Rosebud Rides Again

The Nooksack River from Riverwalk Park, December 31, 2012
The lighting came out kind of grim, really it's much prettier.

This morning at eleven when I was getting ready for work it started snowing pretty seriously, so I pumped up the knobby tires on my old K2 hybrid bike and added an extra layer to my clothing. The snow had stopped by the time I headed home from work at eight this evening, and it might have been cold, but I was so bundled up I felt toasty warm all the way home. I only noticed a bit of cold wind on my face.

The ride on my old bike felt so smooth and easy compared to my Surly. Maybe an occasional change of riding position is good for the spine. Or maybe it's because I haven't given the newer bike a thorough cleaning in a few weeks and the chain and shifting mechanisms are kind of gritty. It's amazing how much sand my bike picks up on rainy days, considering that there hasn't yet been enough snow to require putting sand down on the roads. Usually it isn't this bad until after the snow is gone.

New Year's eve and all day I've been hanging on the edge of my own personal financial cliff. Last summer while I was working two jobs I stopped filing unemployment comp. claims, but after my bike shop job ended I found I couldn't cover my rent at the end of the month without some extra income, so I opened a new claim. My new weekly benefit amount turned out to be pitiful, something like $117, but luckily the Employment Security Department said I was required to continue claiming Extended Benefits until they ran out. Extended Benefits paid a higher weekly amount, enough to cover my rent when my earnings don't.

But the Extended Benefits program is due to end December 29, unless Congress passes a budget deal. All day at work I was checking cable TV news reports (only with no sound, just video and captions), and I keep checking online news now that I'm at home. It's getting so I have to check what time zone a news report is coming from to figure out how timely it is, and which way the pendulum is swinging. Probably best to just turn off the media, stop worrying, and see how things look in the morning.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve 2012

I'll refrain from being profound tonight.

Here's a scene from my ride home from work:

The first snowfall in Ferndale, around noon on December 18.

Turn on your headlights, and don't drink and drive!

A few weeks ago the batteries in my bike computer died suddenly, just as my odometer was about to turn 5600 miles. Now it's back to 116 miles, quite a come down, but at least I can brag here.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

In keeping with my annual November through January holiday custom of re-thinking and trying to remember what I've been doing for the previous ten or twelve months, I've been remembering this quote:

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

I'd been thinking this was Mark Twain again, but I did a little google-searching and found it was really Abraham Lincoln. Interesting that many historians believe that Lincoln was at times clinically depressed, and he surely must have been deeply troubled and worried, yet he must also have been deeply satisfied with his life and the great changes he brought about.

Pretty much all my life I've been living in a holding pattern, waiting to move on to something better, or different, at least. From the time I moved away from my family's home at eighteen, through going to college, dropping out then going back, every time I changed my major, through every job change and new place of residence since then, I've been working and just getting by while saving up money, trying to prepare for my next phase. Which was supposed to be the right one, the true path that I want my life to follow.

Over and over again my plans were derailed by job loss, or legal or family or health troubles, or economic slumps or crashes of some kind. Now it appears that the present Great Period of Economic Adjustment will be a long, slow and halting one, and many people will probably never be as well off as before the crash, though we may be content and prosperous again. In fact, as skimpy as my "lifestyle" is now, every day I see many people around me who are worse off, and more mired in hopelessness. So it seems to me now the best course is to make up my mind to find ways to be happier with what I have and where I am, in the here and now.

My google search also turned up this essay by Marc Sokol from Huffington Post,
http://www.marcandangel.com/2011/08/30/12-things-happy-people-do-differently/, which prescribes in twelve bullet points some ways to change your mind and be happier despite hard circumstances.

Compromising

Now is the season for just sucking it up and grinding it out, pretty literally if you're a bicycle commuter, if you'll excuse the indelicacy. I've been lucky to miss the worst rain storms, although headwinds have been bad enough to put me ten minutes behind on the way to work. On the worst days I've been loading my bike on the bus going in to work. Then heading home at the end of the day, I have a tailwind that lifts me right over the hills.

I'm very stubborn, which is probably why I've lasted so long as a bike commuter, but sometimes I insist on doing things the hard way for no good reason. After wearing myself out last winter, I decided to take it a bit easier, and maybe avoid getting pneumonia this year. I did have a cold in November, but I'm over it now.

