. . . and i’m a mormon

“So I have a question for you,” my good friend and neighbor said to me.  She’d come up the hill to help me plant a box of baby fir trees on the steep slope of pasture we were trying to reclaim as forest.

“Okay?” I grin up at her as she puts into my muddy hand the next little tree, my other hand holding open the hole in the dirt I’d just dug.

“Well, I don’t know how to say this,” she begins and then all in a rush, “why don’t you choose a religion that fits you better?”

Though I’m taken aback, her question is not entirely out of the blue.  Among every other topic under the sun, we’ve also talked religion — or rather spirituality, because she isn’t much  for organized religion.  But faith we both know.  And the inner quietness that brings clarity.  We both know what it means to try and try to treat others with the respect and kindness we both hope to receive — even when we don’t receive it.  And how easy it is to stumble and do what we wish we wouldn’t and not do what we wish we would.

So how do I answer her?

“What do you mean?” I ask, thinking what am I but bred in the bone, sinew upon sinew shaped by a lifetime of belief?

“I mean,” she explains, “if you want a church, why not choose one a little more . . . progressive?”

She has told me I am the only Mormon she has ever actually known.

Where has she gotten her idea of what Mormons are if not from what I am?

I don’t think there is a single aspect she’d identify as progressive that I wouldn’t trace back to the core beliefs that shape me.

What could be more revolutionary — honestly? — than Turn the other cheek? or This is pure religion and undefiled, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction? 

I’ve lived my life within congregations that I did not shop for, congregations that are geographically set, that purposely pull from both sides of the track in the towns I’ve lived in. I’ve visited monthly in homes of real want and real wealth, talking in both places of some of the same kinds of struggles and small joys — but seeing the differences, too, and understanding some of those struggles on a more personal level because the people suffering are friends I respect and love.

In my congregation, English is not the only language spoken and our skin tones are more varied than proportionally dictated by my town’s  given variety.  I’ve sat under the lessons and sermons of people with no education beyond high school and they’ve sat under my lessons and sermons.  I’ve served side by side with PhDs teaching three-year olds. I’ve set up tables and served punch and cookies with hairstylists, social workers, and physicians.  I’ve served on committees with nurses and lumbermen and truckers, with soldiers and accountants and a former night club dancer, with farmers and special ed teachers and the perpetually underemployed. What’s more, the accountant was not male, the nurse was not female — neither was the special ed teacher, and the trucker was the head of the committee. What could be a more radical turning on its head of our social divisions and the caste system we have turned our careers into?

It is in this environment that I’ve learned more than anywhere else to see my town as a unit, a whole organism, whose least members matter as much as any other and whose needs and dreams need to be part of the real solution to the problems we all face.  That is the real root of my progressive-ness.

Because what idea has as much power to change our relation to one another as the knowledge that every human body who walks the earth is God’s dear child — every human body — that whatever you do to any other body — even the most different, the most lowly, the most arrogant, the least admirable, the least likable, the least in agreement with you — you are doing to God?

Do I tell her my involvement with causes she calls progressive is the natural outgrowth of my belief that Jesus will most certainly return to this world He made and loves with a love deeper than I can comprehend?  That  I am only responding to His call to prepare the way?

That I believe in the deepest core of my soul that He is the one who sets us all — believers and as-yet-unbelievers — on this path, calling each of us inwardly in words only we can hear and understand — no matter what groups we belong to, no matter whether we acknowledge it or not — to build His everlasting kingdom of peace and balance and thrifty abundance and worldwide equality?  That He is forever taking up in His mighty hand all our best (though puny) efforts at peace and abundance and turning them truer than we knew.

Would she understand that I want to be found by Him standing among those who helped the good work forward, rather than those who stood in the way?

How can I tell her that I am every day re-encouraged when I remember that I am living within the triumphant arc of a story that ends with vileness failing and goodness prevailing.  That I am enheartened to keep doing the small good things I know to do socially, environmentally, politically, because I wholeheartedly believe that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass?

