1. Flail wildly on the precipice.

2. Skeleton Blues by Simon Joyner. After years of paying attention to Joyner, how did I miss his best album when it came out?

3. Cycling today turns from light drizzle ride to 43 mile slog through some serious rain. I wind along the coast in a downpour. The sea looks like silver. Blotches of rain on the water are like undefined birth marks. Oil tankers dot the horizon. Catalina is a ghost ship in the low storm clouds. It's all quite thrilling until my right foot becomes completely submerged in my shoe. Then my left. My socks turn grey. I literally climb out of the rain to the sun on Palos Verdes East. I have to pay close attention to dodge all the snails crawling across the road. Their world is too slow for them to realize that humans and bicycles and cars are things that can be avoided - to them it's just more force majeure. One of the switchbacks is covered with foamy soap that looks like snow. On the descent, I think of Merckx and Ocana dragging their shoes on the pavement to slow down in a hail storm. Miraculously, on the way back, I can see one of the Channel Islands. By the time I get home, I am cold, wet, somehow - muddy, and the sun is out. True Autumn road riding.

4. "I'd like to see you --

I had a funny dream

and you were wearing funny shoes,

you were going to a dance,

you were dressed like a punk

but you were too young to remember."