Downtown Ferndale is lit up again, even more than last year, so Main Street is a welcoming sight coming home at night.

Black Friday

Last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I was waiting near Sunset Square for a bus back home after completing my usual boring errands, when it suddenly struck me that car traffic was abnormally normal. Normally on Black Friday around the freeway exits, Bellis Fair, and all the shopping centers in town, traffic jams are so bad that buses are re-routed to approach the north transit center in Cordata by a back way, so we don't end up with most of the bus system jammed up along with the cars. Parking lots are usually crowded with cars with blue and white BC plates. This year it was so un-crowded it was a little scary.

Another woman waiting at the stop, on her way home from work at K-Mart, said the store had been busy the afternoon of Thanksgiving, Grey Thursday, but the crush was all over. Maybe the Canadians, and everyone else, stayed home to shop on-line instead. News reports are still saying it was the best opening-day ever.

Let's hope. Let's hope we can have a prosperous, profitable and generous holiday season, without any greedy, materialist, consumerist craziness.

Bread & Soup

Bread and soup and salad will be my menu for Thanksgiving, following an afternoon at work, at time-and-a-half pay. My dinner menu will be a little austere because I lost my wallet last week, with most of my ID, ATM and credit cards, and my EBT card. The credit and debit cards were replaced in a few days, along with a new social security card and a temporary driver's license, but the EBT card is still in the mail (this is the magic plastic that replaces the old paper food stamps, in case anyone doesn't recognize the acronym). I'm very glad that I was carrying my keys and bus pass in my pockets, so I was able to get home and indoors on a cold, rainy evening. Would have been an utterly miserable experience otherwise.

Losses like this sometimes leave me considering how slight a person's hold on their place in the world can be. I've felt this after losing jobs, and during my landlord troubles, every time I came home to find another notice posted on my door, and especially the evening I came home from work to find the lock had been changed.

And those little paper and plastic bits with the numbers and ciphers are like keys that you need to get and keep your place. I've often felt that with no job and no home, I'd be a nobody from nowhere, and without my cards and papers there would be no chance of coming back.

Sometimes I brood and worry too much and get myself into an awful state, but with the holidays coming up, I want to ask everyone who hasn't (yet) experienced any of this, to please for a little while try to imagine yourself displaced from everything you own and do, from every place you felt welcome, with no job title, no bank accounts or paychecks, no place to sleep, no car or phone or email. And then remember not to judge people who are going without these things.

Trick or Treat

Halloween evening was stormy, rainy and windy. I returned home from work late, wet and cold, but glad I had new shoe covers, so I didn't have to empty rainwater out of my shoes on the doorstep before bringing my bike inside the apartment. I had just finished removing the panniers, had shaken the rain and road grit from my bike, and taken off my baggy rain pants and jacket, when there was a knock on the door. Not a childish knock, fortunately because I was really not in the mood to face a bunch of cute little candy-beggars, but a mature, gentle yet virile knock.

I pulled the door open a few inches. There on the doorstep was my very attractive, mature yet virile new neighbor, Alonzo. We had met and talked briefly a few times before, when he admired my bicycle. He'd said he used to be a cyclist, hadn't ridden in many years, but would very much like to ride again. Now here he was, standing on my doorstep, with a jug of Chianti in one hand and a warm, covered plate balanced in the other.

"Hello," he said. "I heard you come in from the storm and thought you would enjoy some chicken penne pasta with crusty, buttery garlic bread, a fresh green salad, and a bit of wine."

"Yes, come in, please," I replied, forgetting about my stringy wet hair and red nose, almost forgetting to close the door behind him. "Of course. Excuse me while I take off the rest of my clothes . . . "

ok, maybe not really.

Kula Yoga in Ferndale

Last February's one-week snow storm wore me out so badly that I've been dreading the coming winter. Now the weather has changed so suddenly that even though I've been bargain-hunting for cold-and-rain-gear for weeks, I still feel unprepared. Sunday night cold winds coming down from the Canadian Rockies met up with rain clouds blowing north over Bellingham Bay over Whatcom County and we had an early snow and hail storm. When I biked to work at mid-day there were still wet piles of snow in the gutters and lumps of slush along the road. Monday was cold and drier, with snow still on the hilltops around town.

