trashing the trash

That's right. We're going to do it. After about a year of having our garbage picked up only once a month, we're now going to cancel our garbage service altogether.

Here's how it works: we'll still have to pay for recycling and green waste/compost (Portland will now accept kitchen scraps and compostable food containers in the green waste!), but we won't pay for garbage.

Of course, even though we try to be really, really good about avoiding packaging and waste, inevitably we will create some landfill-bound trash. When we really need it, then, we can call for a garbage pick-up, which will cost $8. That way, we're incentivized to create as little trash as humanly possible, since the less we create, the less we pay. As long as we go for at least two months without needing someone to pick up our trash, which shouldn't be too hard for us, it's cost-effective to pay per pickup.

I'm psyched. And I hope that the garbageless option is making other people rethink their waste, too. It's awesome that it's an option here to pay for only as much garbage as you create. I fricken love this city.

Goodreads

By the way, for those of you who aren't familiar with it: on ye olde internet there's a site called Goodreads that's a sort of online library/record-keeping/recommendation-helping/literary social networking amalgamation that I've been sort of using for a while. It basically helps you keep track of what you've read, rate it, review it, whatever, and see what your friends are reading... I've gotten lots of good recommendations lately just by looking at what people I like are reading (thanks, goodreads friends!:)

I'll be the first to admit I've used it rather haphazardly since I signed up for it, but I'm trying to use it now to help manage these 100 future books of mine. I'm also trying to at least jot down a few thoughts about what I've read there.

So if you're interested, check it out. It'll probably be a much more comprehensive picture of my progress than this blog. You can find me here. Check it out and keep helping me figure out what to read!:)

a marathon, not a sprint

I have to keep reminding myself that reading all these books in the next year is going to happen in exactly that: the next year. Not the next few days.

But as with anything I start, I feel an immense, immediate pressure to do everything now. Thus it was that not 10 pages into The Tipping Point, my first book of the lot, I found myself unable to focus on what I was reading, instead wondering "how many pages do I have left now? Now? Am I going to have enough time to read this? Should I be reading faster?"

Luckily, I was able to focus, finally--mostly by reminding myself of what I'm typing now. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It's like putting my bike in a super low gear to churn out a 20-mile hill, settling in for the long haul. It's like eating healthy--some days, you eat cookies anyway, but hopefully you still make good choices over the long run. It's something that happens over time, not all at once.

Once I decide to do something, I like it to happen now. So in some sense, I think this experiment will be good for me, for reminding me that some things take time, pacing, patience. 100 books will happen. Over time.

That being said, I finished The Tipping Point and am onto Catching Fire, the second of the Hunger Games triology. I read the first book when I was back in Sacramento last time and noticed my brother had it in his room; I couldn't resist putting the second one into my young adult category. Though it might be hard to wait for another year before I read the third one. I may need to read 101 books in the next year:)

books, books, books

hi guys!

I'm about to embark on a reading journey of epic proportions and I need your help!

James' cousin alerted me to this 10-10-10 challenge: read 10 different books, by 10 different authors, in 10 different categories/genres, for a total of 100 books in a year. His cousin started on October 10 (heh, get it? 10/10/10:) and gave herself until Oct 10 of this year to finish them all. Being the crazy reader that she is, she finished early (and wrote about it here and here), thus inspiring me to give it a try. The somewhat artificial nature of the challenge is, I think, a good way to read a bunch of books that are outside of my general comfort zone, and I'm psyched about it.

So starting in 5 days, I will attempt the harrowing journey through 100 different authors in 365 days. (Yikes! When I write it out like that, it sounds hard!:)

Here's where I need your help. 100 is a lot of books, and even though I have quite the book queue built up on my own, I anticipate needing a lot of recommendations. Especially because many of the categories I came up with are categories that I don't generally read when I'm just picking books out for the fun of it. So I'm counting on you, dear readers, as well as all of my various resources, to help me find 100 quality books:)

The categories I chose for myself are, in no particular order:

-classics I haven't read yet
-young adult
-sci fi/fantasy
-nonfiction
-short stories
-auto/biography
-graphic novel
-African authors
-en otros idiomas (either Spanish or French)
-my choice

Know of any great classics? Any great nonfiction or biographies? Short story collections? Easy books I can read in Spanish or French? (Harry Potter is about the limit of my abilities there). Graphic novels that won't offend me with gratuitous violence? Please let me know, either in the comments here or via email. I can't promise I'll read all your recommendations, of course, but with 10 books for each category and very little time to read them, chances are good I'll take you up on it:)

Bring it on!:)

from the front lines of work

One of the teens I work with today told me that she was going to start calling me "Ms. H." --not because I'm actually Ms. Honnold, but by virtue of my veganism and who knows what else, she has ascertained that I'm a giant hippie. But "Ms Hippie" is too weird, she said, so Ms H it is.

