Portugal 2004

The Portugal Daughter

No Woman, No Pause

Wombat in Portugal

In my long  mountain bike racing career I’ve never ridden harder or pushed myself further than a race I’d never heard of, and hadn’t trained for.

SuperTravessia Garmin was the subject heading of the email that came in  March 2004, and since I get a fair amount of junk email marked “Super”, I nearly deleted it.
But it was in fact a personal invitation from the race organizer to come do what no women had attempted yet in his two year old race: breathe hard for 11 days in a row, an average of 109 km (68 miles) per day.

Off road .

Every two wheel person knows there is a big difference between Paved Miles and Unpaved Miles….and who doesn’t know about Lost Miles taking more energy than Familiar Miles?  I would be  in for some serious effort.

He assured me there would be nightly stops at good hotels, and my own intution told me that the food in this country  might be a treat.  As a semi-professional eater (all bikers are) I value any place that doesn’t have an expression for “food service”.

Of course I told him I could come. I had four days to train, in between teaching gigs in Alaska and Boston.  A decade has passed since my last UCI World Mountain Bike Championship, The last time I’d pinned a number on myself for any reason was….let’s see…the 1996 World Bike Messenger Championships here in San Francisco. To qualify, a rider had to pay a $75 entry fee. In the ensuing dot-com boom, I taught overworked women to enjoy fat tire riding. Not racing, just off-pavement Accident AvoidanceI had forgotten how to pre-worry. Instead of envisioning a broken arm on one of my errands (these negative fantasies were part of the package when I was contending for medals) all I could think about was :would I remember to write down the names of the hand-crafted cheeses, and sketch a couple of farmhouses sometime after one of the grueling stages?

I looked at my calendar and decided to go for it despite all the blacked-out busy days bordering the crucial two week slot.  A Trans-Portugal competition would meet all five requirements for a reasonable life, to wit:

1. it gets me out of the house
2. it gets me out of the country
3. it gets me out of an existential rut
4. I get to eat new, strange foods and meet new friends
5. I can postpone “groan up’ stuff on the summer to-do list

People like me live by the motto: “Ready…FIRE!….Aim!”  We dive into adventure without tons of planning and forethought, just to see what will happen.
Call it built-in randomness.  It keeps you on your toes.  Planner types always seem to know what is coming down the road, I’ve never been able to relate.

I know Fate sometimes tweaks those plans….and I’m willing to admit my wimpiness before Fate and her sister Fortune. Perhaps it is the Crapshoot Cult…but I already belong to other tribes, other cults. Breast Cancer Club. Women Who Barge Into Boy’s Clubs. The Guild of Girls Who Maddened Dad . The Women’s Mountain Bike & Tea Society.

Female Entrepreneur’s Enclave.  Life Is Too Short To Eat Bad Cheese Club. Oh, and I mustn’t omit  the “Church of the Rotating Mass’. The devout ride nearly any kind of bike, we don’t care if it’s suspended (life has enough suspense for most of us), multi-geared, single speed, ugly, pretty or covered with mud.  It’s a tool that we ride, not an object of worship. The ride is the thing ( if pushed to admit we worship anything).

Perhaps the other thing I truly respect is time. 

I knew that I’d only have two weeks, and Portugal produces roughly two hundred artisan cheeses, A gnawing sense of duty requires that I try most of them. Serra de Estrela. Tres Igrejas. I’d read about them, and now I was going to meet them on their own turf.

The first line I taught myself to say is “Que e isto?” (“What’s this?”), the second line “Estou aqui pela comida” (“I am here for the food”).

Many bike racers I know have morphed into chefs, some quite accomplished (Emile Waldteufel sprints to mind) thanks to the well-known equation

Huge miles+massive, unfussy food intake =success in the long stage races in far-off lands.

If you have to eat 3000-5000 calories a day, there is no time for fussing about the lack of Cheerios, burritos, or whatever magic foods a person might cling to..

My past experience with long stage races taught me that I would have trouble eating enough. I signed up for the Clean Plate Club. Having raced Ore-Ida back when it was the premier stage race in the world opened my eyes to the unfortunate fact of eating disorders among elite athletes…and made me realize how lucky I failed the entrance exams for Anorexia Adherents and Bulimic Bikers, Inc.  Needless to say, as the designated Woman racing with 20 men, I intended to be a “credit to my gender “(apologies to Warren Zevon).

