Even in Kyoto

As with the Seattle-to-Portland, the Ride from Seattle to Vancouver and Party starts out in the parking lot at the University of Washington at the crack of dawn. We couldn't ask for a more convenient location, really.

I am always nervous about early-morning starts, for two reasons. The first reason is they tend to involve riding with large packs of unfamiliar riders who seem to enjoy pulling unpredictable tricks at the most inconvenient times. The second reason is that scrottie has an especially hard time in the early mornings, and somehow manages to figure out his own new exotic methods for getting into trouble.

On top of both of those factors, I was piloting the Opus IV out of the gates. To my great relief, the starting line was a roll-through start, so riders weren't all trying to clip in to their brand-new clipless pedals at the exact same time. Nonetheless, we found ourselves in a sizeable bunch at the first stoplight. My dad and I managed to avoid the worst of the chaos as the light turned green, by bombing along on the left-hand side of all the stopped cyclists. As we reached the other side of the intersection, right as the light started to turn yellow, I heard some crashing noises behind me. But given everything that's involved in keeping the tandem upright and moving forward, I decided I probably shouldn't add to the carnage by turning to look, so we kept moving up and around a hairpin turn onto the Burke Gilman trail.

Eventually, sytharin, slydevil, and scrottie managed to catch back up with us. At our first restroom break, we learned that the crashing noises were scrottie, who was on the Jolly Roger. Apparently someone had traveled through the intersection and then stopped suddenly, which caused S to slam on the brakes. Since S doesn't usually ride the Jolly Roger, he wasn't familiar with the Jolly Roger's brake configuration, where the rear brake has a whole lot of travel while the front brake is grabby. The end result? An endo. S suffered some sizeable scrapes, and the Jolly Roger lost a bar-end, but all things considered these seem like fairly minor casualties under the circumstances.



This minor mechanical inconvenience turned into a sign of things to come. Overall, we enjoyed a wonderful ride along the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish Trails, as we headed towards our first big climb of the day, up Woodinville-Duvall Road.

One of the things we addressed during our visit to Angle Lake Cyclery was a problem we'd experienced on the Seattle-to-Portland, where the smallest chainring was so small that we couldn't shift into it and use it for hill-climbing. I don't know if the teeth on that old chainring were intentionally angled funny or just bent out of shape, but it was nothing but trouble for us. We requested and received a slightly larger replacement for the RSVP, and during our parking lot tests it seemed to be much better.

Heading up that first big hill, I shifted down into the small ring, and my dad and I started to try and establish a comfortable hill-climbing pace. Just as we were finding our groove, I heard a very loud BANG! scrottie, who was riding right behind us, observed that the tandem's rear tire had gone flat. Drat!

We pulled over into a nearby driveway, halfway up the hill, and pulled off the rear panniers to inspect the damage.

Two things quickly became apparent: (1) the rear axle was a bolt-on axle and I hadn't packed any crescent wrenches, and (2) the cause of the blow-out was an ageing tire with a worn-out sidewall. Once again I found myself wishing I'd spent more time going over the Opus IV before departing for the ride. I'd been giving that tire the side-eye but thorough tire-checking is clearly not my strong suite.

Given the lack of crescent wrenches, I walked back to the side of the road, and commenced shouting, "I need a crescent wrench for a bolt-on axle!" over and over again to all of the passing cyclists who were chugging their way up the hill. I got some amazing confused looks from people. A couple of people were kind enough to pull over, but none were carrying crescent wrenches for their carbon-fiber racing bikes.

Eventually I spotted a rider that I'd noted at the starting line because he was wearing a Seattle Randonneurs jersey and was very clearing riding a randonneuring bike. Among my shouting, I said, "Hey, you're a randonneur! We need a crescent wrench for a bolt-on axle!"

scrottie says he thinks the guy pulled over mostly because he heard my shout about randonneuring. Thank goodness for that, because the randonneur was fully prepared, and magically had the correct wrench size! After leaving his phone number with sytharin, he said we could hold onto the wrench until we no longer needed it. Hallelujah.

