Jacquie Phelan's Weblog

Damp Wombat in Cleveland

•July 2, 2009 • 6 Comments

Thanks to Andy the former track racer and stellar pack steerer, a quartet of us (Georgie the Tokyo bike messenger, Philippe the French sculptor and illustrator, Andy and me) sailed thru the soft rain on the frightening roads of Ohio, no shoulder to speak of…and lots of semis passing us. Even now and then an irate motorist will lean on the horn. So far none of us has been hit, but if you could see the scary roads we’re on, you’d probably be praying like I am.

It’s strange–we’re in a mega religious part of the country–the churches are everywhere. It’s …well, I must say that the huge black billboard near Feezle road in Pennsylvania that said “God Saw That”…unnerved me.
Bryan Reckham (sp?) the artist from S.F. was in front of me….a bird dived into his front wheel, and a mass of feathers bounced back out of the whirring spokes, a tiny body dropped onto the road. He hadn’t even felt it.

I feel a bit bad for all those squished turtles, moles, raccoons–whole family of them dead in the middle of rural Pennsylvania–and almost identify with them.

Because I’m human, I will not be pulverized into leather like the snakes, porcupines, and other vertebrates whose white backbones and a mass of black-brown muscle and blood are the only proof that a little less fauna reside in the countryside here abouts.
IF someone is killed, it will wreck the ride.

If it is a drunk driver, it will be the ultimate irony.

All kinds of road signs state: “DUI : you can’t afford it”.
Then, a mile up the road there are other billboards offering legal assistance for people who have been ‘stuck’ with a DUI. They blare messages like “call 217-GET-FREE” and show car keys dangling from a hip pocket.

Just got back from a great get-together with she-mail penpal Ann Henderson of Cleveland, and her girlfriend Mary, both avid cycle tourist/advocate/artists. If I can figure out how to upload pix I will put Mary’s custom “I love my bike” and “one less car” mudguards up…Ann sponsored me with a lavish Turkish supper at a nice spot up in Shaker Heights, a tree-lined hundred year old suburb with stunning old homes each finer than the one before. The rain had moved on, and now it was becoming a classic summer night, the kind that demands you explore the city on two wheels, preferably guided by fun loving knowledgeable hosts.

A far cry from our ride into town…They finished by showing me the Peter Lewis building by Gehry… the one that Howard Kunstler hates with an especial passion.

You decide for yourself.

Posted in 42 ride

SAVED by the ProBikes People of Pittsburgh PA

•June 30, 2009 • 7 Comments

Whooopppeee. I am at a real computer in a bike shop in Pittsburgh. Jake, Brain, Soupie and CHUCK have welcomed me into their Forbes Ave. bike haven.

Old Cunninghamroadbike is in need of a good tapping job…I’d cross-threaded the rear mech when reassembling it out of the box (I know I should have let a mechanic do it, but I thought: come on, how hard is it to screw in a derailleur?).

So, from NYC to Pittxbg my chain crunkled and groused, and I prayd a lot. As you might know, I’m on the Northern team of the 42 Ride, accompanied by 20 others… tomorrow will be my first day on a healthy bike, thanks to: Soupie the great, Brain, Jake, Alan, Chuck, Anya, Johnny, Jeff, Todd and Major Tom the little “Boxton” terrier. Uh, is that enough people in one shop? Maybe not.

Maybe the other eight will be bummed I failed to meet them, BUT there is the big party at Peter’s Pub from 6-8 tonight.
Wish me luck on the next fifty stages of this ride…

luv, me.

Pittsburgh is the city of bikerly love… heh.

Posted in 42 ride

Poor Little Skink

•June 21, 2009 • 1 Comment

Gotcha

Digging in the full bucket o’ slops for the last time until I return in August, I heard a little noise, and saw a flash of blue under my shovel. A baby skink wriggled in the dirt. When I picked ‘er up, she struggled less than usual (I sometimes do go for skinks, just to see if my hand is fast enough).

After a couple of photos, I went back to the compost heap and laid the thing down…and she moved a bit but not much. Dragging her tail, and her infintessimal back legs not functioning, she buried her head and forearms in the soft dirt. Her blue tail stood out, an improbable jewel.

Lifted the tail with a thin twig and it dropped back down, inert.

Oh, dear. I broke her back (I hope with the shovel, which was inadvertent skink mayhem, as opposed to capture, which was idly purposeful).
Feeling sick.
Then I remember: there are much bigger paralyzed creatures.

