These were mostly last sunday, except the last one, which was saturday. A lovely evening hanging out on the roof deck with our neighbors from down the hall. The street picture, I just had to put up somewhere. The neighbors, though: one is a painter, and the other makes jewelry, of the fine art variety, in all different sorts of metals. Cool folks, both of them.
I know, I’ve been here a week and a half, and they’re having the company picnic already? I’m pretty lucky like that. The week I joind GoPro, for example, they had their IPO and a giant party, as well. Anyway, these are my new coworkers.
The title says weekend, but really it was more like one long day. I stayed at work till a reasonable time and then got on the BART. I don’t remember why, but I couldn’t take off that afternoon (it may have been before I knew I was changing jobs, and had extra PTO). In any case, Sophie, her mother, and her mom’s friend Sally went on ahead in their tiny Yaris, and I drove the Land Rover by myself, across the central valley and into the mountains. We spent that evening on the patio of our AirBnB, drinking wine and or beer. The next morning, we went to Ernie’s Cafe, something of a local institution. Then we drove around the lake all day. That night, I cooked french fries, and Sophia cooked steaks. For desert, we had wine and conversation. There may have even been a nap in there. This last weekend, I rode a motorcycle for the fist time. It was a range day for the motorcycle safety class I’m taking. Man, that’s a lot of fun. The class starts with the very basics; how to safely start the bike, walk the bike across the range under power in first, feathering the clutch, then short little jumps, then longer jumps, then around the oval; every exercise built on everything I’d learned so far, and by the end of the day I felt pretty good, doing the countersteering exercise. I need to work on looking through the corners, and braking with both brakes. And throttle control. Really, everything. There’s definitely something to motorcycle riding though, beyond the risk involved. Something about the coordination of all the things you have to do— concentrate on any one and before you know it you’ve messed up somehow. But you focus on none of them, and everything just flows. I’m sure after a bit more parctice, all of that will be second nature and not require Zen concentration. Like driving was at first, so many things to manage. Anything like that is bound to seem complex. Then your left foot learns where neutral is, and your right hand learns where the throttle really kicks in, and the left hand learns how to find the friction zone. Gearheads talk about becoming one with the machine… I thought it was bullshit, but it’s definitely a thing I’ve felt on my bicycle, so it seems natural on a motorcycle too. Also, I keep thinking about riding into the mountains, into the night.
Sinced I got these off the camera yesterday, figured I could post them today. It was a good trip, filled with memories and delicious burritos from The Pantry. We were staying out towards Cerillos, on a friend of a friend’s family vacation home. A really beautiful spot. The storms coming in over the valley at sunset were amazing. I was a little suprised at how big Cerillos has gotten. Boom town, maybe from the movie business that came through, maybe because of the light rail between SF and ABQ. I’m not sure, but it seemed like there were a few too many kitch stores for the long run. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with that little place, next time I visit. Hopefully it won’t take 7 years next time.
So, in case you haven’t heard, I started a new job this week, at “Bleacher Report”:http://bleacherreport.com . New job, new commute. Shiny new Macbook Pro. Anyway, I wanted to put up some photos from this morning, and the one at the end from last night, walking to the apple store to get a padded sleeve for the new rig. The sony is mostly dead, I need to see about getting it repaired. That siad, it has emboldened me to get out shooting more with the Nikon. And to post more, because as Sophie keeps telling me, people like pictures.
Copyright © 2008-Forever, Matt Mills.
