The club

Nothing prepares you for joining the Crumpled Bike Club.

My class of four women, including a mom-daughter pair, was going well. We’d just completed the Wombat “Wimpy Track Stand” followed by a few good stabs at the in vivo version of ’sur place’ (the very ol’ fashioned term I learned from Victor Vincente of America). There was some truly creative “Body English As a Second Language” phrases being thrown down under the valley oaks.

We were in a new ‘abusement park’ , since the usual environs was reverberating from the skilsawing ( the sound track to our mini building boom).

A corner of the horse-stable parking lot seemed ideal. Shady, and light traffic.

A humongous bruiser pickup truck pulled in, and came to a stop on the edge of my imaginary circus tent-circle.

“WE IN YOUR WAY?” I yelled, forgetting he wasn’t my student.

This stable is situated on public land, but it’s always good form to say something–anything– when dealing with horses and horse people. They always appreciate it.

He said, “no way. I’m in YOUR way… let me know if you need me to move”.
A big friendly guy. Wth a big frightening truck. The kind of truck where the grill is around shoulder level. He headed off to tame an appaloosa or shovel something.

“Right, now about those Bug Stomper moves!” I cried, returning to my suddenly adept ladies (happens every timeI turn my back). “No, that’s too dainty. Way too dainty…crush the bug!”

Half the fun of being the circus master/bike professor is making up inane skills names for the ’sillybus’.

Then a quick demo (to an inner voice-over: “a vision in practical plaid wool –a unpleated miniskirt over grime-fighting black tights, another victory in the war against Lycra ..” it was a hot, very fine day and I was sweating big time,correcting tiny mistakes like a real old bat-larina. Then re-mount the bike, show it, tell it, throw it down, ad nauseum. Throat-roughening stuff.

Four women of varying skills make different kinds of noises from the honest-to-goddess beginner’s “whoops!” followed by a hasty “sorry..” to the regular rider’s familiar grunt that accompanies a move made, but only just.

Four voices yelled NOOOOOO! in unison, and i looked behind me (l’austin space, mixing fashion, crash-avoidance, and some attention on the task at hand)

The man in the blue truck had just started up his rig and driven on top of my beloved Breezer.

A shared bellow from five women as he backs quickly over the bike one more time, folding the handlebars in a most unpleasant way. The metal noise from forks and tubes crumpling brought out a bit of a neighborhood crowd.

I ran over as he jumped out, and we both stood there in shock. My Breezer looked well-ironed.

“It was an accident“ he blurted.

I thought about how, just a few minutes earlier, I was crouched over the bike–equally out of view–putting my water bottle away.

And in a scary foreshadowy moment, I told Rupa that Indra had committed a cyclist faux pas: laying the bike down in the street. On the trail, I call this ‘Bike Shop In The Fire Road’.

Extra points if the bike is upside down, well-centered, and perpendicular to the ‘good’ line.

So is stopping on yr bike without pulling over…It’ a sign of good breeding (or coaching) to leave a clear path for the next person coming along. With six million people in the metro area, that means in the next minute or so…

“Here, I’ll pay you for it..” he said, reaching into his pocket.

“You can’t possibly have a thousand dollars in your pocket. Right now, it’s debris. I’ll have to carry it home. Let’s mull this over, maybe you can talk to your car insurer.” I said calmly, not betraying the heinous rotten illness developing in my gut. I had just noticed how the down tube resembled a toothpaste tube squeezed in the middle.  Handlebars both pointed the same direction.  This was my ride everyday, all-errands AND big distances bike. NOT a cruiser, NOT a commuter, NOT a racer. But all three.

Maybe my bike isn’t a thousand dollars. In 1995 it was two and a half thousand dollars. They aren’t made now… Well, here at Taj Mahovel people think bikes grow on trees (honestly, someone told me that, like Charlie lifts up some dirt and sprinkles it on some tubes and a bike emerges).