Along with shopping, I resolved to prepare my body for winter. Last winter, after a very hard week of commuting in icy, snowy weather, I tried a drop-in yoga session at a place in Bellingham. During one movement that involved lying on my back with knees raised, twisting at the waist to roll the legs from side to side, I had such hard, painful muscle spasms in my inner thighs that I almost yelled out loud. Feeling it was unfair to the teacher and other students to continue when I was in such bad shape, I decided to rest and take it easy for a few months.

Later in the spring a new yoga studio opened in Ferndale, only about a mile from where I live, and last month I signed up for a four-week, twice-a-week beginner series. Now I'm attending one night a week, and have even been practicing at home, in a somewhat hit-and-miss irregular way, meaning I do some warm-up stretches and exercises while drinking my morning coffee, and a few more stretches and relaxation exercises at the end of the day. It's helping already, which is encouraging me to get up early enough in the morning for a longer, more disciplined practice.

When I first took up bicycling several years ago, at forty-five years old, I read that because of the repetitive and narrow range of movement while pedaling, bicyclists often become stiff and rigid in the shoulders and hips, weak in the feet and ankles, and develop slack muscles in the front of the body compared to the back. I knew I should be doing some sort of cross-training or stretching exercises, but being disorganized and undisciplined, I procrastinated until my laziness started to hurt.

Actually I remember trying tree pose after I'd been riding frequently for a few months, and being proud of myself because I could actually do it - I'd finally developed enough muscle in my thighs to hold my leg up without wedging my foot hard against the inner thigh of my other leg. Not anymore - I have tendinitis in my left ankle, and both my feet are too weak and wobbly to balance on one foot for long. So I've been working on my feet at home, standing on tiptoe, balancing on one foot, doing a lot of mountain poses, especially when my back starts to hurt at work. In class we work mostly on sun salute and warrior poses, after warming up with cat-cow and downward dog, loosening up my legs and back so I can move on to more challenging moves without hurting myself. Doing warrior poses usually makes my spine pop in a few places, which might be alarming to some people, but has done huge good for my back.

I'm beginning to feel calmer and more confident about facing the winter.

The Drought is Over

Friday was the first rainy day of autumn, after more than eighty days without rain. The Nooksack River is lower than I've ever seen it (not that my experience goes back very far), with sandbars appearing below the bridges in Ferndale. The woodpile I was observing at the beginning of summer was broken up and partly cleared away not long after Memorial Day weekend, but the under-water base is visible now. The pilings in the middle of the picture on the right are the remains of the old Main Street bridge, which was replaced in 1996, about a year after I moved to Bellingham.

I haven't heard any winter-weather predictions I'd trust much, but no doubt the water level will rise quickly now.

As of Monday morning, October 15, the river has risen a bit above the rock banks, and the pilings and sand bars are no longer visible. In case you're wondering what this has to do with bicycling, people in cars can't see much of the river; the view is better on foot or by bicycle. Drivers did get to see an above-the-bumpers pond that formed in the roadway below the railroad overpass, when storm drains backed up at the intersection of Hovander Road and Main Street. The sidewalks were under water and I stayed well back to avoid getting drenched.

Car-centricity

Maybe it's not my place to be judgmental, but I laughed when I first saw this place, in a small shopping center built by the Lummi tribe on Rural Avenue near the Slater Road I-5 overpass. Customers do have to get out of their cars and walk in to the store to purchase alcohol.

Besides the drive-through, there is a seafood market, cafe, and arts & crafts shop, which I guess give the place more redeeming social value.



I've been spending too much time indoors on the computer, especially considering that the weather continues sunny and breezy, in the low-to-mid-70's. This morning I took a break to walk to the grocery store and coffee shop.

This was the scene on Main Street:

Every day during my six weeks at the bike shop, I saw another bike with mechanical features I'd never touched before - a surrey, tandems, internal gears, coaster brakes, knee-height fixed-gear children's bikes and more. So even though I'm not a car-fancier, I can't help but admire the care and skill that goes in to restoring and maintaining these cars.

I also can't help but wonder what kind of gas mileage they get.

Party's Over

The C-Shop is closed for the season now. Last Tuesday I rode to Birch Bay expecting to work a half-day, but the place was all locked up and forlorn. Instead I spent the afternoon cruising by the bay and walking on the beach, which I'd been meaning to do all summer anyhow. The tide was out and the tideflat was noisy and crowded with feasting geese and gulls.

