Forever Joshing

•September 29, 2007 • 1 Comment

Josh is now 30ish, but Charlie and I met him and his pal Paul on a gray New Year’s Day, 1993. Charlie had noticed some helmeted riders circling in the street below us, and when I went to open the door, there was a young man standing at the door.
“Is this the house of JP and CC?” he asked.
“Yes….”
” Wasn’t sure….we knew the neighborhood but not the house. We are writing a story for our magazine “Strange Chicken” and would like to interview you”.
“Sure, why not come out to the Airstream of Consciousness, that shiny thing in the yard..I’ll make us some tea…”

And thus did novice celebrity stalkers Paul Walker and Josh Thayer enter our lives.
There is way too much to narrate now. I just want to point you the reader to Josh’s blog: itsmorefuntocompute.

I’m stoked because he is really our sudo-kid, having fledged from churlish college rower to articulate middle-aged Contributing Citizen. Yes, middle aged. It starts at thirty. Ends at sixty. Enjoy the longest phase of your lives, o readers! If you squint at his fun blog (he’s been doing this forever. I’m the fledgling now, huh?) you’ll see very cool pix of his frame building project(s) and a lovely interior monologue as he welds and cuts, files and fits.

If only he had trained at Charlie’s shop! Then he could put it in his resume…well, there’s always coming over for an hour or two, and then putting it in yr resume….so many guys that haven’t even built a bike have claimed they “apprenticed” at Charlie’s magical shop.

At least you’re building real bike frames.
Try not to let this one get swiped, OK, Josh?
Just because you built it doesn’t mean it “grew on a tree” (Chas’ favorite term for the mistaken belief of others, who seriously seem to think that Charlie goes out into our shabby yard and yanks a frameset out of the Aluminum Tree!
Stay metallurgical, and always remember: Reagent Pure.
Oh, and guid luck in tomorrow’s psychlocross race in Fairfax.

Posted in Charlie Cunningham, Jacquie Phelan, MTB racing

Critical Mass is 15 years old today

•September 28, 2007 • 3 Comments

Now and then I love calling Carol (Cunningham) to share my latest silliness…today (Friday, last of the month) after I read her the great words I found on Larry & Molly’s fridge last night, and will duly record here for you m’dears. In a second.
After sharing the funny Fridge Entertainment (I get up while the Thursday night musical gang slogs through a hornpipe or a waltz, things my banjo is not suited for, or I’m too lazy to slow down for, and walk into Casa Rea’s kitchen, and read the fridge. It’s a repository of lefty propaganda, wit and other ephemera…like a nice enamel magnet with a WW2 fresh-faced typist saying “Gee, I wasn’t using those civil rights anyway”…), Carol said in a solemn voice, “I hope you’re not going to Critical Mass tonight”.

This was out of the blue. I’d just come down from FHP (email me to find out what the initials for our tree-house aerie stand for!) with Chas, and put the tea on while yakking with my Mother-In-Love (no other term comes close).

“Why do you say that?”
“Well, it’s all over the front page…It sounds like a major free-for-all….”
“But…you know I’ve gone off & on for years, made that movie, told you how family-friendly it is…is there something they’re saying in the paper?”

I hadn’t looked at it yet.

“You haven’t had BREAKFAST YET?” she said shrilly.
“Uh, no, late night…music, remember?”
“Well, go have breakfast, you’ll keel over at the phone or forget it altogether…”
“Hardly happens” I assured her, wondering if she had a clue about my last week back from travels and barely remembering to eat…
“It’s just that the S.F. Chronicle tells a very biased story, and I thought you knew better than believe those jokers…People bring their kids in trailers…lots of kids in trailers, parrots on the handlebars, riding while filming…and it’s all safe-super-safe, because the COPS are keeping it that way. They prevent the (rare) road raging murderists from bumping the riders off…It’s really a sort of rolling party street festival, Mom”.
“Well, they sounded like it was kind of out of control…”
“Carol. Remember who are the biggest advertisers…Car companies. The paper has an entire 12 tabloid size pages given over to car shite”.

