Play ball!

The Assembly of the State of Wisconsin has passed a bill proclaiming that “No sporting event may be held in a venue the construction of which was financed at least in part from moneys contributed by a state agency or local governmental unit unless the event is preceded by the playing or singing of the national anthem.” (AB 226, 2021)

The bill does not define “sporting event”. If I take a Frisbee to the park and toss it with a friend, is that a “sporting event”? How about a pick-up softball game? A kids’ soccer game?

A park is, by definition, “a venue …financed…by a state agency or local governmental unit” (unless a National Park). Therefore, it appears that any sporting event in a park must be accompanied by the National Anthem – if this bill passes the Senate and is signed by the Governor. Understand that this is a state that failed to pass any legislation establishing safety regulations related to COVID-19.

I, for one, am fully prepared to sing the National Anthem when I throw a stick for Bailey to fetch. If I don’t feel like singing, I have it ready on my phone.

I’m going to define this trip as a “Sporting Event”. In several weeks we will pass through Wisconsin and we will ride in “a venue…financed…by a state agency or local government unit”. Just in case I forget then, here is the National Anthem to kick off Cycle America 2022!

I think I’ll propose that this be the legally-required version (Ha! And you thought it was going to be Hendrix, but in MA that might be illegal.)

In Massachusetts, you must sing it correctly. To sing the anthem “other than as a whole and separate composition or number, without embellishment or addition in the way of national or other melodies” is a crime. (General Laws, Part IV, Title I, Chapter 264, Section 9.) Having heard some renditions before sporting events, I might be inclined to agree.

Day 1 Everett to Skykomish 76 miles, 3517 feet of climbing for 680 feet of net elevation gain.

Don’t expect these data every day. I set my altimeter according to Google at our start point. I believe there was a misplaced decimal point, as we were 160 feet below sea level when we reached Puget Sound.

Cold! Wet! Death-defying busy highway! Drawbridges without shoulders! And that was all in the first five miles.

We rode west (West!?) for the first 16 miles for the obligatory dip-the-rear-tire-in-the-Pacific-Ocean photo op – our first scenic detour. We didn’t actually make progress toward Boston for the first 30 miles. It’s a good thing crossing the continent is mostly incidental to having a good time.

Sealed with wax, it will be merged with the Atlantic in 9 weeks.

To yesterday’s list we add France and British Columbia to the homes of our riders. It rained a bit overnight so we packed up wet. My neighbor carefully dried her tent, then went inside for something. When she came back out, it was raining. Breakfast was forgettable – hash browns that had been rehydrated and heated. “Hash whites” would be more accurate. Coffee was ½ hour late and pale brown water. It looked like the water of Castle Rock Lake but lacked the flavor. It ruined perfectly good water. Thanks to my former co-workers for the shot of espresso at “Proper Joe”, a coffee shop at mile 30. The town of Snohomish seemed like a pleasant place if it weren’t cold and wet. My former co-workers will keep me in espresso and beer as I cross the continent. Thanks again! And feel free to comment below. Just don’t give me too much work news – remember the “former” that goes before co-worker.

I probably wrote of Skykomish’s history as a Superfund site last time, so go back to June 17, 2018 to read that story.

The rain stopped after a few hours and we had a cool and cloudy day. Arriving at camp, I dried out and pitched the tent, cleaned and lubed the bike, then took a shower. As they say, take care of the horse first.

After going back and forth a few times I decided not to bring a sleeping bag since I was usually too warm four years ago. Too warm has not been an issue. I need to sleep in more clothes tonight.

As usual out west, the most beautiful views were in places that it was barely safe to look – no way could I stop for a picture. Tomorrow we go up and over Stevens Pass.

Lush – that’s what you get when it rains all the time

The Cascades, shrouded in fog.

Tuning up

I have turned in my notice at work. I’ve told you in these pages that I’m doing it again. That requires tuning up – both me and the bike. Four years ago I wrote about training. I won’t do it again. Write about it, that is. Doing it – training – is even more imperative when 70 is right around the corner.