Does it matter, size?
No, eh?
Thought not.
I’m gonna go check and see if she’s moved more..

Yes. OK, she either got eaten, or dragged herself out of view, or …

I have to move my fingers across a keyboard, and force myself to hit “send” before nightfall on the longest day of the year.

"Peek-a-blue"

Nacre, nacre. Who's there?

Posted in Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay
Tags: "Please don't report to PETA", Abalone, Blue-tailed skink, nacre, paralysis, skink

2 Dan Coup

•June 21, 2009 • 1 Comment

On the back road to Marcie's house

Everything just shifted … a little. The Merz is not falling together right–Noah, I owe you big time–and so I’ll take my Road-ham after all. This is very concerning to the builder.

There was no time to pre-ship it, insured. This means the airlines has another chance to rip off a ‘ham (the first two times were: when Todd DeAngelis handed over his boxed race bike to someone at LAX, but forgot to take a receipt, or any proof he’d handed something over…and the second was really egregious.

Charlie’s personal bike was in an exhibit at the United Airlines terminal in SFO, along with other custom bike builder’s work.
Only his was removed (from a locked glass case!). It has never been found… $1,000 reward if returned (Note: that happened twenty years ago).

If I could have any OTHER bike to ride, it would be a Specialized Roubaix. I tendered my thoughts to Mike Sinyard this morning.

Right now, I’m finishing my story about Billy Savage, director of Klunkerz, the movie that so aptly captured the early fat tire period. Look for it in the July 3rd edtion of the Pacific Sun. Cover story…….ooh, this time tomorrow I will be here! Noah will be hosting an Alice B. “Welcome To NYC now relax” fete from 8:30 til 9: 24 pm. Right, Noah?

PS : 2 Dan Coup=’tout d’un coup’ (all of a sudden, en francais)

Posted in "knobby nobility", 42 ride, Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay, Ride
Tags: change of plans, cunningham bike, Cunningham Bike Stolen From United Airlines Museum-on-a-Jetway

Build-Up, With Soap

•June 19, 2009 • 7 Comments

Pryor's cup--from his famous collection.

Only four more days until I hop on a plane, my little suitcase loaded with hard-to-duplicate delicacies such as homemade olives and umeboshi paste and lemon ‘crud’…never leave home w/out ’em… and a banjo banging on my back (the special Adam HUNT banjo w/resonator, an’ green vinyl soft case) and make for New York, (u nork).

Can hardly stand it.

Already, I’ve decided any road cycling is too risky without body guards these last few days. I’ve got catastro-phobia bad ( in direct proportion to the enormity of the project I’m facing).

This is always the case. Before flying to teach Wombat Camp in Anchorage, I concentrated, while trying not to hold on too tightly to the bars the last couple of hard dirt rides prior to flying…for fear I’d harm myself and be ink-ipacitated.

Sorry, that’s when you can’t WRITE cuz you broke yr hand.

Afraid I’d get Ankle-izing Sponsorosis: this is when you get a great new sponsor (as I have, even though this is no race)…an expectation is placed upon me. A bit of pressure. And many many of my racing bretheren (Casey Kunselman comes to mind) would, contract in hand, go out and train extra hard to emprouden (I know that’s not a word) the new boss…and wham! Broken bone.
It just occurred to me that, for racers, this is potentiated by the obligatory usage of a new, untried bicycle. Very bad recipe: new machine, big expectations, new sponsor. I always got to ride my same ol’ , same-ol’: an incalculable advantage as I got older and tireder.
Did I mention I’d be riding a 1974 custom Merz? Courtesy of Noah? That I’ve never ridden? THANK GOD I’m not racing (and thank god I don’t care to impress anyone. No, really. ) And as Noah reminded me, it would be getting a new coat of paint since it was improperly repainted by the previous owner…

It is my custom not to batten down niggling details like “transpo” and “lodging”. Gellner, a 34 year old rabid Cunningham collector essentially CC’s and my ‘pretend kid’ (we tragically barren ladies attract Youth In Need Of A Suitably Offbeat Parent or Two)…is putting on a ‘do’ (that’s a pretend party: “four people walk into a bar…”) Monday night. He asked me this morning “ JP, where are you staying afterward……you know our place is one room, don’t you?”
“I just figured I’d wing it…” I said with the confidence of a person who has finagled couch space from a stranger on a plane a time or two.
“You’d better clinch something” he sighed.
I called Talia, Christy, Nicole, biker pals all. All fully booked, in THEIR one-room apartments.
Maybe Noah’s right about NYC being inhospitable to “wingers”.

