I bet it’s wet on Grove Street (Edinburgh). Some yahoo was strumming a little too loudly whilst staggering home from the pub. The instrument’s being kept in ‘evidence’ file until the miscreant is brought to justice.
No Calorie Left Behind
•September 13, 2008 • 1 Comment
Handle these with utmost care!
Please direct your attention to the Salivation Army blog buried within this url…Whereas I think I’m going to try to write more book and less blether I realize there is a pattern I’ve begun–based on the (possibly mistaken) assumption that one person’s life has a certain readability to it…maybe even a story line! Plus, the way I do things inevitably entertains/shreducates/appalls.
Here, then, is what I spent an hour confabbing: a snack I named Snowy Bollocks, for obvious raisins…
Autumn Ritual
•September 12, 2008 • 5 Comments
The Cunningham Applied Wood Mauler
- how much wood would woodChuck crush…
The splitting of the logs.
A disease plaguing Marin’s trees (25% look affected by my eyeball-estimate ) hasn’t spared us. One by one, we take down the sick and dying trees …before one of them smites us flat as we sleep. There is a ton of special equipment for the project (slings, harnesses, jumars, japanese saws, pole-saws, carabiners…climbing gear put to tree-trimming use. Charlie and his friend Scott Bowman were ace tree-climbers, and scaled the world’s tallest tree in the redwood groves of Mendocino 40 years ago…that’s another story).
Wood heat-in-winter is the pathetic pay-off (normally we raid dumpsters for clean construction waste, there is more than enough to heat all of Fairfax)…and it’s all done safely , thanks to an impressive electric wood-splitter CC made when I complained that that huge heavy maul was going to hack my foot in two one of these days (my aim is…imperfect, my swing is off-balance, and mostly he did the mauling). Most wood splitters are loud gas-powered nuisances–not the Cunningham electric model!
He began with a 30-ton press frame, added a custom-built ram, slider thingie, uh…’other stuff”…and a week or two later, a poignant hum (about an E flat) emanating from the front yard means that the splitting has begun. The apparatus is seven feet high, and there have been no rounds too large to split (so far).
Sometimes the wood creaks and pops as the splitter whines, but nothing happens fast…the ram glides down under hydraulic power and calmly cleaves the wood, which splits along the grain…my job: grab the stove-sized bits after they clatter to the ground, carry them off and stack ’em (nowhere near as well as the Swiss) in the little wood shed which is home to at least one woodrat that noisily re-arranges the kindling all winter long.
I’ll sleep great and wake up with a wood-chucker’s body ache.
Troll Power
•September 10, 2008 • 9 CommentsIt’s 9-9. I have several things to think about, but I was trawling the web and found Kenny Lamont’s lucky mojo.
Had to have it. In a few more days, my blog will have reached the one year mark, and sixty five of you will have read it each a thousand times, how kind!!
Thank you for being reader/riders/rithmaticians…if you want me to go at this for longer, let me know. Otherwise I’m’a take a break to get the book done.
Don’t forget me, though.
- This should be the mascot of Marin County Open Space
Stumbling-block, or Stepping-stone?
•September 7, 2008 • 3 Comments
Marin Wombats apres ride book group: Snoop & Bike Monkey
“Fractalesque” morning. Behavioral branchings-off, according to some inner algorithm. Perhaps over an entire life the pattern will emerge?
Someone help me make sense of my pattern!
If I want a book published, I must not move on to something else until it’s finished (advice from the great John Pedersen). As in: begin the day TYPING.
But all the lovely distractions beckon….Sit down with the intent to enter a certain writing contest. Type for maybe five minutes, and wander into yard to churn the compost, a calming activity. Sorry, and emotion regulator. Later discover I’d severed the root of our luxurious volunteer acorn squash…it’s deader than dead, all crispy & sad… Vegecide, unpremeditated. Damn, I ‘m glad we never had a child...
Had fractally breakfast (between peeks at email, a twelve-foot dash to the computer, then back to slurp tea before its temperature falls too far).
(Ed: Your readers CARE ABOUT THIS?
Me: Shut up. This reassures them that they’re not alone)
Begin a pair of thank-you notes to Paul and Al who came to accidental party that erupted yesterday–supposedly a micro tribute to our 33 year old ‘fledgling’ (pretend offspring) Josh Thayer. The idea was serve tea at 3:33 on the nose on his birthday. Dream on!