What she has called a quiet embracing of others is what I have seen as the example of Christ, the path He beckons us all to walk with Him.

And the fact that not all Mormons see things exactly the way I do is just one of the things I love about my religion.  I love that I have to gather every week with people from whom I would be too completely divided (by politics, by interests, by education, by socioeconomics, by so many things) if we didn’t share the same hope in Christ.

I love it that I am called each week to come sit beside them, among them, sharing the hymnbook between us, clasping hands, listening to each other’s struggles and woes of the week, the small celebrations.

I cannot imagine a world at peace that does not begin with me building peace with the closest neighbors I disagree with.  That they can love me and I can love them is for me a small and recurrent gift of grace.

I sit back on my heels, hands on my hips.  The wind blows my friend’s hair around her head standing there above me.   What I have to say is so huge, how can I ever say it and be heard?

bramble

In my ideal city there would always be berry brambles growing along the road.  And unclaimed fruit trees.  In fact, it would be an unspoken social obligation to maintain a strip of frontage with some refreshment for whoever passes by.  Some place to throw the bike down and yourself onto the cool green grass.

If not a hedge of blueberries, maybe just a patch of wild strawberry.  Or a swathe of arugula growing in the shade. Or cucumbers scrambling up a trellis.  Or a water fountain rigged up from a garden hose.  Or even just a wooden bench beneath a wind-chime that makes the sound of water . . .

Of course being the kind of creatures that we are, this kind of grassroots hospitality would immediately lead to lawsuits and excessive governmental oversight.

Rude!  You plant strawberries when I am so allergic to strawberries!

I have to inform you, ma’am, that you are in violation of code 732FZ – the only kind of blackberries allowed are the thornless.  And only one of these three non-invasive varieties listed on the website.

In my ideal city there wouldn’t be this kind of squabble.

Except there would be people.  And I’m not sure people and squabble can ever be entirely separated.  Even in an ideal city.

Maybe in the ideal city.  Maybe.

But in the interim, I go out early, take the dog  (quoting Emily Dickinson who always has so much to say about the kinds of things that always happen) and expect to be surprised by the blackmarket “Hsst-over-here!”  scent of ripening blackberries dangling from unlicensed brambles arcing up, thrusting thuggishly up through the sweet cream-soda froth of Queen Anne’s lace at the roadside.

This week, for the first time since this same time last year, blackberries are sprawling either side of the city limits, setting up places of refuge without a city ordinance, drawing blood from unsuspecting passersby, enticing people with places to go off the path.

Grumbled at, weed-whacked, mowed down but never quite wholeheartedly eradicated by anyone because everyone, being the kind of creatures that we are, secretly admires and desires . . .

. . . this juicy rebellion against regulation, this unruly regularity that brings such unpaid-for unvoted-on sweetness glimmering so beautifully black, as lusciously deep as a deeper spot of shade and right when and where we need it at the end of a long hot hill . . .

. . . at the end of summer.

thanks, Nicole, for the question:

“What word do you like?”

Future Cycle: Small Town Revival (of 24: 7½) . . . and Chickens

Enough dreams come true and I start believing I can see them all into reality . . .

For years I dreamed of having a bike I could ride wearing a skirt.  With a basket to carry fruits and flowers.  But now, if my bicycle dreams can come true — why not the chicken & egg dream?

Of course, like any long-cherished dream, this one has got embroidery.

I want not just any chickens.

What I really want are Marans who have dark mahogany, dark chocolate brown eggs — their shells so tough and delicately dense, with pores so tiny that supposedly salmonella bacteria can’t pass through.

Soft boiled eggs, raw egg eggnog, real mayonnaise, Bavarian creams, delicate meringues . . .

Except I also dream blue and blue-green eggs which means Auracanas with their feathery side-whiskers as well.

And storybook Little Red Hens and other old-fashioned heritage breeds

Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, Barred Rock, Leghorn, Light Sussex, Delaware, Holland, Orpington, Austrolorp, Cochin, Faverolle, Silkie, Aseel, Old English Game, La Fleche, Barnevelder, Welsummer . . .

