Eyes of a Painter

Every picture tells a story, as Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart told us 50 years ago.

I was advised, when I started this blog, that pictures were essential. Words would not be enough. Since it’s about riding a bike, that meant phone pictures for the most part. With a “real” camera, composition includes choosing the right lens, getting the light right, and using aperture and shutter speed to control depth of field and motion. A phone limits those choices and a camera and lenses are too heavy to carry.

What my eye sees and what my phone shows you don’t always match. The weakness is on both sides – me and the phone. Another blogger I follow is a writer (novelist, poet, former English teacher) and a painter. On the ride that spawned the picture below, I though about Martha – writer and painter – and whether the picture in the phone would really show you what I saw.

Ken Burns tries to capture that in his films. It has been named “The Ken Burns Effect”. My eye saw that truck a lot more clearly than you probably see it in the picture. To get closer to the truck with a digital zoom loses the sharpness and the buildings on the horizon. The colors seem less vibrant here than out there. Digital enhancement (at least with the built-in phone software) makes it look fake. While Martha has the eyes of a painter, this is my kind of music, not hers. She’s a punk. I mean that in the nicest way.

Since Martha is a punk, The Stranglers may be more to her liking. I was never a Stranglers fan, but heard them on the way to meeting some folks for a ride. They were being interviewed by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and played this:

It is from the album “Dark Matters”, their first in nearly 10 years, and contains the last recorded work of their keyboardist, Dave Greenfield, who died of COVID-19 during its recording. Nothing punk about that song (or a lot of their other work), but as we approach 70 (or pass it) my friends and I talk about aging more. Some friends no longer ride with us, having gotten old. Some have slowed down. Some wonder how long we will feel this good. I can ride 100 miles now, but for how much longer? I will enjoy it while it’s here. There are no guarantees.

Last Wednesday Night Ride

It is October. It is supposed to be getting cold and dark after work. 77 degrees and sunny. A quick 17 miles and I’ll be home in time to cook dinner. Soon there will not be enough daylight to ride after work. The fall color ride is just around the corner, and that will mark the end of recreational riding until the New Year Ride (unless it just stays too nice to resist).

In Praise of Snot

The other day I heard Bill Bryson on NPR talking about his latest book. To paraphrase, he said that our bodies deal with cancer on a nearly daily basis. Usually we recognize mutated cells as invaders and destroy them before they cause damage. This is, of course, a completely unconscious process. Our bodies are way smarter than our conscious minds. (Imagine having to take responsibility for beating your heart every second, and still having enough consciousness left over to decide whether The Bachelorette was making a smart choice.) It is only on the rare occasions that those cells divide uncontrollably that we are faced with what we know as cancer.

That got me thinking about mucus. Over the years I have seen a lot of fad diets come and go. In the ’70s, the “mucusless diet” was a big thing. The theory, as I understood it, is that when we have a cold we have an excess of mucus and therefore mucus is bad. We have a stuffy and/or runny nose and we don’t want that. The next step was that certain foods cause us to produce mucus and we should avoid them. Among those “mucus-producing” foods were all dairy products. Being a Cheesehead, that was pretty hard to swallow. No 11 year old Cheddar? No Brie? And don’t get me started on the Velveeta on which I was raised.

What if that is bass-ackwards? What does mucus do? It forms a protective barrier. When we leave a dusty environment, we notice that we want to blow our nose. When we do so, we blow out some pretty disgusting-looking stuff – dusty mucus. The technical term for that is boogers. Our body makes mucus (snot) to line our mucous membranes. That snot ensnares toxins in the air we breathe – dust particles and god knows what else. It traps that gunk so we can get rid of it before it gets into our lungs and causes some real damage.

When we have a cold, that system gets overwhelmed. Something has gotten past the defense. Our body makes more mucus to try to repel the invaders. Too much, too late. That we have failed doesn’t mean the system is bad. Our body also has an inflammatory response. Sometimes it, too, is overwhelmed. At that point we suppress it with ice, elevation, and anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen or steroids. Does that mean the system is bad? No, it just means that it sometimes overcompensates after its failures. (Sound familiar?)

Likewise, mucus is not bad. Mucus is a good thing. We need it every day. It is only when it is overwhelmed and tries to overcompensate for its failures that it becomes excessive.

Long live snot! (And eat cheese if you want to.)

High fashion at low temperature

…or, how do you stay warm at -30 degrees?

Now that it has warmed up by 70 degrees F (-26 to +44) [think of it – that’s like 20 to 90 degrees in 3 days], we can look back at the cold weather. What does the well-dressed cyclist wear at 30 below?

I can’t tell you, but I can tell you what I wore and what worked. We’ll go from head to toe (head, shoulders, knees and toes, for the younger set).

For the head: balaclava, helmet hat, and helmet. My favorite balaclava is no
longer available. I now have three of them. For cold weather I use a silk one with the face open – keeps the chin and cheeks warm. For colder weather I use a merino wool one with eye and mouth openings. I can inhale through the nose (and through wool to warm the air before it reaches my nose and lungs) and exhale through the mouth opening to avoid fogging/freezing lenses. For coldest weather I use a fleece one. There is no mouth opening. Some exhaled air stays inside it and is directed down toward my neck and chest. Some fogs my glasses. Exhaling forcefully helps direct more air away from the face to minimize fogging. I may join those who wear ski goggles and let you know how that works.

Upper body (from the inside out): silk turtleneck, wool jersey, wool arm warmers, down vest,  windfront “softshell” jacket (thin fleece).

Lower body: bib tights, winter windfront tights, rain pants.

Feet: over-the-calf silk liner socks, neoprene socks, Bontrager Old Man Winter boots (two layers). [Brand name mentioned because this is kind of a small niche and I don’t know how the few other brands out there function.]

Hands: Silk liner gloves, Empire Wool and Canvas bike mitts [brand name mentioned because most “winter” bike mitts are not really made for the cold, and to give a plug to Kevin Kinney, maker of these mitts up in Duluth MN.] Some folks swear by bar mitts/pogies. Since I haven’t used them, I can’t comment.

All photos shot in available light except the last one, to show the reflective stripe on the mitten.

Just to be clear, in “normal” winter weather I just wear rain pants over my work pants and the jacket (plus vest if 20-25 degrees and arm warmers below that) over my work shirt. The complete change of clothes is only for extremes.

Now this, from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/03/684438571/women-who-dare-to-bicycle-in-pakistan