This means eating with both hands, and maybe even my feet.

On July 22^nd I met the other American riders at the airport in Lisbon (we would have to wait til after the 11 day event to check out the amazing city center)  and Antonio drove us the 6 hours north, into the hinterlands called “Tras Os Montes” (beyond the mountains”).

After the bikes were built up, he gave us our navigational tool, the Garmin  global positioning system receiver). We practiced with them on the first 20 km of the 1200 kms we would ride. …. No need to look for pink surveyor’s tape, arrows on cardboard, and other marks that usually keep a hypoxic herd of dirt racers on track.  No, we would have to have the presence of mind to actually Look Down At The GPS. This would prove harder for some that for others….as Antonio put it: “The dimension of your mistake depends on the degree of your concentration”, I’ve often believed that if races included a ‘brain’ element, I might be able to do a bit better than usual. I trust my brain…under normal conditions.

 Our shakedown ride was a magical, unpressured tour through a tiny ten-house town with a very sleepy central square, a town named… Labiados (hmmm…”he lips”? “The labia”? ooh, a sign to remind me to bring that Bepanthene cream we  got in our goody bags?) where we all got lost at the first intersection, and got re-educated about the Garmin instrument. A few kilometers away (on a climb of course) the dogs at a nearby farm challenged my “bike-ipoise”—We just pedaled on and pretended this wasn’t a Dantean test.

Wild shrubs like cistus perfumed the air… Our course was designed to showcase Portugal’s own secret backyard. Most Portuguese live in cities, far from the outlying subsistence farm lands with their own dilects, their own food styles.  Antonio has for over ten years, worked to change that.

From northeastern edge of the country, along the Spanish border, to the bottom left hand corner on the Algarve coast  we rode tiny byways, medieval cobbles, farm roads.. For an entire day on stage 3 we rode the precise border: our left foot was spinning in Spain while our right foot pedaled in Portugal

Being something of a space cadet,  (read: ADD) I knew that they might have fun trying to find ME as I tried to find my way back to the course.

..

When I ride for fun, I always stop at intersections, do an about-face, and study the intersection from the other direction. It helps my built-in camera recognize a familiar location. Without this simple trick I would be “l’Austin Space”.  .

I’ve never ridden across any country, not even any state. . My usual training these days consists of back and forth to the library, post office, and grocery store, with a weekly fun ride of about 2-3 hours (usually on dirt).

Antonio Malvar  was the guy who brought mountain biking to his country, organizing World Cup races, leisure tours, and operating the country’s only mountain bike shop near Lisbon. In his email, he said there needed to be women in his race, and he was happy do everything in his power to get me over.

If you have been in sports as long as I have, in a “men’s “ sport, that is, this is the nicest thing  a person could possibly say.

Here in the  USA, the governing body of mountain biking, the sponsors, everyone, has their eyes on the men who win the races. Even after 20 years of concrete evidence that women ride bikes, love riding offroad, want to have good bikes and decent gear, it’s rare to see much energy directed at women . It’s beginnng to happen, but nobody is inviting women (perhaps they invite Paula Pezzo, the amazing Italian gold medalist and pin-up girt of mountain biking) to races to even out the gender balance.

I was looking forward to “Tortugal” (my husband’s term) like it was going to be a vactation.

. The rules of the race stated that from the minute you left in the morning until you reached the destination (always some tiny hilltop medieval town) you were completely on your own: you carried all your water (or filled it up in the town fountains, or in a café), food, tools to fix a flat or a broken chain, and most importantly, you got all you route finding advice from a small tool firmly anchored to your handlebars, the Garmin GPS receiver (correct term?). 

If I could remember to slow down at the intersections, I would then see ESQ or DIR in block letters, telling me to go left, right (or straight on, when there were no words at all).

