I dreamed I was an art student

•June 26, 2008 • 1 Comment
Savvy cyclist's A-Zedinburgh

My  Guide for Cycle Tourists!

The cliche goes: When In Rome, Do As The Romans Do.

The same goes for this place.

Eden Burrow is a roamin’ artist’s dreamtown.

I never attended Burning Man– where everyone attending is expected to at least pretend to be an artist–but the minute I stepped out of Waverly Station in Sept 07,  I was smitten with this stunning multi-layered town.
I joined the river of people on Prince’s Street, and realized that along with the sheepy tourists with bags full of tartany whiskeyish things ( or, god forbid,  Gap-Sony-Generic things) this place is boiling,

churning,

writhing

with Art.

Which means it is crawling with art students,

glutted with galleries,

papered with flyers

all touting …

shows

installations

happenings.

Do  art buyers gather here, too?

Or do the artists just buy each other’s art?

Perhaps this will eventually be Edinburgh’s destiny: a world heritage Art Cauldron.
Within two blocks I felt like I had new eyes…Even in ordinary conditions, my mind is re-booted daily ….every 24 hours a new, different–not necessarily tidy– desktop!

Paired with a twelve nanosecond attention span, and you get…er, the Mind of the Wombat.

So here I am, looking all around me at the Cool Things…and making mental notes for the kind of book you can do in installments of twelve nanoseconds (or less).

My ‘research’ was done by roaming on racer/organizer/roommate Helen Findlay’s spare “Dreichcycle”.
I call it The savvy cyclist’s A-Zedinburgh –a freebie to give the people who came to this years EBFF (Edinburgh Bicycle Film Festival).                          Fold a letter-sized sheet of paper in half three times,                                 snip a strategic slot in it and fold cleverly. Here’s the video (thanks, Chris).

Instant publication!
The first edition needed a little correcting, I’ll be back with a new one shortly…if you fancy your own, simply pop a fiver in the mail to me at

A-Zedinburgh book offer…….Box 757 Fairfax CA 94930 USA

and you will get your copy of this amazingly useful mini-book.  “Bike-o-graphed” if you so desire.

Our staff are standing by to take your order.

My quick trip to meet book agent Jenny Brown was most pleasant. I think she gave my work (three books produced in the last three months) the highest compliment: “These are wacky!!”.

I doubt she remembered that my name practically IS ‘Whack”…

Yes. I did it. I made a commercial pitch to an extremely gifted (and busy) agent. A helpful agent at that , who gave me five minutes, more than the three I had asked for.
All artists benefit from  help.  Even us poseurs.

Posted in Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, Ride, The Book
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Beltane Biking

•June 21, 2008 • 2 Comments

scots-barbqBig fun this evening riding up onto a massive hill covered with “corduroy” (pine forest in perfect rows) …in attendance: Colin Shearer, Helen F. Simon, Steve, Chris, Nicky Cockburn (for a short spell)  and a young tattoo’d dreadlocked man..

There was a big concrete reservoir structure that I suppose held water well above innerleithen toun  for….the mills?  Since we did a full circle and then some, I should have seen it two times, but I was so blindly fixated on the six silhouettes up ahead (as well as the rock-studded singletrack) I totally missed it (picture a seventy foot long, fifteen foot tall box plopped on top of a heathery hilltop devoid of trees)