I got out the heavy machinery (my battered phone book). I dug up the number of a very cherished mentor of mine I hadn’t seen in an inexplicably long time. Her kid is a NYC crime reporter. He rides a bike. I draggged him up Tam once.
He was the perfect person to call out of the blue.
“Chez Graham is at your disposal” he said to me via e-mail.

Suddenly the urge to take a risky ride hits me now, at one-a.m. A gust of “perceived security” stabilizes my world, an’I want to re-derange it (note to reader: this is why I ride a bicycle everywhere).

I beat this urge down, and readied a bucket of soapy water to tackle the filthy, oozing ‘food ghetto’– my half–of the refrigerator.

Make CC happy before I go.

Prove that I can organize something.

Posted in "knobby nobility", "Mental health", 42 ride, food, heinous name dropping, hoarding, insomnia, Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay
Tags: anticipation, Jacquie Phelan, New York City, pre-42ride, travel story

Four Legs Good, Two Wheels Not

•June 16, 2009 • Leave a Comment

by Justin DeFreitas/ West Marin Citizen - June 11, 2009

Sometimes it seems as intractable as the tribal conflicts-cum national wars that will endlessly destabilize the Middle East.
Maybe that’s the point.
If Arabs, Jews got along, maybe they would close ranks and shut out the ugly Americans. Leaving us in search of oil….

This is late–night thinking, nonsense thinking.
I’ve believed an analogous situation since I moved here in 1980. The horse rider and the bike rider shall not ‘lie down together’ unless the out-of-control cycler (I like using that weird sounding word, a dead giveaway for a person who hasn’t been on a bike later than 1960) slides under the rearing bulk of a spooked equine.

Somehow, in Marin, the most homogeneous hunk of multiculti Bay Area, we wealthy whiners war about which toy we play with.

Meanwhile the rest of the world books bona-fide PILGRIMMAGES here, dumps a little coin and a LOT of love of the bicycle culture that somehow persists here, and yet another journalist drags Charlie Kelly, Joe Breeze and Gary Fisher up Mount Tam…Will we ever ‘arrive at an agreement’ ? Will Mike V’s ‘cooler head’ prevail? There’s always hope, which rhymes with “nope”.

Posted in "knobby nobility", "Mt. Tamalpais", heinous name dropping, media
Tags: "trojan horsycle", bikers get no respect, Bill's Trail, Justin DeFreitas, Marin County Bicycle Politics, West Marin Citizen (Newspaper)

New Glove Design Done In Spare Time!

•June 11, 2009 • 5 Comments

felted sweaters, gloves

It’s a mere two weeks until I take off for NYC to do the 42 ride. My bike will be flown out and assembled courtesy of Bushpiglet Noah Gellner (creator of the Tastydirty website and the Cunninghambikes site.
I usually wait to pack the night before travelling, which leaves a dozen days to relax, stay in bed, eat a lot, my usual prep for endurance events.

This leads to two a.m. HOP ouT ofBEDs and ScramBLE doWn the LAdder to ..excavate the clothing pile to reveal the couch rumored to lie below it!

It took an hour of focused sorting . Pick up a jacket. Think for a little too long how it could be improved with a bit of needlework. Remember that that dwelling and dawdling is what makes un-piling so daunting…return to ruthlessness, my kind of lenient ruthlessness that spares all the clothes from the dumpster or thrift shop and reprieves them to a purgatory folded patiently in my “Llew room”.

My brother Llew has, like most of us avowed packrodent/junk orphanage operators, an unsorted agglomeration of stuff wedged into rooms at his Berkeley apartment. Double rows of books on haphazard shelves. One can only use this sort of bookshelf if you have x-ray vision His one loyal friend devoted weekends to taming everything, only to see the work re-buried. Llew is beyond hope, and lives happily under his piles. I hope to get out of the pile habit. Running away for two months is a great start, and gives Charlie a clean house for a while.

I doggedly ‘churn” papers, books, ‘potential projects’ to make a sittable space. Finally, a seven foot long, too-deep, ugly red leather sofa emerges. A hand-made Mexican rancho piece that cost its wasteful original owner (a neighbor) at least $3,000 eight years ago. The matching leather chair & ottoman were also mine for the taking but our house is 720 square feet. No room for a couch AND a chair..

So now there is an empty, re-liable sofa for two loungers of diminutive (sub six foot) stature.

Does this kind of jive actually entertain?
I need a show of Hans.

