Wombat Christmas Message

•December 23, 2008 • 2 Comments

wombatThe ambivalence is killing me!

My inner Scrooge is kindled by all the illuminated,  inflatable Santas, reindeer, plastic puffy trees, faux north poles, etc gassing away, the sound of the motors taking over where dog barking left off.

Cold nights are more  quiet because dogs are hauled in from ” decibel duty”.

On the other hand, lights strung up–even the over-the-top full house coverage  ones–brighten my mood.

But to really kick my child-heart into Christmas gear, I have to hear Calypso Christmas, a production of a college men’s chorus in the mid-1950’s.   We played that album until the grooves were so huge the needle bounced  around in ’em.

Not everyone in the household is as fond of this peppy alternative musical tradition as I. Hence a furtive pre-dawn scoot down to the house for a listen before CC ‘calmdescendingly” raises an eyebrow at my twelfth re-playing of “Christmas present for Sallie“.

One other ritual clinches the season: the  Kay R. Christmas brain teaser.

For years Kay Ryan has drawn rebus-y holiday note cards, the best being last year’s “fork-hauling birds”.

My repartee:  an owl teaching two idiotic doves, i.e. ‘tutor dull doves‘…shame the iambic lilt isn’t there.

I think I have the right RHYTHM, as well as the embedded rebus.

See if you can guess it.

Posted in "Kay Ryan", Charlie Cunningham, heinous name dropping, lame wordplay, mood enhancement, WOMBATS
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Snow on Tam

•December 19, 2008 • 2 Comments

Never did make it up on the two days snow was ‘deep’ (six inches in places)

But yesterday  I rode up to North Side Trail, stashed bike and jogged…I caught a glimpse of a tiny patch of snow, and tasted it. Snow still carries that metallic flavor I remember from snow-munching in bygone years.

Glad to have gotten free during a brief bit of cold dry spell, as the clouds had been drawing their breath for a real sob session that evening.

It arrived as sleet, falling on illuminated water as I churned away my cares at the new outdoor Olympic pool a mile from home.

Here’s evidence of the micro-snow patch.

snow-little-patchSolstice approacheth, and a very dreich weekend is expected.

Posted in "Mental health", "Mt. Tamalpais", Cycle Training, Trees
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What are black and white and dread all over?

•December 14, 2008 • 3 Comments

Unbothered by a little dirt

Originally uploaded by misterteapotpostcards

Komondorok and Pulik… two  Hungarian breeds whose signature ‘do is dreadlocked ringlets, which insulate against both sun, wind,  and cold. Not to mention tooth of wolf.

Puli, Komondor are the singular, but I dig the fact that their plural is “ik” and “ok”.

This Komondor is  is very fine and very big, as is that old Hungarian farm barn door behind her.
Stop the press. Just learned the Italians  have one, too.. it’s brown, and its name: Bergamasco.

Posted in "Mental health", dreadlock dogs
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Dreadlocks dog

•December 14, 2008 • Leave a Comment


Dreadlocks dog

Originally uploaded by Seb* [aka *]

The pup very much resembles “Puppy”, the bad mannered poodle I grew up with…I’d dangle my rat in her face, to see if I could bother her (I was a ROTTEN pet owner, but I am reformed, I promise).

Another way to play with pets is making the rounds on the web.

The guy is in town right now, and since he got a ticket for smoking a joint on the street, they hauled him–and the Bremen town Musicianss–into city chambers, where he was given a small fine, no jail time thank God….I love our town.

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Patina

•December 12, 2008 • 4 Comments

Nothing left "un-mollified"

Nothing left "un-mollified"

Velvet textured grime

Velvet textured grime

Charlie is maintaining his cross bike, the seven-speed machine of  choice. The one to be picked (as I will grab mine) in an emergency evacuation.
Nimble  off -road, and ultra-fleet on road (nae knobblies on those Spshlzd Xpo-titian Tyres),  skinny tire, wide-gear -range cross bikes balance lightly on bony  shoulders as we flee a fire (or flood, or locusts) by hopping from auto-roof to hood (bonnet) to boot to fender to hood, (the only clear path! Talk about a ‘metalled road‘!) the length of our narrow street which of course shall  be jammed with other panicky neighbors unpracticed in the auto-less life.   We Americans are unaware of the  fact  that automobiles will be worthless in a true emergency.

