Jacquie Phelan's Weblog

The human life has its rhythms, its chord progressions, its melodic and discordant elements. A very familiar beginning and guaranteed end are shared by all, but no two are alike. The impossible uniqueness of the Music each human makes of their life is what makes me want to stick around.

Without having to think about it, I sort people I meet beginning with the original yes/no that means I will linger more than five minutes with him or her. I am now confident that it is because of my love of hearing an individual’s “music” and the fact that more players can mean more ….well, more beautiful interactions, unexpected outcomes, greater depth and complexity and yes, some incidental problem solving…particularly MINE, but mutuality gets double points.

My friends always add to my song (and I to theirs presumably) that –like birds– we are warbling insistently to the world.

I needed a long time to figure out what kind of so-called artist I am, very much thanks to the nudges and kicks of those Muses I find.

I never learned to paint, photograph or write. It used to bother me, but I just dive in anyway. And like dropping over a little lip into a rocky descent, I trust those leveled pedals. The bike is the gimbal that keeps me poised on a poisonous planet.

So here are four basic Themes currently rolling around in my head, loosened by travel. I KNOW I am going to make my “fortune” as a result of my prying myself off a rock and letting myself be the drifty, confused woman with the roiling interior life.

The four tunes are:

Love really does make the world go ’round.

Physical movement every day is essential to healthy hospitalproof living.

Accentuate your strengths.

And of course ride your bike.

Bicycles are the Perfect Conductor that actually weaves these all together.

I sit on the floor in a Kassel walk-up hotel that has been refurbed into a destination bar called Foster’s Garden. There is no chair, no desk… Just computers and wires and speakers and a pile of CDs, electric plug with six plastic piglets

An Australianish sort of bierstube with four other levels (billiards, music, sports on TV). I have never been in any. I just trudge up the six flights to the reassuringly cluttered halftime home of Georges Koch, who saw my story in the magazine (BIKE, from Germany)

The story can be read or seen anyway a few pages down on my photos…scanned article is at least lookable to you Anglphones. The title is “Tea Scares Away The Men” !

He wrote and said he had never seen HIS ideas in a bike mag.

He rides with soft soled kayaker shoes, five euros at the local discount store. He has a three speed internal hub that is combined with an 8 speed rear, three chainrings in the front….but the granny is a hard-to-find 20 tooth. And he has a VERY unusual diet. Which must be shared in Phelanfood at some point.

Now these are NOT my ideas, but the pictures he saw showed a nonconformist (drop bars, wack outfit) likely to be open to Other Ideas. So he wrote me an email and asked if I would like to trade places and for once be the beginner, and let HIM, a two year convert to the bicycle life, be the Expert. I love flipping things around. I wrote back “YES!”.

Georges sent for my precise bike set up. Charlie provided it (remember I only ride the bike, I don’t know the set up, the repair, etc)…and now I have the use of a nice silver bike which almost mimics my riding position, save the too-high b.b. which is endemic and seems unavoidable in modern massmade bikes.

I am riding it with soft shoes. My fuel is mostly quark (look it up, it’s not just a subatomic particle), oil and fruit, with doses of 90% cacao…I want to go on the record as having been in Germany and NOT eaten every single incredible pastry in the window.

I can do that after this Experimental Symphony.

For the moment, it is all just a different tune using a completely different set of intervals, a new scale. It will definitely be part of making my fortune, since it is entirely up to me to organize the libretto.

Oh yes, my German is improving, too.

~ by jacquiephelan on May 21, 2008.

Posted in Cycling, Grand European Tour 2008, Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay, Ride