And what I really want is this rolling coop . . .

Or one just like it . . .

Could a widespread personal chicken habit be a necessary part of this Small Town Revival?

It’s at least another basket-filling Backyard Bounty.  It’s at least another way of Eating Local.

And with enough up-and-at-’em roosters chorusing from street corner to street corner it would certainly be a Small Town Reveille.

How would that be? If we turned into a whole town of early risers?

A whole citizenry who can sit down regularly to a golden-yolked egg, over easy, fresh and full of taste, pumped full of all those naturally occurring vitamins and minerals we are never going to get from the sad essentials added after the fact – how would that be?

Future Cycle: Small Town Revival (of 24 : 3) A Morning’s Ride Away

You want to go on a bike ride with me, don’t you?

It’s 7:30 in the morning.  We meant to leave earlier but  there were tires that needed pumping . . . Son’s bike helmet . . . water bottles.  But now we’re ready to go.  The morning is still fresh and we have sunshine for the first day in years . . .

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Pedaling into Portland, I imagine  — with such energetic glee — myself living there, the wonderful smells of restaurants, the shops, pedestrians and cyclists and people sitting at sidewalk tables.

But wheeling home at the end of the day, I am so glad I can pedal into Portland for a day-cation, but come home here to rest my weary head where all I smell is the drying grass hay and all I hear are birds.

what MAKES it | BREAKS it

• + splendid day-cation possibilities in close-range
• – bike lane (westbound) out of Portland, between St. John’s bridge and Linnton is far too narrow
• + and biking to get there
• – camping trailers, big semi-trucks far too close to bike lane in that narrow section
• + bike lanes along Hwy 30 mostly clean of debris
• + bike lanes feel safe to ride
• + the regional organic, local scene
• – coveting thy neighbor’s farmer’s market

what have you lost?

“Is there anything good about losing?  Does loss help us discover anything?  Maybe sometimes we notice or take better care of what we still have.  Momentarily.  Maybe the reason we talk about our petty losses with such energy is that there are so many inevitable larger ones that can never be redeemed or reclaimed.”

–

the introduction to  What Have You Lost?: poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Back when we were still renting someone’s old summer cabin on the lake in what had since become a consciously genteel suburb of Portland, we would come out here to our rough and rural hillside early in the morning to drag out the filthy carpets, scrape up the scarred linoleum, strip hen-and-rooster wallpaper, and repaint anything too dark and dismal for our comfort.

In the evenings we’d return to the graciousness and order of that neighborhood we had decided we would live without.  After our own quick and exhausted evening meal, we would walk around those well-ordered streets, smelling other people’s dinners, admiring their flowers for the last time. . . almost the last time . . . probably the very last time.

At one corner, these pale queenly lovelies raised their graceful heads beneath an old stand of Douglas fir.  After many evenings, on one of our very, very last mornings, I wandered up to the front door and knocked, “I have to ask you, what are those flowers?”

Oh, those! the woman said, Japanese anemone, and she told me how easily they grew.  Which was all I needed to know.

But with a quick generosity, she turned, fetched a shovel and dug up a small clump and put it in my hands.

I planted it outside my door here.  The anemones were the only thing that grew for me that first year.

And every year they slowly spread.  Each spring, I’d divide the clump and plant new colonies further along the house until they grew from one end of the house to the other, rising gracefully with the drawing in of summer: the last flowers to hold their own against the frost.

In the winters the tall anemone withered away and their background singers came into play.  A slow-growing shiny-leaved evergreen with insignificant flowers bloomed in the heart of winter: sarcocca (sweet box) poured out a powerfully sweet perfume in the darkest days of February.

What is that wonderful smell? my friends used to say when they came to the door, ducking under the dripping eave.  I missed it every time I opened the door last winter.

