Happy Birthday, Dean!

Rich and Donna arrived here this week, and we are thrilled about that since we haven't seen them since Peace River. Donna is the one who kept encouraging me to get out there and play pickleball and I'd have most likely quit if it weren't for her and Karen.



She said something yesterday about it probably being too late to do a Happy Hour this week, but maybe next week. I told the guys that while we were on our way to grab some groceries for the week. The Happy Hour King (Austin) thought it was no problem to do one this week.



Since I'm crazy, I agreed. So Austin invited everyone to come to one THAT DAY...and everyone of course pulled it together with no problem. Even a bit of rain didn't slow us down. We just moved to the Rec Hall and did it there. The ladies amazed me with all of their goodies that they brought even with the "no notice" ahead of time. Especially Vicki and Margie.

We've been to lots of Happy Hours, but this was one of the most special ones because it was also Dean's birthday party. Dean is the Grandparent to the really cool kid, Gavin. You know, the one who is a falconer. If you know Dean, it isn't a surprise that Gavin is so cool. It runs in the family.



Dean is one of those sunny people that just brightens the world. You can't help but be in a better mood after hanging out with Dean. His smile alone will warm you right up. (Why do I hear Bob cracking up as I write that?) He's also one of those people that you feel sees something good in you, so when you spend time with him you begin to believe it yourself.



His wife Margie is pure sweetness, so they make a great pair.

Hope your birthday wish comes true, Dean!

We had a great time, surrounded by some of our favorite people!



Living the life in friend filled Florida!

Leaf Season

Having returned to Boston from our stay on Cape Cod, we were greeted by the "Leaf Season" in full effect. It happens so fast! This is very new for Eustacia Vye, who has never seen Autumn before. I had to keep reminding her to pay attention to the road, as she continuously got distracted by the leaves. She thinks that the Fall season matches her colour scheme very nicely - I agree!

This is the fist time I have ridden my Pashley in over two weeks, and the absence made me hyper-aware of the differences between her and my Motobecane mixte. To my surprise, the upright sitting position took a bit of re-adjusting to: To be completely honest, I was somewhat frustrated with the bicycle's composed and stately demeanor after having grown accustomed to the faster and more responsive mixte. Also, I do not have a front rack or basket on the mixte, so another thing that took some re-adjustment on the Pashley was the enormous basket obstructing my view of the front tire.

Mulling this over as I went on various errands, I did not really begin to enjoy the Pashley again until our trip to the grocery store: With the basket and saddlebag fully loaded, the Pashley truly shines - a super stable, super comfortable, utterly luxurious ride. I would have been miserable trying to do this on the mixte.

It was a crisp Autumn day, and it felt oh so cozy to glide through the streets in my soft, flowing cream sweater upon the nicely broken in leather saddle.

I tried to capture the sweater here, but this wasn't my day for successful self-portraiture. Wearing it made me feel as if I were officially acknowledging and celebrating Autumn.

Tweed hat, bought at the Provincetown Army/Navy store - my current favourite cycling cap.

And an attempt at a "Panda shot". Not very informative I admit - but hey, it captures the moment. Happy Autumn cycling!

The Specialist

If you live or work in Brisbane, you owe a debt of gratitude to Nate Foster. I Like to think of him as some sort of specialist bomb squad kinda guy. He's one of a very few specialist welders working on live gas lines. Stuff that.






I don't know about you climbers,but the idea of pointing some welding rod thingy, that's seething with a high potential electric charge at a pipe that's pressurised with natural gas in the middle of a populated city,as a little spooky.


I stole that pic from Nate's Instagram. Follow his world of high style and danger onInstagram as "Spanworth" and get ready for thegratifyingly predictable alert,"Spanworth likes your post".







Nateshowed his explosive power when he tooka burn on"Beautiful Thing" 28 at Queensland's specialist cragThe Pulpit.

jjobrienclimbing and style was there to bring back the look.





















"Beautiful Thing" - In the pipeline.







Soft focus. Hard climber.











My fave shot of the year, and product placement perfection for Wild Country Helium quickdraws







Last time I posted Nate he stayed on top of the stats for a year, thanksto the girls over at Red Phoenix Style. Lets get him back on top.









Spanworth likes this.

jj

Friends and Their Place in Our Life

This is a picture of our friends that visited us, on top of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. I have to give a sincere thanks to them for their visit with us. We had such a wonderful, wonderful time with them. We truly just soaked up every minute we were them. It was interesting, it was easy to just spend time chatting about our lives with them and they were such grateful company when we extended even the slightest things their way. They honestly were just a joy to be around and we felt lucky to have them as guests. When they thanked us as they left, we said it was our privilege and we meant it.



