The Bicycle Garden

Simp-My-Life: Report on Day Two of the Alternative Non-Consecutive Twelve Days of Christmas

2011-12-12T09:08:00.011-06:00

As I have mentioned, Walu and I are planning a kitchen remodel in the upcoming year. Well, mostly I'm planning it. Walu is mainly planning to bear it like a soldier when it happens.

Anyway, I've been looking at magazines about kitchens for ideas, and one question keeps arising in my mind: who are these people with the perfectly matched sets of all-white dishes stacked neatly behind the glass doors in the kitchen cabinets? I mean, really? Who lives like that? What happens when the odd blue dish creeps into the house? Do you scream and attack it with a broom?

If I get glass doors on my cabinets, I'm gonna fill those cabinets with every lonely, mismatched plate I can find. I'm gonna put plastic Flintstones cups in there! Gimme coffee mugs from State Farm Insurance! Guernsey cow salt and pepper shakers! Then I'm gonna post photos of it all on the interwebs to show matching-sets-of-white-dishes people how to live it up a little!

OK, on to the report: Yesterday I finished the Queen Anne ottoman I started during the last Christmas break. I count this as de-cluttering, since I'd essentially finished all the components last year but for the assembly, but was put off by all the laborious sanding required by the cabriole legs. (What? I can't use the random orbit sander? Pffshh!) All year I've left them on top of a work table in the shop, right where I could see them, hoping that since they were annoyingly in the way, I'd be inspired to go ahead and finish the job. But they must have been annoyingly in the way in a singularly uninspired manner, because I just never got around to it. I moved them out of the way a lot so I could work on other things...and then moved them right back in the way so that I wouldn't forget to work on them. So there you go. Another brilliant plan bites the dust. And they were annoying.

Anyway, here 'tis, finished up and in its proper place:

I also finished organizing and cleaning the laundry room. Here are the new blinds that replaced the light-proof shutters:

And though I'd installed these earlier in the autumn, I like them so much, I'm including them in my Simp-My-Life List O' De-Clutter Goodness: dog and cat food bins:

Finally, I hung a hat rack in the bedroom and filled it with the four hats I use the most:

I may or may not get rid of the other hats; I haven't quite decided...

The rest of the week may be spotty with reports, as it will be busy with grading and the general wrapping up of the semester--hence the "non-consecutive" part of the alternative Twelve Days. I'll work on things as I can, though, as it will give me a much needed psychological break from grading.

Simp My Life: Report on Day One of the Twelve Days of Christmas

2011-12-11T10:01:00.005-06:00

It's my project and I get to make the rules, and so Rule Number One is that there will be no "before" photos. Sorry, but them's the rules.

Now that that is out of the way, on to my report for Day One:

My original plan for day one involved getting rid of most of my enormous hat collection, but as I was going through them, it occurred to me that I actually wear quite of few on a regular basis, and can make a case for retaining those. So I need a way in which to store them so that I can continue to reduce clutter. The plan I came up with required some shopping and closet re-organization (which I was planning to do anyway), and so I spent much of yesterday on the road, fighting the Christmas crowd. It was not in vain, however, and as a bonus, I shopped for some organizational tools that I will need for the other de-cluttering projects on my list.

Since shopping took up much of the day, I only had time to do a small project, but it turned out so well, it made for an excellent kick-off. Some years ago, I turned our laundry room into a photo darkroom, but since the advent of digital photography, I haven't had any use for it for several years. I'm planning to get rid of all the darkroom equipment over the break (if possible), and yesterday, I took down all the light-proof shutters on the windows.

Quelle miracle! Such light flowed in!

One of the shutters was over the kitchen sink, which looks out over the laundry room (which used to be the back porch, long before we moved into the house). And although it let a lot of light in the kitchen by taking down the shutter, it meant that anyone washing the dishes now looks down on...well, the laundry room. I don't know about your laundry room but ours is not especially attractive, even under the best of circumstances, what with all the bags of cat litter, bottles of stain remover, boxes of laundry soap, and stuff. While this project is all about getting rid of stuff, unfortunately, this is the sort of stuff I will have to keep. So among all my wanderings along the Christmas shopping highway yesterday, I stopped off at the hardware store and got some frosted glass film. Last night I applied it to the window panes, et voila!

I truly love this, and it was such a simple fix to a major eye-clutter problem. Walu and I have plans to renovate the kitchen sometime in the upcoming year, and when we do, I may replace the window panes with architectural glass in a leaf pattern. For now, however, this really lifts my spirits. I actually enjoyed washing dishes this morning.

Well, not really, but you get my drift.

A different kind of Twelve Days of Christmas

2011-12-09T09:01:00.001-06:00

I am really, really sick of the clutter in my house. This all started when my sibs and I cleaned out my parents' house a couple of years ago and I saw what a life of stuff-accumulation can lead to (and my parents weren't even what is popularly termed "hoarders"), and the feeling has not gone away. Since that fateful summer, I periodically get this urge to purge the crap that surrounds me, and for some reason I'm really feeling it this Christmas season. So now that the Christmas break is upon us and I'm pondering just which projects to take on between the craziness of the semesters, I'm thinking it might be fun to have a different sort of "Twelve Days of Christmas."

"What if..." I started thinking this morning, "...what if I spent twelve consecutive days of organizing and getting rid of clutter? One project each day?"

I could call it, "Simp My Life."

The trouble with this plan at the moment is that though I am in a lull between the end of classes and when my students' final projects come in and I can start grading them, the Christmas break hasn't actually started. Until the grading is over, things will remain kind of hectic and crazy. This weekend, however, is indeed a calm before the storm of Monday, when the onslaught of papers starts, and so I find myself itching to clean and organize. So I'm declaring executive fiat on the whole consecutive days thing and saying that I can start tomorrow and pick it back up next weekend, after Commencement Ceremonies, the traditional start of the semester break.
And so it begins...

Tomorrow: The First Non-Consecutive Day of Christmas, or, The Hats Gotta Go

A custom walnut snap deck for Annette the Xtracycle

2011-12-03T10:10:00.003-06:00

This is the second of the projects I worked on over the Thanksgiving break. The snap deck that came with my Xtracycle Free Radical was a simple piece of plywood.

Naturally, since it is plywood, the finish doesn't hold up well to weather. In fact, the instructions say not to leave it out in the rain. What kind of utility bicycle never gets left out in the rain?

So I decided to put my paddle-making skills to work and create a weather-proof wood deck out of some scrap black walnut and soft maple. After all, nobody ever said you couldn't take a canoe paddle out into the rain.

You can't tell from the photos, but the maple has some very pretty curl in it. I finished the deck with four coats of marine polyurethane.

A Thanksgiving interlude

2011-11-27T17:37:00.007-06:00

So I spent some time in the woodworking shop during the holidays, cobbling up a couple of whimsical bike doodads, because I was bored, or blue, or something, something. I dunno. Do I need a reason for whimsy? Or would a reason render whimsy non-whimsical?

Anyway, here's the first of the projects:

I had some shiny metal Velo Orange fenders on the Rivendell Betty Foy, but they bothered me. To my mind, they just looked too flashy for a bike I've named after my mother (Frances). My mother was not a flashy person.

So I ordered some elegant cherry fenders from Woody's Custom Cycling Fenders:

Once I put them on, however, the bike rack looked pretty pedestrian. I decided that the thing that would spice it up (without making it look too flashy; see above) would be a matching cherry deck. So I cut a couple of book matched slices from a chunk of scrap cherry:

Milled and glued them:

Cut an annoying "lip" off the rack (annoying because it was always getting in the way of my seat bag) and added a brace from some aluminum bar stock:

Finished things up by adding some cherry buttons to keep the rain out of the tubes, et voila!

The cherry has a little curl/flame in it, and over time, it will darken into a rich amber, close to the color of the leather saddle. Cherry is magic like that, and magic is good, in a non-flashy way.

My first fillets

2011-11-07T07:01:00.001-06:00

I found fillet brazing to be a bit trickier that brazing the silver into the lugs, but it was also more fun. After I drew the silver filler beneath the seat stay caps, I lowered the flame slightly and began to build up the silver. The first time I did it, I didn't get enough filler layered on, and when I went to file down the joint, there were some big gaps. So I fluxed and fired up again, and laid down some more silver. Then I filed it all smooth. It looks pretty good, and I think it makes a robust joint. You probably don't need a fillet braze that is this big--the seat stay/seat tube juncture is supposedly a low stress area--but I didn't want to take any chances. It still needs a lot of clean up to look finished, but here are the pics:

Framebuilding update: Fitting and brazing the brake bridge

2011-11-05T18:30:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy three weeks at school, so I am behind in nearly everything, including keeping up with this blog. So as an update, instead of a wordy explanation of what I've been up to and where I am in the project, here is a sequence of photos showing the steps to fitting and brazing the rear brake bridge:

Fitting the miters:

Fluxing before brazing:

After brazing and before clean up:

After initial clean up:

I've also been too busy to do much riding, but tomorrow looks like it will be a pretty autumn day, so maybe I'll get out and wheel around a little. If I do, it will slow the work on the frame down a bit, but that's OK; part of the pleasure is working without a deadline.

When the moon is in the seventh house, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love frame alignment, part one.

2011-10-24T07:32:00.007-05:00

Well, I was feeling all sparky and full of myself with my last two brazing efforts--attaching the articulated dropouts to the ends of the seat stays and chain stays, respectively. I mean, just look how pretty that articulated dropout looks up there--plenty of filler, minimal clean up. By the time I finished with the dropouts, I was convinced I had this process down.

And of course, you know where that kind of hubris inevitably leads. Next on the agenda was attaching the chain stays. Alignment is especially important here, since a wheel that is askew can create a wonky ride. I've been following this book by Marc-Andre Chimonas for guidance for my frame building adventure:

In it, the author suggests that rather than building a complicated jig for alignment, simply use an old wheel to get the chain stays properly aligned. Like this:

The problem I encountered when I tried this was that one of the lugs in the bottom bracket had some slop in it, and the chain stay would droop down, throwing the alignment of the wheel off. No matter what I tried, the wheel would slide cattywampus to the rest of the frame. I feared that if I tried tack brazing the whole shebang that way that tears would surely ensue.

Also, I didn't have an old wheel to use, and since heat is applied during brazing, Chimonas warns that this could ruin the wheel--something I wasn't too keen to have happen.

So I decided to build a simple jig to align the stays, instead of using the wheel. First I determined the length of the stays and cut them to be flush with the interior on the bottom bracket (shown here before cutting):

Then I attached two piece of angle iron and made sure they were flush with each other by attaching some aluminum bar stock at either end:

I aligned this with the frame:

Then I used a threaded rod and nuts that Will Cannings loaned me for a skewer and made sure the chain stays and dropouts were equidistance apart:

I measured the distance from the threaded rod to the bottom bracket on both sides to ensure that the chain stays would be the same length and alignment would be parallel. After all this, I fluxed everything up reeel guuud and tack brazed it:

After I tack brazed it, I took the jig off and put the wheel in and it looked like it all lined up just fine. So I removed the wheel and set to work brazing. Once I had finished, with everything cooled and the flux cleaned off, I put the wheel back in.

And it was cattywampus again.

Nevertheless, I am nothing if not resourceful, and I applied a little "cold setting" (the metal worker's term for what I would call "carpenterial persuasion") and got the wheel into what appears to be reasonable alignment:

It was late by this time, so I didn't put any measurements to it. If I'm not too knackered after work tonight, I'll do it then and make my report, in part two.

As an important aside, this process took me most of the day on Sunday, and involved a fair amount of head scratching, calculating, and minor frustrations. Even so, never once did a cuss word leave my lips. I hadn't realized that--nor its significance--until this morning as I was writing up this report. Normally during a project that involves lots of frustration, I curse like a sailor. However, I think that on this project, I am so engaged by it and having so much fun, that even the challenging parts give birth to joy rather than stress. Given this, I feel fairly certain I'll be building another frame in the future.

I'm going to build a better jig before I start next time, though.

Frame build update

2011-10-17T10:09:00.004-05:00

I've got a few photos to show the progress on the frame. My brazing skills are improving, but largely because I kept finding gaps in the lug shorelines and having to re-braze them, affording me lots of practice. At this point, every lug has been re-brazed at least once, and one has been re-brazed three times. It now looks as if they all are completely sealed, and that there is plenty of filler in each of the joints. Because I was so intent on the latter need, some of my joints required a lot of cleaning up to get a smooth transition between lug and tube. I used a Dremel, small files, and sandpaper to try to achieve this.

This is a rough cleaning. I'll probably do more before sending it off to be painted.

Here I've brazed the articulated drop out of one of the seat stays. I'm really pleased with this brazing job since it was done in one pass, with a goodly amount of filler going in the joint, and minimum globbiness to clean up.

Next up, braze the drop out on the chain stays, measure and cut the chain stays and braze them to the bottom bracket.

Let the brazing begin

2011-10-11T11:35:00.019-05:00

In the end, it was the old-fashioned kind of social networking that found me someone who could teach me to braze. A fellow Xtracycle owner, who "knew" me from seeing me ride around town, happened to be working in Velocity Cycles the day I dropped in for a tweak on the Ruby. His name was Jake, and he remarked that he'd seen me on the Xtracycle, riding around, and didn't I also own a Salsa Casseroll? One bike led to another, and I mentioned that I was in the process of making my own frame, but would like to find someone to show me how to braze. And thus it was that he mentioned Will, from whom he'd bought a house. Will, he told me, was a metal sculptor, a colleague from school in the Department of Art, and a fellow cyclist. Jake was sure he'd be interested in my project.

It happens that I've met Will before at a neighborhood party, but we didn't really converse then (because I am fundamentally shy, and would rather stuff a rabbit up my nose than to make small talk with someone I don't know; yes, I realize that this is a problem). He stuck in my head, though, because he was wearing a kilt, an attire he comes by honestly, since he hails from the British Isles.

Anyway, I fired off an email to Will, outlining my project, and he said he'd not only be happy to help, he was interested in building a frame one day himself. So he came over the shop one night last week--wearing regular clothes instead of a kilt--and I had my first lesson in brazing. Here's Will, who, as it turns out, is easy and pleasant to talk to:

Brazing is like soldering, but brazing uses higher heat and a stronger filler for a stronger joint. In this case, I am using MAPP gas and a MAPP torch, both of which are available at any hardware store. MAPP gas, which comes in these yellow canisters, burns much hotter than propane. I borrowed this torch from my neighbor Tom, but it is causing me some wrist pain to hold the whole shebang, so I am currently looking to replace it with a torch that has a hose attached:

Will, who has been brazing since he was sixteen, brazed the first joint--the seat tube to the bottom bracket--to show me how it is done. We first cleaned all the surfaces to be joined with 400 grit sandpaper, and then wiped with mineral spirits to remove any oxides. Then the end of the seat tube and bottom bracket lug hole were painted with white flux and fitted together. Heat was applied and the filler, 56% silver (called Silver 56) was drawn into the joint through capillary action (or, as Will called it, ca-PILL-ary action):

The filler leaves a smooth meniscus around the edge of the junction between the tube and the lug. This is called the "shoreline." When properly applied, the filler goes all the way through the joint and comes out the other side. (That white coating is the left-over flux.) Here it is with the flux cleaned off:

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, it was not as easy as it looked. Here is my first effort at brazing:

The flux on the lug itself and the head tube (the vertical tube) have turned black, which means that I exhausted it before the filler could be drawn into the lug. When the flux was cleaned off, I could see gaps in the shoreline, as can be seen here, in the small gap at the top left of the junction between the lug and the down tube (click to zoom in, should you so desire to see the gap more easily):

So at Will's suggestion, I cleaned off as much of the oxidation as I could, and then over the weekend, I had another go at it, using a lot more flux, with better results:

It is a little hard to see in the photos, but there is a solid shoreline all the way around, and I'm confident that I got enough silver in there to fill up all the void space, making it a strong joint. The excess filler can easily be cleaned off with files and a Dremel tool.

Speaking of the Dremel tool, I've never really been a fan. In fact, it has seemed for the longest time to be a silly, superfluous tool. I never could figure out what it was good for that a hacksaw couldn't do just as well. But between using it to cut and fit the miters, and now to grind down the excess filler on my blotchy brazing efforts, I have to say that I have fallen in love with this tool.

In fact, I'm so taken with the amazing utility of the Dremel that I've gone ahead and had one of my hands replaced with it. See what you think:

It should be great for brushing my teeth. And as for using it in the kitchen to whip up mashed potatoes, well, I think I need hardly say more...

I still have the top tube to seat tube and seat tube to bottom bracket to braze to complete the main triangle, but here is what it looks like so far when the other tubes are dry-fitted to the brazed in order to check the angles:

By the way, in case you missed my post yesterday announcing the completion of the Bike Garden Challenge, here it is, with all the skinny you need for sending in your pledges. Thank you again, everyone, for all your support.

Done and Done

2011-10-10T11:29:00.011-05:00

Yesterday I took advantage of some beautiful riding weather and pushed through to finish up the Bike Garden Challenge. It was a lovely day, in all respects--cloudy and cool, with a calm mist for most of the morning. The miles just melted away.

I remarked to Walu last night that at the beginning of the year, I'd thought that 50 miles a week on my bike was a lot, but that this weekend I rode 50 miles over two days without thinking much about it. At the end of the second day, I was tired, but not especially so. It was a satisfying end to a long tour for many reasons.

So now it is time to call in some pledges. I was buoyed by your support over the course of the year, and I know that the South Plains Food Bank will lifted by it as well. Some of you have already honored your pledges, and for that, I am truly, truly more grateful than you can ever imagine. For the rest of the Challenge supporters, I am grateful to you, too, but you must still please make out your check to the South Plains Food Bank and send it to:

SPFB

4612 Locust Ave.

Lubbock, TX 79404

Also, do me a favor and write "Bike Garden Challenge" on the memo line on your check. That will ensure that it is earmarked for the food bank's farm. Hopefully, we can also use that to tally up what we've managed to do together with this campaign.

If you'd prefer to give online, there is a way to do that, too. Just go to the sidebar here on the blog, click on the Bike Garden cycling jersey and the link will take you straight to the donation page for the SPFB. Again, please leave a note in the comments section that indicates that you are giving in honor of the Bike Garden Challenge.

Thanks to Fred, Cheryl, and Jill for keeping me company on the last miles of the challenge yesterday (Jill by texting and calling from Kansas as she rode). And as an extra special thank you bonus for all my supporters, a photo I have titled "Victory with Helmet Hair":

Feel free to print this and hang it on your wall. You're welcome.

Finishing up

2011-10-05T09:40:00.002-05:00

I have never once been alone on my bike this year. It may have looked that way to outsiders, on those days when I was spinning around solo, but the fact of the matter is that I always felt like I was riding with everyone who has pledged to support me on the Challenge. You may not have been present physically, but you were certainly there in spirit, every day, for every mile.

And now we've come to the finish. If all goes well and I don't catch any of the bazillion viruses that seem to be decimating classroom attendance, I should finish up easily on Sunday. Originally, I had planned a big party, but the problem was, I really had no idea when to expect the finish, and so organizing something big would have been difficult. As it turned out, I'm finishing nearly a month ahead of where I'd expected, so there you go.

So as the miles have been ticking down, I've been wrestling with how to end it. Should it be a big bang, with those of you who have been riding along riding those last few miles with me? Or should I finish quietly, as also seems appropriate, since so many of the miles this year have been quiet ones.