In the springs that I have now lost, while the anemone sent out flat, dark-green rosettes, preparing for the autumn show, there used to be myrrhis odorata (sweet cicely) springing up in lacy green fronds, lacier white umbels of anise-scented froth.  Every part of the cicely is licorice sweet  – the stems, the seeds, the leaves – you can add it to rhubarb and cut half the sugar.  It re-seeds happily but not aggressively, but I’d had some trouble finding the seed in the first place, hunting it down from descriptions in British herbals.

I’ve saved the seed.  It’s in a tiny Christmas gift bag in the dented enamel pitcher in the cool spot just inside the front door.  Probably it will grow again just fine if I can ever make a bed for it.

And I keep thumbing through the catalog that still carries sweet box.  It will be such a tiny plant at first.  And three years until it’s really worth something.

Japanese anemone I can find at the local nursery.  No problem.

Certainly all three – anemone japonica alba, sarcocca humilis, myrrhis odorata – all three are replaceable.

But it won’t be the same clump of generous anemone anymore that first blessed my bleak yard.

Only a remembrancer.

arrows of flowers, bowstring of bees

No one really wants to hear about my crazy passion for the maths.

I see their eyes glaze over if I venture past, “Yes, actually I am enjoying my class.”

Mostly, this is because the non-Mathian contingent — of which I have been myself for years — regards anything past arithmetic and basic multiplication as tiresome.  We (they) see Math through a yellow and stinking fog.  A stupor comes over them (us) at the mention of the bare and sterile steppes of Trigonometry where we secretly believe dry-necked mathematicians with little pot-bellies just pretend to ride.

Oxford Dictionaries: Kama “the god of love, typically represented as a youth with a bow of sugar cane, a bowstring of bees, and arrows of flowers.”

It is true: my life is highly populated with Mathians.  You would think I could talk to them about my new love.  But obviously, real Mathers don’t talk about it.  Theirs is a stable and serious relationship.

Mine is just a fling, some kind of mad infatuation.  What future can there for me and the maths together?

“Kama (काम kāma, kAma) is a Sanskrit word that has the general meanings of “wish”, “desire”, and “intention” in addition to the specific meanings of “pleasure” and “(sexual) love”. Used as a proper name it refers to Kamadeva, the Hindu univerasal God of Love or Archangel of Love. “

But it does thrill me to understand what I never could before.  I don’t mean never could as in never regurgitate correct answers, never plug in the proper formulas – I eventually pulled adequately adequate grades, parrot-like repeating meaningless phrases to the resigned and bored acceptance of my math teachers.

I mean understanding like looking up through iridescent leaves under the giant ideas of the maths (because it begins to appear that there are many paths of mathiness, snaking through the forest of  knowledge)  – understanding like standing under a redwood tree in a warm rain – catching the smell of it.  Feeling it filling out the lungs.

It thrills me to have discovered, for example, that the words sine and cosine are mistranslations made by the Romans, those unwhimsical engineers.

Years ago I asked and have asked many times since – but what does sine mean?

It doesn’t mean anything . . .  It means this kind of relationship between parts of a triangle drawn within a circle’s arc . . .  It means this kind of wave . . .   It’s a convention – we could as easily call sine and cosine, Bob and Alice . . . It’s just a word. 

This is the answer math teachers give, neo-Roman and unwhimsical.

wikipedia: Sine

And it is not true.

Nothing is ever just words.  Everything has been named by blood and bone beings who walked a world you and I would not be utterly lost in.

I love it that somewhere along the Indus, or the Ganges, an astronomer once drew a circle and then wanted to look at just a part of that circle.  What to call that arc of a circle, the part of the circle under consideration?  Why, it looks like a bow!  A rainbow.  A hunter’s bow.  Cupid’s bow.  Or just capa, which in Sanskrit means simply “bow.”  Something seen in the sky, dreamed of, sung of, something grasped in the hand.

