plumas.5am

among the pines

high above a clearing

ex the cell phone

ex the net. ex

communications

we turn the tin pan

blue on a burner

blue the water 

boil we

to the birdsongs

listen

french press and dress 

the dawn. just like those

who came before

#katyamills

water on ice

the wind whipped through
made sense of the calm
they got so tired they
fell asleep walking

the sky turned blue long after the dawn
they forgot to remember they
had not stopped
talking

when she finished the sentence he awoke
with a yawn and asked for two eggs
over easy

she fried the eggs by the sun
in the palm of her hand

the sky turned white long after the blue
the end of the day long overdue
washed down with water on ice

cycling makes my world

go round

k on motobecane cafe noir

cycling adventure (part II)

I remember the moment, standing over my duffle bag full of camping gear at 4am, half-awake and trying to choose between a pillow and long underwear. The pillow won. Over the next several days we woke up from camp @ 530am to a car alarm someone was setting off on purpose (and i thought i got away from the city) to sucker us out of our sleeping bags and tents and inside for coffee and breakfast before heading out for our long daily adventures up in and around Auburn, California...  my decision would come back to haunt me... zooming down steep hills at 7am in nothing but a cycling jersey and t-shirt clocking 40 miles an hour max was a fine recipe for bronchitis -- and yes, it was so worth it. We had a blast, me and my team ladybugs compadres and i definitely contributed at least 250 miles (i confess i didn't do them all this year). 

The weather was outstanding, the crew was incredible, the food was excellent, the cyclists were friendly, and the Gold Country Fairgrounds was a very nice homebase. Nobody got injured (i heard one person maybe fainted) and everyone worked together to make it a safe and sweet trip. I particularly loved listening to tent zippers and trains chugging along, rattling through the night. I hope to stay on the every other year plan but who knows. I seem to have less and less time anymore to do anything. For now my plan is to get back and finish Book #3 of my trilogy -- the Daughter of Darkness series -- so you probably won't hear from me for a while about running or cycling events. 

Oh! I forgot to mention i could not wear my prescription eyeglasses so i got a little bit lost every single day of the ride. We were trying to follow arrows taped to the ground to know where to turn and thankfully we had maps and crew looking out for us, so i never went more than a mile or two off track. Also, in Auburn i greeted a unicyclist with a coffee who was riding a steep grade like a pro, and one gorgeous solitary deer the last day on the American River Trail heading home. There were plenty of horses and cattle and goats and bees in boxes, and the occasional snake which had unfortunately been run over. We also got crop dusted the first day at one of our rest stops. The planes seemed to be dusting us more than the fields! Don't know what that was about - we don't look like crops? - but it felt like a mean country bumpkin trick and we got out of there as soon as we could! 

The final day we rode into William Land Park [via the Sacramento Riverside road and Marina and Old SacTown and a desperate turn through Loaves & Fishes and the Railyards] to a staging area for lunch, and I was the VERY LAST one to arrive because i got lost again that day, somewhere near Loaves & Fishes. I got on course and pedaled hard and made it just in the nick of time, as we had to line up and ride with a motorcycle escort to be at the Amphitheatre by noon for the celebration. A cyclist with a puppy dog in his basket fell over and some asshole almost ran him over. Everyone got scared and angry for a second. Then he was back on his bike, puppy intact, and everything was golden again because the group that was there to celebrate our homecoming was spectacular and loud! And the mayor of West Sac was there to give a nice speech as we stood up with our bikes on the stage and hero medals around our necks. I shed some tears myself, which immediately crystallized into salt on my cheeks. I was rather dehydrated.  

Anyways, thanks to all our friends and supporters, and to the organizers of the event! This year we have thus far raised close to a quarter million dollars! Love from me to you. 

KatYa  'just another ladybug on wheels'

cycling adventure 2017

We are 16 hours from liftoff, the start of the ride at the Barn in West Sacramento, and i am rushing around getting some last minute things in place, doing my laundry, securing cat-sitters, packing my bags, getting the bike ready, doing therapy, and, well, i just had to sit down for a minute, take a deep breath and thank god and the supporters who helped us get here. This is my second NCAC. NorCalAidsCycle 2015/2017. A 300-mile, 4-day bicycling adventure through Woodland to Placer County then up to Lake of the Pines and back to Auburn, down to Roseville and back up again, then down through Granite Bay to Beals Point on Lake Folsom and back home to William Land Park. 