Naturally  we in the bicycle cult know that CARS are the  emergency!

Number, size, unwieldiness and sheer complexity make ought-not-omobilies the perfect vehicle for ‘carmageddon”…

Any day in the Ross Valley, you’ll see me prancing on and off the bike, cross-style where no one can see (i.e. in the woods).

I’m also that nut job  luxuriously stretching at the “hub”, the mid-county  stop lights with twenty lanes of traffic  aimed at the center of a (former train interchange, sob!)five-way   intersection..

I know, it’s indecent to flaunt one’s free range of motion not to mention one’s genuine enthusiasm for really long traffic lights (more time for yoga!). Until television-for-bored drivers is invented, I’m all they’ve got…

I know they want me to fall when I balance on the pedals, but I only turn a lazy, very tiny and perfectly controlled circle.

Damn, I’m getting way off topic, maintenance, and filth, and maintenance of filthy build-up.

Surface dirt.

Specifically, the desirable patina accrued on a bicycle’s NONmoving parts.

The time one would spend carefully cleaning away a harmless– no, make that protective— coat of grease/dirt/grime could be better spent. Don’t ask me how: I am sure you can figure something out…

I can’t forget that Overzealous Wombat who so carefully

–dare I say obsessively?-–

cleaned

—no, make that “stripped”-–

her super-shiny-like-no-other-‘Ham-we-have-ever-seen  of all grease, impurity, foulness, filth, dreck, etc.

Result:  very unhappy quick release, sticky cables, squeaky bearings. Dry, chapped things. Increased friction…

“Where’s my oil?” they  must have squeaked (in utter futility).

Some do not listen to this plaintive (and very repetitive) sound.

Result: the entire bike was parched. Things were bound together, immovable.

(Tech Addendum by CC speaking from his royal perch)

Anywhere dissimilar metals interface on a bike, bad things can happen.

Put two different metals together and you get a battery.

Batteries make electricity  and electricity flowing between metals leads to corrosion.

It is called “galvanic coupling” : a troublesome reaction when metals are under constant stress, like where spokes meet hub shells.

“Bikes  are made out of lots of metals” you say.

Steady those twitching toes. Turns out a little grubbiness takes care of everything.  A film of oil or grease between the metals is quite protective. Charlie spins his wheels and sprays Prolink chain lube on the spoke/hub zone once or twice a year, especially in the wet winter months. He puts a drop of same where each spoke meets the rim too.  It makes spokes and hubs last longer and the nipples can actually be turned if the rim needs truing.  WD 40 is allowable in a pinch. C doesn’t bother wiping the film off the parts and it collects dust, eventually creating a furry brown cloak of apparent neglect. Perfect for deflecting the attention of  opportunisitic bike thieves.

Grubophobes can of course wipe off the excess film knowing that the remaining oil is still doing its main job. JUST DON’T TOUCH THAT SOLVENT BOTTLE.

Note that the chain always wants a good rub with a cloth or brush, followed by drenching with that premier lubrication, Prolink, who is lightly linked  to our household…. (we have an exclube-sive arrangement, since Charlie too was a lubrication designer).

So yah, that’s it in a hubshel

Posted in "Mental health", Alice B. Toeclips, Blogroll, lame wordplay, Ride, Technology
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Frozen Springtime

•December 10, 2008 • 8 Comments

violets

The violets on the sagging back wall are blooming three months early.

Spring birds–don’t know which–are singing way too early.

And last night thick frost.

“Time to encase the house in bubble wrap” Charlie said brightly, pulling out a thirty pound roll of reflective plastic sheeting.

An hour later, all the heat from the woodstove was bouncing off the (even lower) ceiling.  We’ll use half the fuel now, and our main room will look even more aluminiumish.

“Emergency chic” is the only descriptor I can think of.

Meanwhile, in the batroom the thermometer reads 54 degrees Fahrencold.

BRRRRRR.
We are SUCH WIMPS

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Self-bruising bikers, unite….

•December 8, 2008 • 5 Comments

santaccruiseflyerSome confessions to make.

1. I “disorganized”  this year’s Santa Cruise. The last five  years or so, the saintly Cora Haselbeck, Jain Light and Joan Murakami provided tea, stoves, kettles, munchies galore…made it a party, etc…all I needed to do was write the press release and relax until it was time to drive down there. Santa Cruz is about a hundred miles south of us. No one else comes from the county anymore.