Then, decisions. My dad said there was a bike shop right at the top of the hill, so we sent sytharin ahead to see about obtaining a tire from them. Meanwhile, do we wait, or do we try to boot the tire and continue forward? I opted for booting the tire and continuing forward. Randonneuring has taught me to always go for relentless forward motion, and in the long run it seemed better to me to keep rolling than to wait for one person to ride up, sort things out, ride back, and then deal with the matter.

My instincts were vindicated when we reached the top of the hill, because it was only 8 am and the bike shop was decidedly not open yet. There was nothing to do but roll on to the first rest stop, at Maltby Park, where there was a mechanic on duty.

Train was 9 hours late getting back to Emeryville last night. We were absolutely on schedule up until the southern edge of Oregon, where we got stuck waiting for an Amtrak Throughway bus that was caught in traffic. The bus delay was so long that the Amtrak crew ran over its schedule work hours, so then we had to wait again for another crew to reach the train before we could get going again.

Southern Oregon is still insanely smoky. I hear that small towns in Oregon were running out of running water because there were so many people who came to the state to view the eclipse. I also hear that in places with total eclipses, the crickets started chirping and the birds became active because they were confused by the sudden darkness.

I have an overdue manuscript review.

In addition to the snapped-off bar end, the Jolly Roger has a skip in the rear wheel that needs to be looked into.

I still need to figure out what I am going to do for a boat for the Petaluma Marathon Row on September 3.

I need to get to the next step on job applications.

Time for a meeting that was supposed to happen 30 minutes ago.

Also: the RSVP was an adventure. The Opus 4 is crazy. Handlebars were like managing a jiggling console.

On Friday night, M accidentally locked herself out of the lab, and was thus unable to complete a small project that required collecting hemolymph from crickets at midnight. The net result for me was that I didn't have to plan on running crickets yesterday evening, which also meant that I could go to sleep at a reasonable hour and get up to row this morning.

The more consistent rowing schedule is starting to pay off, which feels very rewarding. One of the elements of rowing that I have found very difficult if not impossible to replicate off the water is its effects on some of the deep postural muscles of the lower back and hips. In particular, when one reaches the release, one sits with straight or nearly-straight legs and a tall back with a slight bit of layback (leaning back towards the bow).

I believe this position requires good strength from the iliacus and psoas major, which then initiate the forward motion on the recovery as one comes up to take the next stroke. It takes a while to get these muscles firing correctly, to ensure that one's weight is rock-solid and centered in the bottom of the boat, and that one comes out of the bow well. It's important to maintain as low a center of gravity as possible to help stabilize the boat. There's an understandable common misconception among many novice rowers that it's the shoulders and oars that determine the boat's balance. Those things matter, too, and so does timing, but top priority should go to the low center of gravity. You can feel this difference quickly if you ever have a chance to sit in a boat with an experienced rower, where somehow the boat feels magically rock-solid. It isn't the boat - it's that rower's body and muscles holding the boat in the ideal position so that all the rest of one's energy can be channeled into moving the boat forward. The experienced rower will get fatigued if you are making the boat flop all over the place, so all rowers should work to help contribute to that aspect of balance.

I would love to see an x-ray of my spine at some point, because I'm certain it's weird (scoliosis at least), and made worse from those years in high school when I only rowed starboard. For whatever reason, rowing helps it tremendously, and that's one of the fundamental reasons I want to keep rowing for as long as possible.

On Sunday, at one point while I was heading towards the BRPC dock, I noticed that the bowman of the Old Man Double* was filming me. Two seconds of film and I know that I need to keep working on my catch speed. He said that they had rowed 180 km the previous week, in an effort to shed weight before Master's Nationals**, and that all the rowing had done wonders for their balance.

I was actually able to best The Brit this morning during longer intervals pieces (two sixteen-minute sets of 90 seconds on, 30 seconds off). He says he's a wimp in the wind. We shall see. He'll have an extra week to train on his own while I'm up in Seattle on a bicycle. Now I am tired. Ka-whumph.



