I'm feeling a bit woozy so I'll let others speak about my event of the day

Comments from readers concerning morning bike crash:

(a proper subject heading might be:) For whom the Bell…

My sympathy for your loss of Mr. Bell…

Was it Bianchi’s fault? Infatuation is a dangerous thing.

Comment from the sidelines (i.e. Mr. Bianchi chimes in – I am merely transcribing his thoughts; I know him that well):

Dear high-ups who make all the important decisions in this town, like about road stuff:

Cut us a break already. Today, Nina took me for a tour of the downtown. She was looking at some old warehouses there (her ideas come from who knows where) and she took me along for the ride. Never mind that the warehouses were along pebbly lanes (see photo below) that caused me severe nerve damage and rubber attrition. I’m not that young anymore.

Then she spun me around her stomping ground – the campus. I was pleased as pickles: a special bike line, important like, right in the middle of the main drag (University Ave)!

And look, I said: it continues on the little highway called Campus Drive! Man, this downtown stuff is cool! Good bye bike lanes, hello an urban existence!

But then, LO! It’s gone! Right there, in the middle of Campus Drive, the bike lane has disappeared! I had to think quick, take Nina by the ass and made her do a sharp turn off the drive toward the hospital, where we picked up roads and byways all the way to the Shorewood area.

The rest is history. I was out of breath, there was a bump, no warning, just like that, she wanted to turn, I missed the beat and threw her. I stood off to the side sulking (she got all the attention) as doctors and trained people with sirens and flashing lights emerged out of nowhere (the Shorewood factor, she tells me). I wasn’t even asked to help her home. Someone perched me on top of their van and gave Nina the comfy inside seat (the Madison=everyone-helps factor, she tells me).

Before signing off, I wanted to tell you high-ups that I think you treat bike lanes poorly as compared to regular traffic lanes. When I was scooting with her on U Ave, man those ditches, real DITCHES I tell you, many inches deep and wide, every couple of paces – WOOMP, and another and another: that’s just unreal. No wonder my nerves were frazzled and my rubber lost some its punch. I was made years older today.

Nina – she seems bouncy if not totally sprightly. That peasant stock line again. She has sprains and bruises but she, kind soul, is showing no ill feelings. She even took me out for an afternoon latte. True, she could not hold on to the cup well (embarrassing the both of us), but we managed the back and forth trip alright (between you and me, she’s a little off balance, but hey, at least she’s still kickin’. Or rather splashing, since I just saw her crawl up to soak in the bathtub).

Sincerely,
Mr. B

Mr. B waits while I look downtown at Madison's old tobacco warehouses 

A brief (because my typing hand hurts) ode to Mr. Bell

I know you well
My stunning Bell!

On a ride from hell
I up and fell
And lived to tell
This story well.

My head wont swell
Thanks to my Bell.


Thanks, Mr. Bell. I’m sorry that my gain is your loss. You do look awfully beat up. So do I, but I expect to be in good form soon enough whereas you – I’m afraid I’ll have to find a replacement. But here’s a photo of you from just a few days ago when you were looking mighty fine. Please know that I’ll always remember you. You saved my life.
love,
Nina

p.s. Now I know what you're thinking. Given what I wrote before, I was probably not cautious enough, it was my fault, bla bla bla. Not true. I was going slowly and encountered a bump in the road. Mr. B. could not handle it and threw me. I think I need to better understand Mr. B's limitations. He's kind of quirky sometimes. Now I know. BTW, he and I are still friends, really we are. No one's perfect.

my hero (not the latte, Mr. Bell) 

My summer vacation: essay written on the first rather than the last day of summer.

Let’s pretend I suddenly lost all writing skills. Let me rephrase that: the pretense has to be in the fact that I do have them but then am managing to disguise them well tonight in order to act like one who does not.

So let me give a brief synopsis of My Summer Thus Far:

The Daily Show was very funny.
Or was it that I was in the mood for it to be funny?
It was warm outside but I managed to not use the AC.
Who needs the AC anyway.
At work, I tidied up loose ends from the previous semester. [This was MONUMENTAL! Yay me!]
I cooked dinner for a change.
I walked in the morning, I walked in the evening, I biked in the afternoon.
I missed the full moon.
But my day was full.
The summer is a good season: it allows you to move forward in ways that winter would not.

A sign that had “Nina and Mr. B” written all over it

A friend passed this on, straight off of someone’s bike rack:

"Faster faster until the fear of death is overcome by the thrill of speed"

Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good way of looking at our current movements around town.

Motivation

I have heard so many talk about it lately: are you motivated to work steadily, clean up your space, eat less, exercise more, meet new people? Are you motivated? Well are you? Work on it, damn it!

