I'm back in California
And I feel like the opposite of a glacier.
Weekly Three
HEAR: “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin
READ: This is one-hundred percent one of the best poems I’ve read this year. Here’s If I Had As Many Hands as Vishnu by Stephen Ackerman.
VIEW: A graph showing who Americans spend their time with by age.
No. 84: I’m back in California
I’m back in California and it feels great. I missed it dearly. But it really shouldn’t be a surprise that I feel best in the place called home. These are the roads and hills and trails that I’ve moved through since I was a kid. It’s muscle memory to exist under these bluebird skies. When I drive my hands automatically turn the steering wheel with each familiar curve of I-580. I ride my bike up hills I’ve ridden a hundred times before. I know where the good food is, how to talk to the people, and how the people will talk to me. There’s a beautiful diversity and representation of every social and ethnic group, which is as much of a comfort as a home-cooked meal or the softness of your own bed after a long trip.
Being here feels like slipping into a cozy, Matt-shaped impression formed over many years. All the surrounding hills are in their right place, which tells me I am too. I feel like the opposite of glacier. Over the years, I didn’t plow through the land, carving away at valleys and canyons and making mountains. Instead, the valleys and canyons and mountains carved away at me. Whenever I return, I’m a perfect fit.
My agenda is full. There’s a lot I want to do and a lot of people I want to see before I leave on August 6. I’ve gotten a good amount done so far. For one, I’ve ridden my bike a lot. I brought it with me disassembled. When I arrived and immediately pieced it together to go for a ride, I answered a question I had been asking myself recently. Did my love for biking dwindle, or did my passion lessen because the Illinois terrain is panflat?
Apparently it’s the latter, because each day I’ve been here I’ve found a slot of time to do a long and beautiful ride. It’s simply more interesting, more fun, and less repetitive than it is in the midwest. I’ve been trying to pinpoint the real difference between biking in the two places. Riding a bike is riding a bike, so what’s the secret ingredient that only California seems to be able to provide? Is it the hills? Is it the people? Is it that I first fell in love with gravel and road riding on the graded ascents of some minor mountain? It’s probably a little of everything, but thinking about the question yet again last night, I think I finally distilled it.
To ride here, you need a map. And if that sounds stupidly simple, it is. The thousand-acre parks, twisting roads, bridges, cities and rolling hills are so varying and different and huge that it’s hard to get around and explore without a map. It’s a map, or it’s getting lost. And getting lost is great fun, too.
The great people I’ve met here through riding bikes certainly don’t take away from the loveliness of it all, either. Last night, I attended my beloved Thirsty Thursday, a weekly ride starting and ending at Canyon Club Brewery in Moraga. It was great to see those guys, catch up with them, and ride the beautiful Moraga and Oakland hills again as a cool fog rolled above us, wetting our faces when climbed high enough to disappear into the mist. This used to be my Thursday ritual. Throw the bike in the Volvo, drive over the Oakland hills to get to Moraga, go on the most epic little half-road half-gravel 17-mile ride in the bay area, then finish with beers and food on the outdoor patio of the brewery. I had the urge to finish the rest of my ritual by driving back over the hill to return to my apartment by Lake Merritt. So I did. Sort of.
I followed my old route toward the lake. Instead of turning right on Grand, I turned left to go to my friend Alex’s place on Mandana and Vermont. I showed up on his doorstep like a long-distance lover. We hugged. I missed that dude. He missed me. We did all the usual things. Talked about his female problems, danced weirdly in the living room, etcetera. I’m looking forward to dinner with him tonight at Drakes Dealership, which brings to mind all the other places I want to eat while I’m here. For your convenience (and for mine too) I’m going to list some of them here. Consider these verified suggestions if any are unfamiliar, and please suggest your favorites that aren’t listed.
