bikelovejones

racing plans, 2012

2012-01-26T17:50:00.001-08:00

You read that right. I DO plan to race in 2012. I just won't be racing as much as I did in 2011.

I took Stompy over to the shop which sponsors Team Slow. They allow team members to come in with advance notice to do simple upkeep on their bikes. It's true that I can do many things at home, but in the winter it is downright uninspiring, not to mention uncomfortable, to replace one's headset in an uninsulated shed with poor lighting. So off I went to Crank.

Typically, if a shop sponsors a racing club, the shop's mechanics will perform major work on the team's bikes. (Major work covers anything that requires large, specialty tools not found in most home workshops -- like a headset press and crown race remover, for example.) However, the fellas at Crank extended to me what I thought was a lovely and very respectful courtesy, by allowing me, someone who is not only a team member but also a shop mechanic, to come behind the counter and use their tools to perform the job myself. I needed help finding a few things but otherwise was left to my own devices. I dutifully wiped down any tools I'd used, put them all back where I'd fund them, and left the shop after a short time pleasantly socializing (Crank is a small shop with limited wrench space and although it was slow today I did not want to overextend my stay).

I brought with me one of the last new-old stock parts from the box I'd inherited from Quinn, the fellow I'd apprenticed with back in 1994. When he died several years ago I inherited a large box of new-old bike parts, some from the 1980's and 90's which had never been opened. Nothing super-fancy but perfectly useable, like the headset I swapped in this afternoon. The stock headset that had come with my MonoCog was two and half seasons old and had been in the frame for about a year and a half too long; the top bearing cup was dented from all the front-end impacts of two seasons of short-track and cyclocross racing on a fully-rigid frameset.

The new headset isn't tons better -- it's lighter, wth more aluminum, and it's ugly and tanklike the way many headsets from the mid-90's were -- but it should easily get me through this year and that is really all I care about for now. I ejoyed puttering in someone else's shop, getting the feel of the vibe and feeling my way around the different tool layout. One thing that was harder for me is that all of Crank's repair stands are set up for guys who are at least 5' 11" or taller. At 5' 7" my neck was craning upwards a lot. But it was not a huge deal for so short a time and I managed just fine.

It was such a nice thing, to feel the respect of fellow mechanics. It is a courtesy that I do not take for granted, and something that I am glad to feel that I've earned after all my years working in the bike industry.

I will be racing this summer in the orange-and-black of Team Slow, on Stompy. I had planned on upgrading to a 700c-wheeled singlespeed frame for at least cyclocross season; but the cost of setting it up was going to render the project financially silly as soon as it became clear that my hours at work were going to change. I am selling the framset and various assembled parts to another racer and some more love and a few new parts into Stompy, which continues to behave like a perfectly fine bike.

My knees have been bothering me this winter, giving out the highly noticeable and occasionally annoying creaks and groans of middle age. These hint at the strong possibility that 2012 may be my final season racing on a singlespeed bike. There is a Bridgestone mountain bike in the pipeline if I decide that I need to switch to a multi-geared bike, but I would like to race singlespeed for the entire summer so that I haveeven a small chance of qualifying for the womens' singlespeed podium at series end. (A gal can dream, right? and besides, I got fourth overall last year.)

Racing at all during cyclocross season appears somewhat doubtful at this point. The aforementioned job schedule changes looming on the horizon may make it impossible for me to free up enough Sundays next fall to make the expense and effort of 'cross worthwhile; and while there is now an established Saturday 'cross series I am not especially fond of racing on Shabbat (the only exception I plan to make this year will be for short-track championships, being held up on Mt. Hood on June 30; and then only if I can work out transportation). For cyclocross season, I may just go out and cheer my teammates on an occasional Saturday afternoon next fall and call it good.

So it looks like my racing season will focus almost solely on the PIR short-track series, which begins on June 4 this year. Once again, I will race in the womens' Singlespeed category. Stompy will be ready. And once again, I will have fun no matter where I finish.

the telephone is ringing

2012-01-23T21:22:00.000-08:00

On a day which was packed with cues and signals and all sorts of very useful information, I met with a woman who does something called "Organizational Development". Basically what that means is that she helps people communicate with each other in more healthy, respectful and productive ways, mostly in business settings. She does this work as an independent consultant. I met with her to talk about my many years working in a cooperative business, and to explore the possibility for putting the skills I've developed to work in other settings, either as a volunteer or for pay.

The discussion was extremely useful. We talked about the realities of the bicycle industry, particularly its historic propensity to attract young men -- who are mostly not known for their communications skills -- and how well that reality overlaps with the tools of consensus and cooperation (sometimes well, sometimes not so well). We also talked about my desire to bring the tools of cooperation to Jewish institutions, which are known for their very traditional hierarchical leadership structure as well as for their near-fossilization (significant change in Jewish institutions takes a very, very long time and does not come about easily).

I also told this woman about my explorations in the field of Jewish music and education, and how new information and opportunities seem to be unfolding for me in this arena.

In turn, she told me about how she'd gotten into Organizational Development as a field. She's done a ton of work in Human Resources management. When the company who'd hired her went out of business, she turned to teaching in an MBA program -- and that, she told me, was when "the phone began ringing". People began calling her to ask for her help in resolving workplace issues, as a consultant. She's been able to parlay her years of experience in collectives, various non-profits and social change movements and other activities into over twenty years of this kind of work, and so far the phone is still ringing for her. She gave me some resources to check out online and in books; and gave me the name of another person working with the tools of consensus and cooperation whom I might want to contact for more information.

This wise lady also gave me some advice that caught me off-guard: "Ask yourself what you really want from your life. Be true to yourself, because you can't turn yourself into something you aren't. And pay close attention to where the phone is ringing for you."

..::the squeaky hammer of the cosmos hits me over the head::..

The telephone is definitely ringing, though not where or how I thought it might.

yet another lovely bike: 1970's Raleigh

2012-01-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

This came into the shop last week for some love. Not sure of anything else about it. What caught my eye was the sweet chainguard and that delicious royal blue color. Yum!

chip-in to help me represent pdx!

2012-01-20T06:45:00.000-08:00

I am raising funds to get myself to a Jewish Music conference this summer, where I will represent the the beautiful quirkiness that is Jewish life in PDX-landia.

Highlights will include coffeehouse performances, workshops on how to get communities singing, and tons and tons of networking to get my music out there.
I have added a donation button to the sidebar (at right). Any amount large or small will help me get to this conference:

Guild of Temple Musicians -- plans to try and go to Boston have been downsized in favr of going to this slightly-more affordable event which is being held in -- sit down -- Portland. The entry fees are three times higher than for Women Cantors' Network, but I don't have to worry about airfare or room and board -- the GTM/ACC conference is pratically in backyard and I'll still save money, even with the higher entry fees. Plus, I'll be networking with a much larger group of musicians. Plus, my boss at the large synagogue where I teach wants me to go and may even be able to help a tiny bit.

Attending will help move me further along in my goal to make a little more of my living working in the Jewish community as a musician and teacher. Any amount you can kick in won't help you on your income tax return (sorry), but would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

another gorgeous bike: late 70's bertin "speciale"

2012-01-19T07:19:00.000-08:00

This beauty, from my favorite era of vintage bicycles, came into the shop a couple of days ago and we've all wasted a few minutes each standing around fairly drooling over it. Before my co-worker could snatch it up to photograph for our web site -- yes, it's for sale! -- I took a few photos for myself.

TA Cranks

Ideale Saddle

Sadly, it's just a little too big for me. (believe me it this had been a 54cm I'd be sorely tempted...)

Timbuk2 Dee Dog bag, ca. 1999

2012-01-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

Timbuk2 Dee Dog bag, ca. 1999
Originally uploaded by periwinklekog

Circa 1999. Custom color combo, lefty, made-to-order in USA. I am selling it because I can no longer use a single-strap bag on my bike. (I've since switched to a backpack.)
UPDATE: This bag has been sold to a happy camper, presumably one without shoulder or back issues.

shameless cross-referencing

2012-01-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know.
You're not supposed to cross-reference between blogs if they're both your own blogs.
It's bad form, or something like that.
But the reality is that I am trying to branch out into new, very specific areas that are specifically way beyond the scope of this blog and one way I can do that is to occasionally cross-reference.

So please feel free to check out my efforts at shameless self-promotion:

1. Here;
2. Here; and
3. Here.

Or not.
If my efforts offend, confound or simply bore you -- well, you don't have to go there again.
Promise.

a slight change of course

2012-01-12T07:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, my gym membership lapsed.

I had given some serious thought to renewing it, but with money being tight and Sweetie telling me she wasn't sure she'd use the membership enough to justify the cost, I had to consider whether it was wise to renew for 2012.

The truth is that, because of changes in my work schedule for the coming spring and summer, it's not clear whether I'll even be able to race short-track. I have already made plans to sell the 700c 'cross frame that I had bought over the winter; if I end up being able to race cyclocross next fall it will be on Stompy, which is due for a full overhaul and a wheelset rebuild. Stompy is heavy, but fits me and is a very known quantity.

I am consciously trying to get more work in the Jewish community, as a teacher and/or musician. This has potential, as nearly everyone I've talked with or worked with has been pleased with my work and/or music and wants to help me find ways to do more in the community. There is also the possibility that I may be able to grow some business on the side as a mediator and facilitator but that is still unclear. What I do know is that, with more Jewish work, I can only give up so many hours at the bike shop without changing my ownership status, and the bottom line is that there are still only so many hours in a day. Something has to give and this year it may well be racing.

I have some dumbbells at home, and can do simple things like crunches, stretching and light weights to maintain some degree of fitness. I can also still add intervals in the spring to gain a little speed. There are a couple of things I will miss by eschewing gym membership this year, like leg presses, the shoulder pull-down and most of all the chair-lift thing where I can lift my legs up into a right angle using my core. But there are other ways to work those muscles and this year I will be doing it on the cheap.

Meanwhile, I am also taking a hard look at some musical opportunities coming up this summer, one of which may involve some travel. (For more on that, see the music blog.)
Preparing for these opportunities would also cut into my racing, and I need to be realistic about what is most important right now and what have time and resources to pursue.

This doesn't mean I won't go out and have fun on my bike; there are still plenty of longer rides to enjoy, maybe a S24HO or two; and there's a new skills park open in outer SW Portland that I need to take Stompy to check out. And there's my daily commute, which some days is like a balm for my soul. So while I may not race as much in 2012, I'll still be riding a ton.

who owns your brain?

2012-01-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Specialized is suing two former employees who left the company in 2010 to start their own bike company.

The company, Volagi, is producing a carbon bike design that is unlike anything Specialized currently offers -- see the clip for a brief explanation -- and it works well. So naturally, Specialized wants in on the potential profits.

Because the two men signed confidentiatlity agreements while working at Specialized, they are being sued for breach of contract. Specialized is saying, in short, that all ideas the two men thought of -- whether at work or in their free time -- are the property of the company and that the men should not have been able to start their own company.

This is capitalism at work. Small company succeeds, big company gets jealous and sues for loss of profits. So it goes after the very thoughts of the former employees as intellectual property. Seriously, this is the way things work now. And as long as corporations are allowed a measure of personhood (thank you, Supreme Court -- wankers) things will continue to be this way.

So watch your thoughts, people; and for heaven's sake don't sign anything that could give ownership of those thoughts to someone else.

It's a good thing I'm not an individual contractor being paid to compose music.

Frankly, I'm no huge fan of carbon fiber -- you'll never see a carbon bike under me -- but I support the little guy and hope this upstart prevails. If Volagi loses its lawsuit, I predict -- and even hope for -- a Specialized boycott.

prayer

2012-01-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

Prayer for a Tenspeed Heart

Let the fire of my body
propel and warm me
and let each darkness
reveal its plenitude.

Let the hills
flatten under my wheels
and let the eloquent curves
yield up their good surprise.

Let my heart be obstinate
when I need to climb
and let my lowliest gears
restrain my spinning down.

Let there be flatland, too,
and into that glittering place
let me stretch with the heart of a lover,
at full speed, blind and intent.

--Barbara Hendryson

last ride, 2011

2011-12-31T15:51:00.000-08:00

I'd originally planned to get up early enough to ride to a synagogue for Torah study. But it was c-o-l-d outside at 7 am, and my body rebelled at the thought at riding across town in 32-degree weather. So I snuggled back down under the blankets until well past 9am. Finally, I knew that I really needed to ride somewhere, anywhere, before heading out to the evening's festivities and eating too much rich food. My legs were screaming to go out and spin and my core was screaming to stay home and be a well-wrapped slug.

The legs won out.

I took a loop through Northeast Portland, nothing ambitious but plenty brisk enough; I'm confident that the thermometer didn't get much above 40F all day.

This ride puts me at a total of 2,281.9 miles for the year. I have to say that although there were no really long rides this year, pretty much all of my miles were good ones, and for sure many of them helped to alleviate what was a stressful and challenging year in many ways. I am truly grateful for every mile I rode this year.
Tomorrow, I begin all over again.
Wherever the roads lead you, I hope that 2012 is a better, brighter year! Happy riding!

tried and liked: 2011 edition

2011-12-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

(A tip of the helmet to the i-BOB list, which began this thread years ago.)

Things I tried and liked in 2011, with an emphasis on bicycles:

1. Training for racing. This meant working out 2-3 times a week at a local gym January through May, and adding some interval work to my commutes once or twice a week March through May (for short-track) and again August and September (for cyclocross).
I didn't have a coach and the frequency wasn't clockwork-religious, but it did help in two noticeable ways: I lost ten pounds (which I hadn't planned on but certainly didn't mind), and I was stronger on the berms at the short-track course, having to dismount and push my bike far less often. I still finished dead last, likely because I was the oldest woman racing singlespeed and because of the asthma, but I finished stronger and felt good about it. On a down note, money is much tighter this year and a gym membership in 2012 seems unlikely. However, I'm back on my feet wrenching bikes and maybe that will help make up for some of the loss of gym time. I am in a different place right now with my racing and, for various physical, emotional and financial reasons, may not throw quite as much energy at it in 2012. In any event, it was interesting to see how intentional training made a difference and I'm truly glad for the experience.

2. Joining a local race club. Racing with Velo Bella got me some excellent discounts (including one for prescription sunglasses, which I continue to be grateful for), and occasionally garnered me some tips from teammates, but all those teammates were out of town in other states, and I only met two of them once at a USGP cyclocross race. It was nice to have the brand recognition -- VB is a recognized regional team in racing -- but it was lonely. So when I was invited by some racing buddies to join a local club they were strting, I said yes. Being part of Team Slow has added a measure of fun to my racing that I have enjoyed mightily, and I wonder how on earth I ever considered racing without that. No matter how many races I do in 2012 I will do them as part of Team Slow, proudly rocking the safety triangle whever Stompy and I go.

3. Not stressing so much about my mileage this year. Of course, I still keep track of my daily mileage; and I will dutifully submit my tally sheet to C-KAP (I broke 25,000 cumulative km with them this year so a certificate is coming my way in the spring); but since deemphasising distance (and especially since deciding that I wouldn't attempt anything longer than a 100km populaire in the future -- big rides just take too much out of me) I am enjoying each ride a little more. My overall mileage for 2011 will probably be somewhere around 2,250 miles, down from my record of over 2,700 in 2007 but still respectable for someone who did not do any really long rides and mostly chalked all that up under daily commuting. I'm content.

4. After trying out a number of different rain jackets and pants (mostly because as the Buyer I had to do product testing), I've gone back to What Works: Burley Designs. Yes, they stopped making their own rain wear several years ago; but smart bike industry geeks bought up the last of the stuff and hoarded it. I have two Rock Point Jackets to my name, and while they aren't the most flattering cut, they are well made and they work. Recently, my successor in the Buyer's chair had to pay a visit to the main offices of Showers Pass (whose Club Pro jacket I reviewed last year -- six months after I wote that review tha jacket began to fail at water repellecy and I got rid of it, optiing for the Burley again). He was wearing a jacket made by a company other than Showers Pass, and folks at the SP HQ frowned visibly at the sight. The moral: when SP moved its manufacturing from Vietnam to China, the quality suffered. They haven't yet recovered from the public perception that the jackets ain't what they used to be. And I've gone back to wearing my Burley. I expect it to last a good bit longer than anything I've tried from SP, and now that I'm no longer the Buyer I'm allowed to have an occasional negative opinion [about bicycle product] in public again. Meanwhile, I am on the lookout for "vintage" Burley rain wear and am buying it up to hoard and to share with friends. Sue me.

Burley Rock Point:

Burley Rain Rider. If you see this jacket in a medium, buy it for me and I'll pay you back:

5. Rivendell Splats, which I bought last winter, have served me well for the most part. They are made in the USA from thick, stout waxed cotton and fit over most styles of shoes. They're also the first shoe cover that is easy to use with a flat pedal. Because they don't cover the ankle, water can seep into your shoe and sock from above; but if you buy your rain pants on the long side you can reduce or eliminate this problem. One of the best things Rivendell has come out with.

6. Chrome backpack. This was the year that I had to concede that carrying things in a single-strap messenger bag was no longer working for my aging back and neck. I've retired the Timbuk2 Dee Dog bag (and will probably sell it); and have switched to a very strong backpack made in the USA by Chrome. I bought this pack used, and it's a tough bag, stronger and stouter than anything being made by T2 now and more so than some of Chrome's newer bags (the subassemblies of which are now being made overseas -- they're going down a similar road as T2) and holds a ton of stuff. I have to be careful not to overstuff it, but when I do it still works far better to carry a load on both of my shoulders instead of one. I expect this pack to see me through several years before I have to give up carrying things on my back altogether.

7. Giving myself permission to feel fatigued, and to adjust my ride as necessary. This is a different approach than I've taken before. But this has been a challenging year on many levels, and one of the challenges has been that I've had to identify when my body is feeling tired as a result of physicality rather than emotional stress. So when I'm feeling really wiped out, I'm tossing my bike on transit and going multi-modal. I've reached a time when this no longer feels like copping out, and I'm geting better at telling the difference between physical fatigue and emotional fatigue. When it's physical I'm listening to my body. If that's part of Getting Older, so be it.

merry christmas, and happy quiet roads

2011-12-25T13:50:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed my Christmas morning bike ride on a day with some drizzle, highs in the mid-40's and quiet roads.
Embrocation, wool-blend knickers, a thermos of coffee in the bottle cage and a slice of lemon cake in my jersey pocket.
Did I mention that the roads were quiet?
That's mostly the point of riding on Christmas morning.
(I imagine it must be sort of like riding a bike in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur.)
Running lights is simply not a problem when there is no one else to be seen for a dozen blocks in any direction.
(And, in a nostalgic nod to the cop who stopped me all those years ago in downtown Gresham, don't worry, I still look both ways before proceeding with caution. Thanks for not giving me a traffic ticket that morning, and I hope you got home in time to enjoy Christmas with your wife.)
I came home 90 minutes later feeling lighter, refreshed and glowing. Then some light stretching and into a hot shower.
The embrocation tingled for an hour afterwards, even after a good scrubbing.
Delightful.
Merry Christmas, and I hope you got to enjoy some quiet roads today too.

working it out by bicycle

2011-12-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you need a bike ride to help you work things out.
Mission accomplished.
Better now.

withdrawal

2011-12-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

I am suffering from bike withdrawal.

I missed two days of work due to the Bad Cold (which was really bad, but I'm getting over it fairly quickly).
Yesterday I went to work but Sweetie insisted on driving me there because it was 27F outside and she didn't want me riding in the cold while I still getting over a cold. (She loves me.) I got through my shift, took the bus home afterwards and was still tired.
Today it's supposed to dry (again! Driest December on record) and partly cloudy. I may take a short spin later if I'm up for it, simply because I'm starting to go stir-crazy not riding a bike. After three days off the bike I just start to get grumpy and antsy if I don't ride. Does this happen to you?

Don't worry, if I go out I'll bundle up.

it's not the weather, as it turns out

2011-12-20T16:09:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to bed with a burning throat and a general feeling of vague illness.
This morning I woke up with the achiness and throbbing sinuses of a Bad Cold, and stayed home from work.
Jury is out on whether or not I'll be able to go to the Klezmatics show tonight but I am leaning towards not going. I still feel awful, and with all the celebrations of the holiday still to come it seems to make more sense for me to stay home and nip this thing as quickly as possible. I am bummed.

Still, Chanukah starts tonight and there's no stopping it.
May you and yours have a lovely holiday.
Chag Sameach!

strange weather

2011-12-19T19:55:00.000-08:00

The month of December has been one of the driest on record here in PDX. Lots of cold, dry days with only somg fog providing any moisture in the air. Along with dry days, the air quality has been pretty bad, because there hasn't been any wind to speak of and people are burning wood in their fireplaces and woodstoves for a solid month. It hasn't rained since Thanksgiving weekend. Riding to and from work has been pleasant because the roads are dry and the air feels bracing. But the air also hurts my throat and makes me cough a lot.