Stay tuned for part 2.

The joys of duplication

En route to the DMV to get my duplicate “I-hate-driving license”, I passed a very likely dumpster (hmmm need photo) in Greenbrae, land of the totally silent suburban sidewalks, yards and houses. Between 9 and 3 pm this land is the sole territory of hispanic gentlemen like Joel Chavez, perfecting the already perfect topiary on the shrubbery.

Stepping on the saddle of the Breezer leaned against the box to get a good purchase on the lip of the huge orange metal box, I vaulted in, ,

First thing I saw was a restaurant caliber aluminum stock pot with its lid half-buried under some nice fluffy bathtowels.

Then: a fine white spaghetti strainer.

Conveniently close by, a lifetime supply of soba, vermicelli and even somehow damp but vacuum preserved fat wheat noodles, like albino worms on steroids.

I dug in, carefully avoiding the nails projecting from the 2×6s laying in among the towels, clothes, pots & pans…there were sample hoisin sauces, versions 1-5 of sesame oil, coconut milk, etc.. This person worked for or owned an all-natural asian convenience food company… and loved her faux chanel and vuitton bags (barely used, I want to write FAKE all over them but I doubt anyone would want to use them then…). A mysterious tiny wooden box with a jar of “Heaven grade Korean Red Ginseng”…unused, but very hard, like silica, to the touch. Old?

Wait’ll CC gets a load of that! It’s easily a $300/oz jar of the Good Stuff. Why so dear? Well, ginseng has “properties”.

Just as I was hoisting the last of the many cloth shopping sacks left in a bundle, I grazed a solid glass object with my metal shoe cleat.

Lo! A magnum of ‘prosecco conegliano valdubbiadente ’sogno di annibale’ (hannibal’s dream cheap white sparkly)

O, scoro mio….
Hauled these to DMV, got a license in no time (surprise!) and ran into dear neighbor Cam getting HER license….

“If I’d'a known you were coming, I’d have given you a ride!”
“Nah.. I like riding…”
Two minutes later I realize she could haul my “score-age”, and I could go back and get morage!

Of course she agreed to it. She’s read my story on gleaning..

Went back, the gardener was still there, and I tackled the clothing bags alongside the dumpster…this too was treasure. Three cashmere sweaters and the nicest mohair sweater with little soft curled turtle neck , I feel (and look) like an orangutan/yeti hybrid. Thing weighs nothing, warm as heck. Which means I’d work up a good sweat headeding home wearing all of them at once (why do you think they call them “sweaters”?!)

On the other hand, in the UK they are jumpers.

The gardener was admiring my agile diving in and out of the dumpster, so I put together a sack of noodles, sauce and some great towels and flower vases “for the little lady”.

As can happen, that comment elicits a visible inward wince.
But he said nothing…just admitted he wasn’t much of a chef, worked too much to cook, seven days a week, trying to ‘keep everyone hoppy”.

“But what about yrself? ” I asked reflexively. “Too much looking after others and not enough ’selfish team’ leads to an ulcer”.

“Had one of those since I was thirteen”.

“How many kids you got?”
“FIve, plus a crazy old lady..”
“My husband has one of them too. Tough, eh?”

He didn’t grok.

At least he doesn’t have to work indoors. Or as he put it, all day at a boring hotel… I guess hotel maintenace is his alternative.

I pedaled home wishing I could fix the ulcer, but at least he knows he can have tea anytime he’s in our neck of the woods.

He sez he’s in Fairfax daily.

Before too long, I’ll be running a real Tea Room and a certain private citizen is going to uh…hmm.. can I get back to you on that?

At home, I have a message. Friend in SFPD has my wallet (and I assume my license). Guess I can keep one in the car, like I always try to (but the photocopy would probably not impress a cop) since Purse Carrying isn’ t a natural instinct and I often drive without money or identification.

Such a brat.