In one of those “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” moments, I decided to replace my cables for the coast-to-coast trip. I figured I’d do those before the season, since there could be some stretching and adjustment needed. I’d replace the chain closer to the ride date, and mount fresh tires for the trip. So it was in March that the bike first went up on the stand…

When I put the bike up on the stand, I realized it was dirty. No sense putting clean parts on a dirty bike, so cleaning comes first. If you’re going to clean anyway, you might as well take off some parts to get at the dirt…

Calvin and Hobbes, copyright Bill Watterston 1993

Cable fishing

One of the more fun aspects of owning a bike with internally-routed cables is actually routing those cables. If you’ve ever tried it, you know I’m being facetious. Park Tools makes a kit for the job. Unfortunately, their expensive tool does not work on some bikes. One of their options is a plastic sleeve that goes over the cable end and attaches to a guide. Another is a thin cable with a magnet on the end to thread through the tube and attract your cable end. The problem there is that the opening at the end of my chain stay is smaller than Park’s guide and magnet. A third option is a magnet to run along the outside of your tubing to attract and guide the cable. The problem there is that high quality cables are stainless steel and therefore not magnetic. What to do?

I fabricated a series of tools from old spokes that accomplish these and other tasks.

Here are the tools. How they work will follow.

Trying to route cables using your old housing but you don’t want to redo your bar tape and the cable won’t go? The tool at the top will do the trick.

You are looking down at the brake/shift lever from the front. Hood is peeled back at lower right. Cable is coming from lower left and going under bar tape and into (unseen) housing at the thumb. The tool holds the cable down and guides it into the next opening. (It wants to go straight up, not make that bend.)

Trying to route through the tiny hole at the back of the chain stay? Superglue and thread.

Leave the old cable in place and cut it at the bottom bracket. Remove the top half. Thread the new cable to the bottom bracket. You might need the tool above to get it under the bar tape. Go to the bottom bracket where you now have both cables. Put a drop of Superglue on the end of the old cable. Spread the glue a bit. Wrap thread tightly around the end of the cable. Let it dry. Place cables end-to-end, put a drop of Superglue on the end of the new cable, wrap thread tightly, let it dry. Now go to the exit hole at the back end of the chainstay. You will use the old cable to guide the new one through the chainstay. Gently pull the old cable through, guiding the new cable into the chainstay at the bottom bracket. Keep pulling (and gently feeding the new cable) until both come through. You should have enough cable that you can cut above the Superglue before threading into your derailleur.

Rear brake cable travels along the top tube with no problem, but now you can’t get the end out? Try the hooks.

There’s the cable sitting in the top tube. (Looking down from above) Now what?

The middle cable hook sits on the bottom of the tube. The cable will slide onto it and you can lift it part way. The bottom hook will lift it out of the tube.

No patents on these tools. No cost beyond some old spokes and time with a file and pliers. Feel free to make some and try it yourself! The tools you need may vary with your bike. If you have a few old spokes, play around until you make the tool you need.
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Ephemera

To The Best Of Our Knowledge is a program on National Public Radio. On the way to my ride Sunday they aired a program called “Poetry in a Troubled Time”. The program began with reactions to the pandemic, the “Troubled Time” to which the title refers. It opened with a pandemic poem by a writer in Lake Mills WI, which garnered national attention. I was riding to Lake Mills that day, so the program seemed apropos.

Charleis Bukowski wrote:

“all theories
like cliches
shot to hell,
all these small faces
looking up
beautiful and believing;
I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe but believe is a
graveyard. 
we have narrowed it down to
the butcherknife and the
mockingbird 
wish us
luck.”

Host Anne Strainchamps called the poem “pretty dark”. Charles Monroe-Kane took great hope in the phrase “wish us luck”. Strainchamps wanted the program to be about poetry “as a refuge, as a consolation”. Monroe-Kane noted, “…heartbreak is where poetry is. That’s where poetry comes in. That’s what it can do. Look, poetry also helps us in healing. You don’t need to be healed if you don’t have pain. You got to have an injury that need the healing, so there’s going to be a lot of injury in this as well.”