I'm curious what, exactly, makes her think I'm a hippie. I've only been at this job for a month or so, and and I've not been super vocal about any sort of veganism, leg-hairiness, car-lessness, or any other vestige of overt hippiness. I'm not sure I've even actually definitively said I don't eat meat. So I'm curious what it is, in my simple fact of existing, that makes me scream hippie.

Either way, I'm not too sad about it. heh. If she wants to call me a hippie, awesome. Maybe it'll inspire me to finally get some damn chickens for my yard:)

evening ruminations

I'm sitting on our porch listening to the evening birds and watching the sunset sunlight turn our neighbor's flowering trees an impossible shade of pink. The traffic on nearby Division Street is a soft lullaby, undulating waves of tires on asphalt. Every so often, an airplane makes its slow arc overhead, leaving an expanding trail through thinly-stretched tufts of clouds. The sky is a template of pale blue. Everything is peaceful, soft, like the edges of life are blurred and wrap around me like a comfortable quilt.

I want to pull it all around me, cozy up to its stitches. I want to breathe deeply and slowly, letting the evening air fill my lungs with outdoors. I want to close my eyes and dissolve into the sounds that surround me, let my molecules drift away on the gentle breeze before they reconvene into a whole. I want to be alive to every sensation.

On an evening like tonight, I am so glad to be sitting on my porch in the midst of it all.

ode to bitty honnold

Okay, okay. I try not to do this because I feel like he gets enough attention without me chiming in, but I sure am proud of my little bitty bro:



Maybe it's lame to say so with a picture of him on Nat Geo, since I'm proud of him regardless of whether anyone else recognizes him or not, but this picture is just so priceless. aw.

Anyway. Way to go, bitty Honnold! Now don't let it get to your head, punk;)


[edit 10/10/11: sorry, I took off the picture cuz I was sketched out about people I don't know downloading it.]

long time no see!

Hmm.. it's been a while, huh? I guess I've sort of been taking an unplanned break from the bloggy world while life picked up a little: I started two new jobs, both of which are fantastic, and am taking some classes at Portland State. Plus there's all this volunteering stuff that I love and don't want to drop, even though I have much less time now. So I've been busy, and saving my writing for my real journal and my classes.

But you know what's awesome? Even though I feel really busy all of a sudden, it's fricken fantastic. I don't really even know how best to describe this except to say that even though I haven't been getting home until almost 9 on some days, every single thing that I have going on right now is something that I chose to do because I love it. I'm taking classes because they're interesting and stimulating, because they push me to learn. I'm teaching Bike Club, which is phenomenal, because I love bikes and kids and teaching, even more so when I can have them all at once. I've still got the farmer's market board stuff going on. I'm learning so much about birds and the natural world with Audubon and all this other naturalist stuff. I've been running, biking... I don't want to just make a list or anything, but every single fricken thing in my life right now feels like it's there because I want it to be, because it brings me joy and fulfillment and purpose. It's amazing.

This is why I left teaching, to find this way of living. I'm happy, fulfilled. And busy--but, so far, in the best of ways:)

PS

Don't forget about my other blog, CarFreeRambles. I've been posting over there much more, so even though it's not as life-and-times-of-stasia as this one, it's still fun! heh. At least, I think so!:)

insomnia

I can't sleep. Despite the fact that it's 11:30, despite the fact that I got in bed when I felt tired an hour and a half ago.

Tonight I feel like the loneliest person in the world. Which is entirely ridiculous, I know, I just feel so...blah. I'm not sure why. I tried to go through this all in my journal earlier, because I don't really understand myself right now. There is so much that's good and exciting about life, and yet today and yesterday I have had such a hard time being psyched. It might be an unemployment-induced torpor, I'm not sure--you know, feeling useless because you're not being productive or something. But it's not like I don't have stuff going on. I'm volunteering at twenty million different places (slight exaggeration;), I'm learning exciting new things, I have all this stuff I want to work on, and yet the activation energy required to start any of it today--or maintain it once started--has felt enormous, insurmountable.