The little black arrow on the screen would lie directly atop a blue line in the center of the screen. One or two taps on a button below would zoom in or out, letting me see the general trend of my travel. There was even an arrow that pointed to north. More than once, I saved myself several km by remembering that since it’s a North-to-South race, I was riding along the blue line, but in the wrong direction…

The great Peter Rich has died, Aug. 3rd

I don’t know how to turn this into a proper text, so here’s the link:

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/08/09/remembering-peter-rich-who-organized-1st-major-stage-bicycle-race-in-u-s

He and I worked on panel discussions at USBHOF (bicycle hall of fame in Davis, Ca) with an ever-dwindling group of aged road racers. Alas, none of them were taped…that is probably both of our fault. He worked so hard to get people there, and I just tried to keep Peter on track, he was going in so many different directions. I got to be on one panel, at the 40th anniversary of Velosport, his seminal shop in the heart of Berkeley.
He had a stroke about eight months before Charlie had his crash,so the year 2015 was a shitty one for both of us (although the first eight months of that year were some of the best in my life…the Marin Museum of Bicycling opened, with both my bike (“Otto”) and Charlie’s “CC Proto” on the walls, with really great descriptions…they remain there, and Otto has a few WOMBATS accoutrements as well: china teacup and saucer, string of pearls, some lace, a jacquard-loomed tea towel with the long name of my club: Women’s Mountain Bike & Tea Society. One of the club mottoes: “Let Tea Equal Time”

Rest peacefully, Peter

Attention reader/riders…

did you know that I’m still raising funds for Charlie’s care?

Here’s the link:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/charlie-cunningham-medical-and-rehab

We hope to keep him in the care home, since the round-the-clock became too difficult for me after seven and a half years…especially when he broke a few more bones, one of which has ‘non-union’….i.e. will never heal (surgery is out of the question, too risky).

So, if you’re so inspired, lettuce snow (lame pun, for both ‘let us know’ and : may the cold lettuce rain down on Charlie)….

Happy NonMom’s Day

I remember buying myself a rose bush about ten years after my own mother’s suicide, in a gesture of Mothering Myself. Doreen Phelan, right up to her 51st year, wasn’t much of a nurturer, probably because HER mother didn’t cuddle her. These things can travel vertically through the generations unless violently uprooted.

So, I got “Livin’ Easy”, a hot-orange number, and was thrilled at how the car smelled when I drove it home. It still lives in the yard, much reduced, whereas its hardy rootstock is fleurishing redly among the tea roses. I learned to check very carefully the fragrance rating of the roses I bought thereafter. Ones such as ‘Duftwolke’ (Deutsch for ‘smell cloud’) will knock you out.

So of course I had to get , as well as Scentimental, a candy striped one which came out in 1996. My self-momming has proven to be pretty effective.
Another way to take care of Fabulous Moi is to get a massage now and then, and Barbara Parker is my Marin neighbor who does a great job… in case you’re in search of healing touch.: Bbarbville@aol.com

When Charlie lived at home, we got regular massage, but now massage has been relegated to Extreme Luxury, owing to the cost of Bello Gardens each month.

When I raced I used to do my own legs, and it seemed to help flush the lactic acid from my throbbing quads.

Speaking of which, I did a lap of a really excellent race called Redwood Trail Alliance Dirt Days yesterday. Framebuilers were there, Sycip, Hunter, Retrotec, Fitz, SIM cycles…and terrific weather made the arduous 7 mile lap pure joy, with ceonothus blooming wildly in the backlands. I salute Curtis Inglis, Bike Monkey, and all the volunteers for producing a really memorable couple of days.
I plan to take Charlie to hear music this evening (Bach choral music by Cantata Collective of Berkeley), which will round out the weekend’s fun.

Clintonia, interrupted

I was out on my first Spring ride, and I opted for Less Traffic, More Climbing. Thus, out the door and up into the MMWD lands beyond the golf course called Meadow Club. I can really tell I’m slowing down (people overtaking me, instead of vice-versa) but on this day I was resolved that I would simply enjoy the 9 mph pace, instead of cringing. I really really want to be Bhudda-minded, but it’s really hard, when you’ve gone 35 years trying to be fast and first.

My goal was to find the doughty Clintonia andrewsiana clinging to the cliff at the intersection of Bo-Fax and Ridgecrest blvd. I found it, but was chagrined to see that the fat green leaves had no central stalk, instead, the stalk lay down flat, broken at the base, and the flower head itself broken from that. I carefully gathered up the flower head, placed it in my musette, and rode off, hoping I wouldn’t macerate the poor thing over the next 18 miles of my slow but sure ascent of the mountain.

I soon noticed a car coming up behind, and saw the window go dow as the driver ducked his head to address me.

