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June 03, 2005

Traveling by Car

sorta fell off the blog thing, so much going on and i fear that i am just recording and not getting down what i'm noticing or feeling about what i have been doing. gonna work on that.
so i left SF, after catching the Old Crow Medicine Show at the Great American Music Hall with Kelsey, Carter and his gang. the show was really fun, even though i maintain my prejudice against seeing bluegrass music anywhere but outdoors with a dusty dirt dance floor. Driving through the night back to Reno from SF was nostalgic, and even though it had been years since our frequent Reno-SF-Reno drives to see shows, i could still fall asleep before Concord and wake up just in time to see the lights of Reno flickering from atop Mccarren.
The next evening was even more of a walk down memory lane, since Zoinks was playing a reunion show after having been broken up for at least 7 or 8 years. Zoinks was one of the first punk bands i ever saw, and i was thrilled to hear them play pop punk songs from my angsty teenage years. turns out i wasn't the only kid who'd fled reno but returned to see the show, there were old friends there from Portland, Seattle, and the L.A. area. the show was really fun, they actually played 2 sets, one at the new Record store, and one at some fratty bar that luckily had $1.50 beers. The songs all sounded as good as when i was a teenager, and during the second set i leaned over to chris mcclendon and whispered, "close your eyes and you're 16 again."
Seeing all my old friends really got me to thinking about how that part of my life, and also what was my early 20's are firmly in the past. seeing all the old friends getting married, having kids, and getting divorced, and also seeing people who had been my best friends when i was 21 and who now i regard as little more then irritating made me feel not old, but at least made me directly aware of the feeling of aging. I asked Chris Mc if he ever felt the same way, and he agreed that he was weirded out by it. "Remember," he told me, "i always said i'd be dead by 25. that means i only have 4 months to go." good old Chris, always knows how to put things into perspective.
the show finished, i hung out and drank a lot with Carter, and managed to track down Dawn, who is near to finishing her masters. I then caught a Greyhound bus to Sacramento, lugged my bike onto the airport bus, and flew out here to New York.
the weather here is even nicer then a month ago, all springy and everyone is thrilled to be walking around in the warmth, before it turns muggy and oppressive. my cousin Mikey and i were talking about how in places where there are seasons, which i guess accounts for most of the country besides coastal California, that people get stir crazy and build up all this energy and expectation for when the warm weather comes. that means that they go manic a bit in june out here, and everyone is riding bikes, eating in open air cafes, and the like. it's nice, and makes me feel like someday i will again crave the seasons and even the winter, though now it still seems to me faintly cumbersome and dreary.
we went on our first mountain bike ride of the trip yesterday, with Mikey's friend Yaniv. Yaniv is one of the best Israelis i've met, meaning he's as good as my buddy Ran in Israel. Yaniv is studying at Columbia, and he has all the good characteristics of his nationality, the boisterousness, the humor, the jokes,without the affected snottyness or lame nationalism. Our ride was north of Mikey's Westchester home, through hilly green northeastern terrain. the tree roots didn't stop me up as much as i had feared, and i kept up and often led even though i only have the single speed bike. it was so fun tearing down the single track trying not to get beheaded by tree branches, all three of us were whooping and loving it. it was an excellent first ride, and made me even more excited about what's to come in the next two months.
tomorrow we finish loading up the subaru and head out towards philly, to hang out with kesley and anthony. from there it's west to Chicago, and then continuing on towards the pacific, but not too quickly, oh no, there's plenty of time.

Posted by bendan at June 3, 2005 08:49 PM

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