Interesting riding weekend. Yes, I got in that metric’s worth Saturday, with a few extra laps… and I got in a dawn ride Sunday (I think that was a function of the Belgian Ale). By Sunday night, though, the backside was complaining. There are disadvantages to whittling off the insulation… gonna try raising the seat a hair to see if that helps.
http://www.slate.com/id/2171291/nav/tap3/ is an interesting and plausible (to my not-too-knowledgeable self) explanation of “why are there still all these big doping busts in pro cycling?” (Yes, swiped from Cycle-licious )
Need 60-odd miles to make 1000 for July, so it just might be a sleep deprived week ’cause other stuff has to happen too and there are guests around. How do people with real lives do it? I want to run away to Montana

It’s raining but I need a haircut and need to go find Ommegang.
How is it that voices are so unique? (Or could a person learn? Of course, if you “cheat” and add the visuals you can be a celebrity imitator; would you have a better chance with just the voice?) Just wondering ’cause I knew that was Carole King singin’ at teh beginning and end of that Care Bears movie, and after all that high-pitched care stuff a more resonant voice was nice.
I liked the Harry Potter book better

What? I haven’t blathered enough?

I dropped by MinusCar and found this quote from here tho’ the “PDF” doesn’t say this so I guess you’ll have to listen:
“Many people go out to a garage, get into a car, windows up, air conditioning on, garage door up, drive to parking garage, get out into building, windows sealed, air conditioning, back out, into car, air conditioned, windows up, drive back to home, door up, in, door down, into air conditioned home and then say things like, ah, God just seems far away.”

THis quote resonates with my assorted innards, remembering discovering that feeling of vulnerability commuting on the bicycle – but also that sense of being closer to the real world instead of insulated from it.

And oh, boy, if I were into these things… I’d look at this “monocog”

Got my Trek email blurb… with a completely cheesy “ten reasons to ride instead of driving” that ended with saying they wanted to hear why *we* liked riding instead of driving. Of course, I still had to hunt around to find a way to contact them, and then it was a “question” form that will probably land on a sales desk and somebody who has nothing to do with that blurb… but hey, this is Trek (where, by the way, there are no signs that the touted “women who ride” project ever got its wheels rolling).
I sent ‘em a few comments about just how deeply you have to dig on their site to *find* the word “commute.” Here’s one reason for them: “If you ride in a city and bike during commuting hours you’ll love being able to cruise past long lines of vehicles held up at red lights (be sure to watch carefully for right-turning traffic who might not see you).” Yea, city commuting is as simple as that… nOT.
Hmmm…. reckon I’ll make my own top ten.
Contenders: “Urban moments” (or “Urbana moments ) like the time I made the move to take that big trash can out of the middle of the road on a windy day, and the school bus stopped traffic for me.
Arriving at work feeling awake and feeling GOOD.
The applause when you’re a rolling light-fest…
Yes, riding past the gas stations, watching the prices go up and down … and up.
(Interesting that Trek completely avoided any vocabulary that might be anything remotely related to politics or environmentalism. *Their* top ten reasons were *all* selfish.)
Yes, finding interesting things along the side of the road.
Tallying those miles at www.bikejournal.com
People look at you and smile. Some smiles are better than others, perhaps, but the world really does need more smiles. More people smile than give you the finger, if you remember to look.
Oh, yea, then there’s definitely the reason in my top ten that’s about the reason people like to go hiking and camping… the “here’s the weather, be in it!” adventure where you are challenged to be prepared and be comfortable and happy … genuinely, if you really were prepared and yes, the hand-me-down GoreTex helps with that!

Nice, boring commutes these past days tho’ I want to find otu why the blue bike is downright uncomfortable past 50 miles.

So now Vino tests positive for… two different kinds of blood? That’s so dumb that it makes me suspect a frame… except that when it comes to winning, people do *really* dumbthings. It’s the nature of the warrior mentality to gamble it all ’cause you only hear the stories told by the winners, not the ones left on the sidelines or the ones whose gambles didn’t pay off. THey should all go out and hunt whales – they have good songs, too…

Trying to think of ways to work in centuries here and there so I can get 1000-mile months for the rest of the year Welp, it would be fitting channeling of unspent other energies.