The forecast is just great, sunny weather through the weekend and in the mid seventies. Unlike two years ago I know many people in this years ride, some from the 2015 ride, others from Kaiser (including my doctor who is riding with his sister this year), and I belong this year to 'Team Ladybugs' which is comprised of 4 riders and 3 crew members all of whom i work with at the GHC in Sacramento where I am a volunteer counselor. Feels good to belong and I am excited to get on my trusted ride, the same one I used in 2015 and have owned since 2011, sleek black steel with carbon forks, Motobecane's Cafe Noir. Two wheels and twenty seven gears of delightful freedom.

quentin and k. selfie @ rainbow bridge

All contributions to this cause are going directly to the healthcare providers who locally have a direct impact on the community, offering essential and immediate services at low to no cost and sliding scale, to the people who need them. Anywhere from hiv testing to counseling to advocacy to affordable medical care, respite, crisis intervention and basic needs for indigent peoples who lack them. California is remarkable for offering services that other states in this great country do not provide.

keyko and k. william pond rec

I can't wait for the camping tech-holiday and break from work. I've been working 12+ hour days all this year if you include my job, my new volunteer job, and all the hours i put into writing/blogging, and I am pretty darn beat up and frazzled! Thank god i love what i do, or else i would surely be miserable. I haven't had to train for the ride as hard this year, thanks to the marathon training i did all of last year. 

Anyways, the beauty of life is in the journey, day by day. I wish you could all be riding beside me but for sure you will be in my heart. And may we all be grateful for our health and longevity, and keep the memory of those friends and family we lost to HIV/AIDS alive today.  We will be having a candlelight vigil on saturday night up at the Gold County Fairgrounds in Auburn where we are camping. I will at that time light a candle for them, too. 

love and gratitude,

KatYa   'just another ladybug'

Review: Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party by George R. Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Stewart focuses on forming an accurate logistical picture of the travels and trials of 87 members of the Donner Party against a harsh environment, whose wagon train came together around July 1846 near the Great Salt Lake and headed to California over a newly inspired yet little tested route over a dangerously steep pass in the Sierra Nevadas, which the trusted and well-traveled Hastings recommended they try in order to save 300 miles had they taken the known (and therefore safer) emigration trail around the mountains. Unfortunately the going is rough in Utah and Nevada, and they are doomed to hunker down and camp beside what is now known as Donner Lake. This tale of tragedy and triumph ends in April 1847, after several relief parties (often comprised of family members of the original caravan) made successful rescues over the course of the long and brutal winter featuring several devastating storms packing snow 30+ feet in some parts. Amazingly, 42 of the 87 characters (many of whom are painted in thin brushstrokes by the author, but just enough to begin caring about them) make it out of the mountains and down to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, a lush valley ripe for settling, and the promised land which was the basis for most of the families making the trip in the first place. Many, including the Donners, had been farmers in the midwest, and envisioned taking a grand adventure in a well-orchestrated way (books and goods and kitchen utensils and blankets all packed into wagons driven by teams of oxen with cattle and pack animals behind) providing comfort for the many women and children, some as young as one year old. The families were mainly of Irish and German and English descent, and we get a glimpse into the different and resourceful ways they survive, as the elements ultimately cause each family to fall back on itself for support. As a city dweller in the 21st century, I could only marvel at the kind of grit and determination displayed by these pioneering folk 200 years ago. As the winter progressed, the snowbanks rose far above the chimney tops of the cabins they built lakeside. Game was scarce. Only timber and religion were of endless supply to them. The ones who were snowed in at the camps had mostly to combat slow starvation and cramped conditions. They lived off of rawhide before resorting to cannibalism as a last resort on the well-preserved bodies of the dead in the snow. Some went mad. The ones who ventured out from time to time in last ditch efforts to cross the towering pass to the 100 mile or so stretch of canyons and valleys which lay on the other side to take them down to Sacramento, showed incredible tenacity and spirit. Others were selfish and cowardly, and abandoned all scruples in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Such was the kind of language the author used to recount the stories. A bit old-fashioned but powerful nevertheless, and kept me reading well past my bedtime!

