This is my tribe. These are my people. The good people of RSM have become an outdoorsy bunch during all this craziness, swapping their youth soccer sideline chairs for the more active sport of wading in Trabuco Creek. The water was relatively brisk and a foot high six weeks ago, but now it's just a few inches deep, soon to be dried up completely until the next rainy season. But there's nothing else to do. So entire families hike down from the mesa into O'Neill Park, then tailgate in clear cold water. Children roll around in the stream while their parents pull a cold one from the cooler. It's a little desperate, a little heartwarming, and a little folksy, easily the most obvious reminder I have yet seen that there is absolutely no other choice in town when it comes to group activity.
Sure, we try. Selma's has the patio open on weekends, but it's not the same experience. Sitting there behind a row of six-foot hedges feels elicit and covert, like a long-ago secret high school party after a Friday night football game, expecting the cops to crash anytime. And if you look closely, it seems that everyone and their mother is a runner these days. I'm all for it. But I keep wondering where they all come from? Where does this sudden primal urge to log a few miles comes from? I think I might have an answer: gyms. With 24 Hour Fitness closed, all those treadmills have been unplugged, too. So people who previously exercised inside are suddenly loping along in the sunshine and fresh air, as God imagined. I wonder how they will ever be able to go back.
It's the same with bikes. Those wolfpacks of weekend warriors are now no longer just weekend — they're all the time. Every day is Fourth of July on the trails. But the electric bike crowd has now joined the fun. I'm not sure how I feel about electric bikes. On the one hand, they've made it possible for more people to enjoy cycling. On the other, there's something frustrating about grinding up a steep trail like mile-long Live Oak on a standard mountain bike, only to be passed by someone in flip-flops on an electric beach cruiser with a handlebar basket whose barely touching the pedals. No judgment. In this world of nothing to do, an electric bike is the closest thing we have to riding Space Mountain at Disneyland.
Damn, I miss Disneyland. Even typing the word makes me sad. It's creatively rejuvenating to sit in New Orleans Square in the early morning with a cup of coffee, marveling at the intricate detail and level of storytelling that goes into every ride. Sometimes, when I'm stuck with a writing project, the answers usually come after a short run or a trip to Disneyland. Not the whole day. Just an hour. But something magic happens in that hour, some sort of creative reset.
What's that going to look like when it reopens? Disneyland and crowds are synonymous.
The good news is that I have a haircut scheduled for Friday. I look perverse right now, this mop of hair without structure or shape completely altering my appearance. I just happened to be driving past my barbershop on Friday (in these strange times, I won't tell you the name, for fear that it will be shut down once again before my appointment). I parked the truck IMMEDIATELY, then went in to get a haircut — only to be handed a business card and told I needed to make an appointment. The conversation was very sotto voce, as if I was being granted a speakeasy password. I lowered my gaze then scuttled back out, not wanting to do a single thing that might break the newfound vow of confidence between my masked barber and I.
In this world of nothing to do there are more and more high points, like the high schooler who broke four minutes for the mile last night in Sacramento, and my good friend Frank Raia winning the online auction for the Immunity Idol from the most recent season of Survivor. It's also my anniversary this week, and my birthday next — always nice back-to-back celebrations. Throw in Father's Day in a few weeks and it's a trifecta.
And I am on book six of the George Smiley novels of John Le Carre, which I am reading in chronological order for the first time ever during all this. All told, the collection clocks in at almost 2,000 pages. Never have I had so much time to read, and I am enjoying it thoroughly. As I've said for a long while, this will all be over soon. We will miss this pause button. We really will. But I have a feeling we won't look back with nostalgia for six months or a year. So that can wait.
What will I do when all this is over? I'm going to Disneyland.