The trouble with finishing with a bang is that I'm not sure how many people would actually want to do that with me. Many of my supporters don't count themselves as hard-core cyclists, and so distances more than five or ten miles might seem too daunting to them, and I would want to leave out anyone who wanted to ride along. Also, I think it is A&M weekend or something, I'm not sure whether that might affect how many wanted to ride. I'll admit it, I have some anxiety about throwing a party and nobody showing up for it...

If a couple of people wanted to ride the end with me, though, I'd say let's make it a ride from my house to someplace for lunch and back. I'll make sure the route is as safe as turtles, and the whole thing is around five miles round trip. If I get any interest in doing this, I'll work out my mileage schedule to leave five miles on Sunday. Vegetarians, vegans, meat-eaters, people who won't eat anything purple--I'll pick a place that has something for all of us.

If no one is particularly jazzed about this, or if you already have plans (sorry about the late notice), then Plan B will be to ride with the cycling club on Sunday and let the marker pass without too much fanfare. I'm okay with this, too, but finishing with those of you who've been with me all year would be my first choice.

So let me know--either here on the blog, FB message or wall post, crib notes passed in class, or whatever--whether you're interested in throwing together a loose ride on Sunday. No balloons or bands, just some friends out for an easy ride on a pretty autumn day.

Either way, get ready to pay up. Blessings on all of you.

How I got here

2011-10-01T18:56:00.034-05:00

I've been under the weather for most of the week with a strange malady in which the only symptom was exhaustion. No nasal stuff, no cough, no tummy woes--most days I simply felt as if someone had opened a vein and drained the life out of me every night as I slept.

Consequently, I did little riding...or at least, that was my perception. I keep track of my mileage on a training log called beginnertriathlete.com, and it does a great job of totaling up things for you. Among other gizmos that the log sports, there is a little calendar thingy off to one side that shows a bar graph of your weekly totals for the month, but you have to mouse over it to see an actual number. Imagine my surprise today when I checked it out after my ride and found that I had logged over 100 miles this week.

That I could log that much and not consider it to be an especially difficult week, mileage-wise (illness-wise is another matter) says volumes about where I am in my fitness near the end of the Bike Garden Challenge versus where I was when I began. When I started this thing back in January, I had serious doubts that I could ride 2000 miles in a year, having only ever ridden 1500 or so in my best previous years. And yet here I am, just starting October and looking at, perhaps, only another week or two of riding before reaching that goal.

It was easy...and it wasn't. The easy part was building the fitness. The not-so-easy part was all the normal slings and arrows of life that sometimes slowed me down.

I was telling a friend yesterday that while I am happy that I have been able to do something for the South Plains Food Bank as the result of this challenge, the fact of the matter is that it has been just as beneficial to me--perhaps even more so. Without people depending on me, I might not have re-started on the bike after being temporarily derailed by the bout of influenza in February, the debilitating stomach virus in May, the trip to Chicago, the week teaching at Mary Baldwin College in June, the trip to San Francisco, the two weeks of head cold this September, and this last, mystery fit of exhaustion. In the past any one of those would have been excuse enough to drift away from a fitness routine.

More importantly, though, is how the bike carried me through a difficult summer in which my mother's health declined and she passed away. It was not easy for me to sit with a dying person. Most days she was barely responsive, and when she was, I'm not sure she knew that I was there or who I was. And even when she was awake, I was at a loss for what to do. She seemed restless and uncomfortable, but whenever I spoke to her or touched her hand or face, it seemed not to matter at all. It fell to the professionals to turn her, feed her, and clean her. The best help I could offer was to be there to call someone whenever she did wake up and needed something. The rest of the time, I sat and read, or watched TV.

My sisters, I believe, were better at this than I was. I have never been much of a nurturer, and truthfully, I was at a loss as to how to step up my game when it was needed. I can't speak for them but I found so many days of feeling useless and inadequate to be indescribably draining. I'd taken my bike down to San Angelo, however, and in the mornings, before it got unbearably hot, I would go for a ride, telling myself that it was for the Bike Garden Challenge and the good people of the food bank. In truth, though, it was for me. I couldn't turn my mother or feed her, but I could ride. It was something I was not helpless to do. It put back in what sitting with the dying was taking out. I would like to believe that by helping me, it helped my mother. The hard-eyed realist in me doubts this. As with so many other things in life, I am agnostic about what was going on in my mother's life in her last days. She couldn't tell me; I couldn't devine it.

Rebecca Solnit, in one of her essays called "The Blue of Distance" (she has several with this same title, from the book A Field Guide to Getting Lost), says that we treat desire as a problem to be solved. That phrase has resonated with me ever since I read it shortly after my father died, a couple of years ago. The reason it has stuck with me is because I think it is true of other things that cause us discomfort as well. We treat helplessness as a problem to be solved. We treat death that way. We treat grief that way.

Solnit's thesis is that perhaps we should embrace the discomfort that unfulfilled desire causes us and accept it for its own place in our lives--that the discomfort itself creates an important form of beauty. Some things we have, she says, only so long as they remain lost to us. My head thinks that is probably true of those other "problems" as well. The trouble is that the head and the heart don't always speak the same language.

I dreamed about my mother last night. In this dream, doctors had discovered a pill that they could give her to restore her speech. Bulbar palsy had robbed her of it for most of her last two years, and here, in the dream, doctors had solved a problem they couldn't solve in waking life. The strange thing was that I felt so guilty that we had not been able to come up with a solution before this. Two years! Two years we had let her remain mute, when there was this little pill all along...I apologized to her, over and over in the dream.

But there wasn't a little pill in real life. In real life, all we could do was watch helplessly as she drifted away from us, unable to talk, to tell us how she felt about things, what made her happy, what made her sad. It was a problem that couldn't be solved, but the heart doesn't speak that language.

I don't know what the dream meant or why I had it. It was just my brain, working overtime to solve the larger problem of grief, I suppose. I awoke and wondered why I hadn't used the opportunity presented by the dream to have a conversation with her. There is so much about the last two or three years that I would have liked to talk to her about, to hear what she thought about things, to have her counsel. But I woke, and then it was too late. You can't go back to a dream.

On waking, the strange exhaustion was gone, so I got on my bike. Toward the end of my ride, as has sometimes happened over the past few months, I thought about my mother, and I cried as I rode. It is easier to manage than you might think. It is more healing than you can imagine. Somewhere in there, I rode past the point where I have fewer than 100 miles to go on the Challenge. And in this way, day in and day out, riding and letting the unsolvable problems ride along, I have arrived, finally, at this point.

Both my mother and father are gone now, and I am still uncertain what to make of this or how to proceed in a landscape in which they do not exist. For the moment, however, I am going to try not to treat grief as a problem to be solved. I am going to tell my brain to take a break and let the heart have its day. For the moment, I am going to let it ride.

Autumn, day two

2011-09-24T07:21:00.013-05:00

Yesterday was the first day of autumn, and blessed relief, it felt like it. After the wicked, wicked summer we just experienced, the cooler air is enough to make me want to weep with happiness.

And now, it is the weekend following that opening day, and I plan to take advantage of it. First up on the agenda, a return to the garden. Nothing major today (though I have big plans for later in the season), but some general weeding and sprucing is needed before I can turn my attention to other things.

Though it would be a perfect day for a bike ride, I'm going to resist temptation. I went for a fabulous tempo ride yesterday, and tomorrow I plan to go out with the Lubbock cycling club, so today I'm giving myself permission--nay, ordering myself--to use this temperate weather to get out into the shop and work on my new bicycle. There is almost nothing I enjoy more than working in the shop during the fall months. I throw open the windows and doors, turn on the radio, and putter to my heart's content.

The replacement head tube came in yesterday's mail, and this time, I got the measurements right. Here are some photos:

Today, after the mandatory weeding, I'm going to go looking for some mild steel and a Mapp torch to start my practice brazing.

It would be better if I had someone to teach me how to do this, but I haven't been able to find that person (or a class nearby), so I'm just going to dive in. This may seem strange to people not used to tinkering, but it doesn't feel strange to me. After all, I have been a semi-serious woodworker for nearly two decades, and I'm very comfortable around tools. The worst that can happen is that I will fail at making a decent frame. (There is a need, of course, for understanding tools and for some advance research on how to safely use them, especially when fumes and flames are involved, but I have this covered.) Since I'm looking at this first frame as practice for the second, I am completely comfortable with that idea. A greater failure would be not to try simply because I've never done it before.

Sometime in the future, after I've got a frame or two under my belt, I'd like to take a frame-building workshop. This might seem backwards, but I think I'd get more out of a short course with a little foundation. (Plus, I'm too curious about it to wait that long.) I have one picked out, in Austin, and so I'm going to start saving my pennies for it.

Tinker, tinker, tinker: And so it begins

2011-09-19T08:26:00.026-05:00

I was looking at an airplane when it struck me that I was going to build a bike frame from scratch. My sibs and I were at the airport in Midland, picking up relatives who were flying in for my mother's funeral. Because everyone was coming in on different flights, but within an hour of each other, we'd decided to just make one trip to the airport. It meant a little extra waiting, but we had each other for company.

Conversation lagged after awhile, as it sometimes does even among family. I got up to stretch my legs and while I was walking around, I noticed an old airplane hanging from the ceiling. And when I say old, I mean that it was from sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, as in pre-Sopwith Camel.

This old bird was hardly bigger than the pilot who must have sat in it, and everything was exposed on it--struts and wires and pulleys. Because nothing was hidden by fabric or metal, I could stand there and puzzle out how it worked. If the pilot pushed down on that stick, then this flap would move. A push of that pedal would move a rudder. And so on.

The more I looked at it, the more it became clear that it was really a very simple machine. In fact, the more I looked at it, the more it seemed like something I could make, were I not terrified of flying in general and therefore unlikely ever to build an airplane, much less fly it when I was finished. Still, if I were to make one, it would be fun.

That's the way I've always been. I'm more interested in building something than actually using it. I've always, for instance, wanted to build a greenhouse. I don't want to use one, as it seems like a lot of work to do so. I'd sure like to build one, though.

I've always wanted to build a sailboat, too, though I've never lived anywhere near an ocean. And I went through a period where I did a lot of fly-tying and even dreamed of building fly rods, though there is not a fishable stream around for miles.

I do sometimes build things I use. I built a telescope once that I carted outside several nights for about a year, until a car accident left me with chronic vertigo that often bothers me when I look at the night sky. It doesn't matter, though, since it was really about the joy of making the telescope, and not the galaxy itself. I don't miss the planets and stars. I still have the telescope.

So given my history, it is not so far-fetched to imagine me building an airplane without any expectation of ever using it.

Thankfully*, as I was standing there looking at the plane, it occurred to me that it wasn't much more complicated than a bicycle. And then I remembered that Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle mechanics before they were airplane builders, and so of course it made sense that one could see elements of that simple and elegant machine in the primitive airplane that hung from the ceiling.

And I thought, "How hard could it be to build a bicycle? Those Wright boys did it. What makes them so different from me?"

Maybe it seems strange that I was thinking about building a bicycle when the matter at hand was my mother's funeral. But as has happened so often in my life, the thought of a project steadied me. It also made me think of my father, who was a tinkerer like me, and that felt right, as if something was coming full circle in those moments between puzzling out the airplane, musing about those other tinkerers, the Wrights, and deciding to make the bike.

*I say "thankfully," not just because I was saved from building an airplane, but because a bicycle is something I might use.

And so it begins. I got a book, Lugged Bicycle Frame Construction, A Manual for the First Time Builder, by Marc-Andre R. Chimonas, read it more or less cover-to-cover four times during the past month (though simple, the individual steps are many and critical to do in the right order), found a set of tubes and lugs on sale at Nova Cycles, took a deep breath, and plunged right in. Here are some pictures of the progress I made this weekend.

I put the dimensions of the tubes and frame into a free software program on Nova Cycles called "Tube Notcher," which prints out a paper template for the individual miters that I attached to the tubes as a guide for cutting:

(The bottom line is the "cut" line.)

I made the first, rough cut using a Dremel tool:

Cleaned it up using a grinding tip on the Dremel, and a bastard file:

The goal, according to the book, is for a miter that fits with gaps no bigger than a fingernail. It's hard to tell from this photo, but the gaps fit the criteria:

Subsequent cuts on the top tube are aligned using the lugs and protractor:

Starting to look like a frame:

My miters kept improving as the weekend progressed, partly because I was putting a beveled finish on the edge to accomodate the dimensions of the mating tube:

Figuring the length of the downtube:

Et voila!

I made one fairly significant mistake when I misunderstood how to measure the length of the head tube, and so I wound up cutting it too short. A new head tube only costs eight bucks, however, so if that's the only mistake I make on the frame, I'll be more than satisfied. Everything I've read over the past month on frame building forums suggests that the first frame is all about learning how to make the second frame.

I ordered a new head tube yesterday, along with all the bits and pieces I will need to finish out (seat stay caps, dropouts, etc.) and it should all be here by the weekend. Hopefully, Ill be able to start brazing this weekend or the next.

So far so good. If I had to rank it, I'd say this project ultimately will be slightly more complicated than a telescope, but probably less so than an airplane.

It turns out that blowing snot rockets on the bike when you have a head cold is not such a good idea

2011-09-17T11:03:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I do not have to explain why. Even so, the ride made me feel better and did clear my head. It even made the migraine with which I awoke a tad less bothersome. But the best part of the ride was spotting this:

My sibs will know why.

It was a bonny autumn Saturday morning. Hope yours was as well.

Transitions

2011-09-16T13:07:00.004-05:00

Well, honestly, the garden season was a bust. It was simply too hot and too dry. I have much to do out there, but it is order of cleaning up what didn't survive rather than showing off pretty pictures. And so it goes.

I am re-thinking the garden for next year, however. Word is that La Nina is re-forming, and so we are in for long campaign. Given that, I have decided to do some hard-scaping over the winter to transition the garden to an even more xeric environment. The plant palette will be changing, too. Gone will be the pretties that require a less hostile climate in order to get established. In will come the tough nuts of the plant world, thorns and all.

The vicious heat has finally broken, though, and unlike the rest of Texas, we've even had a bit of rain. With the change in temperature comes a willingness to work outside again. I haven't been doing that at all this summer, because the only time of day in which the temperatures were bearable for living beings was morning, and mornings were reserved for the Bike Garden Challenge. There weren't enough cool hours of the day to do both, and so choices had to be made.

The Challenge is going well--so well that I feel relaxed enough to slow things down a bit and start other kinds of transitions, from road bike to commuter, from cycling to running, from long miles to rest. I suppose the slow down in mileage comes at the best time possible, since school has started again, and thus begins yet another transition...

One more transition that I will be making is the move back into my shop for some projects. I've needed a good build project to set my head straight for a while now, but the few times I went out to the shop to work this summer were brutal. It was dangerously hot in there, and so I put my need to build things on hold.

It's nice out there now, however, and so I've started a project I've been wanting to work on for several months: building a bike frame from scratch. I ordered the parts a while back, when I found them on sale on the interwebs at Nova Cycles. Have a gander at my new bike:

And that's the way the blog turns--there will be garden things again one day, but for now, there be bikes.

P.S.--Get those check books and debit cards ready! I'm aiming for finishing the Challenge sometime in October...

Apple Butter Festival Ride

2011-09-13T05:40:00.007-05:00

It is the third week of classes and I am already behind in everything I need to do. I also have come down with a head cold. Both are occupational hazards and right on schedule. Ah well.

There is good news to report, however. The ridiculous heat wave known as summer finally broke last week, and we enjoyed a spate of loveliness. So all was perfect, weather-wise, on Saturday as I set out on the TTU Outdoor Pursuits' annual Apple Butter Festival Ride to neighboring Idalou. The ride was slated to be 46 miles round trip, which was 6 miles farther than I'd ever ridden. I'd had trouble with bonking* when I rode that previous 40 miler, so this time I was prepared with plenty of fuel for the ride:

Since the weather report was variable and we'd be walking around at the festival once we got there, I decided to empty out the contents of my bedroom closet and take it along as well:

We set out around 8:15-ish, in cool, light rain:

Jo Jo, here on the left, was our pleasant and capable leader:

Is there anything more glorious than riding on a rainy morning in a land that has not seen rain in a very long while?

We had a support vehicle, primarily to be there to carry back all the jars of apple butter we planned to buy, but also available to fix flats:

At the Apple Butter Festival, there was, well, apple butter:

Music:

A petting zoo:

Mid-ride fueling:

More music:

And of course, bikes:

After the ride back to LBB, the legs felt so good I decided to take a couple of laps around the campus and bust through the 50 mile ceiling. For me, this was a big leap psychologically, since it put the memory of my 40 mile bonk to rest. There is much to be said for overcoming memories that hold us back.

*Note for my British readers: In the States, "bonking" refers to the stop-in-your-tracks exhaustion that occurs during endurance exercise when you have not kept up with your fuel or water. VP tells me that it means something else to y'all. ;-)

Scenes from the native lawn

2011-09-01T06:55:00.002-05:00

I finally had to "graze" my native lawn this week, for fear my neighbors would start complaining about how it looked. But before I did, I took some shots of how lovely it was shortly after we got some welcome rain. Is there anything as pretty as blue grama seed heads when the morning light catches them? They are like flags filled with sun:

Forecasts

2011-08-30T08:15:00.004-05:00

Starting Thursday, the forecast shows temperatures in the mid-90s through Saturday. The ten day forecast is even more promising, with temps dipping into the low-90s. In terms of morale, that drop below highs of 100 degrees is huge. Life begins anew.

With the advent of cooler temperatures, my thoughts turn again to the garden, which sadly, looks as if it suffered through the same extreme summer heat that the rest of us did. Approximately half of the new plantings I put out in late spring/early summer look like this:

Yes, my friends, that once was a living thing.

And since this weekend is the Labor Day holiday, I think it's appropriate to fill it full of chores that have been, for one reason or another, left undone, one of them being pulling out all the things that died. I'll also take the opportunity to tidy up the garden for fall. I think I'll leave off re-planting ornamentals until the spring, but I have plans for a winter garden and so I might as well get things ready for that. I want to re-vamp the drip irrigation system to make it more efficient, so I'll probably do some future posts about that little project.

If all that isn't enough to fill out the labor days (or if it gets too hot and I have to go inside), I also need to finish making some window screens for the west side of the house and finish painting the trim in the dining room.

I have plenty of motivation for clearing my undone-chores list, since as soon as I do, I can start on my next quirky project, which is to build my own custom-fit-to-me randonneuring-style bicycle frame. Yes, I will be welding.

So the long term forecast is this: Grit returns to the Bike Garden. Read all about it here.

Building the Rivendell "Betty Foy"

2011-08-28T14:53:00.016-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted, I know, but I didn't feel much like idle chit chat after the funeral, and then Walu and I went to San Francisco to escape the heat for a few days, and then school started back up...it's an old story.

Anyway, I have lots of things saved up to talk about--so many, in fact, that I hardly know where to start. I've dithered about the issue for a couple of days now, and have finally decided to just jump in with whatever is foremost in my mind. I'll get to all the other posts in due time.

So here's what I'm spending much of my spare time on these days: building a new bike. The bits and pieces came via UPS while we were in San Francisco:

I've long had the idea that I'd like a bike I could throw a handlebar bag onto, loaded with a camera and a lunch, and go rambling around for hours at a piddling pace--an old-fashioned European touring bike, if you will. (Of course this begs the question that there is anything in or around LBB that might invite rambling and touring.) The Ruby and the Salsa, much as I love them and as much as they serve their own, specialized, useful services, are simply not comfortable enough for me to imagine spending long hours in the saddle on them. The problem seems to be with the drop bars and the beating my hands take on them. More than 20-30 miles, and I am done with the rambling fantasy.

