Posts filed under 'Notes and Errata'
hello from our last and final campground
This is Nora, bringing you morning blogging from our last morning in the great outdoors. We are all sad, says lizbrite. No we’re not! Says Shelby. We’re at Susquehanna State Park, hovering on the edge of Delaware on our way to Philadelphia and our last meeting.
Bugs seem to be our theme today. Mel is tired of bugs crawling her feet, and our breakfast has already been inturrupted several times by various species of bug. During the thunderstrom last night in our tents, the bugs decided to take shelter in our teents with us.
Speaking of thunderstorms, one of the reasons we haven’t written in a few days is that riding into Baltimore was a near death experience. We were late getting into the city because of spills and flats, and as we were riding into Baltimore city limits the threatening clouds opened up and suddenly we were riding through a deluge. It was the first time that any of us had ever biked upstream.
As we were riding through the city, sopping wet, a person on the sidewalk yelled out, hey, are you wanderlust? Once again, our fame preceded us.
We’ve been highly negligent in posting about wanderlust, and we have reflections about our meetings in chapel hill, washington dc, and baltimore, as well as stories from some crazy adventurous days of riding. Hopefully when we get to Philly we ‘ll have some storytelling time.
We had a shorter day of riding than planned yesterday because we had trouble tearing ourselves away from Sugar, Baltimore’s favorite feminist sex store. It’s the only place in town that has adult sex education classes and also provides information and resources about sexuality in a safe and non judgmental environment. If you’re in Baltimore or DC, you should definitely check it out - sugartheshop.com
1 comment June 29, 2008
I am the decisive elephant
At the end of my yoga class, the teachers always read a quote. sometimes it’s meaningful, sometimes it’s totally insipid (i.e. “if we stop worrying about how much fun we’re having, we’d have a pretty good time.)
Sometimes I’ll get the same quote a couple times in a row from different teachers at different class times. This week we’ve been on a “Our greatest fear is not that we’re inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure…” kick, and while I’m not sure I buy the premise, the sentiment is nice (and incidentally turns up some kind of wacko google hits).
So today I’m in class with David, one of my favorite teachers. He’s a pretty serious British guy who talks in a really low, soothing voice. We’re in our final resting pose, waiting for our deep meaningful quote of the day, and David says “our quote today is from Goethe. It is called I am the decisive elephant”.
At which point our entire class started laughing uncontrollably, even though we’re supposed to be in this really serene, blissed out yoga zone. I was trying really not to laugh, but all I could think of was a really determined elephant walking through the grocery store, putting things into his shopping cart really quickly. Just grabbing them off the shelf, one after the other.
Anyway. Clearly I am not studying. But in exciting news, I have only one paper left and then I’m officially finished with my first year of grad school. More Wanderlust related news coming your way shortly, I promise.
Add comment May 8, 2008
Introducing the Wanderlust riders, and bike irony
Bike irony and the riders are unrelated, but entertaining. As we approach the official launch of Wanderlust 2008, the other riders will be making their debut blog postings. From here on out, wanderlustwithrhonda.com will be our group blog and the only place to go for all the news about our adventures. Stay tuned for introductory posts from my fellow riders - Rhonda is pretty excited about all her new friends.
On to the bike irony, after which I really have to do some serious final paper writing. Hop into my wayback
machine for a trip down memory lane, to my bike trip down the California coast to San Luis Obispo. I’d had four lovely days down Highway One with my friend Justin, and we’d parted ways just north of Big Sur so he could turn inland while I continued South. I camped with some friendly and apparently insomniac raccoons in a lovely little campsite on my last night before arriving and was feeling quite pleased with how well the ride was going so far. Well, as I rode down a hill south of Cambria my back wheel started tinkling, as if it had suddenly turned into a music box and/or picked up some little bells. Wouldn’t that’ve been lovely. Instead, one of my spokes had broken and was dangling there in two sad, broken pieces.
The thing about wheels, and especially wheels that you’re carrying 30 pounds of camping gear on, is that it’s actually relatively important to have all your spokes intact. Weight distribution and some such nonsense. I got out my spoke wrench and tightened the spokes around the broken one, hoping to take up the slack and prevent more spoke breakage. Unfortunately, not much later I suddenly slowed dramatically, as if I was braking. Which I wasn’t. One of the spokes next to the broken spoke had caved under the pressure (I know, weak), which pulled the wheel so off center that it rubbed against my bike frame on every revolution.
This meant that not only did I have to walk to the next town (which luckily was only a mile or two away), I had to push against my brake the whole time, because the wheel collided with the brake pad on every revolution. Because the broken spokes were on the drive side of the back wheel, where the cassette is, I couldn’t have replaced them even if I’d had extra spokes, because I didn’t have the right tools.
This bike irony is taking a lot longer to set up than I anticipated when I started writing. Bear with me. We’re almost there.
Fast forward to Wanderlust 1. Justin built me new wheels for the occasion (thanks Justin!), but I’d brought extra spokes just in case. I also bought: a cassette tool, an adjustable wrench, and a chain whip. A chain whip is a special tool that allows you to take off your cassette in order to replace drive side spokes. It is also really, really heavy.
