Attachment Issues

•July 12, 2010 • 1 Comment

This morning, while drying ourselves off in the cramped concrete bathroom at the local pool, the Insanely Early Birds talked about having to go through one’s clutter and deciding what to pitch.

“My daughter won’t let me throw out anything from the fifties” someone piped up from inside the toilet stall.

Alix agreed that good stuff is often wasted, and that maybe she could ‘help out’ by taking some of Miss DeClutter’s junk. “I know my daughter will just srow it avay later anyvay” she laughed. (She’s an artist, and her German accent makes everything she says  more interesting.)

I asked how in the world anyone can decide what has “no value” and must be pitched.

Exhibit A: a cute little cardboard box probably from the 1950’s…Bell telephone must have had their own  pin-supply store. How else can you explain the beautiful die-cut, curved side-flaps, the triple-thick card stock, the undeniable sturdiness of the thing, tossed into a dumpster when the phone company site was declared a superfund toxic waste zone?

Well, I don’t plan on eating the pins, just holding my swimsuit together with them or something.

I know I have a little problem, and no daughter to help with the throwing out….

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Prouty Ride Tomorrow

•July 9, 2010 • Leave a Comment

My cider-fomenting pen-pal, Stephen Wood came to mind this afternoon, as I read the great M.F.K. Fisher.

She writes so beautifully, and food is usually the topic. My eye fell upon “How To Cook A Wolf”…her WWII-era treatise on coping with rationing and the million insults of living in wartime (geddit? The wolf at the door?).

To read her words on how to stretch cake, eggs, and do without butter bring a pang to the soul.And she reminds the reader that when peace returns, not to stop cooking consciously…

We Americans are pretty spoiled. Even in the endless wars we’re in, the homebodies are only missing fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, not butter, sugar, or meat.

But wait, I was mentioning cider…I threw Miss Fisher aside and jotted a casual hello to Stephen Wood, the perpetrator of Farnum Hill Cider.  I ‘met’ him on the television–the show called “Botany of Desire”…he was the guy who spoke with cheeks full of heirloom apple.  How could I NOT write a fan letter; his speaking style–go ahead and get the show on er…Net flix? Verizon? sorry, I’m clueless about grabbing past emissions out of the air.  He found my note a half year later, and emailed back, with some cider samples following.
He wrote back:
Funny you should write today.  I’m doing a 100 mile cancer research benefit ride tomorrow (with a team of friends called “Eyes on the Prize”), in what looks like a whole day of thunderstorm.  I’ve done this ride for years, but don’t fit in very well.  I ride my only bike, which is a heavy old Hardrock mountain bike with bolted-on baskets (for sandwiches, beer, tools, etc).  I don’t have any bike clothes, so I wear shorts and a shirt and my reading glasses and my work boots. I’ve been on a bike six times since the last Prouty ride (July ‘09) and have trained as usual: put air in the tires, check the derailleurs, oil the chain, and stop bumming cigarettes the week before.

Usually works pretty well.

It takes me about 9-10 hours, which may be a problem this time, because the Prouty organizers are planning to turn people around if they don’t reach the checkpoints by certain times.  So this year, I plan to carry a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and a printout of the page that shows I raised $2000 for their cause, and maybe a small stick.

I shrieked at the idea of training by ‘not bumming ciggies’.  We must notify the folks at Fellownews!

A new training technique…

Promise of rain. Charlie, Stephen, Hank.

And therein renewed a fine blab session with “cider boy”.
IF the stars align correctly and I’m conscientious in my self-marketing practices, I will ride NEXT year’s Prouty cancer-research ride, with a few teaching opportunities at Poverty Gulch orchardgrounds thrown in.

The heirloom apple orchards stretch out before me in a perfect future, beckoning…


Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

breakfast with rose petal tea

•July 5, 2010 • 3 Comments

It was foggy this morning. I have tea every day, but on a foggy morning it’s even more wonderful. I use PG tips, a pretty ordinary (British) blend, ‘corrected’ with dried petals from “Fragrant Cloud”, also shown.
Listening to Democracy Now, where Amy Goodman interviews Michael Moore who reminded me of the loud, mixed response at his Oscar-winning moment: the directors and actors cheering the solidarity of the documentary film makers ( and the anti-war speech one of them began to make until the band struck up), and the heavy booing from the upper level where all the sponsors and bankers sat!

Apparently, only a couple of minutes before, Moore got an 8 minute standing ovation–“bigger than Kurosawa’s”, an official told Mr. Moore.