That's the BP refinery on the horizon (I think)

I had asked for a schedule adjustment at my regular job so I could work at the bike shop as long as the good weather lasted, but now I'm only working three days a week and have a whole month of four-day weekends. This is almost better than taking an actual vacation, which I never got around to planning. I've signed up for a yoga class, in hopes of resting and preparing for the hard winter months, and I'm going to take some local day-trips. Plus getting caught up on much-neglected house-cleaning, and learning to speak French, and becoming more adept with my computer. Busy month.

My Other Job

At the C-Shop in Birch Bay:

Besides a cafe and candy store, the C-Shop (sometimes) has (or had) bike rentals and a repair shop. The owner wants to clean out the old shop and offer new bikes for rent, plus a bike repair shop, next summer. So I've been working a couple of days a week fixing up old bikes for sale, and sorting through boxes of new, used and vintage parts and accessories. It's kind of a candy store for bike geeks.

I'm still a beginner mechanic, but have been able to complete some simpler repairs, rehabs and clean-ups. The shop has new and used kid's bikes, some ugly-but-functional commuter bikes, and some classic-style road bikes that have been painstakingly restored by better mechanics than me, though I have one in progress.

The shop will probably close down when the autumn rains begin and we can't put them outside any more - there's no space to work with all the bikes inside.

All summer I've been meaning to treat myself to a day-trip ride to Birch Bay, but rainy weather, my job, and ordinary daily hassles always interfered. Since I got this job I've been riding from Ferndale two days a week, over a hilly 12-mile route through a scenic semi-rural area, to a sunny, breezy resort village by the bay. It's been kind of a working vacation, but the rolling hills and extra miles are tiring, along with working six days a week. I need to take some time off from everything soon.

Riding the Interurban

One night last week when I left work a bit after eight in the evening, it was getting dark by the time I got to Ferndale. Dozens of Canadian geese were flying south in V-formation over town and the air was brisk and damp. Already I'm feeling my usual autumn skittishness.

All through August I have been working two jobs (more about the new one later), six days a week, and on my one day off I'm still dragging my dirty laundry on the bus to Bellingham to the coin-op laundromat.

With the extra paychecks, I hope to afford a vacation soon, as soon as I have time, but I think I might want some time off from my bike. In the meantime, here are some photos from a ride on the Interurban Trail last October.




The Interurban railway used to run between Bellingham and Mount Vernon. Now parts of the rail route have been converted to bicycle and hiking trails in the south part of town, and on the hillside above Chuckanut Drive as far south as Larrabee State Park.


The bike trail through Fairhaven Park, next to Old Fairhaven Parkway, connects to a section of the Interurban that runs straight and flat as far as Arroyo Park on Lake Samish Road. When I lived near the University this was one of my favorite summer evening walks, to the remains of the rail bridge over Samish Road. There is a pretty walking trail across the road along Chuckanut Creek, but I don't like to bike there because it's narrow, muddy, rooty, rocky and shared with walkers, runners, horses and even alpacas.

It's a little tricky to pick up the Interurban Trail from this point. You have to turn right downhill on Samish Road, ride to the stop sign at Chuckanut Drive, where you turn left, then ride on the roadside for a short distance to 21st Street. Here you make a risky left turn across Chuckanut Drive, to a short but very steep hill-climb up to the gravel trail turn-off on the right. Last time I rode this way, the trail had just been thickly re-covered with gravel, making the ride a bit of work, but at least riding slowly is courteous to pedestrians, and allows plenty of opportunity to enjoy the scenery and take lots of photos.

Looking down on Chuckanut Drive

The uphill side of the trail -
rock and mud slides are common in winter

Driveways cross the trail in several places, connecting to Chuckanut Drive if you'd rather ride on the road. And there is a turn-off to Teddy Bear Cove, a small, secluded (and at one time clothing-optional) beach on Chuckanut Bay. The beach is named for the pale, pudgy, herbally inspired college students who visited the cove in the happy hippie days of the '70's.

The trail is mostly flat, but it crosses some creek gullies, so there are short, steep dips and rises in a couple of places.

The trail side is lovely, woodsy and ferny with interesting rock bluffs and peek-a-boo views of the bay through the trees.