Neither bike has the geometry for a handlebar bag, either, though I have, in fact, been putting one on the Ruby lately so that I can carry a camera along on my rides. Even so, there just isn't anything remotely "rambly" about the Ruby. She is built for one thing, and that thing, on a person with better legs than mine, is speed. The Salsa might be a little rambly, but she's just not super comfortable.

Nevertheless, in an experimental mood earlier this year, I switched the drop bar on the Salsa for a pair of Nitto Dove handlebars (swept-back, or "North Road" style). What I got was less than satisfactory. Not only did I immediately develop knee problems from the change in geometry, there was an obvious loss of speed. I got, in short, a bike that was neither a fast commuter (which La Chica was before) nor a rambler capable of going long distances comfortably.

I've wanted a Rivendell for a couple of years, and the Betty Foy, in particular, for the last year or so, since it seemed to fit the profile of what I wanted exactly. Rivendells are reputed to be extraordinary bikes--durable, well-made, exceptionally comfortable to ride--indeed, the very ramblers I've been fantasizing about. Short of a custom-built randonneuring bike, they are probably the best on the market for a person searching for such a steed. So when I got a little discretionary money in the form of a paycheck for a summer course I taught at Mary Baldwin College in June, I thought I knew a good way to spend it. Even so, it took me almost two more months to make up my mind to place the order. I mean, how many bikes does one person need?

Ironically, it was a bit of car-trouble that gave me the push I needed. My Subaru had some hiccups when I was traveling back and forth between San Angelo, and since it is nearly ten years old, I started thinking that maybe I should look into getting a new car. But then--mirable dictu!--the hiccuping turned out to be a very fixable problem, and suddenly I had a car that probably has a few more good years left in it. So if I wasn't going to have to spend my money on a car...

Plus, all these bikes added up don't even come close to what a new car would cost. Heck, they wouldn't even add up to a good used car! Ok, maybe they'd add up to a mediocre used car, but you get my drift.

You see what kind of scary rationalization I am capable of.

Anyway, I called up Rivendell and in short order the Betty Foy and most of her bits and pieces were on the way. (One can, of course, order a fully built bike from Rivendell, but why would an incorrigible tinkerer want to do that?)

This is the second bike I've built from scratch, the first being the Salsa Casseroll. This one was a little easier, since it came with the bottom bracket and headset/fork already installed. In no time at all, I had the guts of the bike put together, more or less in this order (the astute reader might notice that I started out in my shop, but I quickly determined that it was too STINKIN' HOT to work out there, and so was driven inside to my auxiliary shop, aka, the front living room):

The hammered metal fenders, handlebar, cork grips, Brooks saddle, Acorn seat bag, and Velo Orange constructeur rear rack were all things I either had lying around or on other bikes. I've ordered a Velo Orange front rack, which should be here sometime next week. I've yet to pick out a handlebar bag, as they seem a tad pricey to me. I may settle for a Wall basket and some zip ties...

Finally, Betty Foy is a character in a Wordsworth poem, "The Idiot Boy," and she is supposed to represent the best of mothers. Appropriately, I have named this bike Frances, after my own mother.

I'll ride the bike around for a hundred miles or so and post a review of how it handles. In future posts, I might explain a bit about bike geometry and components, and what makes one better for rambling (and loading up with bags and gear), and another better for speed (and keeping up on club rides), and so on. And that, as Mario Battali would say, is the dish.

Re-thinking the back garden, and a project teaser

2011-08-09T09:10:00.004-05:00

This summer's extraordinary drought has got me doing some serious re-thinking about the back garden. I thought I had solved the dry shade problem by planting some shrubs, but about half of them have died. I've also noticed across town that even established shrubs are dying off, so these may not be the answer I thought they were at the start of the summer.

The trouble I'm having with designing a sustainable, water-wise back garden is not one of planting for arid conditions--it is that of planting for arid and shady conditions. With five pecan trees providing more or less all-day shade, I need plants that will thrive without a lot of sun, but without having to be extraordinarily irrigated. I've planted many of the standards of drought-tolerance (artemesia, Apache plume, Russian sage, purple sage, succulents, etc) in the back beds before, but they've all gone generally spindly and weak in the shade, and have eventually died. What to do, what to do?

I've also got a problem with the lawn area. The only part that gets enough sun to plant a drought-tolerant grass is small and beaten to bits by four rambunctious dogs. After a summer of no water, it is, in fact, nothing but dust. I'd post a photo, but it's just too depressing.

A BRIEF INTERRUPTION IN OUR PROGRAM:
You see? That's how I'm different from Fox News and MSNBC. I refuse to alarm you about the state of my lawn purely for entertainment and ratings. I'll show you some "before" shots eventually, but until I can get some "after" shots to alleviate your anxiety upon seeing it, I'll hold off.

Fox News and MSNBC might do well to be reminded of the tenets of mindful speech, as I was yesterday when I stumbled across this lovely post on Sweet Pea Bicycles. As the post says, here are three tenets of mindful speech:

1. Is it kind?
2. Is it true?
3. Is it useful?

While the author of the post says that "no" to all three keeps the silence, I think it would benefit us all if the news services had an automatic shut-down of a story if numbers 1 and 3 ever raise their heads simultaneously. Imagine, for example, an entire summer without having to hear about Charlie Sheen or Casey Anthony.

It would be well for me to have an automatic shut-down of my mouth, too, but I'm still working that.

WE NOW RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING:
Anyway, given the challenges, I'm trying to talk Walu into putting a large stone courtyard in the back garden. He's worried about re-sell value, however, thinking that people will want a lawn. I'm thinking that by the time we sell this house, LBB will be under such strict water conditions that people will be grateful there isn't any lawn back there...

I'll keep you posted on how all the planning and designing is going as it develops. Not much is actually going to take place until this heat breaks.

In the meantime, I was casting about for a short summer project that I could complete before school starts in a two or three weeks and have settled on building up a new bike. I'll post more on that as it develops, too. The new frame and components should be shipped by the end of this week.

Radio Silence

2011-07-29T18:32:00.008-05:00

At night I dream of rain, but when I wake, there is only dust and heat. On the road between Lubbock and San Angelo, where I have been driving these past two weeks to visit my mother, there are brown fields, empty of everything but dust devils. Sometimes I have counted as many as six at a time, rising lazily from the earth. They are remarkably long-lasting, taking their time as they roam across the fields, moving here and there, but always, strangely, as if they have purpose and direction.

My mother put a name to dust devils for me when I was a child. She pointed them out one day, as we were driving across the deserts of New Mexico. Later I stood in the stinging swirl of one in a vacant lot in our neighborhood, and knew it for what it was because she had named it.

She gave me the name for mirages, too, and I see these also as I drive the roads these hot summer days. When she told me that they were only the image of water and not the thing itself, I didn't believe her at first. But true to her word, the shimmer always stayed ahead of us, just out of reach. Men had died, she said to me, chasing mirages in the desert. And then she laughed, to show me that it was not a thing to worry too much about. She knew I was a worrier.

And in this way, by putting names to things, a mother helps a child unlock the puzzle that is the world.

Frances Williams Tomlinson
June 17, 1924-July 29, 2011

Seen on the ride: Tuesday, July 26

2011-07-26T10:52:00.002-05:00

"How fast was I going?" I yelled.

"19," he said. "But you were slowing down there at the end."

I think he was being generous.

Plus, it was downhill.

Also seen on the splendid morning ride:

The difference between Walu and me

2011-07-21T08:51:00.000-05:00

Walu's handlebar tape, which I replaced on Monday as a pre-birthday present:

My handlebar tape, which is not only intact, I clean it on a semi-regular basis with Simple Green:

Seen on the Sunday ride

2011-07-20T07:56:00.001-05:00

I'll be honest with you, my garden looks like crap right now. I've suspended nearly all watering, only applying it to new plantings. The buffalo grass and blue grama in the front yard still look pretty good, but the Bermuda grass lawn in the back is on its last legs. Shrubs and flowering plants are surviving, but they don't look at all happy about it. In truth, it disheartens me so much to see how bad everything looks that it is difficult for me to go out into the garden for more than the most basic chores.

So instead of showing you my garden, I thought I'd show you other gardens that are fairing better than mine. On Sunday my ride took me through Greek Circle, a neighborhood where all the sororities and fraternities have their houses. Most of the front yards looked, if anything, even worse off than mine (probably owing more to lack of interest than to the drought and heat) but there were three bright spots, shown here:

Goodbye, Ruby Slippers

2011-07-19T06:34:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I got off my bike mid-ride to adjust a cleat on one of my cycling shoes and stripped out the screw hole. Since I was already down to two screws on that particular shoe, it meant I had to pedal home with the cleat attached by only one screw. The problem with this arrangement, as I quickly discovered, is that a cleat attached with only one screw will allow the shoe to rotate when you want to clip out from the pedal, instead of remaining fixed. And thus it is that foot is more or less permanently attached to the pedal unless you unbuckle and leave the shoe behind...

So it was new Sidis for me, this time in plain Jane, old-school black. The Rubys, those stylish, comfortable old friends, have now officially retired.

Seen on the ride

2011-07-18T07:50:00.000-05:00

San Angelo is an interesting town. A few years ago, I noticed that many of the front yards I was seeing--far more than here in LBB--were xeric landscapes. Indeed, San Angelo, which has the same climate and water challenges as LBB, is probably at least a decade ahead of LBB in response to the dwindling water supply in the southwest. For one thing, they actually talk about it openly--and with alarm--in their local newspaper. Their columnists, in fact, actually call for real, meaningful action from the citizens on the matter. Imagine that happening here in LBB.

Yeah, I can't either.

Anyway, while I was riding around my sister's neighborhood, I noticed that, unlike my neighborhood, nobody was watering their lawns and that all of them had gone dormant. When everyone's lawn is dormant, it looks quite natural. Some of the neighbors are also taking this drought "opportunity" to let their yards go completely, but others have foregone the lawn altogether and have created some nice xeric landscapes which seem to be doing quite well in this challenging season. I don't normally like a yard that is covered in gravel, but I thought this one looked pretty good:

I think it could have been improved by varying the sizes of the gravel, or planting masses of prairie grasses in places, and the placement of the big boulders seemed a little "off" to me, but overall, I thought it looked quite nice.

Radio silence

2011-07-16T06:59:00.004-05:00

Things are not going very well for my mother, so I've been down in San Angelo for the past several days to be with her. The days pass pretty quietly. I rise, eat some granola and yogurt, watch a few minutes of the Tour de France, and then set out on my bike to get a few miles in before heading out to the nursing home for the day. There I sit and read or doze, and watch re-runs of the Tour on television, since there isn't much else to do. Things are quietly winding down.

I've been staying with my sister, who lives in a neighborhood comprised mostly of hills. And thus it is that my rides are of a short but intense nature. I can feel a satisfying tightness in my quads that tells me I'm getting stronger. Having the Bike Challenge helps; it gives me something on which to focus. So though the ticker is moving in tiny increments these days, that it is moving at all is testament to the idea that life goes on.

It is already hot when I go out for my rides, though not unbearably so. Unbearable hits around noon and rises after that. Like it has been the whole summer, every day here is over 100 degrees, and it feels like the end of the world. But it isn't, of course. It's just one season among many.

Independence Day

2011-07-04T11:54:00.000-05:00

I went for a ride and they threw a parade. The two things may not be related, but who's to say?

More importantly, it rained on me during the ride. Not a lot, but it was rain, you know?

I followed all this with a BLT made with a Cherokee Purple tomato, plucked from my own garden, eaten while watching a tape of this morning's stage of the Tour de France.

My life is an embarrasment of riches. Happy Independence Day, y'all.

On the other hand, I could be losing the war

2011-07-01T16:44:00.001-05:00

I went outside this morning and this is what I saw posted on the shed:

Sure looks like a territorial claim to me...

Harvest on the Western Front

2011-06-30T10:35:00.003-05:00

It looks like a battlefield on the farm, what with all the concertina wire, booby traps, water cannons, guard towers, and attack dogs, but by golly gum, I have beat back the squirrels just enough to harvest some tomatoes for the first time in three years. Here is a photo of my first Cherokee purple:

It was not as sweet as I expected it to be, but maybe later ones will be sweeter. On the other hand, I HARVESTED IT.

Perhaps that is as sweet as it needs to be.

Parting shots

2011-06-27T06:21:00.001-05:00

I'm homeward bound today, but I didn't want to leave before adding two or three more photos from my stay in Virginia, land of coolth and rain.

My fellow teacher, Betty Gatewood and her husband Mark beside their vegetable garden:

Our National Squirrel, as seen on the National Mall, Washington DC:

My new favorite T-shirt, sporting the Mary Baldwin College mascot:

As for my own squirrels, fair warning: The ceasefire will be ending around 5 PM today.

Cue the interlude music

2011-06-26T16:47:00.003-05:00

Well, while my fellow Lubbockites have been suffering through record heat (I hear it was 110 F yesterday), I've been busy enjoying the relative coolth of Virginia, where I've been teaching a course at Mary Baldwin College called "Nature Journaling across the Curriculum" to teachers:

The "in-class" part of the course ended on Friday, and yesterday and today I've been visiting my brother Jack and his wife in Manassas. Today we went to the United States Botanic Garden, where, as usual, I was as drawn to the structures as I was to the plants:

I head back to the inferno tomorrow, though, and am quite curious to see how the garden is faring in the heat. I'll report on that, as well as continuing the report on the makeover of the back garden.

To tide you over until that time, here is a closing shot from my brother's front garden this morning, taken with my new camera, which I bought here in VA yesterday, since my old one finally gave up the ghost for good on Thursday:

Gardens are not like paintings: Part One

2011-06-18T06:01:00.020-05:00

It never works out that you plant it and it's done. Some plants die. Some get overgrown and have to be cut back. Some grow lopsided, or stunted, or not at all. Some promise to bloom but never do. Some don't like it here, but would maybe like it better over there, in that spot. Some just always look at you kinda funny, and after a while, it gets to be annoying.

I keep forgetting that. I keep thinking that you plant a garden and it's done, the way one might compose a painting. But gardens are living--and, sometimes, dying--things. And so, if you are a careful gardener, you are constantly making adjustments for whatever temperament your garden might have. If, however, you are a neglectful gardener, like me, then one day you look up and say, "What the hell happened here?"

And thus it was in my back garden this year. I suddenly noticed that what was once a lush oasis had turned into a patchy landscape of dirt. Between drought, the extreme cold of winter and the extreme heat of summer (and a pair of plumbers wielding shovels rather indiscriminately), things had gotten so bad back there that it really was like having a blank canvas again. A really disjointed, ugly, chaotic, and sorry canvas that, aesthetically, was making less and less sense with each passing season.

Fortunately, one night garden designer Susan Cohen, of Miss Rumphius' Rules, was hosting Garden Chat on Twitter, and I had the bright idea to ask this question: What pulls a garden together?

Her answer? Start with the foundation.

Well, duh! Of course! Brilliant! In my enthusiastic youth as a gardener, I had shunned so-called "foundation plantings" as boring, choosing to populate my garden with "stuff that everyone else doesn't have." And it did look good for a time, but, as I've noted above, those plants are now long gone.

I don't think Susan meant, in her plea for a foundation, traditional foundation shrubs, per se. But her comment made me realize that that, in fact, was something that could help me give my garden some pattern and order--something that could make it look designed.

It was nothing short of an epiphany. Once all those "stuff that everyone else doesn't have"* plants were gone, I was able to see that my garden had no foundation.

The other epiphany came while I was out riding my bike through some older neighborhoods in town. What I noticed were the plants that didn't seem to be suffering in all the heat and drought. In fact, they were doing just fine, even with what appeared to be a robust benign neglect in some instances. And what were they? That's right. Traditional foundation plants.

Photinia, nandina, holly, boxwood, etc. etc. Even some old roses look rather fabulous, while all about, everything else was languishing.

And so I got busy. It was a major overhaul, and it involved the whole garden. Because of this, there are simply too many "before and after" shots to put in one post, so I'm going to do two or three over the next week or so. Please bear in mind that it still looks fairly skimpy, but these should fill in pretty nicely in a year or two. It was a major chore getting it all in; plus, I added a drip irrigation line to each and every plant, both for the purpose of saving water and to make it easier for garden caretakers to look after things while I'm traveling this summer. Next year, I'll add the "specials."

Here was the worst area:

Before

The fence needs hiding. There used to be a pyracantha back there, but it mysteriously bit the dust three years ago and I never got around to replacing it.

After

I've added two Silver King euonymous, which can grow to be quite large (6 feet by 6 feet). I'll prune them so that they form a soft wall and give the chaste tree a backdrop. I like that they are variegated and light colored, so the foliage adds some interest. I also like the thought of a quasi-formal hedge here, and in other parts of the garden, to add some counter-balance to what is otherwise a kind of wild and crazy landscape. My front garden is designed to pay homage to the wild landscape of a prairie or desert. The back garden, because of all the pecan trees, has a wooded feel, and offers opportunities for more traditional plants and pruning.

Though you can't see them well in the photo above, I also added two cranberry cotoneasters, which show up a little better here (near the top of the photo, behind the bird bath and salvia):

(Well, okay, you still can't see them very well, but trust me, they are there in all that green; truthfully, I just wanted to show off the garden dog) The cotoneasters should grow up a little higher than the salvia, and provide a deeper green for contrast. I also filled in with some artemisia and daylilies, and left the society garlic, irises, and salvia. As you can see, I've left plenty of space for next year's planting. This year, as I said, is all about the foundation.

To create a repeating pattern, I also planted a Silver King euonymous in this spot on the opposite side of the garden:

Before

This mahonia is old, and has been showing signs of giving up the ghost. So I'd been thinking of taking it out and replacing it.

After

The euonymous should fill this in completely, and screen off the work area as a living fence. The color will provide a nice contrast with the trumpet vine and Virginia creeper.

Finally, also in the interest of pattern, I added some Silver Princess euonymous as a hedge along the picket fence that separates the vegetable garden from the rest of the yard. These should grow to be about three feet high and wide, and again, I am looking forward to pruning them into a soft hedge shape.** I planted them in a slight curve to mimic the flow of the gravel path. They are a bit diminutive at the moment, but if you look closely, you can see them nestled in the mulch on the right of the photo. The variegation and color should tie into the larger hedges of the Silver King plantings.

*These were mostly native plants and xeric plants, which, at the time were really cutting edge where I live. Now they, too, have become fairly commonplace. Which is a good thing.

**I actually enjoying pruning hedges. I took out all the foundation hedges in my front yard when I converted it to a prairie landscape, and miss the monthly haircutting I used to give them.

Goodness, it's hot

2011-06-14T15:52:00.000-05:00

And it's the wrong time to be trying to get things established in the garden. Unfortunately, it's the first chance I've had all year. But all the shrubs are now in the ground, and there's just a few day lilies left to plant, having followed me home from the nursery. I've been busy running a drip line to each and every newbie so that my friend and neighbor Karen will have an easier job of it looking after everything while I'm gone next week. I've got about one more day of hard labor left and then everything should be good to go.

In the meantime, as a teaser, here are a few "before" pictures of a garden that has been neglected for the past few years. You know how it goes, first one shrub bites the dust, then another, then the plumbers dig everything up, then we have one of the coldest winters on record, followed by one of the worst droughts since 1925...before you know it, it looks like the garden that never was.

Ah well, nothing a little focused care can't fix.

Busy busy busy

2011-06-13T06:28:00.001-05:00

I got slammed with work last week when a couple of emergency projects dropped into my lap at work. Even so, I got out into the garden at daybreak each day to try to get some shrubs in the ground.

