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July 05, 2005
All Roads Lead to... Bolinas
I love living in contradictions: in four days, I filled the gas tank three times to drive from SF to Yosemite Valley to Mono Lake to Mammoth to June Lake to Yosemite Valley to Bolinas and back home again... and then this morning I rode my Xtracycle to the worker-owned co-operative Rainbow Grocery to purchase organic products from companies that do things like give their profits to charities (mmm, I'm addicted to Newman's O's). Thank goodness I'm only fractionally sactimonious or I think I'd still have some petroleum-use guilt to work off.
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Life in the Valley is almost exactly the same as it was when I lived there six (and four) years ago. Even Chongo is back again after a brief fugitive absence, though there is an upcoming court case during which he'll have to explain how he's managed to be in the Valley for eons without ever having legally occupied a campsite or other accommodation...
The notable differences are:
Antigone, by far the cutest thing to frequent the dirt-bag climber table in the Caf (I tried to talk Ben Wah and Danielle out of that name, to no avail):
All the water (never seen the falls still going off like this in July!):
...and insane traffic, now that the Park Circus has eliminated so much of the day-use parking. On Sunday it was so choked with tourons that as much as I love Yosemite, I had to get out of there.
That, and I couldn't resist the pull of July 4th Celebrations, Bolinas style! If this guy had known how much gas I used prior to arriving in Bolinas, he probably would have strangled me with the tug-of-war rope:
Ran into Ole, who was pissed because this was the first year in ages that he couldn't ride in the parade. Alas, the bike was grounded due to mechanical difficulties.
After the parade there was surfing (I'm more partial to knitting on the beach, myself),
...and apple pie with ice cream, a (relatively short, all weekend considered) drive to Stinson, corn-on-the-cob, bbq chicken, blue potato salad (apparently if you use vinegar they keep their color, good trick), a very serious and close badminton match (Lewis finally beat me, but we had to play to 24 so he could win by 2), caviar, small children wielding fireworks, a chocolate cake decorated with a berry flag, salmon, sunset, more food than would have been consumed by three comparable parties (I did my best), and finally, a multi-county fireworks viewing from Four Corners.
The body is saying there will be no more driving for me for some time. Lest you fear I'm not a true American, despite having consumed a week's worth of food yesterday, I still ate plenty today. God Bless.
Posted by Elizabeth at July 5, 2005 04:52 PM