Friday, at the end of a morning filled with errands, I pushed myself up the hill to Overlook and my legs felt surprisingly strong. I rested Saturday and Sunday -- we had things to do -- and rode again today, racing briskly to get to work on time and again feeling very strong. But by the time I got to work my throat was beginning to hurt a little. I coughed most of the day, the coughing getting worse and worse. I stubbornly rode home after my post-shift errands, and tonight I am drinking tea like it's going out of style. So far it hasn't helped much. I don't want to stop riding -- I feel better when I ride -- but if this is what's going to happen, I may have to take more of a break.

Ugh. We need some rain, a lot of it, and really soon.

consumerism is not the answer [to the question they don't want us to ask]

2011-12-18T08:55:00.000-08:00

Watching the evening news, I see reports of how the holiday shopping season is so important, that the Saturday before Christmas is often the biggest shopping day of the year and can make or break an entire season for some retailers. The well-dressed talking head on my TV screen tells me that Consumer spending makes up as much as 70% of our national economy, and I stop short.

Seventy per cent?

Seventy per cent of our nation's economy -- which includes funding for schools, roads, public safety, social services and the military -- depends on everyone going shopping. Think about that for a minute. And think about how much that has a bearing on the fabric of our social and communal lives.

You need new clothes now and then. If you work in a job that requires you to dress up, you need them more often because dressy clothes wear out faster (they're just not made as well).
You need to buy toys for the kids for birthdays, holidays and whenever else, because who actually makes toys for their kids anymore? (And if your kids are plugged in, you can't make toys for them anyway, unless you work in a computer factory.)
You need to buy new shoes, not necessarily because the old ones are finally worn out but because they're out of style (and your teenager refuses to go to school in them).
You need to have the latest electronic goodies -- computers and PDA's and cell-phones and everything else -- in part because the new work and educational landscape requires people to be more plugged in than ever, and in part because the computer manufacturers are constantly upgrading their systems so that eventually your 10-year-old computer simply won't be compatible with whatever else The Ghost Of Steve Jobs wants to sell you.
Trick-or-treating, once an activity that took place on neighborhood streets, now happens as often in the shopping malls of America, as parents worried about their childrens' safety have decided that taking the kids to the mall is safer and easier. Of course, the retailers are all too glad to have this next generation of little shoppers running amok in the mall and learning the lessons of consumerism so early.

I work in retail. A specialty type of retail, to be sure; I help get people onto bicycles (and in many cases that means getting them out of cars at least part of the time, so that's good). I promote a healthier way of transportation, and of life. And I get to fix things, sometimes using recycled parts. That's good too, right?

Problem is, it's still all about buying and selling, buying and selling. And I have grown tired of all the buying and selling.

Taking the teaching position this year has been a real help. It gives me something to balance aganist the retail work, and gives me a sphere in which I encounter people in a very different way, a way that is not so quid-pro-quo and doesn't contain such a marketplace mentality. I hope I will get to continue to do this other work as a counterweight to my work in retail.

When you work in retail, it is easier not to ask the question: What would life look like if it wasn't all about buying and selling? What would society look like if consumer spending didn't comprise 70 % of our economy? In what ways would we encourage creativity and conservation instead of the throwaway lifestyles so many of us live now? Would it be possible to enjoy a healthy, decent standard of living if everyone was required to live on less, to be more resourceful and creative, and to rely on our families, neighbors and local communities more for companionship and cultural activities? What if we went back to communal gardens and used them to feed everyone, instead of relying on whatever came wrapped in mylar at the store? What if we had schoolchildren take part of each learning day and spend it working in the communal gardens, learning about science and nature while planting and studying the vegetables that would feed their communities? What if we got away from factory feed lots and raised livestock on a smaller scale, eating less meat and using fewer natural resources in the process? What if we tore up some of our city streets and turned them into bike-ped tracks, and made it more expensive and inconvenient to drive the way they've done in some Eupopean cities? What if we took the "American" psyche, that myth about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and simply put it out with the trash? Couldn't we then we use the savings realized from these changes to create a more caring, close-knit, communal way of life where everyone's needs really could be met?

I think so. But I also fear that too many of us would not survive the transition into such a way of life, simply because our lives now are so dependent on those things which prop us up and make us complacent and lazy and too many people would rebel at such changes. If such change were possible, it would not be at all easy, and frankly would be fraught with risk.

As a friend pointed out to me at a gathering a few weeks back, we are excellent consumers of culture, and that may be the problem. Instead of consuming things and hoping that this will let us consume culture as well, we need to consume less and take back our ability to create culture for ourselves and our communities. In that way, we can own so much more while buying less.

Chanukah begins Tuesday evening. The Festival Of Lights is also the Festival Of Rededication, as we celebrate the reclaiming of the Temple and the work that was done to clean it up and re-dedicate ourselves to its service. Perhaps this is the year that I and those around me can re-dedicate ourselves to creating culture, instead of simply consuming it.

bikes can save the world - pass it on

2011-12-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

(Special thanks for Kent Peterson for bringing this to my attention.)

Created by: Healthcare Management Degree

it's a long story

2011-12-09T08:05:00.001-08:00

The SingleSpeed Cyclocross World Championships took place last week in Sacramento. A fun time was had by all, though it seems some rules were not adhered to by the winners. Add to this that the winners (of the respective mens' and womens' races) were pros sponsored by Rapha, the company I love to dump on, and you have a full-blown turd-fest.

(Thanks for the folks over at Drunk Cyclist for keeping it real.)

Since no one has yet made a t-shirt that reads "F*** Rapha" -- and since there are admittedly few places in my life where I could get away with wearing one -- my vote goes for this little number instead.

Not that I'd ever enter this race myself -- the entry fee is considerably higher than a Cross Crusade race and there is a lot of drinking going on -- the fact is that if you enter a race where the winner is required to do certain things immediately following the race, and you win, then you stick around and do them. Even if those things include getting a tattoo and donning gold lame underwear in public. That the Rapha-sponsored riders disappeared immediately after their races to avoid the tattoo and the undies (and presumably thereby saving the brand from sullying, somehow) is simply bad form.

The bad form was apparently highlighted by the fact that at least one of the the Rapha racers elected to race the event on a bike whose derailleurs had been rendered inoperative (probably with a couple of stout zip-ties), rather than on a true singlespeed bike with only one cog and one chainring. As a singlespeed purist I consider this to be the bigger insult, but I digress.

This is less about the tattoo and more about respecting the promoter's attempts to maintain some semblance of independent, grass-roots bicycle culture in the face of a racing category that is being dragged into legitimacy despite our best efforts. Now that there are national champion's jerseys for Singlespeed cyclocross, things will simply never be the same. But give the promoters some credit for trying to imbue some grass-roots culture into an event that is slowly being sucked into the UCI whether we like it or not. It's not an alleycat; but SSCXWC is also not a UCI/USAC-sanctioned race. I'd say that if you're going to enter, respect what the promoters are trying to do and play by their rules. If you don't want the tattoo, don't enter, or at least don't race to win.

Next year's SSCXWC will be in Santa Cruz, California. The promoters have made it clear that they intend to enforce their rules (meaning that this year's winners will not be allowed to enter another SSCXWC race unless they get their commemorative tattoos). I hear Santa Cruz is lovely in December.

old bikes are worth saving

2011-12-07T07:58:00.001-08:00

On Monday I was presented with a serious dilemma: A customer brought in an old Univega road bike that was his daily commuter. For reasons that remain unclear -- misadjusted rear derailleur? Out-of-true wheel? -- His derailleur over-shifted and went into the rear wheel. A pie-plate spoke guard saved the wheel, but the derailleur snapped in two and the derailleur hanger (the metal tab on the rear dropout into which the rear derailleur threads) was bent over at an almost 70-degree angle. It looked bad.

After closer inspection, I advised the customer that we could try to bend the hanger back but that there was a risk of the metal cracking from the stress of being bent over, and then back; if that failed we'd have to saw off the hanger and either run the bike as a singlespeed or install a Problem Solver emergency derailleur hanger to utilize a replacement derailleur. The customer wasn't interested in running a singlespeed and had limited funds, so he asked us to take the risk and to find a used rear derailleur that could work with his existing drive-train.

Using careful combination of the derailleur alignment beam and a large crescent wrench, I carefully bent the derailleur hanger back into place. Its alignment wasn't perfect but it was straight enough to take another derailleur. I sifted through the box of used derailleurs and found one that would work with his shifters. Ultimately, we had to replace the chain -- it was slightly twisted and would not engage the cogs cleanly anymore -- and straighten the inner chainring, which probably got bent during the mishap.

In the end, I was able to resurrect the bike without forcing the customer to buy a bunch of expensive new parts or a new frame. I did advise him that this would not be a permanent solution; the derailleur hanger was now compromised by being bent repeatedly and he'd have to keep an eye on it. (Judging from the two inches of caked-on road detritus I brushed off the underside of the downtube and bottom bracket shell, I had my doubts that he'd pay much attention before the thing finally gave way for good but at least I did my job in warning him.)

Which leads to my thesis: older steel frames can take a beating and at least 50 per cent of the time they can come back for more. But today, the number of other shops willing to do the kinds of frame straightening that we do regularly is shrinking. (For example, REI no longer straightens frames or forks at all. I learned this when I brought a fork to them several years ago and asked them to double-check my alignment. They cited liability insurance as the primary reason.) And while I understand it, I don't like it. Bike shops used to be miracle workers on a regular basis. Nowadays most of them will steer the customer towards a new part or frame before trying to ressurrect the old frame. I am glad we were able to work a minor miracle for a customer who had limited funds and needed to get back on his bike.

music blog

2011-12-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

I'm going to move discussions about music, and specifically Jewish music, to a new site:

http://beth-hamon.blogspot.com/

This will become the site where I dump thoughts about Jewish music and, potentially, new material as I create it. I'm using this format because I don't know how to create a "web site" per se, and it seems early to consider something more "commercial" in nature.

I will post links to artists whose work I like for folks' listening pleasure. It won't all be Jewish, but some of it will be.

Cheers --beth

doors open

2011-12-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

Many months ago I began the task of going back to the brick wall I'd run into in the fall of 2001 (also known as graduate school) and sifting through the wreckage to see if anything there still spoke to me, if it still seemed valid. Here's an update:

1. I am working at the Large Reform Synagogue again, the one I'd taken a break from three years ago, as a teacher and youth songleader. The educator had called last spring, if readers remember, and invited me to come back and teach and play music again. They hadn't been on my radar, or so I'd thought -- until I took a deeper look at the wreckage and realized that this was probably the universe's response to my deep thinking about music, and about Jewish music in particular.

So far it's good. After some fits and starts I am connecting with the students and enjoying being in the classroom again mightily. I still get nervous when I sing -- I don't talk about it tons but really I'm more of a sideman in temperament and this out-front-solo thing makes me feel, well, sort of naked. Mostly I think like a sideman and try to have my act together, which means I actually practice and try to make things solid at home before bringing music to a roomful of hyper-critical teens (the world's toughest audience). What had originally been conceived as a once-weekly gig has bceome twice a week as I've been contracted to start providing music on Sunday mornings for the younger kids as well. They are paying me for all of this teaching and music-making, of course; and I'll be done in time to ride over to handle the occasional wrenching shift on a Sunday if needed. The clergy and the education director are openly appreciative and helpful, and that is a nice plus.

2. At the urging of the Cantor who married me and Sweetie (and who is also a good friend), I joined something called the Women Cantors' Network. You don't have to be a Cantor, but you do need to be a synagogue musician (and ideally female, though there's at least one fella on the membership rolls) with an interest in promoting new music for synagogue use. Figuring that this, too, might be part of the sifting, and noting the very affordable annual membership fee, I joined. Within days of my membership being formally processed I was getting welcoming emails from all over the place, including several from people I hadn't been in touch with since my adventures at Gratz College. I look forward to learning whatever I can from these women, most of whom are formally-trained cantors and/or cantorial soloists.

3. Another friend entered a contest a couple years ago called Shalshelet - and her song entry was one of the winners in 2010. She came back from the awards concert weekend gushing about the experience, and told me that I ought to consider entering one or more of my songs. Requirements: songs must use texts from the liturgy, and cannot have been published by a major publishing or recording label.
Bummer: The winners (there are a dozen or so chosen every two years) must submit their material in Finale-ready format for inclusion in a published songbook, and must somehow come up with the money to travel to the awards concert (which is held, of course, Back East - in 2013 it will be in Miami, which is a helluva a long train ride for yours truly and her large guitar -- don't ask me about the perils of flying with a musical instrument!).
Upside: if your song wins you get it published in a collection of new Jewish music that people can buy, which gets your music out there quite a bit more efficiently than if you tried to photocopy your lead sheets and mail them yourself; and the awards concert weekend is an opportunity to network with people who've been doing this a lot longer than I have so I could hopefully learn something from them.
I pulled out a couple of selections from my 8-year-old CD, scrounged up copies of the lead sheets, and burned a CD of just those two songs; and sent the whole works off. Deadline is May 2012 and winners won't be announced until sometime next fall, but I figure this is the kind of thing I'll just send off and forget about. If I win, it will be a nice surprise. If not, it's all good. (Maybe they'll send me a critique if I ask.)

4. The aforementioned friend (See # 3) has just been hired as the brand-new Music Coordinator at our lovely, hamishe home shul, and wants to meet with me and Sweetie (as we have both been involved in leading music) to talk about future musical goings-on at our home shul. I like this person and admire her musicianship a lot. It could be a good discussion and could lead to some interesting things.

Mostly I am trying to stay open to the siftiing, which seems to be an ongoing process, and what it may have to tell me.
Does this mean I'll leave the bicycle industry? Not anytime soon; the job security is simply too good to walk away from, and I'd still much rather fix bikes than do a million other things (like be a greeter at Wal-Mart, for example). For now, I am being affordrd enough flexibility to do both bikes and Jewish music, and if that's as good as it gets that may be okay. In the meantime, things are unfolding and I am hoping that my options will become clear over time. Meanwhile, I am enjoying the process, and I'm very much enjoying making music again.

evidence of participation, PIR/Pro Paddock

2011-11-15T07:02:00.001-08:00

Erinne, extreme toughness personified (It's the socks. It has to be.), in classic black-and-white; and me later on at the same spot on the course, in shocking, contemporary color (my, that safety orange IS bright, isn't it?).
There was only one set of barriers at Sunday's race. What's happening to 'cross, people? Now that I've spent so much time working on barriers and they are so clearly a part of my cyclocross destiny, it's time to bring back the Six-Pack! (Are you listening, Brad Ross?)

Photos by teammate Klaus "the Punisher" Ochs. Thanks, Klaus!

racing cyclocross: what it looks like

2011-11-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

For the benefit of my friends who don't race or ride off-road much, here's a video of the PIR Pro Paddock course, shot during the opening lap of the Mens' B race yesterday. Taken with a GoPro camera strapped to Matt Westermeyer's handlebar. Thanks, Matt!

Along the way you'll note a few uphill and downhill sections, and stretches where the mud gets deep and mucky. Towards the last third the course gets a bit twisty and turny and lots of fun. (One note: where the guys dismount and run their bikes up and through an opened chainlink gate, they are riding the rhythm section on the moto track, a especially muddy part of the course that was closed to the combined womens' classes because of the inclusion of junior women in our race. So the A's got to race it, and the Mens' B's got to race it, but not me. Waaaaaah!)

This is pretty much what it looks like when I race, except that Matt's twitchy fingers are shifting -- a lot, IMHO -- and when I ride there is only pedaling harder to go faster.

race report: cross crusade 2011/PIR Pro Paddock

2011-11-13T21:56:00.000-08:00

Today was my last race of the year. It was a very good way to end my season.

The rains of yesterday delivered the mud we'd waited for all season. It wasn'y especially wet or gloppy, and I didn't get a whole ton of it on me or my bike; but it was thick and deep enough in spots to slow everyone down and force many off their bikes on runups most could've ridden in dry weather and so it was good enough.

The course was a modified -- some said watered down -- version of the USGP courses I'd raced the last two seasons. Mercifully, the long opening/finishing straight was chopped into two shorter sections that each led racers back onto the grass and mud in between. I jogged up the run-ups. I suitcased over the one paltry set of barriers near the end of the lap. I managed to keep my bike upright the entire time without crashing -- though I came close a couple of times and actually had to manual my rear wheel onto another line in the mud to regain some traction through a tight corner. My bike handling feels like it has improved a bit each year and I've enjoyed growing with the process.

Bonus: I got the dollar hand-up on my final lap! Yup. Someone stole one of the course marker cones, stuck it in the middle of the course on a tight, muddy turn where everyone was forced to slow way down, and stuffed not one, but three dollar bills in the top. I was so slowed on that corner I nearly stopped, and grabbed the money as I did so. My first ever successful dollar handup. Yesssss!

I finished DFL -- a recurring theme in my season this year, as I never finished out of last place even once, in either discipline -- but I felt stronger and more able to ride up things I know I would've walked up last year. Between that and the number of racing friends who've commented on my weight loss, I know that my work in the weight room has paid off and I will go right back to it later this week. It felt good, exciting even, to feel stronger this year!

This was also Stompy's final cyclocross race. While I will probably race Stompy again next summer in short track -- it's an excellent bike, a nimble climber and great in corners -- for cyclocross it's a virutal boat anchor and I've decided to fiinally upgrade for 2012. I'll be transitioning to a 700c-wheeled bike, built around a Redline Conquest Singlespeed CX frameset. I am hoping the considerably lighter bike will make it easier for me to manage the roadie-centric 'cross courses next fall.

I finished strong, and managed to eke out four laps on a muddy course that confounded some of the roadies and made the mountain bikers grin with delight.

I enjoyed a post-race dinner with friends from Team Slow, Crank and other corners of the race scene. Mielle tried to guilt-trip me about skipping OBRA Champs but failed. Ed wants to get together with me in the early spring to scope out the new pump track that's going in out in mid-county; he wants more off-road time before short-track starts. I rode to and from the restaurant on tired but strong legs, reveling in the motion of the cranks turning and the cold, damp night air as I sped home.

Out of 14 races entered this year I had one DNF (due to asthma and fatigue). I am pleased to have seen some improvement -- maybe not perceptible to anyone watching me, since I still finished dead effing last -- but noticeable to me, and that will have to be good enough. I feel ready for a break, and not terribly sorry to be missing OBRA State CX championships or Kruger's next weekend. It has been a very good season.

hype of the week: 1982 crossmen

2011-11-11T05:38:00.000-08:00

For my final pre-race hype of 2011, I decided to go big. Here's the 1982 Crossmen doing their closer, Russian Christmas Music. Not much to say other than this is good, solid, kick-ass drum corps at it's hair-parting, cement-cracking best. The gorgeous drill (movement) at 1:46 is worth the price of admission alone. Enjoy the hype, and thanks for watching.

Final race of the year for me will be this Sunday at PIR, on the Pro Paddock course used by previous years' USGP and US Cyclocross Championships. Women race at 2:15. If you're in town come check out what will likely be the muddiest race of the series, because it's actually going to rain.

sunday's forecast

2011-11-10T17:14:00.000-08:00

Forecast for Portland, Oregon - Sunday, November 13:

Showers throughout the day. High of 49F, Low of 41F.

We may finally have honest to goodness mud on the race course.

repeat after me

2011-11-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

(As seen at 21st Avenue Bicycles, Portland)

evidence of my participation: barton park

2011-11-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

1 & 2. On the gravel turn:

3. The drop-down (whoopee!)

4. The main run-up (Teammate Erinne can be seen in the middle of the photo: blue helmet, red hair):

Photos courtesy of teammate Klaus (thank you!)

race report: cross crusade 2011/Barton Park

2011-11-06T18:14:00.000-08:00

I skipped this race last year due to a scheduling conflict. I was bummed because it had poured all day and there was tons of beautiful, gloppy mud. Oregon Public Broadcasting had sent out a film crew and shot a video of the race for a story on Oregon Field Guide. It had been an epic day of Oregon cyclocross, and I had missed it. I was determined not to miss Barton again.

What went wrong:

1. The weather. It was -- say it with me, this is becoming a trend for the 2011 cyclocross season -- sunny and dry all day. It had rained the day before, which mean that several short sections of the course were muddy, and there were even a few bonafide muddy pddles here and there; but much of the course had turned tacky by 2:15 and became yet another cyclocross course that favored the roadies. A good chunk of the backside of the course was paved, which for me was a waste of time and energy. Why do cyclocross courses have so much pavement?