I love it that what we now call the chord (the line, the string) drawn from one end of the bow to the other end of the bow that is our chosen section of the circle was called by this Hindu astronomer simply the bowstring — jya— hanging slack, waiting for its arrow.  I love it that Gupta-era geometers in ancient India played with the word jya (“bowstring”), seeing a poetic resemblance between the bowstring of a bow  and the length of a life – full of intentions and desire, and so for jya sometimes they playfully substituted jiva (“life”). 

And then I love knowing that Arab mathematicians adopted the Sanskrit term whole-cloth, without translation, but wrote it down, as they had to in Arabic, without vowels as jv.  So that Gerard of Cremona, in 12th century Italy, looking at the shape, reasonably if sensually mistook Sanskrit jiva for Arabic jaib (“bosom”) and so translated it to Latin as sinus (“bosom,” or “bay”).  From which, in the 1500s, we English-speakers took our sine.

wikipedia: jya and kota-jya. “An arc of a circle is like a bow and so is called a dhanu or cāpa which in Sanskrit means a bow. The straight line joining the two extremities of an arc of a circle is like the string of a bow and this line is a chord of the circle. This chord is called a jyā which in Sanskrit means a bow string. . . .

I love it that that’s what sine means.

This small and abstract poem on perilous desire: bowstring, life, bosom, bay.

Wild nights – Wild nights! (269)

By Emily Dickinson 1830–1886

Wild nights – Wild nights!

Were I with thee

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!

.
Futile – the winds –

To a Heart in port –

Done with the Compass –

Done with the Chart!

.
Rowing in Eden –

Ah – the Sea!

Might I but moor – tonight –

In thee!

.

Though the point – and there always is a point in the maths – is that the compass and chart are wild themselves – that the mooring in that moonlit bay of mathematica is a pleasure as wild as the sea.

Knowing the naming process tells me someting about the shape of the idea being named.  It’s like going back to the childhood home of a friend – who trusts you enough to bring you into that primal place – and with a new clarity, understanding why they are the way they are.

It helps me to know that the sine is the bowstring to a bow that arcs along a circle’s edge.  But it is not the full circle.  And usually it’s not even a full quarter-circle.  What to call the chord of the leftover arc that completes the quarter-circle, the part that isn’t the capa, the bow that belongs to the sine, the jya?  Cosine is the koti-jya, the co-jiva, the bowstring that would belong to the neighboring, corresponding bow that together with the capa bow completes a full quarter of a circle.

I like knowing that.  And now I remember the right relationship between sine and cosine far better than I did with any more arbitrary — that’s just the way it is — definition.

My mind (and yours?) needs stories and poems, colors and scents, desire and music, to fully function.  I get further thinking of sine as a multicolored bow, stretched by the strong and handsome arm of Desire than I did when I tried to repeat over and over that sine is just a grunt we’ve agreed means a something, that sine is really oog and cosine is its corresponding other, the co-oog.

“I don’t see the difference,” says Fritz. “Either way, they’re both just words.”

Just words.

But he likes to look at my homework.  “Even when you do math you’re doing words,” he says, a finger pointing to the snatches of encouragement and confusion I’ve written to myself in the margin in the process of working out a problem:

Still the same answer as before and not the answer in back of book ~ why?  Unit vector, I surmise, would have length of one unit . . . so?  Let’s just play with this because I’m rather lost . . .

It is the permission to play that I never had before.

I thought Math was a citadel, a gate with a high-security system of high-tech locks and keys.  No one ever told me I could possibly pick the lock with a hairpin given the right twist and patience.  That Math was no citadel but a wandering maze of interconnecting trails through a rainforest of trees and vines, fruits and flowers of different knowings.  I should have known – mathematics is a plural, I always knew.  And I know now it is from the Greek μάθημα (máthēma), which means learning, study, science.  Mathematics = the sciences, the studies of, the learnings.

“And what’s this – a treatise?” Fritz reads over my shoulder, then laughs as he reads aloud, “Math-ity obsession with simplicity trumps again?”

“Do you disagree?”

“No, but usually math doesn’t look like this – all wordy and full of commentary.”