Now it’s covered w/surprisingly neat graffiti. Looks sort of like a big bunker but withthinner walls.
Hard ups, and ripping downhills, six other riders …one of whom, Steve, has a shop he’s opening called I-cycle and he rents a space to (or with ) Lynne Aitcheson (the stunt rider who plays ‘Jo’ in the troupe called the Riderz)’s boyfriend who is a framebuilder. Forgot to take down his name…Framebuilder in Innerleithen or Peebles..
bbq was pretty novel:
You brought your beer.
You brought (well, Helen brought) a disposable (boo, hiss) bbq…
Helen packed two chairs (thank goddess)
I forgot: coat, gloves, down pants (sorry, trousers)…full moon rise was gorgeous. Sunset wasn’t too bad either, great pinkness of cloud.
Best workout in at least a week…the guys had been pulling my chain by misdirecting me down wrong trails (old trick to take the wind out of someone’s sails…esp if she’s 15 yrs older and keeping up just fine, even on a so-called crap bike…my Dreich is doing great…it does NOT know it’s crap!)
THey have no idea that I was a racer once. and I have to say, anonymity is fun when the result is bafflement about a flowergirl, er flowerdowager keeping up on the climbs. This allows sails to billow mightily…

The theme of the ride was STEADY BOATS! (Chris: link?)

This was supposed to slow me  down….Simon,  the fellow who kept yelling that at me, is a woodworker…
I thought about it whenever he said it…it was when I was racing by (the only way I can keep up on rides with my betters is not to stop when they are all standing around regrouping –as in, waiting for JP–and this lets my legs not lock up and gives me a bit of headstart…

I finally tell him: “Let’s imagine the boat wants to be steady, but the ocean underneath is rocking…what do the boats do in that case?
They rock, and they roll.

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“Dreadful” Day

•June 21, 2008 • 1 Comment

Thursday June 19th…I am up early, packing what I will need for eight days up in Aberdeenshire…The Bikerz troupe will steer north after their gig at Gylemuir school.

It takes me an hour to sort my necessities… and winnow down to day pack and messyngerbag and a banjo…my gear’s gotta be cycle-schlepped along the Union Canal for a couple of miles. (Chris :show the swans?)

The loud house-phone jangles my concentration.
It’s nine and I have to be out the door immediately to make it to the school by nine-thirty.

It’s my boss, the youthful, affable, easy-to-work-with if somewhat stressed Iain Withers.

He doesn’t sound happy.

“We…er…are not going to need you to come in today” he began.

Whew. Two minutes later I’d have been gone, and he would have told it to my (All2Readable) face which probably might have betrayed the shock I was feeling as he went on, slowly: ” we are not going to…..ehm….you’ll not be needed… for the following week either..”

“Oh, Iain, this must be very hard for you to say!” (God! Always ‘momming’ people! Even when I am bothered!)

For three days I have watched him masterfully juggle seven spinning plates…and let him know that if there is anything he needs me to understand, that he should repeat it twice, ‘because I’m deaf and retarded’.

(This is how I feel. Usually it’s like this. He says something the first time. I realize that it’s directed at me and that there are at least two levels of meaning. Then I say, “Beg pardon?”

Then the second time it comes clear(er)..and then I repeat BACK what I THINK i understood.

“Active listening” it’s called. Proves to the other that you understand.
But obviously there was TONS I was not grasping.
Like how a lady with a tree on her helmet and a banjo on her back

might be a rotten fit for the smoothly running corporate inspired Fiction known as The Bikerz.

Perhaps if I had gotten a clue, a work description, training?

It’s not a record for me (I have been fired before even starting a job once)…but this time, three days into the two week contract, I was cut loose.

I would say “made redundant” , but that is impossible. It presumes “replaceability”–as in: a new Jacquie to plug into the Riderz traveling road show.

The Lady has been observing as well as teaching.

Perhaps inspiring…or warping–depending on your opinion of disheveled dreadlocked dervishes: at the end of the day at Towerbank school, two girls had successfully woven themselves a dreadlock to show me….

“Right, very nice hair, girls! ”
I didn’t think to myself: “Wait’ll their mums get a look at that!”

Or was it the autographed foreheads on those four boys? In indelible ink? Aughh…

Back to Her Royal Wryness and her decrees: HRW the queen pronounces this killer demonstration of bikerly derring-do ( and –don’t-try-this-at-home…) a mixed bag –some good and some bad.