I’m still pretending I’m an irritable Scots bike nut, not a boring ol’ Marin hypocrite with a car right outside. I barrelled on, warm to the subject, with captive, loving relative lashed to her telly.

“If they framed the Mass as a safe, sane activity that points out all the flaws in the existing system of personal transportation, guess how many advertisers would be majorly pissed off? The auto companies, the insurance companies hell even the City,with its hefty returns on parking lots and parking violations…the entire city fabric is shot through with Car Craziness and they rely on the media to prop up the illusion…and besides–”

“Go have your breakfast. Please eat before you hop on your bike”
“OK. Love ya.”

and now, about those Funny words I read on the fridge:

IF you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you an resist complaining and boring peope with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
IF you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you, when through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
if you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
THEN you’re actually a dog.

Posted in Jacquie Phelan

Beginner’s pluck part 2

•September 26, 2007 • 1 Comment

Shirley Tam came by today, on time this time. She used a real map (last visit, Mapquest screwed her up). Shirley’s a courageous woman who has decided that if All Those Other People Can Ride A Bike, So Can I. She also quit a very stressful job at er, some biotech corporation because they seemed to think they owned her weekends.

So she decided in her month or so off, between gigs, to focus on getting two inflated wheels to behave underneath her.

When we got out onto the street, she told me that she also learned to swim later in life, and that swimming seemed easier because you can just float even if you can’t swim….I am not sure of that, since I have living proof that certain body types (bonnie mince Charlie’s, for example) SINK upon being lowered into water.

“Shirley, you mean that in Hong Kong, nobody swam, rode a bike, played?”
“Right.”
“What did you guys do for exercise?”
“We took buses and walked and we did shopping marathons.”
“You’re joking”.
“No. In Hong Kong, shopping is a serious sport.”

“OK…about this bike…we’ll keep the pedals off for now…let’s see if you can propel yourself down Dogbark Lane (slight decline) using both feet to push off…yeah, double foot-strike…No, not alternate tip-toeing like we did before…I want to see how long you can coast after pushing off from both feet at once, and letting your feet sort of hang back behind the pedals for a second or two.”

She did it, but it was clear that she didn’t like the sensation of Going Too Fast (3 mph).

“Let’s try something different. I’ll hold the saddle, you will simply steer, but be sure to look where you are going not a fixed blank stare, either. The real deal. Like: tell me how Camilla there (pregnant neighbor walking her first kid in pram) is dressed…”
Shirley fights a little with the wobbly handlebars, then:
“She’s got on…capri’s below the knee, floral pattern. Red and white. Flat..heels.”

As she spoke, I could feel her “gyroscope” starting to work…my light hold of the rear of the saddle with just a couple of fingers was sufficient…for short spells…and then she’d pitch to the side, abdicating control.

The same happened on Friday: when she focused on something else, a tiny bit of relaxation became evident…. only different stimulus. She had mentioned that when she ice-skated, the music helped to relax her and set the rhythm.

“You mean, just HEARING an external tune?
(began humming the Blue Danube)
(and she remained upright visibly longer…for ten long seconds)

Sometimes I wonder why I charge to teach, when I learn so much FROM my (star) students!
GO SHIRLEY GO!

Then, another brainwave today: “Does it feel like you’re going a little too fast?”
“yes”
“Then how about gently squeezing the brakes WHILE I’m assisting back here, and you steer as before, but scrub off a little speed, yes…just like…that…”
“You mean you can ride with the brakes ON?”
“Yeah.. it dramatically improves your precision in a tight turn (reader: when you are riding very slowly, NOT when you’re flying at speed), oh, God, Shirley you’re giving me another idea…”

I realized that the sensation of a completely free-rolling wheel without resistance, specially on even the gentlest of declines (Dogbark Lane loses ten feet in a third of a mile) give the neo-nervous rider a feeling of No Control. But braking, there is a noticeable feedback loop… even if Shirl hasn’t figured out the subtlety of pedaling-while-steering/looking-while-microadjusting-the-handlebars-again-and-again/-trying-to-remain-relaxed-while-petrified.

