Banana Slug turns 2000!

I finally broke down and took the Banana Slug out for a spin yesterday and did some drills in the West Valley College parking lot. I tried making the tightest figure 8's possible, and had limited luck, but I did succeed in scaring off families walking their dogs and some kid riding his bike around the parking lot. (see still shot below)


I passed the 2000-mile mark on the odometer as I was riding up Highway 9. How befitting! The road was damp and the weather was chilly, but the biggest surprise was seeing snow peppering the steep banks of the road, then collecting by the side in dirty slushy clumps! People had brought their kids up there to play in the snow, and were making snowpeople. I did the requisite pullover at the lookout that I like with the glorious pine-trees-valley view, and kicked at some of the slush with my Doc Martens. I'll miss riding the Banana Slug over the next couple weeks, as I will be otherwise indisposed.

So I watched Prozac Nation last night and joined the tens of millions of Americans who put this DVD on, watched ten minutes of it, and raised their hands in the air, shouting, "Oh My God, This Is My Life, Down To The Littlest Details!!!"

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought everyone grew up this way! Anyway, it was amazing how closely Christinia Ricci's screen life matched mine, from the fact that her parents divorced when she was two, and her mom and dad were always fighting, and guilt-tripping her over who loved her more and who paid for more ... and how her mom was depressed at the time of the divorce and Christina's presence served to "save her," and as a result she lived vicariously through her daughter and her daughter was her "everything" ... something that Christina didn't quite like. It was amazing how Christina turned out to be demanding, angry, insecure, eager to please, perfectionistic and crazy during her first year at school. She had an anti-boys, fear-of-rejection phase, then when she finally decided to trust guys, she became a clingy, jealous, "nightmare girlfriend" and scared away her boyfriend.

Eerie. It was as though someone unscrewed my head, poked through the contents, fished out the good stuff, mixed it up and poured it across a movie screen.