I had a nice bike ride to work. It was cold but clear and the riding kept me warm enough. I enjoy riding my bike but it's been a while. I haven't ridden as much since I had to have some repairs a few months ago. Just like with a car, I felt less comfortable, always wondering if something would go wrong. In town that's ok, but if I ride beyond the bus lines it would be hard to get back if my bike did mess up. I always want a fall back position.

It's from a life of things not turning out quite like I had planned. It's from too many years of jumping into situations that don't end up like I wanted. I got so I never believed anything would be ok until it actually happened. I never believed I actually had a job until I got my first paycheck (I'm serious). I was always afraid I might get fired. Unfortunately this also meant that I was afraid of committing myself to things or people.

I went to a meeting this evening of the Sky Island Alliance. They had Dave Foreman speaking and I'd never heard him, only heard of him as he's quite an important figure in environmental groups. He was interesting but more interesting is the whole concept of Sky Island Alliance and Wildlands Network, that they are associated with. They want to build corridors between protected land that allow animals to migrate as most wild areas are too small to support much ranging, which is what the large carnivores do.

An interesting fact he brought out was that when you protect the large carnivores, you also protect the smaller species, such as birds, because you keep down the smaller carnivores which eat birds and the smaller mammals. He said that in the canyons around Los Angeles, not exactly wilderness, you can tell which ones still have coyotes, because they have many more birds.

A lady behind me was talking about dreaming about Bush and being so afraid. I don't understand how people can be so afraid of Bush. He's pretty centrist and isn't going turn the country into a theocracy or sell of all public land or starve old people. I didn't like Clinton but I didn't think he would turn the US into a socialist country or get rid of private property or force women to have abortions, like a some conservatives thought. It seems to me, though, that liberals are much more afraid of conservatives, which is silly, since most conservatives are not good at getting laws passed because they don't like being told how to live their lives and can't really get into telling other people how to live their lives. Liberals are much better at that sort of thing. Get real!

It was also nice riding home in the dark. It's basically downhill so the riding was easy and the starts were shining nicely. I had left my muffler at work so it was chillier than I wanted, but still not bad. Since it wasn't worth going home between getting off work and going to the meeting, I spent over an hour in Starbucks reading. I got one of the nice armchairs and enjoyed being able to relax over a nice cup of decaf. I'm not comfortable reading in some coffee places since the seating isn't the best but the Starbucks by work has the nicest armchairs. It's just hard to get one sometimes.