*He should really get nicknamed The Captain. His partner will be Marathon Man.
**Argh, I just hope they are being careful about this.

I can't believe I only just recently thought to try disassembling my craft punches. Since I use them to punch through very thick reflective material with a strong adhesive backing, they get gummed up quickly and become difficult to use. Disassembling not only allows for much better cleaning, it also allows for much better punching. Behold:





Hooray for better leverage!

On the other hand, I'm not so sure about the skull-and-crossbones punch yet:



(also the ceramic otter in the photos is sytharin's work).

Tuesday morning, there was one other rower out when I got to the boathouse, but he was headed for the dock. After I finished my paddle around the BAP, I found a note by the logbook that said, "Rebecca: Let's train!" with D's e-mail address (D will henceforth be nicknamed The Brit, to go along with the other various rower nicknames).

I've seen The Brit out and about periodically, and I think he's even participated in one or two scrimmages with the Serious Double, so a training partner sounded like a great idea to me.

Apparently The Brit used to row in London, back in the 1980's. He took a break starting in 1988, and has spent the past year getting back into things and figuring out sculling.

While it's nice to let the Serious Double feel good about themselves, it's even more fun to have another 1x to row with. And that will also keep me on the hook in terms of showing up consistently to train.

When I got off the water, another newish rower was there, E. She seems like a super sweet person and seems to be learning a lot in the singles, so I asked if she'd be interested in taking a double out for a spin at some point. Seems like it could be fun.

I'm going to miss the BAP and BPRC when I leave. A nice spot, and good people.

Also, check out this lineup of algae piles removed by the weeding machine. This isn't even the whole set of piles!

I just got the e-mail that my entry was accepted for the Head of the Charles for the Women's Club Singles!

Hmm. I'm going to have to get more serious about my rowing training.

Can you tell I'm excited?

:^)

scrottie had a friend in town for a visit, so on Saturday night we engaged in the time-honored tradition of a whole bunch of back-and-forth on what sort of expedition to go on on Sunday.

Eventually, S said that there was a Vintage Computer Festival happening this past weekend at the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto. An expedition out to the Computer History Museum sounded intriguing to J, and while we were chatting sytharin also happened to mention that one of her favorite parks could potentially be included along the route.

And so the plan was born: we took BART to Union City, disembarked, and headed towards the Alameda Creek multi-use path. The path made for extremely pleasant riding that reminded me of riding through the Danish countryside.



We eventually arrived at a gravel turnoff into Coyote Hills Park, and turned off to ride among the marshland.



S had recommended a brief stop in the park at the visitor's center to hike up a hill and take in the view, so we did:











Scrutinizing the map, we determined that it was possible to ride out through the saltwater flats to meet up with the bike entry ramp onto Dunbarton Bridge, so we did.

That was an amazing landscape and I highly recommend it for the sake of adventure.





Eventually S suggested that we might want to pause for another photo. I suspect he had ulterior motives.







We reached the Computer History Museum in time for a late lunch, and then pondered our options: Vintage Computing Festival, or the museum proper? We sent S on ahead to scout out the Vintage Computing festival, and his facial expression when he came back made our decision clear.

I have to admit, vintage computers aren't really my scene. On the other hand, it was cool to see all the people who were totally into it, and how they interpret their hobby. It was also way more interactive than the museum proper because the displays consisted of things people had brought with them to show each other and us.



I found this one especially intriguing. This person has collected original prototypes of various computers and calculators, which are encased in transparent plastic so you can see all the guts.



All of the other stuff was fascinating and creative, too. For example, another person displayed a collection that highlighted the evolution of different storage formats, from the original 8-inch floppy disks to the various terrible flavors of zip disks. Someone else was working to feed modern media images to old Commodore 64s, working within the Commodore's graphics capabilities as a creative constraint. Another table was hosted by members of the Apple II's fanbase, who put together a poster illustrating ongoing current projects for the Apple II. There were also lots of Ataris to ogle and interact with, and S got sucked into chatting on a Unix workstation with other users, among whom was a user whose handle was "GhostOfSteveJobs", heh heh heh.