“Shittyness Will Not Be Tolerated”

Most businesses make much of “striving for excellence.” Here at Cunningham Applied Tech, we’re happy just to “abolish shittyness”.

American shoppers are quite accustomed to buying junky stuff. They haven’t much choice, having long ago decided that (quantifiable) price matters much more than (hard to quantify) quality. We at the Hovel hafe at bringing home crap that is, even when new, full of shortcomings.

We recoil.

Flaws in design aggravate tje in-house engineer, even as they make me smile.

It’s comforting to know that Others, especially Manufacturers, are as Inept as I am.

But life is a little tougher for the Engineer. Nothing ever seems to be done “right”.

And so our tool-wielding wizard disappears into his atelier with the offending item for ‘mollification[’(sic).

In a matter of minutes (or hours) the Stuff returns to service VASTLY IMPROVED.

We get a little buzz of satisfaction each time we use it for the remainder of the life of the item.

I.e. ‘forever

A soap dish is a perfect example. The old one was a plastic dish that was regularly knocked onto the tile floor. Jarring.

It lacked the necessary draining screen so the soap dissolved… (is there collusion between soap makers and soap dish makers?)

And finally the thing melted when we were drying it a little too near the wood stove.

I can always tell when the mollifying process is underway. I hear sounds resembling a rodent’s gnawing …it’s the engineer abolishing one shitty little thing after another on the other side of the living room wall.

A couple hours of filing, grinding and tin-snipping slip past (to She the Destroyer, this is a long time. To the Fixer, it’s a just heartbeat).

Result: a new, better soap dish. Fabb’d from a hoard of stainless steel deli equipment I’d brought home the previous winter.

Excess water dribbles back into the sink now.
Soap remains aloof, above mere “puddles”… also lasts longer.

It’s permanent….won’t melt when drying on the cast iron stove.

Another example.

A clunky but much-beloved coffee cup broke ten years ago, and since CC knew how I loved both Portmeirion pottery and cyclamens, he fixed it in the usual mixed-media mate-mollifying way.

As for the ever-singed bakelite pot handle? Away with it, in its place a stout iron spring, and a welded loop of metal that allows the pot to be suspended until completely dry.

Meanwhile on the packrat front, all this gleaning means a certain amount of culling must happen.

To make room for the blender (which has to live next to the old blender–until I can COMPARE QUALITY) I must relocate a lovely line of jars full of beans.

“I wouldn’t touch those things anyway. Too old.” Charlie mutters.

“Has-beans!” I say, faux-brightly, dreading the thought of jeettisoning six types of heirloom beans.
“I guess they have seen better days” I concede.

“You mean better decades“.

Spring Gleaning

Every day is Earth Day around here.

Having lost a wallet and learned that the finder has a girlfriend who decided to keep it (and all the i.d. to aid in starting up whatever accounts people that borrow identities do)….I find myself graspy, greedy.

An orderly pile of black Hefty bags hooked my right eye as I scooted past a dug-in driveway on that hill section of Surf Rancid Rake Blvd.
It’s Monday, the morning garbage is picked up. Now ’twas afternoon, and the cans were empty, but the pavement around them is heaped with “treasure” begging to be inspected.
I think: “Just a quick look-over“.
One peek into a well-tied sack, and I become a swift, efficient gathering machine.
Half an hour later, with traffic droning by at about ten to twelve cars a minute, I have sorted things I can use from the things Everyone Else could use. Yeah, yeah, I ‘ll go back and tidy up tomorrow.

I didn’t take: Britta water filter (still in box–CC is bummed I didn’t grab it even though our water treament plant is 10x more sophisticated than the MMWD + Britta times Avogadro’s number), huge Gordon Bierschstein liter-and-a half glass, pillows, fine lamps. Men’s underwear. Sunglasses. Woven blankets. ANOTHER duvet (not sewn into baffles, more of a feathery lumpen bag).
Festoon the tall garbage cans with these as a sort of Sign to other Scroungers, who, despite the paucity of bicycle traffic on SF Drake, will espy something and move in for the take.

