Green Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! 2011 is almost over, and in keeping with tradition of distilling 8,760 hours down to “good” or “bad,” 2010 has been a pretty “bad” year. A year is never made up of 100% "bad" or "good" moments, but my "bad" was pretty weighty this year, while the "good" is only just beginning. So I’m ready to be done with the old, bad shitty year and get started on the new, “you’ve earned it,” good year.

One of the more superlatively shitty parts of 2010 was the fact that I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family except my mom since I was accused of ruining Christmas last year. I did not ruin Christmas, but that didn't change the fact that no one is willing to admit that they are wrong, and so I will be excommunicated until pigs fly (for the sad, lurid “Running with Scissors” type details, you can read this post). So I was relieved to have an excuse to not come home for Christmas.

I have never, ever in 27 years missed a Christmas at home. Wherever I was and whatever I was doing, my parents always bought me a plane ticket and made sure I came home. I've missed all the other holidays, but never, ever Christmas. I really like going home for Christmas, so it helped soften the blow that it never really felt like Christmas in San Francisco. Sure, there were lights around and you could see Christmas trees in people's windows, but it's never really Christmas until it's so cold that your nose runs every time you go outside, you've had to dig your car out of the snow at least once, and... well... you've gone home. So even though all the lawns in my working class neighborhood are so lit up that you can see them from space, it looks a lot more like "tacky" than like Christmas to me.

But what to do for Christmas? My Rockstar Housemate from Boston would be visiting his brother in San Diego the week between Christmas and new years, why not drive down a day or two early (I would never dream of interrupting his Christmas with his family) and get a hotel in the least wintery place in the lower 48 states: San Diego! Nothing to make you forget it's Christmas like a room with citrus trees growing outside!

My plan was to ride Mt. Palomar, and the rest of a 130-mile loop that brought me through Temecula and back to Escondido. There were some problems with my plan, I discovered in the morning. First, the sun is only up for about 10 hours a day around Christmas, meaning that I would have to haul ass to cram 130 miles and tens of thousands of feet of climbing into 10 hours. Also, I would have to leave before the hotel breakfast began, which meant no utensils to eat yogurt or oatmeal, and NO COFFEE! Even worse, I apprehensively drove by the nearest Starbucks on the way to the beginning of my route, and it was CLOSED! (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog.) This wasn't going to be a Merry Christmas after all.

I found a 711 (711, please don't sponsor my blog) and walked inside for some bad coffee that would stave off the caffeine headache, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? Two grown adults in red and green elf suits complete with tights and jester-style three-peaked jinglebell hats at the coffee island. The female elf was serving herself coffee, while the male elf was serving himself liberally from the hot cocoa dispenser. This is too rich! I thought. At first I thought maybe the elves worked at some department store and had been out drinking all night to celebrate the end of the Christmas season, but when the male elf looked at me and yelled, "Hey! She's wearing tights just like me!" the novelty and excitement he expressed about his costume made me realize that the outfits were just one of those things that appears in your life when you're drunk. Who knows where they come from, they just are. Never mind the fact that I wasn't actually wearing any tights, I was wearing black and purple shorts.

Once I started riding, I thought of another problem with my plan: I was woefully underdressed. Just because the highs were going to be in the 60's, didn't mean that the lows wouldn't be in the 40's. I guess I had been a little optimistic when I packed only shorts and a wind-permeable jacket.

A fifth problem (but who's counting?) was that I had pulled the cue sheet for my ride verbatim off of the MapMyRide's automatically-generated cue sheets. Have you guys ever used those things? I don't recommend it. They're terrible! Forget the fact that the mileages are wrong, the names of the roads are wrong too. (And while we're on the topic, WTF with the new MMR site, I can't make head or tail of it!) In the first four miles I'd already gotten off my bike to consult the maps in my phone twice and amended my route just as many times. What would I ever do without my iPhone?

As much as I wanted to be in a good mood, I was not. It was beautiful out, and I wanted to enjoy the beauty, but I kept coming back to the fact that I'd sent home gifts for my dad and even my thuggish brother, but only Mom had sent Christmas gifts for me. I had a suspicion that my gifts would go unopened again this year, just like last year, and father's day, and Dad's birthday. And damn there was a lot of climbing on this route!