Edward Hirsch noted that all poetry is about death, in that it focuses on the ephemeral – “we are trying to save something that is passing.” Perhaps all of life is about death. Nostalgia is certainly about death. How much of our memory is an attempt to “save something that is passing”? To what extent is writing a blog the same – but a particularly ineffective form of trying to “save something that is passing”? We write and we post and (maybe) someone reads it on the day it is posted. While it is preserved on the internet, how often is it seen after those first days?

“Some things in life feel unendurable yet they have to be endured. They are unbearable, yet they have to be borne.” This was Hirsch’s purpose in writing an elegy to his son, but is also about life itself. We all encounter, at some time, something that feels unendurable, unbearable. Yet we (most of us) endure and bear and move forward in life. We don’t all write poems, but we endure. How do we move from endurance to embracing life again?

To what extent is embracing life embracing ephemera? I worked in radio in an era when it was not preserved. (I just listened to Sunday’s program and read its transcript to be sure I quoted people accurately.) What we did went out over the airwaves, live, at the speed of light. It came into your home instantaneously. The sound waves traveled to your ear and by then we had moved on. In the year 2000, my brother and I were each asked to reflect on our time in community radio – for him, the 1960s, for me the 1970s. He wrote “…you did it, you sent it out into the ether, and people heard it or didn’t. It was the ultimate in ephemerae, leaving a trace only in the minds of those who did it or heard it…”. I wrote “…the reason I enjoyed radio was its ephemeral quality. What I did went out over the airwaves and was gone.” (Neither of us knew what the other had written until the book was published.) Now I write a blog. Is it something about aging that I now try to preserve, not just experience, life? Or is life about sharing? Is it not enough to experience? Is it necessary to share that experience?

In 1976 or 7, I wrote in my journal: “It’s not the experience…it’s sharing the experience.” I was in the midst of something that seemed profound at the time. I was alone. I called a friend to come over. I knew then that the communication of the experience was as important to me as the experience itself. Communication….communion…community. Is it an accident that these words are so similar?

Time

It was 23 years ago yesterday that I started my current job. Did I think I would be here this long? Who knows? I may have thought that about other jobs that didn’t last that long.

But the time has come today. Cycle America 2022, possibly the last iteration of this great coast-to-coast ride, starts in 9½ weeks. At my age, it’s time to start training in earnest. Training takes time, and is not compatible with working 40 hours/week (says the guy who did just that 4 years ago and is doing it again right now).

So today I tell the world (or at least the tiny corner of the world that reads this blog), that I am retiring. And on Father’s Day (also Juneteenth) I will once again (in a time-honored ritual) dip my rear tire into the Pacific Ocean and embark on a 9 week adventure, riding more than 4000 miles to dip my front tire into the Atlantic Ocean. In my own ritual, I will scoop up a vial of the Pacific, seal it with wax, and break the seal 9 weeks later to merge it with the Atlantic.

I did this 4 years ago, thinking it was a once in a lifetime thing. Little did I know. I will be 70 soon. If I live to beat Robert Marchand‘s age group Hour Record, I’ll have to stick around for a long time – longer than I spent at this job. I’ll probably have to start working again to be able to afford to live that long. But right now, I’m done with working.

I invite you to follow me (again, if you followed me four years ago). I plan to return to daily posts. Or maybe there will be days that I just want to go out for a post-ride beer and skip a day. I can do what I want. I’m retired. (That sounds weird.) While the route will be the same, the experience won’t be. You can read each post and, if you have time on your hands, go back and read the same day’s post from four years ago. The dates won’t match, but the days of the week will. In 2018 we started on Sunday, June 17. This time we’ll start on Sunday, June 19. You can probably figure out the math from there.

The WordPress algorithm provides links to two other posts each day that it thinks are thematically related. Yesterday’s post linked to this. Rereading it, I don’t know how anyone could think I’d still be working come June. It foreshadowed this announcement just a bit.

While I believe in retiring early and often, this was the longest I have ever been at one job. That’s why my leaving gets two posts. I wrote them at different times, not realizing when I wrote the second that I’d already done this once. There will probably be a third on my last day. Maybe the fact that I wrote two different posts to say the same thing in different ways is a sign that I’m getting old.