2. I did not warm up enough. Between trying to find folks who came to watch me race and make sure they knew where to go, and having to take a few too many bathroom stops in the last hour before my race (I know it's important to hydrate but I may have gone overboard), I had too short a warm-up time. Add to that no good place to go and do hot-laps without being out of earshot of the annoucer, and I was not sufficiently warmed up when we staged up. My fault, and I owned it, and I felt it during the race -- especially on the run-ups, which were steep and rocky. I could not even make a pretense of trying to jog up these things, it was all I could do to walk up them without tilting backwards and falling back down the hill again. Ugh.

3. This one is hard to understand, predict or gauge, but I was out of breath today and had to stop twice to take a huff from my inhaler. Remarklably, while I was stopped another woman saw me pull of the course and reach for my inhaler, then pulled up alongside me and did the same thing. We agreed that the makers of Albuterol should co-sponsor a cyclocross race, since apparently so many Oregonians suffer from allergy-induced asthma. We wished each other well and carried on. I wondered why today it was harder for me to catch my breath, when things had gome so easily at Hillsboro -- a day with similar weather, though several degrees warmer-- and I hadn't needed my inhaler at all.

What went right:

1. Even with the roadie-heavy conditions, the great equalizers -- the little whoopdee in the trees and the big drop-down in the mud -- were back, and I rejoiced. Both were simply too much fun to be so short, and I was very sorry I couldn't take another lap before I'd run out of time. They also distinguished the roadies from the mountain bikers. I was thrilled with the lime that racers before me had established -- right down the middle, with less of an off-camber and more steep -- and took it every time, feathering my rear brake at the bottom to avoid hitting the tape and crashing in the gravel. I love the drop-down and hope it remains a feature of this course forever. Nearly four hours after my race I am still smiling from the memory of the drop-down, it was that wonderful.

2. In spots where the mud got thick, I passed roadies at least three different times. I rejoiced, even as I remembered my manners and told them which side I would pass them on. I love my bike and I love my tires. (And yet, even as I write this, the boys from Crank (who were my ride today -- thank you!) were working on me, trying to convince me to switch to a 700c-wheeled singlespeed cross bike for next year. I admit that the prospect of racing on an aluminum frame (with -- gasp! -- a carbon fork!) would appeal to me for the weight savings. And yet, there are other concerns. I promised I'd at least think about it.)

3. I remembered to look farther ahead on the course in the turns and handled the thin lines through the gravel better than expected, faster and more confidently, and when I spun out because of my mud-centric, too-low-for-pavement gearing, I didn't lose my cool. I just tucked down, coasted for a bit, then resumed pedaling again until I could get to a short, punchy incline and floor it.

4. Sweetie, my Big Sister and my youngest niece all came out to watch me race. My niece hadn't seen a cyclocross race before and was duly impressed. Big Sister enjoyed watching me do crazy things and always likes visiting Barton Park because it's a lovely drive to a lovely locale. They both enjoyed watching me race and cheering me on. Sweetie screamed bloody murder ("Go Slow!") as I passed her at the top of the drop-in and again when I crested the main run-up every lap. I also heard a few cheers along the course from fellow racers who recognized either me, my team kit or my bike (Stompy is asking for his own Facebook page. I keep saying no). Believe me, when people are screaming for you and urging you on it really does make you race stronger. It was also nice that they could stick around and hang with me afterwards while I changed clothes and we watched some of the Mens' B/Singlespeed race together. They marveled (!!?) at the new, glam skinsuits the boys from Crank were wearing. (I hope there will be pictures soon.)

Teammate report: Erinne finished 16th out of a whole bunch of B Women, in spite of racing on a too-big borrowed bike and crashing badly enough to tear up her knees. She's a [bleep]ing goddess, so fast and insanely gutsy. Chris R. was scheduled to race in the Singlespeed race and I'd seen him early in the day with his racing bike, but I never saw him on the course. I didn't find his name in the posted results so I'm not sure what happened (I hope he's ok).

I finished 20th out of 20 racers, and managed three full laps. I finished only five seconds behind the next woman in my category and she was riding a geared bike. Does this make me want to ride a geared bike next year? No, it just makes me want to think about a lighter singlespeed bike. Certainly, bad warm-up and sucky run-ups aside, I have noticed that my legs are definitely stronger this year when I'm climbing those short, punchy inclines, more than enough proof that my weight work last winter and spring paid off. I'll be doing it again this year for sure.

Home now. Feeling sort of mellow, slow and happy, enjoying the post-embrocation tingle in my tired legs (my knees don't hurt this week! Yay!) and the overall feeling of that sweet, gentle, post-race fatigue. I expect to sleep well tonight. I didn't get too many photos, but they'll eventually show up at my Flickr page. If any pictures of me materialze I'll post them here.

My final race of the cyclocross season -- and the year -- is next Sunday. Cross Crusade returns to PIR for the second time this season, this time using the Pro Paddock course that has seen so much use for US Gran Prix (2007-2010) and even a National Championship (2003 or 4). It's not an ideal course for singlespeeders but racing the moto course will be fun, especially if it gets muddy. I am praying for rain.

hype of the week: "F" drum line

2011-11-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

Okay. So my life this week is jam-packed with stuff. Lots to do. Tons of meetings, teaching, music and more. So while I'm looking forward to racing this weekend, it's not the only thing on my plate and I sort of have to cram it into an otherwise action-packed life.

In honor of this reality, I've selected an interesting -- and short! -- drum line video. Nothing fancy or outrageous here, just some good, reasonably clean corps-style drumming. Drumline is unknown, (for some reason the "F" on the jackets is making me think i'ts a school or college line rather than an independent drum corps) but apparently appeared in a Keith Urban video last year and shot this little bit as preparation for that. Some nice visuals that really break down the parts of the battery (snares, tenors, basses, a few cymbal shots though they're not really doing anything special).
I just figured it would be a good idea to strip things down to the most basic this week, before posting the final Hype of the year next week. So today we're getting elemental. Nothing but good beats. Enjoy.

looking ahead: weather for nov. 6

2011-10-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

Forecast for Sunday, November 6 (Barton Park - Estacada, OR):

Showers

High 47°F - Low 41°F

40% chance Precipitation

It looks like we may finally get some rain -- and mud -- during cyclocross season.

Yessssss!

one gorgeous bike: 1980 Raleigh Tourist

2011-10-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

The rewards of returning to the service area at work: In my first week back at the bench I got to tune up this gorgeous Raleigh Tourist three-speed, circa 1980. This was near the end of Raleigh's production of rod-brake bikes, so what we have here is the newest version of a very old design. (Rear rack and basket not original to bike but handy for errands.) I've only worked on rod-brake bikes a couple of times -- they don't come in often -- and they've always been the larger 23" frame size until now. When I test-rode this bike after my work was done, the 21" frame fit me perfectly. it was hard not to have a teeny leetle bit of bike lust.

Massive amounts of wheel-flop, due to very slack geometry; the rod-brakes stopped me in dry weather but I urged the customer not to ride this in the rain unless he could sources some elather-impregnated Fibrax pads. (He promised me he'd ride it on dry days.) Still, an awful lot of fun to ride, and fascinating to work on.

honey, i'm home

2011-10-24T18:45:00.001-07:00

Today was my first official day back as a mechanic at Citybikes, after four years of handling the lead buyer's duties.

To review: In a cooperative with an egalitarian wage scale, there are no promotions based on types of duties assigned. Instead, ideally, tasks rotate periodically, both to stave off burnout and to strengthen the knowledge base of the cooperative by offering at least some degree of cross-training of tasks. After four years it was time for someone else to sit in the buyer's chair, and for me to start turning wrenches again.

I arrived at 8:30 am, selected a tag from the job board -- I chose a full overhaul of a used bike, so I could jump in the deep end, as it were -- and got down to work. I was surprised at how quickly my old sense of system and order came back. When I'm asked to do an overhaul of a bike, I read the job tag carefully, and then I like to look at the bike for a few minutes before tearing it down. When I'm ready to begin, I usually work from the back to the front of the bike. I fell into my familiar rhythm, enjoying the quiet of the shop and the sound of a freshly-cleaned and oiled freewheel. I lost track of time, enjoying the focus of the particular task at hand: grease this brake boss, file down an odd burr in the end of new brake housing, get that "hop" out of the rear rim and bring this cheap wheel back into some reasonable semblance of round because the customer doesn't have buckets of money and just wants a bike that's safe and rideable for another year. By the time my co-workers began arriving two hours later, I had completed nearly half the job.

Of course, work slowed down once we opened, because in addition to working on the bike in my stand I was also fielding questions from customers, fixing flats and adjusting saddles and showing someone a new bike. I'll finish the overhaul in the morning.

As I wiped the grease from the tools and cleaned up my workbench at the end of my shift, I spotted something that made me laugh out loud. This was hanging on the main tool board, the one where we keep the bigger tools like frame straighteners, dropout alignment tools and the like. It had a tag zip-tied to it. I pulled it down to have a closer look:

(This tool is on long term loan from JF / It opens beer)

Happily, some things about the work don't really change.

race report: cross crusade 2011/Hillsboro

2011-10-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

Another week of dry weather meant another Cross Crusade course that was flat, dry and fast. I was not excited as the MAX train pulled into the Washington County Fairgrounds station. I signed in, caught up with the fellas from Crank, and eventually parked my stuff. I walked the course to check it out. Most of it would be deadly dull for my little singlespeed bike and painful for my slow little legs; a few switchbacks near the barns and a decision by race organizers NOT to bring back the six-pack (thank you!) but instead to break up the barriers into smaller sections. The stairs were back, though with the dry weather they were almost a non-event.

But the best features for me were the most technical ones:

a. a tall sandpile that, if too crowded, became a run-up for everyone but if you had open space in front of you you could go in fast and ride up and over it...

...with a sharp turn to the left at the base of the downslope on the other side.

b. a shorter, steeper incline that you came at immediately after a hard left turn (and had to pedal through so as not to lose momentum).

I took some photos of the Mens' Master C's, the largest single category at the race. While checking out the course and hanging out, I ran into teammate Erinne, who was not racing today but came out to cheer; and newish teammate Bonnie, who focuses on 'cross and races Womens' Master 35+ B (in short, she's faster than I will ever be). Ed was also supposed to race today, and Chris R. as well, in the final race of the day (Mens' B and Singlespeed). I would not see either of them until the end of the day, and only for a short while. I caught a glimpse of Chris The Blur on the course, and waited a long time for Ed to pass by but he never did. Finally I learned from a friend that Ed had rolled a tire after two laps and since he didn't have spare wheels in the pit his race was over.

I expected to be passed easily by Bonnie, and I was -- we called out encouragement to each other and she pulled away. I hope she had a good time; she certainly looked like she was having a decent race. As for me, well, I basically (and predictably) suffered on the flat, long stretches -- especially near the starting area where everything was hardpacked dried dirt and grass, very bumpy and tough on my hands and wrists -- and in the back are coming out of the switchbacks where there was more bumpy hardpack. Ugh! I also got passed by co-worker Hazel, who raced Beginner Women and finished a fantastic 18/86. (Yes, eighty-six Beginner Women. Large field.)

My first lap was basically about hanging on and trying to get my breathing where I wanted it to be. I carried an inhaler but did not need to use it during the race. The first lap through the sandy hill was, predictably, a total cluster and I treated it like a run-up. The second lap I tried to come in faster but got cut off by a junior who shifted too late and killed our momentum; we both had to dismount and run the rest of it. Finally on my my third and fourth laps I had enough space in front of me that I could go in hot and manual my back end slightly it at the top to keep from fishtailing out.

I was a very happy camper at this point in the course. It made me want to go as fast as I could so I'd have more chances to ride it.

I was also pleased with how I ran every barrier, every time, throughout the entire race. Not sure what I'm doing differently this year from last -- I stopped lifting weights hardcore in late May and the only change in my riding patterns has been to go hard Tuesday and Wednesday, ease up on Thursday and Friday and not ride at all Saturday before a Sunday race. But whatever it is I am gutting it out and running, or at least jogging, every barrier and run-up now. It's not track-star fast, and it's not pretty, and most of the time to get any speed at all through barriers I have to suitcase my bike instead of doing a full-on underam carry; but it's a huge difference from last year and for me it's proof that practice makes better, if not perfect.

Continuing my tradition of dogged consistency, I finished DFL in my category -- 28/28 -- but I finished and pulled off four laps and handled my bike pretty darned well most of the time. Maybe speed will come, maybe it won't. But I still feel deliciously, dangerously empty at the end of these things and the extreme physical exertion is really, really good for my head as well as my body.

More photos here. Scroll to the end of the set for Hillsboro pictures.

autumn

2011-10-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

--Robert Frost

hype of the week: 1992 USMC drum corps

2011-10-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

True story: In 1984, I had left school to work full-time. I was living in downtown Portland and working as a bicycle messenger four mornings a week, then heading over to a coffee shop to work the afternoon/evening shift four days a week. They weren't always all the same four days, which helped. Still, I was making just enough money to pay all my bills without having to pick up the phone and ask my folks for help (a constant and looming goal -- it was complicated). I was twenty-one and looking for Whatever Was Supposed To Happen Next.

I had befriended the Gunnery Sergeant who was in charge of the US Marine recruiting station, which was housed in the Georgia-Pacific Building where my mother had worked before taking a transfer to the home office in Atlanta (also complicated). "Gunny", as his office cohort called him, was a friendly, thoughtful man who was curious about me. I obviously had been to college and was intelligent, judging by my speech and demeanor; what was I doing working as a bicycle messenger for peanuts? Sometiems he'd place a call to AMS specifically asking for me to bring lunch for the office staff, and he'd invite me to stay and chat while I ate from my own sack lunch. This happened once or twice a week that summer.

Eventually, I confided in him that I'd had a thing for the Marines since high school; they'd sent out packets to every medalist at the high school state solo contest and mine included information on "The Commandant's Own" -- the drum and bugle corps. My father, an Army veteran who'd served in Korea, had emphatically and surprisingly put his foot down; no daughter of his was going to be a Marine when she was being offered scholarships to college. Since I needed my parents' financial help that first year, that was pretty much that, and I dutifully forgot about the Marines, went to college, and eventually floundered. Gunny was intrigued. One thing led to another and before I knew it Gunny had persuaded me to take a short, 45-minute screening exam "just for the heck of it, no obligation at all". I scored 97 out of a possible 100 -- the highest score they'd seen in the office in months, and about thirty points higher than the average. Four weeks later I'd arranged for some time off work and was on a bus headed to Fort Lewis, Washington, to audition for the Marines music programs.

After I finished playing my prepared pieces, I was told that there were no openings in the drum corps, but that my sight-reading was plenty good enough to land me in a dance band anywhere in the corps, stateside or in Europe. I was very interested. For the rest of my visit, they assigned me to shadow a woman Marine, and she happily showed me around the base, answering my questions and talking a little about her experiences. When she learned that I was over 21, she invited me to learn how to shoot an M-16. After an initial instruction period we went to the firing range, and I followed instructions. I wasn't a bad shot -- all of my bullets hit the target or the backing behind it, though wildly arrayed. But as I squeezed the trigger, I immediately remembered that this was a military organization and that if I joined, I'd be taught how to kill people. It was like being in a theater and the play ended and lights went back up. And I knew that, although I still admired the United States Marine Corps for their precision, dedication and discipline, I would never join them.

"The Commandant's Own" is a pretty amazingly polished organization and I still admire them. As featured guests at a drum corps show in 1992, they wowed the crowds who cheered for them loudly. The acoustics of the Cotton Bowl aren't the best, and their drill is miles behind the drill designs of DCI corps of the period; but they still throw down a very good show, with more than decent brass arranging and some excellent, excellent marching (if these guys can't march cleanly, well, I guess they do push-ups all afternoon). Their intro onto the field is pretty damned cool (and some nice, clean drumming for what would have been considered limited instrumentation at the time). The company front at 2:15 is worth the price of admission alone.
Enjoy, and see you at the races. Cross Crusade goes to Hillsboro this week, and the women race around 2:15.

evidence of my participation: PIR/heron lakes

2011-10-17T21:51:00.001-07:00

It appears that some of my best shots this season (including this one taken by T. Quinones) involve run-ups. Blecch. I do not like run-ups, even though I have made myself get tougher on them this year and now actually jog instead of crawl up them. Still, this shot shows how steep this section was -- a punchy incline interrupted by not one, but two barriers placed in the middle. On this lap I timed my [off-camber cornering] dismount a bit too late to get a good carry position under my arm, so I suitcased the bike over the barriers by simply lifting it by the top tube -- a bit harder on the arm muscles but certainly faster -- and noticeably more doable thanks to the weight work I did last winter and spring. It's amazing to imagine that real, tangible results are possible with weight training.

A couple more, taken by J. Bentham, on the off-camber switchbacks following the barrier run-up:

A few random recollections and thoughts:

1. After my race I had the pleasure of meeting Julia from the Eugene team Poplollies, who raced in my category and sought me out to thank me for my blog posts about racing singlespeed. She is thinking very hard about building up a singlespeed bike of her own. I urged her to go for it, of course. I figure as long as the knees hold out, singlespeed is still the most enjoyable way to race off-road.

2. I helped out with the Kiddie Races at lunchtime, basically directing traffic for the littlest kids at the end of their race. It was sweet to watch these adorable, powerful little people push their skoot bikes and tricycles along while adults on both sides of the course clapped, rang cowbells and shouted encouragement. I thoroughly enjoyed the wide-eyed wonder of these tiniest kids urging their tiny bikes along in the tacky mud. Some of them had the most beautiful looks of fierce determination on their faces, while others rolled along happily with gentle smiles on their faces, almost oblivious to anything else but the easy joy of self-propulsion.

3. Although I am not a fan of run-ups, I have gotten better at them this year. And I didn't even do much actual running to prepare for my season. I mostly spent my practice time working on mounts and dismounts and jogging with my bike under my arm or suitcased out to my side, and let my daily commuting and cargo-biking comprise the bulk of my between-season mileage. I'm still dreadfully slow all around, but I really enjoyed noticing the small, incremental improvements in some of my cyclocross skills yesterday during the race.

4. In retrospect, I thought there was too much gravel. Yes, I pedaled through it, and no, I did not crash; but there was still way too much gravel on the race course and, well, that 180-degree, off-camber gravel turnaround was simply stupid. Very few of the women rode the turnaround successfully every lap; most of us had to get off and run through it, or be forced off our bikes halfway through the turn because of poor positioning going into the bank, not enough speed, overcrowding at that spot, or all three. Never mind the finishing straight, which I think was longer than it had been last year and was just bad for a singlespeeder like me. The gravel was probably the worst feature of the PIR course this year.

5. I take that back; the worst feature of the PIR course this year was the complete absence of rain and deep mud. And Washington County next Sunday looks no more promising; the preliminary forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high in the low to mid-60's. If that's the case, I'll leave the embrocation at home. For heaven's sake, where's the mud? It's mid-October already.

6. Crank -- the bike shop who sponsors Team Slow -- was a gracious host, allowing me to park my bag at their tent for the afternoon. The boys do seem to have a thing for pork, though -- at Alpenrose they offered me pulled pork sandiwiches, which I politely declined. At PIR, they offered me biscuits and gravy with -- you guessed it -- pork sausage. I'm convinced they own shares in a hog farm somewhere. I opted for oatmeal from the nice folks at Bob's Red Mill instead. Still, it's been really nice to hang out with the fellas and to meet their families.

7. Special thanks to pal Crystal and her friends at Metropolis Cycle Repair for letting me do a quick-change into my kit in their station wagon. The porta-potties were too far away and there was not a phone booth in sight. Bless you.

8. One nice thing about the conditions: I didn't have to hose my bike down after the race.

See you in Hillsboro.

race report: cross crusade 2011/PIR-heron lakes

2011-10-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

The day dawned cool, almost crisp, and cloudy. I enjoyed a nice ride down to the venue from my house. By the time I'd gotten to PIR at around 10:15 am, the clouds were breaking up a little. By noon the sun had broken through and I no longer needed my long-sleeved base layer; I swapped in a lighter sleeveless layer instead. The course was mostly dry, with long stretches of gravel and pavement that I didn't remember from last year. What mud there was was dry and tacky. In short, this was a flat, fast course that would be perfect for roadies, and sort of awful for my singlespeed mountain bike. I toyed with the idea of swapping in a smaller cog but decided to leave things alone so I could power up the few short inclines on the course and feel like I'd accomplished something.

At the start line, I scanned the other bikes in my category; I was the only Master 45+ woman racing on a singlespeed; did the other women know something I didn't? Yikes. We were off, and I prayed that I would be able to hang on for 45 minutes.

