Almost immediately, my heart started racing, I felt chilled, and I thought, "oh great, now I'm going to get a panic attack on top of everything." [Note: for the uniniated, I'll just say that my most recent bout with severe asthma left me with a supreme distrust of drugs in general. Long story.] So I hopped back out of bed, grabbed my glasses and the laptop, and am now sitting here in the living room at 3:42am, still occasionally coughing. I feel this is a ripoff. Drugs with a side effect of "an exaggerated sense of well-being" should not then cause one to be an insomniac. I'm utterly awake right now. Dammit.
um....yes.
The upside of going to the doctor today, though, was that I got to sleep in
a little bit (useless as that turned out to be since I was up coughing all
night) and then ride to the doctor in San Jose and then back up to work
in Palo Alto. The ride from my apartment to the doctor wasn't particularly
interesting; it's a stretch of 280S that's mostly residental, flat, and
straight. The ride from the doctor to work, though...that's one of my
favorite short rides. I hopped back on 280, headed north, and as soon as
you get out of San Jose and then Cupertino and then Sunnyvale, it turns
really pretty. 280 curves through Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, and the
scenery switches from corporate buildings and apartments to huge rolling
green hills with enormously expensive houses littering the top ridges.
There's lots of farmland around there, too, and often in the summer if I
take this route, I'll pass a lot of cows grazing. It always reminds me
of being back in Wisconsin. :) It's really interesting to me how the hills
here are brown and yellow in the summertime and lush and green in the winter.
It makes sense, since winter is the rainy season and it never gets cold
enough to actually kill anything, but it's so backwards from the Midwest
that it always throws me off a little.
So, yeah, it was great riding today. It was about 60 degrees and sunny -- warm enough to not feel cold while riding, but still chilly enough to wear my scarf and big poofy gloves. Perfect riding weather.
OK, I'm off to read a little bit and then try to fall asleep again. Stupid medications. I want to talk some more about the last entry on danger and some of the feedback I got from it, but I think that'll wait until I've had some sleep.