Some goodies were too big to haul, so I hid ‘em.

I returned for the new blender, stainless “steal” dish rack with red accents, four bottles of booze (”green Hungarian”, Sambuca Romana and Remy Martin brandy). Three quarts of canola oil, barely used, brown sugar, mayo, butter, chicken stock, provolone, way too many(farmed) salmon steaks, ground beef, pork loin, more beef…isopropyl alcohol —-Charlie uses it in the shop—–brand new toilet brush, brand new broom, new rugs, stainless Revereward saucepan, kitchen towels, sponge, “fantastic” kitchen-cleaner (”Now with Bisphenol A!”).
Judging from the piles of new books on religion (”How to make your religion contagious”) and the many bags full of medical industrial samples (damn! No EPO) and drug company notepads, he’s a born-again carnivore drug company rep who fries his dinner, washes it down with brandy, and uses brand new ivory white bath towels to mop up after himself. He’s also in a bit of a rush.

In fact, he is so late for his rendezvous with The Rapture that he had to toss the contents of his apartment.
He was clearly not a pennypincher: at the bottom of one bag, a tupperware tub full of pennies/ nickels/ dimes, rather sticky with spilled dish soap.

Money laundering?

Our town has a machine that eats coins and spits out a chit for 90% of the value…I’ll get some decent Dr. Bob’s or Green & Black ice cream. Charlie has guessed it’s twelve bux worth, I have guessed two dollars and forty two cents.

The rest of the day for me was contentedly sorting and putting it all away.

Supper out in the yard: a pile of salmon with tortillas, iceberg lettuce chopped w/mustard greens, wasabi +mayo and fresh lemon…now I’m waiting.

Waiting to see.

Enraptured.

Had it–hid it–and lost it–in San Francisco

David Baker powers Margarita Blenderbike ( my bike & soon-to-be-lost left pannier in background)

Big Weekend.
Visit from a D.C. wombat (Anna Kelso, whose bicycle life is noted here) on Thursday, bound for a big race somewhere.
Friday, finally unfurled a gift certificate sent two years ago, on the occasion of my 50th b.d. from a secret 1970’s-era admirer (massage in a bottle!) Sweaty and disheveled, I locked up ye olde Breezer and entered a veritable harem of women silently gliding in and out of steamy rooms, scrubbing salt into their skin, basking in the calm of Kabuki Hot Springs. All sizes, ages, durometers. Even a couple of different colors but primarily pale.
Then a spin downtown to David Baker & Partners architecture firm, where I got to learn how to blend a margarita on the back of David’s extracycle (I think that was it, see him on board in accompanying picture that isn’t “accompanying” close enough).
It was an unusuallly temperate San Francisco evening.
a couple hundred people came to support Walk San Francisco, a pedestrian rights non-profit. It was a perfect mix of urban professionals and ultra-urban, rather much younger bikers from the SF Bike Coalition whose annual budget is enviably plump.
The atrium was the perfect bike parking spot for an early arrival, and for safekeeping I put my tiny red wallet in the pannier pocket, rather than letting it lie in my un-cinched Messyger bag.
Bustled out around nine, and stayed at Lynne B’s fine old tyme house in Bernal Hts.
Next day I noticed my left pannier was …absent.
It had bounced off (a well-loaded pannier, even when spring-loaded onto the rack, can boink off, and if the contents are soft, you have no clue…)

I didn’t notice the loss til ten hours later.
New gyrations, starting with asking the first cop I saw on Valencia “what do people do when they find your purse if it drops off your bike?”
The cop in the passenger seat said :”they keep it”.
“OK, so no protocol, no city l’austin found, etc?”
“Well, there is this…” and he proffered a scrap of paper with all the main police departments listed with their phone numbers. Lost items, buried at the bottom of the list.
“They are only open during regular business hours!”

