Ah, people, people…why on earth are you so kind as to keep checking back here to see if…finally, at long last…I have posted anything new.

Your long nightmare has ended.

Let there be no doubt how grateful I am to know that you still care, what with the several notes wondering if I was all right, what I’ve been up to, etc. etc. Yes, I’m fine, really, I am. In fact, my health is the best that it’s been in months, thank you very much. Maybe that’s what I’ve been up to – out enjoying the end of summer and the beginning of my favorite time of the year. The weather has been temperate; the A/C hasn’t been running nearly as much lately.

I went to the LA County Fair with a friend a weekend or so ago, and that was very much fun. It’s very big (duh) and they have at least 7 buildings full of commercial exhibits, selling everything from Super Chamois (which I sprang for) to mops (which my friend sprang for) to jewelry cleaners to ladders to encyclopedias to health assessments to massage chairs to grandfather clocks to spas to…well, you get the idea. Egg roll on a stick, tri-tip sandwich, corn on the cob – there’s nothing like fair food.

I was intent on heading to Bakersfield last Saturday to see my nephew Nick play football followed by a visit to the Great Kern County Fair. But alas, I suffered the first major breakdown ever to my trusty vehicle. A serpentine/fan belt pulley disintegrated as I headed up into the Grapevine, taking me only as far as Smoky Bear Road before everything started shutting down. A Triple-A tow got me back to Castaic and a garage that was able to get the parts and get me back on my way. It was after 2 by then, though…I had missed Denise’s Swedish pancakes, some quality time with the family and, by the time I would have arrived in Bakersfield, the entire football game. So I headed home instead. Steve and Denise have graciously invited myself and that mystery friend to Bakersfield this weekend for another attempt at the fair and to see star attraction Nelson.

In the meantime, work continues to be very slow. This is supposed to be political season, but we’re seeing very little of that type of work coming through the DP department. I’m not privvy to what’s on the horizon, so an onslaught may be in the offing.

See? You haven’t missed much.

I bid a fond adieu to summer of 2006. Although techincally summer doesn’t end for another couple of weeks, and the weather certainly won’t reflect a change in the season for a few weeks after that, school has started, the sunlight takes on a new quality, and my next offical non-weekend day off doesn’t occur until the end of November.

There’s also an election coming up in two months, and that means a busy stretch at work. Candidates will be inundating their constituencies with targeted marketing opportunites (what, you think I’m gonna call it junk mail?). Judging from the primary election last spring, most of the mail will be from Democratic hopefuls – in fact, I don’t think we mailed a single piece for a Republican. And it seemed that every one of the fliers we sent had a picture of our illustrious, photogenic mayor and future guberatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa. Nothing has yet crossed my desk for this go-round, but it’ll start any day now.

As it was another hot weekend in the San Fernando Valley, most of it was spent indoors in the air-conditioned comfort of my palatial apartment – with one notable exception. I finally got around to airing up the tires on my bike a few weeks ago, and last week determined to take a ride this past Saturday. So I dug out the bike carrier, mounted up the car and headed south through the Topanga Canyon to Malibu. I had read about an excellent low-effort bike path that wended its way along the coast, so I parked the car at Will Rogers State Beach and pedaled south to see where the path would take me.

The temperature was perfect – it never got over 80 all afternoon, and a breeze blowing in from the Pacific helped to keep things nice and cool. The powers that be built two pathways – one for pedestrians and the other for bikes (skaters seem to think they qualify, and even some pedestrians, for that matter). I passed some members-only beach clubs where the chaise lounges (and their resident sunbathers) were packed together cheek-to-jowl, trying to keep their extremities within the shady borders of their personal umbrella space. As I approached Santa Monica, the parking lots began in earnest, and the pathway passed under the famous Santa Monica Pier (with its amusemement park rides) and onward to the even more famous Venice Beach Boardwalk. Beach volleyball games were in full swing, the muscles at Muscle Beach were flexing and sweat-glistened in the bright California sunshine.

I continued on past the end of the boardwalk, and after another half-mile or so the path moved away from the beach onto the city streets in order to get around the marina at…well, Marina Del Ray. So I went inland for a mile or so, then the path returned to its southerly course, with the marina and its forest of swaying sailboat masts to my right. It was then that I had the bright idea to relieve some discomfort in the crotchal area by adjusting my bike seat a little bit – oh, that I had done that earlier, but the damage was done, and that turned out to be the halfway point of the ride, and I headed back the way I came.

Back past the marina, past Venice – goodness, had I really ridden this far? Past the enticing green grass and shady palm trees where I just HAD to take a little rest. I tuned into the end of the Giants-Cubs game on my phone and thought to myself, ‘now isn’t this the life? Giants on the radio, I mean phone, lying back with my helmet as my pillow, listening to the surf roll in and feeling the breeze through my non-existant hair – aaah. But then it was time to finish the ride back to the car – the longest hundred miles I’ve ever ridden – or at least it seemed that way.

All in all, it ended up being just about 17 miles or so, and none really the worse for wear the next day, or even today. There was one thing, though – I had forgotten the sunscreen, so my arms were pretty pink this weekend, along with the back of my neck (which, with no hair, looks very much like a shar pei). Luckily I was wearing long pants, and although I did have my helmet on, the sun managed to finds its way through the ventilation holes on top, so there are several oddly-shaped pink spots on my scalp.

One more thing – I had a celebrity sighting at the beginning of the trip. I was walking across Pacific Coast Highway at Sunset Boulevard (heading away from the beach) when I saw three women approaching me in the opposite direction (heaidng toward the beach), being towed by a large dog and each enjoying a freshly-bought Starbucks something or other. As they drew near, I recognized the one on the right as the one and only Meredith Baxter, who played Michael J. Fox’s mom on Family Ties. She smiled. I smiled. She beckoned me over, I took her in my arms and gave her a big kiss and my phone number.

It’s all true – except for that very last part.