It sounds like a nightmarish rendition of New Year’s Resolutions. Resolve, resolve! Work, discipline, perseverance, determination. A Manifesto! That’s it, a Manifesto for a Better Life!

Better life.

Me, I want to learn to let go, to not be so charged and damn motivated. To think of a day where I accomplished nothing much and went to bed not buzzing or spinning as a good day. To not make to do lists, to work through projects methodically without rush or even much thought. Because most (I admit, not all) projects are rather low-pressure and are well served by insouciance rather than a mad rush of adrenaline. Oh, to not feel anguished and pained at the thought of a week ahead of me! To keep the windows open on the first day of summer and just listen to the sounds out there. And think they’re beautiful. And think about nothing more, for long stretches of time. Hours maybe.

Okay, I got that last thing going now. I’m motivated to work on the rest.

tlc

Would you eat a whole box of TLC crackers just because you liked the name? I would.

my pals 

Bianchi and me, we're getting a little carried away with our passion for each other

Okay, I think I am getting too bold on the bike. I think I ought to wear a bike seatbelt or something. I think I should not be making left turns from busy six lane roads and darting between cars at full speed. Stop me from being a jackass on wheels!

I am a careful driver. So why this defiance, given that I now have two fewer wheels to support and sustain me? Why this feeling of power on the road when I should be cowering and trembling? There are some mean looking SUVs out there and I know they basically have one goal in life and that is to do me in right there on the road. So why am I these days not scared of them? Of traffic? Of life? Why do I feel a special bond and camaraderie with fellow cyclists, wanting to high-five them each time we obstruct traffic with our presence and make life miserable for those wanting to effortlessly speed home in their damn machines?

All those drivers, polluters, spoiled air conditioning addicts – they are suddenly them and the bikers and I, we are us, a fellowship of man woman and spinning wheels. Yeah!

Still, I am putting a little post-it on the handlebars as a little prod: fearlessness gets people in trouble. I should remember how much I hated cyclists like myself just two weeks ago. Road hogs, I used to mutter. Find a bike trail and leave me alone. Of course, that was then. Two weeks can make a new person out of you. Really. One small event -- a bike, a phone call and you're a different you. Pull over, cars, that right lane is now mine, damn it, mine!

the sweet smell of relief and vindication

There is this service out there (for every need, real or imagined, there is a service provider) that comes over and attends to things you’ve neglected in and around your house. As it was gently suggested to me last Friday that my yard and roof need some tlc, I called them and they came dashing over (the big thing about them is that they are like the Roto-Rooter Man – they come out immediately, like your life depended on it).

They walked, looked, poked, inspected. I sweated it out. You just feel so helpless: you start thinking that you truly are a worthless human being who rides Mr. B out west instead of attending to gutters and branches on a regular basis.

Finally, their verdict, delivered slowly but emphatically:

Ma’am (it’s better than miss, alright?) you don’t need the roof edging replaced. Just trimmed. Should take no time. As to the yard: leave it alone. The flowers are great. If someone doesn’t like your densely planted flowers, then they wont like them. But I wouldn’t touch a thing outside. Maybe trim a bush or two, that’s it.

God, I love service providers who tell you you don’t really need much of their service!

Just goes to show that one person’s jungle is another’s Eden, right? Admittedly, I did let things slide a little outside, but I am reassured that I’ve kept at it enough not to make eyes bulge as people drive by (I’m in the suburbs; people don’t walk much in the suburbs – too folksy, I guess).

Inspired, I went to the city park and loaded up on free mulch: your cuttings, pulverized to shredded garden garbage, to be applied now as dressing to my… sweet, dense jungle.

beautiful, right? 

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine*

Which day in the calendar stands out for a northerner? Which one has “revel” written all over it? Which one has you in an apoplectic state toward the third week of December, because it seems So Very Far Away?

Obviously it’s tomorrow. Summer solstice (this year it happens on June 21st, early in the morning). When daylight (in Madison) will stretch luxuriously for 15 hours and 23 minutes (with visible light extending for 16 hours and 34 minutes).

Full moon tomorrow. A long hot day. Windows open. Breezes making their way through, from one end of the house to the other.

Midsummer. Dreamy, crazy midsummer.

*Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream

this morning's rose: color so intense, it radiates 

I feel better: my yard is less chaotic than Owen Woods

So here’s what happened: on Friday, I had a visitor who was here specifically to give feedback on how I was managing the upkeep of the house. His words: the yard looks like you are a woman in despair. You need to hire someone [translate: at a minimum of $40 an hour] to help you deal with it.

It stunned me. I mean, here I’d been trying to stay on top of things and I got this slap: woman, you are a failure! You talk big about perennials and plants but your yard looks so overgrown that even rabbits are staying away for fear of losing their way in the jungle that you call a garden.

