![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well, then. (including some ramblings)
Jul. 6th, 2008 11:33 amI've learned a thing or two about shipping bicycles in recent days. First of all, small differences in dimensions can lead to big differences in price (say, $45 versus $145 per bicycle). Fortunately, we learned this before we packed our bicycles in boxes that were too big.
Secondly, it might sometimes be worth it to pay someone else to package up your bicycle for you. On the other hand, once you've learned how to do it, it will be much easier the second time. Most of this is a matter of the amount of time the entire process takes--we spent a good couple of hours on Friday and Saturday boxing up our bicycles, but by now I feel like I've gotten much better (faster) at the process. Now they're in FedEx's hands, hopefully to be delivered to my parents' house on Thursday, and I'm running around town on Spud.
It takes a lot of effort to prepare for a bicycle ride from Seattle to Portland, that's for sure. We'll be arriving in Seattle on Thursday, leaving on Saturday, and arriving in Portland next Sunday. In the meantime, I'm trying to decide on cool things we could check out on Friday in Seattle (I think we'll plan on biking around and in the very least will travel over to Ballard because Ballard is rad), and on Monday in Portland (definitely Powell's, but the zinester guide that I got also has some other interesting ideas--Ramona Quimby statue, anyone? Highest point in town?).
I can hardly believe the trip is about to begin, and am excited about it but also nervous about spending so much time away from Arizona. I'm crossing my fingers that it won't rain too hard in Tucson before I return on July 22. It would make life much easier if the rain waited.
*
In other news, yesterday afternoon L and I went out to a park in north Phoenix to collect ripe mesquite pods. In November, the Phoenix Permaculture Guild will bring a hammer mill to the downtown Phoenix Farmer's Market so the pods can be ground up into flour. Learning about native foods has been an interesting process. On the one hand, the pods are free. I can't remember how much the milling will cost, and the drive up to northern Phoenix cost time and money. So in the end, it probably would have been more cost-effective to just buy mesquite flour at Whole Foods.
Still--in locating trees with ripe pods, we quickly learned that there's a lot of diversity in pod flavor. The tree that we predominantly collected from had particularly delicious pods, so hopefully our flour will be quite good.
I'm also thinking of starting a communal garden in our back yard over the next year or so. That could be quite interesting. The first thing I really need to do is to plant some tepary beans because this is the best time for it. Meh. That's in progress.
*
Some friends and I went to see Wall-E yesterday afternoon. The simplest reaction to explain: it made me think of Hayao Miyazaki's films (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke). It also made me think of all of the situations where we humans like to point our fingers elsewhere and laugh, thinking "Well, at least this doesn't apply to me" when in fact it does. We saw the film at Tempe Marketplace, a humongous outdoor mall ringed by an oppressive parking desert. Finally, it made me wonder about the organizational structure, vision and philosophy at Pixar, because they've managed to produce some wonderful mainstream films, a rarity.
*
And today. Today I hope to get a thing or two done. We shall see.
Secondly, it might sometimes be worth it to pay someone else to package up your bicycle for you. On the other hand, once you've learned how to do it, it will be much easier the second time. Most of this is a matter of the amount of time the entire process takes--we spent a good couple of hours on Friday and Saturday boxing up our bicycles, but by now I feel like I've gotten much better (faster) at the process. Now they're in FedEx's hands, hopefully to be delivered to my parents' house on Thursday, and I'm running around town on Spud.
It takes a lot of effort to prepare for a bicycle ride from Seattle to Portland, that's for sure. We'll be arriving in Seattle on Thursday, leaving on Saturday, and arriving in Portland next Sunday. In the meantime, I'm trying to decide on cool things we could check out on Friday in Seattle (I think we'll plan on biking around and in the very least will travel over to Ballard because Ballard is rad), and on Monday in Portland (definitely Powell's, but the zinester guide that I got also has some other interesting ideas--Ramona Quimby statue, anyone? Highest point in town?).
I can hardly believe the trip is about to begin, and am excited about it but also nervous about spending so much time away from Arizona. I'm crossing my fingers that it won't rain too hard in Tucson before I return on July 22. It would make life much easier if the rain waited.
*
In other news, yesterday afternoon L and I went out to a park in north Phoenix to collect ripe mesquite pods. In November, the Phoenix Permaculture Guild will bring a hammer mill to the downtown Phoenix Farmer's Market so the pods can be ground up into flour. Learning about native foods has been an interesting process. On the one hand, the pods are free. I can't remember how much the milling will cost, and the drive up to northern Phoenix cost time and money. So in the end, it probably would have been more cost-effective to just buy mesquite flour at Whole Foods.
Still--in locating trees with ripe pods, we quickly learned that there's a lot of diversity in pod flavor. The tree that we predominantly collected from had particularly delicious pods, so hopefully our flour will be quite good.
I'm also thinking of starting a communal garden in our back yard over the next year or so. That could be quite interesting. The first thing I really need to do is to plant some tepary beans because this is the best time for it. Meh. That's in progress.
*
Some friends and I went to see Wall-E yesterday afternoon. The simplest reaction to explain: it made me think of Hayao Miyazaki's films (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke). It also made me think of all of the situations where we humans like to point our fingers elsewhere and laugh, thinking "Well, at least this doesn't apply to me" when in fact it does. We saw the film at Tempe Marketplace, a humongous outdoor mall ringed by an oppressive parking desert. Finally, it made me wonder about the organizational structure, vision and philosophy at Pixar, because they've managed to produce some wonderful mainstream films, a rarity.
*
And today. Today I hope to get a thing or two done. We shall see.