I surprised myself. Yes, I still finished last in my category (not official yet but I'm pretty confident of the result); but this time the timing worked out so I could push myself hard and squeeze in a fourth lap before it was all over. Anytime I hit the mud, my bike handling felt fine. Anytime I was on pavement, I spun out (and wished I'd swapped in the smaller cog before the race). Anytime I rode through gravel I just told myself to keep pedaling, and while my rear wheel slid under me a couple of times I remained upright. Nicest surprise of all was how I dealt with barriers, especially on the flats. Obviously, the huge concrete slab was a challenge every time, but I forced myself to at least jog at it and all my dismounts there were timed pretty well. (Note to hecklers: consider placing the dollar hand-ups a little farther out from the slab so folks have time to remount before grabbing for them.) Because the course was run in reverse of last year's route, the strongest and most agile riders today were able to bunny hop up to the slab and back down the other side. (Note: I did not see any women attempt this but then I missed most of the Pros/A's race just prior to mine. Several junior men made it, and many singlespeed [men] did so as well.)

Except for the two barriers on the steep uphil, where the cheers of my male teammates helped me get up and over that section every lap, I managed to run over every other barrier -- and the two barriers out in the back section were awesome! The hours I spent in late summer/early fall practicing nothing but mounts and dismounts seem to have paid off. I'm sure I was still slow as molasses, but when I suitcased my bike over that set of barriers each lap it felt almost like flying, and I felt the closest I ever have to a real cyclocross racer.

Team Slow notes: I got to meet the newest of our ladies today -- Suzy is an impressive rider and races Womens' Master 35+ B. Erinne looked so ridiculously strong today; her pedal strokes were smooth and powerful and her long red hair was just flying out the back of her helmet. I saw her a couple of times on the course and she must have lapped me more than once (I don't yet know how many laps each of us completed). I saw Kristin early on; she passed me and I don't remember if I saw her again. I got passed early on by Suzy as well -- another strong rider with great form on the bike.

I struggled, as I knew I would, on the sections of the course that were long, flat and paved -- ick! ugh! -- and felt stronger on the short, punchy climbs and the steep switchbacks. I never managed to get the hang of the 180-degree turnaround in deep gravel -- and on an incline! -- and lots of women got hung up here. The key, as best as I could observe, was to go in fast and take the turn rather high But with so many women on the course there was never enough room for me to get my momentum up enough to make the whole turn, and I got hung up halfway around each time, forcing me off my bike. I couldn't decide whether this or the two uphill barriers were the least enjoyable parts of the course for me.

Because of the dry, warm weather, the off-camber section at the end of the uphill barriers was almost a non-factor. According to various reports, today was the first time the PIR course has been this dry since something like 2002. And while I would have liked to challenge myself in the mud, I felt really good about managing to pull out four laps on a course that really wasn't my cup of tea.

(Me and Erinne before our race. We were both smiling afterwards, too.)

Next weekend: Washington County Fairgrounds, Hillsboro. Another run through the manure-tinged mud and the sheep barns. I am hoping it will rain.

hype of the week: 1996 phantom regiment

2011-10-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

In 1996, the Phantom Regiment took the field with a different look, and a much darker feel than even this all-classical corps had been known for. The familiar gleaming, all-white uniform had been replaced by an all-black version, which gave the corps an almost terrifying presence on the green field. The program, entitled "A Defiant Heart", featured music from Shostakovich's first and fifth symphonies, which are definitely among the heavier works in the orchestral repertoire.

I don't normally put up an entire 12-minute field show for Hype Of The Week, and frankly I'd been sitting on it, saving it, for about a year; but I've been in a sort of heavy space since Rosh Hashanah and decided it was finally time to put this one up. In advance of racing my favorite course (PIR/Heron Lakes on Sunday) it feels right to share this now. I promise it's worth hanging in there for the whole thing.

The show proper begins at about 40 seconds in. Look for great close-ups of snare stick work at 3:32 and 5:21. The most famous theme of this symphony happens at around 7:00. More snare close-ups at 10:00 (dig the stick heights, matched beautifully!), followed right afterwards by some gorgeous drill-writing (check out the huge flags almost floating through the corps without hitting anyone!). The show ends with a massive, earth-shattering company front/wall-of-sound at 11:40, and you can stop viewing there or watch through to the end of the video to see Phantom announced as DCI Champions. It was (and remains), in drum corps parlance, a nearly perfect field show. Watching it again gave me goosebumps, a burst of strength, and even a little hope. Turn up the volume, go to full screen, and be shaken and even moved.

chag sameach sukkot

2011-10-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

Happy Sukkot!

(Northwest Native Lulav)

My four species:
--Western Hemlock
--Western Red Cedar
--Douglas Fir
--Vine Maple

In place of an etrog I'm using the seed cone from a cedar. I may have to add a few drops of essential cedar oil but we'll see.

Our praise to You, Eternal our God, Sovereign of all:
whose mitzvot teaches us holiness and who instructs us to take up the lulav .

A local rabbi's comment on the holiday seems especially pertinent for me personally as I am in a time of great uncertainty and not a little worry. "Dwell in a booth," he writes, "You will emerge in strength."
May it be so for all of us.

whose news?

2011-10-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

Today, I got an email blast from the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, announcing that the Jewish Review, our local Jewish newspaper, would be ceasing operations effective January 1, 2012. The Review has been in print since 1959, and was the successor to an older Jewish publication focusing on Portland's Jewish community. It had, in recent years, done an outstanding job of telling the stories of all of the community, and made a point of presenting many viewpoints rather than simply a "party line". Compared to other regional and local Jewish papers, the Review was definitely one of the better Jewish papers I'd read. And now it was to be shut down, putting its editor, assistant editor and several writers out of work, and saving the Jewish Federation an estimated $100,000 a year.

In its place, the email read, "A new publishing group informed Federation of its intent to create a new Portland-focused 'Jewish lifestyles magazine' with its initial issue scheduled for January 2012." Further digging revealed that the new magazine would be published by the same organization currently publishing "Orange County Jewish Life" and a similar publication in San Diego.

Taking a quick look at the Orange County publication online revealed that my hunch was correct: The new magazine would likely be a cookie-cutter, cut-and-paste affair in which Portland area place names and their respective machers (leading local Jews and their families) would be inserted into otherwise generic coverage of something defined as "Jewish life". Unfortunately, in the process, the voices of many of Portland's Jews -- either lower income or more geographically distant from the centers of Jewish life -- would be silenced by omission. The publishers of this new magazine, based as they are in Southern California, haven't a clue about how and why Jewish life in Portland is different. And by handing off communication about and for the local Jewish community to an outside organization, the Federation may save money but they probably won't be doing the community any real favors.

It's a bummer, and could end up being a mistake.

my first sukkah

2011-10-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

Today, like many Jews on the day after Yom Kippur, I built a sukkah in our yard. Unlike many of my Jewish friends, this was the first time I'd built a sukkah of my own. I'd helped friends in past years (shorter friends especially have been grateful for my long reach) but had wanted to build one of my own for years.

I sketched an idea on some notebook paper, measured the height of the porch (against which I would stabilize the other three sides) and figured out how many poles I'd need. I went to the lumber yard before Rosh Hashanah and brought everything home on the cargo bike.

It went together fairly easily.

Stay tuned for D-I-Y Sukkot, Part Two: The NW Native Lulav (in which I freak out most of the rabbis I know).
Sukkot begins this Wednesday evening.

may you be written, may you be sealed (for a good year)

2011-10-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

Last week Jews observed the turning of the world as we entered the Jewish calendar year 5772.
We turn into the new year in a time of cynicism, hopelessness, anger and fear.
More people -- including our neighbors and friends -- are going without work, without adequate food and shelter -- because of the global economic downturn which shows few signs of abating.
Now, ten days later, Occupy Wall Street groups in four eastern cities are hosting Yom Kippur services at their respective encampments this weekend -- a radical idea if ever there was one. Instead of demanding apologies, groups of [Jewish] protestors will be offering them.
I would personally love to stand on Wall Street tomorrow and gently pound my fist against my chest while chanting the Al Cheyt: "We have sinned against You the sin of [pick one]..."
Doing the same thing here in not-terribly-Jewish Portland probably wouldn't have the same effect, or meaning, but it would be radical all the same.

Forgive me, God, for having sinned before You the sins of apathy, fear, isolationism, pettiness; for the sins of my silence and my averted gaze; and above all this year, for the sin of hopelessness with which I wrestle every damned day on this earth.

If you are observing Yom Kippur, may you have a thoughtful fast from whatever distracts you from your Self. And may we all be sealed in the book of life for another year, a year of opportunity to make change in ourselves and to help repair the world.

evidence photo: alpenrose

2011-10-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

First lap, run-up. I ran. (I would walk the next two times.) Still raining pretty steadily here.

(photo by vitus1997)

race report: cross crusade 2011/alpenrose

2011-10-02T18:52:00.000-07:00

The weather never got quite as sunny or as warm as the weatherpeople said it would. Which was a good thing.
In fact, about half an hour before the womens' race, it began raining, steadily and lightly. Which was an even better thing.
More rain meant that a formerly hard, fast and tacky course ideal for roadies became, in seveal important spots, a slower, muddier, slicker course better suited to off-road riders. I was happy.
I was slow, but very happy.

A few photos of the course, showing the morning racing (mostly C Men and Clydesdales):

The off-camber run-up behind the velodrome:

This got a lot slicker and sloppier by 2:30. In fact, by then, most of the women opted to run the length of the section including the short run-up. I rode as much of the section as I could each lap, but was forced to get off and run the incline because there were just too many women on the course to allow me to keep up any momentum. (Sigh.)

The switchbacks at the opposite end of the velodrome:

I took the switchbacks a little too hot the first time and nearly collided with another racer cornering out of a descent. Watching my speed the following laps meant that I had to kill my own momentum because there were simply too many other women close by for me to really open things up and muscle up the other side of the switch.

The long run-up was back, and I suffered it each lap; enough said. The long stretch of singletrack behind the velodrome was also back and I really enjoyed bombing down it -- but was surprised, and brought up short, by the women in front of me who rode their brakes the whole way down. (Whaaaa...?) More momentum-killing. Arrrrgh!

No Team Slow men raced today. We were represented on the womens' side by me (Master Women 45+), Erinne (B Women U35) and Kristin (Beginner Women). I never saw Erinne on the course but assume she did well; Kristin lapped me about halfway through the race and I never saw her again, either; but she looked strong. On my first and second laps I passed women (!!!), in the same spot each time (coming out of a short descent, into a turn and heading out along a singletrack straightaway to a little "bump-up" behind the velodrome). Both times I saw someone flounder because of lost momentum or a bad recovery from the turn, and I simply said, "passing on your right", and passed them all the way through the singletrack and up and over the "bump-up". A satisfyingly mountain-bike sort of feel to the passing move each time. Of course, they passed me later on down the road, so we were even. Still, it was thrilling to pass someone in a bike race.

In spite of how slow I felt, and having finished dead last in my category (results not posted yet for the combined womens' race but I'm pretty sure that's where I ended up), I had an awesome time playing in the mud. I'm so glad it rained.

'twas the night before cyclocross season

2011-10-01T20:01:00.000-07:00

Saturday night (post-Shabbat) finds me feeling a little jittery about my first 'cross race tomorrow at Alpenrose.

I've done as much as I can do and still hold down two jobs, eat, sleep and have time with my sweetie:

a. Four weekly cyclocross practices, opened to friends and teammates but each held solo. (I dunno, I guess my neighborhood is a bit far away from everyone, but I have a great neighborhood park to practice in.) They weren't the most disciplined pratices, but I did get in some good practice on mounts and dismounts. My mounts still suck -- very slow and halting -- but there's probably nothing to do about that now except hope I don't hang anyone else up in the process.

b. Some quality time with Stompy, finally! Replaced cables and housing (sorry, its not hot pink anymore; I scored some nice woven metal housing from VO that looks sturdier), swapped in the Conti Cross Country tires and overhauled the headset (I'd done the once-over on the BB and cranks this summer and they still seem fine). Headset cups look a touch dinged up but since I'm only racing five or six times this fall I've decided to roll with it through the season. If I stick with this frameset next year I'll upgrade the headset before next summer.

c. The usual primping and preening of all my ephemera, and pre-packing this afternoon based on the weather reports. Tomorrow's forecast: cloudy, with showers in the evening, high in mid-60's. I opted for bib knickers and my short-sleeved jersey with arm warmers, though I did toss the long-sleeved jersey in and may use it as a jacket. (I wish we could've spring for actual thermal jackets but not enough of us could afford them to make the minimum). I also packed a screaming orange wind-vest I scored over the summer. Plus various accessories (embrocation, chamois cream, first aid kit, pom-poms), a tool kit and I'm good to go.

I'm heading out early in the morning so I can watch the Beginner men, where I hope to see at least one or two of my teammates. I'm nervous because in spite of all the commuting I've done over the late summer I still feel underprepared and out of shape for 'cross season. (Adding to my sense of underpreparedness are the last three days I've spent off the bike because of Rosh Hashanah. Sweetie tells me I'll just be really, really rested for the race.)
I'm excited because Sweetie and several friends are coming to watch.

Last reports indicate that close to 800 racers have pre-registered online. Last year there were over 1,500 registered racers plus over 200 kiddie race participants. 1,700 racers, plus another 2,000 who came to watch. Even with the runoff from folks planning to race only the Molly Cameron series, I think we'll still have more racers this year. I expect my category (Master Women 45+) to be the smallest womens' category but I still expect to see more than 40 women. Alpenrose is always such a cluster.

Here we go. Let the wackiness begin. The women race tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 pm or so.

shanah tovah (happy new year)

2011-09-28T17:05:00.001-07:00

Sunset as seen from Interstate Boulevard, the last sunset of Jewish Year 5771:

For a scarily easy apples-in-honey recipe, check this out.

To all the Folks In The Tribe, have a sweet new year. May 5772 be a year of peace, health and joy.

must. rant. (damn you, brooks.)

2011-09-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

Years ago I came into the possession of a small stack of CTC Gazettes. The Gazette was the magazine for the Cyclists' Touring Club, the national organization of cyclotouring and bicycle transportation in Great Britain. Included in the pages were photos of happy cyclotourists, clad in the traditional (for that time period, anyway -- 1960's and 70's) oxford shirts, knickers (I think they called them "plus-twos", not quite as billowy as the golfers' "plus-fours") and jaunty touring jackets. Of course, their bikes were outfitted with the now-famous transverse saddle bags, which enjoyed a renaissance thanks in large part to the efforts of Rivendell Bicycle Works to import them in the early 1990's. The photos in the magazine show happy men and women riding through the bucolic British countryside, and in general having a fine time.

The photos can be seen in real-life form today. My touring bike has a transverse saddlebag, of course -- I've used them for years -- and Tweed Rides all over the English-speaking world have brought back the appearance and pleasures of a simpler time without the guilt of the class system tacked on.

And now, Brooks has seen fit to bring back the cyclists' touring jacket. In keeping with their current penchant for pushing the boutique vibe, the new jacket retails for 1,000 euros. If you're doing the math that's about 870 Pounds, or a cool -- sit down -- $1,360.00. Yup. You read that right. Thirteen hundred bucks for a jacket.

To be fair, at least a little bit, the jacket appears to be made in the UK -- and perhaps that accounts for its high price. But Brooks has lately been having goods produced in China and NOT heavily discounting the retail prices, because they know they can get away with it. There are people out there who want the whiff of privilege and they will pay $900 for a rain cape, and $1300 for a touring jacket. (If they can afford these things, they already enjoy more than a whiff of privilege. Good for them.) I love Brooks saddles and have been riding them for nearly 40 years. The B-17 saddle on my touring bike is ten years old -- I paid about $60 for it back then -- and still going strong. But it is getting harder and harder to feel good about supporting a brand whose goods are getting more costly and whose marketing approach is getting more and more class-oriented. I'm also glad that in a few weeks I will step aside as the lead buyer at my shop, and I won't have to worry about it in quite the same way anymore.
All this marketing of "cool" is bringing me down. I'm really looking forward to picking up my wrenches again.

hype of the week: 2009 vanguard, "simple gifts"

2011-09-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

October 2011 finds me returning for my third season of racing 'cross on a singlespeed bike. Appropriately enough, Hype Of The Week returns for the 2011 Cyclocross Season with this amazing footage of the Santa Clara Vanguard at the end of its 2009 DCI World Finals show. Yeah, okay, it's "modern" drum corps, with 3-valved horns (NOT bugles anymore, sorry) and electronics in the pit (God forbid!); but if you really want to have your face ripped off, run it through some decent speakers with the volume up and you'll probably smile in spite of yourself.

I'm sure Copland hadn't planned on this interpretation/instrumentation of his setting of "Simple Gifts", but IMHO it works.

The women race at Alpenrose on Sunday 10/2, at around 2:15 pm. Parking will be a royal pain, so plan to arrive early and watch the A's/Pro's in the race before mine. See you there!

weather forecast: sunday, october 2

2011-09-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Partly Cloudy - High 66°F - Precip 10%

Can you tell I'm looking forward to my first race of the season?

jonesing for mud

2011-09-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last night after my team meeting, I came home and surfed the web for a few minutes, looking up photos of cyclocross action.
I find myself doing this every fall, and I suppose it's a part of how I get excited for cyclocross season. Here are a few of my favorite shots:

The runup at Barton Park, a race I missed last year but hope to do this year:

Starting field at Alpenrose. Yes, this many people really do turn out to race the Cross Crusade opener, and this was just the Men C's:

The ride-schlep-runup at the south end of the Alpenrose velodrome, which defeated me on all but my last lap last year:

And finally, me and Stompy at the end of my PIR race last year. The heavens opened up five minutes before the start of the womens' race and turned the course beautifully, gloriously muddy:

I am only racing five, maybe six times this fall (Five Cross Crusade races, plus maybe Kruger's Kross if I can swing a ride there and back). I am praying for a really rainy fall because the more it rains, the more fun Stompy and I have.

Cyclocross season has already begun with some Saturday races. The Grand Prix Molly Cameron is underway; Blind Date at the Dairy gets going next week, and PsychoCross is underway in the Willamette Valley. But the grandaddy of them all, Cyclocross Crusade, begins October 2nd at Alpenrose Dairy.
See you at the races.

when sponsors love you

2011-09-22T21:58:00.000-07:00

Team Slow held its first team meeting of the fall at Pacific Pie this evening.
When we got there, we found a table waiting Just For Us:

Have I mentioned I love this place?

Best bets:
Sampler plate of assorted mini pasties (little vegetable-filled savory hand-pies)
Wandering Aengus hard cider
Blackberry pie for dessert
OMG Yum!

time to embrocate!

2011-09-18T07:10:00.000-07:00

The rains and cool temperatures of fall finally came out for a teaser yesterday. I rode downtown to catch a Torah study at Temple Beth Israel, clad in knickers and a wool jersey. I could tell it wanted to rain just a little; but wasn't cautious enough to take a rain shell along. I rode home in a light shower, and the wool kept me warm enough as long as I kept moving. I did get a little sniffly, mostly from the change in the barometric pressure; but otherwise I felt fine.

Today I awoke to the sound of a real shower, big drops going ..::splat!::.. against the living room window -- and I smiled.
In a couple of hours I'm heading over to the park for cyclocross practice -- and today it's cool enough that I can finally break out the embrocation.

It doesn't look like much, but it's one of the happiest rituals of my cyclocross season.

whither pedro's?

2011-09-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

Pedro's, the Massachussetts-based bicycle tool and lube company known for their commitment to environmentally-friendly products and a handful of excellent proprietary tool designs (in particular the best consumer tire lever in the world), appear to be going under.

Here's what we have so far:

1. No one answers the phone. In fact, in the dozens of times I've tried to call them as the shop buyer in the last six months I've gotten through to an actual human being in real time exactly once.
2. I ordered a Master Mechanic Case for myself, and placed the order through my wholesale distributor because they were compiling a large Pedro's order anyway and it would be easy to tack it on. Only after I contacted Pedro's directly on behalf of my wholesale distributor did they finally send it out -- 18 months after my original order was placed.
3. As far as I know, I have snapped up for our shop what could be the last dozen cases of Pedro's yellow tire levers in the known universe from the only distributor who had any in stock -- and they were listing them on a specials/closeouts flyer. Our shop is scouring the world for a replacement but so far every other make and model we've tried simply doesn't compare.
4. Pedro's is not showing at Interbike this week, either at the Outdoor Demo OR the show proper. This would be their first absence from the show in years. Rumor had it that there would be some kind of "announcement" at the show but if they're not there the silence resulting from their absence would be deafening in and of itself.
5. Over at their Facebook page, they advertised a "Cyclocross Season Kickoff Sale" Sept. 9-10. Originally to be held at their HQ, on the 6th they announced they were moving it to the warehouse. Cash/checks only, no plastic, no mail-order.
6. Using an old team access code, I checked their pro-deal offerings online. They are out of a lot of stuff. As in, most of it.
All these little red flags are making the tiny robot in my head flail its arms, flash its red eyes and bleat, "Danger, Will Robinson..."
It does not look good.

