Singular Sam, Marvelous Monika
secret Singular H.Q.
My cup runneth over, thanks to frame designer Sam Alison. He picked me up from the London airport, without even having to park, drove me back to the countryside (Briden’s Camp) home.
At SSWC 07 (Aviemore, Scotland) he lent me one of his powder blue steeds (blogs many years ago) and this year I’ll get to try his latest greatest, a cream colored Singular Gryphon. If I’d remembered to bring my camera umbilicus I could show you, but my packing was sketchy. He has models named for birds, and I suggested he give the underappreciated (in modern culture) vulture its rightful place (floating on a thermal, keenly scanning for leftovers). I guaranteed him that Buzzard, Vulture, Bustard deserve to be bicycle models along with Merlins, Kestrels, Swifts, etc…
When I unpacked, I found: a clean men’s shirt which was missing all its buttons. Must have used ’em on some project and forgotten to replace. I have 30 fine men’s shirts. Just grabbed the top one.
Two pair of socks, of which one is wool the other stretchy. And then a solo sock whose mate is still at home. Probably a reminder that this will be a singular summer, singlespeeding singlemindedly in sublime Ireland…as opposed to being an omen that I’ll lose a leg over here in a tragic auto accident.
No, it won’t happen, but these thoughts do intrude, and i have to beat them back but first you have to hear them.
Three pair of green trousers, most notably the Bonobos kelly green ones with paisley pocket-linings and impressively designed zipper tab. Details. This men’s clothing company is all about the details. Charlie and I have been smiled upon by the god of …um…nerviness. I wrote the company and they agreed that we would be acceptable endorsers of their super top-shelf corduroy wearables (I sent a pic of Charlie in his 1980’s triple-patched thrift shop cords). another pair are pale celery green, made of tee-shirt cotton, very soft and so stretchy they fall down. Took them in a lot, hope they behave. And the last are my race togs, stretchy black tights from North Face ( a gift from a friend).
Three shoes: bike, birkies, and English riding boots. I might try walking barefoot to keep up the rhythm of attempting to improve my I.Q. by teaching my soles to grip the earth, thereby exciting old dead neurocircuitry into action. Is this possible? Can proprioception be topped off?
He showed me the towns (will hope Chdot can insert map here) which alternate between lovely and loathesome, countryish, then council estately, then countryish….and I saw the canal boats on the Grand Union canal (who here remembers the grocery chain in Vermont by that name?).
Monika and he have been together years but one morning they were lolling in bed and he heaved a huge sigh, wondering aloud….’should we get married?’
They did it in her country at a beautiful painted old building, a mere two months ago: 11-6-11 . Easy to remember and fortuitous in the numerical balance department. If you’re into that…Wedding shots showed a couple of excellent Czech traditons: sweeping up a broken plate together (shows partnership in good times and bad) and Sam had to prove his mettle by sawing a big log in half. Three inches diameter is big, right?
They met at a summer work internship program in Czech Republic, she was in the same program.
I toasted them with ‘ mamrada zhivoty navenkovia’ (‘I like the country life’), one of my three memorized (since 1984 when Kvetoslav Palov taught me to say ’em) phrases: Bes problemu, and Vsecho moc skodi are the other two. The last one refers to the fact that too much of something isn’t good. That enough is perfect.
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Jacquie Phelan's Weblog 
Singular cycles, Czech phrases, clothing bafflement… what more could I want in a JP blog post?