Weird Vehicles on the VTA Lightrail

Bike fashion is different in San Jose than the City. Bikes are more rugged. You see a lot of mountain bikes with beaucoup de suspension. I ride in San Jose too, and the roads I use are smooth. So, the explanation is either differences in fashion, differences in routes or people are using their bikes for off-road recreational fun as well as commuting.

The following photos support the fashion theory. This guy souped up his regular mountain bike with crazy handlebars, fenders and a purple velvet seat. Yowza. I'm wondering if Elvis is lurking nearby.

Who knew you could commute by unicycle:

I like this photo because it shows the unicycle, a skateboard and the sign about where to put your bike. It goes to show you how resourceful people can be.

Former Leather Tongue

I have a prejudice against this place because it used to be the venerable Leather Tongue Video store where I did not get my videos but liked knowing it was there. Now, it is an upscale jeans store, and they put a bicycle in their window display.

Stories and categories

Another overcast day in Paris, and I’m pondering how you never know where the gifts of your life will come from: love, money, music, joy, satisfaction…. I’ve wanted the complete Beatles on my computer forever, and I had this idea for unknown reasons they would come from DJ… which was strange since we have never shared music. Whenever left alone in a person’s apartment with my computer, I scour their collection for something I might like. Here, in J&G’s, waiting for the sun to come out or inspiration to strike, I find they have a complete Beatles anthology. (At home, I only have it in vinyl, and since I no longer have a record player, that doesn’t do me much good anymore).

I find it useful to avoid getting attached to any one storyline like where my Beatles will come from or who will refer me to a job when I need one. Stories are better when they unfold exactly not as you suspect. So, you try to make decisions for reasons, listen to your gut, and keep your options open… until you stop and commit to something. Then, you must have complete faith in that thing or you’re setting yourself up for misery.

My mother said when her first two marriages broke up, she was so heartbroken it never occurred to her that her divorce affected anyone else. Each marriage lasted less than 2 years and yielded a child. In French, one word, fierté, is for the pride you have in your country or your children, and another word, orgueil, is for the deadly sin. We use language to categorize things and understand them, but we also find that these same words and categories make them more difficult to understand.

I’m back in Paris after a week in Brittany with my mother. I can’t recommend Brittany enough. I’m also happy to be on my own again. Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn, I head off to Zurich for the weekend and Sultan’s wedding. I’ve lots more to share but no muse and a day ahead of me to see again this whole city. Sometimes I feel like my waking activities are primarily for the purpose of creating a situation where I will be able to sleep that night.

Cycle Chic Pali-style

KT and I were discussing Cycle Chic chez moi the other day while surfing the net when I noticed the new Cycle Chic banner for the first time. It reminded me of this photo I recently snapped at the Palo Alto Caltrain station.
If you've read my blog before, you know that I am a bike/train commuter to the Valley. If you've done that before, you know that the Palo Alto Caltrain station has more bikes than anyone knows how to store. They have a bike station, racks and lockers and still there are bikes chained to every pole and tree in sight. Meanwhile, cyclists are also frequently getting bumped from the train because there isn't enough room for them all on the train. Is the solution just more of everything? A bike share program? What do you think?

Bow Tie en Train

This man is my new favorite person in the world. Not only is he wearing a bow tie while bike-train commuting, but look at that smile!

...Alas, I also see a ring on his hand.

On being alone

I hate being alone. This conflicts with my need for “downtime” and that my way is the best way. ;-) I’m listening to a This American Life recording called Home Alone, and I find it terrifying. What if I slip in the bath tub or have a heart attack in bed? For example, this woman dies completely alone: no family, no friends, no one knows her. A month after her death, they call her answering machine, and the outgoing message is completely antisocial… rather, ahem, like mine. People who want to be alone should be. But the program points out that what we all really want is control over whether or not we are alone. What I guess we aren’t always aware of is what we’re doing that creates a situation where we are going to be alone when that isn’t our choice. In the program, the woman died. We discover that being mourned is a privilege for people who choose to be close to other people.

Despite my fears, I have not been alone here in Paris. Well, I didn’t see anyone I knew on Sunday, but I had a lively time at the Plage on my own. That isn’t particularly different from some weekends in San Francisco.

