Random Ride East Bay (2008.02.28)

My handlebars usually point north this time of the morning, but under this low break of dawn my tires and everything are spinning away south down Alice street. It will be nice to not see McArthur BART this morning. Not to push my bike through the gate and then hoist it up the stairs, only to sit on my helmet until my train comes like a Japanese man on a tiny stool in an onsen awaiting his turn in the hot pool of naked bodies. I tucked "Kite Runner" in my bag even though I know I will not have a defined time to read it like I would any morning that I take the rail to work (~23 minutes). At fourteenth street I pull up and wait for the light to change, rocking back and forth on my mountain bike. The gear shifters over the years and over the course of many crashes have ceased to exist. I carry all the cogs, but none of the capabilities to shift across them except for when I get off the bike and manually move the chain with my hands. The light changes and I lurch forward into the morning traffic then cut left towards the lake. To my right a tree's roots pile up in an attempt to escape the 4 foot by 3 foot hole punched through the concrete skeleton of the city. An oily mark left from candles stain the spot where Chauncey Bailey was assassinated about half a year ago. Blood replaced by paraffin, all things are eternally in a state of metamorphosis. Sun beams leap frog down the smooth spots of the road, becoming oranger with each bounce. A multitude of scissor fast legs cut up and down the side walks all heading to big boxes here and far to sit still for hours on end only to go through the relay again when the sun beams will bounce from the other side of the street. Just past Oak Street I cut through the lane of traffic and jump the bike onto the median and cut across the on coming traffic into the guarded bike lane that hugs the southern part of Lake Merritt. A few marsh herons walk the sandy edge of the lake where the broken sparkles of glass meet with the broken sparkles of beating water, there yellow feet on black stalks shake in the shallows stirring up critters for them to pierce with their beaks. I gaze out across the lake, the blue, orange, green expanse of city and the thick gnarled redwood filled hills behind her. The cool morning breathe that rolls across her belly into my lungs, I incorporate a little bit into the superstructure atom network of my body. The outside always lives within. How lucky I am to live here, to live now. I'm not sure where I'm going. The tires are rolling and I'm pedaling, but unlike Adam who says the best way to get anywhere is to visualize yourself there, I can't visualize there. I try to focus but I see the gentle peeling of bark on a redwood like the frayed ends of a well used carpet, chanterelle mushrooms pushing up through oak leaf litter, the bay, its bridges, the salt flats with their dazzling colors, east Oakland, Union City, Juaquin Miller park, mustard flowers as far as the eye can see, San Leandro, Chabot, Knowland Park, and all the other little nook and crannies. I pedal on. Weaving through spring. The tulip trees are all full with their white lipped purple and pink bodies, like a coral or a deep sea hot vent worm, not a terrestrial plant. Spring comes to the California I know in greens, then yellows (mustard and acacia), then whites and pinks (cherry trees), then orange (poppy) and blue (blue dicks, hounds tongue, brodeia, etc.) and then the colors fade to summery browns and golds. Before long I'm on Independence Street and then Foothill Boulevard after cutting through some suburban styled curvy roads. I've seen the line where East Oakland stops and San Leandro starts. The line where police respond to things other than blood. I look east to the green hills and the homes, I wonder somberly which was Dr. D's and if he held the same passionate love and fearlessness in the world the night he was gunned down by an old acquaintance who then drove the shell of him out to Montara Beach and waited to be caught. I crossed viva sections of my memory as my bike skirted across the streets of San Leandro. I know little slices of the neighborhoods due to a surprise birthday party last month for a friend and a one time strange gathering of burners at a house with a sex swing hanging from the ceiling one of my neighbors took me too. Before long I emerged beneath the 580 as it cut east towards Stockton and I rolled through Hayward. At some indiscernible point the road became Mission Boulevard, CSUEB sat upon the hill, its strange blockish building peering down upon the flats that ran out to the bay water's edge. Soon no home dappled the hills. A herd of horses