As I rode through towns like Escondido ("Hidden") and Rincon ("Corner"), and thought about other California towns with silly names like Las Pulgas ("The Fleas") and La Mirada ("The Look;" not 'view,' 'look'), I wondered who was responsible for naming these towns and whether it was really just a dim 7th grader with a Spanish dictionary opening the pages up at random. How else do you explain a town called, "Rafts" (Cayucos), "Hellhole Canyon" (this one in English), and Coalinga which admittedly doesn't mean anything but bears more than a passing resemblance to 'cunnilingus.' I saw one street named "Whaaat" (3 a's).

I was also surprised at how many cars were on the road. Not like there was traffic or anything, but I just assumed that anyone who had someone to be with on Christmas wouldn't leave the house, and certainly not before 8 in the morning. But do you know the surest way to bring a steady stream of cars on a deserted country road, even on Christmas morning? Pull down your shorts to pee. That's when 15 cars will suddenly be driving through the orange groves toward nothing but a mountain whose parks are closed. Know the second best way to bring a whole bunch of speeding cars out of nowhere? Take your hands off the handlebars to eat a snack. And what were the only stores that were open? Why, liquor stores of course! So even though it was 8 in the morning on Christmas day, it was a perfect day to be speeding through switchbacks drunk.

I have to admit, this ad at a liquor store was a little bit beyond me.

After what was already much climbing (and a little more getting lost), I reached the foot of Mt. Palomar. I was probably already at about 1000' of elevation, so I just had about 4500' to go over the next seven miles. Piece of cake!

And it was. It wasn't a hard climb with the average grade only being about 6 or 7%, it was just lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong for someone who hasn't done that kind of riding in awhile and doesn't want to admit how out of shape she is. Thinking back on it, I didn't have any major melt-downs (the hallmark of a Claire biking adventure) but I was definitely counting down the distance to the top by tenths of a mile, so I must have been at least a little bit unhappy.

I was a bit confused by this one too. Sure, it's a mountain, but if in December it's about 55 degrees up here, are snowballs really a big problem? And a $500 fine or 6 mos in jail, isn't that a bit steep?

The real unhappiness came after I reached the top. First of all, I had been long out of water and sweating for over 3 hours of mostly climbing. There was a general store at the top of the mountain, but surprise, surprise, it was closed. Oh well. All I had to do was hold on for a 10-mile downhill and then there had to be something open at the bottom, right? Right??

I tipped my front wheel down the other side, but was getting a little lost in the signage. I was in the state park now, and stopping off at every camp ground to try to find a water fountain. All I found were picnicking Latino families, and I didn't really feel comfortable asking them if they had any water to share. Then all the "Exit" signs were pointing back the way I came. When I found myself at a dead end in the middle of a Christian Retreat center, I finally pulled out my phone again to plan my own retreat. No signal. Worst-case scenario, I was going to have to go another two miles back up to the top of the mountain and come back down the way I'd come up.

I climbed back out of the Christain colony and made my way back toward the summit. About half way up I stopped at an intersection with a clear view of the sky, and miracle of miracles I had reception! Praise the Lord! Thank you, baby Jesus! Find me, phone! I beseeched. The little blue dot showed me that I was back on the path to where I wanted to be. A Christmas miracle! Then I looked at the path where it wanted me to go: "Road Closed."

I briefly considered just riding around the "Road Closed" sign, but then if I figured that I got 4 miles down the road before I found the road was completely impassible because of a mudslide or something, I definitely would throw a temper tantrum if I had to climb back up again. Also, this meant that I wouldn't be able to get out to Temecula.

Okay, truth be told I'd given up on going all the way out to Temecula hours ago, and between rousing refrains in my Pity Party Anthem ("All I want is a fucking drink of water! Is that too much to ask?!" --in quotes, not italics because it was whined out loud), I started to beat myself up for being so relieved to cut my ride in half. Why was I so bent about riding the longest Palomar loop on MapMyRide? Why did I always have to do the longest option of everything? Surely I was long past that "I can't compete, so I'll just do events that I can be proud to complete" mentality. Right? I mean, I run marathons on a whim just to thumb my nose at those people. I see your marathon and raise it by not training, you pussy! What the hell was I trying to prove anymore?

