The soap dispensers in the McCullough building's bathrooms dispense foam. How cool is that? I was so impressed that I washed my hands twice. Then, I went outside to read in the time I had before Magic Flute rehearsal, but ended up futzing with my bike instead. Then I got bike grease on my hands and had to wash them again. Ever since our epic bike ride, one of the brakes' springs has been a little overzealous. Oh yeah, the epic bike ride.

The morning after a disruption-less trip back to school, seven of us from Branner and a girl from the frisbee team set out astride our bikes. The goal? The ocean, over some small mountains a "mere" 23 miles to the west. We started out on a fairly flat but pretty polluted route to the base of the mountains, then stopped at a store in Woodside beforing turning right onto Kings Mountain Road for the climb to Skyline Boulevard at the ridge. Now, as I thoroughly learned, any road whose name includes the word "mountain" is gonna be bad. Secluded? Sure: we almost definitely came across more bikers than drivers on that narrow, windy two-lane. Beautiful? We were weaving in and out of redwood trees, and had some great views of the South Bay in the clear patches in between. But body-wrenchingly tiring? Yes. It was only four miles, yet it took as much time as the nine to the base had. At one point, Kasia's speedometer read a whopping three miles per hour. Yeah, people walk faster than that. Lots faster.

But with lots of breaks and no dearth of encouragement from hyper 4:20 miler Adam, who not only led all of us up the whole way but did it on a quasi-broken bike in the lowest gear, we all made it to the top around 2 in the afternoon. From there, it was gonna be a sweet, sweet 10-mile descent to the ocean—butthat also meant a 10-mile climb back up, not to mention the 13 miles back to campus from where we already were. It would be really tough, just at the very edge of our physical limits, so we were sorta reassessing our original plan. As we were standing there being indecisive, a cyclist in full regalia—bike shorts, shirt, cleats, and everything—came by and stopped to talk to us. He was nice—mildly surprised and impressed that we'd come all the way up Kings Mountain without clips or cleats, but told us that Tunitas Creek was truly hellish. In fact, he said that he wouldn't do it. Well, that sort of made our decision for us.

Instead, we turned around and flew down that road at a beautiful speed of approximately 30mph. I was a little slower, though. I'm not quite as confident in my braking skills; if I messed up on the many switchback, my options would be rock face on one side and 80-degree cliff on the other. I was still going at least 25, though, and that was fine enough for me. We stopped for lunch by a small creek, whereupon I promptly grossed everybody out by creating and eating a peanut butter, cheddar, granola bar, turkey jerkey, and dried apricot sandwich. I dunno. It's more efficient that way, no? Plus, I like the way each flavor becomes more or less prominent at different points in every given bite.

We kept cruising after lunch, and got back to campus before 4, leaving me plenty of time to shower and rest before rehearsal at 7. It was a good trip, and I didn't really regret not having gone all the way to the ocean. That can be another time, via another route, and perhaps on a road bike with more efficient tires. This trip was cool enough in itself. I especially liked the fact that, except for Wilson (the nickname for Elizabeth Mayne is derived from the facts that there are two Elizabeths on the team, that her middle name is Wilson, and that we were watching Cast Away the night before one of our first tournaments) from Donner and Molly and maybe Adam, none of us knew each other too well. The group had been put together via mass email to the Branner list or roped in as we were tuning up to leave that morning, and we all ended up having so much fun. As much as every-jealous-body else mocks us, I like this dorm a whole lot. Even though we've all mostly settled into our own little groups, there are still a lot of us who are up for random and really cool experiences on all scales. What can I say? Yay Branner!

Anyway, I think my poor bike was slightly overtaxed on its long grind up. The brake's been pushing against the rim, wearing down the brake pad and making my biking unnecessarily hard. I didn't realize just how bad it was until I flipped it over this afternoon. That brake pad is about thrice as worn down as the others. I tried moving around the pad, which was ineffective. I think the problem's in the calipers, but I'm not sure how to adjust those. There's this guy in Branner who, at the beginning of the year, kindly volunteered for the post of bike bitch. Maybe he'll be able to tell me how to fix it. Or I can try taking it apart a little further. Either way, fun!

Oh, right. Classes. I'm taking math51, IHUM, e14, and architecture drawing process. And a two-unit French conversation class pass/fail. More classes, equal number of units, and, most importantly, no ME101, 106B, or OEP! Yes, they were probably among the best classes I've taken here, but they were all colossal time vacuums which only need to be taken once. Anyhoo, with the classes... I seem to like 'em all, especially architecture, but I haven't had enough class time to really critique 'em. Later.

Meanwhile, it'd been a greyish first week, but the sun's definitely coming out now. Woohoo for lawn frisbee, doing problem sets outside, and other sorts of fun stuff.