Tis guid that there are professionals zipping around to ten or eleven schools around Scotland with a positive bicycle message, complete with brochures, waterbottles and red “Riderz” shwag bags.

It might be guid that an entire school see near-world record standing bunny hops, jumps, and even full back flips off a curved wooden ramp. Not really sure, since it may just foster that Spectator/Star dyad that I am so ambivalent about….

But stars they are: the five riders (Duncan, Lynne, Fraser, et al) are very good at what they do, like the kids, clearly enjoy themselves in the show, and work like dogs to get the set-up just right (and safe: in damp weather the ramps become scarily slippy, and all attractions have to be ribboned off to keep the kids out of trouble).

Downright bad: encouraging kids to be noisy viewers instead of noisy DO-ers?

Also good (but should have been the morning activity, and then be followed by the show): skill-building exercises (riding along an elevated “timber trail” as well as my patented track-stand lesson, and the “nervous novice” (I call it chicken shit) ‘look where you want to go’ game, which involves riding along a board on the ground….,plus a little workshop called bike doctor (the things they were teaching went beyond the normal capacity of your typical p-5 and 6 students, but I might be wrong. Certainly a TON of kids brought their bikes–something you don’t normaly see in California, where most kids are driven to school. An additional segment on Planning your route to school. It was something, seeing those kids all kneeling on their maps outside on the playground as Mark Symonds, the Edinburgh Council school bicycle travel coordinator –down on all fours– shares his expertise with each. All leave with maps and a guide to safer cycling.

It will be interesting to hear what (or if) bicycle ridership among students rises perceptibly in the wake of this impressively worked out Concept.

But were the services of the biggest ad agency in Scotland and a PR agency to boot really get the job done better? Wouldn’t it be a great idea to spend one-half of “wow!” (The term I’m using for the only hinted-at budget for this two-week media blitz) on things that are happening (and succeeding) at the grassroots level?

Do the schools assess themselves, and make up (or gather) their own data?
The Marin Bike Coalition has unverified (and way over-estimated, i.e. fudged) numbers. We ‘wowed’ away 22 millions in three years. Have barely anything to show for it.

Ours is JUST one COUNTY, with rather savvy (some non-cycling) bike “advocates” whose motto has always been: follow the money.

iF the Bikerz gets a hundred out of the roughly 600 children who see them to get on their bikes regularly, it will have been well worth it.

I hope so. I put at least a hundred autographs on outstretched hands, and expect there to be a spike in the population of unembarrassed, pedal-poised girls sporting “treadful” hair under their flowered helmets.

Posted in Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, Ride

Path of Leith Resistance Part 1

•June 17, 2008 • 2 Comments


St. Bernard’s Well (with Hygieia) by blackpuddinonnabike

Yesterday was my first day of two week’s working with MB7‘s Iain Withers. Iain (and Cycling Scotland) have put together a a fat tire roadshow, featuring a squad of six gifted riders (two are pro trials & bmx riders, a couple are more focused on  university studies. One of them, Danny McAskill, has not become famous yet, but will within a  couple of years ).

What is in Scottish water?

I allot an hour to make the three-mile trip from Grove St. to Trinity Primary School partway down to Leith. ..Mustn’t be late the first day at work!

Armed with my trusty Spokes map (by now, it’s pretty soft and hole-y from wrongfolding and impatient shoving and unfurling x a hundred) in the overstuffed messynger bag, I ride wrong way down Torpichen Street in the general direction of the Water of Leith path.

It’s the lyrical waterway that links Edinburgh’s trafficky art/tourist/business/residential world. It is not easy to locate. Every local knows it’s there, but most seem to have no clue precisely where it is from where they are standing.

I know it’s right below me somewhere…I’d discovered it near the Drumsheugh Baths two weeks ago…but couldn’t locate it NOW.

Fifty five minutes left on the clock.

Ask the telephone installer. He thinks a couple of seconds and sez, “See those little stairs by the cone? Take them..”