I would guess that either they're done; or they've been bought by a larger company.
If the former, I glad I managed to get my Pedro's tool situation mostly squared away (with a few extras on a handful of regularly-used/abused tools to see me out, plus an upgraded repair stand and the aforementioned tool case).
If the latter, I would guess the new owners will choose to dump the tools (most of which were manufactured in the Lifu factory anyway, including most of the proprietary designs) and re-emerge with a sharply narrowed focus on enviro-friendly lubes and solvents.

I'm bummed. Pedro's had a good thing going with their environmental focus and their excellent consumer accessibility at races and charity events across the country. I'd guess that's done now, and if it is I'll miss them.

i fear we have not learned much

2011-09-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

I was in Philadelphia, enrolled in classes at Gratz College, on September 11, 2001. It was a gorgeous morning during the second week of the semester. I walked into the main lobby and was greeted by news, from the school's admissions director, that a plane had just crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center, 100 miles away in New York City. She told us to go to class and that she would let us know if she heard anything else. An hour later, our Hebrew class was interrupted and we were gathered into the main lobby of the building, where the president of the college told us what had happened, and instructed us to go home. At the urging of the Jewish Federation of Philadelphia, classes at all Jewish schools and colleges in the city were to be cancelled until further notice. Because the trains had been shut down for security reasons, I got a ride with a classmate. We made it to Temple University when traffic came to a complete standstill; apparently, everything else in Philadelphia was closing for the day too. I thanked my friend, got out of her car and walked the rest of the way back to my apartment near Rittenhouse Square.

Along the way, stores on the crowded streets had turned TV screens to the front windows and turned up the speakers so passersby could watch ongoing news coverage; people were crowded around the windows three and four deep. Busloads of schoolchildren in their new uniforms were being herded onto yellow buses to be taken home. People were rushing to and fro, having all been let out of work early and told to go home for the day. Everyone was hurried but exceedingly polite; every time I bumped into someone on a crowded sidewalk we both smiled a little at each other and murmured "sorry" or "excuse me". I stopped at a phone booth near the Free Library on JFK Boulevard and waited my turn in line so I could briefly call my father in Portland to tell him I was alright. An Episcopal church nearby had opened its massive red doors to anyone who needed a place to pray or just calm down. I ducked in for a few minutes and was grateful for the quiet. I continued on, having what turned out to be my requisite Scary Moment as I walked between the glass and steel towers of Liberty Centre, the financial center of the city. Traders from the Philadephia Stock Exchange were outside, pacing nervously in their two-toned trading floor jackets and puffing away on cigarettes. I tried not to let myself look up as I walked between the two towers but I couldn't help it, and after that my pace quickened nervously, all the way to Bainbridge Street and my apartment building. I got home around 1:30 pm, and listened to NPR for much of the rest of the day. Up to that point I had been numb, not quite understanding what had happened. Then I heard reports of taxi drivers in Damascus, Syria handing out sweets to children to celebrate the attacks. That was when I hung my head and sobbed, the full weight of the day's meaning finally hitting me.

"War" takes many forms.

I was reminded of this again when, several days later, I stood on a crowded street corner in Center City, waiting for a bus to take me to an evening lecture. Classes had resumed at Gratz and at other schools and although people were still in disbelief there was a definite air of slowly, tentatively trying to get on with life. As we waited for our respective buses, I noticed some hard-hatted construction workers on a lunch break nearby. I saw a taxicab slowly turn the corner, being driven by a Sikh who was easily identified through his open window by his brightly colored turban. Either not knowing much about Sikhs, or not caring, two of the construction workers began yelling and jeering at the cab driver, screaming at him to "go home to Saudi Arabia". I watched in horror as one threw a bottle at the side of the cab as it passed. The cab accelerated and sped away. I hid my face in my hands and tried not to let people see me cry. I did not feel strong enough to tell off the construction workers, and I felt ashamed of my fear.

I left the bus stop and walked home, skipping the lecture, and sat on the stoop in front of my apartment building with a piece of cold chicken and a bottle of beer, watching the quiet street in front of me and wondering if we would ever learn how to make peace with ourselves and with each other. I wondered what I was even doing in graduate school -- what a luxury it seemed, all of a sudden! -- and if my choices and actions would ever make a difference in the world around me.

In the ten years since the attacks of September 11, we have seen an outpouring of pain, love and support between neighbors and friends; a heightened emphasis on geopolitically-based fear by our media and politicians; an increase in our military aggression and a chipping away at our individual liberties (specifically, the individual's right to privacy); and for many, a gnawing feeling that even if we have been able to successfully prevent another such attack from happening, we have not made the world a more peaceful place in the passing decade. I fear that as a society, we have not learned very much -- certainly, not enough -- since that day; and I wonder what it would take for us to change from a competitive, war-obsessed culture into a cooperative and peace-seeking one.

As I prepare to begin the New Year of the Soul, less than three weeks from now, I wonder what will be asked of me in the coming months to make things better for those around me. I hope that I will recognize the answer when I hear it.

overlap

2011-09-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when you publicly state that you're ready to let go of something, just saying it begins a cosmic process by which you make room for other things to come into your life.

This is what happened with me over the spring and summer. I said I was ready to let go of certain aspects of my work at Citybikes (particularly the stress of being the Buyer, which will be passed along to another cooperator this fall), and two weeks after I said it out loud, I got a phone call from a local synagogue where I had formerly taught and led youth services. They were hiring faculty for the fall and my name came up in discussions; would I be interested in coming back to teach and be a youth songleader?

The timing of the offer was almost perfect; I was returning to wrenching in the fall, which would give me the more flexible schedule I needed to make room in my schedule for teaching again. And although the synagogue hadn't been on my radar consciously, when I gave it some thought I realized that going back into the classroom was a good idea on many levels. After discussing it with Sweetie, I accepted the job offer. School starts next week.

Yesterday, I loaded up the cargo bike and took my guitar to the synagogue after my shift at the bike shop so the religious school principal and I could go over some music for High Holidays. Riding over the bridge, feeling the smoothness of the cargo bike (that I'd built up entirely from parts) as it rolled over freshly re-paved streets, and feeling the weight of the guitar on board, I noted the odd juxtaposition of my wacky skillset. I'm a bike mechanic. I'm also a teacher and a musician. And for the next stretch of time at least, I'm going to be all three.

I don't know any other bike mechanics who also serve a faith community in a leadership role of any kind; conversely I don't know anyone serving the Jewish community who also works as a bike mechanic. Various pieces of the universe inhabit me in a very strange and sort of cool overlap. And because of this, I inhabit an odd place in the overlap of the universe, an overlap that allows me to meet a very wide range of varied and very interesting people and do all sorts of things that normally wouldn't go together. It's a really odd overlap, but it's also sort of cool.

I'm looking forward to this fall.

must tradition always trump sustainability? and at what price?

2011-08-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when Jews around the world begin to Plan Ahead. We are entering the month of Elul tonight, the 30-day period when we do nothing but turn inward, examine ourselves, and then turn outward to make amends with those we may have harmed during the past year. We hope that we will have done the hard stuff by the time we approach Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), a month from now.

It's also the time we plan ahead to the holidays that immediately follow Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Specifically, this is the time when Jews who are planning to erect a sukkah (temporary dwelling) for the eight days of Sukkot begin to design their structures, replace worn or broken pieces of framework, and place their orders (usually through their synagogues) for Lulav and Etrog, the species with which we say the special blessings inside the sukkah. The lulav and etrog are flown in from Israel by the plane-load, thousands and thousands of them in boxed sets ranging from plain to elaborate, for sale to Jews all over Diaspora who will use them in their temporary structures -- their Sukkot (literally, "booths").

Someday when time, resources and storage space permit, Sweetie and I want to erect our own sukkah. (We don't have a garage or basement so storing the reuseable parts outdoors in our rainy climate is a real problem, one we haven't yet resolved.)

But the whole issue around the lulav disturbs me greatly. The idea of paying someone to fly a bunch of plant stalks and fruit over from halfway around the world sort of galls me. Especially when that stuff will dry up, and shrivel, and won't be of use again the following year. It really bugs me that so many aspects of trying to maintain Jewish life in Diaspora require sustaining a connection to Israel that feels neither truly connective nor sustainable.

So several years ago I hit upon an idea: Since I'm in Diaspora, why not use what's been given to me here? Why not ride my bike up to Forest Park and gather freshly-fallen branches of Oregon native species? Green fronds of Western Hemlock, Douglas Fir, Oregon Grape and Western Red Cedar, combined with an aromatic cedar cone, would certainly make an acceptable -- and far more sustainable -- Northwest Native lulav.

No, it doesn't really say anything specific about a connection to Israel. But I already have issues about figuring out connection to a place I may never make it to. Plus, international air travel is insanely expensive and the carbon footprint is simply too great for me to ignore.
So I tend to think that simply erecting a sukkah in a not-so-very-Jewish place like Portland is connection enough to my Judaism and to the Jewish people, if not to Israel specifically. As for connecting to harvest, it would be fairly easy to substitute any of the natives for something like a single stalk of alfalfa or hard red wheat, both of which are being brought in from the high plains of eastern Oregon as I type this.

So far, every rabbi I've suggested this idea to has given it a big, fat, emphatic "no" vote. Few have been able to explain why, at least in terms I am able to relate to. But still, it's an idea in the back of my mind. Someday, if Sweetie and I are able to find a way to store the re-useable pieces of a sukkah frame, it's something I'll definitely look into. Sweetie thinks it would be okay to have it sit alongside an Israeli lulav; I think it would be acceptable to have it be a radical alternative to an Israeli lulav. (I tend to be more radical than she is in many things.)

And if we ever get around to building a sukkah, the arguments over the dinner table will be interesting, to say the least.

change of seasons, change of tires

2011-08-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

This morning was my first scheduled cyclocross practice. I sent out an email to teammates and friends inviting them to join me on this first of three, and possibly four, Sundays at my local park. I hurriedly swapped out the fat short-track tires and swapped in the early-season**, skinnier cyclocross tires. Although I was a little late getting to the park, I wasn't surprised to find no one else there. After taking several laps around the park that included practicing dismounts and some admittedly awkward re-mounts -- will THIS be the year I learn how to make the flying leap back onto the bike? -- I decided I wanted a longer, more brisk ride. I took a loop north and around Overlook. I enjoyed noticing the first changes of color in the trees, with leaves turning gold and orange around the edges, and even a couple that softly fell into my path; in spite of the past week's hot temperatures, autumn is definitely on the way here in Portland. The first rides on skinnier tires are always a revelation after racing all summer on fat, off-road tires; although there's no noticeable weight difference, the skinnier tires make my bike feel lighter and more nimble, especially on pavement.

Because of potential job schedule changes that are as yet unclear, I have not signed up for all of the Cross Crusade races I originally planned to race. So far, I have signed up for the grand opening at Alpenrose and the PIR race, both favorites of mine and races I can easily get to and from without help. Once I figure out my job schedule I will hope to add at least two or three more races to my 2011 cross schedule.

I've stressed a little about how to manage the "down" time between the end of short-track and the beginning of cyclocross seasons; I had ten days totally OFF my bike during an absolutely lovely vacation spent with family. There was plenty of walking, a little kayaking and swimming (BRR!) in a mountain lake, and some definite mental and emotional recharging. On the down side, I ate some pretty rich food in spite of my best efforts. Still, when I got back I found it wasn't too difficult to get my groove back on the bike after a couple of days. Today I enjoyed little bursts of speed on pavement and off, and returned home after a brisk, 45-minute loop that has helped to turn on the little switch inside that says "cyclocross". I'm starting to get excited.

(** Technical notes: For the early season in Portland, when things are still pretty warm and dry, I like to train and race on Club Roost Cross Terra tires, a cheap and decent hardpack cyclocross tire for 26" wheels. Later on when the rains come and the ground gets muddy, I'll swap in the "later season" choice, Continental Cross Country 1.5's.)

technology shouldn't be this hard

2011-08-25T11:16:00.001-07:00

The cell-phone arrived in the mail yesterday. My sister offered to help me figure it out, but she wouldn't be available until sometime next week. So I decided to see how far I could get on my own. Millions of people use these things all the time; it shouldn't be that hard, right?

Ugh.

Part One: using the landline, I call the toll-free number to activate the phone. I commence navigating the computerized, phone-based sequence of instructions, which I am told will take ten minutes to complete. For some unknown reason, I am switched in the middle of this interaction from auto-response to a real, live person. This is where my troubles begin. The person is sitting in a large, loud call center that is located in a distant land, and speaks with a thickly-accented English that is difficult for me to understand. He walks me through the process, slowly and painfully as I ask him to repeat himself several times. Finally, we have established a new phone number and uploaded my minutes. Unfortunately, he has assigned me a phone number without an Oregon area code. I ask him repeatedly to change the number so my local contacts won't incur long-distance charges. He refuses -- that's right, refuses -- saying that this is the right number for the primary calling area zip code which I've given him. I thank him and get off the landline to try out my phone. First, however, I look up my cell phone's number online to see where the search service think's it's located. I discover that my number is assigned to an already-existing cell phone account in Encinas, California.

Clearly this is not going well.

Part Two: Using the landline, I call back the service center, this time asking for Technical Support and getting someone whose English is clearer and easier for me to understand. He is patient as I explain the situation to him. He walks me through some instructions, then tells me to turn off the cell phone while he does some stuff on his computer. He asks me to stay on the phone and he will tell me when it's okay to turn the cell phone back on, by which time he will have given me an Oregon area code and number.

As he types and I wait patiently, I hear a loud electrical SNAP! and suddenly my landline goes dead. Workmen installing insulation in the crawlspace have accidentally severed the phone line with their high-powered staple gun. It takes ten minutes for them to give me landline service again. Meanwhile, I was in the middle of something technical and fear I will have to begin the process all over with someone else.

Part Three: I call again, and wait for Technical Support again. I explain what has transpired so far. The new service technician asks me to turn on the phone. He types, I wait, and then my screen comes alive with light. He tells me some buttons to press, and then I am staring at my new cell phone number, this time with an Oregon area code. He calls me on the cell phone to make sure it works. It does. I think him, he thanks me, we hang up.

Part Four: I begin to try and figure out how the buttons work. This turns out to be more difficult. I would like to enter phone numbers of friends into the new phone but nothing in the instruction booklet even mentions adding contact info. Further, the way buttons work is not intuitive (at least to me) and I keep getting screens I don't want. I decide instead to send an email to my closest contacts to let them know my cell phone number. I hope that when they call there will be some obvious way to add their numbers into the phone after the call ends. I hope.

Looks like I'll have to wait till Big Sister is available next week. I can make calls and check voicemail but that is pretty much all I can do for now. I don't know how to select a ringtone, or pretty much anything else. So I'm on my way but it's slow and halting progress.

The entire process so far has taken nearly 90 minutes.

now i've gone and done it

2011-08-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

After years of hemming and hawing and trying really hard not to need one, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a cell phone of my own today.

Backstory: seven years ago, a friend gave a pay-as-you-go, candy-bar style cell phone to me and Sweetie, topped up with some minutes and assigned an Oregon area code, just so he could find us at a very large folk festival without having to scan a crowd of 40,000 people. Since then, we have used the phone sporadically, mostly for travel; and I have dutifully taken it to Radio Shack and paid cash every ninety days to top it off and keep the number from expiring.

Problem is, Radio Shack is going to stop supporting this phone (or, more precisely, the -- ugh -- bangs brain for memory -- Service Provider? YES! That's it!) VERY soon. This means that I won't be able to buy any more time on the thing and the phone number will expire in October.

Second problem is that I am returning to synagogue teaching work this fall. In and of itself that's NOT a problem; in fact I'm really looking forward to teaching again. But the religious school has done away with walkie-talkies in the classrooms and expects every teacher to instead have his/her cell-phone on their person.

Small detail: I haven't had a cell-phone of my own. I only had the one Sweetie and I "shared" (which meant we argued about who HAD to carry it rather than who GOT to carry it -- and that was only when one of us felt a need to carry it at all, which wasn't often).

Clearly it was time for me to get one of my own.

So after looking at my options, and asking slightly nervous questions of my sister (who knows nearly everything about nearly everything, as older siblings often do), and getting her to promise that she would hold my hand during the learning process, I went ahead and bought myself a cell phone. I don't plan to text -- too expensive, eats up minutes -- and won't be using the Bluetooth or camera features (seriously?). All I want to do is make and receive phone calls. I'm hoping this won't be too tough.

But it IS a huge change for me, to go from cell-phone relative freedom to being sort of tied to one. I hope it won't be a mistake.

cross crusade official 2011 schedule

2011-08-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

Here it is, the Cross Crusade series schedule:

Oct 2 Race 1 - Alpenrose Dairy - Portland, OR
Oct 9 Race 2 - Rainier High School - Rainier, OR
Oct 16 Race 3 - Heron Lakes Course, Portland International Raceway - Portland, OR
Oct 23 Race 4 - Washington County Fair Complex - Hillsboro, OR
Oct 29 Race 5 - Old Mill District - Bend, OR
Oct 30 Race 6 - Old Mill District - Bend, OR
Nov 6 Race 7 - Barton Park - Estacada, OR
Nov 13 Race 8 - Pro Paddock Course, Portland International Raceway - Portland, OR

I am thrilled that Cross Crusade will visit PIR not once, but twice this year. I assume this happened because Sherwood is off the schedule this year and also because the USGP Portland Cup -- now renamed the Deschutes Brewery Cup -- has been moved to Bend and takes place a week later than usual. This was done to help elite-level racers better prepare for US Cross Nationals, which have been moved out to January 2012 -- in Madison, Wisconsin. (Yeah, good luck with that. I certainly won't be there.)
Quite a bit of calendar-shifting and rule-changing was done in the off-season to accommodate the elite-level racers who need a later National championship race to prepare for Worlds; and also to purposely thin the ranks of the entry-level racers at Nationals because their numbers at Bend simply overwhelmed USA Cycling race organizers and officials).

I would have skipped USGP anyway this year, even if it had stayed in Portland. But now that the same course has become a Cross Crusade race, I will include it in my schedule, meaning that I'm racing five times this year and twice at PIR. That's probably all the time and energy I will have, for reasons which I'll discuss later on.

Meanwhile, here's a little teaser from last year to illustrate why I love racing at PIR so much.
It's the mud, silly.

Cross Crusade Race #4 PIR from Burk Webb on Vimeo.

[cyclo]cross training

2011-08-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Today I began my cyclocross-specific training with a morning run.

To be more specific, it was a morning run punctuated by little intervals of walking. Per instructions from friends and teammates, it lasted exactly twenty minutes (not including stretching -- very important!). I hadn't done any running since high school. While I remembered to stretch before and afterwards, I did NOT remember how much I'd bounce around, even in a sports bra (to be honest, I was smaller back then). And then there's the running-while-asthmatic thing; I'm going to need to carry an inhaler with me to do this (I forgot this morning and simply took longer walkng intervals than recommended to get my breath back). I was not asthmatic in high school. And whether or not I have the "right" shoes is anybody's guess. Running shoes weren't quite as technical in 1979 and there were fewer models to choose from. (My current running shoes, a nine-dollar special from ebay, are lightweight, hideously ugly, and fit well. They'll do.)

Still, it felt surprisingly good to jog, to swing my legs and arms back and forth and feel my feet pound the paths in the cool morning air and to feel the sweat under my shirt when I finished. I'll do it again on Saturday.

you could see this one coming from miles away

2011-08-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

Standard & Poor decides the US Government's finances are more on a par with, oh, Belgium's; and then this gets out.

Why am I not surprised?

Better yet, although the probing began before our government lost its precious Gold Star Credit Rating, would anyone even have followed this story if S & P had left well enough alone?

the horror

2011-08-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

This just in about the state of the performing arts:

http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2011/08/tweeting_during_concerts_the_h.html

I read the article, read some of the comments, and then I went outside and threw up.

Okay, seriously, I didn't do the last bit; but I could have.

Are you [bleep]ing KIDDING me?

With so many people going to concerts without knowing about the music, you're going to leave the writing of the program notes to audience members with smart-phones and crackberrys and let them text notes in real time? And then you're going to encourage other people to read those notes and get their information about the music from a 140-character [bleep]ing TWEET?