Read more of Sam Gosling’s Snoop, a tome Charlie and I are actually stealing from one another to grab another chapter. My secret weapon: hiding in the bathroom, where angels fear to tread.
Reader, I DO resort to questionable tactics when the stakes are high.
Then change course 180 degrees, and WRITE Dr. Gosling! HeyI don’t all writers want feedback? Let him k now I get the subtle jokes. Oh, wait… maybe he thinks his humor is blatant! Being English in the USA means having to clobber the reader upside the head. According to a certain critic, Americans are generally incapable of subtlety.
Anyhow, Snoop points out that we humans are creatures of habit, and that our daily routines rarely vary (even when we escape to Eden Burrow?). Well he’s right. I dwell on computer perhaps overlong, making myself ‘clear’ to others. But not in a way that moves “Fabulous Me” forward (my autoless biography)…or “One Lump or Two” (a year with the WOMBATS).
Hmmmm. Lean back…. ponder this…remember I owe a couple of thank you notes…
Behind my messy desk is an angle-of-repose bookshelf. Any time I touch something, something else shifts. This time a little chapbook fell when I dug out an envelope.
“Small Printing 1975″…a small compendium by the British Printing Society which displays the varied talents of its members. What’s cool about small presses is how ALL OVER THE MAP they are… and this, before the World Wide Web. Imagine the focus required to set type (correctly) …hmm… (spend ten minutes perusing, and discover…THE BUILDERS. A version of an unforgettable song that has haunted me for 25 years… the Heptones song “Book of Rules”. A quick search shows someone named R. L. Sharp wrote it in the thirties…and even the Grateful Dead were mesmerized by it..
It’s so short, so pithy, so true. And what will I make with my tool kit? A door or a barricade?
The Builders/a page from Small Print/Brit. Printing Society
SSWC 08 Napa Style Notes
•September 4, 2008 • 1 Comment
devil with a blue dress off
- What I Wore At SSWC 08
Packing to go camp at the SSWC in Napa, I spent five minutes deciding between total nakedness and full-on fabric layering…the heated hills of Napa dictated the latter choice.
In hot countries, people wear layers of light clothing. Oddly, the farmers in Portugal (at least the women) were in black! Maybe their husband had died that year…
My ensemble went as follows: rayon/polyester four button women’s jacket. Cotton corduroy four-button (Cunningham Indian motif) vest with Wombadge stating my allegiances (“Eat, Drink, Be Muddy”), 1969 vintage May Co. horizontal-striped wool tie (Bruce Cunningham, Charlie’s dad, wore it on the three or four occasions he had to wear a tie), Patrick & Co. oxford longsleeve men’s shirt –100% cotton of course, single needle tailoring (my wardrobe staple), long lightweight Ex Officio sunblocking pants, woolen argyle socks (Sally Something or-other thrift shop in Aviemore) and VERY worn Shimano shoes from about 1990. Yep, I HAD been tempted to use a brand-new set, but it’s against my religion to change anything the night before a race, even when
1) I only race once a year, and
2) I’m not taking it ‘seriously’
These beaten up ol’ Shimano M-somethings have nearly no rubber sole left: they are almost like tap shoes, (with a knob of metal in the center) but I still know EXACTLY how they behave on Napa’s slippery sandstone. .
This makes it sound like I knew the course. No, every inch was a surprise. Even the length was a surprise! Looking at a lake (Lake Marie, my middle name) cooled my baking heart.
But the sweat that accumulated on the push-climbs REMAINED in the cotton shirt and vest, to cool me on the zippy descents.
I tellya…those Arabs/Bedouins/Portagees know a thing or two about staying cool.
Methinks that skin under sun without protection gets hotter, and double that if it’s lycra!
Some of my favorite heckles were the comments like “Your boss just called…” and “you’re late for work”… and the cowboy-hatted woman blasting a cheerful trumpet tune in my face.
Better than an energy drink.