It would have been best to do it in the spring, but school kept me too busy to get out in the garden. And so now I'm faced with babying them along in 100 degree weather, trying to get them somewhat settled in before I take off for Virginia in another week, where I'll be teaching a graduate course for teachers at Mary Baldwin College on using nature journaling in the classroom.

I'm going to try to set up as much of the new planting as I can on a drip irrigation system. Besides saving water, it will be much more convenient for my neighbor Karen, who has kindly volunteered to look after the garden while I'm out of town. I'd ask Walu to do it, but...I'll just say he's not as focused on what a garden needs as another gardener would be.

In the meantime, as I look over the landscape of the summer, I'm thinking about my list of chores in the back garden. It's just a few things, but they are each big, both in scope and impact:

Plant foundation shrubs
Install drip irrigation
Refresh the limestone gravel paths
Build a planter for the back patio
Move compost bin
Build chicken coop

Hopefully, I'll find some time to blog about it and keep you up to date on the progress.

Home again, home again

2011-06-04T12:52:00.003-05:00

Walu and I took a quick trip this past week to Chitown to see his parents and his brother Sasha, who is visiting from Laos. It was a whirlwind week, but relaxing, too, as we kept our agendas uncomplicated to accommodate everyone else's schedule. If we'd had a longer visit, I would have tried my best to cobble together a trip to Mr. McGregor's Daughter's Squirrelhaven, since I've been reading about it for a few years now. I met Barbara at last year's Fling, and throughly enjoyed visiting with her about my favorite Chicago plant, the hosta (which, to my sorrow, I cannot get to grow here). It was not to be, though, so I'll just have to wait to catch up with MMD in Seattle at the Garden Blogger's Fling.

I will say that the highlight of the trip, as always, was the Second City's beautiful architecture. Walu, Sasha, and I even took a guided tour by boat down the Chicago River that was sponsored by the Architecture Society to learn more about it:

I highly recommend the tour, but if you do it in the summer, it might be advisable to wear a hat.

Now I'm back home and ready to plant some foundation shrubbery in my back garden, which has suffered from neglect the past couple of years and looks a tad tattered as a result. It didn't help that we needed to replace a sewer line this year and the plumbers completely destroyed one of the flower beds in the process. Ah well, in every disaster, there is opportunity for renewal, and so it shall be here.

I've gone for a bike ride this morning, on a lovely, overcast and moderately breezy day, and now I'm ready to go plant shopping. I don't have anything in mind except that I need some shrubs for a backdrop and that they need to get in the ground and somewhat established before I take off again here in a couple of weeks.

So, gotta go, since I'm burnin' daylight, but I'll keep you posted on what transpires.

Wonder of wonders. Something the squirrels didn't ravage.

2011-05-27T13:14:00.000-05:00

Looky what I dug up in the garden this morning:

Sweet.

Gardening in a semi-arid climate

2011-05-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

I've got a side-gig blogging over at Birds and Blooms magazine's website, and this week I am doing a short series addressing things we can do to help our gardens when we live in a semi-arid climate. Check it out here: Tips for gardening in a semi-arid climate

The best laid plans...

2011-05-21T08:11:00.003-05:00

...gang aft agley, as the poet Robbie Burns said. And mine have been agleying all to yell and beyond this week. The astute reader will note that my little ticker has not moved much, and that's because on Wednesday I came down with some sort of stomach bug that has refused to leave my system. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it is trying to leave my system several times a day. At any rate, I haven't been feeling well enough to get on the bike or in the garden.

I'm feeling a little better today, though, so I might try to go out for a short ride just to shake the legs out. It has been my hope to hit the halfway point on the challenge in May, and it's still possible, though I have to admit that I'm feeling pretty weak right now. The end of June is the true halfway point on the calendar, so I'm still ahead of schedule, but it would be nice to have some miles in the bank before I start traveling.

I'm also going to try to put in the last few plants I brought home from the nursery a couple of weeks ago. They've been tucked away in a shady spot and I've been watering them regularly, but it's time to get them in the ground.

Then I might have to have a little lie-down and settle into some summer reading.

In other news: I am posting this from my new MacBook Air, as my old computer was irreparable. I've just about got all the software loaded, so things should be motoring along more or less normally now, blog-wise. I just need to get off my sick bed long enough to do something worth blogging about...

I am a bit worried that I'm already far enough behind schedule on things I MUST accomplish this summer that it is imprudent to think about taking a week off to go to Seattle for the Garden Bloggers Fling. Buying a new computer was also an unexpected blow to the summer budget, and is a big chunk of what I'd set aside for the Seattle trip, so financially, it isn't as prudent as it once was, either. Deep in my heart, I know that I shouldn't go, but I do so want to see my friends. I guess I'll have to make a decision soon.

That's the report!

I've been here and there

2011-05-16T07:48:00.005-05:00

Well, it's been awhile, I know, but I've been busy. School stuff, mainly, though there's been some neighborhood association kerfuffle thrown in the mix just to spice it up. The garden languishes, but the cycling, I am happy to report, has been steady, even through the fog of end-o-semester craziness.

But now the grades are in and the graduates are graduated, so I can turn my eyes to calmer climes, namely, the garden. I have no pictures to post because, in the midst of the chaos that has been my life for the past couple of weeks, I dropped a bowl of cereal and milk onto the keyboard of my beloved Mac, and now she is no more. I am relegated instead to the slow, inconsistent, colorless, hinky machinations of a back-up PC laptop (which has a mouse/cursor that meanders randomly across the screen) whilst I repair/replace my Mac, and unfortunately for the blog, it is a pain in the neck to load photos on the PC (see above: random mousing).

So. No pics.

Anyway, today I start the long-delayed garden clean up. I have a couple of weeks before Walu and I take off for Chicago to visit his parents, and I can get boatloads done in that time. Hopefully, I'll be able to show you some before/after pics sooner, rather than later. In the meantime, it is worth pointing out to you, in the event you had not noticed, that I am closing in on the half-way mark of the Bike Garden Challenge. It could even be something that could happen this week, should I get really, really ambitious. To do that, however, would mean that I'd ride more than I ever had in a single week, however, so the prospect looks a bit daunting to me. You might wonder why I'd want to do it all this week--why not just putter along and hit the half way mark next week?

Well, this Saturday the GRUB farm is having their annual spring Friends and Family tour/lunch out at the farm, and I got to thinking that it would be fun to ride out there on my bike and turn the ticker over the halfway point then. I dunno, though. It could be too ambitious a plan, especially given the windy days we've had this spring, so I'll just have to see how it all goes. I'll keep you posted, either way.

(And I'd post links to the Bike Garden Challenge, the GRUB farm, and their annual Family and Friends lunch/tour, but it is too hard to do on this Pleistocene era PC [see above: random mousing], so you'll just have to do the search yourself.)

Annette the Xtracycle goes shopping for roses

2011-05-04T17:25:00.004-05:00

I am in the lull between the end of classes and the beginning of grading finals, so I thought it might be a good time to work on the garden. I've been wanting to try my hand at roses this year, ever since noticing some spectacular plants in some of the older neighborhoods I ride my bikes through. They look fabulous, even when everything else is succumbing to the drought and our unusually harsh winter temperatures. So I thought I'd ride on down to my local nursery and see what they were offering. When I got home from work today, however, I was feeling kind of blue and unmotivated to ride, in part because the wind is blowing gangbusters for what seems like the umpteenth day in a row. So I sat around the house for about half an hour, feeling sorry for myself and generally crabby, before I finally dragged Annette out of the shop and into the sun.

It's a funny thing about Annette. She doesn't seem to mind a blustery day. She is heavy and slow, and rides like a stately cruise ship. When I turn her into the wind, there is scarcely a ripple of acknowledgement from her that conditions might be harsh. She simply rides on--stoic, steady, serene.

By the time I got to the nursery, I was feeling a wee bit better, but still crabby. I picked out my roses, and some herbs, too, and loaded up her large saddle bags.

I took off down the street, and then oh, my goodness gracious, the wind swirled and whipped around me and I was bathed in the smell of roses.

I stopped off at Holly Hop Ice Cream Shoppe for an iced tea to go, and then tuned my iPhone to KPLU, "where the temperature is always cool," and rolled on, smelling of roses and listening to west coast jazz in that old-fashioned, tinny, summery sound that only radios in the open air can make.

It was beautiful.

Here is what she carried for me, all safe and sound, ready to be planted:

A pick of planted peppers

2011-04-25T15:30:00.001-05:00

Sweet:

Super banana supreme

Valencia orange

California wonder

Hot:

Jalapeno

Poblano

Plus one eggplant:

Ichibon

And a knockout rose.

Vegetables courtesy of Chef Jeff's; all plants purchased at Little Red Nursery.

Lesser Prairie Chicken Festival

2011-04-20T17:45:00.006-05:00

Each year for the past four years, I've taken some students to the High Plains Prairie Chicken Festival in Milnesand, New Mexico. We eat good food, rise early to watch the chickens, and then the students do a service project while I teach a workshop in field sketching. This is followed by more good food and a ride home in the van.

This year I got some pretty good photographs of male chickens in their courtship display, using a simple digital camera with a telephoto lens (Canon Powershot). Here is a sampler:

It was non-stop chicken love on the prairie.

And lookit, if seeing the photos of the chickens doesn't inspire you to sign up next year, then you ought to do it just for the green chile stew they serve you the night before.

Squirrels

2011-04-19T21:00:00.001-05:00

On bike racks and friendly merchants

2011-04-14T10:30:00.013-05:00

I've been using my bike, La Chica, as much as I can for everyday errands in order to rack up the mileage on the Bike Garden Challenge, and in doing so, I've learned some interesting stuff:

1) I tote up a lot of mileage this way, which leads me to suspect that when I'm not on my bike, I'm burning a lot of fossil fuel just do some pretty inconsequential stuff*;

and,

2) Safe, non-paint-scratching places to lock your bike are not to be taken for granted.

About this last thing, I'd like to give a shout-out to those merchants in town who have paid heed to the desperate pleas of commuting cyclists. Like this very nice man--let's call him "John" (since that's what it says on his name tag)--a store director at Market Street:

Upon being told by a cyclist (me) that the bike racks were put in too close to the store after their recent renovation (making it impossible to hook a wheel over the rack in order to lock the bike), he promptly had the racks re-set at the proper distance. (Seriously, he had them re-set within a week.) There are two racks at the store, and they were both set too close, and he had them both fixed. This is the way they look now:

Notice that I can loop the front wheel over far enough to put the lock through the frame. And yes, yes, I know that I should really lock the back wheel up as well, and blah, blah, blah. We live in LBB, people, and I was only running inside the store for a few minutes--my point here is that I could do that if I wanted to because the rack is set up properly.

I can imagine that this actually cost Market Street some money, since the racks were set in concrete (as all racks should be). And yet, when a customer explained what the problem was, John took care of it. He didn't say (either out loud, or as far as I know, to himself) "Silly hippy cyclists! There aren't that many of them, anyway. What's the big deal?"

Instead, he took me at my word that it was a problem and fixed it right away.

Every single time I ride my bike to Market Street now and lock up at the rack, I smile. Every single time. I also tell all my friends about it. That's a lot of customer goodwill, my friends.

When I don't shop at Market Street for groceries, I'm just around the corner at our neighborhood store, Lowe's. This shop has been a mainstay in the neighborhood for many, many years, and for just as many of those years, we who rode our bikes to the store had to lock them to posts along the breezeway. Recently the store underwent renovation, however, and when the dust had cleared, here was what we found out front:

Chapeau to you, too, Lowe's.

Finally, though I don't have any pictures to show you, I recently asked the people at my favorite prairie park, Lubbock Lake Landmark, if it would be possible to move the existing bike rack from the parking lot on top of the hill, where it was out of sight, down to a place that was closer to the entrance of the visitors center, where bikes could be more easily monitored. And guess what? The last time I was there, that is exactly what they were in the process of doing. I love those people. Seriously love them.

Compare these examples to a local megabookstore (whom we shall call MBS) and mall (hereafter called SPM). On a few occasions, I've found myself riding to MBS for this or that, only to find that there isn't a bike rack anywhere to be found. This leaves me in the awkward position of having to lock it to the only available structure in the vicinity, which happens to be a handicap parking sign. For a variety of reasons, this makes me squirm, not the least of which is that I think it is actually illegal to do it.

So a couple of times, I've asked the clerks at MBS to ask their management to put in a bike rack, to which they always reply, "Oh, that's the responsibility of the mall owners."**

The last time they told me this, I went looking for the SPM owners, and found their office, hidden in dark, labyrinthian recesses of the mall. I walked in with my helmet and my sack, with the MBS logo stamped prominently on it, and said, "I'm here to put in a request for a bike rack."

The SPM receptionist, who was very, very nice***, took note of the sack and knew immediately just where I wanted that rack to be located. She said, "Oh there used to be one there, but it got removed during construction, and just hasn't been put back in yet."

Yet? Yet? The construction of the new MBS storefront was completed, what, two years ago? I'll tell you what, y'all provide the rack, I'll be down there on Saturday with a couple of friends and an impact drill with a concrete bit, and we'll put that rack in for you. Better yet, I'll get John from Market Street to arrange it.

We'll even paint it Empire Green to match the MBS flagship colors.

The receptionist did point out that there were two bike racks on the mall premises, and she showed me on the map where to find them. I only went looking for one, and here it is:

What is wrong with this picture? Discerning cyclists will know that 1) it is tucked away, at the back of the mall, out of sight (a perfect opportunity for thieves to have their way with your bike, at leisure) and 2) it is too close to the wall. In this situation, one has to turn the bike sideways to get some purchase on the matter (notice that this renders the rack useless to any other cyclists who might want to use the lonely rack):

Also, please notice that I did a little better job of locking up, owing to my worries about the location of the rack.

So to summarize:

1) Market Street, Lowe's, LLL = smiles and good will when I ride up = loyalty.

2) MBS and SPM = not so much.

To be fair, perhaps the People Who Matter at SPM simply are not aware that I'd like a bike rack at MBS. I'm not sure how many people I have to tell it to in order to get to the Top Person In Charge of Putting In Bike Racks. Perhaps I've been spoiled by my experience with Market Street, where I only needed to say to a clerk, "Hey...," and the next thing I knew, an entire store director was listening to my concerns, taking them seriously, and doing something about them.

And in return, I know where I'm doing my shopping.

*Most days, this is around 6 miles, but I've even had some days where I've ridden 15-18 miles, just doing errands.

**Yes, but don't you think that if MBS, which is the really, really, really big 800-pound gorilla on the block, said, "Gee, a bike rack would be nice," that SPM would scramble to put one out there for them?

***Actually, she was very helpful and kind, though I didn't get any sense that any immediate action in re bike-rack-putting-in was going to occur, owing to the fact that whoever was supposed to be in charge of such things was, literally, out to lunch.

I was thinking of writing a memoir, but I've already forgotten everything

2011-04-07T07:30:00.010-05:00

I've been reading Tina Fey's memoir, Bossypants, which I find ~~funny~~ stinkin' hilarious, but also uncomfortably familiar in the parts about her awkward childhood. It may come as a surprise to people who know me now*, but I was actually a bit of a geek growing up:

I'd thought I'd forgotten that painful period of my life, but here comes Tina to remind me. It has all come flooding back. I'm going to have to go into therapy to forget this all over again:

The book makes me squirm a lot less when we get to the part about her professional life as a comedy writer. I am not going to give any of it away, though, since I don't want to steal any of her punch lines. All I will say, besides the fact that it is ~~stinkin' hilarious~~ an absolute laff riot, is that it actually has some helpful tips on life, particularly when she talks about what she's learned from Lorne Michaels about being the boss of people, and the proper attitude to take when someone says they don't think you can/should do something because you are female. The book is worth reading for this alone. It's worth reading for the funny bits, too, but I actually feel like I got the price of admission back when I got to those chapters.

Warning for the faint of heart: Fey occasionally uses the sort of language I employ while trying to install a kitchen sink. Also, some of her opinions may rankle you. But you know what? They're her opinions; she's entitled to them.

Before I leave this impromptu book review I am going to give away one teensy part, since I woke up thinking about this bit when she is talking about getting a celebrity photo shoot done. Besides the free coffee bar, the fancy location that is nicer, more glamorous, and swishier than "[wherever it was] you had your wedding," and the people fussing over your hair and face in a manner that is more soothing than eating anything with green chiles and lots of cheese, there is this:

"While this is going on, someone gives you a manicure and a pedicure. At really fancy shoots, a celebrity fecalist will study your bowel movements and adjust your humours."

My own humours have been out of sorts all week, though I'm not sure why. All I know is that I've been feeling wretchedly grumpy and blue, and try as I might, I couldn't seem to shake it. Yesterday, though, one of my classes and I worked on a little service project out at Lubbock Lake Landmark. We were clearing kochia, a non-native and very invasive plant, from an arroyo bank in preparation for re-seeding it with native grasses and wildflowers:

It was hot, dirty, and windy work, and so afterwards, we went to Holly Hop Ice Cream Shoppe to settle the dust:

Though I wouldn't have called any part of it as glamorous as a photo shoot, I think there must have been a celebrity fecalist around somewhere during all this, because when I woke up this morning, I found that my humours had been fully adjusted.

*And yes, this is irony. Or self-delusion. Take your pick.

Newsy news: Book signing this Saturday

2011-04-05T06:45:00.000-05:00

Hey, LBB peeps, this coming Saturday I will be signing copies of my book, How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook, at the local Barnes and Noble, South Plains Mall on Slide Road. The book signing is scheduled to start at 1 PM, but I'm not exactly sure when it will end. I'll try to find out in the next day or two and let you know. In any case, I hope you'll come out to see me--we can have tea, and chocolate, and a chat.

It's time

2011-04-03T08:46:00.003-05:00

Cherokee Purple

Old German

Brandywine

Sun Sugar Cherry

La Chica gets a spruce-up: a review of the Salsa, two years in

2011-04-01T23:12:00.054-05:00

Before I get to the big unveiling of La Chica's spring makeover, I'd like to announce that as of yesterday, I've sold all of the first bike jersey order. As a result, I was able to donate $170.11 dollars to the South Plains Food Bank farm this morning; part of that was from the sales of the jerseys themselves, and part was from a little extra kicked in by one of the donors. Brothers and sisters, we are well on our way. Woot!

And now, on to the business at hand.

It's been a while since I reviewed my Casseroll, La Chica, and since my counter service tells me that people frequently come to my blog through a search for this particular Salsa model, I thought I'd provide an update. I built this bike up about two years ago as a city commuter (seen in this post), and during that time, I've tinkered around with different components, trying to find the best combination for how I actually use it. Two years of steady use also has allowed me to think about the Salsa Casseroll frame, too, and how well it is suited for a commuter, so I'm ready to share some thoughts on that.

The Casseroll frame was designed to be nimble, sturdy, and versatile. You can build it up as a fully-kitted randonneur with 35mm tires, or a skinny-tired road bike, or a fixie (though I'm still baffled as to why someone would pass on the chance to use gears), or anything in between. I've been pleased with it except for a couple of things. First, the paint is a little overly-delicate and tends to scratch anytime you lean it against a post or hook it over the top of a cheap bike rack (sorry, sometimes a body just doesn't get a choice in where she locks her bike), or even if you just look at it wrong. But I bought the bike to be a work-horse, not a coddled show piece, so this doesn't actually bother me.

Much.

Second, the rear has horizontal dropouts for the wheel.