Mathematics is Fritz’ first and truest love – well, maybe second, or even third, depending on how you count his mother in there. How he counts me. But definitely, his love of math is his purest and simplest devotion – no ambivalence, no juggling, no shielding himself.

“I love your pictures,” he says, chuckling, chin over my shoulder.

When I ask myself, as I do frequently ask myself these days, why I am so getting it this time? what’s different? how is it all making such exquisite soaring sense where before it was all wingless muddle? –  I know a good part of it is Fritz.

As in so many things, Fritz is a good part of my pleasure in this pavilion of shapes and eternal quantities, this peaceful place we can come to play, a paper paradise untouched by the messy cross-currents we are otherwise caught in, the prow of our pleasure boat floating free of the slimy weed that usually clutches at the sides of the lifeboat in which we too often must paddle side-by-side.

We wake in the morning and (instead of discussing the broken dishwasher) we lie in bed, propped up with pillows, pencils in our hands, graph paper pad against our knees. Our two heads bent over the shared sketch and computation.

This is how geeks sing their aubades.

“O Daughter of the snow-capped Himalaya Mountain! Manmatha, the God of love has only a bow of flowers, whose bowstring is comprised of a cluster of honeybees; he has only five arrows and these are made of flowers. . . Yet with such frail equipment, bodiless and alone though he be, Manmatha, having obtained some grace through Thy benign side-glance, subjugates the entire universe and emerges victorious” Saundaryalahari, verse 6

But even Fritz is a little mystified at what I’m so loving about what I’m suddenly seeing.

I think, to his eyes, my awe is at such little and such obvious almost-nothings that it seems misplaced.

As if you were to overhear in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, behind a cart of pork rinds and Double-Stuff Oreos, an exultant voice going on about how amazing the little rhyming chimes that jingle at the end of alternating lines of a poem are – how do they do that?! 

Or manic vaporings about the beauty of a certain font, exchanged between levels of Oil Can Henry’s, while they drain your car’s fluids and check the filters, waxing ecstatic over the deeper symbolism of the serif.

Does it matter that my epiphanies are so tiny?  Should we be surprised to discover wonders so slight and small?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

imaginary biking

“I thought maybe you’d given up biking

when you threw away your biker button,“

one says when I show up on two wheels.

“Have you made friends with your bike again?”

says another, brokering the idea of autumn rides.

 I haven’t given up and we are friends.

At least, I would still like to be friends.

Dear Oma and Lady Blue,

I would like to still be friends with you . . .

But here’s the thing –

setting aside the thing about how suddenly

(with the caretaking thing and

the horticultural reconstructive surgery thing and

the I-just-can’t-get-my-act-together thing)

suddenly I can’t seem to afford

that extra 20 minutes it takes to ride into town –

suddenly I can’t seem to consolidate my trips into town

to once at the start of a day

and back at the end of the day-

how instead it’s zip-zip-zip zigzagging

from hill to river

always stopping at the in-laws

three four times a day.

And carting loads that would no way fit in my
handlebar basket.

Setting aside all that,

and setting aside also the hostile forces

among the powers-that-be

who have laid down a new rule

that kids can’t ride the school bus

from the transfer site to school

(a 5-minute bus ride after a 15-minute bike ride)

but can only ride from home to school

(a 45-minute bus ride,

followed by a half-hour wait at the transfer site,

followed by that 5-minute bus ride).

Setting aside all that

as stuff that could be worked around,

worked through,

wriggled under,

here is the real Thing:

Before,

I had a daughter-driver

to tote siblings from practice

with their backpacks of books

and duffels of sweaty clothes,

in the dark, in the pouring rain,

which rain I don’t mind.

But I do mind whining

and all that gusty griping.

Before,

 I had the option

of leaving my reluctant ones at home and biking alone,

letting them come along by car

if they couldn’t be persuaded to join me

in the cycling life.

Now it’s all persuasion and capitulation.

And mostly the latter.

And mostly on my part.

Dear Wheels of Self-Propelled Progress,

I’m beginning again to yearn for you.