Took them, and was in an enclosed brick courtyard.

Come back out, locate a mailman.

HE scratches his head, then says: ‘go up there, to the Hawthorne Bank’…

I am DAMNED if I go uphill again…

Rudely turn away to seek better advice.

Rode back, find a man leaving his apt, wearing cycling kit… he accompanies me across a tiny rickety bridge across the Leith creek, and I am off…

I knew I would have to crawl out at Stockbridge, but somehow I surface too soon.

A friendly p’liceman re-directs me: “Take this road (pointing the direction from which I had come)…then go right, up the hill, then along Queensferry road then back down the hill…”

Never rude to people who are patient (especially policepeople who might be in the middle of a Situation), I thanked him and made a mental note to write a note to the Edinburgh Council that their constabulary need rigorous training to memorize all the little cubbyholes of the Water of Leith path.

Find the wiggle in the route, clatter down more heavily worn stone stairs, and resume gliding through the bird twitterland with the riffling water and nearly no people…

it is a daydreamer’s delight. When you are doing ‘guided imagery’ (something cancer people are taught to get out of grumpy mind-set) this scene is precisely what I had pictured all those times in the therapist’s chair in the year 2000.

To arrive in “Eden Burrow” and find it all here, in non-dreamtime was a major shock and life-altering delight. Is this a case of “Look where you want to go” –a bicycling law–or had I seen Water of Leith in a brochure somewhere ? I never really THOUGHT about Edinburgh per se in my bike racing, whirled traveller life…

I pass a lovely water temple with a stone statue. Hebe? Hygiea?

Me in another life?

Nah…she ‘s got a robe on.

Anyway, I only have 30 minutes left to cover two and a half miles that I don’t know at ALL…The prior bit I thought I’d known quite well….wrong ).

Rolling past dog-walking retirees and the occasional savvy foot-commuter, I realize the flaw in my wish for a purple dotted line that would point out every little inch for the non-native Leith lovers.

Moab has its slickrock trail, with its dotted (more like long yellow dashes) line through the sandstone rocky mazes of the Utah desert. And you can go there any time, it will be crawling with bike tourists. it is Princes Street in the desert (technical, trafficky terrain..minus the shops )

I don’t think the Leith path OUGHT o be crawling with people–especially Tourists In A Hurry, or –god forbid–locals COMMUTING in a hurry.

Perhaps it is thanks to the secretness inherent in this winding treasure trove of trees birds bugs dogs flowers birdsong jackhammers…(oh, wait, that’s Grove Street Municipal Electric Hammer Orchestra, putting in the gas lines…I have banjo’d at them …to no avail. They simply won’t leave.)

Back to the commute…I locate the Goldenacre path (the dirt one…completely devoid of people…almost to the Gee, I Wonder If Someone Could Get Away With Murder Here? point).

Roses on either side blooming madly among the nettles. Floppy yellow climbers, brilliant pink rugosas that smell intensely but drop their petals no matter how carefully you pluck them…and small pale pink ones, five-petaled with yellow stamens, most beautiful. These last hold up well to being arranged on the handlebars… Stop a minute to pick some and decorate handlebars.

I am spending a day with scarified, baggy gray & black- shorted riders with elbow pads, etc. Might as well do some “frill seeking” myself.

Gosh it’s so lonely here I might be able to get away (don’t even think about being late now) with some bike-o (as opposed to auto) eroticism.

Hmmm.

I forget if this is permitted in blogs.

(Shrug)

Overhead the sky is blue with some white clouds stirred in, the trees wheel around dizzily to the pounding of jacquiehammers.

And so… to work.

(Epilogue: I only lasted one week at my ‘Riderz” gig. On Ascot opening day I fabricated a darling helmet with leaves, paper, and flowers, and brought my banjo to amuse the kids during a brake at Gracemount school. The sheer out-in-left fieldedness of this unpredictably non-uniform presentation caused poor Ian to re-think my coming north with the crew and being in extremely close quarters. Perhaps it was the best, but I was given a mere three minutes notice, and suddenly I had a free week to kill.

I took a train to Inverness, just to be a real tourist for once. My bike ride was grand, but the town was a tiny bit depressing. I think I can’t really enjoy a place as much when I’m completely by myself, gawking at stuff….reader, this blog gives me the illusion of a traveling companion.

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Pentlands tour + MoonWalk Edinburgh 2008

•June 15, 2008 • 4 Comments

Perfect ending to a great day.


First: the Pentlands “FIve Peaks” tour, with Jac Strachan, Chris Marquis, Colin Shearer, and a new face: “Sanny” from Glasgow. His accent is vastly more desirable to imitate than the Edinburgh one, and I learned a few Weegie pronunciations, foul terms and even learned that the best thing you can tell a Glaswegian is: ‘you’re not from Ediburgh, are you?’… is this like the San Francisco /L.A. grooviness rivalry?

The ride lasted maybe 5 hrs from door-to-door. We rode to and fro (rather than driving). That alone should qualify us for some kind of karmic status, if not outright “carbon credits” (term frequently used by nonironic travel writers unwilling to put aside their Live In An Airplane style).

Jac and Chris left earlyish because of tea with Dad or something leaving me to contend with two very spirited racers. But no, they are Scots and perfect gentlemen…Colin and Sanny were also splendid tour guides, instinctively waiting for al old bat to pick the flowers, take the picture, generally catch up, etc….I was entertained by watching them surge ahead, playing with one another (climbing impossible steeps and swooping elegantly down the other side).. .At one point I could hear them singing …I was too far away to recognize what, but that is one of my definitions of a friend: someone you spontaneously sing with…. I would include pix but am going to have to wait til I learn how again.

Home to a bath before hitting the movies one more time, again a PACKED HOUSE to see Roam and Seasons, both by the Canadian film crew called the Collective. Each was a well-made tone/motion poem that puts the viewer in the saddle for much of the movie…Naturally when it was over I had to pretend I was trials rider Ryan Leech at all the stop signs…

Birthday dinner for a new friend, Heidi Kuehne, who has had three careers to my one…including professional musician. We played a bit of banjo, I got to meet a dozen of her friends including one, Helen who flew out from the States..whew… another definition: a friend is someone you will endure a flight for. After that, it was well nigh midnight, when the start gun went off for the Moonwalk… I encountered them near Rose Street, just behind Prince’s Street. A special lane was cordoned off.

I pulled out the banjo and begain to play. It is not every day you see Edinburgh’s streets teeming with a two hour-to-flow past river of 25, 000 women…some racing, most walking . All in darling, hilarious, tender bras heavily decorated with flowers, feathers, and that old standby favorite, a pair of pink applique’d hands, like the dress Barbara Streisand wore to the Academy awards in the 1960’s..many had plastic bags at the ready, tucked in behind like a bustle…others wore theirs, saran-wrapped sisters beaming and not just a few thanking me even though I was thanking them myself, for taking the trouble.

I am going out on a limb and guessing they guessed that my pink glasses were about B.C…(they’re not, but I have made it through BC well enough, no thanks to Nissan, who is sponsoring this huge event and doubtless getting a healthy tax reduction for it, oh my does this sound ungrateful? Sorry…it’s just that the irony/pathos is a little too great. If you want to know why  I despair about Nissan’s title sponsorship of this important feel-good event, please see this book: Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. (Essay abstract)

Suitably spent, I tumbled into bed at three thirty.

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Exploring the mystery of the seven stanes

•June 14, 2008 • Leave a Comment


Back from riding in Dumfries with my friend Julie Cartner. She has worked for the Forestry Commision this past twelvemonth to promote the cycling opportunities to a wider audience (namely, families, women, not that highly visible minority that I call the Boy’s Club).

Each day Julie and her friends would lead me out into places with swoopy fun trails, and somehow each day was cool, dry and in some cases partially sunny; they all insisted that the Sun had stowed away in my luggage, because it’s rarely this dry and agreeable for so many days in a row.

All I know is: the 2008 version of the Scottish summer is so good, I’m seriously considering moving here…Partly because of the bike politics, and the power cyclists have within the social fabric. Is it just my luck, or is every other scot-on-a-bike an articulate advocate for going green (the real green, not the new marketing darling Faux Vert that claims that BMW has made a car perfect for heavy traffic…I mean, COME ON!)

BUT how I digress.

What strikes me as radical is the idea that Scotland has come to grips with the inevitability of the postmodern paperless society…and the state has made a thoughtfully conceived turn in the direction of bike tourism in tandem with woodlands management.

The project is called the 7Stanes (Stanes is old scots for stones)…mytho-fictive stones with carvings on them…in seven different areas (I have ridden Mabie and Glentress forest trails). A book is coming out that outlines the Mystery that binds them all together…

Enticing people outdoors to give cycling off road a go–even people that don’t identify as ‘athletes’–is already yielding such tangibles as greater physical health and happier people (few cyclists deny that riding helps keep them sane). Since the Scots have state-run health care, any outlays made in the direction of supporting, teaching, and advocating for offroad cycling as an ACTIVITY (as opposed to being an “EXTREME!” sport) will be repaid (or rather: cost less in the long run) ten fold.

This just my warped perspective: the Earth breathes a sigh of relief when humans climb aboard a bike because a) they are not in an Audi quattro or an SUV

b) they are not shopping

c) they are outside being the mammals, primates and sometimes even the exalted manifestations of pure Joy (go ahead, turn the page) that the cosmos intended us to be.

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Over The Hill Bicycle Reunion & Glee Club Part 2

•June 5, 2008 • 8 Comments


Bingham Bicyclers–the over 50’s–reconvened yesterday under beautiful skies. Last week they came out (14 of them)

a) “To see if I could get fit!”

b) “To try oot the bikes”

c) “to get me balance back”

d) “Cos I’d rather cycle than walk–it’s more fun”

Reason enough to bridge a twenty or more year gap since the last time they’d been on two wheels.

This time around a dozen came…all returned ready to ride again. Staff-wise we lost Val but took on Heidi, another American who has moved (permanently) to Eden Burrow, and loves bikes as much as she does banjo, science, and good company. Her knack for encouragement showed itself immediately.

I heard her telling her students, “It’s impossible to be sad when you’re riding a bike!”

I wish I had a little pin I could give each one (Jeanette, Margaret, Graeme, Ellen and the rest). For every one of them a hundred others wouldn’t dare attempt a tricycle, a kid’s bike, anything. Even if they KNEW that skilled (or reasonably persuasive) and gentle coaches were on hand, free of charge, to smooth that scary first little wobble from Standing Still to ….actually….rolling…and steering…and looking where you want to go…and remembering suddenly you haven’t learned how to STOP…..etc….

Verily, this crew was a brave bunch.

The progress was astounding… Petite Ellen was pedaling around on a bike far too small, but she was Getting The Hang Of Things.

If she keeps it up–even just here in the parking lot at the Lismore Primary School parking lot–she will take home

a) exhilaration

b) the thrill of perfect balance, Movement under Her Own Power and best of all…

c) “I can STILL BIKE!!”

All things that justify Not Staying In Bed That Morning.

Resolved then: No future Olympians will emerge from this crew, only similar people happy to have a safe place to experiment with the Freedom Machine… aiming to ride a couple of miles from home. Not tomorrow, and maybe not even NEXT week, but someday this summer….and for the rest of their lives.

Watch the video and see what fun we all had!

Posted in Bingham 50+, Cycle Training, Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, Ride

Colin Shearer Dream Ride

•June 1, 2008 • 1 Comment

Had a great ride with Colin Shearer, the 45 yr old Edinburgh native I met through our Scots-obsessed friend Ken Eichstaedt. A moonter since the eighties, Colin has visited us with his girlfriend Anna Derricourt in years past, took care of my trip to the Single Speed World Championship in Aviemore last Sept, and most recently FOUND ME A JOB here in Scotland (working with MB7, a performing bike troupe).

Today’s gift from Colin was time. Lots of it.

It was to be a 4 hour Sunday tour of the Pentlands, the Mt. Tam of Edinburgh in that it is immediately accessible (sans auto), open to all, and entirely protected from development.

The day began overcast and dry, we skimmed along a bike path along a canal that connects Edinburgh to Glasgow…a 75 mile long thing with an adustment somewhere along it, called the FALKIRK WHEEL (GOOGLE IT) that makes up the fifty ft. difference that somehow occured as the canal was dug across the country (possibly from opposite ends without the use of telephone , fax, or transit and plumb bob?)

We did about 3 miles of it, passing many women..some wearing shirts that had a pink brassiere screened on the front… they are practicing for the upcoming breast cancer charity MOONWALK, a 26 mile nighttime walk. Imagine several thousand non-athletic ladies practicing longer and longer walks, and you get the picture…they are raising awareness, developing their own strength, and lowering their own susceptibility! (I took a picture of a trio of them and warmly thanked them as a BC survivor). A couple more single tracks along the Water of Leith which is LOWER than the canal by many feet…and we were at the outskirts of town.

A steep track led to a gate that put us into the wide-open hills.

Sound track: gunfire. There were shooting ranges within these Pentlands…distinctly non-Californian. Other things on the sound track…birds birds birds. Beautiful deep tremolos of er, I have no clue, as well as very melodic songbird action. And the steady stammer of the lambs, sheeps and even a bell. The belwether?

After much climbing to get to the very top of a set of hills, we zoomed down dreamtrack with perfect dry surface (only two or three months of the year, apparently)past SMILING hikers, and at bottom even saw a placid pair of highland cows (pronounced HEELAN KOO) and their little koo-lets! The three foot long horns look imposing, and they were just lying there middle of the trail like a pair of hairy volkswagen buses. I bravely patted the red one. Need to touch animals when ever possible (touch starvation in full roar).

The rain came down just as we crossed over the gorse-mottled Braids (low hills that flank the west side of Edinburgh) and again more single track that only a local could find.

Lunch at a mosque, deserves its own blog….

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Gloves & Loss In Edinburgh

•May 30, 2008 • 2 Comments


Real-life velcro (the annoyingly tenacious plastic hooks that cling to practically anything soft, not just the intended loopy fuzz ) isn’t much different from mental velcro ( the term I use for my grabby mind).

Put down your cycle gloves at your peril.  They will hitch a ride inside your shirt, on someone else’s chair, your own trouser leg if you don’t pay full attention in both the putting down and the taking up…my problem is that this is the transition moment…and my mind is usually somewhere up the road, while my hands perform what i always assume is a mindless task.
The gloves proved me wrong.

Keys probably play hide and seek with most folks, but my life is not key-intensive. It is glove intensive (and glasses-o-centric).   I get the feeling that keys are a common bugaboo for more “normal” people with cars, offices, apartments, etc. So I packed TWO sets of lace-trimmed bike gloves. A back up pair seemed smart.

I lost the sunflower pair in Switzerland.

Could it be a coincidence that  my Swiss friends and I  were talking about emo stuff (=code for @ttachment issues)?  Did the gloves stay behind in the ladie’s room  at  that wonderful veggie restaurant in Luzerne?  

   Chris pointed me at a thrift shop my first day here because he knows I’m mad about old clothing, and I’d griped about   leaving my longfinger gloves back at the apartment, betting on warmer weather.

“Two minutes” he said…

I raced in, asked the woman if they had any gloves, and out came a jumbled box of gloves.  (gloating noise, sound of woolen hands rubbing themselves together) A pound for fine red wool gloves! WITH PINK BOW already threaded along the wrist…is today my lucky day?

Within a few hours I had bonded with this new-to-me pair, but apparently they were not so quick to bond with me.

My baggage is fully exploded in the snug space of my own here at Helen F’s fab 1830 abode (pics included somewhere in this blog). Just FINDING a glove could take an hour.  Time aplenty to consider the concept of “controlling” my possessions.

 Europeans talk about ‘controlling’ your passport …know where it is at all times. Is this why it is so hard for some people to travel?   Cause ‘controlling’ tiny little things is not totally easy for everyone?

Thus I will leave the glove question hanging,  and wear socks on my hands when riding.  I’m superstitious about scraping my delicate keyboard dancers on the “pavements” –charming Scots word for sidewalk.

Sorry, I really meant: scraping my hands on the street,  but “pavements” just sounds so…fun and different and local.

 Either way I am swinging the lead :

faking it…fudging….lying, etc…

Riding on pavements is strictly forbidden.  Pedestrians accost you and don’t let you forget it.  I hop off immediately, apologize and tell them of course they are right.

Easy to make their day, eh?

 But if I skate by on the pavements, I will surely be nailed here in my blog for  waving  around argot casually like the person who can only say One Thing In French.

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Over The Hill Bicycle Reunion and Glee Club

•May 28, 2008 • 4 Comments

…had its inaugural meeting this morning at eleven a.m.

Chris Hill picked me up from bike champ Helen Findlay‘s “Eden Burrow”. Not only did Helen (Kiwi transplant) welcome an Imperfect Stranger to her abode, she has trusted me (notoriously hamhanded with tools, equipment, fine china) with her blue & silver Dreichcycle.

Chris deftly swopped the brake cables to keep me from killing myself grabbing the right brake lever (British standard: front brake lever on right), and now I am cranking like mad to keep up.

Hill’s a lanky titan on a teeny wheeled Moulton loathe to let anyone pass, so me and his aid-de-camp Darren Mirfield gamely keep up, dodging the (ten-points if you miss ’em) snails easing across the Innocent bike path.

These two are letting me sit in on a pilot project putting significantly senior citizens back on their bikes. Chris got me over for the Edinbike film fest, and he knows I hate being the Ordinary Tourist.

Five til eleven, we’re the community center in Bingham, an air of some dread… after all, it was just a little blurb in a brochure: “Want to get back on your bike? Are you old? Up for a new activity?” Community center outreach type stuff…

Then at last, a red mini-bus pulls in, and fourteen silverhaired scots tumble out, every imaginable size and shape. Mostly women, and all talkative. Chris gives them a quick rundown of the morning: tea first, then look at bikes, touch the bikes and get on the bikes and maybe even ride the bikes. Or think about trikes.

No sooner has tea been passed around than a woman (Jean, the one person who NEVER EVER ONCE rode a bike) bursts into song: Daisy daisy….you know the one. About looking sweet on the seat of a bicycle built for two. Surprise: everyone sings along!

I KNOW I am not in Kansas anymore.

By the end of the morning there have been two thrilling spills (both harmless) each of which deeply drives home the importance of gardening gloves, anything at all on the hands, for someone getting re-acquainted with the bike.

I run around. Darren runs around. We teach, and Val too has come to teach. She is likely to be dedicated volunteer for this project….Chris wrenches on bikes and issues wry commentary.

Everyone has great time. The upshot: they came just to see if they COULD actually still ride. They found four teachers that managed to get it across that this is possible, even if not in seven day’s time.

And next week most of them will come back. Their mission: find the other pedal, learn to stop as well as start, figure out what balance is when you’re rolling along, and give the old freedom machine another try.

More photos

Story part 2

Posted in Cycle Training, Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, Ride, The Book
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