From Bellingham it's a twelve-to-fifteen mile round-trip to Larrabee Park, where the rail trail ends. From there you can continue riding on Chuckanut Drive, connecting to Highway 11 in to Mount Vernon. Bay views from roadside turn-outs are stunning, deer graze on the hillsides and eagles glide level with the road. There are oyster farms in the shallows of the bay, and two or three restaurants along the way (some may be closed because of low traffic and slow business).

4000 Miles More

Today on my way home from work, just as I crossed the bridge over the Nooksack River, the odometer on my one-year-old Surly Cross-Check turned 4000 miles.

The sixteen mile round-trip commute burns about 400 calories, according to my not-too-precise bike computer, which works out to 100,000 calories per year. No idea how many tall mochas that equals.

Beach Reads

Summer weather arrived on schedule on July 4th, but between my work schedule and the bureaucratic hassles required to stay on good terms with the Employment Security Department, which pays a bit of unemployment comp. sometimes, and DSHS, which reloads my EBT card, I still haven't had a chance to do anything very fun so far this summer. I'm working on plans, though.

In the meantime, here are some good summer reads by two bicycle-riding women named Heather - which I actually read over the winter, but any time is good.

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, by Heather Lende, gets the prize for literary merit and redeeming social value. The author lives in a small town in Alaska and writes obituaries for the local newspaper. While out for a first-of-spring bike ride, she was run over by a truck driven by a local boy running a stop sign. She was almost killed, but was airlifted to Seattle for a long period of rehab. Then she receives word that her mother is dying of leukemia. She writes about the deaths of other close friends in her small town, and touches on the unevenness, or possibly injustice, in our health care and social service systems, raising the question of whether this is sometimes a matter of choice. There is one very dark passage about a bear hunt, but mostly the book is surprisingly cheerful and uplifting.

I Never Intended to Be Brave is written by Heather Andersen, a former Peace Corps worker. During her two years in Lesotho she was told not to travel alone or go out at night, and continually warned about areas that weren't safe and towns or neighborhoods she should avoid. But when her time with the Peace Corps was over she wanted to see more of Africa. After trying to organize a group bicycle tour, she ended up travelling with only one man. When personality conflicts arose, they split up and she continued alone, discovering that most of the fears for safety instilled by the Peace Corps were exaggerated. The book provides a good description of her route and the camps and hostel accommodations she found along the way, but it's a little sketchy in other ways. Sometimes she just lists animals she sees along the way, or describes people without really making them vivid characters, and I didn't really understand the conflict with her riding partner. Late in the book she makes mention of finally understanding something from his perspective, but doesn't reflect on it much. But otherwise it is a good account of a challenging adventure, one I wouldn't be brave enough to attempt.

One Nerve Left

When I was younger I was a lot more anxious and irritable, but I might be mellowing with age, and I think bicycling has helped to smooth out my nerves, or else deaden them.


I never liked dogs much and naturally find them much more fearsome when I'm on my bike. Barking back seems to confuse and discourage them, but it frightened my riding companions when I tried it on a group ride. Dog-lovers tell me the beasts only want to play and will stop chasing if I stop moving, but I've never wanted to experiment, until this afternoon when I had an encounter with a yappy little dog in Cornwall Park.


I was riding kind of fast, up to 10 mph, on a park bike trail, when some sort of little rat terrier or chihuahua-type thing came tearing out of the bushes after me. It was smaller than my cat and would have had to make a wild leap to reach my knee, but looked like it could leave some nasty puncture wounds in my ankle with its ratty little teeth. I thought I could get away easily, but it ran along side me, then dropped behind, came around my right side, and got ahead of my front wheel so I had to brake suddenly. A rather large women who had been sitting in the grass near the path followed, calling uselessly after the little monster, which was running circles around me as I slowed down.


"He's gonna get hit!" I warned her in alarm. Figuring the dog wouldn't stop until I did, but not wanting to risk my ankles, I rode a loop around some rhododendrons and doubled back toward the woman with the dog following. She looked a little apprehensive, expecting maybe to face a rant from a self-righteous cyclist in addition to having to chase down her dog. I meant to lead it back to her but the perverse little thing took off into the bushes instead, so I just laughed and said, "I thought I could out-run him, but he's fast!"