Now that we have had the craziness of the hurricane, we see all the more how important our time with them was. They brought such joy and peace to us, and that carried us through our evacuation and the days to follow.



It has me pondering the role that friends hold in my life. The older I get, the more I realize that I get by not with just "a little help from my friends", but rather I get by with a lot of help from my friends. This past winter, I really realized that. While going through what we did, it gave me the gift of analyzing exactly what friendship is to me. It gave me the chance to evaluate what I want from my closest friends and why it was necessary to ask for that from someone that is a close friend of mine.



Barb has played a significant role in all of this for me. While I was sorting through one friendship in particular this past winter and sharing it all with Nathan, he wasn't quite understanding clearly what I was explaining to him. During this same time we met up with Barb and John for a few hours in Florida and as we left he said, I can see now why you are so frustrated with that friendship. Barb and your friends like her have spoiled you. They are such good friends to you, why would you want to settle for something that is so much less than what they are willing to give you?



And he was exactly right. I have friends like Barb that have set a higher standard in my life than I would have asked for myself, and they have shown me that I don't have to settle for friends that are only there when things are happy and fun if I don't want to. I am so grateful for that. It doesn't mean I don't still love the other friends in my life, just that I don't want to put as much time and energy there at this point in my life.



He said he was in awe at how well Barb knows who I am and how supportive she is of me being..well, me. I agree. I hope I give the same to her in return. Because at the end of the day, isn't that all you can really hope for in a friend-that they work at knowing the real you and appreciating the real you? Not to say my friends like Barb don't speak up when truth needs to be spoken to me. They do. Boy, do they sometimes! And they still love me and stick by me even then. Because I trust how much they do know me, I trust their input.



They also let me share honestly with what I see in their life without taking offense, even if they disagree. If something is a big deal to one of us, we don't downplay that or try to talk them out of seeing it that way. We let it be what it is to them. If someone is sad or depressed, we honor that as much as much as if they were happy and full of joy. We work at adjusting our behaviors where who we are is spilling over onto each other in ways that hurt or cause stress for the other, while still remaining true to who we are. And this particular group of women that I am talking about has managed to do this for about a decade now. I hope we are still there for each other for many more decades.



I value friendship far more than I ever did when I was younger. I wonder if that won't continue to be more and more true the older I get. I hope so, because when a friendship is a good one, it is a rare and precious thing.



Thank you, my friend, and all of you women in this particular circle of my friends. You all rock!

In Print

I wanted to share that this Spring I have two pieces of writing coming out in print publications. An article on my impressions of a classic randonneuring bike will appear in the Spring issue of Bicycle Quarterly. And a reworked version of a post from last December, "Emotional Landscapes," has been included in Taking the Lane, Volume 6: Lines on the Map. If you are interested in reading these pieces and the excellent works alongside which they appear, both issues are now available to order.



Since the start of this blog I've been reluctant to commit my bicycle-related writing to print. I did not feel the writing here was good enough, and I also didn't think the style really flowed outside of the blog format. But working on the Bicycle Quarterly article and interacting with Jan Heine made me aware that I've accumulated material - stories, thoughts, ideas - that do not fit the blog format and would work better in print.



Posts like Emotional Landscapes and this earlier one about Vienna are examples of writing that really should have been longer and more nuanced, adapted for the blog only because I had no other outlet for it. Publishing a slightly altered version of the former in Taking the Lane allowed me to test the waters as to whether I felt comfortable turning non-committal blog snippets into real pieces of writing.



I think that one of my readers, who comments here as "Spindizzy" (aka Jon Gehman the rackmaker) is a genius writer who owes it to the world to write a book about life and bicycles. His comments alone are literature as far as I am concerned. I've also been inspired by the writing of Tim Krabbé, Grant Petersen and Bill Strickland (in a way I see the latter two as flip sides of the same coin), and reading their stuff has made me realise that distinguishing "bicycle writing" from "literature" is silly and a defense mechanism. I've written stuff that has been published before. But with this blog I wanted to de-stress and take the pressure off with what I initially thought was a lighthearted topic. Imagine my surprise.



TheSpring issue of Bicycle Quarterly and Taking the Lane, Volume 6 are now available, and those who order should receive theirs some time in April. I derive no financial benefit from the sales of either, but invite you to support these small, independent publications.