I think the intent on Salsa's part was to make it easy for people wanting a single speed or fixie to adjust the tension of the chain by simply moving the wheel back and forth. Or something like that. What it creates, though, is a wheel that is difficult to remove when you need to work on it, as well as one that has an annoying tendency to slip sideways on a hard crank unless you tighten the skewer down really, really, really hard. Seriously, I use a rubber mallet to hammer the quick-release closed in order to get enough tension on the skewer. Maybe this is not so bad for people who don't have middle-aged, slightly arthriticky hands, but all I'll say for myself is that then when I need to open the quick-release, I usually have to look around for something to use as a lever. Goodness help me if I'm stuck somewhere on the side of a road with a flat and not a tree limb in sight to use for a lever. I'd have to send Lassie out to tell Timmy I'd fallen down a well. Or something.

Honestly, I've found the horizontal drop out thing so aggravating lately, I'm not sure I'd buy this frame again, had I to do it over.

On the other hand, it is indeed a versatile beast, and that lets me try out various configurations in accordance to my whims, boredom, imagination, need to tinker, and general inability to let well enough alone. I think the desire to bling up my bikes stretches all the way back to my childhood, when I used to spend hours and hours in the garage, decorating my hand-me-down Sears special for the New Mexico State Fair parade:

That's my younger brother standing in front of me with his bike. He didn't get a hand-me-down, because he was the only boy in the family and had to have a boy's bike, whereas I had two older sisters and so had a bike that was someone else's first. I ask you, does he look happy that he has his own bike? No, not at all. But I'm not bitter, and that's what important.

Also, for La Chica in particular, I am probably subconsciously trying to re-create something from the schoolyard. We all used to park our bikes along a fence at Del Norte Elementary, in a sort of bike corral, and they all looked more or less the same, which is to say, a gangly blend of single-speed Searsy-Wardsy-Green Stampy-Huffyishness. And then one day, this kid shows up with an English three speed that he'd gotten for Christmas, and all of us who cared about the fine things in life were struck dumb with awe. It stood among our ratty heaps of rust as a champion thoroughbred stands among donkeys.

Plus, it had gears.

My envy knew no bounds. Even today, thinking about that bike makes me want to weep with desire. It was every bit of smart, funny, classy, pretty, fashionable, stylish, popular, etc. that I was not. I mean, look at that picture of me at the parade to see what I mean. QED, my friends. QED.

It is fair to say I haven't worked out all of my childhood issues.

Here then are the components, in no particular order, and my thoughts on how well they work for zipping around town with a light load:

Tires:
Right now I'm running Vittoria Randonneurs 28mm, which are plenty fast for commuting, but nice and cushy, too. I started with Gatorskins 25mm and made the change when winter rolled in this year, thinking that the tread on the Vittorias would be better for wet conditions, should the heavens ever decide to send us some drought-relief. I like the ride of the 28s so much, I'm probably going to keep them.

Handlebars:
I started with mustache handlebars, but they had me too stretched out. So I switched to drops, which I used for the better part of a couple of years and was happy enough with, but as time has gone by, I've grown tired of the gymnastics it takes to see traffic conditions. More recently I tried Nitto North Roads, which allowed me a more upright seated position, the better to keep an eye on things. The North Roads were too wide, though, and made me feel all wobbly and vertiginous, so I switched to Nitto Doves, which, as Goldilocks would say, are just right.

However, changing the angle of the upper body on a bike also means that all the other angles change, too. So it took me several days of messing around with the seat and cleat positions to find the sweet spot where hands and knees didn't hurt.

I've added leather washer grips, and wrapped part of the handle to allow me to change hand positions on longer stretches of a ride to avoid fatigue (see above, in re arthriticky hands). I had cork grips, but the washer grips have more, well, grippiness, and they are big and fat, which feels good to my creaky hands. These are not the pricey Brooks washer grips, but a set of cheap knock-offs I found on Amazon, and as far as I can tell, they are just fine. This has been a very good combination so far. In general, in fact, I am liking this handlebar and grip configuration better than any I've tried on this bike, in spite of all the tweaking it took to make my knees happy.

The upright position does make me tad slower than when I use drop handlebars, probably as much to owing to the change in leg angle as to catching more wind. But since the purpose of this bike is for commuting around town, I'm happy enough with that. If I ever wanted to take La Chica on a real randonneuring ride, I'd switch back to drops so that I wouldn't be left behind.

Fenders:

I rode with plastic SKS fenders for a couple of years, but always liked the look of hammered metal ones. (I'm pretty sure that had they been around forty some odd years ago, that English three speed would have had hammered metal fenders.) So a couple of weeks ago I ordered some Velo Orange fenders and switched out the SKS.

While I was able to put the SKS fenders on in an hour or so, it took me the better part of half a day to attach the Velo Orange. After riding around with them for a few days, I can say that while I think they look very elegant, I'm probably going to swap them for the old SKS. The trouble is that the metal fenders are noisy. They have a rattle that I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how much I tighten everything down, and when they pick up a stone, it clatters around like you're shaking a drunken banshee in a tin can.

Now, it is safe to say that about most things in life I am pretty relaxed when it comes to tidiness--one need only to see my kitchen counters to see that this is true. But when it comes to bikes, I'm a bit obsessive compulsive--gears have to shift properly, brakes must stop on a dime, and the seat position must be just so. So a misplaced squeak or rattle means that something isn't working perfectly and in a very short while, it can drive me batty. I'm going to give it one more shot this weekend to see if I can't tighten things down; after that, they're going the way of the dodo.

Of course, working on it this weekend will mean looking for a lever to open the quick-release skewer...

Seat bag:

It has taken me a very long time to find a bag that suits my needs. Part of the problem has been the Brooks saddle that I use, which is a Champion Flyer S. I adore my Brooks (yes, I do), but between the saddle's springs and the "lip" of the rear rack (you can just barely see it in the photo), nearly every bag I've tried winds up getting wedged under the seat in such a way that I can't actually pull things out of it very conveniently. Furthermore, in order to get a bag to fit, it has to be fairly small, and while I can usually pack a flat kit, that's all I can pack. So, if I want to add a headlight or tail light for those times when I get caught out after dark, or pack a sandwich or a camera for a picnic ride, I have to add a pannier of some sort.

I bought this Acorn bag a week ago, however, and to my delight, it was instantly just about perfect in every way. It sits out over the lip of the rack and in front of the springs, so it is easy to get in it. It is also large enough for my flat kit, my emergency lights, and a sandwich from Which Wich, all at once. My only complaint is that feeding the leather straps through the Brooks attachment loops was not at all a party. Well, unless it was the kind of party where you end up sitting next to a loud drunk. With aggressive politics. And the onion dip has run out.

If you want to try attaching one for yourself someday, I'd suggest using needle nose pliers and holding your mouth just so, while thinking of imaginative ways not to curse.

The attaching problem is as much the fault of the narrowness of the loops on the saddle as it is of the bag. Even so, you have to pull the leather strap out of the bag and re-thread it after running it through the saddle loops, and by the time you are finished, you are really finished, as in, "Well goodness. I'm never doing that again." In all other respects, the bag is well made--extremely so--and rather classy looking. I love this bag. I can picture it on the three speed.

There you have it. I'm fairly happy with La Chica. The things that bother me about the bike are really pretty minor, though if I wore skirts more often than once every geologic epoch, I'd probably need a mixte instead of a men's frame. As it is, I can always use Annette the Xtracycle (which has a mixte frame) for those rare occasions when I have to dress up in what my friend Terri calls a "credibility costume." But as La Chica is now, she's quick and nimble, while providing me with a smooth, comfortable ride. She makes a boon companion on runs around town.

The Cosmic Explorer goes for a ride and discovers progress

2011-03-30T09:07:00.014-05:00

A few years ago, the city started building a large freeway system through town that ran right next to the campus. Named after a beloved women's basketball coach, Marsha Sharp, the freeway is massive and effectively separated the main campus from both the University Medical Center (our teaching hospital) and all of west Lubbock for any foot and bicycle traffic. Well, it cut off that part of town unless you had a death wish and tried to ride on the freeway itself.

As part of the University's Master Plan, however, a shared use path was installed to connect the campus to a satellite commuter parking lot west of the freeway. I knew about the path, but hadn't realized that they had finished it until this semester, when a student who lives west of Quaker Avenue said she's been wanting to ride her bike to campus, but didn't know how to get across the freeway. So one day at lunch, I took The Cosmic Explorer out for a look and was delighted to find that the path not only crosses the freeway:

it also continues on through the commuter lot:

and takes you through this gateway (seen from the backside):

into Greek Circle (no excuses now, Kappas!), and hence safe access to Quaker:

It even carries into the Carillon Senior Living Center campus, where I suppose you can book a room in advance if you are feeling your age from all that riding:

The landscaping is unfinished in most places, and given the university's recent deep budget cuts, that's unlikely to change soon:

And in the tradition of bike paths everywhere, it ends rather abruptly in spots:

But I am so pleased and grateful that attention has been paid to crossing the freeway safely that I'm willing to wait for the day that they can address these things.

After checking out the shared use path, The CE and I rode back onto the main campus, where we stopped for a snack break at one of my favorite benches:

And then paused to admire the tulips on Memorial Circle, beneath the statue of Will Rogers:

Thank you, Texas Tech University and The University Health Sciences Center, for stepping up and providing something that improves the safety and quality of our lives.

#Episode 4879 in The War of the Squirrels

2011-03-28T06:34:00.005-05:00

Yes, once again I am foolishly attempting to foil the fluffy-tailed darlings. This time I've put poultry wire around the raised beds, not to keep the little rats out, but to do so with the dogs, who would think nothing of "claiming" my lettuce and tomatoes with their, um...perfume. By doing this I can open the gate to the veggie garden and release the hounds on the toothy, nut-and-tomato-and-hose eating minxes.

And if I get mad enough--and lord knows I am close to that point--I am going to wire the tomato cages (after I set them up) with an electric shock to get the attention of the furry ambassadors from Order Rodentia.

Naturally, I expect that this plan will be as successful as all my other plans for dealing with this plague of pestilential Scourgels that has been visited upon me and my helpless, undeserving garden. All of which is to say, this latest attempt will probably fail like all the others.

When it comes to hopeless tasks, Sisyphus has nothing on me.

&*^$%# Squirrels

2011-03-27T07:53:00.003-05:00

They chewed not one, but ~~five~~ nine* of these holes in my hose last week:

Every time I'd repair one, they'd chew another.

I am fed. UP.

Time to get serious.

*I found more as I was repairing today's damage.

At last

2011-03-25T09:06:00.000-05:00

Annette the Xtracycle goes to class

2011-03-24T07:27:00.002-05:00

I had a lot of stuff to carry to class out at Lubbock Lake Landmark yesterday, and it briefly crossed my mind to drive the car. But it was such a pretty spring day, with only light winds of 10 mph or so, and I felt I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. After all, how many truly glorious days do we get in a lifetime?

So into Annette the Xtracycle's spacious saddlebags I packed the Power Point projector, my Apple computer, a thick file of maps, my Crazy Creek chair, a small chalkboard, a chalk eraser, a jacket in case it got cold on the way home, a hat, a bike lock, and a cup of iced tea from Sbx.

Loaded up, Annette travels the highways like a stately queen. She is slower than waiting for Christmas, but as steady as a cruise ship on a glassy sea.

Our little trip to LLL added 9 miles to the Bike Garden Challenge kitty, plus there were a couple more from errands earlier in the day.

Garden gloves, a review

2011-03-23T05:48:00.011-05:00

Fifty some odd years of active living have left me with hands that don't work as well as they used to, so I protect them as much as I can these days by wearing gloves at all times whenever I'm working in the garden. In fact, I go through about three pair every year, so this has caused me to have some opinions about what makes a good work glove for women. Here are two of my favorites, for different reasons and purposes:

This pair of Ethel gloves (shown above) was passed along to me by my good friend Cindy, of From My Corner of Katy. We were both at a Garden Writers Association meeting in Dallas last summer, and this pair was in a goody bag Cindy picked up at a reception. Sadly, my goody bag didn't have any gloves, and this made me ridiculously despondent. Cindy, being the good soul that she is, swore up and down that she couldn't wear these gloves, so she gave them over to me. The only problem was, they were a size too small. I took them anyway because I am greedy.

As it turned out, these have become my favorite gloves for nearly every task, precisely because they are a size smaller than I would have bought. In fact, I have another pair of Ethels that are the "right" size, and I put these on instead. The reason is that the snug fit, which has grown slightly stretched and more comfortable over time, has made them like wearing a pair of surgical gloves. I have terrific "feel" for delicate work while wearing them. They are almost like a second skin, only less likely than my real skin to suffer the slings and arrows of gardening--which in turn means that once I put them on, I seldom have to take them off until my work is done.

This pair, by Womanswork, was also a freebie, though I can't remember from where. They are a little thicker and chunkier, so not as useful for sensitive tasks, but that also means that they will stand up better to abrasive work, like one might do when moving stones. In spite of being more substantial than the Ethels, they are very comfortable and breathable, more so than the gloves I'd previously used for heavy work. They fit better than my former favorites, too. In fact, I like these so much, I have completely switched my allegiance and vow never to return. Probably.

An additional benefit is that the Womanswork also have a weird suede-like, rubber-like palm and fingers, which seems to be relatively impervious to fluids. As a consequence I like to wear them while painting, instead of latex gloves, which always get hot and sticky.

Between the two brands, I figure I've got things covered. I don't like the color on either pair, but I figure, what-the-hey, they were free. Besides, I'll wear these out about mid-summer and need to buy new pairs, so I'll have a little more control over the important stuff.

A practical primer on prepping and painting

2011-03-22T09:10:00.006-05:00

Though woodworkers like to get all poeticky and say the wood is alive, it is NOT, in fact, a living organism. Wood belonged to a tree at one time that was indeed alive, but that tree got cut down, and so wood is by definition dead. However, what woodworkers actually mean is that wood is organic, and as such, it can take on moisture or lose it. When it fluctuates in its moisture content, its fibers swell and shrink accordingly. So it moves around a bit, which may be why some more, shall we say, fanciful and highly imaginative woodworkers think it is still living.

That moving around a bit is a problem, however. Swelling and shrinking eventually lead to cracking and splitting, which is why if you have a wooden structure that will be exposed to the elements, it needs to have some sort of protection. Some woods, like teak, redwood, and cedar have this protection naturally. They'll weather nicely, turning gray, but otherwise showing little wear for years and years.

Other woods do not fair as well. The mighty oak, for example, that majestic tree that we all like to compare ourselves to when we are pretending to be tougher than we actually are, is a real wimp when water comes creeping around.

And pine? Forget it. It folds faster than an origami chair.

So if you are faced with using a wood that is not cedar, redwood, or teak for an outdoor project, you need to offer it some protection from the elements. In most cases, this means painting. Since restoring a previously painted structure is harder than painting a new one, I'm going to focus on that. Here is what I have learned from many, many, many years of a) not listening to my dad, b) deciding finally to listen to my dad because doing a) turned out not to work so well, and c) experience as a poeticky woodworker who is also a realist.

PREPPING:

1) Don't take short cuts. Prepping is boring, it's hard, it's time-consuming, and it has zero instant gratification. Nevertheless, if you think, "Oh for goodness sake, how serious could it be to leave a little loose paint or dirt on the surface?" or "I'll just fill in that little crack with some extra paint," put down your tools, walk away, and go buy a new gate, because the paint job you are putting on this one is going to fall apart as soon as you turn your back. In fact, the moment you start to say, "How necessary is..." this paint job is going to start looking around for a place to die.

2) Remove ALL loose paint. Then sand the edges.

3) Fill ALL cracks and holes with good, fresh, flexible, paintable wood putty. Don't be seduced into thinking that you can just put more paint in that crack and have it hold together. Modern paints are fabulous, but they can't work miracles.

Here is why you are filling all the cracks: most paints have some flex in them, which is what you want because the fibers of the wood are squirming around slightly as the moisture content of the air is changing, remember? However, they have limits on how far they can stretch, so if you don't fill the cracks, eventually the surface of the paint will fail. Once the surface of the paint is breached and a hole appears, water will seep in and the wood will swell even more. It is over at that point. You have lost the battle. Let the paint peeling begin.

4) Remove all dry rot. There is a reason it is called "rot." It will not stop once it has started, no matter how many layers of paint you slap on there. Cut it out until you see fresh wood. If this makes a hole in your sill, or removes part of a panel, replace that with fresh wood. If the piece is small enough, you can even use bondo--that putty used for repairing dents in cars.

5) If you need to glue something, as I did with the joints in the gate (but not the slats, since you actually want them to be able to move around as they shrink and swell; if they are unable to do this, the wood will split), use a quality waterproof glue. I use Titebond III (not Titebond II, which is only water resistent). This is the glue I use on my canoe paddles, and it holds up to water wonderfully.

This is the take-home message for prepping: While some moisture will always be in the wood, the purpose of the paint is to create a protective skin to keep as much water as possible out, all in order to limit how much movement occurs. You have to do everything you can to keep that protective layer intact. Hence the scraping, the cleaning of dirt, the filling of holes.

PAINTING:

1) Prime all surfaces, even if you've got the fancy paint that claims to be paint and primer all in one. Trust me on this. Remember, you are trying to seal the wood, and this is what a dedicated primer does best.

2) Use two coats of paints, even if you've spent the big bucks (which I recommend on paint) and gotten the high end, so-called "one coat" paint. The advertisers lie. You will need two coats.

3) Between coats of paint, you can wrap your paint brush tightly in a plastic bag. The sky will not fall down if you don't clean it between coats, and this saves you some labor. You worked hard on the prepping, so you are due for some labor-saving.

4) Use a paint key to open your cans of paint, not a screw driver. The store where you buy you paint should give you these for free. If they do not, go someplace else. Screw drivers ruin the edges of the lid, making it hard to close it tightly.

5) Keep the rims of your paint can clean to ensure proper closure of the lid. There are a variety of ways to do this. If I have to pour the paint into another container, I use a special plastic lid with a hole in the top that keeps the rim clean. You could also simply wipe it with a paper towel.

6) Use a large rubber mallet to GENTLY tap the lid back down on the can. Don't use a regular hammer (SEE ABOVE, in re damage to the lid).

6) When you are finished, clean your brushes until you see no more paint coming out of them.

Now you are finished and you have done a fabulous job. Your gate looks adorable. Even so, it is still an organic thing, so don't expect that this happiness will last forever. Eventually, you will have to go through the process again. The good news is that if you have done it right this time, that moment will be a long time coming.

Wine cups

2011-03-20T07:29:00.004-05:00

I went to San Angelo for a couple of days this week and while out walking along some railroad tracks near the art museum, I found wine cups blooming. Much is made of the Texas bluebonnet, but to my thinking, nothing holds a candle to the first appearance of Callirhoe in the spring.

I bought some wine cups last fall at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's annual sale and brought them back to LBB, where I planted them in my front garden. We get other members of the wild mallow family growing around here, but I can't recall seeing wine cups, so I have no idea whether my transplants will survive or bloom. But you know what? If they don't, that will be okay. There need to be some things in life that do not bend to our will, but remain steadfast to their own. It makes them that much more extraordinary.

UPDATE: Just went out to check, and the plants themselves have made it through our rather cold winter, so it remains to be seen whether they'll bloom this year or next.

From the Department of Other News: I'm doing a few local book-signings and in the immediate and near future, so if you're around, come on out and see me:

Later today I will be at Lubbock Lake Landmark hosting a nature journaling workshop as part of their 75th Anniversary Extravaganza. I'll also be signing my book, How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook.
I'll also be part of a public reading and book-signing on campus this week for an anthology I co-edited with Kurt Caswell and Diane Hueter Warner, To Everything on Earth. Kurt, Diane, Joy Kennedy and I will all be reading from our essays. The event will take place March 24th at 7:30, in the Formby Room on campus.
I also have a book-signing scheduled April 9th at 1PM at the Barnes and Noble on Slide Rd. More details as that develops.