I'm going to go to a concert in the future and watch as hundreds of my fellow concert-goers whip out their smart-phones and tweet away to the strains of a Rachmaninoff or Beethoven symphony? Excuse me, but [bleep] that. That is just way more white noise than I like in my concert experience. I predict that if this becomes a serious trend, lots of people will stay away from the concert halls -- especially if orchestras don't lower their ticket prices after firing their annotators and program publishers. The whole idea is just galling, even for someone as rough-around-the-edges as me.

Okay, now I think I will puke.

final series standings, PIR stxc 2011

2011-08-03T07:15:00.001-07:00

Final series standings in the Womens' Singlespeed category:

Order Name Age Team 6/6 6/13 6/20 6/27 7/11 7/18 7/25 8/1 Total Worst Best 7
1 Susan Sherman 42 Showers Pass 30 30 30 30 0 25 25 30 200 0 200
2 Shawn Postera 37 (independent) 22 19 22 22 30 17 17 17 166 17 149
3 Kristin Bott 30 Team Slow 19 17 19 19 19 15 0 15 123 0 123
4 Beth Hamon 48 Team Slow 17 15 17 17 0 13 15 13 107 0 107
5 Dani Dance 39 River City 0 25 25 25 0 0 0 25 100 0 100
6 Julie Kramer 40 Team S+M 0 0 0 0 22 19 19 19 79 0 79
7 Lisa Belair 44 Team S+M 0 0 0 0 0 22 22 22 66 0 66
8 A. Christiansen 26 Ironclad 0 0 0 0 0 30 0 0 30 0 30

(I've listed the top eight spots. (there were four other racers but none raced more than a couple of times, and/or in some cases switched categories early in the series.)

The category did not grow this year and in fact it shrank a little, down to 12 racers from 15. Of those 15, at least three switched to other categories (usually their Masters' age group), and switched to racing on a geared bike, early in the series.
If I had successfully completed every race, my worst score might still have been tossed out but what was left might have been enough for me to tie for third or place third outright. Obviously, my improvement from fifth to fourth overall had at least something to do with me and my ability to finish more races.
After talking with Loraine at the OBRA championships, it's clear to me that most women opt out of singlespeed (or never try it at all) in part because of the effects of aging, particularly on the knees. Loraine showed me scars from multiple knee surgeries and told me she was anticipating yet another one. And she's a little younger than me. Sharon (who raced the category once before switching to her age group) told me that the demands of singlespeed -- particularly the stress on the core and lower back -- exacerbated her back issues and forced her to give up singlespeeding. (She's selling her singlespeed bike so it's a pretty permanent decision.)
I've given geared mountain bikes some thought, and after assessing my body and my improved strength, I think I'm good for another year or two before I have to make that choice. So I remain committed to singlespeed racing for the next year at least.

a last backward glance: short track memories

2011-08-02T19:10:00.001-07:00

Photos from last night's festivities:

A couple of pix from Tomas -- Womens' Singlespeeders out of the gate and looking for the illusive holeshot:

A very dusty and wild short-track course:

Team Slow representing at the podium awards party and schwag toss (that's what I look like when I'm trying to take a picture with my own camera. I'm amazed I got the shot):

Kristin enjoying her podium (she's on the far left, having won third place in the series overall for Womens' Singlespeed):

This morning I felt a little tired. In spite of how underslept I was, I rode part of the way to work, and ran errands for the shop at lunchtime. The telltale sign came as I attempted to power my way up a short, steep climb on SE 9th between Washington and Stark Streets, and when my brain sent the message to my legs nothing happened. I mean nothing. My legs felt dead and unresponsive. I dropped into a lower gear -- I was on my city bike -- and spun in a too-easy gear back to the shop.
When I left to go home a few hours later, my legs told me they'd had enough, and I tossed my bike on transit for the ride home. Tonight my quads are a little stiff and sore. I'm hoping that stretching, a hot shower and some more stretching will help. But overall I'm pretty happy with how the short-track season went.

Now I take a break from serious cycling to enjoy time with family and friends. I'll get back into the swing of things and begin my cyclocross preparations (more stretching, running and barrier work) in about a week to ten days.

Phew.

race report: PIR short-track # 8/Series Final

2011-08-02T00:30:00.000-07:00

Monday night, my short-track season ended with a laugh and a smile.

I had put everything into my race on Saturday, knowing it might leave me feeling diminished on Monday.
Then my period roared into town Monday morning.
(Gentlemen: get over it. Women get these, and you don't; but if you did they'd affect your performance, too. Oh, no? BET me.)
I felt tired and slow all day, and knew that just finishing Monday's race would have to be enough.

The course was suitably fun for the closing night, a technical relief after Saturdays flat-fest; and finally included a reasonably exciting drop-down from one of the berms, the first real one of the season. Back and forth over the whoopdees and through the rhythm sections, each lap dustier than the last and me getting slower and slower. I even inhaled a huge tuft of cotton wood fluff floating through the air, causing me to hack like a smoker through a fourth of a lap until it cleared. I struggled to get up the tallest berms (remember these are designed for motorcycles), and had to get off and walk twice. No matter. After 25 minutes of dusty, crazy racing, I heaved myself up and across the finish line in a final burst of frenzied pedaling and turned in three incredibly labored laps (I'm guessing they'll call the first one a start lap and not count it for anyone) on the warmest evening of the series.

Sweetie came and cheered for me from the backside bleachers, waving the team sign and yelling her considerable lungs out. Although I was drained, I blew kisses at her each time I went by. She has been to nearly every race of the series to cheer me and my teammates on. It has made all the difference for me, and I will really miss hearing her at cyclocross races this fall and winter.

Just finishing was good enough to keep me firmly in fourth place overall for the series -- one off the podium, but also one spot better than I did last year. Teammate and pal Kristin made the podium with third place overall (another medal for Team Slow!), and thanked me later for agitating and organizing for a category she could win something in, which made me smile so damned hard. I hugged friends from various teams, and thanked Shane and Mielle for all their encouragement. I didn't stick around the for the end of the schwag giveaway; when you work in the bike industry the last thing you need to bring home is More Schwag. Instead, I opted to leave a little early, ride all the way up to Red Fox pub and get us a table. I left ahead of my teammates, but most of them actually beat me there (no big shock or anything -- in spite of my racing success I am still dreadfully slow). Still, I was glad for the long ride up N. Denver and time spent drinking and eating with friends.

Most delicious of all: the cooling night air as I rode home, on nearly-empty streets at almost midnight. Nights like these on a bike are simply the best, and I suspect I won't have time to enjoy too many more before work and the weather conspire to send me indoors sooner. But OH! the feel of cool night air on sweaty skin, rolling along at a gentle 10 miles an hour while shadows play in the darkened trees and I play back in my mind the exuberant final evening, and my whole summer season of racing, well, THAT is simply golden.
A beautiful end to my short-track adventures for the year.

hype of the Week: double-header, part two

2011-07-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

For part two of our double-header Hype, here are two extremes.

1. For your consideration, the 1984 Santa Clara Vanguard drum solo "Toccata". This was radical drum corps in the making, a drum feature where nothing was played louder than mezzo-forte and the keyboard instruments were the stars of the drumline. Nothing like this had ever been done in drum corps before -- a drum feature that made you listen by being quiet (and without amplification, I might add). It blew people away and changed drum corps forever.

2. In honor of the end of my summer short-track season and the beginning of preparations for my cyclocross season in the fall, here's the 1988 Canton Bluecoats playing a decidedly muscular version of their official corps song, "Autumn Leaves". There is so much going on in this video it will wreck your head. At 3:07, a soprano soloist takes a hit in the head from a badly tossed rifle -- and holds the note! Later, check out the madness as eight snares start playing, add players two by two and eventually become a snare line of twenty (doing the requisite drum-to-drum and backsticking visuals). Finally, just before the end of the number -- in a page taken from the 1984 Freelancers, who did it first -- the rifles and sabres drop their equipment, pick up horns and play on the closing chords. It's all totally overblown and yet totally tight; and if I'd been a judge at that DCI Finals show I would have tossed out the rule book and given the Bluecoats the highest General Effect scores in history.

It's been a good summer.

race report: OBRA short-track championships

2011-07-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

The course at Westview HS was flat, hard-packed, and fast. In short, a terrible course for singlespeeders.
Still, I'd signed up and Mielle had given me a ride so there I was on the starting line.
The sad part was that I was the only singlespeed woman in the entire field. No one else had signed up for the category.
At a State freaking championships.
Did they know something I didn't?

Teammate Erinne asked if she should race singlespeed with me -- I'd mentioned I had a few zip-ties with me (OBRA allows racers to choose a gear, then immobilize their derailleurs with zip-ties and race in the singlespeed category, a sensible rule for amateurs since not everyone owns a dedicated singlespeed bike).
I shrugged. "I dunno," I said. "You could, but wouldn't you rather beat women your age in a real race? Plus, your field's still pretty small and you're strong enough, you could make a podium anyway. I'd enjoy the company but it's your call."
Erinne opted to race her age group with derailleurs. (She later told me she was glad she did.)
We were off, and I learned quickly that flat courses are the bane of singlespeeders. Not super-technical, just flat and fast and, well, sort of roadie-like.
(Eeew.)

Just to be clear, parts of the course were actually fun to ride, especially the part that zig-zagged through the trees that ringed the soccer field (and which was put in the make the course "technical"), and the off-camber descent that everyone barreled down with glee. But the large back section of the course, what looked like a farmer's field just outside the fenced school grounds, was a mowed strip of bumpy, short grass with tons of hard-packed washboard -- and this was the worst part of the course for a singlespeeder. (Granted, lots of racers complained about this section, but at least they could shift when the going got rough.) Erinne passed me on the course and yelled, "I understand why everyone else is racing with shocks!" I laughed in spite of myself and we kept racing.

I was surprised at how strong my legs -- and my resolve -- were. My legs kept turning the cranks with strength and power, even as I gasped for breath on the hot, mostly un-shaded course. And there was never a doubt in my mind that I would finish. I just kept plowing along, breathing hard and telling myself "I can DO this". And I did. In forty minutes, I completed four laps of almost 1.5 miles each, on a course that absolutely sucked for singlespeeds. For my faith, and my efforts, I won the OBRA Champion's medal for Womens' Singlespeed. And unlike the mixed feelings I had about my third-place finish last year (when there were three women in the category and my bronze medal was a foregone conclusion if I only finished), today I pushed myself SO hard, and felt so strong, that when I finished, I felt like a real bike racer and felt like I'd earned my damned medal. No prize is ever so sweet for a bike racer, I think, than to feel like you've earned your race.

A big shout out to Erinne who, in spite of crashing into some thorns, still pulled out a second place finish in Masters' Under-35 category. (But of course. She's SO strong!) Whoot!

(Erinne and I basking in our little hardware haul)

Congrats also to Pal Mielle, who raced -- and won -- her age group, and then turned around and raced again in a Cat 1 field and dominated that, too. I suspect she will be invited to cat up soon if she doesn't just go ahead and ask to. (Winning two state titles is a nice way to celebrate your birthday weekend, yes?)

(Mielle and I share the top step of the little podium for fun)

Rest day tomorrow, then my final short-track race of the season at PIR on Monday evening. I may have precious little left in the tank after today's effort, but I don't care. I'll ride my brains out and have a grand time. If you're in town, come and join me. The fun starts at 6 pm and concludes with the "very short track" team relay race at around 8:15.

hype of the week: double-header, part one

2011-07-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

This week's Hype comes in two parts:

First, in preparation for the OBRA State Championship short-track race n Saturday, here's another "back-to-the-source" clip, this one from the amazing Brecker Brothers and their album Heavy Metal Be-Bop, which I bought when it came out in 1978 and I was a freshman in high school. I'd already been bitten hard by the funk bug with forays into the catalogs of Tower of Power and ConFunkShun. The Brecker Brothers brought a breezy brand of funk to the scene that was heavily jazz- and fusion-influenced. This cut, which opened the album, quickly became one of my favorites because of its amazing off-beat punches and the first bass line I'd ever heard functioning as a hook. I played Heavy Metal Be-Bop so many times that I wore out the eight-track tape (!!) and had to save up for another one.

I couldn't find a live concert version of this chart, so I went for decent sound. Enjoy the clips of NYC and concerts stills, or just put on the headphones and turn the volume up.

Part two of the double-header Hype will air on Sunday.

default only sucks when you have your wages garnished.

2011-07-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

So it looks like the United States (which part? The government? Big Biz? You and Me? My cats?) will default on an epic, multi-generational mountain of debt.

What this means remains unclear to me.

When an individual defaults -- on student loans, a credit card, or a mortgage -- it usually spells some kind of real trouble. Wages and income tax refunds can be garnished. Bankruptcy can be just around the corner. Your credit rating can jump off a cliff, which really sucks if you're looking for a job; employers now routinely turn down applications from people whose credit is sending up little dust clouds, Wyle E. Coyote-style, from the bottom of a ravine.

In short, your life ceases to be a party when you default on something. The larger the debt, the more suckitude you can expect to experience.

But what about The Government? What happens when a government defaults? Remember that a government is made up of mostly-elected officials who are supposed to have our interests in mind when they act, and you immediately understand that, even if the United States defaults, these elected officials won't lose their Social Security, health coverage or pensions. No matter what happens they are probably going to be in much better shape than you and me. In fact, unless they have a serious gambling problem, they are probably set for life.

This is, to my thinking, simply another facet of the aformentioned sucktiude.

But on the ground, if the government defaults and loses its precious Standard-and-Poor rating, will you and I suddenly find ourselves unemployed, destitute, hungry and homeless the next day?
Probably not.
For those with stable employment, the results won't be apparent for some time. But I suspect that we will all be required to adjust our standard of living downward, permanently, and perhaps a little sooner than anyone expects.

This could be an ideal time to begin voluntarily weaning ourselves off excessive use of home heating and air conditioing and those pesky, sub-two-mile trips by car, just so we can get used to it when we really need to do it.
It's also a good time for individuals to know how to do lots of different things pretty well.
As Robert Heinlein liked to say, "specialization is for insects".

I'm not fear-mongering here. I think the good life is still possible. I'm living something very close to it right now. I have a job, a place to live, a loving partner and good family and friends around me. I'm not rich (far from it), but I am blessed. A governmental default won't change most of that anytime soon, and it won't change any of what really matters, ever.
I just think we'll all need to readjust our definition of what constitutes the good life.
Think closer to home and to the ones you love. Family and friends are always an excellent place to begin this sort of thinking.

short-track update: one week to go

2011-07-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

Checking the OBRA results page for last night's race, I discovered that OBRA officials did not give credit for the first lap to anyone (presumably because it was a start lap). I was given credit for only two laps but I assure you I crossed the finish line three times. Really.

Series standings after seven out of eight races (showing top five spots only, as racers beyond that raced the category fewer than four times):

Place - Name/Team - Total points
1 - Susan Sherman/Showers Pass - 170
2 - Shawn Postera/ - 149
3 - Kristin Bott/Team Slow - 108
4 - Beth Hamon/Team Slow - 94
5 - Dani Dance/River City Bicycles - 75

Points are awarded for the top fifteen places (consider that most categories have more racers than that and Womens' Singlespeed is in only its second year as a separate category). The top 4 overall have raced nearly every week of the series (or, in my case, I've raced every week but DNF'd once). At the end of the series the lowest score of the eight will be tossed out and the remaining seven tallied for final overall placement. Based on the math, it looks like I have a chance to move up a spot from last year's placement, to fourth overall. If this happens I may throw a party. Or something.

This morning I felt surprisingly good. I slept better last night and woke up feeling more rested. My legs were tired on the commute to work but did not protest when I asked them to push up Sabin Hill just a little harder. There was no pain. It was an amazing sensation, to feel tired and stronger at the same time. I am enjoying these moments of notcing the positive changes in myself this year. I'd like to use them as a base for what might be possible with more focused preparation over the winter. (I guess that's another way of saying that, although I've recently scored a geard mountain bike, I'm not really ready to give up racing singlespeed just yet.)

race report: PIR short-track # 7

2011-07-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

An early morning thunderstorm tamped down a lot of the pollen out at PIR. I was underslept, but decided I'd go and have fun no matter what. And I did.

The course this week was very technical, twisty-turny and decidedly BMX-y out on the moto track, with off-camber transitions that sent many Cat 3 riders crashing yet made me grin with delight. The whoops were run in reverse, meaning that if you didn't watch your speed you'd catch some air. Easily the happiest course I've ridden all series. I knocked out my three laps (I wasn't even close to being able to pull out a fourth this time, the course and the lead riders were all so fast!), and noted that I didn't need to stop for my inhaler once during the race. I also noticed that my legs felt uncommonly strong, which I could only chalk up to two days off the bike over the weekend (all other variables being equal). Major bonus: Sweetie came out to watch, wave the Team Slow sign, ring her cowbell and scream her lungs out. Past a certain point in my race, when the oxygen deprivation had kicked in, I could no longer really see her, but I heard her all over the course and it definitely made a difference. (I don't know what I'll do when cyclocross season starts and Sweetie stays home -- it's too cold and crowded a scene for her and our deal is she pretty much only comes to watch me race short-track -- I'll sure miss her voice out on the course when I'm bogged down in three feet of mud.)

In short, I had a really satisfying race and felt more like a real racer than I have all summer.

Our team representation was smaller tonight, with only three of us racing singlespeed or Cat 2 age group; several regular players were either working late, on vacation or getting over illness. Mielle (my pal from Team S & M and not entirely of this earth) nabbed second place in her age group and looks to be on track to podium in the series overall. I will not be shocked if she also makes podium at the OBRA [Oregon] State Championship short-track race next weekend. As we watched some of the final race, Kris (the race organizer) came over and chatted with us. He commented that showing up every week was how you earned points, and that it was possible to make podium if you raced consistently every single week of the series. He grinned right at me as he said it. Was this a hint? I preferred not to make anything of it. After six races I was in fourth overall, but I'm not sure where I'll end up. Kristin was gone this week and I got a DNF a couple of weeks ago. They toss the lowest result and tally up the other seven races, so in the end I suspect Kristin could still make the series podium (which would be really cool, considering she's been racing the double for most of the series).

Next up: OBRA Champs on Saturday. I've been advised that the course is pretty darned flat, and not really suited to singlespeed. Whatever. I'll go and race and have a good time. And I'll hope that more than three women show up for Womens' Singlespeed this year.

on doing hard things

2011-07-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
(a tip of the chapeau to DC for posting this quote there first.)

In June of 2005, on the advice of my doctor, I began keeping track of my mileage: daily, weekly, and monthly.

In 2006, I found out about C-KAP, a health-oriented Canadian organization that gives out awards for racking up the miles (or kilometers, as the case may be), and I joined, mostly to give myself a reward for racking up miles and to see how I compared with other people doing the same thing.

In 2007, I enrolled myself in a multi-day charity ride and spent seven months training for it. Along the way I discovered the sport of Randonneuring, and tossed off five metric centuries before riding the actual 210-mile, three day event. (I managed 141 miles before my knee gave out.)

In 2008, I completed three more metric centuries, or populaires as they're called in Rando-land; and discovered that, while I was capable of riding that distance, the recovery involved was agonizingly long. It would take me more than a week to recover from a 62-mile ride. Further, I was so slow that I rode these events entirely alone; on the one hand it was a test of my mental strength, but on the other hand it was just lonely. That's when I suspected that long-distance riding might not be for me. That fall, at a cyclocross race where I'd helped out in the pits, a friend dared me to try the sport the following year. He suggested I race short-track on my mountain bike first, to get the feel of racing off-road and build up some strength over the summer.

And so in 2009, I lined up for my first bicycle race. Clad in a t-shirt, army cut-offs and Vans, I willed my cobbled-together singlespeed mountain bike around the berms, through the rhythm section and across the finish line. I finished dead last, but I finished, and I found my new bicycling activity. I became a bicycle racer.

2011 marks my third season of bicycle racing and I continue to love it. Each season, I have added some element of growth and learning to the experience. This year, I added weight work in the winter and learned to embrace my weekly [push-]mowings of the lawn as an excellent upper-body workout. I added intervals to my commutes once or twice a week. Although I didn't really get any faster I did get stronger, even with the addition of an asthma diagnosis and a couple of different inhalers along the way.

Thinking about the above quote and my experiences over the last several years, I realize now that I am meant to do hard things and somehow thrive by them; and that part of the experience is learning to embrace the hardness of them, no matter the outcome.

Ten years ago, I went to graduate school. It didn't work out, but not for lack of my trying. It just didn't work out. There were too many hurdles for me to get over. I wasn't really equipped for the experience (spiritually, academically or financially) and the school was teetering on the edge of financial collapse (though I did not know that when I enrolled, and they tried hard to hide the fact). I came home with my tail between my legs, sorry and slightly embarrassed that I managed to complete only a semester of graduate school. I put my musical dreams on a shelf and went back to the work I knew how to do.