2. Yes, drive. Thermoses and cups clanking in the back seat, bike shoved in with little thought to the kinked cables, frost scraped off the windshields, whitened knuckle focus on the road, praying to stay awake

3) This ride has always been a memorial to my mom. I have told the story a couple of times, but a muddy parking lot with freezing riders is not the time and place to orate.  What was rattling around in my head while driving was how sad it was that, because she was an ‘upper middle class’ (they always stressed that, as if it were a desirable rank) inmate of an appallingly vicious household, she had no available resources for support.  We kids had school for a blessed eight hours. The neighbors wondered (or knew) but never said a thing.

After all, it’s no one’s business.

In our paper this last week, a sixteen year old child, lost in the foster care system, escaped from a tract home owned by a very bent couple with four kids, an unrelated roommate, and this whipping boy, I’ll call him Cinderfella since he slept in the fireplace.  It is making the tired little community of Tracy look hard at itself.

A gorgeous sunny, low-angle winter gem of a day-shame I had to drive 190 miles rather than hop on some train–and a dozen or so riders, notably Joan and Jain, veterans for the past ten or so…helped out with the munchies (thanks to Beckmann’s bakery).

This year I even recognized Greg Lydon, who’s another annual stalwart in recent years. He brought his mate Lisa for the first time.

Rode up with two different clumps, Troy & his matching bike team pals who bolted up the hill, then resumed riding with Joan and Jainj. And I met a doctor at the top of the hill, well, actually I met a friendly rider whom I convinced was the missing link in fat tire history story-cycle. THat’s another blog for sure.

What I’m aiming to get at is the scary part of this ridin’ idyll…

A quarter century ago, a woman either took her own life or was killed, and we will never know which.  The coroner’s report was incomplete.  I have no energy to try to dig up the truth.  It’s possible that her husband got away with murder.

And since she was my mom, I decided to do a little something about it.

The pun (“Cruisin’ for a bruisin” is a nice euphemism parents and spouses use to imply that the victim-to-be will ‘earn’ their punishment by doing something ‘to’ the abuser. Like….looking at him wrong?  Whatever) was hard to resist.  The old teeshirt featured a Santa Rat on a bicycle..

Anyhow, it has always been the first Sat in December since that’s around when my birthday is, but earlier, since holiday  things will be happening the actual week of my birthday…and I’d hate to compete with them!

So…what I wanted was a kind of secret b.d. ritual, where the comers wouldn’t really have to know that was what it was.

To the people attending the ride-qua-fundraiser for Women’s Crisis Support of Santa Cruz, it was an excuse to ride w/JP –in 1983 that meant bragging rights for hangin’ with a champeen of Barely Anything (remember, fat tire bicycling was a fringe activity then) . But I’d make ’em pay! So, surprisingly they did .. I thought it was cause I’m popular, but someone  (probably someone in search of a tax break) confided that there are people who NEED to peel off some dax tetuctable dollars and hadn’t gotten around to it, and now it was the end-0f-the-year . Sure pal, what ever helps you feel a little better about paying a check for a scarcely organized ride with a scatterbrain.  Here, try my tea.  EAT something. You’re shivering.

Reader, I  promise you many Americans have not had properly steeped hot black tea (I say “hot” because in restaurants, esp. in the non-urban areas, they assume ‘tea’ = iced tea! The horror.

Verily, now I am comin’ out of the closet about what my idea of a birthday party is.
Those of you who have my calendar (see margin)…there are about seventy of you–know exactly when to send me a hello…the rest, here’s the hint: WEDNESDAY IS MY 53rd birthday.

And I’m very glad to be here, scathed only by gravity and  bicycle-inflicted incidents….feeling damn fine, sleeping well… here, feel my nose.

Posted in "Mental health", Alice B. Toeclips, WOMBATS

Soramimi and Lady Mondegreen…

•December 4, 2008 • 1 Comment
Owl for Bette

Owl for Bette

… walked into a bar… Lady M. was “laid on the green”, and tall, Italian Mimi was injured as well.

Some readers already know about mondegreens…the mis-heard words, lyrics etc. that lead to imperfect understanding and sometimes unexpected imagery.

“Scuse me, while I kiss this guy” (Jimi Hendrix).

But have you heard of ‘‘Soramimi’?”