Crap. Something needed to be done. First, I hovered under my quilt (this is my response to pretty much anything problematic these days). Then I took B out for a spin. Then came the walk in Owen Woods. Finally, as dusk was turning into darkness, I took the shears to my yard and started hacking away. I made progress. It now needs 9 people with 49 hours and extra sharp shears and blades to take care of it. But I feel complete. Like my coping skills are no longer subject to challenge.

Owen Woods at dusk 

my front garden: you know, all those green stalks will eventually produce blooms. just you wait. 

What was I thinking – first in a series of posts indicating that I basically have lost the ability to draw inferences of the sort: if A, then B.

Here’s a story from last night which, if not offering definitive evidence of the above, certainly is suggestive that my brain has crossed wires and unsound connections within:

In the early evening I biked over to Rowley Street (maybe a half hour away, toward downtown Madison). I intended to drop in on a get together of sorts, even though I knew only a small number of people in attendance. And because I knew only a small number of people in attendance, I thought I would surely drop out pretty quickly. And bike home. With maybe a stop over at a blogger’s house, because she appears to be okay with drop-bys and she lives near there.

It didn’t happen. Turns out there were four people who, in their second (or first?) lives played guitars very very well, and one who played harmonicas very very well and as night set in, the Beatles songs accompanied by multiple guitars came forth and people sang and ate and yes, drank beer and – this is a new one for me – organic cigarettes were passed around and although I did try a puff so that I could later brag that I’ll try anything as long as it’s legal, I wasn’t much into the smoking. But I am a sucker for people singing together, outside, late at night and so it was close to midnight before I left.

But wait, what was I thinking? If A, then B. If you take your bike out late at night to a gathering on the other side of town, then you have to imagine yourself capable of riding it back. I did attach a nice little cateye to Mr. B, so I was fairly certain I could see the road, but others thought I was insane to be riding the hilly roads at midnight.

I retorted that at midnight the roads are emptier than at noon and besides I can always hop on the sidewalk if I feel uncertain. I read the rules for bike riders, I know what is permissible. At which point someone said that the alcohol limits are placed on bikers as well and of course they are correct, but I had been doing more singing than drinking so I felt I was safe there.

What got me finally was someone’s description of what it’s like to ride on the sidewalk at night with even just one beer under your belt: you feel every bump even if you do not see it. It’ll knock your insides out.

So I caved. Which was okay. Someone took me and my bike home and during that car ride I found out that they sailed regularly and so out of the evening I got a lot of Beatles, some promises of joint bike trips from those who were boggled (not necessarily in a good way) by my determination and at least one sailing adventure, if I promised to work the ropes, or whatever it is that one does on sailboats.

If I were to summarize the evening in one sentence, I would say that it reminded me a lot of my earlier trip peddling west: I sang and sang and talked out of some kind of desperation, hoping that something would snap and then I could just glide and be done with it. I can’t say that anything snapped and I certainly did not glide in any shape or fashion, but the process of peddling and/or singing feels better than staying home under a quilt – which is the way I had spent the first half of the day.

How far?

Letters I wish I could write:

To someone far away --
Remember last year at this same time when you shared a song with me? When you, in your life out there somewhere had been listening to How Far and decided that I may enjoy it and I did, only I am such a music baby that anytime I hear a plaintive voice, I get too choked up?

And to another --
Remember when last year we listened to Pokarekare Ana on a blanket outside? And how you did not know then that you’d be hearing it in New Zealand a year later? And that I’d be composing imaginary letters on Ocean? Because one just cannot know these things and I am basically your terrible predictor anyway. So much so that I am prone to asking others about what they think next year or the year after will look like, because I typically have no idea and in my Polish angst about each day, I always assume that by tomorrow life will topple and I will find myself wasting away in some state of discombobulation in a Benedictine abbey in southern Italy, or, horrors of horrors, digging ditches in a Russian kolkhoz with a burly фермер standing over me telling me to dig harder.

How far, how far do we go each day, how far did you travel? Did I?

Today I took the bike out and, in a straight line, headed west. Everyone talks of doing that. Driving, running, without stopping, until you run out of steam, breath, or gas. Well what if you biked? How far can you go before you encounter the first corn field? Farmland that rolls onto itself with no end in sight? A red stable with horses? The end of the road?

The thing is, however far you take yourself, you always have to figure out a way to get back. Leave yourself enough gas, or, with a bike – enough energy to peddle those hills again and head home.

The first cornfield these days is many miles out... twenty-six years ago, when we first moved to Madison, our apartment looked out onto a cornfield -- an interesting experience after south Chicago.