little adventures

if you're following my story at all, you know that i like to go out and do stuff. i like adventures. not base-jumping-globe-trotting-fate-tempting adventures, but the kind of adventure you have if you just wander around a little and leave yourself open to whatever comes.

so yesterday i was playing that game i play and another player asked casually in the chat when i was coming to visit her, because she had a big farm chore to do.

i'll come tomorrow, i said. i have the day free.

there's a lot of things i don't know about the world, but i imagine it is difficult to be in the middle of moving from your old farm to your new one in a different state and having to do a lot of the things on the new farm alone while your husband does a lot of the chores on the old farm alone and imagine that each new chore looms kind of large on that landscape and company would be nice.

i've never had a huge tent to put up on a new farm and i've never raised sheep or herded geese but i have been on the wrong end of tasks that just seem too big.

plus it's an adventure.

we had to figure out how to put up a huge army tent and do it plus there were sheep and dogs and turkeys and chickens and ducks to look at and it was a pretty day and it involved an exceptional roast beef sammich.

i'd show you pictures, but i;m too tired to upload them.

tired

i'm exhausted.

i;m mostly not talking about the Very Bad Thing, at least not to other people. i talk about it a lot when it's just me ranting.

and it tires me out.

but every day i go out and ride my bike, and that makes me feel better, because it is an awesome bike and the trails are awesome and me out on them? that's me being awesome. i was going to show you some pictures i took, but i'm too tired to upload them.

yesterday i went to a party and i saw some very cool things. i took some pictures, but i'm too tired to upload them.

my new orange jacket?

ditto.

it's nine o'clock. i'm going to bed.

gun violence in north america

i'm going to say it up front: i'm a pacifist. i do not own a firearm. i am a foreigner in gun culture.

so of course i have a solution to the problem of gun violence.

the thing about societies with a high degree of income inequality and education inequality is that there's an increase in violence of all kinds as well as an increase of crime in general and a decrease in trust and security.

where there are a lot of poor people with few prospects and little hope, there's a lot of risk.

i want to live in a safe crime free neighborhood.

you probably do, too.

so let's work on the real causes of gun violence, ok? let's do something about illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and general lack of manners.

the second amendment is important. i don't trust this or any other government to preserve my civil rights. recent history demonstrates all too clearly how much government isn't really interested in civil rights, so without that right to bear arms, we're all at risk.

so all you gun nuts, go out and practice. know your safety rules and go to the range and make sure you understand your weapons and make sure you're a good shot. thank you for exercising my second amendment rights.

no, i don't think you all need fully automatic weapons for hunting, and i don't approve of drawing weapons as anything but a last resort.

i maybe wouldn't draw a weapon even as a last resort, but that's my privilege to make a principled stand.

pacifism and belief in second amendment rights do not rest easily together, but they balance each other thoughtfully and carefully in a world with real challenges and real dangers.

so you militiamen, you go out and do your thing. i'll sit out here and work on the lefty progressive politics.

i hope we'll meet in the middle, all of our civil rights intact.

all i'm saying about it.

i voted today. in vermont when you go to vote in a primary, they hand you the ballot for all the parties (3) and you can only  vote one, but you get to choose every blessed time. you never have to tell them which primary you're voting in.

i vote in the democratic primary about as often as i vote in the republican primary because i feel it's important  to have the best slate of candidates to choose from in the general election. i can only ever recall voting a straight ticket once in the general election.

what i'm trying to say is that i don't approve of partisan politics for the sake of partisan politics.

and i will confess to having been a onetime ron paul supporter.

yesterday i heard a howlingly funny interview from the republican national convention. the reporter had a paul  delegate there and he had a few moments to say something about his candidate. what did he say in support of his man? no matter what, he's casting his vote for paul. "you can make fun of it all you want," he said, "but it's easy to spell."

firing line

so then the churchman turns to me as if i do not understand the terrible inconvenient position he is in and he says "if any of that is true, we have to fire the pastor".