Here are some vivid images circling my mind still, well portrayed by the author. A man wrapped in blankets propped up against a snowbank beside a campfire, smoking the last of tobacco after saying goodbye and courageously telling the hikers to go on without him, and left behind to die alone in the mountains. Five women who made it over the pass on snowshoes, coming into an Indian camp looking like skeletons on broken frostbitten feet and half-clothed, being taken into warming huts and given acorns to break the starvation. A father returning two months after leaving his children in the camp, on a relief mission funded by the rudimentary California-Mexican government, and finding his 8 year old daughter sitting on the edge of the roof of the cabin he built for them, her feet scraping the receding snowbanks. In the time he was absent, he had survived war, flood, fire, starvation, cold, and thirst. Unlike the others, his entire family would survive the ordeal and live to tell. Another image of a group of nine hikers, long starved, mostly young children, holding on for dear life in the midst of a snowstorm in the mountains, 30 feet down in a hollow made by a campfire which grew and ultimately sunk down into the snow by the heat, and made a space large enough for all of them to climb down into, to stay warm until days later when they were found. One who had died there had their liver and heart taken for boiling for sustenance of the remainder. Solitary men and women at Sutter's Fort, finally arrived, gazing back to the foothills every day, wishing and wondering whether their loved ones were still alive on the other side.

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Black Chasm and the zombie kids

Me, my friend Tom and his motorcycle were surrounded at Black Chasm in Volcano, California by a bunch of little kids. They wanted us to play zombies with them. Tom cautioned them not to touch the hot pipes. Eli was the littlest. His hair was cut adorably in an overgrown mohawk and he had very blue and wide open eyes. Adriana was like a little 4th grade Madonna, standing making poses, dark eyes and hair and very beautiful and she knew it. She announced to everybody, if anyone touches my hair, i will kill you. She was friends and schoolmates with Ariel, who had a devious look in her eyes so you knew she was not to be trusted. I was scared of her and refused to play zombies. She made it through an entire bag of doritos while sitting there on a log talking to us, and her tongue turned orange and the adult at her campsite called her away and scolded her for ruining her dinner. There was an older boy, maybe eleven, with wavy, dark hair, who assured us he had a girlfriend but wouldn't give any details. He had a lot of factual information and could be relied on for the truth. The others continued walking into fantasy. Adriana said she was getting married. Ariel was apparently already married. Eli had an adorable lisp and told me in words falling over themselves, he knew a man with wires for a leg whose head was in his chest and had an arm inside his arm and brains oozing out his neck. He seemed to believe everything he said. Anyway, I strapped my helmet with yellow flames back over my ears to encourage Tom we should get the hell out of there before something happened and the kids turned to zombies on us. I took some final swigs of my green apple gatorade and finished my elk jerky. Tom wasn't frightened whatsoever and ignored my body language completely. I kept breathing while Adriana arched her back and threw her hands forward like a mechanical doll. Ariel turned into a goblin and chewed a hole in Tom's boot. Blood was everywhere. Before I knew it, Eli's eyes turned dark and he grew claws and slashed my shirt open. Tom shouted for me to get on the bike and I did, goddam evil kids, get us the hell outta here! We fired up the bike and ascended up out of Black Chasm and the town of Volcano, known only for the first ever hanging in Amador County. There wasn't even a goddam volcano.

Journal # 05.19.15

ncac adventure 2015

When i come to focus on the down and outs, all hell breaks loose and i can do anything. i got stung by a bee while pushing forward to the tail end of 330 miles. i thought he was a shard of glass in my leg. i was racing alongside a freeway in the central valley with a friend. the pain got sharper but it could not hurt me. all the pain in the world i had pushed into a chain. the down and outs where once i was one. some had lost their lives like a roman candle shooting flares out into the darkness. they lit up my world, too. others behind doors for years taking meds, watching controlled light shows until their eyes turned red and their hearts went dim. depression. alienation. marginalization. dying. some of it was self-willed. some of it was not. anger and defiance and blame are no longer the qualities you find in me. i pushed them into the chain which powered the two wheels below me into the wide open. almond and rice plantations here in the Capay Valley. Cache Creek. Cowboy country. I love my country, I love this land. Marysville. Oroville. Sacramento, California. Life is wide open again. all the pain in the world i pushed into a chain. and then i came back again.