And I’m hoping that may be enough to get me out there.

> cross-posted on Imaginary Bicycle .blogspot .

A Lovelier Helmet?

Am I in love with this bicycle helmet?

(plucked rhodie optional and not included with purchase.)

I wouldn’t say love.

I still go helmetless Sunday mornings when I’m all dressed for leading the choir and don’t want to be helmet-headed.  Not entirely convinced that a helmet would do much to save my life anyway, I figure I can go without when there’s very little traffic on my quiet country roads that time of day and week and I’m taking my time anyway, tootling along on the Oma, listening to birdsong,  admiring clouds and trees and frontyard gardens.

But on the other six days when I ride harder and further and with more agressive traffic – not to mention in the company of children under the legal age – I want a helmet.

And I think I’m at peace with the helmet I have now.

(bow also optional)

Rather than save up for a Yakkay and buy it sight-unseen,  rather than either an equestrian helmet or a Bern because of the weight and heat involved,  I opted for Bell’s Citi Helmet because:

1. It has a detachable visor to keep rain and sun off my face
2. It’s a nice, quiet brown, leather-textured
3. It has a quiet, rounded, reasonable shape without Tour de France venting or other ridiculosities
4. It was sensibly priced (just under $50)

I don’t know that I feel pretty in the thing.  But at least I don’t feel so silly as I did with the DayGlo super-speed model I was wearing before.

And it has a tab in back where I can tie my polka-dot bow.

So I’m happy.  Enough.

The Old Bike’s new life

For two months and more, my poor old hybrid has been abandoned. Is this what she deserves after ten faithful years, carrying me for hundreds of miles, up hill and down?

For days lugging panniers full of gear and trail mix around island coastlines? Through new cities, through canyons, along rivers?

  

For day after day, hauling baby trailer with baby, then toddler? Plus groceries and jugs of milk. Piles of books. Boxes of apples. Stacks of manila folders.  And when the trailer was retired, tugging the Tagalong to kindergarten then 1st grade, 2nd, panniers bulging with backpacks, teaching materials, art supplies, picnics, a wooden salad bowl and salad in a plastic ziploc, more groceries?

But lately poor Lady Bluemoon is blue indeed, languishing in the dark garage.  Though better days are coming.  Warm weather and the season of long rides approaches.  Lady Blue is about to be reborn.

She will never be the silvery upright ride the Oma is, but suddenly now that the hybrid is the Old Bike and no longer just my old reliable, it feels like I can play around with her a little more.  And after riding the Oma I know better what I need to make the ride on the hybrid a better ride.  Plus I want to see what can be done with any old bike to make the ride more fun, more easy and still affordable.

One of the things I’ve always liked about my hybrid  is her adjustable headstem – years past I ratcheted it up to the most upright position, trying to get a little more height on the handlebars.  I used to ride around propped up on my fingertips for miles because I just am not comfortable hunched down over the handlebars – and I want to SEE.

I find I love my upright ride on the Oma.  I love the visibility and general comfort of the handlebar position.  But I’ve had to adjust to the sudden loss of leverage I used to get from gripping the handlebars and bending low when climbing hills.  Also when climbing I feel a little less sure of my steering control while on the Oma.

To tweak Lady Blue a little closer to perfection, we’ve been playing around with different handlebars to achieve a ride that’s a little more upright (i.e. more comfortable for the long flat miles for the way I ride) but that still allows some leverage on the hills.
Most recently we’re trying a no-name swept-back style that looks kind of like the Nitto Albatross.  I still have to try it on the hills.

There are more changes in store.  Grips will be next as my old ones have worn themselves away.  And a new seat post.  The suspension seat post I bought with my hybrid has gotten looser and looser over the years.  I haven’t liked the widening wobble that makes it harder to do the whole-body steer.  Plus, it creaks  – not the most encouraging sound-effects when working one’s way up hill.