Yea, I finished Harry Potter. Some neat pictures of the opening world wide are here – shows Aussie’s “braving the cold” with frost on the windows and everything!

Fastest commute on record this morning (and no tailwind… just very cooperative traffic and being on the fast bike). YEsterday on the way home from church I spotted an Xtracycle too far away to discern the driver but hoped it was close enough so that somebody saw two at a time … can you imagine… they might think it’s a movement …

Just before venturing out to see Harry, I got a couple of coats of varnish on the SnapDeck. We’ll see if I did it right. And the INternet makes fora small world.

(Our campus “food for thought” Marva Nelson sent this one out… I’d been missing them on the summer’s break…)

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

–Mary Oliver

From yesterday:
I had genuine rain this morning, though not particularly heavy, and knew I’d run late, especially since my power was out. I found that bag of wind up lights with radios in the closet (the Christmas Gift for Everybody and everybody didn’t come so there were some left over) and one of ‘em worked and the local station didn’t say the whole town was out so I got on the Gazelle and splashed on in. We had fairly enthusiastic storms earlier so what was a foot deep yesterday at Country Fair was probably deeper today so I went around. There was also a fair amount of debris.
The Xtra wanted to go but then the left saddlebag holds water and even though it rides great (with the fenders and internal brakes and gears), then I have to do major cleaning. Since the Gazelle even has “internal chain” it’s only my wicker pie basket that suffers and it hasn’t dissolved yet. (Yes, I was told I strongly resembled the wicked witch of the west yesterday )
Coming home two things: first, on Country Fair, a sudden, surprised shriek: “SIOUX!!!” from a car. I gave a hearty wave back at whoever that was sailing off in the opposite direction, and wondered if that’s what it was like to be George Harrison. If everybody rode bikes would that not happen? Or would we still look at people?
Then I went by and had the reverse with that newly constructed house with the really neat flamboyant garden all over its front yard. We smiled at each other and I was compelled to wave “Lovely!” and she laughed…

Here’s a pithy quote from KnottedYet at Team Estrogen:

I just saved a lot of money on my car insurance by switching to Shimano!

I can relate, even if I did spend extra on the rental for insurance ’cause I ain’t got no auto insurance.

Having put 1500+ miles on a rental car over the weekend (and riding a grande total of 10 miles Friday-Sunday) it was really nice to be back on real wheels today. Might ride the Gazelle tomorrow, by request. We’ll see waht I’ve got to carry… and if I can find the ductape to put a working light on the thing. THe byhootiful generator light won’t go on even when I whack at it a lot now (I don’t *think* I whacked it so much it burnt the bulb out… tho’ when I turn it over to the shop I’ll include that little box with the spare bulbs.) Rode with the mellow Monday ’cause I was in the mood. Amusement at flat-fixing as our fearless ride leader efficiently got tube out, replaced, and tire back on rim, and then proceeded to pump it with both hands on the pump, the wheel flailing in the air. In delivery considerably better than an attempt at staging it would have yielded, a relatively new rider speculated “It would seem that that would put a lot of stress on the stem… I’ve just never seen it done that way…” and just after the assurances from fearless leader that it seemed a perfectly good way to manage the task… Whack! the stem is beheaded and all the air escapes.
A compromised rim tape compromised the next tube, but a gu-pack boot and perhaps not inflating to full pressure got us back on the road. We were passed by two ladies in Ragbrai jerseys and I was compelled to pass them to charge to the top of Kirby per the BonDurant Rule (tho’ instead of his “Must Keep Accelerating No Matter HOw SLowly On That Hill ON Kirby” – which is hardly even a hill but because it is long, you are TOAST if you do it – I used his other small-incline invective: “20 at the top! Mush, you huskies!” since we were already on the last mile of it. We averaged just under 15 for the ride without anything remotely resembling a paceline (more like 5 pairs of cyclists, three carlengths between each pair); the lack of “formation” has been noted by some riders. Even when we’re bunched up, it’s basically a “the leaders will pull” deal.