Tiny treasures

Virginia pennywort, Obolaria virginica


A plant that's very easy to overlook in the leaf litter. It would be nice in rock gardens, I think. Some of them get a bit larger than this, but not by much.^*

Do you see any violets?

I took this picture with the camera pointed at my feet.^** There are almost a dozen clumps of Viola walteri in the frame. (A.k.a. Prostrate blue violet or Walter's violet.)

Here's a closer look, with my foot for scale:^***

They're very petite.

Most of them are purple, but there are a few white ones:

Every flower in a clump is the same color.


They have a medium-length hook or spur behind the flower. At our place they grow in dry limestone areas. (For the longest time, I just assumed they were regular violets that were stunted because of poor soil conditions!)

Common but still enchanting:

Bluets! This is one of the first wildflowers that I learned the name of. It's also how I learned that many birdwatchers are also very knowledgeable about plants: when the birds aren't showing themselves, you can always look around on the ground. ("Hey, what do you call this little purple flower, anyway?")

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^*My glove size is small, so this really is a tiny plant.
^**I'm 5'4", which is exactly average for American women by the way, not short, and I'm not standing on a rock or anything.
^***My feet are sort of small too, size 6.
(Yes, since I've gained weight I like pointing out the things about me that are still small!)

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In researching the Walter's violet I came across a nice Alabama wildflower web page, Alabamaplants.com. Here is a link to that site's excellent photos of Viola walteri.

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A sad update:
While preparing to email Dan Tenaglia about his excellent site mentioned above, I learned that he passed away in an accident just last month.

Gunnar Bikes: the Accessible Waterford

Given the references to Waterford in a recent post, as well as the company's presence at Interbike (that's a briefcase full of head tube samples in the picture above), I wanted to bring readers' attention to a line of bicycles that I think is mighty nice: Gunnar Bikes. Made in Wisconsin, USA in the factory of Waterford Precision Cycles, Gunnar is the simpler, budget-conscious offspring of the famous custom manufacturer - named after a beloved pet dog.






Advances in steel tubing design led to the TIG-welded Gunnar line's 1998 launch, and Waterford has been producing them ever since. There are now 10 stock models available, including road, cyclocross, touring, and mountain bikes. The local-to-me Harris Cyclery is a Gunnar dealer, and recently I finally got around to test riding one of the bikes.






The Gunnar I rode is the CrossHairs model: a cyclocross bike with cantilever brakes, clearances for 38mm tires and provisions for fenders and racks. The colour is described as "burnt orange."The 54cm floor model was slightly too big for me, but doable as far as getting a sense of the bike over the course of the test ride.My interest was mainly in theCrossHairs'potential as a road-to-trail bike - for which its aggressive geometry, fairly light weight, and wide tire clearances made it look like a good candidate. Others might also be interested in it as a randonneuring bike or even a commuter, given the rack and fender possibilities.





The cleanly welded frame is fitted with a curved, steel fork with a brazed fork crown.





Eyelets for fenders.







Cantilever bosses and rack mounts.





This is the third SRAM-equipped bike I have test ridden this year (see the others here and here), and I am becoming pleasantly familiar with SRAM components.







The canti brakes are Avid Shorty, and they worked fairly well for me.





Alexrims B450 wheelset and 700C x 32mm Panaracer Pasela tires with black sidewalls.






On the 54cm bike there was no toe overlap for me (size 38 shoes, clipless pedals), with plenty of toe room for 35mm tires (but not if I were to add fenders). In conversation with Waterford, I learned that the toe clearance on the 52cm frame is nearly identical, so the same would hold true for one size down. For sizes smaller than 52cm, the clearance decreases.






Riding the Gunnar CrossHairs I found the handling familiar and intuitive from the get-go: Fast to accelerate, responsive to pedaling efforts, stable. No twitchiness and nothing weird about the handling, just an easy, fast, fun ride. The finish on the Gunnar looks excellent: extremely smooth joints, precise braze-ons, nice paint (some attractive stock colour options, as well as custom choices). Geometry can be slightly tweaked from the stock options as well, particularly top tube length. If ordering a Gunnar bike from scratch, lead time is about 4 weeks.






The complete bicycle pictured here is currently for sale at Harris Cyclery (in West Newton, MA), retailing at under $2,500. Prices will vary depending on the components used. For a US-made, handbuilt bicycle with lightweight tubing, responsive but easy handling, clearance for wide tires and provisions for fenders and racks, the Gunnar CrossHairs is worth considering for road-to-trail riding. It's a handmade-on-demand, yet available and accessible bike - from the legendary builder Waterford.