“Thank you!” i mimicked cheer, and pedaled despondently away early Saturday morning, toward a walletless weekend.
At least a DESERVING person got my 150 bux. I usually carry twenty clams max in that thing.
I broke that rule when I got paid for a recent private session…Never having lost a wallet, I didn’t realize that any deviation from routine gets the god’s attention and obliges them to sharpen up their Lesson Stick and whack out a lively tattoo of cascading Consequences.
Got home to hear a message on my machine.
Someone mumbled that “I ‘”might have lost something”.
After a day of non-answers, I reached a homeless gentleman who says he’d like to return my stuff…but ….
after I suggested he drop it at the local ’scarbucks’ rather than take it to me personally (”I’d sure like a trip out of the city” he hinted unwisely) I realized he wasn’t kidding when he said he was lonely, six years under a bridge is a bitch, and any type of relationship is a human connection… and got the feeling i was going to get a taste of the ol’ dangling wallet trick (the victim bends over to pick it up and the perp tugs on a string. A chase ensues ) to get a person to become Very Interested.
It’s only been two days, and each “I’ll take it there in an hour’ has become a daylong vigil with no result.
Silly to care about a wallet, esp when it wasn’t stolen (I’ve neither lost a wallet nor had one swiped, i’ve led a rather charmed life).

I called visa, library and DMV and began the process of Letting Go . Like the red one, the new (used) billfold has “if found, please call 459-0980…Win Generous Five Dollar Reward!” written in thick black marker.
My bet is the fellow won’t want to part with it in case I change my mind and decide to meet with him.
Any guesses out there?

2008 You’re A Peon World Tour!

(Job Seeking in Edinburgh 2007)

It’s official.

I’ve bought the ticket yesterday and am feeling the nausea/elation of clicking on the ‘purchase’ button (for someone who nearly never shops, this is somewhat huge) for a thousand dollar ticket.
That is ten percent of my…annual worth.

Visiting my favorite corners of the world (outside this little nook in Fairfax Calif) - Europe.

I’ll be collecting capital cities: London, Paris and Edinburgh - and maybe even Bern. Meeting the people - old friends and new. Long before my first airplane trip (at fifteen) I saw Europe through the eyes of the great M. Sasek, who wrote and illustrated over a dozen classic kid’s travel books.
There is a bicycle trail connecting the countries of the former Iron Curtain, and I’ll be researching parts of that trail for my 2009 ride the length (4,500 miles from Turkey to Finland)…details to follow…

On the way I’ll appear at the Edinburgh Bike Film Festival, take part in Bike Week, teach cycling skills to children and adults, write and research for more writing when I return.

I’m also angling for a couple of invites to National radio shows…Women’s Hour in prtickler.

Giant Pacific Salamander Spotted

In the ivy’d undergrowth at Toad Hall, Mill Valley. It was one of those windy days where the perfume of the bay laurel flowers is stirred all around.

A smell-o-gram catches you by surprise.

A memory rushes in, and your heart soars without warning.

It’s spring…you’re ten again.

And there is an animal at your feet.

“I was just writhing along” (sez surprised amphibian) next thing you know, I’m flying through the air…\”
Gospel truth.

Reader/rider, there are very few of these beasties about. This one was about seven inches long, very dark brown-black, mottled with red. I have seen ONE in my life prior to this. Boy, was he strong.

Put ‘im in a clay pot, because I didn’t want to have to squeeze too tight. I HAD to show her to Carol, Mistress of the Haul (serious shopper, and also oversees Toad Hall).

“Oh, there it IS!” Carol (82 yr old grand dame) cried, “I haven’t seen him in fifteen years! He used to live under the front step.”

“I think maybe it was this one’s grandamander…cos they can’t live fifteen years, can they?”

There was no growl…this kind is capable of a noise when disturbed, but it just stalked slowly under the boards where I first found it.

