(Steve: "What a drag. They are idiots. I know lots of people who *suck* who have experience." Vanessa: "Oh man, I'm really sorry. They made a big mistake and I hope you know that. Non-profits are weird about hiring and I've always gotten the impression that it's kind of an in-club. Do you want to meet for drinks or anything?")

So, um, yeah. I had a great weekend � how�s that? From the mountain biking I look like I am a centerfold out of Extreme Girlfriends magazine, I have the scab of a seven-inch scratch running up my right front forearm and on the back left a warren of smaller scratches and mottled black-and-blue, there are a series of parallel scratches against a pale purple background on my left thigh, and both knees are so much all of the above that I�ve reconciled myself to pants and long skirts for at least a week. I had never ridden in toe clips before, and the gears on the rented bike were like the fucking Enigma machine to me, and really I was not expecting the trail to be as, well, trail-like as it was, only a foot wide in some places with branches and brambles growing out from the sides, lots of rocks and roots to ride over and uphill segments that were not kidding, but aside from the parts where I felt miserable for being a drag on Steve, it was not so bad. Turns out that although my legs do not look incredibly muscular they are the strong silent types, and I did much better on the hills than I would have guessed. The bicycle was an $1800 Gary Fisher model, and now I know why all the bike boys I�ve known have mocked my lesser Fisher, $600-some in 1987 which was a shitload of money to me, because this one was the apotheosis of a rugged and awe-inspiring machine, even its mechanical inscrutability was like a poem in another language. And what those PA bike boys called mountain biking is kid stuff compared to the way they do it in Hood River, so they can take their Kestrels and their custom Cannondales and, I don�t know, ride them off a dock or something. We were out for about three hours on Friday and then about three and a half on Saturday, during which time I think we covered the whole of a well-known local trail and after which we were both so exhausted that Saturday night was beer and pizza in the hotel room and ten hours� sleep. Also contributing to the exhaustion factor I�m sure was windsurfing on Saturday morning. On the subject of windsurfing I am here to tell you that the learning curve is far steeper than anything I�ve ever done before; after three and a half hours of group and then individual instruction we were just beginning to be able to balance on the boards and steer a little bit, but the prospects are attractive and both Steve and I are theoretically game for Level 2. (The outfit we went to has classes up to Level 5 and advises that this is the bare minimum you should take before venturing into open waters.) The Columbia is the most radioactive river in the country, did you know that, and after all the time I spent in it on Saturday morning you probably do not want to get near me with a Geiger counter. There was about an hour and three-quarters of on-land instruction mostly on the school�s "simulator," which was a board attached to wheels that ran in a circle like a microwave tray, and then we went to a little inlet and practiced for real. A man was hanging out on the shore yelling at people, telling them what to do � he tried to pull Steve and me out of the water for another ten minutes of lecture, audaciously we thought, but we begged off because by then we�d both figured out that the simulator time had been maybe half a waste since real conditions were so much more demanding � and at first I avoided then ignored him though later he softened and started giving me relevant information in a more considerate tone of voice and I started to figure things out a bit. The thing was, our instructor had brought us from the class site to the inlet with the assignment of sailing out past a buoy then around it and back to shore, but this was too advanced as none of us had the windsurfing kung fu enough to balance or steer. After we were on more civil terms, the yelling man showed me essentially how to steer in place, to make the board turn one way and then the other, forget the buoys and the concept of distance. I thanked him and said that his way of teaching was much better, that I was taking a lesson from one of the local schools and frankly its beginner curriculum was counterintuitive to me, how could I come back from the other side of the inlet without being grounded in how to get there in the first place? I did not realize at the time that the yelling man was the founder and president of the school I was taking a lesson from. Ha ha. He also made me feel better by telling me that many years ago it had taken him a whole year of trying before he felt confident as a windsurfer � I�m not making things up about the learning curve � and at one point I overheard him on his cell phone, calling back to HQ and giving someone a verbal reaming for not having cancelled the beginner classes. He mentioned that a competition that had been planned for that day, out on the river, had been postponed because the wind was so gusty, up to 38 mph. He also invited us to come back in the evening when conditions would be calmer, but by the time we remembered this, having returned the bikes and limped back to the hotel room, we were in no condition to take him up on it. Windsurfing, though � I would try it again. Mountain biking with the superFisher yes also but under certain circumstances, like I would need to figure out the gears while riding around town first and ditto get used to toe clips � the bike boys told me that only serious riders needed them � and in an ideal world I�d go with someone who was closer to my skill level and daredevil level, someone I would not constantly be holding back, though that would mean not-Steve so I guess on the biking with each other tip we�re hosed in completely opposite ways and we should just learn to suck it up. Hood River is gorgeous but in a way that makes you uncomfortable if you think about it; it�s like being inside an REI catalog where everyone has strong ropy muscles and deep un-fake tans, handsome jawlines and white orthodonture-perfected teeth. That is to say, it�s a town where people have a lot of money, a lot, and likewise a lot of leisure to spend on the sporting lifestyle and on achieving and maintaining their smug catalogworthy attractiveness. It�s a town where the money and the unself-reflective Here is what you do with it seem to have driven out all the irony. I saw five or six high-school-looking kids dressed all in black sitting on a wall downtown, looking glum, and as we walked past them I said to Steve, "It must be hard to be goth in Hood River," but then I regretted it � for me to have said something like that, so blithely and maybe even snidely, struck me as a very Hood River thing to do, and the kids honestly did look like they�d rather be dead, it was too grave for a decent, feeling person to have joked about. Robert Redford would fit right in, or Oprah with her claque of personal trainers. Amazing scenery though, beaucoup de natural splendor. On the way in, early Saturday afternoon, we drove in along Highway 14 listening to "All Hail West Texas," and it was even better than the Mountain Loop Highway at sunset and the Elgar cello concerto, which for a while now I�ve thought was unsurpassable. And for that and more, I could not ask for a better traveling companion than Steve.