It's possible that I'm getting sick or something. Or that I haven't run or for-real exercised for the last three days and am just in some sort of endorphin withdrawal. Whatever it is, I don't like it. I don't like this odd and hugely uncharacteristic feeling of lassitude, of ennui, of boredom with life. (Though I do like those words!:) And it's funny because if I sit down, like I did just now, to think of all the great, amazing things I've got going on, there are lots. So why am I here on my computer at 11:36 now, spilling my guts because I can't sleep and I don't know what else to do with myself?

Heh. I'm going to think I'm such a pathetic crazy person tomorrow if I actually post this. But I guess I will, just for the sake of perspective. It's balance, I guess: without sadness, happiness is not as meaningful; without stupid pathetic posts, the ones where all I do is fricken spout about how happy I am don't seem as awesome;)

Food field trip!

Yesterday, James and I took a food field trip. That is, we went to this super huge Asian grocery store/mall not too far away from our house. I'd never been there, so we figured we'd take a trip to see what we could find (and also purportedly to look for the tofu pouches with which to make inari sushi).

It was amazing! We came home with a few things that I'm excited to figure out how to use. The first is lotus root (follow the link for a picture). It's like ginger in that it's the rhizome (the root, basically) of the lotus plan, but I guess it behaves in cooking sort of like a starchy veggie or a potato. I'm not sure what we'll do with it yet, but I'm psyched to try!

We also grabbed some ginkgo nuts. Did you even know that ginkgo trees had nuts? I didn't. (Though only the female trees produce nuts, I learned, so maybe I've only ever seen the male trees?) Since we got home, I've also learned that ginkgo nuts have a smell comparable to "rancid butter" (I don't know yet, since I haven't opened the package), but apparently they're still good. heh. I guess if you roast them, they're slightly sweet, or they're good in soups or to add texture to other dishes. We'll see. Again, I'm excited for the culinary exploration.

Even though we happened upon this food field trip sort of on a whim, I think it's a good idea to take a trip to a different store every once in a while--preferably one that has food you've never heard of. It's refreshing to be put back in my place: sure, I can find my way around a kitchen, but there is SO MUCH food in the world that I've never even heard of, much less know how to cook with. I like that reminder that the world is much, much bigger than my little portion of it.

branching out

Not to cheat on blogger or anything, but I've been working on a new project. I decided there were a few things I wanted:

1. To own my own content (hence a move away from blogger)

2. To try out a more thematic blog

3. To have more stuff available on my blog--different pages and all

And some other stuff. Anyway, I'm still in the stages of figuring out what I want it to be exactly, but I'm ready for people to look at it and give me feedback. A lot of the content (i.e. everything but the last post) is the same as this blog right now, but that'll change as it gets going.

You can find it here: http://www.carfreerambles.org/

I think I'll probably leave this littlehappinesses blog up, maybe use it for more personal stuff, but I want to focus on the other one for a while. See how it goes.

Anyway, let me know what you think! (Just bear in mind that this is a fledgling project, so be gentle:)

Day nine: Santa Barbara!!

Start: Isla Vista
End: Santa Barbara!
Miles biked: about 32-- 15ish to Santa Barbara, 17ish more biking around the city

The downside of bike touring--at least, if you're into spectacular mileposts--is that if you're not on the big highways, you often don't get a "welcome to..." sort of sign. So even though I finally made it to Santa Barbara today, I didn't really feel like I'd Arrived with a capital A until hours later, when I sent James a text from the public library saying I'd made it. Only then did I realize, hey, this was kind of an accomplishment after all! Just nine days ago, I was in Half Moon Bay; now I'm halfway down the coast in Santa Barbara!

It was kind of an anticlimactic ending, honestly. I woke up early, even though I was sequestered away in Skye's house, and as I expected, the world was wet and rainy: super storm had arrived. Mom was driving down to meet me that evening, and with only somewhere between 13 and 15 miles to the city, I had basically a whole day to explore Santa Barbara. Except that with the heinous rain, the normal exploring things I would do seemed less appealing. But on the other hand, it's not like there was much to do hanging around Skye's house either, so I set out into the storm.

Once I made it to mission Santa Barbara, like I said, only about 13 or so miles away, I was absolutely soaked. I had to stop for a while and regroup about what I wanted to do, since at that point I was feeling a little less excited about being outside.



But after a while of sitting there under the mission's shelter, I realized 1) that even if it was rainy, at least it wasn't that cold (a plus of being in southern California, I suppose), and 2) whatever dude, it rains in Portland all the time and I bike in it. California was clearly making me soft. So with my spirits renewed, I set out to actually explore Santa Barbara.