Healthy habitat, that.

Finally an explanation I can understand

fayreform1.jpg

For why we have sexist (and sexy-to-hetero men) advertising.
A study!!!
In the kind of language that does for me what speaking Morticia’s dubious French does to Gomez Addams…pant pant..ooh, scientific talk that I can only just barely follow…ooh…(see earlier Sapolsky blog).
Burt Hoovis (“Lance Armstrong Doped”) are u listenin’?
OK< Still can’t get images up…
But at least I can post this…. For the lay reader, there’s this fine translation from Seth Borenstein.
And wish me luck tonight: I address a crowd (OK, six people whom I personally begged to come) at Seabright Brewery in Santa Cruz thanks to Keith and LindaJean Cranmer, artist/sponsors who liked what they heard in Berkeley at Velosport last month…

Baboon Bothered By Doping

But being unable to speak, all the baboon could do was threat-grimace, fling feces at the scientist that injected him with “the clear” and wait for the ‘roid rage to wear off.

This winter I’ve dived into everything I can find by Robert Sapolsky, the renowned neurobiologist and author of such brilliant books as A Primate’s Memoir and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.

The former is an account of his life among African baboons, and the latter a very funny and excruciatingly well-explained guide to how stress (often self-inflicted) has re-shaped the kinds of illnesses we succumb to.

Now that’s a very un-Sapolskian sentence, inelegant and slightly fuzzy around the edges.

But hey, I’m not a genius.

I just leave their books around, hoping that some sort of contagion will infect me with scientific
know-how, wit and possibly even publishability.

Lately I’ve been stressing about Not Writing The Book, and so a chapter of the great Sapolsky re-ignites the flame, and a blog–not a book–erupts.

Then a headline like the one above makes me run for the camera, pen a note to the biologist (addressed simply to “Sapolsky, Stanford, CALIF”) raving about his great books, then run out of steam when I can ‘t get the picture to right itself.

Or worse: WordPress decides to do a (Shimano-style) total ‘improvement/overhaul’ of the inner workings of this template.. .and I’m unable to figure out how to put a picture on this, let alone rotate it.

To you my rider/readers, I wish a good weekend. And to me, a tailwind of talent, an invisible guiding hand to ease this new (until the next big ’simplification’ of the system).

Thank you Dr. S and thank you anonymous baboon, I hope they let you out of the cage some day.

Free Shoe Spree

Yesterday I saw a blue tub PACKED with brand new (mostly size 7 women’s, save that size 11 Doc Marten lace-up storm trooper boot) shoes.

Next to the bin, a sign: Free (and in tiny letters: ‘at last’).
This counts as an only in Fairfax moment.

Hence the careful mating up of the pairs, the arrangement on the curb, and the scary sensation that the corner of Blackberry and Creek might just be a dangerous one (there was a car parked right where my head was)…. the commuters were taking the turn pretty fast, and there I am in my usual Homeless Couture black winter coat, mess(n)gr bag, unlaced Shemano Shooz….
a rather disposable piece of street scene…

As I framed the shot a jogger came up and begged to buy the Doc Martens.

“No charge, m’dear, they’re not mine”…
“Perfect for Burning Man” she said.
She was a foot shorter than me and she insisted she had size elevenn feet.
Mine r nine, and that is considered very Platterishly big.
I shall never understand why it’s so damn important to have SMALL feet.
“Can you hide them in the ivy so they’ll be there when I get back?” she said as the golden retriever yanked her up the street.

“Of course”.
The shoes had remained there overnight, but the fascinating leather bowling bag, big as a doctor’s kit bag had been nabbed. It had been the only thing I could even imagine ‘needing’ (once the strange circular plastic platform on the inside had been torn out).
Ach.
After the shot, I jammed all the high -heeled shoes in my panniers (not the boots– I dutifully hid those in the tall weeds for the jogger to find) and headed to Solevation Armyboots.