Books will be available for purchase at all these events, but if you already have a copy and want to bring it out, I'll be happy to sign it!

A parade of hats

2011-03-18T07:19:00.015-05:00

As I was working outside today, it occurred to me, not for the first time, how much I cherish the opportunity to wear hats. I was diagnosed with two forms of skin cancer by the age of 36, and thus my fondness for the chapeau began.

Believe it or not, these are just a few of the hats I own, but they represent the pile that I choose from most often. I've found most of them in my travels, so they also represent memories. I find that if I'm having a happy time on a trip, I tend to buy a hat to commemorate it:

And here is a line-up of the ones that I usually wear out in the garden or on the river when I go canoeing:

This is my all-time favorite, found in a little shop in Santa Fe. That's a "stampede string" you see on the back of the brim; I found it at a neighborhood boot repair shop and added it later. Stampede strings are usually made of woven horse hair and tie under your chin to keep your hat on your head during, well, a stampede. I don't get a lot of stampedes in my garden, so I use it for windy days:

This is a very comfortable hat that I found at a nursery at the Garden Bloggers Fling in Buffalo last year. I really like it, but it lacks a stampede string for windy days:

I got this one from a nature store in Albuquerque a few years ago; it is also comfy, without a proper means of attaching it sur la tête:
:

This is also my all-time favorite (I am allowed to have two). I bought this hat on Martha's Vineyard during a vacation. It is lightweight, with a linen crown and woven brim, making it the most comfortable and stylish of all my hats. In fact, all hats should be made this way from this time forward; I've never found another like it, though, so I suppose that is unlikely to happen. (What makes it so comfortable also makes it more fragile, so perhaps this is the reason.) I made a stampede string for it out of leather (not shown in the photo) since it didn't come with one. I guess they don't get a lot of stampedes in Martha's Vineyard, either. I love this hat, and use it sparingly these days for fear of wearing it out.

My fully-immersible and quick-drying river hat, with the logo for the Natural History and Humanities degree program on the front:

And a description on the back:

If I start out the day wearing a hat, I won't take it off in public, because I simply don't have the kind of hair that responds well to mashing. This has given me the opportunity to try to spread the cheer of hat-wearing as I've worn them into hardware and grocery stores. Strangely, in a part of the country where cowboy toppers are common on the heads of men, people seem oddly resistant to the idea of women wearing hats. That is to say, I get the looks.

To which I'd like to say, "What? You've never seen a woman wearing a proper hat?"

The big reveal

2011-03-17T07:58:00.001-05:00

By popular demand: a blue fence:

I didn't stain the stringers. They are cedar and will weather to a gray that will "disappear" next to the blue. By not staining them, if I replace the pickets in the future, I can keep the stringers as is, since they will then go with whatever new pickets I put up:

Our Scottie, Archie, is a bit of a digger, so I put flagstones at the base of the back of the fence to discourage him from this practice. We'll see if it works:

It's hard to show in the photos the cooling, soothing effect this small stretch of fence has on the rest of the yard, but here is what greets me as I go through the gate to the shop space (try to ignore the construction mess):

This is such a marked improvement over the ugliness of the hurricane fence that I don't want to wait until I get the opportunity to finish the other half of it. I'm out of time this week, though, so a wait it will have to be.

Please help me decide!

2011-03-12T15:40:00.010-06:00

I've finished painting the restored gate (more on the "how to" in a later post), and here is what it looks like:

The problem is that now it makes the fence in which it hangs look pretty awful by comparison. This is a hurricane fence that Walu and I put up when we first moved into the house, and its main purpose is to keep the dogs out of what is functionally an outdoor extension of my shop work area:

The space usually looks like what it is, which is a construction zone, and in the summer that's not so terrible, since there are trumpet and honeysuckle vines that shield the eyesore from view. However, starting last year, I've been trying to take out the trumpet vine on the right, as it has turned out to be an invasive monster from heck-and-beyond. And so I'm thinking it's finally time to replace the ugly, strictly utilitarian structure with a picket fence. My friend Nancy gave me some fence panels last year that she wasn't going to use, but the pickets are fir, which doesn't really make a good outdoor wood. Plus, all my current wooden fencing is cedar, so I'm concerned that over time, the fir will weather differently and look out of place. I could solve both these problems by staining the wood, but I can't decide on the color. This is where you can help me. Should I go with a natural, sienna-colored stain, which in itself will look different from the weathered cedar that is already there (these pickets are just leaning up there temporarily; when it is finished, the hurricane fencing will be completely gone):

Or, since it's already going to look different from the existing fencing, should I really make a statement and go with this mossy blue stain:

I think both complement the turquoise of the gate, but I'm really, um, on the fence about the choice. I need to make up my mind toot sweet, though, since I'd like to take advantage of this pretty weather that we are having and get it stained tomorrow or the next day.

Please take a moment to cast your vote, either on the poll widget at the top of the right sidebar, The Bike Garden Facebook page, or on my Twitter feed. Thanks, and I'll let you know which way it goes.

The jerseys are coming! The jerseys are coming!

2011-03-09T06:23:00.006-06:00

I had a call from Canari yesterday to tell me that the jerseys were finished and being shipped out. I am muy excited by this. Plus, it coincides nicely with my slow but steady improvement in the health department. I haven't been able to do much more for the Bike Garden Challenge than add small nibbles of commuting mileage since recovering from the flu, mainly because I am still battling some residual fatigue. This was starting to frustrate me until this weekend, when I decided to just relax and give myself permission to rest and recover. Every day I feel a tiny bit better, so eventually I'm going to feel up to the long rides again. That's a given.

Spring break is next week. I'm going to have a snappy new jersey to show off. Can a Canyon Lakes ride be far behind?

For all you who have ordered a jersey, I will ship yours out to you the day I receive them, so expect it soon!

UPDATE: Apparently I am not the only one trying to recover form on the bike after a bout with the flu: The Peloton.

Restoring a favorite garden gate

2011-03-07T06:43:00.003-06:00

This gate, which has seen better days, is the re-purposed bottom half of an old screen door. It's probably at least 20 years old, and while I've re-glued and re-painted it from time to time, I haven't ever really done more than a slap-dash job, and I think it's starting to show:

So I took it down on Saturday, broke the dowels joints completely apart and re-glued them. I haven't got a photo of that because I was working pretty quickly to get all the slats back in place before the glue dried, and didn't have a third hand to hold the camera. These days I use Titebond III as my go-to glue of choice for outdoor projects. It's waterproof and tough as nails, and a lot easier to work with than Gorilla Glue, which is what I used to use. I've used both on my canoe paddles, and haven't noticed glue failure on either.

On Sunday, I addressed the issue of dry rot on the bottom of the gate by simply cutting it off (using a circular saw and a straight edge with clamps) until I got to good wood. If I didn't remove the dry rot, any new paint I put on would come off almost immediately.

Luckily, I only had to remove about two inches--more than that and I think the proportions of the gate might have looked odd. If that had been the case, I might have considered replacing part of the bottom with new wood.

On the other hand, if I had had to go to that much trouble, I might have considered ditching the project and simply building a new gate. There comes a point where it isn't going to be worth the labor to re-purpose something...

After I removed any dry rot I could find, I filled cracks and holes with wood putty, and scraped and sanded all loose paint down to bare wood:

I managed to get the primer on, but because I'm going to have a very busy week at work, re-painting it may have to wait until this weekend. I'm kind of glad of that, however, since I'm jiggling around the idea of changing the color, and that should give me time to make up my mind...

Patience

2011-03-03T06:16:00.002-06:00

Every year, without fail, I begin to despair that spring will follow winter. And yet, there are signs:

Snow peas

Ipheion uniflorum (Star flower)

Still, the wise gardener will wait to plant most things, because winter usually likes to get in one last word. For us here in LBB, the rule of thumb is to hold off planting until the first week of April. It's hard to wait, though, with all the gorgeous, warm weather we've been having. To help me resist the siren call of spring planting, I'm planning to scratch my itch to get out in the garden with some hardscaping projects this weekend. First on the list: a fabulous idea for some raised beds in the Homesteader's kitchen garden.

Stay tuned!

Why I love teaching, continued

2011-03-02T18:44:00.000-06:00

As usual, the garden continued on in my absence

2011-02-26T10:10:00.009-06:00

When last we left the saga of the hoop house, I'd finished all but the door. As it turns out, I'm not going to have a fancy-schmancy hoop house door to show you, since the day I went out to work on it was the day I also came down with the flu. I sat in the garden staring at the project, trying to come up with a plan, but all I could think about was how I had no energy at all. Little did I know why...

In the end, I simply draped a piece of plastic sheeting over one end, connecting it with these handy clippies at the top:

and using the same to attach a left over piece of PVC down at the bottom. When I want to leave the door open, I turn the PVC upright, stick it on a piece of re-bar stuck in the ground, et voila! And you know what? It works just fine.

The clippies were suggested to me by Clare in one of the comments on the original hoop house post. They are ridiculously expensive, and I did consider cobbling up some homemade ones for a minute or two. In the end, though, I decided that I was already behind in getting things up and running, and what little spare time I had could be better used elsewhere. I ordered them from Territorial Seed and they arrived within a week. They are easy to attach, and add a fair bit of sturdiness to whole design.

I'm quite appalled at how much such a simple thing costs (roughly $1.25 apiece), but since I can re-use them every year, I suppose it is worth the investment. A package of 20 for a hoop house this size (~9' long, 5' wide, and 5' tall) is sufficient.

Chickens guarding the lettuce

Tomorrow we are supposed to have sustained winds of 35 mph, with gusts up to 60 mph, so I'll be curious to see how the hoop house holds up. I'll be sure to post a report if it blows away.

I had also started soaking snow peas for planting (they germinate better with a good overnight soak), but felt too ill for a couple of days after putting them in water to do anything about it. Eventually, however, I crawled out to the garden, dug a trench an inch deep, and planted them 2 inches apart. That was some time ago, however, and as of this morning, there was still no sign that they were planning to come up. So yesterday I started soaking another batch, and went out to the garden this morning to plant another row:

If the first batch eventually comes up, bueno, I can always pull up the second row after it germinates. If not, I've got a back up plan.

A week ago I managed to cough long and hard enough to pull some muscles in my lower back, and I've been battling muscle spasms ever since. So I don't know how quickly I'm going to get back up to speed on either the riding or the gardening. The weather reports are all about high wind warnings for a few days, however, so I don't suppose I'll miss much by being all stove up.

A chipper shredder for the community: Part 1

2011-02-23T09:45:00.003-06:00

The first time I started thinking about chipper shredders was a year ago last fall, when I was faced, once again, with the mountains and mountains of my neighbors' leaves that always wind up blanketing my front garden. Dealing with these leaves is no small task, as I've detailed here.

I've had people suggest that I simply leave them in the beds, but this underestimates just how many leaves we're talking about. I'm all for a winter mulch, but not for whole scale smothering. Furthermore, the sheer volume of leaves is not immediately compostable. That is, they simply won't fit into my two compost bins. At times, I've had up to 20 large yard bags full, and they can lie around for months, waiting to be mixed in. I needed to shred the leaves I gathered, simply to reduce the volume.

This, as it turned out, was more than a bit of a wrinkle. A machine big enough for the task was too expensive, but renting one was almost just as much so. In the end, I used a combination of a leaf blower (not big enough for the task, as it turns out) and a neighbors' industrial-sized lawn vacuum (hard to handle), which I run over the piles after I've raked them out of the beds.

The second time I started thinking about a chipper shredder was that following winter, when this ice storm brought down tree limbs, not just in my yard, but all over town.

My neighbors and I saved what we could of the icefall for firewood, but even so, a lot of material went to the landfill when it could just as well been chipped up and used as mulch.

So chipper shredders were on my mind last spring when Troy Bilt contacted me and offered to let me have any tool in their catalog, up to $1000 value, if I reviewed it on these pages. Naturally, I was intrigued, especially when the representative said I was free to write whatever I wanted. And I thought I knew exactly what I would order...

Except that I just couldn't see owning a machine that would cost upwards of $800 (the price of Troy Bilt's top-of-the-line chipper shredder, the CS 4325) when I would probably only use it a couple of times a year, at most. It just seemed...extravagant. But what if it weren't just my chipper shredder, but it belonged to the whole neighborhood?

I'll admit that this idea had already crossed my mind before Troy Bilt contacted me. When I was trying to find a solution to all the downed limbs from the ice storm, I'd briefly considered approaching my neighbors about purchasing a chipper shredder together. But, as usual, I got distracted before I ever acted on it. Now the opportunity had fallen into my lap.

Even so, I thought I should poll the neighbors and see what they wanted me to get, letting them know that it would, in effect, belong to all of us. As it turned out, every single one of them picked the chipper shredder from the catalog. It seems I wasn't the only one feeling the need.

So one day last spring I took delivery of a big ol' chipper shredder from Troy Bilt. It wasn't until this past fall, however, that I finally had a chance to try it out. To give it a good test, I solicited leaves from some neighbors, who obliged by dumping them in large piles in my front yard. This is after they've been sitting there for a few days, and have had a chance to settle down (large trash can for scale):

Without further ado, here is a preliminary report:

I ran these leaves through the hopper of the shredder over a period of about two hours and the first thing I can report is that it effectively reduced the volume of leaves by at least half, and possibly by as much as two-thirds. The leaves, which were mostly from pecan trees, were shredded to a size that is very compostable. Here they are after an additional month of sitting in the compost heap:

The bag that the leaves feed into is easy to attach and detach, and is of a size that is convenient to handle. The machine is extremely easy to start and operate, and is set up so that it is as safe as operating a lawn mower.

The machine itself is very large, but while heavy, it wheels around nicely on two large tires. It comes with an attachment for a riding lawn mower (which I don't own), so you can pull it some distance that way if you needed to.

The only hitch in shredding operation that I noticed was that if there are largish sticks (greater than six inches or so) in the pile of leaves, they tend to get crossways at the bottom of the hopper and prevent leaves from feeding into the blades. Whenever that happened, I had to stop operation, turn off the chipper shredder, lay it on its side and fish the leaves out to get to the stick causing the problem. The stick was nowhere near the blades whenever this occurred, but I would disconnect the spark plug anyway, just because I'm a cautious person. This was an inconvenience, but not really a fault with the machine itself. Once I figured out what was going on, I was simply more careful to pull the sticks out before feeding the leaves into the hopper.

Finally, the machine is LOUD. You won't want to use this in the early morning hours.

It is also BIG, and it took up a lot of space in the shed. But fortunately, about the time I put the chipper shredder through its paces with the leaves, I got word that the South Plains Food Bank GRUB farm was thinking about buying one for their orchard. I contacted them and we have now made an arrangement to have the chipper shredder on permanent loan at the farm.* They get a free chipper shredder, I get storage, and my neighbors and I can come use it on the few occasions we ever need one. A perfect alignment of community needs.

In part 2 of this review, I'll report on how well the chipper works on the chores at the GRUB farm's apple orchard, and give my final impressions on the machine.

*Note: I have agreed with South Plains Food Bank to pay the taxes on the chipper shredder and retain ownership of it.

Radio Silence

2011-02-17T11:47:00.000-06:00

It seems I've picked up the flu bug, and have taken to bed for a few days. Since it is difficult to ride a bike when lying prone on one's back, it is safe to assume that I won't be posting any progress on the bike challenge for a few days. I have a report on finishing up the hoop house and sowing some seeds, but that will have to wait, too, since even writing this short report is going to cause me to have to take a bit of a lie-down.

I'll be back in a few days, though, full of spark and vim.

Sick day

2011-02-10T13:10:00.002-06:00

I woke up this morning with what is probably a mild bug going around campus. I knew it was coming, since I've been seeing an inordinate number of references to "food poisoning" on FB and Twitter. Funny how food poisoning always seems to go in these contagious waves.

Anyway, that was hours ago, and I'm already feeling nearly normal. Still, I've declared it an official "sick day," and have decided to work on blog/garden/bike/writing stuff. One of the things I've been doing is checking out other bike blogs, looking for some inspiration to get out there and ride in this unusually cold weather.* One, Let's Go Ride A Bike, has made me smile, even through the tummy rumbles, and inspired me not just to get out and pedal around, but to try to exhibit some style while doing so.

Style is not my thing. I must have been distracted by a shiny object when they were handing out style instructions at the Life Factory, since although I can recognize it whenever I see it, I am largely clueless as to how to achieve it. And if comfort and expediency also happen to be issues, then even the attempt at style is instantly off the game board.

Yesterday was a case in point. Sick and tired of being chilled to the bone, I donned flannel-lined jeans sized to fit a pear (I am an apple, so you can imagine the voluminous, calamitous results), a turtle neck, a red-checked flannel shirt, a black fleece vest, and red Rockport shoes in order to teach a class. It was a pretty frumpy outfit.

But I was warm.

Today, however, I feel inspired by LGRAB to dust off my girl card and make a stab at style while riding my bike. As soon as it's warmer. And only if it's comfortable.

Oh hell, the only promise I can make is that it won't involve over-sized flannel-lined jeans.

In other news: You may or may not have noticed that I've put a little linky-box to my favorite local bicycle shop (lbs) over on the sidebar. This is not a paid advertisement. I've simply put it there because these guys truly do keep me rolling. They are friendly, know me by name, and have helped me out of occasional tiny jams when I've dropped by and said things like, "It's making this clinking-clacking noise that is driving me nuts..."

I like them so much, I once ~~foisted~~ dropped off some Thin Mints at the shop ~~so I wouldn't eat myself into an early Girl Scout cookie grave~~ just to show my appreciation. Anyway, high time I gave them a plug.

*Well, it may not be a big deal to someone living in Chicago, but it's cold and miserable for the likes of me.

La Chica Rides: City Randonneuring

2011-02-07T07:41:00.018-06:00

Randonneuring is cycling's equivalent of a scavenger hunt. You start at a particular place (like a convenience store), ride a particular distance in a particular amount of time (say 200km in 12 hours), and stop at checkpoints along the way (often more convenience stores, so that you can fill up on Little Debbie Snack Cakes at the same time) to get something called a brevet card stamped to prove you'd been there.

I've never been on one. This is mostly because, as far as I know, there aren't any randonneuring clubs in or near LBB, which in turn is probably because there doesn't seem to be much desire to ride long distances through an ugly landscape that is also flat, windy, dry, hot, and in love with large pick up trucks.

I've always wanted to try one, though, since I have the fantasy in my head about a day of riding down lovely, twisty, peaceful, pick-up truck-free lanes with a group of people who have a loose and benign purpose in mind, such as getting a card stamped along the way. Plus, there are the Little Debbies.

La Chica, my Salsa Casseroll that I've set up as a commuter, would make a pretty fair randonneuring bike. She's steel, which gives a smoother ride than aluminum, and light and nimble on her feet. I recently outfitted her with 28mm tires, replacing the 25s that were on there, and right away I noticed a distinct difference in the butteriness of the ride. This surprised me, since I hadn't expected jumping up a tire size would have such a dramatic impact. In any case, La Chica has become--if this is possible--even more of a pleasure to take out on a spin around town.

Over the weekend, we had some residual ice and snow from the front that moved through, so I took La Chica out instead of the Ruby. The Ruby is meant to be ridden fast, and wet streets, skinny tires, and speed are not a good mix. La Chica is speedy and nimble, but not Maserati speedy, and is just as much fun to ride slow. Plus, the new tires, which while still skinny, bridge the divide between race tire and mountain bike tire width, and have a fairly grippy tread.