Just like any drug, if you dip into the depths of your own stamina and self-control too many times then you start to abuse it. You don't get high anymore from it, you just kind of start to feel used up. But you can't stop. A 10K just isn't enough if you know there's a half marathon being offered. You know you're too spent to be able to push yourself in the shorter stuff anyway. If you doubled your distance last season, then you have to quadruple it this season, just to prove that you've still got it. No, fuck that. That doesn't sound like fun at all. The mountain was enough.

Didn't I say the mountain was enough? As I rode back, I tried to cut out all the hills between me and the hotel. It turned out to be impossible. No matter which way I went, there were hills. I had tracked down some fluids from an open liquor store, but every time I hit a bump my dehydrated, undercaffeinated brain was rattling around in my skull making me want to get off my bike and fall asleep in the broken glass, trash and cacti at the side of the road. Finally, 6 hours (only 5:20 of which were riding) and 70 miles later, I pulled back up to my car.

Driving back to the hotel I stopped at the 711 for more coffee, but then driving by the Starbucks (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) I noticed that... are those people sitting outside Starbucks?! Okay, I'll admit it. I actually drove into the parking lot hoping it would be open before I actually saw signs that it really was. (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog.) I got out of my car and got in the ridiculously long line.

Rant Alert!

Now what kinds of people do you suppose go into a Starbucks on Christmas day? There was the woman who was ordering 15 complicated drinks for everyone in her family; a woman obviously unfamiliar with the whole Starbucks ordering procedure. Even though these 15 orders were all perfectly written in Starbucks syntax, this woman had to ask 5 questions about each drink to the lone register girl taking her order. Pet peeve no. 1: When there's a complicated order and the line's backing up, pull someone else to the second register to take orders!

Behind the woman ordering in bulk was the Impulse Buyer. This woman stepped across the aisle and was checking out every piece of syndicated crap that Starbucks had for sale. This was not just the casual glance of someone bored and flipping through products while she waited for the woman in front of her to order a truckload of coffee, this woman was engrossed in the children's books and sample gift sets. She was so engrossed that she was blocking the only path from the bar to the door and people were asking her to excuse them, then bumping in to her as they passed, and she STILL didn't move a muscle. Pet peeve no. 2: If you are going to be engrossed in a public place, step to the side and make sure that you won't be in anyone's way. If you do find that you have been inadvertently blocking someone's way, then excuse yourself, step aside, and find a less heavily trafficked place to be absorbed.

Then there was me. I stank. I was covered in salt and bike grease. If you know me well, you know that I am paranoid to the point of obsession about smelling bad. When I know I smell bad, I don't want anyone within 4 feet of me, which is hard when you've got a Starbucks full of clueless people.

Then behind me there was the type of mother-daughter pair that only southern California can produce. The mother was portly and frumpy, a fact that was not hidden by her impeccable dye job and expensive jacket. She was also obviously stupid, as evidenced by the conversation she was having with her 90-pound, 5'9" overly made-up 20-something daughter handling the travel mugs across the store. "Maybe we should get one for Alex. Do you think she has one? It's cute. Do you think she would like it? Well if you think that she's already got one like it...? I've also got some of those special Starbucks gift cards. We could put some money on that and put it in the cup, but if you don't think it's a good idea..." The conversation itself wouldn't have been so bad except that it's gouche to A) reuse an already-used gift card and B) be shopping for Christmas presents at 2:00 on Christmas afternoon. Not only was she yelling this whole conversation across the store, she also had her back to the direction of the line and was ever-so-slightly backing up... into me. Pet peeve nos. 3 & 4 people who bump into you and don't even realize it, and then continue to do it without apologizing, and people who violate your personal space and THEN yell into your ear... even if they're not talking to you. Pet peeve no. 5: people who yell conversations across public places.

For the hundredth time today, I missed Boston. In Boston, these people go to Dunkin Donuts (Dunkin Donuts, please don't sponsor my blog.) and leave the Starbucks to the far classier entitled set of rude people, who turn their nose up at yelling and distance themselves from people who smell.