Thought I’d look  up ‘mondegreen’ in Wiki for yuks , just the way I pored through the Webster’s Third when younger. Probably while dodging homework too!
SF Chronic columnist Jon Carroll devotes a page a year to mondegreens.

It used to be top forty radio mis-hearing.  The older & deafer I become, the more sources of these mondegreens I have.  Ordinary conversation coming from mumbly hubby.

Television, which is always tuned too softly.

Tis grand to repeat what I just heard to my less & less amused mate (psst! Note to self: get a hearing aid).

Wikipedia says that mondegreens are NOT TO BE CONFUSED with ‘soramimi kashi’ (foreign song lyrics which yield unprintably vile Japanese meanings).  These soramimi are so hot (esp. when explicated) that Wiki has them on probation.

Hence this post. Before soramimi has to go to charm school, or juvenile detention, please read.

And have a laugh on me.

P.S. Alert rider Anne Cutler (calendar wiz) tells me there’s a great documentary on the typeface (er, font) known as Helvetica, which turned fifty this year I b’lieve.  Check it oot.

Posted in Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay
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License to Fish

•December 4, 2008 • 2 Comments
Fishing for compliments is fair game

Fishing for compliments is fair game

This was my Fishing For Compliments license…a  copper badge that I first deployed in college.

It doesn’t have the original information though…maybe I can find it in my journal…

The first “license” was an alternate to the “Hello My Name Is”…and this is what it read:

“a) Jacquie Phelan

b  Midd only

c) 1240

d ) Sagittarius –Dec. 10

…and how are YOU?”

Freshmen had only a week before classes began–so little time for five hundred unleashed brats to establish rank.

Preliminary coolness-sorting took place during the evening “mixers”.

I hadn’t been to many parties back in high school, so I was out of my element. Small talk completely baffled me.

(Note: my element was, and  is  library/couch/bicycle saddle.)

A  pattern emerged at the mixers,  boiling down to

“Where else did you get in?”

(i.e. which other schools wanted you. The more, the groovier)

“What were your SAT scores?”

Scholastic Aptitude Test had a a couple numbers,  one’s intellectual bank balance. Tops  was sixteen hundred points. Nearly no one got that score in those days, and I was a  measly twelve hundred or so… P.S.  I really felt shame about it.

My badge was my mean  way of cutting through the BS…and  putting people at unease.

Being from California –as only one or two of the five hundred frosh were– I counted  on natural hipness, despite the non-blonde hair.

I  was gonna ambush ’em with a new style : lacing one’s shoes underneath the leather tongue.    This arrangement meant the tongue was literally sticking out, guaranteeing a unique silhouette– the one-eared rabbit look.

Once the campus was overrun with this sort of lace-tying,  I could bask in coolth, and work on popularizing un-patches (carefully embroidery-bordered  holes in one’s jeans: an alternative to streaking, which was huge that year).

How invisible I’d been in my two thousand-strong  senior high school class! At 5’5″, and weighing maybe ninety pounds,  I trudged the halls of L.A.’s William H. Taft (a 350-pound president, way ahead of his time)  snubbed by blonde babe cheerleaders, squished between huge football players, slaloming around skinny surfers, and  developing crushes on  more nerds than you could shake a slide rule at. There were about a dozen of us “other”- caliber kids  who simply didn’t fit any  molds.

In my college surroundings, I’d   failed to notice that the only shoes being worn in 1973 (in Vermont, anyway) were “top-siders” (a loafer worn on boats).

By winter, ‘Bean boots’ (an ugly rubber ankle boot for wading through bogs) came out, but my shoe trend failed to catch on.

“This is how it we tie ’em in San Francisco” I’d explain condescendingly.

No nibbles.

Despite the fact that nearly everyone had the same uniform on from head to toe (tee shirt, khakis, striped belt, Dr. Scholl’s sandals for the women and  top siders for the men, well, maybe some Earth shoes too…) nobody was taking fashion dictation from a  lunatic.

Those who hadn’t scratched me off their New Faces guide were no doubt charmed that I wanted to know what their favorite band was, and how glad I was they  didn’t  slavishly tie  their shoes the way we did out West.

Posted in Jacquie Phelan
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A rainbow for you riders

•November 29, 2008 • 1 Comment
magic in Fairfax on "Thankstaking" morning

Fairfax bubble magic

Posted in Jacquie Phelan
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