Yesterday I spent the first part of the day riding bus rapid transit in southern suburbs for work. The RER returned me to the centre ville; so, I figured I should check out the shops before returning to the apartment. I’m looking for a purse.

I have always been a night owl. I realized the my body desperately wants to be awake at around 4-5 am here which is about 7 or 8 pm in San Francisco. I wonder if I should limit my location to time zones where that’s an appropriate hour to be awake.

No photos today as they were all of buses yesterday. I’ll do a separate post about that another day. I’m also going to leave my laptop at J&G’s and go have a vacation with my mother for a week. So, don’t expect me to keep up the blogs (except VV which is queued in advance).

Sunday in Paris

The clock reads 5 am, and I’ve been wide awake for more than an hour after taking a sleeping pill at 11 pm. I was so tired, and now I feel like I’ve been chugging coffee. I’m hoping for a nap in a little, ideally before the sun rises. My hopes are not high.

Yesterday was Sunday, I’d slept most of the day, and nothing in Paris is open anyway. Well, that’s a filthy lie. The Marais is open as is the Plage. My plan had been to go to the flea market if I’d been up in time. I figured I needed to exhaust myself if I was going to get any sleep that night. I took the Metro to Bastille and walked through Place des Vosges.

Hang on – the sun is rising, and I think I’ll try to sleep again.

OK, back now 3+ hours later. I might have slept. The machine definitely got my laundry cleaner than any American machine I’ve ever used (and btw, took all 3+ hours). When we left our hero, she was having a profound sleep disorder uncurable even with delicious French sleeping pills that have always worked before.

I did have a realization about what I do wrong in relationships. But I can’t tell you about it, or I would have to kill you. Code to self: R (4 letters) and continuing with the same system.

I was surprised to find the Marais so crowded. Most disappointing was the huge line at the Jewish bakery, but I also noticed the pastries were 3.5 euros. French pastries are generally around 1 euro. So, I figured I could hold out until tomorrow for 3 pastries instead of having 1 today (think marshmallow study – ask me if you don’t know what I am talking about).

Eventually I found my way to the completely awesome Plage. Here are some photos:





By the time I got here I was famished as I had packed myself a meal before I left the house and was already hungry at that point. I sat by the side of the river with so many others on a giant picnic table and had my sandwich. I wasn’t able to illustrate very well in my photos that they provided a different kind of seating every few hundred feet along the river: picnic tables, hammocks, beach chairs, etc. I didn’t document some of the cooler ones. I still love it when the French dance – they are so much less self-conscious than other cultures, so much more able to live.

From there, I walked across the Seine to the Left Bank. I strolled through St. Michael/St. Germaine teaming with tourists and closed shops.
Then back across the river to Notre Dame, then across the bridge to Ile St. Louis where I stopped for a while to listen to music.

I decided to walk all the way home despite already being tired and having a bum hip to wear myself out for sleep. You know how that worked out for me.

I should have mentioned this in my last post, but Mose has a website. Click on it every week. I also wanted to add that it rained on us at the barge party.

Paris, day 2

The weather report before I left said rain for Paris. I remembered it being warm here until September 1 when it suddenly turned cold, but maybe I haven’t actually been in Paris in August before. It isn’t warm for sure! It’s rather more like San Francisco: cold, blustery, irritable.

I finally left the apartment around noon on Saturday as I already mentioned. The plan was to go to the outlet stores and then Galarie Impaire, the Parisien branch of Creative Growth. I checked their website for location and hours. I remembered where the Kookai outlet was and hoped I could find et vous. Kookai was not exactly where I’d left it, tho it hadn’t moved, but we were reunited eventually. I bought a dress, pants and jacket with much happiness. et vous remained hidden from me – I still need to look them up on the internet. Then I wandered over to GI only to find it is closed for the month of August (tho I double checked, and their website said nothing about it).

I went home and went to bed setting the alarm on my phone for one hour later.

Yeah, that didn’t work. When it went off an hour later, my body was still encased in led, and the men beating it with railroad ties were just hitting their stride. I reset the alarm giving myself another hour, and 30 minute after that I finally got up. I had had terrible nightmares about G and work (not combined). It was 7:30 pm.