well, now you get it.

my original intent has always been to have my dignity restored and my name cleared, but if the only way to do that is to go with the formal complaint which will require the firing of the pastor when it all comes out, i guess that's what we have to do.

the truth will set you free.

we are all about to be set free.

and i have documents.

time machine

my parents have been divorced since 1982. each of them has been remarried for a long time.

my sister got married a long time ago. she's still married.

last night we all were at my dad's for a boat ride on the pontoon boat and dinner after.

and there we all were, the seven of us: me and my sister and her husband and my mom and dad and each of their current spouses in the sunshine on the water and for a couple of minutes i looked over and it was forty five years ago and my dad was young and dashing, with his young wife and tiny little daughters on the big boat with the teak deck on the hudson river.

maybe nobody noticed the time shift but me.

most shocking hour on tv

dear television executives, producers, and screenwriters,

sometimes i watch dramas. sometimes i watch procedurals.

many of these shows involve the solving of crimes.

but here's the thing: what i like about the show is the interaction of the characters, the application of ideas and thinking skills to the presented problems, and dialogue that isn't cheesy.

i do not require for the bad guys to become more and more evil, the conspiracies to become larger and larger, or the corruption of the system to become more and more pervasive.

i certainly do not need the acts of violence to become more cruel and more graphic.

here is a secret about me and many other viewers: i do not need my television viewing to become progressively more shocking in order to retain my interest. i liked it just fine when interesting characters had interesting thoughts about situations and problems and in fact i am less likely to continue watching when you decide that what i want is for mind-blowing never-before thought-of shocking depravity and or amazingness.

see, the interestingness of a story does not rely so much on the shockingness of the acts depicted in it, but the quality of the telling.

when you take a perfectly good show and feel a need to make it "the most shocking hour on TV!" so i "won't believe what happens next!", what happens next is that i stop watching your show and go watch a documentary about how shoelaces are made.

so the next time you're in a meeting and you're asking the junior staff to punch it up a little and come up with something really fresh, how about taking a normal situation for this set of characters and following a reasonable story arc for them, but taking care to tell the story well?

because the next time i tune in to see a serial killer arranging for rival gangs of child pornographers to fill explosive schoolbusses filled with desperately sick children and make them travel the country killing convenience store clerks on their way to fighting each other in ritual death combat for underground pay-per-view that's hidden from detection because a secret cabal of law enforcement agents is working under the authority of a shady government anti-terrorist plot and everybody is about to get off on a technicality but then all the witnesses suddenly die in an arson fire, my patience will be sorely tested.

so just don't do it, ok?

love, flask.

shirts

there are rules to cycling jerseys.

really, it's just a shirt. but teams and clubs have their own shirts. and a club may draw from a diverse group of riders but everyone in the club can wear the shirt. if you are a sponsored rider, you are required to wear the shirt your sponsors give you.

some professional teams make available consumer versions of their team kit so that weekend riders can show their admiration for their favorite teams. there's even "sporn" (sports porn) that features hotties in team kit.

the UCI is very fussy about how their rainbow jersey is worn, but the basics are pretty much that in the year after you win the world championship, you wear your rainbow jersey in all sanctioned races in the specific discipline in which you won. if you are the road race champion, you may wear your rainbow jersey in stage races, excluding any time trial portion unless you are also the reigning time trial champion.

as the world champion your pro team makes you a special version of the rainbow jersey that incorporates your sponsors with the required design elements. there was a flap last year about mark cavendish and a rules violation involving the shirt.

once you have been the world champion, though, you are entitled to wear spiffy banding on the sleeve and collar of your regular uniform for the rest of your life.

moving down the ladder, there are jerseys for national champions and jerseys for specific races and a complicated set of protocols that vary in strictness according to how elite a rider you are, but the short version is that if i ever win a national championship, i will be entitled to wear a special version of my club jersey with spiffy banding on the left sleeve and collar.