I won't actually write a step-by-step recollection of it or anything, but it's a lovely little town, with signed bike lanes and everything--even if, like in San Luis Obispo, they're a little narrow. But it's always so nice to explore a city with a bike network. That way, even if you don't have a map or don't know exactly where you are, you can just follow the bike signs that point you to a certain place. And you know you'll be able to follow the signs to get back too. I really appreciate that kind of city planning. And in California, it always made me a little nostalgic for Portland and its amazing bike boulevards.

This last day of my trip didn't honestly feel as much like the rest of it. Especially once I found the hotel that mom and I would stay in and ditched my trailer, biking around Santa Barbara felt pretty comparable to biking around Portland (the rain probably hugely contributed to that perception). Of course, I only had to look around at the palm trees--even as they peeked out through the clouds--to remember that I was, in fact, almost a thousand miles away.



Regardless, it definitely felt like the end of my trip. And trip ends for me are always a little hard. Partly it's the readjusting to normal life. Even the very fundamentals, like eating, are things I have to renegotiate and reconfigure. When you're biking all day, you eat a lot. But on this last day, with such light biking, and most of it just around town, I had to remind myself that food was something I should think about and partake of. I just wasn't hungry. Same with sleeping, choosing what to do with your time, just existing in the world--all need to be renegotiated. Even after only 9 days, my habits are different, my way of being in the world is different. It's hard to immediately switch back to electric lights, permanent shelter, one central location instead of being in motion all the time... It's something that I think makes James crazy, because I'm always a little crazy when I get back. And he has to put up with it until I reintegrate.

Anyway. Mom made it down to Santa Barbara and we had a lovely evening walking around, chatting, catching up. It was nice to have a friendly face to celebrate the end of an adventure with.



And when we drove back up to Half Moon Bay the next day--in absolutely dumping rain--Alex's van was still there where I'd left it. Hooray!

And now I'm back in Portland, after James and I had a nice Christmas in Sacramento with our families...and I'm already itching for more bike adventure...

Rainy end to amazing coast adventure.

Day eight: bring on the miles

Start: Pismo Dunes
End: Isla Vista
Miles Biked: 92ish

I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse that I'm very good at waking myself up in the morning sans alarm. It's nice that if I know I have to get up early, I will--but it's lame that in the course of making sure I get up on time, I'll often wake up over and over during the night, convinced I've overslept.

That's what happened before today: after waking up basically every hour starting at midnight, I finally got up at 5, made myself some oatmeal while I huddled in my sleeping bag, packed up, and left Pismo Dunes by 6. In the dark.

The bleary-eyed bike awakening--slowly feeling more alive as I warmed up and the day turned grey, then light--nicely set the tone for a day spent mostly churning out the miles. This was a good day to spend biking. That's a nice way of saying that there wasn't really much else going on today. After a brief stint on hilly, unpeopled back roads and then the heinous, strip-mall city of Lompoc, the bike route joins up with Highway 101. And though there's a huge shoulder and the biking is relatively safe, 101 does not make for a scenic, pull-off-the-side-of-the-road-for-adventure journey.

Truth be told, Highway 101 is pretty ridiculously lame. Between the loud, fast cars (and trucks) and the rough, glass-hewn pavement--plus the fact that it goes ever so slightly uphill for 13 miles, and you can't even see the ocean anymore to raise your morale--it was definitely not the most enjoyable of rides. It was a good mental exercise, actually: how do I pass the time when it's just me and a boring ride, how do I keep my spirits up about bike adventure when what I'm doing for most of today hardcore blows.

So I sang, reveled in my wandering thoughts, and tried to focus on finding cool things in the landscape. All in all, it was a pretty nice day, despite the flat tire inflicted by the aforementioned glass-hewn pavement. Tip for anyone considering bike travel: make sure you can fix a flat by yourself before you go anywhere where you can't walk home;)

I biked for 60 miles or something before I finally stopped for lunch. And my lunch stop made me feel like a total badass. When I pulled off 101 into a little rest area near Gaviota, there they were, all the cars lined up in their neat little parking spaces while their occupants stretched, picnicked, whatever--and there I was, pulling off the highway on my bike, normal as could be. heh. I could feel one family watching me as I parked, stretched, opened up my trailer, grabbed my Jetboil, and made myself a pretty rockin lunch. They wanted to hear all about how bike travel works; I was super conscious of their little daughter--perhaps 5 or so--watching me with wide eyes. Score one more for bike travel ambassador.

Refugio State Beach, 80-some-odd miles into my day, is where I finally stopped to play a little:



And how amazing is that? Palm trees? Sand? Sun? All in the middle of December? This kind of thing is why I kept forgetting that Christmas was coming.