No. 27 Ferndale via Northwest

 When I do my day-off errand running I usually find it's more efficient to take my bike in to Bellingham if I need to make several stops in different neighborhoods, rather than walking or riding the bus here and there around town. But if I only need to make one or two stops I often leave the bike at home and just ride the #27 bus, giving my bones a chance to settle back in to a more typical upright bi-pedal posture.

On a sunny day last week the bus filled up with bikes going both directions - three on the front rack, one inside in a wheel chair space up front, and then the driver had to turn away a fifth passenger because there was no room for another bike. Lucky I decided to be a pedestrian that day. I would have felt guilty crowding someone else out.




Whatcom Transit has installed these very well-thought-out lights at two stops along Northwest Drive. They are powered by a solar battery on top, and have push-button switches for an over-head light and a light to signal the driver to stop.

I have been meaning to join a Tuesday morning social group-ride that starts from the Ferndale Library and goes about 20-30 miles, I'm not sure where. I had it fixed on my calendar for today, but it was pouring rain all morning. Instead I went out for a random ramble after dinner, and ended meeting up with a Tuesday evening group that rides a 35-mile loop from the Whidbey Island Bank at Bakerview & Northwest. Both rides are co-ordinated by the Mount Baker Bicycle Club. It was nice to see familiar people in bright-colored spandex after spending so much of the day alone with my computer.

With all this rain, and warm temperatures in the mountains, the river is running high and fast. I'm developing a fascination with this log-pile. Every time I walk across the bridge I stop to look for changes. Today several big, bare tree trunks with broken roots attached came down the river.

a final thought

Buckets of Rain

Tonight I had to work late because of a flight delay. A 757-load of passengers bound for Las Vegas had to wait almost five hours, and they were getting restless and edgy, like bored third-graders, by the time they boarded at 9pm. They express their annoyance in passive-aggressive ways, littering and spilling drinks and leaving a lot of messes to be cleaned up. I didn't finish work until ten, making it a ten-hour day. My feet and back were aching the way they usually do at the end of a work-week, and this is only my second day. But then I had a lovely bike ride home to make up for it, the kind that blows all the day's aggravation and frustration right out of my mind.

I've been caught in the rain at least a few times in the past month, so on Wednesday I gave my bike a thorough cleaning and put new batteries in my head- and tail-lights - lucky timing because I haven't had to ride in the dark for a few months. Most nights I ride home between the dinner hour and my usual 10pm curfew, when there are small brown rabbits nibbling grass at the edge of the road and crickets singing in the ditches. Tonight was cool but comfortable, with a light rain that freshened the air without making it clammy or humid. I left off my rain jacket but only felt the rain as light drops on my face and spots on my glasses. It was very quiet - I guess crickets are only vocal at dusk.

Midnight now, and it's raining hard. Maybe summer will come in time for the Fourth of July.

A Safety Tip

I must be suffering from post-event let-down after having to work through Ski to Sea weekend.  I missed the Highland Games for the same reason, so no strawberries and cream this year.  Now that Bike Month is over, though, I have a belated bicycle-safety anecdote.

Several years ago when I worked in a print shop with a couple of guys who were hearing-impaired I learned a little bit of sign-language.  I've forgotten pretty much all of it now, except one sign that had to do with telephoning - the guys used a TTY and didn't have enough hearing or speech to use a regular phone but they had some interesting expressions related to telephone use.  To signify talking on the phone you fold your two middle fingers toward your thumb, hold your hand up to your face with the index finger toward your ear and little finger toward your mouth.  Raising or lowering your hand would mean "answer the phone" or "hang up the phone" or "get off the phone."

Sometimes when our supervisor was mysteriously absent from the shop for extended periods, we'd start to wonder where he was, and they'd sign "he's on the phone," meaning "he's in the bathroom."  Or possibly something more like "he's constipated" or "he's full of $#it."  So the "get off the phone" sign could also mean "get off the can."

This was way back in the days before cell phones, and before I took up bicycling, but I recalled this sign when phone use in cars began to be a hazard, and thought it might be a clever, friendly way to remind drivers to hang up and drive.

The one time I tried it, though, I discovered it works about as well as any attempt at a good-humored assertion of the rights of a bicyclist versus a car driver.  I was riding on an arterial freeway underpass at rush hour, on the sidewalk because of fast, heavy traffic and dangerous conditions, when a guy in a 4x4 truck pulled out of a parking lot in front of me, talking on a cell phone.  I saw him coming and stopped before the driveway, then smiled and tried the "hang up the phone" sign.  I don't know if he understood all the nuances of the gesture, but he smiled back at me, rolled forward slowly until he was completely blocking my way, and continued with his conversation.  All I could do was wait by his door, smiling blandly, until he finished talking and pulled out of the driveway.

