A post about biking and movies.

One of the things from which I derive joy is taking bike rides. I also like watching movies in the theater. So the several times a year I find myself riding out to the local theater to catch a movie are always a good number of hours of enjoyment. I always take my sweet time leaving because being late just runs in my blood, but I always make sure to leave right around an hour before the show starts to make sure I can make the ~11 mile ride without too many problems. I purchased my tickets early for the 10:30 showing from the theater's website and I ended up walking into the mall at 10:26. Perfect timing of course so I went ahead and had my water bottle topped off at the concession stand before heading into what I expected to be a packed theater. Nope, not even close. I grabbed myself a great seat and watched a film starring A Man Dressed Like A Bat, which turned out being a very enjoyable movie that I won't spoil in any way.

After sitting through the credits to the bitter end because it's a thing I do even though there was nothing after the credits of the third installment of Christopher Nolan's A Man Dressed Like A Bat, I got up and left the theater. According to the same clock I saw when I entered, it was now 1:34 in the AM. No problem I think, time to hop back on the bike path and hope I don't run into any bears, which I have an irrational fear of doing. Lucky for me there were no bears, but there was a bit of rain. It wasn't a lot of rain, so I was OK with it, but there was just enough rain to know that I had missed a bigger chunk of this storm while watching A Man Dressed Like A Bat do his thing.

Not too many minutes after starting the ride home I noticed the sky to my right occasionally lighting up. It wasn't particularly impressive till I passed the portion of the bike path that runs under the main drag, which put all those main street lights to the other side of me. It was then that the light show got a lot more interesting. From behind the trees that lined the path I could see the clouds and empty sky brighten several times in a two or three second period and it was quite a sight. The damned trees blocked most of it, but I kept riding and glancing to my right every couple of seconds trying not to miss too much of it. Right around that time I saw a very bright couple of lightning strikes just as I passed a very open area where the trees had been cleared and rows of some foodstuffs or another had been planted in the fields beyond.

The clearing had come and gone in an instant so I got off my bike and walked back to it. I killed my headlight, not that it was anywhere near bright enough to rival the lightning. I didn't see very many arcs, but there were a couple. Mostly it was the sort of lightning that just lit the clouds up in that dark red color that they get for reasons I don't know. It reminded me a lot of 4th of July fireworks; the strikes were that rapid. It must have been loud as hell where it was happening, but where I was I couldn't hear anything over the relatively quiet music of my mp3 player. After watching for a few more moments I got back on my bike and continued riding back towards home. I kept looking to the right as I went, but the storm was traveling in nearly the opposite direction I was riding so it never got any better. I still enjoyed the hell out of what I did see though.

Also, typing this out gave me an excuse to use a semicolon on the intenet! Did you see it?

Tendons should stay where they belong

I've done an awful lot of biking lately. So much so that a very old injury that wasn't even an injury at the time has started bugging me. Way back in 8th grade or so the top of my foot got sliced open and I could see the tendon, but the tendon never got damaged. What does that have to do with now, you ask? Well you see, I bought a pair of nice insoles recently. They're a set of Dr Scholls arch support insoles. They worked great for the pain in the bottom of my feet and helped my posture even. They're only a half length insole though, which changed my foot's geometry and put a lot more stress on my toes. My left foot is A-OK, but my right foot, which has very old scar tissue from the slicing back in 8th grade allowed my tendon to start pushing up through my foot.

It really didn't even hurt very much and I only decided to stop wearing the insole when I noticed how red and just plain bad my foot looked in the shower last night. I was still able to take a decent ride today and I'm really not hurting at all from it, but I still wonder how the heck my foot could have gone so crazy like that just from old scar tissue being in the wrong place.

I've got it wrapped right now with that nifty single use ace bandage like stuff. I wrapped it around my foot a couple of times and I'm really quite good to go.

----

Ohh right, the bike ride I took today... That was to go out and see the new Spider Man movie. It was a spectacle and the effects were awesome, but the movie itself left much to be desired. I still liked seeing Dennis Leary playing a cop. He does that well. Unfortunately I wanted to slap Spider Man around something fierce just about every other minute for doing something or another stupid.

Continued heat

So I have almost completely lost my will to write since it's been so damned hot, but eel I should give an update.

• My keys were returned to me. Some girls found them at the park. They left no info so I could not give them the reward I had offered.
• I've been swimming and jumping a few times since the last post. I'm getting my timing down really good at the 20 foot dam. I'll be adding to my repertoire some more this year.
• I've been biking a good amount, too. Today I took an 18+ mile ride.
• I've been cranking away on some projects around the house including getting the 80s vintage stereo I was given all prepped for my nephew.

And now I'm back to the part where I close up this blog post and continue to put off uploading my videos. If I ever remember to bring a camera, the memory card and working batteries at the same time to Orange dam I swear I'll post something.