blog (July, 2006)
Sweet Corn Challenge Ride
I rode 50 miles this morning in the Sweet Corn Challenge.
Three cars convened at the lake and joined their three mutually-friendly passengers.
We talked of routes. I chose one friend and 50 easy miles over the other friend and 100 fast miles (just back in the saddle, upcoming movement classes/rehearsals this week...)
Two of the cars travelled south: one carrying one person and bike; one carrying two persons and bikes. The other car stayed by the lake and was heard muttering about seagulls.
The former two cars convened, again, twenty minutes later, having southerned sufficiently their passengers.
This is not a race, reminded the instructions. Novel for us both. We dismounted at every water stop to quench and chew and chat (and grimace about thousands of plastic sportdrink bottles and no plan for their reclamation or decomposition.) We stopped at Metropark::Hinkley for a swim somewhere in the middle.
Meadowland and forestland smiling summer but eyeing nervously all of the new neighbors: sad castles, suburbanly sprawled.
Eddy's put on a very nice ride, but it was a bit bizarre and scary that in such heat the water was all you could drink at the waystations, and $2.50/bottle at the finish.
Fresh Stop and go
This past week and the previous, I've picked up a bag of locally-produced quality veggies and fruits at City Fresh's Clark-Metro Neighborhood Fresh Stop (other locations...) Here's what's fresh this week. $10 or $20 gets you a big bagfull.
The vegetable influx is forcing me to cook more, (my first corn chowder and fried green tomatoes last week,) and to learn a bit more about food storage.
We suffered an eggplant casualty a few days ago. Everyone has been in mourning except for the compost bin, (who's slowcooking his mortal remains,) and the blueberries, (who never really knew him.)
rascacielos
The shift toward the natural in technology begins when we see machinery not as the towering achievement of an ingenious humanity, but as 'lame counterfeits of living organisms.' What is an airplane next to an eagle, a radio next to the voice? Our proudest technical achievements only approximate the organic functionalism within nature. By reconsidering the wonder of natural processes, human techniques can be rejuvenated.
-- William McDonough, The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability
first crash on second fuji
Ed says he may have to ride some few hundred miles to fit his new touring saddle to his rump.
Me, I break in new bicycles by throwing them against concrete, and using the sidewalk to scrape off unneeded ass. It wouldn't really be a bicycle of mine, anyway, if I rode it 150 miles without crashing.
Racing the cars east down Carnegie after work (and nearly winning,) on my new(-to-me) early 80's Fuji Del Rey, I hopped up to the sidewalk to avoid construction and cool off under a sprinkler. To salute my brashness and brilliance, snake hose flaunched us into a curb-framed sidewalk flowerbed.
I uncrumpled up In place, In one piece, Wind intact; she, also, essentially fine, just wheezing out the front tire. I replanted the marigolds we uprooted on impact.
I haven't bought a new portable airpump yet (to replace the stolen one,) so I took the rapid back to Tremont. I have serendipity, optimism, and Adam Harvey to thank for finding and driving me the rest of the way home, and, ((re-tubed but not retired,)) getting me back out to ride over to the blogger meetup.
kungfu to samba
Wushu kung-fu just wasn't much fun. I figured that was maybe part of the point, but it's been a few months and I still don't feel I've gotten anymuch out.
Enough's enough's anulled.
Today, instead-so, I rode from work to Edgewater park-beach for my first lesson in Samba with a few women who traded numbers with our Capoeira group in performing to Grupo Brasil's music last week.
Among tables, under shelter, sand on cement, distant onlookers.
Just a few basic movements. Loosen hips, slow down for now. Find music to absorb the rhythm and practice step.
Then a chat,
a swim, (or just treading,)
and a ride, (I'm just coasting.)
non-fiction
She had seen me enter, and had collected my on-hold items from the back while helping someone in line ahead of me.
I thought I deserved her name since she knew mine, and said so. Just following our how-do-you-do's, the phone rang, and its caller was quickly asked to hold. I protested that she could attend to the call before me, but it was "just her daughter," so I pried family secrets while she flipped (1/1) each item from my stack and scanned its barcode.
Daughter studies business at John Carroll, instead of library sciences, as mother hoped. Mother & I agree we both would have liked to have studied library. Studied library at university. But she is a clerk, and I [am software, and] see the soon end to such books kept in such buildings.
Mother allowed that she was probably being romantic, but said she gets the sense that library-oriented professionals nowadays are more interested in information retrieval than they are lovers of books.