I officially {heart} biking in LA.

I was slightly afraid I might hate it -- dodging cars, running out of bike lane, never escaping Doomed Bike Syndrome, etcetera -- but I don't. I love it.

( Yes I do. )

During my run today, I crossed paths with a girl pumping away on her bike, a fluffy white miniature poodle riding beneath her. Nope -- not in a basket, not strapped in a bag. Its little hind legs were balanced on the chain guard, straddling the bar, and its front paws were resting on the handlebars. How in the world it wasn't slipping on the metal, I don't know. It was just cruising along, white poofy ears flapping in the wind and not a care in the world.

This bike thing has turned into quite the fiasco.

I offer up my lesson-learned-the-hard-way in hopes that it might save someone else a heart attack in the future:

If you just got/put new tires on your bike, and it's in your car, and you're driving home, and BAM your heart starts racing because it fucking sounds like someone hit your car or maybe is shooting at you and your ears are ringing like the gun is behind your head and you stop-panic and just sit at the green light and make sure you're still alive and nothing's bleeding and you can still hear and what if you're deaf for the rest of your life and that cars are, in fact, driving around you and have not, in fact, driven into you... keep in mind that one of your brand new bike tires might just have exploded.

Serendipity has been shining on me in the past couple days, warming my face with her sweet sweet beams of light. I've looked up to face them full on and bask in the heat. That's when the bitch lets me trip on the sidewalk and chuckles quietly as I collect my bags from the concrete, stand up straight, and keep walking.

But I kind of mean that literally.

( I've been bike hunting. )


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I really do need to be updating better. Stories like the one where my friend's classroom can't approve this one textbook for class because it discusses Magic Johnson in the chapter on AIDS and Magic Johnson's kid is in the class.

Conundrums of the rich and famous and such.

And like the one where I went to the Pacific Ocean for the first time on Tuesday. After my first pedicure. With my friend from Hawaii who told me many things for the first time and made me smile.

Firsts and such.

Because life is not all work and assembling furniture.

Usually.