Mose had invited me to come to a dinner party that night. Not sure if I had already missed its beginning, I called him set to decline, stay home and maybe watch a French movie I’d brought. But he seemed so chipper (if a bit annoyed by my indecision); the party was at someone’s house and another party on a barge, I changed my mind and met him at 9 at Convention on Metro ligne 12.

A Catalan woman living here doing her post doc in pharmaceuticals celebrated her home for 3 friends who had come to visit her. Everyone spoke some combination of French, Catalan, Spanish or English, and I was surprised by our lingual fluidity and grace.

After the dinner there was some dissent about the next venue. Our Parisen (we had just one) suggested we go to a white party on a barge. You get in free if you are wearing white, but you have to pay 10 euros if not, and everything is white inside. (On a brief side note: white is in fashion as are very baggy clothes. I will pass on both, thanks.) As we walked from the metro on our way to Mose’s party (which finally won out), the same gentleman noted that it isn’t important that we take the fastest way; it is important that we get to the Seine as quickly as possible because we have women with us and they must experience a romantic walk.

He says that French women are very difficult to impress, and they never smile. He prefers foreign women. Mose said because they are easier to get into bed. Our Parisien said: well, just to get them to smile. I shared how difficult it can be to shake the strange men who start following me bc I respond when they speak to me probably because they are used to Parisien women for whom ignoring them isn’t necessarily a rejection.

I loved the barge party. I took photos, drank French white wine, danced and chatted with my new best friends. We left at 3, and I came home and went to bed. The next day, I was up again at 3 pm. I should have set an alarm. Or maybe I was just tired.

Today in Paris

Here I am in Paris, and my body thinks it’s just woken up from a long afternoon nap. Since I am up early, I should make the most of it and go see something new and wonderful like French bus rapid transit or the museum X or next year’s fashion in San Francisco at the outlet stores. But when have I ever made the most of my time? Why start now?

Canadian Airlines was fine even tho the plane was 2 hours late out of Montreal. The airport had electrical outlets and I processed photos I haven’t had time to look at since I shot them. (I used my time well then!)

I watched The Other Boleyn Girl on the plane (we had hundreds of options) bc G had watched it on a flight recently and I was curious. Natalie Portman should really stick to still photography – she’s nice to look at as long as she isn’t trying to express anything. Like G, I checked the validity of the story learned it had a slight basis in reality especially if you allow for the expansion and compression of time to serve a story. Reading about Henry VIII’s relationships with women definitely supports Brian’s claims about the cycles of relationships covering a series of years and then shifting. He was so in love with Anne as to change the religion of his country, and yet, a few years latter (their relationship lasted less than 10 years according to my source), he threw her over for Jane Seymore.

But mostly, I slept.

I selected this flight partly for its price (which was still outrageous – Tina confirmed her flight was the same price through STA) but also for its times. I like arriving en France in the middle of the day because when you arrive in the morning you have to stay awake for too long and when you arrive at night you have to navigate the city in the dark with weird men all around (Paris is lousy with weird men) and then go straight to bed (which you don’t want to do both bc your body isn’t ready and also because you’re excited to be here). So, I arrived at 1:30 instead of 11:30 – annoying bc the flight is already too long but really fine because what was I going to do with that time anyway?

I met up with Tina at their place near the Canal in the late afternoon. They’re doing a Canal Plage too – like the one on the Seine – with clowns and dancing and little trains for children to ride, ice cream, additional cafes (we can never have enough outdoor seating!) etc. I witnessed some really special moments with children interacting with clowns

but the dancing broke my heart with its sweetness.

At Tina’s, we snacked on water and figs and chatted for a bit. Later, six of us brought our own fun canal-side with a picnic. We watched the sun fade over the city.


I woke up at 7, but I have been puttering around the apartment for nearly 5 hours. I should head out into the world. But first, this post with photos (rather time consuming!).

Camera Quest

I take a lot of photos, and people pay me for them sometimes. While I more than break even, I don't do it for the money. I've been using the same Sony point-and-shoot for 4+ years now. It works great most of the time, but given what a big part of my life taking pictures is, I realized that my talent deserves a better camera.