I debated before I left about whether or not I needed to bring it - I mean, I was bringing a pan flute, so it wasn’t as if I was counting ounces, but I also knew that it was going to be annoying to carry this really heavy tool around if I didn’t end up needing it. So I promised myself that if I made it through the trip without breaking any spokes, I’d throw it into the San Francisco Bay as a ceremonial gesture. Well, it turns out that Justin is really good at building wheels, so I didn’t break a single spoke throughout the 4,600 miles. (or since then, for that matter). I arrived safely to San Francisco, the chain whip went into the Bay, and a good time was had by all.
Fast forward to today. I’ve been getting Rhonda all gussied up for our trip this summer, which of course means that every time I fix one thing I find three other things that need to be repaired or replaced. For instance, I just replaced my chain, but noticed that it skips when I pedal. Some investigation revealed that I’d managed to totally destroy my sprockets (the little teeth on the gears) by riding on a worn out chain. I stopped by the bike shop and picked up a new cassette with non-dysfunctional sprockets, figuring I’d go home, pop off the old cassette, pop on the new one, and everything would be golden.
You see where this is going, don’t you?
I got home, went to my bike tool box…and remembered that the ONE tool that I absolutely, positively needed in order to change my cassette was swimming with the Chinese mitten crabs and potentially some ballot boxes on the bottom of the San Francisco Bay.
Moral of the story, kids, is even if your spokes don’t break, don’t throw your chain whip into the bay.
If those aren’t words to live by, I don’t know what is.
Add comment May 6, 2008
I know, enough about the weather
I only post this because:
A) I am avoiding doing my work for school, so I have to think of increasingly creative ways to procrastinate as I run out of un-school related tasks on my to do list. (not that I actually have a to do list, but that’s beside the point.)
B) I opened up my fancy igoogle desktop window, and in it I have the weather.com box that you see below. I keep track of the weather in New York, so I know whether or not to wear my heavy coat or just my medium coat, and the weather in San Francisco, so I am reminded why I will move back there someday.
Now, normally looking at the weather just makes me depressed, because it says things like “San Francisco, 64 F and mostly sunny” and “New York, 35 F and rain mixed with ice”.
But look! avast! For the next three days, the weather in New York and San Francisco will be nearly identical.
Of course, on Friday it will be 74 in San Francisco and raining in New York, but you know what? I’ll take what I can get.
Riding through the West Village today, I finally let myself believe that one day, it will be warm in New York again. The trees are just beginning to come into bloom, so riding down 9th Street is like riding down a cavern of flowers. I think there are probably worse places to be right now.
And I am proud to report that I did it - I rode my bike all winter in New York. Admittedly, there were a few days when I took the subway because it was nighttime and raining/hailing, and once I even took a cab. But there were also times when it was icy and in the 20’s, and I rode all the way across the Williamsburg bridge without seeing a single other person on a bike. Those times don’t have a whole lot to recommend them, all things considered.
So thanks, folks who read my post on the weather and got things moving around here. A little less rain would be nice, but I’ll settle for no longer having to wear two pairs of gloves every time I leave the house. Sometimes New York just makes me impatient with how fragile my body is. I mean, really. It’s not that cold, hands. It’s not like you’re about to freeze off. But they insist, so I wear the gloves.
Add comment April 9, 2008
and finally, NYC
after an intense, delirious, sunburned week in San Francisco, I flew to NYC on Wednesday with the remnants of my stuff and my cats, who were less than pleased about being shoved in a box for twelve hours. I spent the entire flight worrying that they were freezing and/or dead, since I had to put them in the luggage hold and so couldn’t see them until I got to New York. They seem to be relatively well-adjusted and not too mad at me.
Yesterday I got my first taste of just how big New York really is. I’ll tell you stories about all the stupid stuff I do if you promise not to laugh. My new apartment is across from a subway stop, so I walked down to take the subway to the train station and catch a train to Princeton, where I left much of my stuff back in April. I approached the ticket machine and tried to put money in it, like you do at BART. A woman approached and looked at me trying to figure out why the machine wouldn’t take my money. “Whaddya want? Four dollar ticket?” she asked. “Um, sure”. I responded. She started tapping the touch screen menu (ah-ha….), moving so fast I couldn’t even see the questions on the screen. “Where ya going?” “Grand Central,” I said. “Do you know which way I should go?” She pointed me down the stairs, and I set off for the station.
Of course, in New York, there is more than one train station. And trains to New Jersey leave from Penn Station, not Grand Central. I left Grand Central and broke the rule I made for myself last time I was here, which is: do NOT randomly get on a train that you think is going the right direction. Which meant that I was out another 2 dollars, since I went the wrong way and had to exit and reenter the subway to go the right way. Grrrrr. Luckily, I have a bike to ride temporarily, at least until Rhonda gets here (she took the bus) so I don’t have to take the subway any more. wheeee.
So far I haven’t gone a whole lot further than my block, but a bike ride is in my near to immediate future.
3 comments August 24, 2007
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