” That’s an endangered plant” he said. It was without malice, and the fellow had a kind face. A small kiddo waved an arm from the kid-holder in the back. Risking everything on that slippery potholed and shade dappled road, II turned to face him while continuing to pedal (I reallyhave to stop thinking everytjhing’s smooth in front of me, even on a paved road. I’m too old to tumble and bounce)

I tried to assure him that I’d only pocketed it because it was already broken off, and that I knew it was a Clintonia. He was mollified, and I gave him my name, and asked for his card, so I could thank him properly (with a boastcard)…he had a fine stack, the kind of card stock ones with a different picture on each. I shoved it into my tights and promised myself not to moon anyone for the rest of the ride.

He is a landscape architect, and obviously passionate about natives…if he lets me, I’ll mention him by name, but since this blog goes out to 34 people around the world, I want to be sure he’s OK with fame, etc…
The Scottish bard came to mind

To a Clintonlia

On finding a broke-necked flower on the steep verge of Bolinas Ridge, above the Alpine Dam

Green smooth-paddled leaves

circle round

the fine sleek stem that’s gone to ground

Thou hadna strengh the breeze to bear

And Thursday’s storm bent your knees.

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion

has whipped up winds that topple trees.

Your yearly crown was thusly pinion’d

for our cars and cares come first

while Earth must wait

The best laid schemes thus gang agley.

AIt

Rehash-omon

Bad puns of the day

Rehash-omon. This is the universally acknowledged  stupidity of dragging up hurtsfrom the past, in order to freshen the pain, create more discord, and generally keep thingshopping in a dysfunctional relationship. 

The Dalai Lama was once asked what he thought about self-hatred. He looked puzzled, and asked ” what is that?”. He simply didn’t know. (Hard to belive because he’s met so many people…but…)

But I’m sure that it’s our habit in the West: the litany of wounds. The people , I call them “grievance collectors”  will drop a heap on your doorstep,  to distract themselves from their own self-loathing. And  um….share the Opposite of Love.

This habit was ingrained at our dinner table at home, and I must say, I’m still guilty of this…face it, if I take remember the most recent contact I’ve had with a dear friend, I’m ‘counting’. As in …”but who’s counting?” AND IF I TELL THE PERSON what day/year I last heard from them…as in, ‘gee, it’s been 8 years or more’…then I’m doing them no service, and certainly guaranteeing I might not EVER hear back from them. I have a brother that’s made this very clear. He tells me in years, months, days and minutes, which frightens me into wondering if his full time job is counting the days…that his Evil Sister has ‘ignored’ him.

Me. I’m counting. I’m remembering. And of course, feeling left out a lot of the time. Even though it’s plain that everyone has a busy life. And many of the efficient people are channeling their energy into a project. Which I clearly do not do…

I can hardly wait for Alzheimer’s to cure this!

Kombucha moment. Came to me when taking Charlie to Gestalt Haus, the most beloved ‘biker bar’ in Fairfax, run by an incredibly wonderful, gruff guy named Vise. As in ‘vise grip’. The place manages to remain alive, with a few sun-shelters and the regulars enjoying to-go beer in the breezy alley alongside the Haus.

When you run into a bunch of friends that you love, haven’t seen recently, and who have temporarily or permanently sworn off beer, it’s  Kombucha moment. (Think ‘Kumbaya’which has been badly mistreated lately. Or longly. It’s a beautiful song, truly hopeful, sung back when oppressed black slaves asked for the angels to ‘come by here’. 

I am gonna go for a run, and see if I can find Charlie out on this fine summer’s day. He leaves at 2 each day, for a two hour walk in the forest we live next door to.

Cheers, all. Please write. Remember. I’m counting.
PS. Big news. A woman named Erin just wrote out of the blue, and I got to connect with a 1980’s wombat!! In Australia!!! Life is great again!

Au revoir Dan Hennessey

Just got word last week that a very cherished part of the biking community had a crash that killed him. Dan Hennessey grew up 12 miles away in Mill Valley, and stayed friends with his neighbors there, as well as developing a very tight cohort of biking friends here in Fairfax.

I’d see the gang heading out of a Wednesday afternoon, packing a nice picnic for merriment on the mountain.
“One of these days, I’ll ride with them” I promised myself.

Alert: “One of these days” is the curse. One must never utter it.

I never did ride with him.

But he was always hosting, at his corner of Fairfax, the annual middle-of-the-street New Years Eve ritual with chairs ringing a tiny ember glowing in an iron pot.

