March 15, 2008 8:12 am
Easy Like Friday Afternoon
Posted by Will under biking, outdoors
[4] Comments
Though channelized since the 1930s the concrete banks of Ballona Creek can be surprisingly serene — especially the stretch flowing across Culver City near Overland Avenue. Many have been the times I’ve pedaled through there along its bikeway either on my way to work or on my way home and I’ve wanted to dismount and just hang a spell. Well yesterday I did so, stopping on the way home so that the bike and I could go bellies-up by the water’s edge — for several reasons:
- In celebration of putting another issue of the magazine to bed.
- In gratitude of it now actually being daylight when I leave the office thanks to Daylight Savings Time.
- As an attaboy for biking every day to and from work this week.
- And because on a bike, as opposed to in a car, opportunities such asthis are just inherently accessible.
March 15th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
When I lived nearer the concrete canal, I ran there late at night. Training for a marathon meant running 80 miles each week along the uniform banks Ballona Creek, and sometimes this became monotonous.
Some chill nights a magical event occurred. Flying and gliding silently on the flicking knotted wood legs of the long distance runner a companion joined me. Orange street light sprinkled across black water to reveal a long slender wave spanning the canal, and moving upstream.
It’s a phenomenon called a soliton. John Scott Russell, an English naval engineer from the 19th century, first described the phenomenon. He described a wave moving upstream in an English Canal at 8 or 9 mph. He chased the wave down on horseback and followed it for a short distance before he lost it.
The upstream waves I saw in Ballona Creek typically traveled upstream at a rate of 10 or 11 mph. That’s just a hair faster than the “long slow distance” pace I rolled at. So I would pick up the pace and race the waves for a few miles, before turning home.
This kind of soliton, a wave of translation, thrives in a abstract setting. You won’t find them in babbling mountain streams, the convoluted twists of the Colorado, or the torrential avalanche of water that rushes down Ballona during LA rainstorms. You can produce them in abstraction of the laboratory, or find them in the laboratory we have impressed on the world where we’ve channelized creeks and straightened rivers.
Racing my companion from a world of abstraction home, I noted that my life had become an abstraction. A year ago I trained with my teammates toward the concrete goal of racing 8 kilometer and 800 meters faster. I usually studied math, but sometimes I studied other topic, and I lived with 3 housemates. Now I trained alone for abstract improvement. I lived alone, and I studied pure Mathematics exclusively.
The abstracted concrete of Ballona inspired me to pause the abstract, and restore some of the concrete of my life. The concept of stopping to reflect in a place your mind has abstracted as a purely a channel for travel is revolting to the task optimizing brain.
Tell your brain to fuck off. Concrete is good for you.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Alex, what a phenomenal experience and awesomely told!
March 17th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Told ya DST rocks!
March 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
What an amazing write-up, Alex. Thanks for sharing!