My sole sustenance was the 1.5 liter bottle of pure water, until DAMO handed me what he called a vegan hamburger, but was in fact a sugary candy that saved my butt that last, unexpected 7 mile lap…
Damo, your “Beer = Good ” sign was another heartening reminder that I am not in the commercial mtn bike arena, I am in the hurly burly of artists, workers, and white collar escapees known as …you know what. For an even better version of all the fun, please read this story by bike snob.
Us, the Outcasts.
Peachy Keen
•September 1, 2008 • 1 Comment
Dear riders…and (r)eaters,
Most of you are aware that the necessary adjunct to good ridin’ is good eatin’.
Hence, Salivation Army, my food blog.
This blog will not appeal to “Gourmet Magazine” foodies one bit!
Page through my twenty tales-you’ll see that I’m not demonstrating my refined taste, impressive income, or hard-to-locate produce (which is what ‘slow food’ seems to mean here in the Bay Area).
We are all clear on the concept that just because cyclists ride a lot doesn’t mean they have to earn more to pay for quality food. Such food is often available gratuitement! And the cycling saves you money in healthcare & transit.
In other words, ORGANIC FOOD IS CHEAPER IN THE LONG RUN.
My ‘Back Door Catering co.’ (aka “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) approach to food acquisition addresses five appetites:
1. Wish to save planet (rescue fine food from land-fill, by plundering dumpsters regularly). Just because I’m a Marin County Yuppie doesn’t mean I’m not trying!
2. Self expression through cooking (“Salivation Army” blog tries to cover this)
3. The Urge To Steal. There. I said it.
4. The need to remain busy (and avoid getting depressed about our downspiralling American society)
5. The need to connect…to share my discoveries and get a laugh out of you folks. After all, as John Lennon put it, humor and art are the best things to flummox the industrial/consumer complex, and foment a peaceful overthrow of the war machines. Heh!
And anyone using war metaphors when writing about cycle sport is simply…out of touch with the beauty, peacefulness (even whilst racing) of bicycling.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna eat some of that peach ‘lasagne” from last night…
Unmitigated Gal
•August 29, 2008 • 3 Comments
Fashion Outlaw Captured On Film. (News at eleven)
For the last quarter century my alter ego Alice B. Toeclips flew undetected by (American) cycle fashion’s clueless radar.
Finally the sport has caught up with her mudjesty the queen of the muddy dominion.
The polka-dot rider was spotted (ahem) in a three piece suit racing SSWC 08 in sunny Napa, Callifornia. Many of the four hundred weirdly outfitted competitors zoomed past with admiring commentary. Spectators registered their approval of both a flowing riding style and that wombat sartorial flair. Maintaning STYLE is akin to issuing a (wo)manifeso….being fashionable is like signing a petition.
As far as originality goes, Naked has been done to death. (Sure hope it keeps being done, too!)
Rock ‘n roll photographer Anne Cutler pinned “Alice” down for a few fine Fairfax afternoons.
So YOU can have your own pin-up girl in twelve unforgettable outfits. Remember to shop early and often, although Lulu can print and ship as late as December 10 to get it to you for Christmas/Winter Solstice/Hogmanay. UK holidaysa and USA ones are included…as well as full moons (the lunar ones).
Up against the wall!
SinglespeedWHIRLS 08, Napa CA
•August 25, 2008 • 6 Comments
We are having a civilized discussion here on the trail. Obviously late in the race.
Mood: Glorious
Music: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Time: bed, deferred.
Vibe: in tune with best of what bike life’s aboot
Dear Curtis, Missy, Don, Joanne, Frieda, Chino, Jeremy, and all the crew that hosted the tenth annual single speed world championship(NYTimes story, complete with shot of Rowan orangeman , plus Frieda Inglis, Curt’s lovely Texan Granma.
THANK YOU.
Your event was my favorite race since… well, Scotland’s fine ffrolic in September 07.
Let me count the whys:
Getting HAULED there by most kind Rotoruan (NZ) Heidi and her man Marcello. Me and pepto-abysmal pink bike ..and a hefty satchel of my wombat merch were borne in style by generous, avid bike pals. We blabbed excitedly the entire 50 miles, and pulled into the SSWC site: a hayfield in Skyline Park, Napa.
Dinner at Azzuro with the Swedes, Bo, Emma, Olle, Anna, Najma, and Linda. Trying to impress them with my seven-word per minute non-rapidfire svenska.
