More kids growing up

I went on a long ride Sunday – long mostly because of the 20+ mph headwind for the first 35 miles. I got home in time to see Joel Paterson and the Modern Sounds at the Pursuit of Happiness Festival. Joel is a phenomenal guitarist who can play anything. He has a number of bands to give him a chance to play multiple styles. The Modern Sounds play old jazz and swing with a little rockabilly, R&B, and blues in the mix. He started playing in these parts as a kid, then grew up and moved to Chicago. He also figures into my life in an indirect sort of way.

Those who know me in another part of my life know I work in health care. It was Joel’s mom who started me on that path. When I was 20 I injured my ankle. I was treated in an emergency room (after fashioning a crutch to get back down from the mountains, but that’s another story) while traveling but it didn’t get better. Walking was an interesting adventure. Running was out of the question. I went to my local free clinic (The Near East Side Community Health Center, which has merged into Access Community Health Centers, run by my friend Ken Loving – another story for another time).

In the free clinic, there was a volunteer position called “Patient Advocate”. The Advocate’s job was to act as a medical assistant (gathering health history and chief complaint) and more. It was the advocate’s job to be sure the patient’s needs were met. The advocate helped the patient formulate questions for the doctor, guided them with follow up questions as needed, and ensured that their needs were met before the doctor left the room.

Joel’s mom was my advocate. (She had also been my sister’s high school classmate.) Before I left the clinic that night, she extracted a promise that I would return as a patient advocate after I saw the orthopedic surgeon they referred me to.

I went back and volunteered as an advocate for a few years. Something must have stuck with me, as I became an Occupational Therapist about 25 years later. Patient advocacy is still an important part of my job.

Joel has a YouTube channel that can give you an idea of his range. Or you can look at what others have uploaded here. I’m not sure what to pick to just link to one or two things. Here’s a Scotty Moore tribute:

Here’s a bit of swing:

How about blues?

Now go listen to him live and buy his albums. A musician can’t make a living if all we do is watch his/her YouTube videos.

Back to bikes for a minute. A while back I posted a series on bike safety. I thought I was done but I left something out – and it’s something I’ve used the past few days.

It’s a baseball metaphor. For those of you who have played, you know what it means to “look the runner back”. You can skip the next paragraph. For those who don’t, read on.

If you’re playing shortstop and there’s a runner on second and a ground ball is hit to you, your natural play is to throw the batter out at first; but you don’t want the runner on second to go to third. You “look him/her back”. You make eye contact in a way that says, “If you break for third, you’re out. Better stay where you are.” When the runner turns back to second, you make your play at first.

It works with drivers. You’re at a four way stop. The car to your left was there first and has the right of way. You let her/him go. The car behind her/him decides to go at the same time. You look her/him back; making eye contact in a way that says, “wait your turn.” That driver know it’s your turn to go and was hoping you’d be cowed because their car is bigger than your bike. Most of the time, the driver will acquiesce, knowing they were trying to pull a fast one. If they go anyway, you let them. You both know what’s what.

In this way you can be an assertive, not aggressive, bicyclist.

It’s all fun and games until…

Some time back (March 24) I waxed rhapsodically about my first bike tour and fresh roadside asparagus. As we get closer to departure day, I remember my first planned long-distance solo tour to remind myself why I chose to make this a supported tour.

Aha! I found a photo of my Motobecane.

I outlined an epic journey. Several variations awaited me. The trip was to start by riding west from Madison to the Mississippi River. I would head upstream to the confluence with the St Croix River, following that up toward Lake Superior.

At that point my first option arose: I could turn east and head along the south shore, with a plan of circumnavigating the state of Wisconsin, or I could keep going north and follow the north shore of Lake Superior in Canada with the aim of  making my way down the west side of Michigan and ferrying back to Wisconsin. (Check out Google Maps to follow that route – easier than trying to link to a map of my route, and that way you can scout around.)

If I took the shorter route, I could also choose whether to merely circumnavigate Wisconsin (said to be about 1400 miles), or continue along the shore into the UP. Hah! So much for plans.

Less than 100 miles from home I spent my first night with friends on their farm. It was to be my last night sleeping in a bed for a while. Unfortunately, they were all sick.