“Touch yr shoulders to yr ears. Now, let ’em down…. ”

It was a two hour session, a bit long. We rested a few minutes in the shade under the huge oak at the bottom of the lane.

Every few minutes huge pick-up trucks would roar past. Dogbark Lane’s a fleeping dead end, but God they go fast..We stayed put most of the time, had the trucks work around us…there are a dozen little kids on the street, even the sewer workers from San Francisco oughta have a clue it’s just a slow driving street. But, no. They are late.

Finishing a bit later than I’d anticipated, I had to doff the Super Patient Lady hat and throw on the Late For My Next Act cape.

Shirl put her bike in her car, promised to steal the neighbor kid’s bike (joke) so she could be even closer to the ground…And I realized there was no way , at ten minutes til one, I could be at College of Marin in time for my classical Russian Music appreciation seminar. First I said, “Take me in your car, I’ll have mother-in-law drive me home”.

Then I worked it out, remembered the six other things I had to do….like they say in London: You’re better off by bike. I don’t know what I’d been thinking. Ancient American reflex? I KNOW better.

“Skip it. See you later, I’m gonna stick to the bike, and just risk being a bit late…”

On went my special lock-in shoes (untied, cuz I’m late all the time), lace gloves, helmet with wings on top…plus a folio of comics I did 20 years ago that a friend will scan for me so YOU CAN SEE WHAT A DREADFUL COMIC ARTIST I YAM.

After music class, I realized that I hadn’t eaten a bit all day. For someone who usually shovels a thousand calories in at breakfast, this is headline news. Blame the computer. I’ve been typing every free instant.
Hint to reader: *please send reassuring comments, which give no caloric energy but are still useful*

Now it was mid-afternoon, and all I could think of was: Dumpsters (normal kid would think:fridge). Androgeno’s didn’t disappoint. I pulled: 3 things of ricotta, one thing of fresh mozzarella, a bunch of organo bananas, ripe (the hardest to deal with because they canna take any pressure), six pints of readymade orange colored indian sauces vindaloo and Korma (which I’ve never heard of) of course those are about 3 pounds(UK) six bux each…score!!! an’ what else?

Mmm…oh yeah hearts of palm from the deli. Only slightly tired. From a can, into the plastic deli tub. Taste of sodium phosphate but that’s ok, minor preservative…I sobbed inwardly for having taken my fast Cunningham road machine (truly I can get to COM in 14 minutes) which has NO ‘carrion’ capacity…DANNNNGGGG

For dinner I threw a small orb-y zuke from the garden into a small pan, added a sploosh of vindalo –coconut and lemongrass and curry sauce–then glop of ricotta and tried to sit and eat it instead of typing. But the buzz from the “InSainsbury’s” Dry Cider I hauled home from London is awfully fun. Empty stomach, and all.

It’s approaching dark.

Oh, yesterday “Spaceway” had six pints of Benign Jerry’s Pissed Offio icecream!! Only slightly well ok all melted but still cool.

Color me: sated.

Posted in Cycle Training, food, Jacquie Phelan

Alice B. Toeclips, who are you?

•September 25, 2007 • 4 Comments
JP overlooking Bon Tempe Lake, Mt Tam

Belts are sadly underused in racing kit

Alice B. Toeclips is not dead. She wasn’t born, either, come to think of if it. She spontaneously combusted in a corner of my brain that takes in oxygen and water and spits out sparks and really bad wordplay. Toke Lips. Go Lips. Show Tits.