Overhead, twinkling blue lights from one of those window-laser gadgets that gave the impression of hundreds of fairy lights strung 40-50 feet in the canopy of a valley oak.

As I’m wont to do, I’ll be sending up little prayr balloons for Lori his young wife and his two doting daughters….Wishing I could do a thing. Just one thing.

I’m afraid this is the puny little One Thing.

Remembrance, and love.

You can see it bridging the creek, his name and the word LOVE alternating in pastel street chalk….We’ll remember, remember remember.

 

There goes the neighborhood

13 July 2019

 

Hello Gus,

It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that your magnificent Dobie is no longer on my friends list.

For the second time, I was on my bike when s/he (I forget!) came after me. The first time, an older woman my age had her on a lead, and held tight, and I squeaked past, stopped, looked back, and realized that yes, this was the not-quite-new neighbor Gus’s animal.

This evening around 8:30 I rolled by in daylight, and as I passed the duplex I heard a feminine voice yell “hey! Stop! No!” or something like it. I braced myself, and as sure as can be, yr black bullet shot past me, wheeled around and began to snap at my front wheel, then backed off barking madly.

I tried to be a good human, hopped off the machine (thank god I didn ‘t have my helmet on; dogs are TERRIFIED of people wearing them, I’ve found. Going without is an extreme rarity, owing to the TBI history my husband Charlie suffers from), and began to talk soothingly to her/m, and she approached me warily, but allowed me to pet her on the head, and scratch her ears, while I remained in my Coward Crouch, holding the handlebar.

Then yr mom (as I found out) came up with her phone in her hand, apologizing, and I said it was time to deal with the issue.

“Now?” she was surprised.
“When else?” I said. “Get on the bike and ride up the street.”
“?ME? I haven’t been on a bike in…” something something.
But she handed me her phonething and I watched with some horror as the dog attached the front wheel of the bike, biting it(!) and at that point, upon turning around the bike, with the dog barking madly and jumping up on her, she said “She’s going to knock me over”…and so, walked the bike back to me.

By this time we had two bemused walkers (neighbors?) who were looking on, while I asked if there was anything wrong with saying “NO!” or “Bad dog” or hinting that this behaviour is unacceptable to “the boss”.

Who is the boss?

Will the boss consider a muzzle?
I realize that this might disturb the wearer.
But I have already experienced riding into a parked car, avoiding a dog, and ruining my face temporarily.

I also sport a fine set of five holes in my leg from the pit bull in 2009.

So I tell people: “I just have this irrational fear of dogs…. Could you just hold him for a second while I get by?”
On the other hand what about just waiting awhile, she’ll grow out of it? It’s just a phase.
Children have been known to ride up and down Wood lane, so I ‘m sure there will be more tumult. Every year people are bitten by dogs, but mostly these events go unreported.

I had so looked forward to um… getting to know you. Now I’m getting to know your dog, and your mom.

Care to talk? Or take yr dog out for a bike ride with me along? There’s got to be a reasonable friendly solution. But I don’t want to have to stop, dig out a can of mace, and then ride carefully past your place, since I use a bike daily, 2x daily, 3xdaily, for errands.

Yrs for as long as you live on our street,

 

Jacquie Phelan Former vet tech, former race champion, current old lady

 

 

Pants on Fire

Lies, etc. Jack & Jackie

 

Lies, fibs, exaggerations, embroidery, weaving, elaborations, embellishments. Tangled webs. What you call it shows what you believe about it. One’s own exposed lies can put you in prison, a liar can put you in prison, fibs are for kids, exaggerations make a good story and embroidering/weaving imply beautification and functionality.

 

Phelans are by nature liars. Dad and Mom were accomplished, unapologetic liars. Dad lied about who he was when he set eyes on mom. He encountered her at a Montreal hospital where she was recovering from a ski accident. She broke her leg on her very first attempt at skiing. He wanted to impress her by saying he was the ‘chief resident’. She fell for it. He brought her books to read.
Forty years after this, when I was trying to dig up a solid fact about who my mom really was, I called one of the doctor’s wives that knew her. Mrs. Carraway recounted a story about Jack ‘foresaking the cloth’ . Mom implying he gave up the priesthood in a passionate rejection of celibacy and a religious life.
Clearly, my mother had a few cards up her sleeve. I wonder how she kept track of them…

 

 

They were the rule makers. From birth, the six offspring were bathed, powdered and diapered in the fabric of deceit.

