Idle weekend banter

Was unplugged for quite a bit of the weekend. Instead of being glued to my laptop I started Easter Sunday morning with coffee and a bagel at Panera Bread and then headed out on the River Walk trail. I spent some time as I walked wondering about the history of the river. Even though it was early morning on a cloudy day I was still grateful for the shade of the trees. [And I got online to look up the Kern River Parkway Foundation later in the day to see who is helping to plant trees and “re-water” the river.]

River Walk Easter Sunday March 31 2013 (1)

Sonya Christian, River Walk in Bakersfield, March 31, 2013

I am glad that the city is investing in parks and other recreational activities to improve the quality of living here in Bakersfield. I was surprised and happy to see that there are 52 parks that are listed on the website at http://www.bakersfieldcity.us/recreation/Parks/ParkMapComp/bestlmap.htm

Not sure where Bakersfield stacks up against cities that have walking and biking paths. Bicylcing.com, http://www.bicycling.com/, has ranked the 50 best cities for biking and San Francisco is the only California city to make the top 10. With those hills, you must be in top form to be able to bike the city. New York is ranked #7, right ahead of San Francisco, and my best exposure to the New York biking experience is through the movie Premium Rush. It is a great movie and one that I recommend. Manhola Dargis, one of my favorite movie reviewers, of the New York Times captures the gist of the movie. Check out her well written review at http://tinyurl.com/carteqy. Dargis ends the review with “Mr. Koepp has found the right balance here between genre seriousness and un-self-seriousness to turn the disposable into the enjoyable.”

Here are a few excerpts for you movie buffs:

Pushing pedal to the mettle and its breezily thin, goofy story to the breaking point, “Premium Rush” provides just about all the late summer air-conditioned relief you could hope for. It’s buoyant dumb-fun, a ticking-clock thriller about a New York bicycle messenger who has to get from here to there without being taken out…..

An embrace of the real has become a recurrent element in contemporary action cinema, with digitally created and enhanced spectacle being deployed alongside actual bodies moving through, bouncing off and slamming into the physical world. These practical stunts function somewhat like collecting vinyl records, taking up sewing, baking your own bread, handwriting thank you notes and stripping down your Schwinn in that they’re reassuring totems of a reality that at times seems to be disappearing in the slipstream of digital ones and zeros……