Situational Hippiedom and Tandem Adventures

In an attempt to quell the lingering blues that have been nagging me for so long, I’ve been making a concentrated effort to spend more time out and about and with my friends. During the past three days I’ve done some really significant socializing. I’ve been to Jen’s house two times; we lazed around on the floor and various articles of furniture, ate a lot, discussed future communal baking opportunities, and I got some serious dog therapy. I love having a friend’s dog that I can borrow for walkies, and of course, he loves it as much as I do. I just tend not to show my enthusiasm by panting and grunting so much. And I get some extra social opportunities thrown in because everyone who sees you on the street says hello when you have a dog. Jen told me it’s also a great way to get dates. So far this has not proven true.

Monday night I got to go to dinner with Louie, a friend whom I used to work with at Stone. I still work at Stone; he’s the one who took off to go pursue a degree in music at Humboldt State. Louie is great company, and he likes good beer, of course. At some point during dinner, we got sucked into the ever-present argument about whether or not I am a hippie, on account of my somewhat hippie-ish values regarding trees and being nice to other people. Why won’t this discussion go away? I don’t believe we ever came to a conclusion about me, but we decided that Louie is a situational hippie. Down here in southern California, particularly in Oceanside, where he lives when he’s not at school, he is definitely somewhat of a hippie--he’s got very long curly hair, a laid-back friendly attitude, his family is 80 percent vegetarian, and he’s a musician. Up north in Arcata, however, he’s nowhere near hardcore enough to be a real hippie. He doesn’t smoke pot, he bathes regularly, his hair is not in dreads, he hates the Grateful Dead, and he’s just too darn responsible. I had never realized that hippiedom was such a relative thing.

At any rate, Louie and I stayed up WAY too late that night talking (mostly not about hippies, thank goodness), and so he stayed here on my couch. The next morning after we got up, he sat down and played some utterly gorgeous pieces of classical music on my piano. It was bliss--sitting on my futon feeling the breeze sifting in through the open window, staring out at the profusion of greenery glazed with early afternoon sunlight, and listening to some really beautiful music made at the hands of a friend. We tried playing a few new pieces and noticed that he and I are just about equally as bad at reading music, although he actually knows what the words on the side mean. He even knows about timing! I’m glad that his education is working so well...and then there’s the fact that he actually practices every day; perhaps I should try that. Then we went to breakfast (at noon) at the Big Kitchen and stuffed ourselves silly on good food. Although I suppose that my fondness for the Big Kitchen does nothing to support my protestations of non-hippieness.

Last night I called up Alegra (no, she’s not fast, so quit asking). She was up for some spontaneous company, so I drove to her place in Pacific Beach. She is lucky enough to have inherited her family’s house on a fairly large plot with a big front yard full of fruit trees. It’s very peaceful; far enough away from the main drag to not feel like you’re in the shallow, too-hip world of PB nightlife. She was in the process of trying to use up her multitudinous carrots from her Be Wise Farm CSA box and was making a very yummy carrot ginger soup. Or, as we decided it was more aptly called, carrot GINGER!! soup. She had used fresh ginger root--and a lot of it. I brought her some tabouli that I had made in exchange. After munching on homemade yumminess, we headed out to the beach for a late-evening picnic. It was all very romantic but she didn’t even hit on me. Geez.

We rode her clunky and fantastic tandem bike down to the boardwalk--it was the greatest! We didn’t crash or fall over or anything. I’m not even sure that I’ve ever ridden on a tandem bicycle before. My only complaint was that in order to not throw off our balance, I couldn’t look to the sides too much and spent much of my time scrutinizing the print on the back of Alegra’s shirt. But it was all worth it. Her bicycle has a wire basket in front and three, yes THREE bells on it--one in the front and two on the back to compensate for the obstructed view. And sitting so close together meant that we could hear each other really well and we shared our respective “breaking down in front of the fire station and hanging out with firemen” stories. Hers was much better than mine, particularly since it involved the very bicycle we were riding on at the moment. We finally found a good bench without glaring lights to obscure our view of the waves, and sat ourselves down with a tiny bottle of champagne, organic dark chocolate truffles, and some of the best damn cheese I’ve ever had in my life. Lovely!! Alegra really knows how to show a girl a good time.

More adventure was in store on the way home, however, as the front chain slipped off its gear and got horrifically jammed when we had only pedaled half a block away from the beach. We tried to no avail to get it out with our fingers, and ended up walking halfway back to her place before we ended up at her friend’s house. Doesn’t that just happen to you all the time? You’re sitting at home relaxing and watching a movie, and then two grease-smeared young women show up at 10 o'clock at night asking to borrow some tools to fix their tandem bicycle? It took some effort, but we finally pounded the chain out of where it was jammed between the two gears, and after some prodigious hand washing and a little chit-chat with our friendly savior, we were off again. We managed to make it all the way back to her place with no further mishaps or need for assistance. Which was good, since there weren’t any fire stations around.