I think I�m not going to tell people anymore when I have applied or interviewed for jobs. As of this minute I am inclined to back off the program of being forthcoming and evade the question in my diary as well. Even sending the short status report to my main homeys this morning was a self-disgusting mortification, and also arrogantly I made the mistake of saying something, after last Friday, to a few such subaltern homeys as Stephen and Dave, and now I am going to have to make myself seem abject in their eyes and I think I�d rather put mine out. I feel so stupid and worthless, like I did with Steve trying to get up the hills on Friday before I knew enough to fake it with the gears, crashing my bike and falling into stumps. It�s good to know what you�re capable of. And I want the people I know to be proud of me, at least to respect me, and keeping my mouth shut is I believe the best and least painful way to fake that too.

The hotel only got five cable channels, not fair, so what we ended up watching on Saturday night was most of "Sleepless in Seattle." I saw it when it first came out and often people have told me that if I watched it again I would be more susceptible to its charm, and I can now definitively report that they are full of shit. I got Steve to weigh in on the Meg Ryan issue � he says that although there is some vague resemblance esp. about the nose, her face is much narrower than mine and her lips not as good, plus my hair is better too � and, interestingly, he revealed that when he was hired for his current job, those in the interview loop commented favorably on what they thought to be his likeness to Tom Hanks. Though I think those people are full of shit as well.

Tonight I have to get that damn book then read it before Thursday; *now* I am entitled to say, Fuck, this is really not what I needed. Also before Thursday I have to figure out something to cook for Book Club and find time to make it, all while planning and shopping for next weekend�s camping trip to Mt. Rainier, which means in sum that I�m not going to have any free time to take Vanessa up on her offer even though I desperately want to. (Which on second thought is maybe a good thing, since there�s no crying at Linda�s.) Next week I�m going to rent a storage locker and dedicate most of my evenings to packing boxes and starting to populate said locker, physically extricating myself from Casa Rebecca, because I need to feel like there�s an aspect of my life in which I�m not just pathetically spinning my wheels and I need something to feel happy about. A guy I know sent me a job listing that looks OK, looks like I could do it, looks possible, and my visceral reaction is to blow it off and not think about that stuff and set myself up for a fall until mid-September when I�ll be back from vacation, but I don�t know, is that arrogant too? The degree to which I thought I deserved to esteem myself, it seems, may be due for a downgrade.

The demolition derby was cool as hell. The new chipotle Tabasco sauce, while no substitute for the original item, is mighty tasty in its own right, and I speak as someone who is notably condiment averse. And, this occurred to me in the car yesterday afternoon on the way home, do you know who should have adapted and directed "The Shipping News," who could have saved it as a movie? John Sayles. Thank you, that is all.