It's not that the last ten years have been a waste -- very far from it. In leaving grad school, I fell deeply and madly in love, got married, and helped care for my father in the last months of his life. And I put down some real roots in my community.
But I've arrived at a place where it's time for me to go back and look at the interruption, the high brick wall I ran into when I realized that grad school wasn't working out and I'd better stop before it got any more expensive. Maybe grad school wasn't the answer, or maybe that particular program wasn't the answer; but there was something to my dreams that demanded reexamination.

And so I have begun the process of sifting through my dreams and considering where they fit into my life now. It is clear to me that the last few years that I've spent doing hard things are serving me well in this process. In fact, they have shown me what kind of focus and self-discipline I'm capable of. Combined with the love and support of my Sweetie, my friends and family, I feel ready to examine new ideas and new opportunities and see where they might take me. This process begins with going back and looking at where I left off when I halted my graduate studies. I hope I'll get some useful information in the next few months, about myself and maybe a sense of what I'm here for.

It will be hard, at least sometimes. But there's something to be said for doing hard things, no matter the end result.

hype of the week: 1979 blue stars

2011-07-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

Admission: I loved Chuck Mangione when I was a teenager.

It's true. Chuck played a mean flugelhorn and provided the pageantry arts (marching band and drum corps) with some great material to turn into field shows in the late 70's and early 80's. And before you argue and say that the material was sometimes misplaced in an arena that was still struggling against its military roots, check out this old-school offering from the Blue Stars at the 1979 DCI Championship Finals, "Children of Sanchez". Dig the super-clean drumming throughout! Also note that, in spite of lesser instruments (those earlier two-valved bugles were notorious for intonation troubles), the hornline puts out a great sound here, tight and pretty full-bodied. Those "cracks" at 1:09 are gun shots from a starter's pistol, to signal the minimum time limit and the end of official judging time for the field show. The execution judges will leave the field at this point. (You won't see that at a drum corps show today; they did away with the starters' pistol sometime in the 1980's.)

Hype Of The Week ends next Friday (7/29) with a double-header, because I will be racing at both the OBRA STXC Championships AND the final night of the PIR short-track series.
If you're local, you have three chances left to check out short-track racing in Portland: Monday evening 7/25 at PIR, Saturday morning at Westview HS in beaverton, and Monday evening August 1 at PIR. Hope to see you there!

evidence: stxc 7-18-11

2011-07-21T08:16:00.001-07:00

Evidence of my participation:

(photo by Shane Young)

I had just come out of a hard turn into a very tough, off-camber climb. In four laps I managed to climb it twice without getting off and running it. Thankfully, Shane caught me actually riding the thing. SO tough.

Hype Time returns tomorrow! Stay tuned.

race report: PIR short-track # 6

2011-07-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Ugly, The Bad and The Good:

1. The Ugly: My last lap hurt like a [expletive deleted]. I was in the wrong place on the course when they changed over from bell lap to final-checkered-flag lap and I had to do my final lap pretty much all by myself on the course, a humiliating feeling when you're the last one out there, everyone has finished at least a minute or two ahead of you, and the next bunch are waiting for you to get the hell off the course so they can start their race. My last lap really and truly sucked, and I pretty much dragged myself over the finish line.

2. The Bad: The course was made somewhat tacky and even muddy in spots by a light, steady rain that fell for about an hour before the kiddie races at 5:45. Parts of the moto course resembled a cyclocross course. Trying to find a line was ridiculous, especially for the Cat 3's and Juniors who raced first. By the time it was my turn, the sun had come back and dried sections of the course, and there were actually a few decent lines. Unfortunately, there were also some deep ruts in the mud that were treacherous to navigate -- and heaven help you if you lost momentum and stopped (which I did, once) because powering the pedals up again was impossibly hard. In fact, in spite of how relatively flat and fast the course was tonight, having to pick my lines through the muddy spots really sapped my energy.

3. The Good: I managed four laps. Yes, four. (Though the first lap was a start lap and they may not count it for anyone, I still crossed the finish line four times.) I did not need my inhaler at all out on the course, because the rain had tamped everything down; even the cottonwood tufts weren't as bad as last week. This was my hardest race yet and I felt I had to redeem myself in order to come back and keep racing at all. And I finished. Four Freaking Laps. That was enough to take away the sting of ending up last yet again. Having the loudest team and cheering section in OBRA certainly helped, and so did all the random spectators out on the course who recognized me and shouted encouragement along the way on every lap. Heintz and Julie came out to watch and it was great to see them there, even if I was too winded to respond to their cheers.

At the end of my race, I felt like I still enjoyed doing really hard things, and knew that I wanted to come back next week for more. It was definitely a good night.

sponsor tour: pacific pie

2011-07-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

Part two in my occasional Sponsor Tour:

Pacific Pie, in SE Portland, Makes Aussie-style pies, both savory and sweet, from scratch and with fresh, local ingredients.

My personal favorites include the Creamy Chicken, Vegetable Curry, and for dessert, the Strawberry-Rhubarb pie.

They recently moved to a larger, brighter location on SE 7th Avenue near Clay St. They did much of the renovation work themselves, and their larger space allows them to stay open later and offer an expanded menu, noe including side dishes and a full complement of Australian and local beers. They're really big on culinary sustainability as a part of what makes food taste great. Check them out!

hype of the week: 1978 bridgemen

2011-07-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

In the 1970's, the Bayonne Bridgemen were the Philadelphia Phillies of drum corps: scruffy, cocky, with ponytails and facial hair and swagger. Their "banana coat" uniforms were decidedly UN-militaristic. In an era when color guards were still expected to march high-step and do little more than present the colors, the Bridgemen color guard was doing shoulder rolls and booby shakes like a salsa line at Carnival. They weren't always clean, but they were always entertaining.

For your viewing pleasure: "Spanish Dreams" from their 1978 DCI Finals show. I don't know what the guard designer was thinking (what IS the rifle line wearing? They look like blue space suits), but there are some great horn solos and good shot of drumline intensity at around 2:18. Enjoy, and see you at the races, where I promise to do better this time.

team photo

2011-07-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

All happy in our new kit, after the final races of the Mt. Tabor crit series:

(photo by Ben Salzberg)

race report: PIR short-track # 5

2011-07-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Numbers at PIR were noticeably smaller last night. The weather was cool and a little muggy, with highs not even at 70 degrees by racetime. Rain clouds were gathering in the west and the breeze was almost too chilly for a bike race in the middle of July. And when I arrived at the venue, I immediately began to wheeze. The cottonwood tufts were in full bloom and blowing all over the course.

I took a short practice lap, and fifty feet into it I needed my inhaler. I took a huff and kept going, taking my turns at the sharp corners through the singletrack, clearing the log, and managing to power up most of the berms without getting off and walking. I was conscious of wanting to keep a little in the tank for the actual race, so I skipped large sections of the course and gave myself time to stretch and drink some water. I helped with the Kiddie Race (I screwed up by ending the big kids' race at the wrong pair of trees and kids complained the race was too short -- sorry, kids), distributed treats, gave Sweetie a kiss as she arrived to watch and then I did a few hot laps in the parking lot.

But the stress I'd been wrestling with for so many weeks finally blew its stack this past week, doing a real number on my body as well as my mind -- I'd been exhausted all weekend, physically and emotionally. The cottonwood salad I was eating and breathing with every turn of the cranks felt worse with every hot lap. I gave up on the hot laps early and went and hung out in the start area. With all of that going on, I knew that my heart wasn't really in the race. Just finishing would be a real challenge.

I lined up, engaged in some lighthearted banter with the other women, took a third huff from my inhaler, and then we were off. The course was really fast in some palces (especially in the singletrack) and slow in others (the entire motocross course had been groomed with bark dust for the benefit of the weekend motorcycle racers, and the bark dust made for some slippiness beneath my rear tire). Dust was flying everywhere, along with the cottonwood tufts. I could not breathe. I was still hanging with the rest of the field because they were bottlenecked in the trees, so I chose not to pull off for another huff. Finally making it onto the moto course, I managed to climb most of the berms this week (my legs felt much stronger than they did two weeks ago) and although I was slow as molasses I managed to find decent lines all over the course. The mid-field drop-down was back from last year, fun as ever, and my bike handled beautifully. In short, on a decent night this would have been one of the most fun courses ever for short-track season; and most of my friends agreed. Kristin raced the double again this week, and somehow managed to shout out encouragement even as she raced further and further ahead of me on the course. I grunted a few times in her direction but couldn't really offer anything coherent while eating spoonful after spoonful of dust.

My lungs were beginning to rebel. At the top of the last berm at the end of the midfield rhythm section I ran out of breath and gas, and had to run my bike up and pull off to the side to avoid getting run over by the singlespeed and masters' men breathing down my neck. Things began to suck quickly and steadily after that.

As I approached the last straightaway before a hard left turn towards the finish slope, a Cat II Masters' racer aggressively cut me off, yelling loudly as he passed, and that pretty much killed my momentum right there. I gasped, inhaled dust and cottonwood and could not breathe. To get up the steep finish slope I would have had to dismount my bike and run with it. But I could not breathe, and in my heart I suddenly didn't care about the race anymore. Remembering the advice I'd been given earlier in the week about taking care of myself and listening to my body, I pulled off the course ten feet short of the finish line, gasped at Candi to mark me as DNF, and pulled behind the officials' tent to take another huff of my inhaler. I stood there for a full minute, huffing and waiting for the Albuterol to work. Then, dismayed but surprisingly not emotionally shattered about it, I pulled my bike off the race course, went and sat down and called it a night.

Sweetie knew what I'd been working with and understood when I told her why I'd stopped. She'd been worried about my breathing and wheezing -- she'd felt the dryness and dust in her throat, too -- and was glad that the inhaler was working. I felt bad about DNF'g, especially with Sweetie there to watch me race, but knew that I had done the right thing by not continuing. And I reminded myself that DNF (Did Not Finish) is not nearly as sad an outcome as DNS (Did Not Start). As my pal Heintz reminded me, "Hey, you're out there doing it and I'm sitting here watching." He and Sweetie told me repeatedly that I was still a rockstar to them. Sweetie urged me to go out with my teammates for the post-race beer. I did, deciding to ride all the way to the Red Fox to make up for the lack of mileage in my race. It was slow going, and I needed my inhaler once along the way, but my legs still felt strong; apparently, it was only my lungs that didn't feel like playing. And my heart, a little bit.

More troubling for me and Kristin is the fact that the Womens' Singlespeed category has not grown this year. This week, only five women raced in the category, and there is concern that if we don't see some growth in the category the race organizer will take the category away in 2012 -- meaning that women racing on singlespeed bikes will have to do so in an age-graded category or an almost entirely male singlespeed category.

Going to the Red Fox afterwards helped immensely -- it was good, really good, to hang with my friends over a shared platter of fries and a glass of beer.

This week I am working on getting the stress under some control and listening to my body some more. I'm getting a referral for some accupunture later this week, which will hopefully help with both the stress and the asthma. And I'll come back next week and try to finish strong.

ride slower, taste and enjoy

2011-07-11T07:26:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I led the third annual Tuv Ha'Aretz Bike Garden Tour.

It was a smaller group than in past years but we had a lovely ride. This year we focused on the role of gardening and food in community, so instead of visiting a series of home-based edible gardens we stopped at a couple of spectacular community gardens and had a tour and lunch at Columbia EcoVillage, an intentional cooperative community.

Although I'm not as big on gardens and gardening as Sweetie is -- Tuv is really her thing, she's on the steering committee and stuff -- I still had a good time checking out the gardens with everyone on what turned out to be a beautiful, nearly perfect summer morning.

More photos here.

hype of the week: 1979 spirit of atlanta, "let it be me"

2011-07-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hype time returns with a blast from an era When Amplification Was Not Required In Drum Corps.

Last year's Hype of the Week fans will remember another clip from Spirit, owners of The Loudest Horn Line On Earth from the late 1970's up through around 1990. This year, Sprit returns to the Hype lineup with one of the most memorable closers in DCI history, from the 1979 Finals. People actually left the stadium humming this tune!

There's some nice close-up footage of the rifle line (was 1979 their first year with a co-ed guard? Not sure), a few good shots of the timp line (this was before grounded percussion, back when we carried our timpani -- this is the SOLE reason Yours Truly is round-shouldered and sway-backed today), and some wide shots of the drill -- dig the full company front at around 2:16. (Park-It-And-Blow commences at around 2:51).

If you want something approximating the danger element of this hornline, it's probably best to plug in the headphones before you turn up the volume.
Enjoy, and I'll see you at the races.

rest and recovery

2011-07-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight as I type this, too many of our neighbors in this block and the next are setting off illegal fireworks. They are ridiculously loud and they are terrifying one of our cats (the other seems almost unaffected by the noise, a phenomenon I can't explain). We are trying to be as comforting as we can.

*********

We got home today from a few days camping in Central Oregon, part of my much-needed rest and recovery plan. Not only did I need a break from riding and racing, I also needed a serious break from the various and sundry woes of my modern life. So did Sweetie. So off we went to dip our feet the healing waters of the Metolius River.

We settled into our campsite and became acquainted with the flora...

(lupine)

...and the fauna...

(a Cascades frog, or so we think)

(some kind of baby caterpillar hatchling sac; these were hanging on bushes by the thousands in our campsite)

We found time to hike and swim, sing and make Shabbat, and to enjoy each other in a very quiet, green place of incredible beauty. And that was really what we needed more than anything.

(on the trail to Cabot Lake, hiking through a burn area from the B & B fire)

I'm not really ready to return to work tomorrow.
Our weekend was simple, sweet and beautiful, and too short.

post-race fatigue and inspirations

2011-06-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Today I am dog-ass tired. Pooped. Ridiculously flat. I cannot believe I rode even part of the way to work before tossing my bike on Trimet and going multi-modal the rest of the way. Ugh.
Once at work, it was all I could do to stay alert and not yawn in front of the visiting rep.

A few things that give me hope, or at least inspiration:

1. I'm taking it easy this weekend. Time over the holiday weekend will include things like swimming, sleeping, walking and hanging with my Sweetie. There will be little or no riding involved. I hope this will give me a little recharge.

2. Judi tossed this absolutely delightful video up over at DC. Go and see it and be amazed. Watching it made me happy.

3. The good stuff about yesterday's race, in no particular order:
a. I cleared the log. Three times.
b. I climbed up a fair number of berms all the way, before totally disintegrating on the final lap and running or walking most of them.
c. I only needed my inhaler once.
d. In spite of how badly I wanted to stop, I Kept. On. Going. Omigod it hurt like you would not believe but I did finish.
e. Team Slow has, hands down, the best cheering section in OBRA. Imagine a flash mob of manic psychotics, off their meds for a week and all gathering together to scream your name as you finish each lap. That's pretty much my team, only with a little less psychosis and a lot more technology. Cell-phone cameras clicked, blinked and whirred as I rolled past and amazingly, I could hear them whenever someone stopped screaming to take a breath. I dig my team so damned hard. They are geeky and strong and beautiful and I am thrilled to be among their number.
f. Racing buddies across the spectrum of experience and strength continually offer their own brand of vocal encouragement, sometimes out on the course as they pass me, sometimes from the sidelines, even when my race is turning into one big suckball of pain. I could not imagine racing without the friends I've made along the way, and I can't wait to see them all out on the course again in two weeks.
g. The team from Camas Bike & Sport gave me a much needed distraction from my pain as I tried to figure out just how many men, women and children they had entered in the night's racing. I estimated over fifty, but could not get an accurate count because I was too busy trying to clear the log (see #a). Camas, thy name is legion. (Is there really nothing else to do there?)

Whatever you do for Independence Day, please remember that the fireworks you bought at Blackjack (across the river in Washington) are super-illegal and their mere possession is fined heavily in Oregon. So set them off in Vancouver, and don't blow anything up you can't replace (like a building, or someone's hand). Have a safe and happy Fourth.

race report: PIR short-track # 4

2011-06-28T06:06:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, I rode my cargo bike laden with bike tools and spare bits on a 25-mile roll around Sunday Parkways-North as a volunteer roving mechanic.

In hindsight, this was a mistake.

Monday morning I woke up feeling more tired than usual, and while I was looking forward to the race I knew I would be hanging on for dear life. At breakfast, my stomach felt vaguely Crohn's-y, like eating a banana and not getting much out of it energy-wise; there's no pain or discomfort going on but still you get the sense that your body isn't going to give you your money's worth today, and the warranty expired ages ago so you have to just roll with it. It's annoying.

I carefully rationed the smallest expenditures of energy in careful doses through the day. Once at the venue I limited my pre-ride time to ten strict minutes and mostly stuck to the singletrack in the cottonwood trees, giving the modified "logs" a go a couple of times (actually rolling over them this week!) and dialing in some very twisty, technical turns in the dusty, rutted grass. The cottonwood trees were blooming, releasing soft white tufts of deadly fuzz all over the course. I was actually grateful when Kristin suggested that for the kiddie race, I NOT be the rabbit, but instead be in charge of directing the kids where to stop and get off the course and head back for treats. Perfect.

I watched Kristin, Erinne and Tomas race the first part of the Cat 3 race and managed to get some pictures.

Erinne ended up finishing in 2nd place in her category (Erinne! When you leave a trail of bodies in your wake after every race it's time to cat up). Kristin was racing the double again and as soon as she'd gulped some water she was lining up for the Singlespeed race. I sort of want to envy her but I recognize that our difference in age is a big part of why she's able to pull off a double every week. (Did I mention hat she also races in the Fixed Gear category on Mt. Tabor on Wednesday nights? )

I needed to get warmed up before my race, and that required some hot laps around the parking lot between the short-track and criterium courses. Roadies and mountain bikers share this part of the facility on Monday race nights, turning constantly to the left and trying to get in some deep, stronger strokes now and then to elevate the heartrate and catching up with each other from the previous week's racing.

Of course, I'm making this all up, talking through my left nostril here. I still don't know exactly how to "warm up". I generally follow the wisdom of taking a number of laps around the lot, and on the straightaways I try to pedal faster for so many pedal strokes. Then at some logical point I veer out of the parking lot and go line up for my race with the other Singlespeed and Cat 2 women. Not sure if the warmup really helps in my case, but I feel like it's better than NOT warming up, so I go ahead and do it.

Last night I barely hung on for dear life. Getting up the berms was very hard and I was forced to get off and run or walk up more times than I care to count. I had my inhaler with me and needed to use it during the race; I waited until I got to a discreet place in the trees before taking a huff; it's perfectly legal but still looks bad to do it out in the open. In my mind I struggled with trying to focus on riding and the overriding desire to quit before I was done. I really, really wanted to stop last night, especially when I realized that I would not pull out more than three laps again and that getting in that third lap was really going to hurt. And it did. When I was done I felt like I wanted to simultaneously wheeze, cry, and puke up cottonwood tufts. Results for my category haven't yet been posted but I'm pretty confident that everyone else in my category did at least four laps to my three.

This is the part where I just don't know what to do: other people get faster over the course of the series while I am lucky to last three laps. In my Walter Mitty heart of hearts a part of me really wants to improve, to get faster like everyone else and not gasp for breath so much and not run out of gas halfway through a race. It is so hard to NOT compare myself with everyone out there at times like this, even when I know I shouldn't. The truth is that it's racing, and it's natural to compare against others in the field. Looking at the results that have been posted so far, the women in the Cat 2 45+ group, I noticed that the fastest women all managed just one ore lap than me. So did the Cat 2 35-44 Women. So really, we're talking about one lap, at least this week. And that one lap remains elusive.

Still, I finished. And that is always good. Having your teammates cheer for you is even better, and certainly helped to ease some of the sting of my internal struggle. And the course was very technical in a way that I enjoy riding, with lots of turns and sharp, punchy uphills through the singletrack section that remind me how fun it is to handle a bike in the dirt. So in the end I was glad to have been able to finish, even if it completely wiped me out. After a sandwich (thank you, Kristin, for getting the goods from sponsor People's Sandwich! Yum! If you go, get the Turkey wrap) and lots of fluids, I still felt like utter dogflarb so I skipped the post-race beer with the team and went straight home.

I'm halfway through the series and I'm still upright and breathing, a good sign. My goal is to race every single week of the eight-week series, without DNF'g. No racing next Monday -- It's the 4th -- so hopefully that will give me at least a little time to mellow out and recover before racing resumes on the 11th.

hype of the week: 2009 parking lot smackdown!

2011-06-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

This week's hype brings us a very rare bit of footage: some good-natured parking lot smackdown between members of the Concord Blue Devils and the Canton Bluecoats. Stuff like this doesn't get on Youtube often so when I found it I knew I had to share. If you listen carefully, the snare drummer on the right messes up shortly after the start of his luck, drops a little F-bomb (in public, in partial uniform, at a drum corps show??! Drop and gimme twenty, maggot!), and begins again.