i ride in a catamount cycling jersey. catamount has had its own shirt since before it was an official club and then it shared a jersey with the green mountain bicycle club during the merger years and now catamount isn't a cycling club but still has a shirt.

here's a picture of my catamount shirts up until the first year of the merger. not pictured is the second merger jersey or the new handsome shirt.

the one in front is my eastern cup championship series jersey, which i won in 2004. its design is based on the catamount red shirt.

i'm thinking about jerseys this week because wednesday night lea davison showed up to the race in her olympic uniform instead of her usual specialized kit, and everybody stood a little straighter.

there were a couple of guys there entitled to wear some fancy bands on their jerseys but it's a small d democratic race venue and current champions and former champions and maybe someday champions ride all together with housewives and schoolteachers and little girls and first timers.

we all put on our numbers and we all go around the course and we all trade stories after and at the end of the season they don't give us prizes for winning the race but for how often you show up.

i have shown up for every wednesday night race since 1999.

there's no official record kept, no prize and no special recognition from season to season, but i hold the record for showing up the most. it is an invisible crown, but one i wear proudly.

sometimes

sometimes i am so depressed i can barely move.

today is one of those days.

it's more of the Very Bad Thing, the thing i am not talking about, but i have been hungry for hours and if i had something i could eat without having to prepare it, i would have done. i am all out of ramen noodles. i have some cheese in the fridge, but i am not sure i want to have to unwrap and cut it.

sometimes things just suck.

parking lot talk

if you thought the US team olympic cycling uniforms looked spiffy on tv, i can tell you that they look spiffy right up close and in person.

i think i mentioned to you that i have crossed paths with lea davison in the parking lot at catamount. i think i told you that along with her sister she runs a mentoring program for girls on mountain bikes.

tonight after our race (and i will want to tell you more about both that and cycling uniforms later) i went up to her and i had a few things to say to her. i'm only going to tell you my part of the conversation:

i want to thank you for your work.

we've only ever talked here in the parking lot and i only knew you as "that nice young woman who does little bellas". i had no idea who you were, even.

i cried watching you on tv. 

and i cried watching you come across the finish line tonight.

your work is important.

every time i see a fat woman on a bicycle i cheer. (i was well over 230 pounds when i started riding) every time i see a little girl on a mountain bike it makes me happy.

to ride a bike is to cheat death.

riding a bike is freedom. it is mastery.

and for too many of us, there is not enough of that in the world.

two things

i wanted to get these two things offa my desk:

the first is a great set of maps bassed on how popel search google about the US states.

http://blog.noupsi.de/post/28896819324/why-are-americans-so


the second just made me laugh. hard.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hello-stranger-on-the-street-could-you-please-tell-me-how-to-take-care-of-my-baby

mouse hole

so today i caught one of the contestants on my patio with a mouse.  a live mouse, trying to run away. so i said "all right. that's enough. this is MY patio and that is MY mouse."

and by this time the mouse had been chased under the fence and was lying exhausted in the grass on the other side. so i turned my best prey stalking manner on the cat. after a few rounds of "i'm standing crouched and motionless while you're looking at me and when you look away from me i move closer" he turned and ran.

then i turned back to the poor mouse, still lying exhausted on the grass. i wriggled under the fence on my belly to get to her. she looked ok, but she'd peed herself. i picked her up gingerly, and she didn't have the strength to bite.

out in the open is a bad place for an exhausted mouse, so i carried her back and put her in a hole in my woodpile. mice nest in there sometimes. i don't mind. mice are not allowed to nest in the house, but the woodpile is ok.

she rested there for a while and in an hour or so she was gone.

mice, left to rest, recover pretty fast. voice of experience.

cats

my neighborhood cats are engaged in a turf war over my patio.

i am sick of their stalking each other on my patio. i am sick or their competitive spraying on my patio and i am sick of waking in the night to their fights over and on my patio.

see, the key words in all those sentences are MY PATIO. i already know whose territory it is. it's mine.