Many of the booth creators were standing by, excited to explain things even to a total newcomer such as myself.

We had to fight some headwind on the ride home, but once again the route and landscape for the return ride were wonderful. It was also good to get in at least some training mileage in preparation for the upcoming Ride from Seattle to Vancouver to Party.

I finished reading Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande last night. I'd been hearing about it on several fronts, including from our former Farmer House neighbor, who is a wonderful thinker and atheist coping with her own imminent mortality from cancer. My mom had also requested that we kids read the book because she is someone who wants to have that series of tough conversations about how to go through the process of dying.

I can understand why: we have the stories of my great-grandma D and my grandpa W to reflect on, in addition to the stories of my Aunt Penny, and Grandma and Grandpa C. In addition, there's the looming spectre of my dad's cancer, where even if he has a 10-year horizon, we should still all think about how to spend that time well. I am grateful for parents who seek out these conversations.

Anyway, the book shares a whole series of insights about how we treat old age and the act of dying, and offers up a series of ideas and examples for things that seem to help make those experiences as good as they can possibly be. Given that we are all mortal, everyone should spend at least some time thinking about how to cope with the end stages of life.

But there was one thing I deeply appreciated while finishing the book: in the Acknowledgements section, the author not only talks about all of the people who helped with different aspects of the writing, but where he also slips in a comment about how he has NEVER found writing to be an easy process. This is especially comforting coming at the end of a well-written book.

-

I took a break from writing, while working my way through this last cricket circadian experiment. It's impossible for me to write while conducting that kind of research, where I am constantly trying to stay mentally ready to run experiments at all hours of the day and night. But now I need to return to writing on two fronts: job applications and manuscripts. I think the author's comments are a comforting reminder to be compassionate towards myself while I work on these projects. I'm feeling a whole host of emotions about writing right now, but the ones that stand out are guilt over leaving things to sit for so long, severe anxiety over whether I will manage to get things done and over the sense of vulnerability that accompanies job applications, and anxiety over how to carve out time and quiet space to write productively, while living in a loud, chaotic house and working in a loud, chaotic lab. I also miss my grad school writing buddies. But I have a feeling that I can't just wait for more writing buddies to show up. I need to buckle down and get to work no matter what.

So far, this week has mostly felt like fielding other peoples' stuff.

Even at 9 am, the lab is crowded and loud. I showed up, dropped off my pannier, and fled to the library to hide.

I just want to do some basic things.

I badly need to update my finances and sort out travel reimbursement from fieldwork.

I want to enter in my meters from the River City Rebellion on Sunday.

I want to look at the results from an undergrad summer student who has taken on the labor of love of working with my leafcutter task allocation data.

The data analysis and manuscript backlogs are worrisome.

It's time to dust off job application materials and get to work.

We're going up to Seattle in the middle of the month for the RSVP, and I have barely ridden my bicycle this summer.

I still want to row in the marathon in Petaluma over Labor Day Weekend, and haven't been getting any exercise at all, aside from the regatta itself - hardly the best time for training.

It is incredibly tempting to tell everyone to back off, and just go somewhere to be by myself for a while. California is just too busy and crowded.

When I returned from the field, scrottie reported that the freezer was FULL. I have been stockpiling a lot of berries in there. Whoops. So it was time to roll up my sleeves and start canning.

For now, just some brief notes:

-The strawberry-rhubarb jam recipe from the Ball canning book is WAY TOO SWEET. But that could be because I was working with perfectly ripe strawberries, which are already quite sweet. For my second batch, I increased the rhubarb and cut the sugar. But I should also just try to find a better recipe.
-Meanwhile, the blackberry liquor syrup recipe is HEAVENLY. sytharin will be pleased.
-I tried out a raspberry cocoa jam recipe, and cut the sugar for it as well, and it's also delicious, even if S's first remark was, "I prefer fruit that isn't doctored with other stuff." Harumph. I am pretty sure that any and all recipients of raspberry cocoa jam won't complain.

We also whipped up a batch of dandelion pesto, and basil pesto.

So many jars.