It’s April! That means 30 Days of Biking and biking every day and hopefully blogging about it each day.

Two days of riding with friends up and down hills–Council Crest yesterday and the less-horrible part of Mount Scott today, because apparently I didn’t make it clear how awful it was (see day 25). Skipping the steeper, hillier, busier square-shaped loop after climbing up through Lincoln Memorial Cemetery made things better, but it’s still quite a mountain. Oh, and then we went and did my five #hillkillerz hill repeats together since our ride was shorter than usual. It was really nice having friends do my hill with me. One of them has a mellow hill and one has a very short and steep hill so you can probably guess which of the two I’d like to join for his hill.

Not so much today since I had company to keep me busy, but on Sunday when I wove my way up the cemetery hill alone (well, alone with Pixie–sorry Pixie!) I pondered all the space we use for cemeteries. Sure these hilly cemeteries were initially built way out of town, but the city has sprawled towards them and swallowed them up, making them prime real estate that’s already spoken for and probably wanting to do its own expanding. The other cemetery we ride through has lots of trees, but this one is mostly acres and acres of grass-covered hills filled with graves. I imagined if each plot had a tall tree on it and how visitors would weave in and out of a beautiful forest to pay their respects. How different it would feel. I wondered if urbanists are on the case of cemetery land use and didn’t find as many articles as I thought I would, but here’s a good one: Cemeteries use a lot of space and are terrible for the environment. Is there a better way? I intend to dig for more information now that I’m curious. My mom died 20 years ago and donated her body to science. My brother and I wanted something tangible to visit so we bought a little plaque in front of a tree in a memorial garden in Santa Barbara. I don’t know if that’s the best solution, but it seems pretty sustainable.

Yesterday’s miles: 21
Today’s miles: 18.6
Total April miles: 535.3