The aftermath for Moore was death threats on all of his family, physical attacks, vilification in the New Yorker and NYT, house vandalized, and body guard budget. You gotta hope he’s allowed to live a long-enough life.

Back to frivoli-tea…I am going to produce a chapter this morning–the Fabulous Me book.
Powered by dried flowers, hot water and a couple of tired crumpets slathered with Lemon Crud.  Oh, wait. Sun’s out.

Possible change in planz. Check out this Zippy ‘toon. Sums it up.

patented lid design!

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Pacific Sun, extra, extra!

•July 2, 2010 • 1 Comment

By Reed Alabowditch

Jacquie Phelan has written a rangy, long-winded account of the rough road fat tire cyclists have had in Marin County since the sport/pastime/religion was reputed to have evolved here in the 1970’s.

Her account is deeply personal, and has enough bad puns in it to irritate even the most thick-skinned word butchers.  Residents of Marin get the weekly “Specific Pun” (as we call it here) free; all  supermarkets carry a stack of them. For you out of towners, I’m happy to mail you an autographed (sorry, bike-o-graphed) copy for five clams sent to Bat box 757 , Fairfax CA 94978.

There are about eight great photos in the (paper version) that aren’t seen in the online copy, alas.

Can she turn this account into a book? We are hoping so. The last twenty years (her prime, technically speaking) all she’s done is left “droppings”.   If you didn’t see the actual paper in the free newspaper boxes at assorted fine media outlets, you can take a stab at all 4,000 turgid words of Ms. Phelan’s version of “bicycler” history.

Faintly related: a transcript of an oral interview with Marin County’s greatest conservationist, Peter Behr, who helped preserve thousands of acres of land all over the county, most notably the Pt. Reyes peninsula and “Marincello” (a metropolis that, although approved,  luckily  never was built).  The Pacific Sun had a huge role in the Pt. Reyes preservation, because there was no money to buy it. Somehow, every legislator in Washington D.C. got a copy of the Sun, with its photos by the great Pirkle Jones, and were convinced to earmark funds to purchase the seashore to prevent development.
I get shivers thinking about it.

He also mentions that being a practicing lawyer and a politician is a conflict of interest, which is why he didn’t maintain a practice when he was a supervisor and a congressman. Such integrity would be considered “quaint” among our current supes!

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Ride To Golden Toad Camp

•June 28, 2010 • 1 Comment


“Golden Toad” is a camp dreamed up by Kristi and Jeremy McMaster, a pair of organic chef/musician/world music entrepreneurs up in uh..gee, I don’t even know.  THEIR friend Renee (who is remotely my friend as well)  turned thirty, hosting  a party-within-a-music-camp in the redwoods up around Occidental, with 250 of her  musical family.  I wangled a way to get my C.R.A.P. (collated, rudely assorted packing) up there by  !?@#)$#*-mobile,  while I rode my (heart)cycle and “saved the planet” (hypocrisy alert!). Actually I was building up an appetite. I’d heard about a legendary chocolate cake by Buffalo, the in-house baker.

The first thing I heard sounded like I’d entered the medina in Fez….I hadn’t heard live middle eastern music before, but I adore the KPFA music of the world program. A fit young woman (Liz Strong)– sans makeup , sans frills, zills or harem pants (more like harem bloomers with a nifty squarish ruffle at the knee) performed belly dance probably the way the women did for their OWN entertainment in days of yore.  Mesmerizing….

It was a magic three days, the best of it impossible to separate out from the tangle of densely packed musical opportunities.
What pushed me into check-writing mode (a very rare state hereabouts, I’m sure you regulars know) was that Vasen, a Swedish trio whose style of traditionally-rooted and freshly arranged music is transfixing.

The trio have been together a couple decades, and their mutual respect and playful banter bely brilliant (they’d say ‘lucky’) chemistry. This infects the listener with a similarly brotherly feeling of mutual regard, and by the end of the concert, or class, or session with them, you are ready to sign up for becoming Swedish by osmosis, and joining “Team Vasen“.   Such a team really exists (in Bloomington Indiana, where they play at the Lotus Festival), and the team…well, I’ll let the link tell it all..

Overloaded with chances to listen to Turkish Cumbuc (pron: joomboosh)–an aluminium/wood 12-string banjo, saz, nyckelharpa…the camp students and teachers waddle or gallop from tent to room to pavillion, (even with schedule in hand, I couldn’t find the ones I’d chosen), developing hill-climbing legs (the camp is laid out on an angle-of-repose slope). Everyone got a workout, especially the  cigarette smokers.