On Saturday I rode La Chica to the store for groceries. That was so much fun that I rode to another store. And then I rode around the 'hood for awhile, checking things out and monitoring the pulse of the community. Then I rode to campus. Then I rode to another store. And around the 'hood some more.

It was just too much fun to stop.

Sunday dawned wet, cold, and snowy. I had planned to ride across town to Petsmart to pick up some peanut suet for a bird feeder, and so at first I was disappointed to see more bad weather. But then I remembered a comment a colleague and friend had made last week on the Bike Garden's Facebook page when I was dithering about whether to ride in some of the extreme weather we were having. Jordan, who knows me well, posted this:

"You can do it! You are properly outfitted so you will be fine. You have done tons of rides but this is one you will remember."

When I say that Jordan knows me well, what I mean is that he knows that I am both drawn to adventure and afraid of it. He knows this because he and I, in fact, once went on many adventures together when we team-taught some courses for the Natural History and Humanities degree program. Here is Jordan, on the right, showing off some fresh bread he'd just baked on a canoe trip down the Brazos River:

You can end up talking a lot about life while paddling a canoe. Among other things, we talked about the willingness to take risks and worrying about things that we can't control. We talked about these things often because I have very little of the former, and do a great deal of the latter. Yet there I was, paddling a canoe, or backpacking, or bouldering, or whatever. I also worried ceaselessly, and out loud, every step of the way about every little thing that could go wrong.

I am positive I drove Jordan crazy, but good guy that he is, he tried not to show it. Much.

Jordan is in Nebraska now, where he is still teaching others about the proper balance between risk and worry, I'm sure. But all those conversations we had together in the canoe must have stuck with me, because I thought about him and his comment from a few days before as I watched the snow falling outside my window. And I knew he was right. These are the rides we remember.

So I rode to Petsmart. And it was cold, but not too cold. And I did worry, about the cold, about drivers not seeing me, about whether I was wearing too many layers and would subsequently overheat and perspire, thereby causing me to get chilled, which would lead to hypothermia, possibly before even reaching Petsmart, and I would become delirious and lost...

But then I heard some geese, flying low overhead, and lifted my eyes to watch them.

And I heard water rushing along a gutter and spilling into a storm drain and thought, "Ah yes. Water. I remember you."

And I noticed that there was hardly any traffic at all, but what there was of it was friendly and respectful of someone so foolish as to be out in bad weather on a bike.

And I relaxed into the adventure.

When I got to Petsmart I had the idea of "checking in" on Facebook, since I'd posted something about riding across town in the snow. As I did so, it occurred to me that this was like randonneuring, only without the Little Debbies:

So when I decided to go through the drive through at Rudy's BBQ place to pick up some sausage and chocolate pudding for lunch, I checked in there, too:

And I checked in at Market Street, where I stopped on the way back, to pick up a couple of items for supper:

When I asked the clerk to take my picture, he asked what I was doing, and I told him, "It's like a scavenger hunt."

Though there were not any Little Debbies involved with the trip, I was able to make do with the Girl Scout cookies that were being peddled there:

La Chica rode through the sleet and snow like a champ. I was not wearing too many layers, or too few. Drivers gave me plenty of space and shared the road. I shared my day with geese and water. And there were Girl Scout cookies at the end.

Jordan was right.

I'm thinking that this was such great fun, I'm going to do it again. I'll plan a trip around town with check points, and post my status on Facebook as I go along. Who knows, maybe some friends will join me, and we can ride along along a peaceful road, full of conviviality and cheer, getting our cards stamped on Facebook. A little city randonneuring, if you will. They'll have to get their own Girls Scout cookies, though.

Tranquillo

2011-02-02T17:24:00.019-06:00

It's a sort of snow day here--not much snow, but dangerously cold temperatures. One of the perks of being an academic is that my work is portable, meaning that if I'm not actually teaching a class, then I can work anywhere I can plug in a computer.

It happens that I do teach a class on Wednesday afternoons, but I know for a fact that some of my students don't have cars, and one or two don't even have gloves, so I was worried about them having to make a choice between safety and course obligations. We have a required, weekend field trip to go to a festival celebrating the lesser prairie chicken later in the semester, and I always give them one regular class day off in exchange. Today seemed like a good day to be that day. So, a self-imposed snow day.

The low temperature when I woke this morning was 1º F; the high right now is 13º, with a wind chill at -4º. Reason enough not to go outside for any purpose except clearing the sidewalk for my favorite mail carrier. Today is a near carbon copy of yesterday, weather-wise, so it makes two days I've decided to skip riding a bike. January was good for riding, however, and I have a nice cushion of miles in the bank on the Bike Garden Challenge.

In bike racing, Spanish cyclists and directeurs sportif will sometimes offer this admonition during the toughest, most stressful parts of a race: "Tranquillo, tranquillo." Calm, calm.

Tranquillo is how I am feeling right now about the bike challenge. When I started this project, I'd never ridden more than about 1200-1500 miles in any given year, so I was somewhat worried about whether I could do this. What I'd forgotten, however, was that in the past, I've always combined that mileage with running. This year, I've decided to forgo the running to concentrate on the cycling in an effort to increase the number of miles. And to my surprise, I find I haven't missed running at all. More importantly, neither have I missed waking up in the mornings feeling like someone has been whacking my feet and legs with a baseball bat in the night.

I've always been a runner, so this not missing it is new to me. I think I can live with it, though. I'm not saying I'll never run again, just that I've no desire to start it up right now. In the meantime, I do need to do some weight-bearing exercise to replace it, so this week I've started weight training again. Cycling, without any other sort of exercise associated with it, has been shown to contribute to bone loss, so it is not good to rely solely on it for fitness.

Tomorrow should be a bit warmer, though my WeatherUnderground desktop widget is issuing frostbite warnings through 10AM. The high is supposed to be in the mid-20's, which may still be too cold for my taste for riding. We'll just have to see. I have a lunch date at a neighborhood restaurant, Home Cafe, with one of the neighborhood association board members to discuss some plans. It would be nice to be able to ride there, as it is only a mile away.

A mile here and a mile there is how I'm racking up the total on the challenge. On any given day that I use my bike for errands or work--to school, to the grocery store, to a meeting downtown--it is possible to put anywhere from 6-15 miles on La Chica, my commuter bike. Then on the weekends, I get out The Cosmic Explorer, the racing bike, and together we add a few more to the kitty. As a result, in January I rode over 268 miles--an average of nearly 70 miles a week. Unheard of for the likes of me. Tranquillo.

All of this has made me something of an oddity in LBB, which is no Portland, or Copenhagen, or Boulder, or Austin, or Davis, or this year's winner of Bicycling Magazine's most cycling-friendly town, frigid Minneapolis, Minnesota. No, LBB is none of these. Here a body is more likely to be driving a big ol' pick-em-up truck than something that balances on two wheels. So when I show up at planning meetings with helmet hair, one pant leg rolled up, and asking if I can bring my bike into the offices (since there is seldom a bike rack available), people have a hard time hiding their bemusment. I have such a meeting on Monday, and I've already told the person setting it all up on what to expect, and why. He seemed fine with the notion. The meeting is clear across town, so maybe I'll make up a little of what I'm missing during this unruly weather. But if it turns out not to be the case, I won't be worried

A simple hoop house for the farm

2011-01-31T07:04:00.003-06:00

Over the Christmas break, I took care of a winter garden for some neighbors, Kurt and Karen. They were growing a healthy crop of greens inside a hoop house that Kurt had built, and I was impressed at how well it worked, even in some very cold temperatures.

So this weekend, in need of some R&R in the garden, I took advantage of some spring-like weather to cobble up a hoop house of my own on the farm. It's not quite finished, as I still have to make some doors for it, but this will give you an idea of the progress so far.

I had some 3/4" pvc pipe lying around from an old project, so I took that and bent it, wedging the ends against the stone sides of my raised beds: I ran one pvc pipe across the top and wired it to the hoops:

Then I added two more across the sides and metal fencing posts/stakes at either end and the middle for additional support (these were also leftovers from some old fences). All of these were attached to each other with simple baling wire:

You can see from the two photos above that this spot manages to get plenty of sunlight for at least a few hours a day, even during the winter. I'm running a soaker house along the part that gets the most sun, and leaving shaded section unplanted. I'll put down some boards to give myself a dry place to kneel while I harvest the crops. The hoops are high enough that though I have to stoop a little, I can easily move inside without feeling too cramped.

Then I covered the hoops with three foot-wide, 4 mil plastic sheeting, and attached the sheeting at the bottom to leftover pvc pipe to weight it down on the sides. I attached the top of the sheeting to the top length of pvc, using wire through spots I'd reinforce with duct tape:

On the south side of the hoop house, the pvc that weights down the plastic sheeting is in sections, so that I can open it for ventilation during warm days, shown here:

On the north side, it is one long length of pvc:

The last three photos were taken late in the day, when the sun had gone down low enough to cause the back fence to cast a longer shadow. I only mention this because it might otherwise look like the plastic sheeting was not letting in much sunlight.

I'll probably work on it a little more this week, adding doors and further securing the sheeting against the wind (of which we have plenty here on the high plains). We're supposed to get socked with another arctic front this week, so I'll wait until after that to sow the seeds.

I'll post an update of the doors when I've got them figured out and installed. The only thing I've had to buy so far is the plastic sheeting, which cost me around $10, so I'm afraid I can't give you an estimate on how much it would cost to build this from scratch.

Riding around the 'hood on a pretty January day

2011-01-28T10:13:00.001-06:00

Cycling Jersey: price breakdown

2011-01-26T10:36:00.003-06:00

I once returned $100 that a distracted bank clerk accidentally gave me.

True story.

She had counted out several hundred dollars to me while she was talking to someone, and on a hunch, I re-counted the stack of bills once I got home. Sure enough, she'd given me a hundred dollars too much. So I immediately got in my car and drove back to the bank, stood in line, and gave her the money back. Needless to say, she was happy I did this.

Why am I telling you this? Because I need you to trust me when I say that I will donate $10 to the South Plains Food Bank farm for every Bike Garden cycling jersey you buy. It's just the easiest way to go about this. I'm not trying to make a buck here--I'm just trying to have some fun and send some money to the food bank farm. But then things like state sales and federal income taxes get involved, and it gets complicated real fast.

I'm not a 501c3 and have no intention of going to the trouble to become one, so I have to charge you state sales tax. And I know that by doing it this way, I'll have to report it on my income tax return. I'm OK with that, though, since I believe in taxes. They do a lot of good for us, like, for instance, pay for public education. (We forget that sometimes.)

So that's why, even though I'm asking you to pay a little more for the jersey than they actually cost ($10 more), and telling you that that extra bit is going for a good cause instead of into my pocket, I am still going to have to charge you state sales tax. Think of the sales tax as a donation to higher education in the Great State of You Are Not the Boss of Me, which is, even as we speak, threatening to cut waaaaaay back on our funding in order to make up for a state shortfall in the budget.

To further make things simple for me, I'm going to offer just the club fit, in the short sleeve version. (Both men's and women's cuts are available.)

Here is the price break down, as best I can figure:

Short Sleeve jersey (club fit): $72* + $5.94 tax and $4.95 shipping = $82.89

If you live in LBB, you can of course pick the jersey up from me and avoid the shipping cost, so your total cost would be $77.94, including the $10 donation.

The jerseys come in both men's and women's cuts, and the size ranges are XS-XXL. Here is a link to Canari's sizing chart. You are getting what is called the "pro" fit on the chart.

I find the fit to run pretty true. To help you out with an idea of what that is, I am 5'5", and weigh 137 pounds. And I am what is euphemistically referred to as an "apple."

I fall exactly between a medium and a large in women's and will probably get a large (actually, I'll probably get one of each, for different, erm...eating seasons**). If you are not used to wearing cycling jerseys, bear in mind that by their nature, they are generally form fitting (think "less wind resistance").

I'm going to place an order on Friday, so if you're interested, let me know. If you don't want to commit just yet, but you might sometime in the future, no worries, I will probably place another order sometime this year. We have a period of eight months after the initial order in which we can order more jerseys.

Once the order is placed, the pricing structure may change a little based on numbers of jerseys ordered. If I end up getting a price break, though, I'll just send the extra money on to the Food Bank farm. That's my promise.

*Includes the $10 donation and $3 extra for a hidden zipper

**Darn you, Girl Scout cookies!

Drum roll, please: The Bike Garden Cycling Jersey

2011-01-25T19:00:00.004-06:00

I probably shouldn't be rolling this out just yet, since I haven't got all the pricing details worked out. But frankly, the cuteness factor just plain overwhelmed me and I just had to do it.

So brothers and sisters, without further ado, I present to you the first ever Bike Garden cycling jersey, honoring the South Plains Food Bank:

Is that adorable, or what?

This snappy garment was created with the able help of Jason Bailey at Canari, who took my scratchy little vision and transformed it into something that is (in my humble opinion) an heirloom-quality cycling jersey.

Design details:

There are two fits: Vortex Pro (which is Euro, i.e., snuggish and streamlined) and "club fit" (looser); I think the one I have is Vortex Pro and it seems fine, but I'm going to check up on that.
There are three mesh rear pockets
On the back panel, Pearl's thought bubble reads, "If you can read this, you're too close."
On the front, Henrietta greets the rising sun, or a fried egg, depending on what your mood might be that day.
The South Plains Food Bank logo is on the front and back, and the name is on the sleeves.
"The Bike Garden" is written on the side panels.
The sleeves will have a solid racing stripe (like the image on the bottom, not the twin racing strips on the sleeves in the middle image).
On the back of the collar are printed the words "Joy is a kind of courage."

I don't know yet how much these will cost wholesale, or if I'm going to offer them at cost or a little more (which I can then donate to the South Plains Food Bank), but they should be around the neighborhood of $70 (club fit) -$80 (Vortex Pro). Let me know if you're interested, and I'll keep you posted.

Cycling and Doping

2011-01-24T07:11:00.021-06:00

Jonathan Vaughters fired the highly successful Directeur Sportif Matt White yesterday from the Garmin Cervelo professional cycling team, for sending a rider to a doctor for a check up, without clearing it with team headquarters first.

For those who don't follow cycling this is the equivalent of Barack Obama firing Hilary Clinton, for sending an aid to a restaurant she's heard about in a country on which we have a trade embargo, without first clearing it with the White House. Well, sort of. I mean, it's both that big and that shocking. It also sends out a message: We mean it when we say "We won't tolerate this."

The reason Garmin has the rule is because they have a strict anti-doping policy, and they monitor every little opportunity in which doping might rear its ugly head. There was apparently no doping in this episode--just the opportunity for it to occur because the rider saw a doctor who had been linked to it in the past.

All the rider saw the doctor for was a VO2 test. It was Matt White who sent him there without asking first, so it was Matt White who took the fall.

I feel bad for Matt White and the Garmin "lads" (as he calls them), but this is a good thing. It tells me (and hopefully the rest of the world), that Garmin's anti-doping stance is no smoke.

I have also decided that in the interest of full disclosure, I should list the performance enhancing drugs that are getting me through the Bike Challenge. I feel I owe it to the many people who have placed their faith in me. I freely admit that without these drugs, I probably would not be able to complete all 2011 miles this year. If that makes me a doper, so be it; at least I've been honest with you.

Without further ado, here they are:

Drugs I take every day:
Nexium (for chronic acid reflux)
Crestor (for high cholesterol)

Drugs I take every once in a while:
Advil (for sore, achy muscles and the occasional headache--in fact, I'm thinking of taking one this morning)
Zomig (for the migraines I get about four times a year)

Drugs I have taken in the past year and may have to take again this year if the need arises:
Flonase (for a chronically stuffy nose; had to stop because it gave me a headache--see above)
Tylenol for Sinus Headache and Pain (see above, stuffy nose)
Cyclobenzaprine (OK, this was just twice, at night, for a muscle spasm caused by a pinched nerve in my neck)
Nyquil (I had a head cold last spring)
Dayquil (see above, head cold)

Drugs for which I have a prescription but have never used (well, maybe I used it once several years ago; can't remember):
An asthma inhaler (for seasonal, exercise-induced asthma; can't even remember the brand name)

I also eat walnuts, blueberries, and drink a glass of red wine with dinner on a nearly daily basis.

Oh, and of course, there are the apple fritters:

Well, I think that about covers it. I feel much better having gotten that off my chest.

Keep those pledges coming. We're up to nearly $4300 for the South Plains Food Bank farm. You all rock.

Dust shall not stay me from my appointed rounds

2011-01-22T18:06:00.004-06:00

We woke up to a pretty good brown blow in LBB today, so my plans to go for a long ride went the way of the dust. As befits a girl of grit, however, I used my time off the racing bike to do some long-overdue maintenance on the commuter and the Xtracycle:

In short order, the gears and derailleurs and, erm, clicky bits, were all sparkly and singing like pips. So excited was I by this, that I went ahead and put 10 miles in the Bike Garden Challenge kitty just by running my usual Saturday errands on La Chica (the Salsa commuter) and Annette the Xtracycle.

A very good day, in spite of the wind and dust.

A beautiful day, that is all.

2011-01-21T10:27:00.000-06:00

On Monday I took advantage of the school holiday to ride to the top of the hill at the windmill museum and back:

It was such a gorgeous day, they closed the road so no one else could see it, for fear that all of humanity would be eternally blinded by so much beauty. (And here is where Dee Nash would say, "Not really.")

I meant to post this update on my ride progress before this, but what with school starting up, UNIT board stuff, doing some agitating for bike lanes on 34th Street, getting the bike campaign underway, and some family issues, I've been a little discombobulated of late. No matter. The warm response to the Bike Garden campaign for the food bank's farm has kept me going.

Muchas gracias, y'all. You are the best.

Keep those pledges coming.

Cosmic Explorer, Destination Unknown

2011-01-12T21:27:00.034-06:00

There is a story I've told my students for years, and it turns out that I've only been getting it about half right. I first read the real story in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, and it goes like this:

Poet Conrad Aiken used to like to sit in a Savannah cemetery by the spot where his parents were buried, drink martinis, and watch the shrimp boats pass by.* One day a boat named Cosmos Mariner sailed past. Aiken saw this and was quite taken with the name. Later that evening he looked it up in the shipping news and found this: "Cosmos Mariner; Destination unknown."

This is part of the inscription that Aiken chose for the bench that is his own headstone, where he now lies in the cemetery beside his parents. The other part of the inscription reads: "Give my love to the world."

I didn't get the story too terribly wrong, I just messed up the name of the boat a bit. I've always remembered it as the Cosmic Explorer. But you know, I like the incorrect name better. Coupled with the second half, "Destination unknown," it seems a perfect instruction for life: We are all explorers on a journey in unknown waters. Like any voyage of discovery, peril, danger, and sorrow can be found at every turn. But there are also beautiful islands to behold, and they are named Grace, Mercy, Kindness, and Joy. The trick is to make it through the storms to the other side, where they await us.

I was thinking about this on the drive home from San Angelo this weekend. I was listening to a radio program called Humankind, an episode titled "American Resiliency," in which they examined the question of what makes some people more able to withstand hardship and disaster than others. Two things stood out among the things that the psychologists and historians on that program said about people who are resilient: They are part of a community of people on which they can rely, and they are able to focus on positive things even in the midst of the most terrible circumstances.

Oh, and there was one more thing one of the historians said that gave me pause. He said bad things that happen are a normal part of life, but we've forgotten that in the past couple of decades in this country. It seems we've grown complacent and logy, as if we believe we're permanently tied up in the safety of a port. We've forgotten that in reality, like it or not, we are all of us, most of the time, on a journey in unknown waters.