galloped up a slope covered in thick green grass. The hills tightly packed and bulbous appeared to have fended off developers, but their bare slopes conjured up images I had seen mounted high in old libraries when these slopes may not have been so bare, may have been covered in thick redwoods. All the redwoods behind Oakland, the dark green band that runs from the 24 up and over the hill are all new growth. They are the orphan children of parents that were cut down more than a century ago. In the upper halls of the Oakland library on 14th street there are pictures where the Oakland hills look like these hills behind Union City; grass and nothing more except a few sordid stumps. Strong winds from the night before pushed most of the particles out of the air, so I could cleanly see Fremont peak and gaze westward and see the San Bruno Mountains. At that moment a conversation from last week directed me towards the bay, down Decoto and torwads the Dumbarton Bridge. At Olie's in Alameda last week, Arshi and I had split a booth with a couple our senior by a dozen years or so. After eve's dropping on each other's conversations the fellow and I began talking about work etc. I was mulling over how I would get to Menlo Park if I landed a job there since I don't have car. He told me you could ride across the bridge. I mistakenly thought he meant the Dumbarton Bridge, but once I had cycled down to the on-ramp for the Dumbarton that spans out near the south bay salt ponds I the cars sped by at 60-70mph I realized that he was talking about the San Mateo bridge. I looped back around through Coyote Hills, back through Newark and Fremont. A field of yellow mustard stretched from the road out to the pillars of rock on Coyote Hills, I paused on the raise of a road and watched red tractors plow under the field of mustard, the segmented yellow and green turning into a quagmire of black and brown with only hints of the former yellows and greens. I red tailed hawk watched with me and then disappeared over the city when nothing came scurrying out of the lot being plowed. Lost, I biked east figuring I would hit the above surface BART line and could follow it to a station. Along the way I stopped a great asian grocery store and bought some canned mangosteam and jack fruit along with a brown sugar cube passing for a wintermelon tea. In front of the store I nibbled on some of the dried squid and washed it down with a pennywort drink. Before long I was on BART and back in Oakland. The time on my alarm clock read 1:20pm. I gave Erika a call to confirm climbing tonight and then got back on the bike and went up into the East Bay Hills to pick mushrooms. I went up Park Blvd and then hiked with the bike over head up into Juaquin Miller Park. After fussing around I ended up on Redwood road and glided down to a drainage ditch across from the stables where I picked Miner's Lettuce for a salad and then continued down to Big Bear Gate Loop. As I scoured the understory of the forest for mushrooms I happened upon a women with dreds standing in the stream ringing a bell. She appeared to be focused on something I could not see, so I let her be. Up the trail a ways I found a red-eared slider turtle just mossing along through the forest. Being a biologist and a tactile sort of person I of course picked the turtle up. Its cool body had a weight of around 7lbs and from inside its shelf I could see in its eyes that it was just a surprised to see me as I was to see it. I put the turtle back on the leaf litter where it was previously and then an orange tuft, just the sort I hand been looking for crept out at me from some oak leaves. Gingerly I strutted up the muddy slope and cupped my hand around the delicate ruffles of its top and pulled. It pealed away from the soil without a fight. This is the first chantrelle I've ever picked in the wild with the intent of eating. By the time I returned back to the road I had managed to find another 2lbs or so of the mushrooms. I cycled back up to the edge of the east bay hills just in time to catch sunset and then drifted back the western slope to my home. I sometimes forget how much there is so close. All it takes is a day and a wondering soul to remind me why I keep coming back to live in oakland.

so here is the route





Red Tractor plowing fields of yellow near Union City



Below is the first Chantrelle I've ever picked in the wild with the intent of eating - I  fried it up in a little buter and some of the shallots from the backyard - then added just a splash of white wine. I ate only one a piece the size of a button the first night to make sure I had plucked the right fungus...luckily yes! My liver is ok, so I ate the rest. Tasty.