She lives in the corner where Yasser Half-A-Rat and Charlie Cleverbacon live, when they’re not dashing through the snow, in a “one horse soapin’ sleigh”, or taking everything “for granite”. The corner jammed with Tourette’s types, babbling and barking with shocking honesty, fighting for impulse-control during those solemn nuptial moments as the minister asks “is there anyone here who believes that this couple should not wed…:?”, and in the ensuing silence murmurs, “speak now , or forever hold your peace”. I had to use two hands to silence the NO!!!! when Steve Potts married Lynn Morrill. Augh…

Perhaps I inherited my mom’s willful deafness. She Who Never Got Names Straight, who mangled incoming words and cheerfully shared the shredded, reassembled result with her incredulous listeners, the Phelan family. Her Doreenisms made life interesting.

At any rate, “Toeclips” came about the instant my pedal stroke was fortified by the chrome Christophe cage. Until my friend Allan installed them on sharp-teethed metal Lyotards (“now I can’t ride barefoot!” I whined) I rode flat rubbery pedals on my Raleigh girl’s bike. He didn’t call the new foot-baskets “Rat Traps” (a term I’d heard in high school, which I rather liked) but rather “Toe-Clips”. This name instantly invoked one of my cherished literary she-roes, Gertrude Stein’s mustachioed Alice B. Toklas, who like me, was from San Francisco.

I assumed this magic name early on for my alter ego, and instantly enjoyed a bit of advance renown, not to mention exclusivity. If you got the joke, you could be Alice’s friend. If you didn’t, you’d hate Jacquie for boring you with a longwinded explanation about expat life in Paris in the twenties.

Alice B. was quickly drafted into service once I started racing . Since certain folks automatically hate anyone who beats them, and doubly so if the folks are fellas and the winner is a woman, Alice took the heat. While Alice was raising hell, I could stand innocently by, and remain my cheerful, lovable (and of course worthless and undeserving) self at the races. I didn’t want to be like the champions I saw on the road, charmless icons. I wasn’t even sure I was a champion, even though that’s what the jersey said on it.

Alice kicked an awful lot of butt in mountain bike races–well, a few guys were spared– but most weren’t, and she never apologized for it. In fact, she seemed to relish beating the boys. Resentment was rare, but if it surfaced, Alice would shrug it off and say, “All the better to burn ‘em in tomorrow’s time trial.”

There was a rumor going around at the time that her bike’s aluminum tubing, filled with super hot air, was the real reason Alice beat so many guys. Not her braided hairy legs, or laconic limber lungs. Had to be the bike.

Please bear in mind this was happening in the first half of the Flagrant Eighties, when Steel was Real. Alu was almost a communist plot, and the tubing was so big, colorless and dull. How could you drool over something with no shiny paint, or fret over lost luster?

As “Jacquie Phelan”, Alice had tried (and failed spectacularly) to break into the roadie peloton back in 1981…THis was when she learned that the Olympics finally ended the ban on women racing bicycles…or to put it their way, women were welcome to compete for a place on the national road team. There were precious few women racing bikes in the USA then… most of the best racers were also speed skaters in Michigan and Wisconsin. They probably weren’t super thrilled about making room for Californians with their year-round riding climate. But they were the ones that persuaded someone on the Olympic Committee to put a women’s race in the LA Games in 84…
So I strove.

This is actually a different chapter, but let’s just say I was more or less Voted Off The Island by the elite road racers that first impressionable year. Fast forward to 1992, with all my, er, ALice’s success dominating off-road and welcoming thousands of women into the sport..I decided to put together a team to race the Ore-Ida, the (at the time) longest, most grueling road race for women anywhere in the world. Did it matter that it was produced by a guy with Great Intentions but wandering hands? Nother story, that, too. So, we’re at the start of stage three, or was it six, who cares? It was raining. WE were going to ride over Gallina Pass, I think it was ten thou’ but have to check some time…I had swim goggles on, for laughs (“great weather for ducks, eh?” But only teammate Susan DeMattei thought it was funny). The rider in front of me, Louisa Jenkins, but I had a nastier name for her after this, looked back at me and sneered “ That is the UGLIEST bike I have EVER seen!”