Decision making has never been my strong suit ...especially when hundreds of dollars are involved. I did several internet searches on SLR reviews and rankings. When I was in Art school (college) and High School, I had a mid-level Pentax, and over the years, my family gave me several lenses and other accessories for it. So, I have probably thousands of dollars worth of additional stuff even tho my camera body is deeply obsolete (and broken for that matter). I liked the idea of sticking with Pentax also bc it isn't one of the lead manufacturers (like Cannon for example). G suggested I read reviews on dpreview.com, and they didn't change my mind.

dpreview asks readers to buy cameras from the companies listed on their site to support the neutrality of their reviews. I placed an order with one of them ($900). The next day, I got several calls from them. First, they couldn't validate my credit card. Next, they no longer had the camera in stock, and I should buy a different one instead (sales pitch prepared). I didn't want to do that.

So, I went on Yahoo! and Google shopping and found the camera much cheaper ($600) there. I placed an order with a company that got good ratings and had a good price on Y!shopping. The next day, I received several calls again. While the listing clearly included a battery, he said it didn't come with one -- would I like to add one to my order? Oh, and also, its an import and the menu is only in Chinese. Would I like to upgrade to a US-made model? At this point, I canceled the order. (G said that's easy to fix but I shouldn't support a shady business. He doesn't trust any electronics dealers in or near NYC.)

G found the camera I want on CL for $500 in South San Jose. I emailed the lady, and she emailed back. Of course, getting to SSJ is a drag. So, I asked if she ever came to NSJ. She was silent for a week, but when she did write back, it was to tell me vaguely where she lives which, it turns out, is near the Light Rail. (Have you ever noticed there are people out there who think they have bad luck but are really just incompetent? Her emails stressed that she was sick, had lost her job, other people wanting to buy the camera had flaked on her, etc. but then she couldn't just tell me where to come and get the camera.)

I'm going back to Europe shortly, and I really wanted a new camera before I go. So, G (again) found KEH, and online store for used camera equipment. Last week, I placed my order for a "like new" camera, lens, and memory card ($750). I did not receive any phone calls or emails from KEH, and no one (UPS) had a problem with delivery. It arrived today in its original box. I hope this story is finished now.

Love...

Love is like an onion where you peel away layer by layer until you're just weeping over the sink.
-30 Rock

Bloomed with Vengeance

My 20-year high school reunion was last weekend. The festivities lasted all 3 days, but I only felt compelled to attend one of them. I attended the 10-year, and at the time, I was surprised at how beautiful all the women were and how fat and bald all the men had become. This weekend, the women were still very beautiful, and I was particularly impressed with everyone's social skills.

Several months back, one old friend found me through the reunion website, and we've been pretty tight ever since. We did Bay to Breakers together, and I learned that my outstanding crowd management skills came from High School. (Berkeley High School survivors learn first to make their way through a crowd and only second the fate of the Merchant of Venice or how to employ the quadratic equation.) She had the same crowd skills and told me where we got it.

I've emailed with a few others too. I am overwhelmed at what a deeply good group of people they are. One old friend whispered in my ear, "I wonder how this feels for the people who used to be the beautiful ones for everyone else to have come into their own." It's true. Erin Mallory is still stunning but so was everyone else. She didn't stand out anymore. Likewise, I saw no correlation between relative current success and HS performance. (But that might be influenced by my idea of success -- a fundraiser for the ACLU would be very successful whereas an administrator isn't. Is that normal?) Strangely, everyone was keen to chat about bikes all night long. One guy, who dated one of my friends freshman year, sent me an email the next day saying something about me having come into my own with a "vengeance" -- how poetic.

I avoid parties, large groups and people I don't know. This habit is a bit of a social detriment. Last weekend, I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. Everyone even knew what a disaster my family has been. Political differences came up, but we had a common ground like falling on feathers. No need to avoid or explain boring things either.

All this having been said, I don't regret having a low-key dinner with my (non-HS) friends Saturday night instead of going to the $75 event or going sailing Sunday instead of the family picnic. If I'd stayed any longer, something bad would have happened. So, I didn't.