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.