a 45-degree shift as you enter the historical center of the city, and streets you had counted on as reliable eastish-westish axes turn back on themselves and parallel lines suddenly intersect. Skyscrapers block any possible fixed landmark. Eventually, the gyre spits you out and you find yourself in Eastie or headed over the river to Cambridge.

Anyway, riding street in this town is, as I've mentioned before, mortal combat. I pushed as hard as I could and upped my mileage count just chasing my tail downtown, then rode back out to JP against a vicious headwind to sign up for the mechanic training course at Bikes Not Bombs... which was already full. I decided to go to the gym, figuring it'd be dead on Friday night. Wrong. Meat market. Undeterred, I put my headphones on and played a liveset I had downloaded before leaving home. Full of skips. Shit. Basically, I got denied all evening but still had a fucking great time. I worked out, took a long sauna and stretched. Came home, chatted with the roomie, wrote, and now I'm just gonna chill and get a good night's sleep so my body can recover. Friday, y'all.

You may ask how I afford my rock'n'roll lifestyle. It ain't easy being this crip.

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