"Toss me the loofah, will ya?

It was strange to know absolutely no one…well, Renee. She was  radiant, with her pink hair and squeezebox, performing at the “Teahouse of the Mullah Nasrudin’s Donkey” where the chef special is boiled sea cow. I preferred the chicken.

All around, pillows and mats were strewn, seemingly in case of  sudden gusts of gravity, or contact high or something.

I saw a banjo broken, and the frightening situational aftermath…

I rode home and retained barely anything.

My banjo (was not the broken one) and guitar have yet to find there way here…

monterey cypress

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

P Stands For Purgatory

•June 22, 2010 • 2 Comments

Re-railleur clamp for Noah

Purgatory is that place where the mildly sinful are cleansed until fit for heaven.
Since Marin is quite heavenly from a landscape perspective, but we’re not allowed on Clouds 9, 11, 14-124, I think of this place as purgatory. Until riding single track is re-calibrated to be a venial sin.

Posted in Uncategorized

Chickens!

•June 14, 2010 • 1 Comment

What the pluck? by Fiammetta

Yesterday Peter and Pilot Light showed me their vacations pix–a virtual visit to Leyden, Netherlands…and then shots from the Italian street art festival which I’ve missed for sixteen consecutive years, thanks to careful non-planning. This picture of chickens sold me on scooting down to San Ruffle even in the 90-degree heat.

Fairfax festival was in full swing, and it seemed like everyone who ever had a tie-dyed teeshirt, flowing skirt, or ponytail had converged on the town green, which was invisible under all those sandaled feet.

San Ruffle was less hectic, until I found the four streets that were being covered with chalk.
Thrilling.

Tia Warner teaches A.P. art at San Ruffle H.S., and her kids were there, along with about a hundred other smudge-legged artists under makeshift hats.  The H.S. jazz band was hot.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

The Lady Doth Protest

•June 13, 2010 • 2 Comments

A labia of love

Mimosa Pale is a Finnish artist who doesn’t  get mad about how tiresome the patriarchy is for uppity women to contend with.

She just gets Eve in.  (EVIL PUN ALERT).

Here’s her vaginabike taxi– a feminine mobility monument that you get to crawl into, and be towed about in flat-flat city Helsinki.

If I understand correctly, the piece was rejected at the museum show.

Nevertheless, it’s such a great idea, and such a startling, funny picture I had to share it with my Gen(i)tle Riders.

Her home page (see first link on her name) features her unique rain-producing umbrella.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Put a bicyclist on the NH tourism map!

•June 8, 2010 • 10 Comments

OK,  this is a stretch.

My friend,  Lynne Tolman who works too hard running the Major Taylor Association an’ stuff in Massachusetts, is competing for the “I LOVE IT HERE” New Hampshire photo contest.
If you want to drop kick a cyclist  into first place, you have to finish reading this,  click and vote for Lynne T. holding a paper sign. Then she’ll stop nagging me, saying that I’m personally responsible for her ah…not winning this contest.
I think I daren’t ask you Gentle Riders for any other favors for awhile…

Bear in mind, the guy in front of the NH capitol is ahead by some votes, and she wants to put him in the gutter, and beat him by a tire’s width.

Oh, wait a minute…. The top vote getter is simply “eligible to win”. Damn, I missed the fine print.
You are free to not bother.  They just want to yank us  around. There’s enough of that already on the web (why I’m not on spacebook)…

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags:

Cunningham #10c Gone, $500 reward when returned

•June 7, 2010 • 2 Comments

Our friend Doug Herst’s bike was swiped from the Koffee Klatsch in Fairfax Saturday, June 5.

Another friend lost his Rivendell there earlier in the week.
There might be a thieving operation culling the crop of bikes laid against the shop windows, making me wish there were cameras trained on the side of the building, as WELL as at the traffic light.

Nothing matches the kick in the stomach feeling of a bicycle stolen. OK, wait. There are some things worse (BP oil spill, death of a child, right….must keep things in perspective).  Still, most people will tell you it’s way worse than having a car stolen (perhaps this is because I belong to a very biased segment of the population).

It’s an unpainted gray aluminum (impeccably maintained for 27 years)  fat-seat post (not seen often), drop-bar mountain bike with a type 2 fork …No pictures of the bike exist, so I’m just putting up one of CC’s….

it resembles this one.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »