Monthly Archives: January 2012

Happiness is a Moon Landing

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I can’t decide if I am so damn chipper this weekend because future-president Gingrich has promised a moon colony or because I am finally counting down single-digit hours between the current time and when Husband Dan finally moves into our apartment and is quickly followed by all of our furniture

Dan's dreams include occupying the moon.

 

I will not move to the moon until the moon colony has figured out the issues of obtaining functional and comfortable furnishings.

The other theory I have about my current positive outlook  is that the weekend has been beautiful after a week that started with snow, turned into rain, and the finally turned into springtime.

 

My cycling clothing could be called “eclectic.” It’s probably more appropriate to call it “ill-fitting and indicative of a cheap bastard.”*

This is because the majority of my road jerseys are hand-me-downs (or swaps) from cycling friends of Dan or I – which means that they belonged to

  1. fast teenaged children who grew
  2. cyclists who got fat (by roadie standards)
  3. cyclists who had beef with the organization who provided them with the specific jersey.

Which means that I own mostly of mens’ xtra-small jerseys featuring collegiate logos or long obsolete teams. I wear these with non-matching shorts/tights. I look like a sausage stuffed into it’s casing with some extra floppy room in the jersey arms. In the land of road cycling, this means I get friendly greetings on the road when

  1. someone with poor vision mistakes me for a peer (never happens when I’m headed uphill at 4 mph)
  2. a guy with a santa beard passes (unless he’s on a recumbent or wearing something other than a hi-vis jacket/vest/sash)
  3. someone is really friendly

On Saturday, it was not freezing and beautifully sunny. I rode a pretty standard “Leave city – Lincoln – Concord – Carlisle – Return” loop. I was wearing a jersey for a college that is nowhere near this region.  This typically means that I get salutes and head nods from folks wearing collegiate cycling apparel, and old santa-types.

I saw so many cyclists! I was amazed by the number of people a) riding and b) smiling/waving (rather than the perennial head nod or stoic mini-salute). This was more people than I’ve seen riding in awhile, and it contributed even more to my awesomely happy mood. Then I thought: why don’t I know these people? Where are cycling buddies? Why can’t I meet a friend who is much larger but only marginally faster than me?

So far it’s been more than difficult to solve this conundrum.  Winter is not a good time to make bike friends, especially when you value sleeping in followed by leisurely breakfasts over riding in sub-freezing weather. I refuse to ride for fun when it’s below 30°F (transportation cycling is a different story). I attempted to go to the only year-round ladies ride I could find locally, but arrived to find it had been cancelled and participants had been informed telepathically, rather than via the website created for that purpose.

The best of Saturday’s roadway greetings occurred as I was headed out of Carlisle on rte. 225, a lady travelling up to Carlisle, wearing a similar hodgepodge of cycling gear passed by, sat up tall, and said “Hey!” like she just saw an old friend. Maybe she’s just a fan of a college that’s 800 miles away from here? Or, maybe she saw a kindred spirit who owns mismatched and ill-fitting cycling apparel?

Whatever the answer, I’m wondering: where do these nice, friendly people hide? I’m thrilled that I’ll be able to ride with my Husband again, but he’s a) way faster and b) has to share good weather days with both his bicycles and motorcycle.

As a house-husband, I have a feeling he’ll ride on the beautiful days where I’m stuck at work, and then when I finally get a chance to sneak out on my fun-bike, he’ll be riding his fun-bike, the one with the many-horse-power engine. Not that I mind riding alone, but when you have cycling friends, you get barbecue friends, drunken dart playing friends, and (if you are lucky) someone with whom you can commiserate with about chafing, phlegm, and unfortunately timed intestinal distress.

These are problems to focus on later, after the spring season truly arrives, for now, I’m just waiting for the furniture my Husband, to show up at our door.

*I think the “eclectic” moniker goes to the couple I saw riding a hybrid bike and old steel clunker (respectively) on the Minuteman at about 8 mph with some fancy Castelli bibs and coordinating black jerseys. I think if I had brand new fancy-pants bibs, I’d want to go a little faster than the rollerbladers (I’d be trying to drop the hungry-and-venomous-looking scorpion on my ass).

The first-world problems I wish we had

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The berating of people who are smart enough to use the Internet, but not smart enough to intelligently examine an issue is really best left to someone else. There’s already someone in this world who can fill work-time procrastination hours with plenty of bicycle-related news commentary.

However, I feel compelled to share what my personal Google-bot told me to read today:

"I am upset that a good friend of mine insists on cycling in central London without a helmet, despite all the warnings and the white painted bicycles placed about the streets as memorials. I have mentioned it to him a few times, but he still hasn’t got one. I don’t want to keep nagging him but what can I do?"

Google-bot was wrong. I really didn’t want to read this*. I was much more interested in this:

"My neighbour’s cat has started coming into my flat and eating my cats’ food. He did it only occasionally until a couple of weeks ago and now it’s every day – my poor cats hardly get anything. I can’t lock the cat-flap or my cats won’t be able to get in and out. My neighbour thinks I’m overreacting."

The fact that I think this problem is so much better than the first one really isn’t saying much. This also technically wasn’t a question, but rather a string of related statements.

However, when you combine the two, it becomes a much more interesting problem that actually might warrant taking action to solve:

I am upset that a good friend of mine has started coming into my flat and eating my cats’ food, despite all the warnings. He only did it occasionally, and now it’s every day. I have mentioned it to him a few times, but he still thinks I’m overreacting. I don’t want to keep nagging him but what can I do?

So much better. And the obvious answer to the first question: the reason your friend doesn’t wear a helmet is because a helmeted head can’t fit through the  cat flap.

*For the record, I have no beef with the helmetless. I wear a helmet specifically so that when I finally get flattened by a large commercial truck (or, to be fair: texting SUV-driver, or really old person who you can barely see behind the wheel), no one will blame my severe internal injuries, crushed femur, or general resemblance to Gene Hackman on my lack of helmet. 

It is better to speak from the soapbox than to eat from it.

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I’m cheap.

We’re talking about in the financial practicality sense.

An illustrative example: I own a lot of things that range from lime green to safety yellow, not because I like these colors, but these are the colors of satchels/sweaters/jackets/shoes/etc. that are typically on sale at 40%+ off because no woman in her right mind would want to pay MSRP for something that purports to be useful but appears in a day-glo color that truly matches nothing else on this planet.

These are the colors I am typically wearing. Often all at once. No, I am not color blind.

Because I hate spending money, I avoid turning on the heat until I find myself wearing gloves to type. I then keep the thermostat as low as I can tolerate.

I regulate my indoor temps in relationship to my feeling of personal wealth and current degree of cheapness. Through this, I’ve managed to acclimate myself to never having the thermostat set above 61 degrees. I get added benefit from my in-home heat deprivation because in the building where my actual office is, some losers down the hall don’t have a thermostat, and they choose to open the window next to my office door to adjust their personal climate 100 yards away.

From this rigorous anti-heat training, I might as well be a polar bear.

Careful analysis suggests that Nanda and Polar Bears have much in common.

While hopefully I’ll see some financial benefit to this, the awkward fallout is that I have to wear summer-like layers to tolerate most indoor environments in which I am not responsible for paying utilities.

I went to a town meeting regarding the proposed improvements to the Minute Man Trail at Arlington Center. The word “Trail” is used loosely, as the pathway ends and then confused dog walkers, in-line skaters, speed-walking grandmas and the occasional bicyclist have to figure out how they will cross the Rubicon Mass. Ave. and somehow make it back to the trail. They have some money to fix the problem, and paid some firm to give them suggestions. While the improved light timing and curb extensions are great ideas, the trail connectivity still has a problem. The options range from repainting some sharrows to trying to convert 1.5 blocks into a cycletrack/clusterfuck.

I only had marginal time between leaving arctic workzone and arriving at my arctic igloo apartment. So I dropped the laptop bag, made a PBJ, shoved it in a purse, and pedaled off toward Arlington Center. I have a long history of being the person who shows up late to community input meetings, and I was trying to avoid this typical scenario. I made it there in record time and was pretty warm when I a) almost forgot to lock my bike, b) dropped both my blinkie lights on the sidewalk instead of into the bottom of my purse (thankfully, this was Arlington, and so they were still there at the end of the meeting. I probably wouldn’t have even needed to pull them off).