After these basics, the real fun begins.  First, fenders – of which there are choices now beyond black, white, and neon yellow.  Hammered metal is catching my eye lately – they’re so shiny.  (I know, this reveals way too much about the depth of my analysis).  And I noticed yesterday that a nearby bike shop has Electra hammered metal fenders that are about half the price of the beautiful Honjo fenders.

Then a chain guard – if such a thing is possible aftermarket for a bike with a front derailleur and a triple crankset.  I love the floral Poka guard I saw first on Lovely Bicycle!  And then I saw the alphabetic guard also by Poka.

from sleepyneko

But it doesn’t look like this would fit with a front derailleur.  I’m not so in love with the looks of the only two-part chain guard I’ve found so far – designed to work with a triple crankset – and besides, not even available for purchase.

Is this another reason to take a metals class this summer and learn how to make my own?

The Cleverness of Clever Cycles

  

  

  

I like bike shops for some of the same reasons I like hardware stores, clock repair shops and independent book-sellers.  First, they are full of interesting and intriguing things, but even better they are full of interesting and knowledgeable people who have opinions and experience with the inner workings of what they sell.

Because they know and use (and often have a passion for) the things on their shelves and show floor, their solutions to your questions are always more inventive, wide-ranging and tailor-made than what you’ll find at the super-sized Barnes & Noble-equivalent (“But I’d be happy to look it up for you. . . .  And how do you spell Melville?”) 

When I came back to biking as a grown-up I was lucky it was here in Oregon.  The people in bike shops were young and enthusiastic about bikes.  They rode them to work.  They rode them for fun.  Some of them had even used baby trailers and could give me suggestions about them.  But, when I began biking ten years ago, none of the friendly and helpful bike shop people I ran into were . . . women.

– Except at the tiny mom-and-pop bike shop here in my own small town.   One day when I stopped by for a patch kit I fell into conversation with the older woman working there, mentioned  how it was hard to bike very far, but I guessed I just had to get used to the saddle and toughen up.  Or resort to padded shorts.  I’d already tried the gel-top seat covers and other solutions eagerly offered by other helpful people in other shops.  “Honey,” she said, “what you need is a women’s seat.  It’s not about padding.  It’s about the right support points.”  And she was right.

Things have improved since then – not just for the comfort of my ride, but also for the male-female balance in bike shops.  (Though sadly, that first woman’s little shop closed down round about the time the Wal-Mart came into town.  But that’s another story.)

I began this biking blog with the idea that I would spend the best part of a year testing out bikes, visiting different bike shops, learning from those knowledgeable people, gradually narrowing my choices down to the one Bicycle.

It was a good plan.

But Clever Cycles changed it. Not because they had many beautiful bikes-for-real-life.  Though they do.

 

And not because the people there are knowledgeable and helpful.   Though they are.

 

(And it was a pleasure to bring the Oma back for her 30-day tune-up at their capable hands.  As well as a repaired headstem for my husband’s mountain bike while we waited.)

My original plan may have changed largely because Clever Cycles actually had the Oma that fit me right there on the floor – and at a nicely discounted price that week only.

Before riding the Oma, I stood there in the side-street chatting with the guy who’d so helpfully adjusted the bikes to fit me and listened to what I was looking for and pulled out many great options for me to try.  Chatting about Retrovelos and other options, I fully intended to take my spin on the Oma and then make my way home.  I’d come back another day for further explorations.

But when I came back from that beautiful ride, the helpful young man was busy with another customer and I fell into conversation with one of the owners of the shop, a woman whose seven-year-old son was playing happily just beyond the shining spokes.  A woman in an embroidered skirt the color of cinnamon toast who rode her bike the way I wanted to be riding – “50 pounds of groceries in the front hamper and the boy in his seat up behind.”  She talked about climbing up Mt. Tabor on her Oma and realizing she hadn’t had to shift down to the lowest gear, “It is heavier at first, but you get stronger.”

And I could see myself riding.

The shop owner reached for a card, “I’ll just jot down what you rode, shall I?  So you remember?”

 

Clever, clever.