This past week has been a rough one, hasn't it? The shootings in Arizona are too awful to comprehend. Peril. Danger. Sorrow. We need a safe harbor.

Or maybe not. Maybe what we need is to square our shoulders and continue the journey, for grace, mercy, kindness, and joy are out there, too.

There's just one thing, though. All hands need to pull together on the boat. But it seems impossible to achieve this, doesn't it? What has happened this week in the aftermath of the tragedy in Arizona has been predictable and almost as depressing as the senseless shooting itself: The blame game starts up almost immediately. And then the heated rhetoric begins. And now the heated rhetoric about the heated rhetoric.

Robert F. Kennedy once said that one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. It seems to me that right now in this country, that one-fifth of the people are driving the rest of us aground. They are not interested in reason. They are not even interested in grace, mercy, kindness, and joy. They are only interested in their own self-serving misery and infecting as many people as possible with their disease. They are even perversely gleeful about this. But too easily, the rest of us get caught up in the same virulent unhappiness and anger, and then instead of focusing on the positive, and what we can do that is right and good, we begin to founder.

Well, I vote we leave that malcontented one-fifth off the boat at the next harbor. Just ditch 'em there. They are merchants of misery, profiteers of hate; let them trade their wares somewhere else. They are cranky, selfish, addicted to celebrity and power even when it is bought with the pain of others, and they make us needlessly angry with each other. We don't need them. We can send them a postcard when we reach the island of Joy. It will read, "Give our love to the world."

Once we refuse to allow that perpetually dissatisfied one-fifth to influence us, we shall draw a deep breath and become strong again. We shall be a community, focused on the positive even when faced with senseless tragedy, resilient and sound, able to stand all storms.

Bad things happen, because it is life, after all. But we can do good things in response, because we are strong.

This good ship is the Cosmic Explorer, destination unknown. All willing and able hands on board.

*Maybe you think this is morbid, but perhaps you wouldn't if you'd ever taken my "Landscapes" course. Cemeteries are actually quite peaceful, and full of stories.

It's not too late to join the Bike Garden Challenge: 2011 miles in 2011 for the South Plains Food Bank farm! If you'd like to help out, just leave a comment on this post, or email me at susan.bikegarden@gmail.com. Be sure to state specifically that you'd like to pledge a penny a mile ($20.11) to the challenge.

This weather is not amusing

2011-01-11T07:42:00.009-06:00

Native Minnesotan and fellow blogger Carmella Schnagel probably wouldn't think so, but in my opinion, it is dangerously cold outside right now. I tried to add a couple of miles to my commute into school yesterday and wound up unable to see the road for all the tears in my eyes from the arctic air. Since the bike creates its own windchill effect, there is no way I am getting on it again until this passes. No matter, I had anticipated such an occasion, and banked a few miles on the bike last week. By my calculations, I am going to need average around 40 miles a week to make my Bike Garden Challenge goal of 2011 miles in 2011 for the South Plains Food Bank. Since I expect that there will weeks when I'm off the bike because the weather doesn't cooperate, or I catch the sniffles, or I'm traveling, or whatever, I hope to bank more than the average in those weeks when the fates are more pleasantly aligned with my desires.

In the realm of other cold weather-related news: There is also no way on God's green earth that I am going out to the shop in these conditions to work on finishing the ottoman. I mean, my new kerosene heater, purchased on the advice of David Schmetterling (who has, BTW, pledged a penny a mile in the Challenge--thank you, David!), is a bonny good thing, but I don't want to stand around for an hour waiting for it to heat up the shop enough for me to work without gloves on. There isn't much left to do on the ottoman, however, so as soon as the freezing conditions let up, I'll whip out the final steps and do the big reveal.

For my neighbors, and in the realm of other, other news: There is a meeting this evening of 34th Street planners to look at revitalizing and re-desigining that troubled avenue. If you take a look at the proposed diagram, you can see they've added bike lanes. A very good thing. I plan to be there tonight to voice my support for such forward-thinkingedness.* The meeting starts at 6 PM with an hour-long open house so that the public can view the plans, followed by the meeting itself. Open to the public, at Sunset Church of Christ Family Center, 3631 34th.

*NOTE: Since this has not been discussed and approved by the board or the neighborhood association, I will be going to the meeting and offering my support for bike lanes not as the UNIT president, but as a bicycle commuter.

I'm serious about this...

2011-01-09T13:09:00.001-06:00

...serious enough that I threw my bike in the back of the old wagon and took it down to San Angelo this weekend, where I went to visit my mother. San Angelo, as it turns out, has more hills than LBB. Nevertheless, I bundled up on Sunday morning and took the Ruby for a ride. As you can see by this photo at the end of my workout, I am still smiling, for the hills did not slay me:

I'm almost up to a dollar, for those who are counting...

Be a part of the fun! 2011 miles in 2011 for the South Plains Food Bank. Twenty-four people have already pledged a penny a mile. I honored by their faith in me.

Watch this space

2011-01-07T07:32:00.031-06:00

I'm talking Destiny with a big D, my friends. That's the feeling I have about this wild and crazy plan I've just hatched.

It started with, of course, the advent of the New Year and the whole resolutions bit, which I really suck at. Resolutions, I mean. I'm not really bothered by this a whole lot, since I suspect I am not alone in this matter. In fact, I don't believe I personally know anyone who does well at them.

Actually, I suppose Walu is pretty good at resolutions, but then, he's really Superman in disguise, so that doesn't count.

Anyway, in spite of resolving not to do resolutions this year, I kept thinking of a few things I'd like to do, and at the top of that list was getting back into a fitness routine.

I started casting around for something that would keep me motivated and resistant to distraction and slackitude. I thought about running races again, since I am very good at focusing on my training when I have a specific race in mind. The problem is that my knees just don't like racing anymore, but since I am an old thoroughbred from waaaaay back, I am not capable of easing up and just "fun running." The gun goes off and the next thing I know the legs are out of the gate like they are Seabiscuit following a carrot that's been battered in oats and deep fried.

So I thought I might try a charity ride, instead (since there is no danger of me trying to go fast on a bike), and I came up with one that fits the bill nicely: A 45-mile ride at the Austin Livestrong Challenge next October. That's a goal I can get behind, and with it in mind, I started training this week.

But wait! There's more!

While I was thinking about the Livestrong Challenge, I starting to dream about having my very own Bike Garden cycling jersey to wear for it. Now, y'all know how I feel about cycling jerseys, so naturally, once I got the idea in my head, there was no turning back. Just as naturally, the design had to feature Pearl and Henrietta, and the one I've created, if I may say so, is cuter than a bug in a sparkly tutu. You'll have to wait a little longer for the big reveal, though, since I am going to do a separate post about it once I have some final details in place.

But wait! There's more!

The jerseys are so adorable, in fact, that I could see people wanting one for themselves, so I decided that I might even offer them for sale here on the blog. And since I am not doing this for profit, I thought that any extra money I made on the jersey could be donated to the South Plains Food Bank farm (Yes! They have their own farm! They believe in fresh vegetables!).

Is that a great plan, or what? I get all goose-bumpy and dizzy just thinking about it.

But wait! There's more!

The really cool thing about jerseys is that they can be (and often are) rolling billboards. As I was thinking about donating any profit I make from the jerseys, I thought it would be brilliant to put the SPFB's name on one of the sleeves to give them a little plug.

But wait! There's more!

As if a charity ride and an adorable cycling jersey-the-profits-of-which-benefit-the-SPFB were not enough to make this an incredible, motivating, kick-in-the-pants-and-get-fit plan, here is the best part of all:

I will ride ~~2000~~ 2011 miles in 2011 for the South Plains Food Bank farm this year.

Yes, that's right. And, as you might have guessed, I am going to ask you for a pledge of a penny a mile to hold my feet to the fire. A penny a mile! What a great deal!

You can, of course, pledge more than this, but it's going to take you a penny a mile to buy in to the excitement. That's a twenty-dollar-and-eleven-cent donation to a great operation, brothers and sisters. And here's the kicker: if I don't ride 2011 miles this year, you don't have to donate.

If all goes well, at the end of the ride I will make a big announcement, throw some confetti into the air, and ask you to go to the SPFB website and donate directly to them.

I've put a little ticker up at the top of the page so you can track my progress. Right now, I'm up to 68 cents. An auspicious start for the first week of the year, in my humble opinion (I am counting both commuting miles and training miles, because I absolutely believe in hedging my bets).

This is HUGE! It's Destiny! With a big D! So watch this space to see how it all goes. And if you'd like to sponsor me on this crazy ride, leave a comment (saying specifically that you'll pledge), shoot me an email at the address on the sidebar, message me on Facebook, or DM me on Twitter. I'll put your name on the sidebar as a supporter of The Bike Garden Challenge (unless you want to be anonymous).

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put some air in my tires.

Note: And by the way, progress is still being made on both the ottoman and the novel. The ottoman will probably be finished sometime on Monday or Tuesday of next week. The novel, however, will take a little longer. I am not as prolific as the amazing Dee Nash, who is apparently capable of writing an astonishing twenty pages a day.

Pearl and Henrietta: Snowpocalypse 2010(11) (A reprise)

2010-12-29T07:20:00.001-06:00

For my friends across the world who have been dealing with a reprise of last year's record snowfall, the girls are making a special return engagement:

"Yes, we are too standing in the bike lane."

Random thoughts while riding around working off the pumpkin pie

2010-12-27T17:55:00.020-06:00

Random Thought A: Pop Quiz! Choose the best answer.

1. Bicycle lanes are for:

a. Parking your SUV
b. Walking your beagle
c. Running your laps
d. Strolling with your honey
e. People riding bikes

2. Match the following:

Column A
Cars
Bikes
Pedestrians
Beagles

Column B
Sidewalks
Parking lots
Chew toys
Bicycle lanes

Random Thought B. Pageantry versus posing

The other day I was out riding and I'd stopped at a light. A car full of teenagers pulled up alongside me and one of them rolled down his window. Thinking he might be getting ready to ask for directions or something (since this actually happens a lot), I turned toward him and smiled helpfully.

He said, "Is that a four speed?"

It took a moment to sink it, but then it did: He was mocking me. Once he saw that realization hit home, he triumphantly rolled up the window and the other people in the car burst into howls of laughter. The light changed and they drove on.

Here's the thing: I am fifty-three years old. I don't really frakkin' care what you think about my cycling outfit. Furthermore, I quit caring a few years ago. That is the beauty of being my age. I expect that this liberation from the petty constraints of worrying about what others think will continue to grow, until one day, I will be so light and carefree I shall float heavenward as if on wings spun from the light of a distant star.

When you grow up, you can hope for the same.

Which brings me to the difference between pageantry and posing. Sadly, as in the rest of life, there are divides in the cycling community, and it all revolves around that miracle fabric, lycra. There are the people who sneer at wearing lycra and defiantly wear anything but. There are those who wear lycra who sneer at those who don't. There are even those who wear lycra who sneer at others wearing lycra because they deem them not worthy to wear it. And they all call each other "posers."

Enough with the sneering already. You are not yet ready for wings spun from starlight. Go sit in the car with the others.

A) I don't care what you think about what I'm wearing (see above).

B) Do you really think I'm delusional enough to pose as something I'm not? I am middle-aged, slightly overweight, slower than cooling magma, and I don't bother kidding myself: I would not under any circumstance be mistaken for someone who races bicycles. That isn't the reason I am wearing a cycling jersey and bibs (or tights, or arm warmers, or toe covers, or whatever). I am wearing them because they make me smile. They are festive and daring and colorful, like flags snapping in the wind at a grand medieval pageant. I am wearing them because life is very, very hard and part of the solution for getting through it is to embrace pageantry whenever and wherever you can find it.

Here is a jersey I bought as a souvenir on the single best vacation day ever, in which Walu and I rented bikes and rode them through Acadia National Park on a rainy day, stopping at a lodge to have clam chowdah and pop-ovahs:

In the photo, I am wearing the jersey on my best training ride ever, when my buddy Jill and I rode to a bakery in the nearby town of Slaton, and I had an apple fritter to celebrate surviving.

I also own a kit like this one, shown here on Jill. We both got this one to show our support for our favorite local bicycle shop, Broadway Bikes:

And this next one is a recent purchase for me, and I made it to show my support for this professional women's cycling team, Peanut Butter & Co Twenty12:

And why would I buy a cycling kit to show them my support? Firstly, because they raise money for the team this way, and secondly, because it is the twenty-first century, and professional women athletes still do not have parity with men. Come, come, good people. There are other amazing cyclists out there besides just the ones getting all the press and big sponsorships, and they happen to be female.

Riddle me this: When was the last time you saw a women's bike race on the Tee-Vee? Exactly. I'm looking at you, Versus Television.

Athletes are athletes. Daughters and sisters are no less so than sons and brothers. Go Peanut Butter & Co Twenty12! Get a shorter name!

Flags snapping in the wind, my friends. They make the bitter medicine of life go down easier.

Random Thought C: Commercial break

These Pearl Izumi Select thermal tights I'm wearing on my ride are comfy and toasty.*

Random Thought D: Life is change.

It's official: Jill and her husband are moving away. I am verklempt.

Jill was the one who got me training again, some eight years ago, when she talked me into doing the running leg of a team triathlon. She also introduced me to the joys of cycling, and taught me how to clip in and clip out, and how to fall when I couldn't. She's been a friend, coach, mentor, cheerleader, and on occasion, a swift kick in the butt.

A typical exchange on any training ride goes something like this:

Me: "I'm still trying to get some conditioning back, so I want to take it easy, no risking over-doing it. I need to protect my knee/back/shin/neck/whatever, and not push it too much. Really. I need to go easy. Nice and slow."

Jill: "OK."

(Pause.)

Jill: "Want to race to the top of the hill?"

In her honor, here are three of my favorite Bike Garden posts, all of which, not coincidentally, feature training rides with Jill:

"It's 100 degrees in the shade. Can Thanksgiving be far away?"

"I am humbled by the Sunday ride."

"John Deer and I are the same color"

Godspeed, Jill. Kansas is ready for some pageantry.

Random Thought E: Want ad

Wanted: Riding partner. Must be willing to go slow and not very far. Must be willing to listen patiently to my litany of ailments and then challenge me to a sprint up the hill. Must understand that the training ride is really just an excuse to chat about life. Must have a kind and generous nature. Must replace an irreplaceable friend.

*Note to the FTC: I have received no remuneration from Pearl Izumi for saying that I like their tights. Pearl Izumi doesn't even know who I am.**

**Note to Pearl Izumi: Call me.

A report and a post-Christmas word

2010-12-26T13:53:00.008-06:00

OK, clearly I'm not going to be up to daily posts. Y'all will just have to take what you can get.

Nevertheless, I have been busy on my projects, and can report that I am making progress on both the writing and the ottoman. The legs for the ottoman are nearly finished, in fact, with just some final sanding to go, after which I will start milling the stretchers for the cushion base. I have less to report on the story; suffice it to say that it, too, has grown some legs.

Here is a photo sequence of milling and shaping the cabriole legs:

Glue up:

Lay out:

1st rough cut:

2nd rough cut, with first pieces taped back on for support:

The roughed-out legs:

Refining the shape with rasps:

Adding shoulders (cut on the band saw and then squared with a shoulder plane)

One leg after the first sanding (the other three have been shaped with the rasps, but not yet sanded):

Sanding is a lonely business, and probably my least favorite part of woodworking, so don't expect rapid forward progress for a couple of days.

That is all.

Oh! Except for this: Spending time in the woodshop is a solitary pursuit, and as such, I do a lot of thinking there. On my mind for the past couple of days is something Plato said: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

I feel like that is a good thought on which to conclude this season.

Of pirates, hot rods, and voices in our heads: a report

2010-12-24T07:38:00.009-06:00

I know I promised to post something about my progress every day during the break, but what can I say? I've been busy with the usual holiday this-n-that. OK, mostly I've been shopping. But it was fun for a change.

My brother and his wife were in town for a few days, and since they now live in Virginia, they've been homesick for all things Texas. Consequently, there was nothing for it but to go shopping for the perfect cowboy boots and eat every night at Abuelo's until we bled chiles rellenos from our eyes. Which we did.

Here are the boots Jack bought, an unabashed display of hand-made Raider Pirate Power:

And mine, which look suspiciously like hot rods for your feet:

I think they call to mind something that superheroines would wear. Click on the photo to check out the stitching on these bad-girl Tony Lamas. These boots are nothing short of folk art, my friends.

I also bought this nifty work jacket at Tractor Supply, for winter gardening and woodworking (when the shop is cold enough for a jacket, but not cold enough to fire up the kerosene heater):

Anyway, some progress on my projects has been made. I have been busy in the shop, making the cabriole legs for the ottoman, and I'll post something more about that tomorrow. But here's a teaser shot:

And while I haven't gotten a lot more writing done over the past three days, I have been thinking about the story and working out problems. Suffice it to say that the The Voice is becoming clearer to me, and I am Inhabiting the Main Character, which all sounds a bit alarming, I know, but I think both are pre-requisites to Becoming a Great Author. Or so I've heard. But that could just be The Voice lying to me.

That's the report. Merry Christmas Eve to all.

Into the breach: COWS officially begins today

2010-12-20T07:44:00.001-06:00

Well, all the academic hoopla and falderal has been put to bed and tucked in for a three week rest, and I am left with a seemingly vast period free time with which to play. Past experience has taught me, however, that it is not as vast as I think it is. Here's how it usually goes: I blink, and the semester has started up again.

This time I'm going into my rest and recovery period with a plan, though. This time, I'm not going to fritter the time away and then wonder why my batteries didn't get recharged while watching Sandra Lee cook from a can on the Tee-Vee. This time, I'm going to do the thing that does re-charge me, and that is to use my time to make something.

Actually, I've got a plan to make two somethings. The first, as I've telegraphed to you already, is a little writing project I've been wanting to get up and running. That starts today, and as you know, I have decided to give it the code name of "COWS." (The story actually has nothing to do with cows, so if you were hoping against hope to read a little tale about Guernseys taking a boat to the Caribbean and being captured by pirates, only to save the day by teaching the hearties how to put down their weapons and make peanut butter sandwiches with dill pickles, I fear you will suffer great disappointment.) All I will say about it at this point is that it is a mystery. (By that I don't mean that it is a mystery about what I will write, though that may certainly also be the case. No, I mean that I am writing a mystery story.)

The second project will be a small woodworking one. I was taken with a couple of beautiful ottomans I saw on the recent neighborhood Holiday Home Tour, and have decided that that is what I need to complete the recent makeover of our front room. However, our front living room is not very big, so I can't go large. Unfortunately, every ottoman I've seen in town looks big enough to host a NASCAR race on top.

Naturally, I am as pleased as punch about this, since it gives me the perfect excuse to custom make an ottoman to fit our space. I have a lot of leftover cherry from the blanket chest project, so this is something I could do for very little cost. It should also be a fairly easy project (as compared to the bench or blanket chest projects of the summer), so I think I can get it done with just a couple of hours of work each day over the course of the break.

So here's my plan for my days:

Exercise to start the day (running, cycling, weight lifting)
Woodworking in the morning
Writing in the afternoon
Spontaneous gardening in between

Walu is taking a trip to Boston for a conference directly after Christmas, so my time is more or less my own for about a full week of this break. (Actually, he's so wonky about reading and writing all the time that he wouldn't get in the way even if he were to be here the whole break.)

That's the plan. On today's docket: Start milling the wood this morning and work on chapter two this afternoon (I've already written chapter one).

I'll leave you with a closing shot of the cherry that I pulled out of the wood pile yesterday, in anticipation of making the ottoman.

Don't take any wooden nickels. Unless they are cherry, then it might be okay.