I was definitely tired by the time I got to Refugio, and it had a really nice campground, but I knew it was supposed to start raining hardcore that night and I was not super psyched about being in my tent for it. Or rather, being in my tent would have been fine, but packing up in the morning, with everything wet and no shelter once I collapsed my tent, was less appealing. So onward I went.

In case you forgot, Skye, one of the dudes I met in the Big Sur campground, had very generously offered his house to me if I needed it. He'd written his address in my journal and told me where to find the spare key; I could just let myself in and stay in from the rain. Plus, I should feel free to help myself to any of the food in the house. His generosity astounded me. I wasn't totally a stranger, but I was pretty close--and yet he not only let me stay in his house, but let me stay there when he knew that none of his housemates would be around, when I would have free reign of all his belongings, accessed with his spare key. I'm humbled by his trust in humanity. And I want this world to be one in which there are more people like that.

So I found his house, just a few miles away from a cute farmer's market that I of course stopped at.



It was just getting dark by the time I got there; the wind was picking up, it was getting cold, the sky was starting to cloud over. And after over 90 miles of biking, I was exhausted. Thank goodness for a warm, dry place to stay:)

Bike...flat...bike...headwind...bike.............ocean!!

Day seven: whales!

Start: Morro Bay
End: Pismo Dunes
Miles Biked: 33

First view of the morning: Morro Rock. It was quite a picturesque way to start the day.




Another good start to the day: strawberries! You know you're in California when you can buy fresh strawberries in the middle of December. Whenever I see signs for little farm stands with fresh fruit, you can be sure I turn off the road, and today was no different. The chubby, cheery farmer from what I think was called Hidalgo farms--right on the side of Los Osos Avenue on the way in to San Luis Obispo--seemed highly amused at the rapture his delicious strawberries inspired in me.

But seriously, you can't argue with fresh strawberries.

Other than rocks and berries, my day was filled with San Luis Obispo. It's hard to say for sure whether a city is cool or not from only a few hours there, but San Luis Obispo seemed pretty cool. There were bike lanes, for one--not as nice as Santa Cruz or Monterey, and a little narrow, but at least they showed some effort to include non-motorized travelers as viable users of the road. There were also bike shops, which was a lovely discovery since my tires had been feeling a little low. (If you're never done this, pumping up your bike tires to full capacity after they've been low for a while will make it feel like you have a whole new bike.) Also exciting discoveries were a totally vegan restaurant where I had lunch (so yummy), a happy little creek by Mission San Luis Obispo where I could sit in peace and write in my journal, and a great public library where I could check my email and look up some directions to a few places I wanted to go.

I also found a good store to restock my always-dwindling food supply: trail mix, a few red peppers, some apples, tangerines, a protein bar or two, two delicious vegan cookies--I grabbed all the necessities and added them to my stash.

South of San Luis Obispo, I biked through Pismo Beach, a place I often hear the name of but would have had no idea where to place on a map. I think I've always heard of it as a nice place, but it kind of creeped me out, honestly. Perhaps I was there at a particularly dead time, but there was no one out, just a bunch of very pristine-looking houses and palm trees. It reminded me of a movie set, nothing moving beneath the facade. The best part of it was on the way out, when I saw this little reindeer reminder that I was biking in the middle of winter:



Until today, with this dude and a Santa whose lap you could sit on right by Mission San Luis Obispo, I'd totally forgotten that it was almost Christmas.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the day, however, came this evening, when I found the Oceano campground. They'd discontinued the hiker/biker sites there, which made me quite sad, but a friendly park ranger ended up letting me stay for free instead--an even better deal than the hiker/biker prices, which I didn't think was possible!:) The campground is right by the Pismo Dunes, which made for some fun landscape, and some beautiful sunset beach-walking. And what was that frolicking out in the waves as the sun went down? I can't be 100% sure about this, but I'm fairly certain it was.... whales!! At first I thought I was seeing things, or that maybe I was being tricked by a diving pelican or something, but no, that certainly did look like a tail... and some shooting water... and another tail... I'm pretty sure I indeed saw whales.

When I went to bed, the temperature seemed to be dropping rapidly. The storm everyone was talking about was supposed to hit the next night, and I had a big day of biking in front of me if I was going to make it to the house that Skye, one of the dudes from Big Sur, had offered to let me stay in. I went to sleep prepared to wake up, pack up, and set out in the morning dark...

Beaches, palms...was that a WHALE?!