Ouroboros

Morning weigh-in: 175.5#, 10.5% BF

Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the
dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with
which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a
closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into
a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back,
demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the
System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to
keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of
humanity— most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in
the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time.
And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or
anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its
addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply,
dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

The serpent he's talking about is Ouroboros, the archetypal snake that encircles the World, devouring its tail, and the dream is the one where Kekulé, trying to figure the shapes of organic molecules, is stumped by the ring-shaped benzene, until the serpent appears to him in a dream. (If you've ever smelled gasoline, you know what benzene is.)

Anyway, rode home yesterday, but arranged via email to meet my friend Joe on the way home, do a ride with him. (Joe's a year younger than me, and we used to be pretty regular training partners at Round Valley. In 1998 he took 1st place in the Sport Senior Men class while I took 1st in Sport Vet at a race there; since then I've slowed down considerably, but he moved up to Expert and became shockingly fast: I thought I was a hero for doing the Wilderness 101 in 12:28, he did it in 9:03 this year.) He was on his road bike, but did a hard training ride the day before & would cruise along with me -- I was on the 50-pound (racks, panniers, work clothes etc) Iguana, and killing myself... We rode some very pleasant roads out near Harmony -- in other words, hilly roads -- and parted ways by the Free Bridge. I probably got about 30-35 miles in on the ride home.

Mug Club Night at Which Brew, but it was quiet there otherwise. Tonight is gym/laundry, maybe stir-fry a little of that tofu I bought before it goes bad.