This was my ten-year old, sloping top-tubed alu-Cunningham road bike. The roadies had never seen sloper tubes, or ‘compact frames’ yet..(.that “innovation” would come a decade later)
“THANK you!” I replied brightly. “My husband thinks so, too!”
“It wasn’t MEANT to be a compliment ” she retorted.
“Aw, I guess I should feel crushed, huh?” I asked helpfully.
At that point some giggling erupted around me, and I knew we would have a fun race.
Revenge came at the Ketchum/Sun Valley stage, an out-and-back criterium where we all had to hairpin-turn around an orange traffic cone.

Remember, there are about 150 of us…

Because of my bike’s geometry (or maybe my lack of fear about braking extremely hard, because the bike could take the forces) I would sproing from the dead-rear of the peloton when I reached the cone. Then I’d whip around (on the inside line) and somehow–miracle–I was at the front! For about two seconds, when the rest of the gang would surge around me, like the sea around a rock, and I’d resume chasing until the next time we had to deal with the cone. In 92 I was 37 years old, a good 10-15 yrs older than the other girls. But that is sort of excuse-y, huh? Besides, Penny from South Africa was forty, and she was dropping me too..
On the dirt, Alice was always happy–her face wore a wicked smile–to the point that Carl Weymann, a representative of the company sponsoring her (“Funtour”, let’s call it) repeatedly called from the sidelines “SHOW SOME PAIN!”.

I didn’t have time to stop and explain my position (usually lapping Cindy Whitehead yet again)
a)Life is good: I!m winning a race.
b) In scenic Oregon!
c) Instead of just yammering away on the PA, someone is spinning classical music over the loudspeaker! Maybe I’m actually dead, and in heaven…

As Jacquie, I was Alice’s ugly sister. Alice was a pure, proud hussy soaking up all the attention, then hosing it back on the beer and sun-soaked crowd. Remember, this is the chick that not only needs to know her fan’s names, but their Entire Medical History, plus a little about their family.

On the other hand, she could be a major jerk. With Authority Issues, Rule Adherence Issues, Exhibitionist Issues ( just wait til I’m, er…’we’…are eighty). Alice acknowledged the rules… and stretched ’em.

Like the time in 1984 Funtour failed to send race uniforms in time for the biggest race of the era, the “Rockhopper 4 Lungs”, a benefit for the American Lung Association. The week prior to the big (400 riders) race, Me, Rad-mona D’Viola and Casey Patterson had put on a women’s night out for Mother’s Day weekend. Of the fifteen of us (the largest aggregation of women on fat tires ever, and a record that would endure for years and years. For comparison, the NORBA Championship had six women in 1984) , half of us went topless when it got hot mid-day. In 84 you could ride all day and see no one. Besides, what are they (hikers, rangers) going to do? Ticket us?

“If I don’t get my team kit by next Friday, I’m gonna do this again” I told them. “Be sure to come and race or at least cheer me on”. Heh heh. Make a clean breast of it. Colleen (Ross’s wife) stencilled “Cunningham” on my back in yellow acrylic paint. A racer never overlooks the fabulous machine which is their partner…and in my case, always seemed to deliver me to the top of the podium. Oh, sorry, there never were podia in those days. A podium is an indicator that a certain activity has an audience in the millions, and that hadn’t happened yet…not would it for years. So five miles from the finish, all by myself in the woods at the top of a winding descent, I rolled down the top of my onepiece swimsuit and as I came into view down the long straing straight finish, people weren’t certain…”it’s a guy. No, it’s a girl. No, you were right.. No, wait….”

At the time, the NORBA rulebook was, um, maybe a double spaced typed page or two’s worth of commandments along the lines of “finish on the same bike you started on” and “don’t cheat–kind of a shame we forgot to put “No Whining” in there, huh? In contrast, the USCF road racing rulebook had sections, subheadings, decimal points, the whole nine yards. Rules dictated everything from the degree of cleanliness of one’s race jersey, to the whiteness of one’s (mandatory) socks.

If the promoter had been anyone other than the Lung Association’s Lynne Woznycki, a gal who appreciated a good gag, I probably would have been permanently excommunicated from the Church of the Rotating Mass. As it was, s ten years later, over fondue in Metabief France, Darryl Price, my US National Teammate, leaned close and yelled over the din of thirty starved riders feeding themselves “You permanently warped me, Jacquie. I was only fourteen.” He then complained about the fondue (which I had ordered, in French, secretly, because I was getting tired of pathetic versions of “burrito” here in the heart of the Jura).

I let Alice take the blame. After all, she’s the rad one, not that brown-haired bore over there, eyeing the pile of leftover cubed bread and “la religieuse” – that web of chewy cheese at the bottom of the pot.

The life and thymes of Alice B. Toeclips

Posted in Alice B. Toeclips, Charlie Cunningham, cycle racing, Cycle Training, Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay, MTB racing, Ride, The Book
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Chef’s Special

•September 21, 2007 • 4 Comments

When ever I’m out and about, especially after dark, it is my natural bent to peek into the dumpsters behind Androgeno’s market. They are worth describing: both are yellow bins with slanted sides and their tops, if they ever had them, have been torn off. They face each other, so the slanted sides make a chevron shape…and the cubbyhole they reside in is sheltered by a latticework of wooden fencing that reminds me most of a pie crust where the fruit shines through.

When Charlie and I are returning from visiting Toad Hall (the house his dad built and mom continues to live, in her first year of widowhood) we’re usually in the Bluebaru, and as we roll past the dumpsters (I already know Ch’s tired, he doesn’t want to waste that extra few minutes)…I longingly look at it, grinning inwardly like some self-conscious Pavlov poodle, and tell myself:”there’s already piles of grub in the fridge…keep looking straight ahead.”

Sometimes Charlie will stop the car, and I race out like a kid to a Christmas tree. Inevitably, within 3 minutes I drag back sacks of mango, lettuce, melon, milk, cream …or parsnip, carrot, and potato….whatever the hell’s in there.

During my 3 weeks’ absence even Charlie’s mom noticed that her larder was looking a little understocked. The fact is, my ‘liberated produce’ has positively impacted our household nutrition and budget.

This time I was alone, so I pulled into the curb and hopped out. My outfit: velvet brushed cords, MacLennan tartan skirt and burgundy ‘wife beater’ teeshirt. Normally I wear lots warmer uppers but my furnace seems to be overheating these days.

Yes, I know you didn’t ask either about my wardrobe or my temperature. But I didn’t plop this blog on your doorstep either…I am going to have to get used to not knowing my readers…and not knowing if my usual readers are not reading.

The bin was full of spent orange rinds, hundreds of them, from the fresh juice-making operation they do each day. I slid in sideways to get to the rear of the cubby hole and away from the eyes of the dozens of cars cruising through the busy intersection at Bridge Street. How many times have my friends spotted me emerging with arms piled improbably high with un-bagged groceries from the “back door catering co.” And worse, my acquaintances, who have no clue I live this way?

I spy a pair of plastic cake boxes with Angel Food cake, undecorated, pristinely gleaming from inside. Then as if by fateful gourmet magic, in the other bin: two pints of organic strawberries. OK, I know what I’m making for breakfast tomorrow. Gateau Ivre, a sort of bread pudding/clafouti with a drizzle of brandy over the cut-up cake and diced other breads, all the milk and creme fraiche I’d hauled in from other raids, eggs from Cala market the other day, chopped apples from Ed’s place down the street, and cottage cheese I’d failed to hurl before my travels. First I peeled back the green growth lining the plastic quart tub, naturally. Melt honey from Tim’s farm, add lemon from Ellen’s tree, blend with the custard, lay it all in the buttered 9″ x 14″ pan and bake at 350 until fingers of fragrance yank me away from typing madly to my imaginary real friend in cyberspace.
It’s ten before I’m washing this delicious breakfast down with boiling hot red label Plain Old Tea, a day well started if you are measuring smug self-satisfaction. If you are measuring efficiency and ability to remain on task, give me an F.

Carefully wiping all the dairy product plastic tubs with newspaper so as not to waste water and in order to feed the worms (soy ink newsprint, they promise it’s ok for worms) out in the compost pile takes some time. It also deprives the raccoons of their due–they lick clean all un-rinsed recycling containers, then hurl them around in a random musical expression at three in the morning.

That reminds me: this particular (very quiet) morning at around three, owls were calling back and forth. It’s the season of the owl’s calls. Back in 82 Charlie and I were riding down Tam, I didn’t know him at all. The owls were trilling. The full moon of October was working its incredible magic. And Sandy fell off his bike trying to keep up with us (but being drunk, unlike us, rather unsuited for riding through moondappled dirt trails) and a this brings me to a different, non-food story.

Bon apetit!

Posted in food, Jacquie Phelan, Salivation Army

Beginner’s Pluck

•September 20, 2007 • 1 Comment

Just taught Shirley Tam, a Hong Kong financial manager who’d found me in the ether somehow; I think someone said “look this lady up”.

She has never ridden at all. This kind of Totally Innocent rider poses a special challenge – as much a thrill for me as it is for the student.

I’ve had about eight to ten Innocents over the years (adults)….as well as a handful of nine year old schoolkids that never got it down, and were terrified.

So Shirley arrives a half hour late because of the tangle of streets we live in…they don’t translate well into Mapcrust, and cell phones don’t work once one drives into our little canyon….

So we had a sit-down tea out in the Habitat as a fine rain pattered overhead–useful tactic to reconnect spirit and body. One hopes not to put Descartes before the iron donkey.

The shortbread fingers disappeared in a couple of impressive chomps, and her tea went almost untouched.

Then I took the pedals off her bike–a tip MEL ALLWOOD recommends in her bike books and I will be re-recommending (i.e. pedagogiarizing)– this way the flats don’t smash the shins of the new rider.

The way I see it, it’s recreating a bit of the history of the bicycle all over again from Draisenne to Safety Bicycle….Shirley lowered her saddle and tip-toed her way up and down Wood Lane for an hour, I urged her to soften all those stiff limbs, and even let the bars wiggle a bit, you can go straight while wiggling the bars (we know this, right?).

Over in Ed’s yard (he’s got the only 1917 house on the street, a darling red-painted cabin with added rooms, a grape arbor and terrifically ancient fruit trees) perfect golden apples lay scattered in the yard, proof of the high winds last night.

“You keep pushing up the street, I’ll grab some” I announced, hitching up the ol’ plaid skirt (with corduroys under, the usual outfit) and apron-carrying about 3 kg. of fine fruit back to the Taj Mahovel.

“I will make an apple bundt cake” she told me.

As for myself, I am a sucker for apple crisp, light on the sugar, heavy on the lemon juice, and still warm, with cream, the heaviest possible.

The end

Posted in Cycle Training, food, Jacquie Phelan

Beached

•September 12, 2007 • 1 Comment

porty.jpg


After the swim.

This gorgeous stretch of sand came halfway through Chris Hill’s small-wheel bike tour of Edinburgh, a privilege beyond my wildest hopes. When you’re world-weary, there’s nothing like hopping on a bicycle–any bike will do, if the brakes are adjusted and the chain oiled–and rolling along, letting the scenery, architecture and sky unfurl before you. I had a day and a half to see the town.

Chris fanned a half dozen “Exploring Edinburgh….car free!” brochures out on the coffee table for me to peruse. Between them and a 1930’s era atlas (with all the countries changed!) I was able to imagine a rich blend of past and present. At the outset we took Holyrood Road, then “Dumbiedykes” (sounds condescendingly homophobic, huh?) …thence to the Engine Shed cafe, where aromatic blasts of comfort food (veggie style) perfumed the street. (Note to reader: maybe I misremember the street order…I remember loving the name “Grange Loan”…

I had no appetite, the astonishing ride left me breathless, besotted. I was falling in love with Edinburgh.  We continued by winding through a housing project and diving into a hole–the Innocent Tunnel!— then on a perfectly isolated greenpath for a mile or so,  then back into reality,  dodging the traffic and using little-known byways lined with blackberry, nettle, and plastic bags. Soon the sea was in front of us, thin white line below a wide blue band of flat water–colors of the saltire. With the lovely un-Scottish name of Portobello. A pair of swans glided regally along shore, gracing this vacant, faded seaside resort. Still the beach beckoned.
“Hey, Chris, is it legal to swim here?”
“What do you mean?”