Playing banjo away from every camp and getting Gene Oberpriller to appear out of the darkness.
The GREAT Gene, last seen in 1996, his last NORBA race as a pro (sez he) in Atlanta Georgia. Ah, a kindred poet-talker spirit!
Then JOSH THAYER appears and sits down in the dust with us.
Then we mosey over to a camp fire, where I sing As I Roved Out (J. Moynihan version) .
Er, then bed down in the dirt, as I have done dozens of times before. Solo under the stars, at peace with the cosmos.
Inevitable disturbance which proves some of the Original SSWC Values still obtain: someone bellowing “TOWFER” or maybe “TOPHER!” over and over again near the picnic table I am parked alongside.
Someone I will beat tomorrow, of course. Gonna have a bad headache, that one.
NOT drinking is the SSWC version of doping….a cowardly, unfair physical advantage which I freely deploy.
Hearing spectators compliment me on my natty three-piece suit (must find a picture somewhere), then ask if maybe I’m a bit hot.
More than a bit.
But best of all was the synesthesia of dusty fragrant chapparal, shadow-striped canyons echoing with ripped spectators (and bailed racers) cheering wmphatically for –or slagging– every single person.
I was seriously ready to turn around after beginning the third and final 8 mile loop. Wait…isn’t that Trina Ritchie?
“Jon’s just up ahead.”
I trudged on, a lot cheerier. Half an hour later, there he was, heat stricken, perched on the lip of the switchback before yet another climb. My regular readers know Jon (and friend Chris Marquis) were the original motivator in my re-entry to world competition, er, single speed fun.
Jon is extremely swift. Seeing him down is like seeing a racehorse down.
Not right.
Max (Stomparillaz) rolled up and halted (this stopping thing is contagious). We blagged a bit, then I realized I hadn’t ‘time’ to waste–no food on me, and the ride would be a three-and-a-half at this rate.
“I’m off”
“Me too, or I’ll never move”.
Thus did we cross the line together, and a reet fine finish it was. NO BLOOD. No destroyed bike.
Just a really hard really fun ride. Can’t wait to read Jon’s story. And see Trina’s and everyone else‘s pictures…including some impressive pro work.
SSWC O8 Days 1 & 2
•August 23, 2008 • 2 Comments
jp at marla's book signing a few years ago
Awoke at 2: 23 and let my thoughts whir about.
“Can I write a blog in an hour, and be back to bed to catch up on sleep?”
(Ed: no)
Hosted Singular Sam Allison, the creator of Singular Cycles. You remember my borrowed steed at Aviemore last year? First we hie’d up to Annadel State Park in hopes of finding the Bunch in that sizeable tract.
We did. Considering we’d begun an hour after they left (and from a completely different trailhead miles away) I consider it a suitable miracle. We needed one. Sam had a spate of rotten luck (hard crash on previous day, his first on American soil) and it was time to wrestle a good time out of this brief (he only took a week away from work) sojourn.
We rode at (for me) race pace. The sun was high, the trail very dusty and super rocky and the shadows were nowhere in sight. I use shadows to help me navigate bumps. Needless to say it was a bit of a Rough Go (name of trail) bouncing along trying to seem like I know what I’m doing.
Within the hour the Bunch zoomed out of the park to get to Sycip’s little post-ride taco picnic.
“Let’s ride more, we barely got here” Sam said.
OK.
And with that we returned up the bi-i-g hill, took several wrong turns, did a complete circle at one point, and I remembered how the 1983 Rockhopper flummoxed me, Charlie and the brothers Cook who had come to pre-ride the impossible-to-find route. We returned in disgust (stupidly forgetting how incredible it is just to be out in open lands on bicycle while the rest of the world is stuck in traffic), went to the local bike shop and whined about how lost we got.
Older and perhaps more grateful, I relaxed about being ” lost” in this small fastness, and enjoyed a swim in Ilsanjo, a reservoir accidentally drained last winter. It was a puddle, not a lake, but it was cool and it stripped away the urushiol and dust.
We missed the food but caught quality time with Jim Kish (titanium bike builder, and fledlging banjoist) and Jeremy Sycip (father of four day old boy, now they have one of each), developed a crush on Jeremy’s personal machine (foto to follow).
