Letting go

My eyes opened and the startling clarity of my surroundings leaped, as a dolphin breaching the ocean's glassy surface, into my consciousness; the lights from the oil rigs, paling in the sunrise which painted vivid streaks of orange, pink and gold across the sky, the rumblings of the awakening city at my back, the waves, diving recklessly into the sand, the gulls screeching overhead, and the presence of the people beside me. I felt the sand at my feet, the tingling in my legs as I unbent them from their crossed position, the soft weight of my sarong I'd wrapped around my legs to keep them warm in the cool ocean breeze.

 It was 7:00 on Tuesday morning, and I had endless strands of decisions ahead of me, but after forty five minutes of meditation, the unanswered questions no longer gnawed at me. I felt alive in the present moment, and even if my knees were prohibiting me from completing the route I had planned, it wasn't the end of the world.

Riding along the bay

It has been a long path to arrive at this conclusion, but in the end, all my frustrations have been worthwhile. I was looking for a challenge when I decided to do this trip, and even though the challenges haven't been of the sort I was expecting, I am learning more from them than I would learn from pushing my muscles to exhaustion every day. I left home 25 days ago, and I have only biked over thirty miles on seven of those days. This is the price I've paid for not paying attention to my knees when they first began to hurt and adjusting my pedals. Now they are damaged and though I will have to go slowly as they heal, I believe they will heal and I will be able to pick up the pace later.

They call it the Los Angeles River...
but where did the water go?

Injuries always heal more slowly than one would like, but I have found that I am able to bike for at least two or three hours before my knees start to hurt and five or six hours before the pain is too excruciating to really make any progress at all. Perhaps that's not something I ought to have figured out, but if you were in the middle of Wilmington at 4:00 in the afternoon with forty miles to go until the camp site you had planned to stay at, I doubt you would have wanted to stop and camp. You probably wouldn't have ended up in that particular situation anyway though; it takes a lot of irrational decisions to be biking along Anaheim St. at 4:00 in the afternoon having been biking at a decent pace since 9:45 AM from the center of Los Angeles.

To make a jungle in the desert.

Sunday was not my day for rational decisions. After a delicious breakfast, Quinn and I left his house and biked down Venice Boulevard to the beach where Quinn turned home and I continued South down the coast. Simple enough right? Just head to the ocean and go south. If only that were the case. For some reason, I had the impression that I was going to end up much farther down the coast if I biked straight to the ocean from central LA. I had looked at the maps, and even made rough distance estimates, but my navigational planning was nothing short of miserable for that day.

The ride from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo, almost exclusively on Highway 1, spoiled me and I had forgotten how many turns you have to make in a city. After several hours of biking, I realized I wasn't even where I thought I was going to start biking down the coast, and I still had over fifty miles to go before Crystal Cove State Park, my planned destination. I found my location on the maps and determined that I was off of the route, but I decided that I was going to keep going in the way I had been going anyway. These sort of thoroughly illogical notions continued to plague me all day. I would ask for directions and follow them most of the way, but then take a different road at the end because, well, I don't know, it seemed like maybe it would get me somewhere more quickly.

 To make matters worse, the roads I biked on continued to deteriorate as I strayed further and further from the route. Through San Pedro and Wilmington, there are few bike lanes and heavy traffic, though the shoulders were quite wide. These cities are the shipping harbors behind LA, where all the imports land. They are ugly places, full of big trucks, metal crates, concrete and sketchy streets, but it is nonetheless an interesting area, for it makes apparent the workings behind Los Angeles' splendor. All the imported wine and expensive perfumes come through San Pedro, and all the people who work the ships are chained to the city's consumption.

Grocery shopping :)

Eventually, I managed to get myself to the bike path in Long Beach, but my prospects were looking grim. It was 5:00 already, my knees were aching and there were still twenty five miles between me and Crystal Cove State Park. That was when I got an email from Jen. "No worries," she wrote, "I would love to host you for the night." And with these simple words, my situation reversed itself. I had written to a few Warm Showers hosts in the Long Beach area earlier that afternoon on the off chance that they might be able to host me on such late notice, and when I heard back from Jen, a senior in college, I was amazed. Warm Showers is just incredible.

I picked up some food for us to make dinner and when I finally found my way to Jen's place (after more terrible navigation), she came out and gave me a hug. We cooked dinner together, talked, laughed and shared our stories. Jen made me feel completely at home in her apartment and when she asked if I would like to join her for meditation on the beach the next morning, I readily agreed. We rose at 5:45 and biked down to the beach to join one of Jen's friends in his morning meditation by the sea. The quiet, grounding space to welcome the day was a blessing, and it allowed me to get out of my irrational mindset.

American the beautiful...Carson city

Meditation gave me the perspective to see that continuing south with the condition my knees were would be a poor, if not disastrous decision, so I decided to spend one more night with Jen and then go back to LA. The day of swimming, reading, sleeping and stretching allowed my knees to recover considerably, and spending more time with Jen was just wonderful. She is going to bike from Oregon to Chicago this summer and it was exciting to hear about her planning. More than our connection over biking though, talking with Jen was simply inspiring, and I feel very lucky to have had the chance to meet her.

A forgotten companion

On Tuesday, I went to meditation again and then hit the road. Going back to Quinn's house was, not surprisingly, several hours faster and probably ten miles shorter than my original trip. The route was not particularly exciting, but being a Tuesday, there was less traffic on the beach bike paths, and rather than going through Wilmington and San Pedro, I went through Carson and Torrance which boast car dealerships and factories instead of shipping grounds. My knees did fairly well until early afternoon, when I had to stop and rest for a while, but when I changed my sandals out for my bike shoes, I felt completely fine for the rest of the ride. I have been adjusting my clips and seat heigh/position and experimenting with riding with my sandals so that I'm not clipped in. At this point, I've tried out so many different things that I can't remember what it felt like originally, but I think I have made some progress.

Ahhh, acupuncture...

Being back with Quinn's family has been wonderful. They are so kind to me, and I have come to know Los Angeles pretty well in the last week and a half of walking and biking around the city. I have one last acupuncture appointment tomorrow morning, after which I will take the metro to San Bernardino and start heading towards Joshua Tree, slowly. I have decided that I will just do short days of biking until my knee has healed completely because doing some biking does seem to help, and I want to keep moving. Nothing is definite however, and I am prepared to adapt, because I know that the only place I can live is the present.

Love, peace and new beginnings,
Sonya

PS. Sorry about the bad photographs, I have been using my smart phone and it is difficult to take anything more than a snap shot with it.

Where the sidewalk begins