I guess my question sounded strange, but I explained that in exclusive Marin Co. California, one isn’t permitted to swim in gentle water like lakes and estuaries. Only in the deadly Pacific ocean are you allowed to take yr chances with the sharks….

So, since there were no people and no constables, I ripped my clothes off (Harris tweed jacket w/lace cuffs, corduroy pants, cashmere socks) and pranced into the chilly blue Firth of Forth. Sandy shallow bottom, what a concept! Smooth white sand underfoot almost made the 49-degree water feel tolerable. Lunged in with a silent shriek and breasted toward Kirkcaldy.

It’s my policy to leap into any body of water that will permit me to leave it alive after an enjoyable swim. I was a manatee in my other life: a blubbery, benign sea critter (occasionally chewed up by ships’ propellers) that solaces lonesome sailors. Ten minutes later, I hauled out, a happily chattering goosebumpkin shoving wet salty limbs into dry, sandy clothing.

After this, it was around the sea-wall, into Leith and up the big hill back to Edinburgh central. Said hello to a local shop rat-who’d taken the reins at a bike shop nearby, and then to the portrait gallery in time for closing-hour tea.

Next year, we do the castle.
And the Engine Shed.

And some obscure garden.

Thank you CHdot.

.

Posted in Edinburgh, Jacquie Phelan, Moulton, Scotland
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A rubber kilted rider in a vast expanse of heather

•September 11, 2007 • 1 Comment

What hits me about the Scottish Lambscape is the color. Green and purple everywhere. The sky is a soft cashmere grey nearly all the time I’m up here, and this makes the green and purple more vivid. Suitable for the three week hallucination I’ve been enjoying. I’m on a vacation, and I’m staring out at purple hillsides named Heather. Lochs lie around, blue all day. Unswimmable frigid rivers weave toward the coast: Tay. Spey. Forth. Faff.

One day riding alone above the purple-green line, around the barren Cairngorm hilltops, two dozen evenly spaced white shapes mark the road. No, they are moving along the road, coming my way: sheep in search of…something…something that a biker doesn’t have…and they turn clumsily around and trot back downhill.

I want to see plaid, and my first sighting is draped over the arm of a young German tourist with £300 worth of custom medium-weight tartan (2 tonic clan) custom sewn for him. His weekend will be competing in highland pipes. “Please can I pet your skirt?” I beg.

He allows me to fondle the tightly ironed pleats, way thicker wool than I’ve ever felt.

He and a hundred other pipers of all sizes (but not all genders) will blow themselves blue all day, but I will be so busy trying to find out where my loaner bike is hiding that I won’t get a chance to climb the hill to the hotel where their Blow-Off is being contested. Damn.

In the Sue Ryder Charity Shop (their version of a thrift shop) there are plenty of pleated wool skirts, too bad they’re all in solid colors. I buy ’em anyway (for you, dear reader, for you) and get some argyle socks to boot.

For the Singlespeed World Championship, I’ve made a rubber and wool fringed kilt, in hopes of affronting someone.  But this crowd is determinedly wacky, and every imaginable sartorial insult is being thrown down at the start line of the popular event.  Half naked supermen. Cross dressing.  70’s polyester.  My sequined sporran (man-purse worn front and center) hides  a secret. Maybe I’ll show you some day. Here’s a televised account of the merriment.  I rode a borrowed Singular bike from the very generous Singular Sam.

Ever off-colour, yr faithfull correspondent

Jock Shonquetil

Posted in Cycling, Jacquie Phelan, lame wordplay, Salivation Army, Scotland, Single Speed, singlespeed, SSWC07
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