Here is a detail of the beading on my glove.

JULIE CARTNER would appreciate the spiral design. She’s a Scottish bicycle policy/advocate I met at sswc07 Aviemore.

Just learned that Rapha will be providing a jacket for each rider. Oh my the “Coefficient of Schwag” will be elevated…

Posted in "Mental health", dumpster treasure, fashion, heinous name dropping, hoarding
Tags: 42 ride, beading, clutter, Co-efficient of Schwag, decorated gloves, deluxe, fashionista, felted mohair, gloves, hoarding, leather sofa, Merz road bike, Rapha gear, Rapha jacket

Riding with Pigpen

•June 9, 2009 • 4 Comments

gnawing on shoulder of giants

Word came thru the Knobby Nobility grapevine: Pigpen (Larry Glickfeld) was in town. He’s the one-time editor of Competitive Cycling, the tabloid home of columnist Bike Barb, Sundown Slim, and a host of other merry Cranksters in the late sixties, early (pre-Fellownews) era.

He lives a thousand miles away, you drop everything to ride with him.

The ride: a clockwise loop from Napa’s ABC bakery to Sonoma, over Cavedale road and then along the Dry Creek valley bottom (rather than the Mt Veeder route, we were toast after three hours of sun-baked riding).

Never did any of this before. Along with Barb and Pigpen, the redoubtable Art Read of Terrible Two, Rockhopper renown, and general bike-and-social-justice-avocado rode along with me, sporting one less basketball in his jersey, and dropping me using nefarious means too terrible to describe for a family blog.

Hint: tangled wheels.

There was a plaque honoring the dozen or so sponsors of the ‘short-cut’ route cut in 1915, that snaked over the Mayacamas Mtns , and every person’s donation duly noted, even Emma Bleakly’s five dollars.

All the hunting on the web is turning up no history of the black, ten-foot deep and who knows how many feet wide cave (man made) -there’s a 90-degree left turn that is so dark you can’t inspect it (Art’s little bic lighter was worthless).

Musta been a stowing place for booze in prohibition.

After the ride (no crashes! no flats! pure joy) it was a quick ten mile jog to the Marshall Bee Farm in American Canyon. Larry’s sister Helene married a bee farmer and their compound is impressive. Their mom turns 95 week, Delicate as a child with a fistful of tortilla crisps, mom got a double dose ofb happy birthday.
We swilled all kinds of beer, inhaled all kinds of grub, and found other cyclists as well as about four generations of the Glickfeld clan nibbling cheeses dipped in honey (never had before, ambrosial) and enjoying a summer’s afternoon.

Posted in "knobby nobility", "Mental health", heinous name dropping, Ride
Tags: Art Read, cavedale road, Larry Glickfield, Lewis Peterson, Napa by bicycle, Nick Farac-Ban, Paul Draper, pigpen

42 Ride ho

•June 7, 2009 • 7 Comments

bike_flyer04

The forty two riders from all over the US (I assume most if not all Americans) will alight in NYC on the heels the Bicycle Film Festival, departing June 25th for a fifty five day tour, eighty miles per day….sagged. Destination: Los Angeles, which doesn’t really pinpoint it, does it? That appellation belongs to the hundred suburbs in search of a city.
SAGGED….this is the magic word for me: I am still too lazy to pedal me PLUS my sleeping bag and food any significant distance (even though I still love to carrying impossible weights and unmanageable shapes under one arm when scavenge-riding within a twenty mile radius of Fairfax).

With a little luck, it’ll be on a borrowed Rivendell bicycle (cross fingers, drape keyboard with spaghetti entrails, light candle, hold breath).

So watch this space, to see just what 42below (a maker of vodka, based in New Zealand) has concocted for a merrie tour of my country, tis of thee.

Papers have been signed, notaries have borne witness, and much anticipation lies in whether one will do the upper or the lower route. Both will be scorchingly hot. But I’m good at hot. I survived the Transtortugal 04.

I don’t have to ask my friends for a dime per mile. That never worked for me anyhow: perhaps my mile-eating legs frighten them fiscally. I didn’t ask ANY questions about the ride, so it’s all a pleasant mystery, from start to finish. I do know that the prevailing wind will be in our face the whole way, as we grind through the red states.

Next year, if I get to return, I pray we go the other direction.

Any suggestions for must-haves ?

