London

   You know things have gotten bad when the "climb" to the top of a park in London that you could jog up in dress shoes on a lark if challenged, gets your thighs to screaming, your breath harder to pace, your speed down to commuter level.
    The best I can say is that, like an Englishman, I've kept my weight down. I'm become like one of the wirey business boys you see here jogging home with his backpack full of the day's business clothes and computer. Who runs or rides with a backpack in the States? There must be an equivalent plus ca change plus la meme phrase about how much more different we are when we get more the same: us and the Brits.
    Truly unbridgeable.
    Speaking of which they're the best things you see on a bike here- the bridges crossing the Thames. Or at least the views of the ancient river town. The bridges themselves sadly have been stripped of almost any ornament, London bridge looks like it was designed in a car park, but the view as you idle back over it is remarkable. Thousands of years of human history huddled by the banks. "I heard there was a sacred chord..." You look down on the town and it seem to rise in the air all about you.
    Anyhow when I get back, a few weeks riding the monster climbs of LA will cost me less since, I've not become a Clydesdale on all the British butter and beer. Not from lack of trying. Weird how light you can become as you age. Melting away.
    Riding in cities is hopeless. And London the most hopeless of all. You have to throttle down and decide it's just going to be an exploration lane to lane, town to town for an hour or more until you hit some kind of suburban road that leads out for 20 miles. Past canal boats and barges and urban parks built on bomb sites below bridges so narrow to the river only one body can pass at a time. The general politeness of the English excels here - maintaining the daily rhythm, unravelling the thousand potential conflicts with a nod and a cheers. I enjoy them immensely in situations like that, in formal informality they're great. But slow down and stop -  it's like trying to grab a dream. Firm in the mind, precious and close, but incorporeal.
   Oh the places I could have gone, oh the time, alas