Today was a great day. For starters, I went on a bike ride. I rode about three miles over the course of roughly two hours, and still had the energy to walk to the store and back when I got home. It seems hard to believe that such a small bike ride could elicit a massive endorphin rush, but it sure did make me feel good.

The ride was basically a round trip to Stanford, with a stop at my office and at the Post Office. Since one of the goals of the day was to get some sun on my bald head I opted to not wear a helmet. What can I say? Some times you have to live dangerously.

It was in many ways a typical ride to Stanford. When the light turned green at Park and El Camino, I started to ride through and all these left turners just rode right at me. Well, now those people can say that a bald lady on a beat-up three speed yelled at them and called them cuss words.

More living dangerously perhaps, but it felt great to shout out and claim my space on the road.

But who can be mad for long when hundreds of thousands of California poppies are lining your path and the sun is shining? Hello to my friends in grounds: Serra looks fabulous, thank you very much!

After I stopped into the office and made sure that they haven't turned my cubicle into a storage unit, I rode very slowly and happily over to the Post Office. Stanford is just so beautiful. Sometimes when I am doing a lot of field work, I actually get sick of certain routes and have to change up my walk or bike ride. Today I soaked in every second as I rode by Arrillaga (busy: looked like a swim meet was on); the volleyball courts (occupied; still too cool for bikinis); the Band Shack (Wait? Are they still there?); Serra Mall (heavy in bike traffic only) and up Lasuen (event causing traffic at IOD - will I get through alive?)

Well I did. After the P.O. I rode past the site of the old bike shop - R.I.P. - and then along Campus Drive to Escondido Road. Could the Munger Project be more of a behemoth? I rode home through College Terrace and saw enough flowering trees to keep me for many a day when I won't feel so ambitious.

The perfect sequel to my happy bike ride was finding the Memorial Service for Coretta Scott King on C-span. I saw a good part of it.

One of my greatest challenges right now is that I have "chemo brain" and it is hard for me to focus and keep on top of things. And when I say "right now" I mean pretty since I started chemo on January 5. For example, it took me two weeks to read a Grisham, and sometimes I had to put it down because it felt too complicated.

But somehow I was able to completely focus on the orations at the memorial service and was moved by the words of Bill Clinton, Attallah Shabazz, and Rev. Bernice King.

As a person who has opted to saturate my body with poisons that may or may not kill replicating cancer cells that may or may not exist, I found it captivating that Rev. King talked about her Mother's struggle with ovarian cancer and her choice of an alternative health clinic in Mexico as her treatment/battle ground.

While I have chosen the chemo path with eyes wide open and a big fat insurance policy to keep me knee deep in multi-colored chemicals, I don't like the institution of this course of treatment, and I don't like the way the practitioners treat me.

First of all, it is completely impersonal. An oncologist or their lackey takes a look at your pathology report, pops your numbers into some database and next thing you know, your arm is out and they are pumping whatever combination of drugs into you as well as giving you a handful of pills to swallow so that you won't completely feel the effects of them.

After you get the drugs, you feel terrible and your brain doesn't work right. Then you go meet with the oncologist and they talk too fast and really could care less if you eat Kale or Krispy Kremes and then have the nerve to comment on your strong iron counts AFTER rolling their eyes when you tell them about your iron rich diet.

Okay. As Mark Twain would say: "I am prone to exaggeration." And I have unwittingly changed the subject. I do not think I can do justice to Dr.King's words or her sentiment, but I found her call for a rebirth compelling in light of her Mother's complications from ovarian cancer and her choice to seek treatment in an unconventional manner.

Don't worry anyone, I am not going to quit chemo. But I probably will be exposing my fabulous bald head to the sun's beguiling rays and yelling at people who think that bikes don't count. More often I will be thanking God for the millions of orange poppies and green grass and people like Coretta Scott King who answered the calling to make the world a better place.