(Regarding the bit at the end when all four drummers play together -- how can these guys know the same stuff? Simple: either one of them marched in the other corps once upon a time, or -- more likely -- they were trading riffs on a commonly-known drumline warmup. These warmups get passed around all over the drum corps world, especially now with the advent of electronic chart-writing.)

Good stuff, lots of fun. Look for me at Sunday Parkways North this weekend, and look for our team in our new jerseys (yesssss!) on Monday out at PIR. Enjoy!

team slow jerseys, sunday parkways

2011-06-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I went up to Mt. Tabor to cheer on my teammates who are all crazy enough to race a hilly crit on the top of a dead volcano. Ed (above) brought our just-arrived team jerseys and was the first to model his.

I must say that having teammates all wearing the same wacky color scheme as you does make a difference in creating some semblance of team unity. Anyway, it was fun to watch my friends race a crit (Ed, Tomas, Ben and Kristin raced fixies; Klaus and John raced Cat 5 Men) and finish strong.

(Would I ever race road? Nope. Not for me. The ground is just too hard if you crash.)

Sunday Parkways North is this weekend. Look for me out on the route, as I've volunteered for Roving Mechanic duty. Lots of fun riding and strolling along car-free streets, plus entertainment and delicious local food at local parks. North Portland is the place to be this Sunday.

race report: PIR short-track # 3

2011-06-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

Another short-track race, another three laps. Let's just get that out of the way at the start. I admit that a part of me wishes I knew how to increase the number of laps I'm capable of completing in a short-track race; but since I don't know how to do that I must be content with simply being able to go out there and finish strong.

Racing seems to be something really hard that I do on purpose, just because it's really hard. So when I finish my three measly laps, red-faced and breathless and feeling like I want to puke, I remember that it's really hard and am mostly content. Last night, I did not use my inhaler once, in spite of the dust that flew across the entire course and made my lungs absolutely burn; another small victory of sorts. This morning I am still coughing from the dust. I also managed to climb every berm on the course at least twice (though I did have to get off and push to the top of the two tallest on my final lap because I was so spent), and cleaned every transition and off-camber feature on every lap. Another small victory. I have to take them where I can find them.

Sweetie came to watch -- I could her hear yell for me pretty much anywhere I was on the moto section -- as did Pal Heintz, who was fascinated by the action on the course. Last night's course was laid out in a manner that allowed spectators to see most of the action in all three parts of the course (moto, singletrack and "back forty") from the stands. Heintz asked me after my race why I enjoyed doing something that was so obviously hard. I thought about it, and these were my reasons:

a. I couldn't do this kind of stuff as a kid, when I was struggling with almost-daily fatigue without knowing why. Even marching band was hard back then. Now that I know how to live with what's going on, I can get stronger and push myself to do the things I wish I could've done when I was younger.

b. Since I'm not a kid anymore, I do lose speed, but I make up for it in the pleasure I get from handling my bike in the dirt. My muscle memory from the BMX riding of my childhood returned surprsingly quickly in my first season of racing and has been the primary source of real pleasure I get from doing this. Every time I manage to clean some tricky feature it's like "winning" for me.

c. It's an incredibly welcoming and social activity. I have met some of nicest people in bicycling in my local race scene; and I am really enjoying being part of a local team who all cheer loudly for each other. (And we yelled a LOT last night.)

I encouraged Heintz to consider giving it a try. In spite of my misgivings about always finishing in last place, I told him, it's still a LOT of fun.

(photos by Tomas and Audrey)

On the tricky transition, being lapped by my teammate Kristin (who raced the double -- Cat 3 women AND Womens' Singlespeed! Such a MONSTAH! -- last night):

Coming out of the transition. It was "Casual Night" so racers were encouraged to eschew lycra in favor of mellower attire:

And yes, that's a safety orange triangle seemingly growing out of my rear end. Most of us at Team Slow have adopted this marker to make us easier to spot on the course, at least until our team kit arrives (though I may just leave my triangle in place anyway since I AM so, well, slow). Also note the DC socks, worn in honor of Pal Judi and her ongoing inspiration.

Race results: fifth place, Womens' Singlespeed. I must remember that placing last, especially in a singlespeed category, is still much, much better than not finishing at all. And it was thrilling to watch my teammates push themselves on a technically tricky course. In retrospect it really was a pretty darned good night of racing for me and for Team Slow. (The glass of delicious Steelhead beer afterwards at the Red Fox didn't hurt, either.)
Team Slow results on the night can be found here.

hype of the week: 1992 crossmen

2011-06-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

The Crossmen were just plain cool, especially when they were still based in Pennsylvania and had the white aussie-style hats. (The move to Texas also saw a move to shakos. Yawn.)

Here's a section from their 1992 DCI championship program. At 1:24 into the video, listen for the contras (what today are called -- ick -- tubas. DCI's decision to move from two-valved G bugles to three-valved Bb band brass really killed it for a lot of diehard alums and fans, but that's another post) and their big solo entrance -- and dig how fat they sound. Awesome stuff. Also some excellent footage of the snare line early on, great marching and fun visuals. (Though what on earth is the guard wearing? Ugh.) This one's just big, brassy and fun. Enjoy, and see you at short-track.

road racing on the dead volcano

2011-06-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

This is Einar:

I watched him race along with my Team Slow mates last night at Mt. Tabor.
Einar is 68. That's sixty-eight.
And he raced in the fixed gear category.

I may never again complain about anything related to bicycle racing.
I want to be like Einar when I grow up.

photos from short-track # 2

2011-06-15T08:33:00.001-07:00

First two photos taken by Audrey Addison and used with permission.

On the course:

The beautiful thing about this shot is that the two women out front -- me and Pam, in the yellow-and-red jersey -- are both well into the Masters' 45+ age group and having a blast out there. LADIES! Unless you're pushing 80 you're probably not too old to try short-track -- come on out and give it a go!

Heading up the berms on the backside rhythm section:

SO tough to ride this section!

Silhouette shot by Shane Young, used with permission:

Shane was raving about the beautiful light behind the clouds during the kiddie races and was hoping for some good backlit shots like this. I'm glad he got his wish.

Tonight, Team Slow will be out at Mt. Tabor cheering on the truly insane teammates who are racing on the pavement. Racing starts around 5:30. Look for us in our orange cycling caps and say hi.

race report: PIR short-track # 2

2011-06-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Things I remembered to do this week:

a. eat lunch early enough to digest most of it by 4 pm.
b. pack a gel for pre-race (to be taken with plenty of water) and snacks for post-race.
c. actually drink the water before, during and after the race; and eat the snacks after the race.
d. stretch before my race, and briefly afterwards; then stretch more slowly and for longer period after riding home.

Things that didn't help me this week:

a. going out "clubbing" twice in one week with Sweetie (but hey, she got us on the comp list for two shows by bands we absolutely love, so it was tough to say no). Both nights saw bedtimes well past 11 pm, which is generally bad for me.
b. The course was definitely tougher in some aspects tonight, especially because the rhythm sections were run in reverse of last week -- meaning that the berms got progressively higher instead of lower and it was tough to build momentum. You simply had to power your way through the two sections and it hurt. A lot. I just ran out of gas (and breath!) and I was forced to get off my bike at least four times during my race to push my bike up the final berm in a given pass.
c. I really felt the dust and the pollen in the air this week, which meant I was gasping for breath more and had to pull off twice to use my inhaler during the race. Disappointing.
d. I have decided that it is intimidating to be followed so closely behind by the "sweep" rider (usually a younger, stronger fellow whose job it is to sweep the course until the lapping of the slowest racers by the fastest ones begins in earnest). Nice fellow was riding my ass all the way through the first lap and it secretly bugged the crap out of me -- not because he was rude or anything, in fact he was a perfect gentleman -- but because it reminded me of how [bleep]ing slow I am. He finally pulled off and I was left alone to suffer.
e. the barrier they added after the start lap was completed by the field; this consisted of two large square sections of 8x8's laid side by side, with the course laid out so you had to go over them. Most racers simply rode over them, manualling their bikes over the barrier like it was a very wide log. I knew that I would probably not be successful and did not want to risk damaging my bike (low parts budget) or myself (lower healthcare budget), so when I saw the barrier I instinctively dismounted cyclocross-style and ran my bike over it, re-mounting on the other side before pushing myself hard up a short, steep off-camber curve and back onto the moto course. I got some good-natured crap from my friends for running over it, but my rear rim and tire are both intact tonight and that is fine by me. I watched a few folks drop their chains and/blow out tires at that spot in the next race and know I did the right thing. (Someday I will figure out how to manual over a log on the fly without clipless pedals.) Meanwhile, recognizing that the decision and action to dismount cross-style came so instinctively felt like another tiny victory for me, a reminder of growth in experience if not in actual prowess and speed. This is what it's like inside the mind of a really slow bike racer: the nano-victories mean a lot more.

Things that helped me in spite of myself:

a. the ten pounds I lost over the winter by working out. It's a little easier to get my ass up those berms when my ass doesn't weigh quite as much as it did last year.
b. The increased strength in my legs, also a result of working out and noticeable even when I was forced to dismount; a few times I was able to will myself to jog rather than walk up the berm, a first for me. This increased leg strength is a total revelation for me, utterly amazing, even as I continue to finish DFL in my races (something I expect to do through the series; it's good to remain realistic and simply ride your own race in these situations).
c. The cheers of several teammates and other racing pals from various spots around the course. There is nothing like hearing your name called out in genuine encouragement during a bike race. It really does help.

Wednesday I'm planning to head out to the Mt. Tabor road races to cheer my teammates who will be racing Cat 5 Men and the Fixed gear races. I'll see if the additional and careful stretching prevents the extreme soreness of last week's post-race days. meanwhile, although it is disappointing to finish last again, I must remember that I am finishing last in a singlespeed category against women who are all younger and faster than me. I'm mostly okay with that, but part of me wants to learn more about training over the fall and winter to see how much more I might do next year. I would prefer to keep racing singlespeed than to have to come up with the money to build up (and space to store!) a geared mountain bike. As far as I'm concerned my bike is just fine. I am already thinking about how I can grow more. I would love to not finish last in every race, and maybe someday I can make that happen.

hype of the week: 1995 cavaliers

2011-06-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

This week's pre-race hype is All About The Drill. Watch the insane drill-writing where the hornline forms four squares that pinwheel and mesh into one, while the color guard manhandles the biggest flags in drum corps (when you have an all-male corps, your guard can do some heavy lifting indeed). Plus, you can't go wrong with Holst. An amazing show that took the Cavvies all the way to the top at DCI Finals in '95. This one's for all the band geeks. Enjoy, and if you're local I'll see you at PIR tomorrow night.

post-face follow-up and other random notes

2011-06-09T07:31:00.001-07:00

1. On Wednesday morning -- about 36 hours after my race -- my thighs felt like someone had pummeled them with a 9-pound sledgehammer. Lactic acid build-up was still making its way through and out of my body. (Note to self: stretch more after the race, and again, gently, before retiring for the night.) Not sure how I will feel by next Monday, but that's the beauty of signing up for the whole series at the start: it kind of commits you to see things through. I'm happy with my three laps and the way I handled the bike but would like to somehow not be the very last person on the course next time.

2. Yeshiva University Museum -- remember those guys? -- sent me a letter acknowledging receipt of my contribution to their collection. We'd originally talked about my sending them candlesticks and a mezuzah. By the time the form was emailed to me to print out, sign and enclose with the pieces, I was so tickled by the whole thing that I tossed in a yad for them, too. Quote from the director of the museum: "These pieces capture the creative and playful spirit of your work, your inventive use of materials, and your re-interpretation of traditional Jewish motifs through the lens of contemporary, urban -- specifically, cycling! -- culture. As a New York institution dedicated to the artistic interpretation of Jewish culture and themes, we are pleased to have your work become part of our collection."

I'm pretty darned pleased, too; and if I ever make it back to New York I'll be sure to stop by and check out the museum.

3. Sweetie and I celebrated Shavuot -- the Jewish holiday celebrating both first fruits and the receiving of the Torah at Sinai -- by going to an unusual and hip event that featured study sessions and live music. The headliner -- and our reason for going -- was the New York band Girls In Trouble, headed up by Portland native Alicia Jo Rabins. Sweetie got to interview her for both her radio show and for an article she recently wrote for the Jewish Review, so she was able to get us comped (I love that she can get us into concerts and shows!).

The band began as a song cycle Rabins was writing in lieu of a masters' thesis, on oppressed or underrepresented women figures in Torah. They now have two albums out and both are excellent. The event was held at The Woods, a new venue in the Sellwood neighborhood that was opened inside what used to be a funeral parlor. Saw several good friends from the Jewish community there. Love the room -- it has an adorable, tiny stage and nice hardwood floors -- and I would love to play a show there myself sometime.

4. Summer has finally poked its head around the corner and is looking into the room that is Portland. Sunny days in the low 70's are on tap this week, and I am hopeful for some really warm weather soon.

race report: PIR short-track, week 1

2011-06-06T21:08:00.000-07:00

Tonight was my first race of the season, and my first race as a member of Team Slow.

I've been dealing with an inordinate amount of stress over the last few months and during the last few weeks it has really gotten me down. I wasn't even really up for racing, and noted my lack of enthusiasm heading into this race. Still, I'd paid for the series pass, signed the waiver, and there I was at PIR. I'd volunteered to help out with the Kiddie race at 5:40, acting as the "rabbit" (leading some adorable children on tiny bikes around a miniature course set up just for them). Kristin gave instructions and sort of headed things up; and Ed was the "rabbit" for the bigger kids. I was concerned about having enough energy to do this between my practice lap and my race, but it all worked out okay. I even had enough time afterwards to watch teammate Erinne do some of her Cat 3 race before mine. She looked strong (ah, youth!) and I hope she'll at least consider singlespeed when she's ready to cat up.

I pulled off a few quick hot laps in the parking lot before heading over to the staging area, where I took my place with three or four other women singlespeeders. Since our category was so small, they simply started all the women at the same time, after the Masters' men and Singlespeed men had gone.

The race went surprisingly well, though I did suffer quite a lot on the last lap. The course was dry, with decent lines created by the previous heat and large chunks on either side of the lines providing obvious boundaries. I swung a few corners wide and heading into the chunky stuff but managed to remain upright the entire race. We were all exceedingly polite; Kristin shouted out encouragement to me as she passed me, I yelled back it was a delightful evening for a race; and faster riders all gave audible warning that they would pass me (even telling me on which side). Stompy performed beautifully, I had no trouble at all racing on a fully-rigid bike (maybe The Gym Thing helped with increased arm strength, too, I dunno) and I gauged the right amount of air to let out before the race. The bike rode well over the chunky terrain, even out of the "back forty" over the perpendicular ruts in the hard, drypacked grass. Would I enjoy this course on a 29'er? Probably. Would it feel as nimble? Doubtful. I'm not tall enough to really need to ride a niner anyway, and I'm perfectly happy with Stompy.

I only needed my inhaler once the entire half hour; I was DFL (of course) but was allowed to finish my final lap before the next race started (thank you, Candi and Brian); and best of all, my legs really were stronger! I was able to enter the motocross track from the "back forty" and power my way up a sharp, off-camber corner to get onto the moto track without dismounting. Best of all, I managed to climb all the way up a very steep berm at the end of the middle rhythm section where many racers were forced to get off and run up. The first lap, I got stuck behind two women who fumbled shifts, and I was forced off my bike; but the next three passes, I had enough room in front of me to build up momentum and I cleaned it every single time -- even on my last lap when I felt so spent. It was the most satisfying part of the course for me, and potential evidence that The Gym Thing may just be something I ought to do every winter. (Question: Do I still keep working out at the gym now that my race season has begun, or do I just ride a lot more now? Don't know how that works, exactly. I will consult with friends in the know and listen to my body.)

It was great having teammates actually at the venue, cheering me on. Sweetie came to watch tonight and was so proud of me, hanging out with my teammates and yelling for me. Afterwards she smothered me with kisses and kept telling me how proud she was of me. (There is pretty much nothing better than racing and having your sweetie tell you what a rock star you are. Nothing.)

(Racing incognito for now; the team kits are due to arrive soon.)

Getting out there on the course and willing myself to suffer seems like a good idea, in retrospect. The moments when it was just me and my heartbeat cleared everything else out of my overworked mind and that can only be a good thing, even if it lasted just thirty minutes. I was totally baked at the end of my race, goofy and slightly stupid from the adrenaline; and it took me a good 20 to 30 minutes to recover. I stayed to watch teammate Ben race with his Masters' age group in the next race and chatted with Rob, Ed, Chris and John till about halfway through the final race and then went home, where Sweetie was waiting for me with food and drink.

I am hopeful that the time I spent at the gym will translate to stronger finishes and better performance on the more technical features of the course. On to next week.

Joseph Karo would've been a cyclist

2011-06-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

The Shulchan Aruch (Hebrew: שולחן ערוך‎, literally: "Set Table") is a codification, or written manual, of halacha (Jewish law), composed by Rabbi Jospeh Karo in the 16th century. It is considered by many to be the most authoritative compilation of halacha since the Talmud.

Rabbi Karo never saw a bicycle, and could not even have imagined one in his time. But if he had, he would've endorsed my Shabbat afternoon activity yesterday, and I bet he might have even joined me on my ride.
Shulchan Aruch states that young persons may engage in strenuous exercise on the Sabbath, as long as it is a source of pleasure. Remember a couple weeks back when Sweetie and I left services feeling tense, not calmer; and we went to the gym, and it helped us to get into a more restful spirit on Shabbat afternoon?

Well, it has been a very stressful time at Rancho Bikelovejones of late, and yesterday I absolutely had to get outside or I'd go crazy. So late in the afternoon, I took Stompy out for a final ride before racing on Monday night. I pulled on my cycling shoes, sunglasses and helmet; laid on some sunscreen (because we finally got above 80 degrees for the first time this year!); and set out for the singletrack just below Willamette Blvd, over near Killingsworth, about three miles from home. It's not much -- it doesn't cover a large area and the trails are skinny and pretty straightforward -- but there's enough up and down, tight corners and sizable chunks of leftover cement embedded in the dirt paths, to make it challenging on its own.

I rode down the steep gravel entrance into the area, throwing my butt as far back behind the saddle as I could an feathering my brakes and trying not to be nervous. I made several laps in and around and through the little network of singletrack trails, weeds growing waist-high on either side and making me use a little body English to get around the largest of the embedded cement chunks. I wasn't fast -- I didn't count on being so -- but to my surprise and wonder, my wiry legs were strong enough to get up the inclines on every pass (as long as I didn't stop mid-trail). Last year at this time I would be pushing my bike up almost every incline, gasping for breath.

I guess my time in the gym has paid off in some measurable way. I won't be faster -- no interval plan, after all -- but I am stronger on the bike. The realization made me glad.

I looped back and forth and around for about twenty-five minutes, enough to get my "sea" legs back and feel more ready for Monday night, before recognizing that it was time to head back. As I rode home through leafy tree-lined streets and took sips from my water bottle, I imagined the course at PIR and felt ready to give it my best shot. And I definitely felt calmer, better, relieved of some of the worst of my stress, for having taken the ride.

I'm pretty sure Rabbi Karo would've approved.

hype of the week: 2007 vanguard, "electric wheelchair"

2011-06-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

First of all, a huge shout out to pal Judi, who will be taking on 100 miles (kilos? Dunno) of total off-road insanity in the Mohican 100 mountain bike race this weekend.

This is Judi, clad in her DrunkCyclist jersey.

(DC still has a few of these available (I got mine!); once they're gone they're gone so get one soon.)

Judi CAN smile, but this is definitely more like her game face.
My prediction: Judi will basically bring Ohio to its knees this weekend.
Kill it, girlfriend. Total Monstah.

Second of all, a large shout out to my teammates on Team Slow, some of whom have been riding hard since the early spring (while yours truly has slaved away in the gym and done way too much cargo biking to have an actual interval plan; I'll have some strength, but probably not much speed. Sigh). A few of them are out at PIR tonight, but my schedule and body put the kibosh on that at the last minute.

The PIR short-track series begins Next Freaking Monday Night (!!). Singlespeeds race at 6:30. For better or worse I will be there with them. I hope to have a little quality time with Stompy this weekend, nothing ambitious; just 30 to 60 minutes of off-road goofery to get my sea-legs back under me. I haven't ridden off-road since my trip to Gateway Green back in April.

To get my head into it, I am starting up my Hype Of The Week series again with a short clip of the 2007 SCV drum line warming up with the classic "Electric Wheelchair". Enjoy, and maybe I'll see you at the races!