Back at Taj Mahovel Sam put a beautiful bruschetta together in about three minutes. In ten we were dining on fresh pasta, homemade heirloom tomato sauce from last year’s crop, and fresh pears. And the requisite Sierra Nevada (new flavor: Anniversary). THen he got a VERY quiet night in the Airstream, gathering strength (I hope) for this weekend’s festivities (=excesses) and Charlie and I listened to crickets for an hour up in FP (please write to find out what those initials mean).
A few hours later I hung Sam’s laundry in halfmoonlight (we cater!), then baked peach cobbler and savory bread puddng (aka ‘baked glop’). At nine: breakfast of champions: fresh bread toasted, butter, feijoa jam and tea, tea, tea. The glop I packed for the ride, along with my Ada-banjo (resonator back, bit heavy but hopefully more durable than my open-back jobs one of which I destroyed). Dressed for intense sun: longsleeve white shirt, long tights.
In the parking lot downtown some fifty cyclists ‘faffed’ (that word just doesn’t sound right in our arid climate).
All the expected faces (Sean from Soulcraft and Curtis of Retrotec) …a horde of North Carolingians. Surprise: Eric Roman in the flesh…He’s the wiz who produced SSWC 05 –my first ever foray with the Bunch. Though I didn’t know him personally back then, his efforts inspired me to collect a couple hundred autographs from grateful attendees of the State College, Pennsylvania race.
That cardboard-mounted Rockshox poster is a bit of bike history …I gave it to Maurice, who gave it to ? ..who lost it…unless a reader knows where it is. Please send back to me, I’ll get it to Eric. Reward if found.
I dragged three gals and Big Mig up the hill to Tamarancho early. Better to wait for a crowd in a leafy place, than a barking lot. Surprise #2: Marla Streb hello-ing from Rachel Loyd’s driveway. Rachel was there, and a couple of young men.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!”
I always ask it so accusingly (for some reason I can’t just be happy to see someone I love encountered unexpectedly. I have to be mildly injured that they didn’t tell me when they were in “my” town). Marla, forgive me.
We got about five minutes of excited introductions, catch-up (Rachel’s worried about the tattoo! As if she’s going to just win!) and photographs…then the group churned past (unaware there was a two time singlespeed goddess standing there in the driveway).
The Tamarancho loop was fine, shady bits balancing the hot exposed technical serpentine sections. I even performed a realistic crash for one of the NC women, just flopped over as I was wriggling through the “root-rock-right up the face” section.
I got to ride with Bo Gustavvson (guy who helped ‘save’ me from the vicious dog) and Olle the set designer/boat restorer from Stockholm.
Ed: JP, don’t you ever meet any crashing bores on these things?
Strum’d banjo to soothe/torture a green-faced Fiona who lay flat, fighting off heatstroke She and Bo were shivering and sweaty–scary. Her reason: katzenjammer. His: Swedes not accustomed to heat.
So what are the Beijing Olympians doing ? “Training in sauna, or heated gyms, like Bart Brentjens did for Atlanta”. THIS JUST IN: ANNA CAROLINE CHAUSSON TAKES GOLD IN BMX. Sports Illust. needs to cover her.
Sorry, we digress.
Not being even slightly overhung, I kept the banjo’s neck from striking all the trees on my left, while the helmet sat in my eyes, and I re-thought my idea to race with it in Napa.
It will sit in the shade, resonating, and I will wear a three-piece business suit, and overheat but not get sunburnt. I thought about being bare, but no, the poor hide is tanned enough for three lifetimes.
Bo and Ole came to meet Charlie before returning to the heart of the action, take some lemonade.
And at the pub I found Nigel Foskett (mistook him for Biff-yeswearontheweb Outcast), legions of the North Carolingians. Finally grasped WHO Barbara Howe is…and shared boastcards, beers and even fobbed some finery off…The women flaunted some fine post ride footwear. Somehow the time flew and I realized I’d be missing part two of the day’s fun: American Cyclery gathering, ride across bridge, picnic at Kirby.
Hard to even THINK about leaving ‘my’ town for more frivolity.
I pedaled home and hopt into the bath. Gotta get my beauty rest.
SSWC05, collecting autographs from riders
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