Last Look at the River

Here are some last-look photos of the Nooksack River log pile near Hovander Park in Ferndale, taken Saturday morning, the day before the Ski to Sea race.

From the Main Street Bridge

From the east side by the Carnation Building

From the west side by the car wash

  . . . and this year's petunias.

Ski to Sea

Whatcom County's annual Ski to Sea race will be held as usual on Sunday on Memorial Day weekend. The race is a team relay consisting of skiing, running, mountain biking, road biking, river canoeing and sea kayaking legs. Probably not in that order, and maybe one other event, too, I forget. As a plodding commuter and leisurely tourist I avoid such competitive events. I've heard it's one of those things everyone who lives here should do once, but no one's been eager to draft me.

The canoe event on the Nooksack River ends at Hovander Park, about a mile from my home, and just a little down river from Ferndale's Main Street bridge. Last week some news stories reported a log jam in the river near the start in Everson. There is also a potentially dangerous log jam piled up against the railroad bridge in Ferndale (photos below). Water levels are low now, but can change quickly in case of heavy rain or a warm spell that melts snow in the mountains. Over the winter the water rose almost two-thirds of the way up the blue paint streak in the photo below.

A week or two before last year's race, a work crew (possibly Burlington Northern?) was out on the river in three small boats, using cables to pull logs loose from the pile. They let some of the logs drift down the river, a few others were anchored to the bank with cables, to prevent erosion, I guess. The pile was smaller and more compact last summer. This year it seems larger, and more raggedy and uneven.

The Nooksack River looks fairly calm in this part of the county, but it is fast, murky and deep, there is a lot of debris and sand bars, and conditions can change fast. A few years ago a woman drowned during the race when she became trapped underwater in a log pile.

The photos above were taken last Monday, the 14th. This week we're having a rainy spell, and apparently the spring thaw hasn't come to the mountains yet, because the river is a bit lower today (Monday the 21st). Below is a new photo of the Ferndale woodpile:

Tuesday afternoon, May 22 - A warm spell must have come to the mountains. Today the water level in the river is several feet higher. The sandbar and much of the log pile is submerged like the bottom of an iceberg.

More debris is coming from upstream, including logs and old tree trunks with bare roots attached. Some flows around the pile, taking small branches and brush with it, but some of it sticks.

The large tree trunk sticking up diagonally in the photos below bobs up and down in the current, with water backing up behind, then welling up around it.

May Day

Suddenly this week the trees and brush along the roadside are dense with new green leaves and thick, lush grass.

The weather has been wet and windy, but I usually get in a 20-30 mile ride on one of my days off, in addition to four days a week of a 16-mile round-trip commute.

No new tulip photos this year. That's all right, I'm not a good enough photographer to do anything new with that subject. I do have a collection of unusual livestock photos, though - cows, bulls, llamas, alpacas, beefalo and pygmy goats. They're all looking very shaggy and molty in the spring.

Twisted Tale

This is the sort of adventure cycling leads me to on rainy days.

A while back I read a blog by a couple who were bike touring in Switzerland. The woman mentioned being served a braided milk bread called zupfe or zopf. I've always wanted to know how to make a braided bread loaf, so I Googled up a recipe, and here is the result. It's not quite regular or symmetrical, but pretty good for a first try, I thought. I made sure to knead it for at least five minutes, until my hands ached a bit, so the texture is smooth and elastic. Tastes good, too.

I may miss the Skagit Tulip Festival this year. Monday was sunny, but I had a list of boring chores, appointments and errands to run. Tuesday and Wednesday both look stormy, and Thursday through Sunday it's back to work.

My blog stats tell me that recently people have been searching the Bellingham Fire Department Pipe Band (three people, or possibly more). I posted pix of the BFD band on "My Birthday Photos" tab, and also the "Bohemian Coast" post back in October, in case you're looking. I may skip the Highland Games this summer, since they will fall on a work day, unless I get lively enough to get out to Hovander Park early in the morning.