Apparently the town of Arlington has a much larger budget than I, and thus has no problem heating the inside of town hall. It felt sauna-like. But only to me. Other people didn’t even take off their coats.

In the middle of January, surrounded by every middle-aged cyclist and speedwalking senior citizen in Boston Metro-West, I delayered down to my only-marginally-work-appropriate-with-a-sweater-and-opaque-tights cotton dress, to notice that my favorite cable knit tights had a huge hole in them, and I looked ridiculous. Half dressed. Holes in my clothes. Uneaten PBJ squished in my purse. I had miscalculated the time it would take between home/sandwich/meeting, and so the sandwich just sat there, calling out my name. I did at least remember to silence my phone.

The bike movement options are straight out of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide. I think it’s great that they are on board to adopt NACTO’s guide – unfortunately the Bikeway design specifically addresses in-road facilities – not on-road segments of multi-user paths, so the potential for confusing users, creating conflicts between trail users and local sidewalk users, not to mention  cars/bikes or rollerbladers/everybody is pretty huge. From a Multi-User perspective I wasn’t particularly happy with any of the solutions, but fixing the trail in way that could make everyone happy would probably cost millions, and involve a lot more than a single intersection. Given that I was half-naked and starving, I really wasn’t able to constructively contribute.

Most people at the meeting were pro-active transportation types. A lot of people at the meeting were traffic engineers who wanted to fix other intersections and redesign medians away from standards. I could also swear that I saw Mr. John S Allen wearing a bright green track jacket (is he cheap like me? or just likes the absurdity?), but I have no proof. I did like that the rollerbladers acknowledge that they take up more space than anyone else. Thanks for noticing. Some local news source did actually write up the meeting, and there are a few inaccuracies (I think some people might claim the light timing value mentioned is innacurate), but overall it seems like the same meeting I went to…

 

The Face of the Changing Climate

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This week, while reading the internet for work and for fun I ran across multiple instances of people angrily denouncing/denouncing-denouncers-of climate change in response to a single extreme weather event or season with above-average precip/temp/snow/etc. I tried to re-find these mentions so that I could call them out, but they got eaten by my RSS, news reader, and other feeds. Sorry. Instead, I can offer this.

I like physics, so you can probably guess exactly what I think about the climate and what it does while we are at lunch. But… I have an equally unscientific thought on the actual cause of changes in seasonal weather patterns: Me.

 

Snow season is calculated as total snowfall. Current season is divided into "pre-" and "post-" move.

According to this very heavily researched and detailed graph, you can see that my location in these past few years has corresponded with snowfall (and this also tracks with instances extreme winter weather events, if you really care to know). Winter 11-12 is still in progress, so time will tell (and I hope I’m right, sorry ski industry!), but you can easily see that prior to moving back to Boston, the snowfall in  Bean Town exceeded College Town, and since my move, vice versa.

For the record, the fact that I’m freezing my ass off right now (-10C/14F), doesn’t actually change my opinion of changing climate.

Where the Hell is My Husband?

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I’m really competent in a digital world. If you need some kind of infographic or map, or need to magically rebrand the world-famous doughnut bike into a rolling tribute to the Swedish fish at short notice: I’m your girl.

There is no applicable purpose for this particular skill. It doesn't even transfer to Mike and Ike's.

If you need anything done in the actual world, I’m entirely useless. I can’t keep a closet organized, logically store things in a kitchen, or even figure out where the dried beans are kept at the Foodmaster. Currently, I have no idea of how to organize the two towels and meager dishes I have here. It’s like staring at a field of infinite possibility and I am entirely paralyzed.

This is where Husband Dan becomes extremely useful. He can plan a 15-stop errand running trip with no back tracking. He would immediately know where to store everything in the currently empty cabinets of this house. He would even have the refrigerator make sense.*

On Saturday, I managed to escape from my unorganized domestic hell to get outside and enjoy the 50-degree weather. I went for a decently long ride and managed to not get lost, which is rare.