Campsite selfie – airing out my stuff

I hit the road next morning. Now, southwestern Wisconsin (the driftless area) is pretty hilly. Still, it seemed hillier that morning than the day before. I struggled up climbs. I decided to cut my day short and settle into a semi-secret campsite along the Kickapoo River. (Don’t look for a map link here, I said it was semi-secret.)

Kickapoo campfire

A little aside: the Kickapoo River valley was to be dammed as a flood control project. (It would, incidentally, create new lakefront property for resorts and rich people’s summer homes.) The federal government took title to many acres of farmland (140 farms) that they intended to flood. The locals rose up and the plan was scuttled. The land went wild.

View from Wildcat Mountain

I didn’t leave that site for the next few days. I was lucky to make it out of my tent for a while each day. On about the third day I decided I was too sick to not be around other people. I packed up my camp and got back on the bike, riding to the top of nearby Wildcat Mountain, where there is a state park campground.

Fog at Wildcat Mountain

I sweated up the hill, got to the park, put down the bike, and lay supine under a hose bib, running cold water over myself. A park ranger came by and asked if I was OK. I said, “not exactly, but I’ll be okay in  few minutes.”  I went into the office and reserved a campsite, set up my tent and went back to bed. It rained for the next three days or so.

View from my tent

By the time I was well enough to get back on my bike, I had lost weight and had no energy left. Plus I’d lost about a week of riding time. Time for a new plan.

I was digitizing slides today when some of the images reminded me of the next phase of the journey.

Maiden Rock

Interior of “my” houseboat

Upstream I came to the town of
Maiden Rock. I’ll let the historical marker tell the legend of the rock (follow the link). I made it to Winona MN and met a community of folks living in houseboats in the backwaters of the Mississippi. One of them was away and they were kind enough to lend me his houseboat for the night.

Mississippi houseboat

I took some photos at dawn, and here it’s time for another aside: Years later I was working at a cooperative community and one of my neighbors (an evangelical Christian) showed me a “picture of Jesus”. Her church did full-immersion baptisms and when she developed the film of her friend’s baptism, there was  a foggy spot on the picture. She solemnly assured me that that was the image of Jesus. I told her I had a picture of the Buddha. She had to see it. It was one of my sunrise photos of the backwaters of the Mississippi. Here it is:

The reddish orb at the top looks to me like a head. Just below the head you can see shoulders (at the upper points of the star) to each side. The light emanates from the belly. Less obvious in this small reproduction is the appearance of two knees just below the belly (at the middle points of the star), as though of a figure sitting cross-legged. She studied the picture for a long time, then earnestly pronounced it to be a picture of Jesus. 

I rode up to St Paul, stayed with friends and ate until I felt semi-human again, then packed the bike into the cargo bay of a Greyhound bus and returned home. So much for circumnavigating Lake Superior, or Wisconsin, or much more than my campsite.

P.S. I forgot to mention last week that spring ended abruptly a week and a half ago with a temperature of 95 degrees and the hatching of millions of mosquitos that know nothing except the sucking of blood.

The good side of summer arrived today. Sitting on the Terrace,

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA from Madisonstories.com

my feet in the water, sipping a beer, listening to live jazz. A breeze off the lake, temperature down to a totally reasonable 78 degrees. This may detract from the universality of the image, but was the icing on the cake for me – FaceTime with my Officially Adult child – college graduate last weekend, first day in a new city, first day of a new job, first day in a new apartment. Life doesn’t get much better than this; and I haven’t even started riding…

Ode to Bruce Gordon

I saw a kid riding a 29er today. It reminded me of a toddler on a big wheel. It also reminded me of Bruce Gordon, framebuilder extraordinaire and visionary.

Bruce retired recently. He built bike frames in a small shop in Petaluma CA (the chicken capital of the world). He built racing bikes but was especially sought out for his touring bikes.

the Bruce Gordon – my bike, my photo

I’ve been riding one of his bikes for 28 years. It was an experiment in “mass” marketing. Bruce had always built bikes by hand but, in the mid-late 80s, designed a bike that he had built for him in Japan. This was the “Hikari“, and it came in one color. It was named after the Japanese “bullet” train. I put mass in quotation marks, as it was mass marketing on a very small scale, but bigger than one man could build.