i have been thinking about how to properly convey this concept in a language they understand and last week i was thinking that if i catch them each in their turn and pee on them, that is a message about territory and my possession of it that they will comprehend.

i have, however, settled on a different method.

i wish for the neighborhood cats to believe that they are on my menu.

you've all seen cats stalk prey, right?

well, i am now stalking them. when i see them i stare right at them, and very intensely. i move very slowly toward them, never taking my eyes off of them and when they look away, i move into better position. i wish for everything about my body language to say "i could use a little more protein in my diet and you look delicious".

today i did this with one of the contestants for the better part of an hour before he first slunk away to safer ground and then finally broke and ran away.

over the time of stalking i watched him change posture from challenging to merely confident to uncomfortable to nervous to retreating and finally running away flat out.

he came back a little while later to peer nervously around the hedge, but a few glaring stares and licking of the lips sent him away for the rest of the evening.

i am hoping to make my patio a place the contestants no longer wish to occupy.

pumps

yeah, well.

yesterday i was going to tell you about the pump track, but then there was the story of being on my back and flailing like a beetle, which seemed more amusing.

i've mentioned the pump track before or at least i have wanted to mention it.

it's a bumpy oval track, berms on the corners. the bumps are wavy and the track is smooth. the idea behind it is that you go in and you don't pedal if you can avoid it. you use your body weight and your arms to push and pull the bike and if you're very good at it and very strong you can not just keep your momentum but actually gain speed.

if you are a very fit person you can go around and around and around.

i am neither very fit nor very good at it, but i can get around it twice most days and three times on a good day before i have to rest.

in other news involving pumps, my rear shock still does not hold air like i need it to. and i was having something weird happen and it was hard to get air into it and i was wondering what was going on so i let the air right out of it, just to see how it pumped up from nothing.

i did pretty well up to 100 psi, but then the going got slow. and i had already done a lot of pumping, so the next 80 pounds went in hard. and now my hands and arms are sore. it's nothing that won't sort itself out with a good night's sleep, but i am tired. that good night's sleep is goign to start an hour or two ahead of the usuals.

bottoms up.

so today i had an awesome ride.

this wednesday, the last bike race of the season, will be on the blue course so according to my rules (which i make up) i only had to ride the blue course.

that's because the rules for my ride are that if i'm able i have to ride one lap of the upcoming course and then either one of each of the other two, or two of one of them and then if i feel like it i can do other stuff.

and since the blue is my favorite and since the only one left is blue, i rode four laps of the blue, which is 20k, and farther than i have been able to go all at once in a couple of years, so i was feeling MIGHTY.

i even cleaned two laps of it, which means cleaning ridge run, which even in a good year i don't clean often. really, who am i kidding? in a good year most of the time i have to get off and walk ridge run.

(jargon alert: to clean a thing is to ride it without having to foot down or brace against trees.)

so i was feeling VERY MIGHTY.

and then i took a few laps around the pump park (that sounds like a boy thing, doesn't it?) and i took a couple of pix of that thing because that's really what i was going to tell you about today but then i went over to the other pump track and got to the far corner and then suddenly just fell over on the steepest part of the little embankment.

it was totally not a big deal, because i fall over a lot and i'm a very good roller. you start to figure out if you do it enough mostly how to keep your tangly bits from tangling and your fragile bits from breaking.

and i landed decently, too. not even hurty.

but then the terrible truth settled: some of my weight was resting on my bike.

which was on top of the rest of me.