On the way out, I took the Minute Man to Lexington and made a mental note that people were pretty civilized. I’m familiar with the W&OD near D.C. and any time HD and I are on that trail, we’re subjected to countless guys who like to make a big deal about catching and passing anyone who passes them, but I gently passed a few folks and there was no retribution (as it’s not a war/race/pissing contest). I was super impressed with how reasonably people behaved. However, on the way back home, I jumped back on the trail and passed some old guy in a pseudo-vintage wool jersey somewhere in the outer-burbs, and thought nothing of it, until he caught up to me near the Trader Joe’s/Starbucks in Arlington, which is a heavily travelled area.  I had slowed to prevent pedestrian carnage. He passed me, turned on the gas, and almost took out 8 pedestrians in the process.

I don’t mind getting passed by old guys, and as I am lacking in surging testosterone, my ego isn’t harmed by it.  I can actually judge my bicycle related fitness by the number of middle-aged men wearing something absurd who pass me on the roads (this weekend, for example: waffle-weave cotton long johns under lycra bike shorts). The key word here is: roads. Bike paths are filled with pedestrians, pets, and unfortunately flat frogs and mice. The pets and pedestrians aren’t flat, and I want to do my part to keep them present in at least 3 dimensions.

3- dimensional people once again remind me that one of my favorite non-flat individuals still isn’t here. While I’m missing my husband a lot, it’s an appropriate amount; however, my mom misses him more.  She sent him (not me) a happy New Year card last week, and I received an email today:

“Hi, Nanda, We miss you. Hope moving in is accomplished and new job is a good one… Know it must be busy so just wanted to say that we hope all is well and you’re not missing Dan too much… We don’t have an e-mail address for Dan so can you send one. Know he is missing you a lot. We will send him a “care” package to keep his spirits up. Love, Mom and Dad. P.S. any suggestions of what to put in the care box for him?”

From reading her emails, one might deduce that my mom was never told that the carriage return key works on the computer keyboard exactly as well as it did on a typewriter. However, she’s written reports and had jobs and stuff, so I’m pretty sure she knows how paragraphs and grammar function, but just believes that these rules are suspended in the interwebs

Writing style aside, the point here is that I am living alone in an empty apartment in a large metropolitan area in which I have exactly three friends (who are interesting and busy people), and my mom is extremely worried about how Dan is holding up while surrounded by all of our furniture, in a quiet small town where we know a lot of people! She is so worried that she wants to send him a care package like a freshman during Fall mid-terms. My mother has forgotten that Husband Dan did not immediately materialize full-grown from sea on a half-shell upon our wedding day.

The Birth of Dan, as envisioned by my Mom (sincere apologies to Sandro Botticelli)

The young-spry seventy something property manager has the exact opposite opinion of which one of us deserves more concern. She  stopped by to tell me that our 88+ year old landlady is going to live; apparently she took a bad fall and it was pretty dicey for awhile. Our property manager went on and on about how it’s unfortunate that I don’t have my husband here to take out the trash, check the furnace, and keep the bad guys who steal trash can lids away. A lady living alone in an apartment in a yuppified neighborhood? How unfortunate!

Despite her concerns, I’ve managed to put on shoes and go to the basement to check the furnace (hasn’t blown up yet!) and hauled the trash the whole 15 feet from the side of the house to the curb. The trash cans came with pre-stolen lids, so those aren’t my concern. This whole 5 minutes of my life was pretty difficult.   How do the single ladies do it?! In 21 days, I’ll get Husband Dan back, and while I hope he’s going to be pretty happy to see me, I doubt he’ll be jazzed about taking out the trash. So, I might get to practice those hard earned skills again, sometime.

 

 

*Seriously. I had an unopened can of soup in there. What was I thinking? I tried to channel our former kitchen and got the cheese in the cheese drawer and most of the veggies in the crisper, but god, that was arduous. I’m actually looking forward to coming home to a color-coordinated fridge, again.