In Dublin
Shalimar
Los Pericos
Gotta Eatta Pita
China Paradise (Dublin location closed, now in Danville)
Thai Basil
Curry Pizza
In Oaklandish
Tay Ho
Tacos Mi Rancho
Taqueria Guadalajara
Drakes Dealership
Modigliani
The Star
In SF
Panchita’s Pupuseria
Stella’s Bakery
Mario’s Bohemia Cigar Store Cafe
Golden Boy Pizza
This weekend I’m going to Lake Tahoe. I’m really excited for it. It truly takes some perspective to fully understand just how beautiful and pristine and magical a place like Lake Tahoe is, or Yosemite, or really most of the epic parks contained within this state. Realize this — parks like ours are rare. Hardly any other American state has parks like we have here, and their frequency go from few to almost none the further east you go. It’s only right that there’s no place like Lake Tahoe, where the water is the deepest blue and the trees evergreen. If there were, it wouldn’t be so special. We’ve been camping there on a yearly basis for as long as I can remember, and unsurprisingly some of my most profound realizations regarding this whole life thing have happened among those trees.
It’s clear to me that California is where I want to end up. I’ve talked to my girlfriend about this, and the topic is a bit of a contentious one. She likes California, but doesn’t want to commit to it as a set-in-stone plan. That’s fair, but I think I do. One reason for her hesitance is that her family is in Illinois. Why should I get to be near my family and she shouldn’t? Valid as hell. For questions like that, though, I don’t think there will ever be a perfect answer. All you can do then is go for the thing that’s as close to perfect as possible. If we have family in Illinois and in California, those are really the only two options. And of those two options, I think it’s best for everyone to be in California, where there’s more opportunity, more beauty, less winter. I want to raise my kids outdoors, frequenting national parks, swimming in the Pacific. I know Grace had a beautiful childhood in Illinois, but that lifestyle, winters included, seems better as an optional, somewhere to go and visit for a white Christmas or a midwestern summer knowing that your homebase is somewhere a little more temperate.
But there’s another thing, one that has to do with just us, families aside. I feel that I love her better when I’m here. With my heart full of the joys of home, my power for loving seems multiplied. Warning! This is just a theory, but it feels true. This is where I met Grace, where we fell in love, where I found so much joy in exploring the places I’ve always known (and places that were new to me, too) through the alternate perspective of my blue-eyed Illinois girl. We have friends here, more than we do in Illinois, and we both love hiking with the dog and eating well and going on adventures. She wasn’t able to come on this trip because of work and school, but I find myself thinking of her more than I usually do when I’m away, probably because this is a place we both called home for a time. I want to do the things we used to do together, try new restaurants, take her again to Lake Tahoe, where last time she escorted me into the water on a SUP while I went freediving, searching the shallows for sunken and long-forgotten objects. (I found an iPhone). But the flipside of that coin is whether she loves me better being filled with the joys of her homeplace in Illinois. She loves thunderstorms and rain and a fall season that is characteristically fall and, she says, humidity. But I believe the main thing is her family, which is of course a huge and serious thing. I don’t pretend to know the answer. All I know is that navigating this is immensely difficult. But from my highly biased perspective, I think the future for Grace and I and our potential kids looks brightest in the golden state.
This exact topic came up last night with one of the Thirsty Thursday crew, Drew, the first biker friend I made in Oakland and the guy who invited me to the Thirsty ritual in the first place. His wife is from Australia. For a long time, he said, they were battling the same question. To live in California or Australia? She had friends and family in Australia. He had the same here. Eventually, he said, she had been in California so long that she simply couldn’t imagine going back to Australia. The story seemed suspiciously simple, especially in the light of my and Grace’s current difficulties, but apparently this was the case, which seems like an excellent turn out for them.
I doubt things will be so simple for Grace and I, but maybe. But what I’d prefer instead is that Grace and I stop seeing things in terms of her family and my family. If we’re going to do that thing that couples eventually do, then her family and my family becomes our family. And with that established, where is the best place for our family live full, happy and healthy lives? I have one place in mind. ♦
Mailbox
Last week’s newsletter, The deepest feeling, was an excellent story Matt, and the essay from Albert Schweitzer was good food for the soul. Keep ‘em coming.
- Fred
Have a question or response? Hit reply. Write-ups and questions from readers will be published here each week.