Never having done a really long tour, I’m all ears and poised pen…

Just learned that the French Minister of Corrections has come up with an original idea for rehabilitating, or at least re-habituating a lucky group of cyclists, seventeen at a time, riding a sort of Penal Tour, with guards cycling alongside. There may be lots of joking about it ( see Sam Abt’s story in NYT) but as Paul Fournel mentioned in his story, ‘the bicycle is the fastest way to freedom’.

Posted in Alice B. Toeclips, mood enhancement, Ride
Tags: "Ethanol powered transit", "Incontinental ride", 42Ride, paul fournel, Penal Tour De France, Sam Abt, scary fuel, Transcontinental ride, vodka, wodka

Cayuga Birthday Party

•June 1, 2009 • 2 Comments

Lynne Buckner’s umpty-eighth birthday began with breakfast at her place (“Eggs Frenedict”) followed by a somewhat panicky attempt to

a) leave on time to welcome guests to her party

b) ready a borrowed bike for fiddler Sarah Wilson

c) prep a bit of food

Naturally these were mutually exclusive, and as dad used to say, “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye”.

The Alice B. Corollary is: “it’s all fun and games until you blacken your white cashmere coat with the chainring grease.”
I’d taken the coat off to pump the tires up: any idiot knows that you need to have a lab coat to pump up tires (greasy pump shaft gets your clothes every time!)

But the borrowed bike’s tires had presta valves, and Lynne’s floor pump had a Schraeder head. Nice…then even a borrowed Schraeder head pump from Jim-up-the-street wouldn’t behave for me. Over the phone, Jim reassured Lynne that “Jacquie will know how to work it”.

Right. Is there a trick to those reversible pump heads on portable pumps? No on has taught it to me.

Result: A brief spell of self-loathing–” bicycle expert!”. And a reality check with Sarah.

Sarah takes the bus.

Lynne & I bustle the “two miles” to the park (remember Lynne uses ‘crow fly miles’, where I use “wombat waddles” miles. They are like shraeder and presta, you must have an adaptor.) It takes at least twenty minutes, riding at a clip.
It’s worth it. Cayuga’s a magic park I’d never seen, best-kept secret in S.F. A pocket of beauty, peace and very lively folk art, all created by one person, a former Golden Gate gardener.
The guests arrived, one and two at a time.

Pat (“Sweeney”) came from the cancer unit Lynne works on at St. Luke’s. The rest were contra dancin’, old time playin’ colleagues like Mark Kartmann, Jim Franecevich and Amy Hofer. Sara finally makes it, and regales me with the story of her brother Rich Wilson being the first American to finish the VonDay Glub something or other…a sailboat race.

Food art, Trader Joe’s trusty edibles, and hot chai that Lynne made kept us gabbing in the foggy chill for the couple hours. Now and then BART trains screeched overhead, a surreal contrast to our cozy picnic. Like peregrines nesting in downtown SF–it’s what we have to live with. Ten people (and a few dogs) gathered and scattered on May 31st, the longest and most fun day of the month.

Can I keep him?

I realized that with my Breezer Villager, it would take an hour just to reach the bridge, and another three to get home…so Mark Kartmann offered me a partway lift. So: stuff the very heavily laden (beautiful sweaters from free boxes, a copy of SCAM punk magazine, several good books incl. all the Claudines by Colette, and even an uprooted plant or two jammed in) bike in his truck, should be a cinch.

After five minutes wrestling with a recalcitrant bike and its super wide handlebars–we decided that unpacking everything loaded on the bike would help. oh yes, and opening the back of the van….his van is so stuffed with electrician’s goodies that really there is only room for a horizontally pushed in bike.
I look down at my coat as I hop into the passenger seat.

Damn “bike mascara”.

My upstairs hard drive allows one or two brilliant ‘avoid problem’ moves, then I’ve used up my fucking Common Sense battery.

Wait. It’s OK to be featherbrained, I tell myself. Besides, how many people get to look this good on a bike?

As I labor home, twin ribbons of sweat zigzag down my ribcage. I’ve still got on a wool sweater, cotton vest, and tee shirt.

Arrrgh....

Ideal gear for S.F. summers, but once you cross the Golden Gate bridge summer hits you like a blast furnace, usually after breezy Sausalito. I opt to ride it out since there is no place to pile the clothing.

I couldn’t resist peering into dumpsters normally out of my home range–and scoring big. Organic fruit and vegetables, and a bonus: pussy willow bundles!…Which means sketchier steering, but neat shadows.

Weaving and lurching along in the lowest gear, I had the “homeless look” perfected by the time I reached Dogbark Lane.