It was up to each of us to make sense of what was being said and what seemed to be actually happening.
Dad could hug Mom in the kitchen and announce to us that they loved each other very much.

I would try to reconcile that with the fracas the previous night: her piercing shrieks punctuated by his barely audible deep voice behind the master bedroom door.

How easily they come, the steady stream of stretched “truths” . They carve their own course, and at least in my case, led to places I had no intention of going. It may need to be explained that these were nearly always my reaction to some form of punishing inquisition.

Part of the reason I keep a journal is to have my own truth down in writing in case I get confused later on in life.
It was on the playground at Crestview Elementary in Topeka Kansas when I heard the news about President Kennedy being shot. I had no clue what it meant, since I didn’t know what a “president” was, but the anguished tone of our teachers and general playground pall said enough.

I retorted “Hahahahahaha! So?”

Grown ups with some childhood development might have recognized something amiss, in this brutally open expression of glee at someone else’s expense. No one took notice of it in the hubbub, but once home, I was terrified by the sight of my father holding his face in his hands and sobbing as the tiny television transmitted the tragic news. I’d go straight to hell for that mocking tone.

Having been fully steeped in the Catholic Guilt Trip, I knew I was guilty of sin from the moment of my birth. This episode would just add another sin (Venial? Mortal?) to my account.

Topeka was the center of a particular school of psychiatry run by a pair of amiable brothers, the Menningers, who attracted people from both coasts that wanted to pursue a psychoanalytic way of treating the mentally ill.

As I watched the Mrs Kennedy who had ‘my’ name, crawl across the car’s trunk to retrieve her husband’s skull fragments, my dad (who shared the president’s name) assured me that Mrs. Kennedy would never remember this moment.
“Why not?”

“Because she’s in shock, and there is a mechanism that protects people from remembering horrible events” he said evenly.

“You mean, if something horrible happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to remember it like her?”

A surprised look crossed his face.

“Probably”.

And thus began my writing career.

Department of Silliness/Congress of Wonders

It’s a wet, sluggish Saturday, but on the radio, what joy. A Grateful Dead Marathon hosted by David Gans, our local Dead expert…Ever since my youth in Los Angeles hideously bucolic suburb (Tarzana) I’ve had fun listening, and writing down the names of the songs and the groups. I’d end up with long lists in .005 rapidograph scribble, as if getting them down was going to serve me someday. As with everyone else, ‘band name inventing’ is a sideline of mine.
I only rarely get the time to do anything like that now, though I do find myself running for a pen while repeating in my head: “Mance Liscomb, Mance Liscomb” til i could get it written down.

In the middle of the music marathon, a hilarious comedy skit began with a pseudo old-man calling to pigeons: “Here pidgy pidgy pidgy…” and another ‘old’ man comes up to the bench, and fogey merriment ensues. It turned out to be a group called Congress of Wonders. Missed them completely in my youth, but am making up for it. Pigeon Park is the name of the five minute gag, full of fogey-defamation so thrilling to post P.C. ears. In a different sketch I hear a doorbell ding-dong followed by a cheery “A-bomb calling!”.

Wahhh…
My plan: make you have to learn some of it, to make up for  your own misspent youth.

The other killer performer was Ken Nordine, creator of the music genre now known as Word Jazz. His bit was entitled: “How Are Things in YOUR Town?”. Turns out this poet/voice-over millionaire had a very long, fruitful career, being sought out by Jerry Garcia, Tom Waits, David Bowie and hosts of others in need of a golden voice. Further research reveals that he died a mere two or three weeks ago in February 2019. He had an amazing 70 or more year career.

Last night I chanced upon “My Beautiful Broken Brain”, a Netflix documentary about a 35 yr old filmmaker/ad agency creative  named Lotje Sodderland, who had a stroke. Charlie and I watched it until it grew too late to continue. This TBI survivor  revived a couple of days after the stroke and immediately began documenting her experience on her iphone–which led to meeting another filmmaker, and ultimately getting help from David Lynch, and becoming a reality.

No one at Schurig Center (formerly Marin Brain Injury Network) had heard of it.
I consider it required viewing,  owing to the fine editing and startling creativity it used to get the watcher to experience a bit of Lotje’s brain activity.