...head down and with my legs sticking up in the air, unable to be brought down on account of my abs just aren't strong enough to lift my legs and unbend my body when i'm lying head down underneath a bicycle that i'm also holding down.

so for a couple of minutes i just stayed put, trying to figure out what parts ere going to have to get moved in order to get up.

to recap: i am lying on my back, with my head downhill on a little steep bank of loose dirt and my legs are hanging above my face and i don't have the core strength to bring them back where they belong without rolling to one side or the other which i can't do, because i am tangled up in a bicycle.

after a few minutes i figure that if i can untangle my right arm a little i can push the bike away from me, but this only causes the bike to start to move in a way that starts to pull parts of my body away from other parts in a fashion that is most unsatisfactory, so then i have to try to return the bike to its original stuck position so i don't go sliding the rest of the way down the dirt.

by this time it's a little uncomfortable.

but what am i thinking? i'm thinking i wonder if i can reach my camera...

turns out i can't.

and mark is in the parking lot, so i holler to ask him to come help me up, but it tuns out that that little corner of the track swallows up sound and even though i'm shouting pretty loud (and flailing like an overturned beetle) it does no good.

and then i realize that although i can't reach my camera, i CAN reach my phone, so i call the shop and ask shop girl to come help me up, which she does right quick.

but not before i ask her to take a picture of this.

you know.

because if you have to be rescued from a humiliating position from which you cannot move, it's best to have a picture of it.

shock and awe

i think i mentioned to you that i recently bought a bike. i thought when i got it the rear suspension was spongier than i wanted it, but i figured to adjust it. no biggie, right? so then after the crash i pumped up the shock, because it was spongy. and it was nice and snappy until i rode it. and then it wasn't snappy. it was saggy and the shock was only holding 150 psi. i weigh 200 pounds, so i ought to be riding that shock at about 180, give or take a little. but i don;t know a lot about shocks, so i tested and repumped and had someone else test and check it but it holds 150 psi and that's it. into the shop. out of the shop. the took the shock apart and found nothing but dry seals, lubed the seals and sent me home with it. then more leaking to 150 psi. back to the shop. they replaced the shock. two days riding, and it's spongy! another shock dropping to 150 psi. i am getting frustrated. if a shock doesn't hold air, it should not hold air, not just not hold any air over 150 psi. if one shock does that, it's a freak thing. if two shocks do that, it's a challenge to my concept of reality. what is going on????

good dog

i was going to write about something else, but i;ve had a beastly day and a friend just sent me this asesome video of her and her dog.

i hope you like it.

cause and effect

my car smells a lot like i keep a half dozen pairs of athletic shoes in the back seat.

i have no idea why.

hill o' beans

in the world of glitch, i am obscenely wealthy. this is a nice change from real life.

i have always made most of my money from selling raw materials in the auction house. most people think the money is in more complicated things, but it costs you next to nothing to wander around the world gathering beans and cherries and bubbles and such and although you can't sell them for much, you can sell a lot of them for a little, and volume adds up.

beans are nominally worth 1 currant. you can sell them on auction at a daily average price of 4.8 currants, and often as high as 6.

in  my early days when i didn't have money and needed it quick, i used to sell beans on auction for two currants under going price. i made a LOT of money doing it.

but other player would speak to me, insisting that i should sell at higher prices, mostly because they wanted THEIR beans to sell at those higher prices. and sometimes they would appeal to my sense of greed by explaining to me as if i were terribly naive that other players were only going to buy my cheap  beans and turn around and resell them at higher prices.

"fine," i said. "then two of us can get rich off of the same beans and not just me."

the thing was at the time i needed money and i needed it quick.

now i can afford to buy hundreds of thousands of beans at 3 and wait until i can sell them at 6.

and someone out there still needs that money quick.

here's a thing: if you think my prices are too high, feel free to undersell me and you can control prices. if you think my prices are too low, fell free to buy my underpriced beans and sell them at a price that suits you better.

if you can't do either, get out of my way.

you shouldn't eat it.

this is a lobster mushroom.

it is a parasitic species that grows on other mushrooms. it is reported to be delicious.

the tricky bit is that it takes on the toxicolgy profile of whatever species it's growing on AND it completely consumes its host, making it nearly impossible to tell what the host species is.

so maybe completely edible and delicious, maybe totally deadly and still delicious.

i wouldn't risk it. you probably shouldn't either.