After a short time, he tried another pre-built bike, the “Rock ‘n’ Road”. (The apostrophe in Rock n Road seems to move. Since it is a contraction of “and”, it seems to me there should be one on each end. Bruce sometimes puts one before, sometimes after.) They were built in Petaluma.  Bruce hired a welder from the aerospace industry. He hand-brazed his custom frames but told me that TIG welding is environmentally friendlier. Not being a welder himself, he hired one. He also told me that powder coating was better for the air than painting, so he powder coated his frames.

The big deal with the Rock ‘n’ Road is that he designed an all-purpose bike. He figured that some folks want to do some riding on the road, and maybe a little off-road. Rather than own a stable of bikes, he figured you could get by with one with a few changes.

Common wisdom at the time was that mountain bikes had to have 26 inch wheels, while road bikes had 700c wheels. Bruce explained why the bigger 700c wheel was suited to off-road travel. The industry made fun of him. Ten years later,  the 29er was born (an even bigger wheel). A few years later, another wheel size came out, pretty close to a 700c. Gosh, I guess Bruce was on to something.

How do you switch from pavement to trails? He invented something called the QS2. This

Photo from BGCycles.com – QS2s

made it easy to swap drop bars for flat bars and quickly re-connect cables without adjustment. He found some tires and had them adapted to his design. He wanted a tire that could be used on or off-road. If I remember right, the first iteration had lugs that were sunken to provide a smoother running surface but still some off-road traction. The current model has raised lugs, which shed mud better.

Photo from BGCycles. com – Rock n’ Road tire

He later designed and built some beautiful cantilever brakes.

Since he had someone else to build his standard bike, he could devote time to designing new products and building one-off bikes. He won myriad prizes at frame builder’s shows. He designed another bike, the BLT (Basic Loaded Tourer). to keep a reasonable price for a great bike. He designed racks and panniers for touring. (OK, the racks have been around for a long time, still among the best.)

Details of Bruce Gordon bikes

Bruce Gordon

BG cantilever brake

Bruce has retired, but his bikes ride on. I’m riding one today. See you on the road.

Getting paid to ride

We tend to romanticize getting paid to do something, despite the fact that “amateur” comes from the Latin root “amare”, “to love”.

Bicycling is no different, with movies such as Quicksilver, with Kevin Bacon starring as a stockbroker-turned- bike messenger. (Or my personal favorite, Major Bedhead the unicycle courier from the Canadian children’s TV show “The Big Comfy Couch“.)

I guess I was a professional bicyclist a long time ago, without thinking about it. When I was 12 I began delivering newspapers by bike. Like mail carriers, “neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night stayed [me] from the swift completion of [my] appointed rounds”.

There was one day when it was too icy to ride my bike and I skated my “appointed rounds” and there were a few days when it was colder than -20 degrees, which entitled me to a ride in a car according to house rules. Otherwise, I rode 364 days per year (no newspaper on Christmas in those days).  When it was a little less cold, my eyelashes would freeze and clink when I blinked. The lenses of my glasses would fog, then freeze, and I’d have to take off a mitten to scrape the ice off with a fingernail. For those who doubt it was really that cold, I offer this:

On the other hand, there were beautiful summer days when it was not yet hot, though you knew it would get that way. The lake was like glass and I dreamed of what it would be like to be skiing as the sun rose. (I suspect those who lived on the lake would not have appreciated it in the same way.)

At 5 AM, the only people out on the streets were the newspaper carriers and the milkman. Milk was delivered to our house every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Bread was delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The “Omar Man” had a handy carrying rack for bread. It was cleverly designed with an upper rack for breads and a lower rack that cantilevered out with pastries. It was right at eye level for little kids so we could beg mom for pastries, which we could never afford. He never gave up.

I did my best thinking when I was out early in the morning on my bike. I wished for a portable tape recorder and a microphone mounted on my handlebars so I could record my thoughts as I rode. Alas, my best thoughts are lost to the world. I would probably be a famous inventor now, retired and living on my royalties, had I been able to record those ideas – or at least that’s what my 12 year old self thought.

I spent some time as a bicycle traveling salesman. When I was in Cub Scouts we had an annual candy sale to raise money. My dad encouraged me to venture farther from home to hit territories other kids wouldn’t get to. When I was 9 he dropped me and my bike at an apartment complex 6 miles from home and told me to hit all 216 apartments, then ride home. I found my way home (without a trail of bread crumbs) and won a prize for the most sales.

Now I am an amateur – unless you readers want to pay me for this ride.