Eat, Sleep, Ride

It was back around May of 2005 that I found my Univega at Goodwill, almost seven years since I junked my car, and I've been reminiscing about my early days.

At first I just rode around the parking lots of the Civic Athletic Complex near my apartment, then I dared the steep downhill on Puget Street to some office parks on Fraser Street, where I could practice making turns, riding over speed bumps and through gravel, and signaling, which requires letting go of the handlebar with one hand (I still feel uneasy taking my right hand off the bars). After a few rides on parking lots and side streets I ventured on to the parking lots of Bellingham High School, then up Cornwall Avenue to Cornwall Park, which has beautiful flat, winding paths among old cedars and firs. It's also popular with joggers, dog-walkers, horse-shoe clubs, frisbee-golfers and medieval boffers from the Society for Creative Anachronism. With all these hazards I had to learn not to stare at my front wheel all the time.

My old bike at Elizabeth Park

The ride when I crossed Meridian Street to Squalicum Boulevard was the one that made me a bicycle-junkie, craving longer and longer rides. Squalicum has wide, straight, almost flat bike lanes leading to the marinas and waterfront parks on Roeder Avenue, where you can circle around the paths enjoying views of the bay, boats and big old houses on the bluff above the harbor. A loop from my old neighborhood, through Cornwall Park, to the waterfront and back is about a ten-mile ride.

Soon after that I tried heading inland, riding the Mount Baker Highway as far as the Nooksack Casino. I didn't have an odometer then, but I estimated it was about a 12-15 mile ride one-way. The highway has bike lanes, but car traffic is fast and there can be a lot of big trucks. I once saw several emus by the road side at an animal rescue farm, but they're not permanent residents. Small farms with horses, alpacas or llamas are more common.

When my range extended to rides of thirty miles or so, I discovered the pleasure of sleep. Often when I got home from a ride, I'd sit down to have a snack and fall asleep in my chair, then wake up an hour later feeling refreshed, energetic, ready to get on with my usual boring weekend chores. At night I had an easy, restful sleep very different from the anxious, twitchy nights I was used to.

I confess to often using bike-riding as an excuse to indulge in the pleasure of food - a little too much sometimes. The summer I rode with a fund-raising team from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, training for the Seattle-to-Portland, I could eat pretty much whatever I wanted. By June I was waking up hungry at 4am, and needed to eat about every two hours. Some weeks I finished off more than two quarts of ice cream and still lost weight. I can't get away with that now.

These days I get $69 a month on an EBT card, supposedly for fresh fruits and vegetables, but I mostly use it to stock up on rice, beans, pasta and canned or frozen fruit and veggies. Then I pay cash for sauces and stuff to supplement the staples throughout the month. This is handy for shopping by bike, since I can shop around for better prices and only buy a few easy-to-carry items at a time.

My EBT card should be re-loaded soon, and then I can feature a shop-by-bike tour of Bellingham and Ferndale.

Not Yet

Although the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival officially began April 1, we've been having a series of windstorms that last twenty-four hours or more, with winds ranging from twenty-five to fifty miles per hour, and some heavy rain - no more snow here at sea level, to my relief. I'll wait a few weeks before trying a tulip tour.

On March 15 the only coin-op laundromat in Ferndale shut down. Since then I've had to carry my dirty clothes on the bus into Bellingham, killing most of an afternoon. There isn't even a direct bus, you have to make at least one transfer to get to a neighborhood with a laundromat.

Last week, which was particularly cold and rainy on my days off, I got myself into such a stew about it that I couldn't stand to make the trip, and ended up hand-washing some socks, underwear and work clothes at home instead. We have uniform shirts for work so I can get by without a lot of clothes, but four cotton t-shirts took two days to dry.

It takes so little to throw my life off balance. This week I made myself not think about it so much, and was able to get the noxious errand out of the way early on Monday. But this wastes too much time for the long-term.

The Promise of Spring

When I left work at seven this evening it was still daylight. By the time I got to Ferndale the sun had set but the sky was still light. For the first time this year I left off my rain jacket on the ride home, though I still wore two layers of long sleeves and pants. All the way home I was remembering how back in grade school, when it first got warm enough in spring to go without a coat at recess, how shy I felt at first, being outside with bare arms.

After the first mowing of the moss in the outfield . . . 

. . . the beginning of Little League . . . 

. . . and Slo-Pitch

I'm pondering a political joke