Even in Kyoto

Things started out normally enough: lovely warm living room with an inviting fire:



Delicious family breakfast featuring coffeecake sent in by slydevil's parents:



Everyone gathering round for the opening of presents:


Children full of excitement, running around to help distribute the gifts:


Adults glad to be awake and in each others' company:


It was shortly thereafter that things got vastly more entertaining.

You see, a couple weeks ago it occurred to me to track down some "large" googly eyes. At the last minute, in the midst of packing, I threw them in a bag along with some scissors and double-sided poster tape.

At the tail end of the gift-giving, I initially just gave one pair to each family member - a very humble gift.

My niece knew what to do with them, right away:


Then this happened:


And soon thereafter, this:


And it wasn't long before there was complete, glorious pandemonium. There are enough photos I'll put them under a cut.

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Glorious gray gloom
Drizzle downpour deluge drip
Bicycling bravely

If I'm remembering right, this was the last Bike Commute Haiku that got communicated to my father before he reached a point where it was too much to try and engage via Zoom, back in February of 2019. My mom encouraged me to read it to him over the computer, although it was becoming clear that sounds were becoming increasingly painful as he got closer to death. At that point, moving him from bed to wheelchair had become a two-person project, with a belt around his chest as a moving aid.

I think about this haiku often, especially on rainy bike commute days. It is one of my favorites out of all of the bike commute haikus I've come up with.

This has been a fairly dry winter here, so I'm grateful for every overcast, rainy day.

S is back! We were able to sit > 6 feet apart outside and see and hear each other directly, and even got to split a beer.

He is going to stay in Princess TinyHouse for his 14-day quarantine, and so far he reports that TinyHouse is bigger than the roomette on Amtrak, so that's something, I suppose. We've arranged for a cleaning protocol so he can come inside and use the bathroom and shower while I'm out of the house at work. And then he's going to go to a campground for a while and enjoy some forest bathing, as 'twere.

Emma's continuing to enjoy the goat cheese, and is eating some of the wet food and some of the dry food. I'm skeptical that she's managing to get enough calories, but the best I can do is try to increase her cheese ration at this point.

My back doesn't feel perfect, but it definitely started to feel better today, too, so that's progress.

I still have too much to do by way of course prep before Monday. But at this point in the day, that's a tomorrow problem.

I at least got three shorter videos and one longer video recorded today. I think it's really good to have shifted these biochemistry lectures to videos instead of in-person lectures. It is just so much better to be able to "chunk" the information into a series of shorter videos instead of making a group of students sit through 75 minutes of this stuff. I've also gotten a whole lot better at explaining this stuff in this third iteration than back in my first iteration.

Also, huh. I haven't posted any photos in a little while. This is a very random set.

( clicky for photos )

1. Inside the boathouse just after arriving this morning.



Mostly I took this because it shows a classic boathouse sight: someone forgot to put a pair of slings away at the end of their practice the day before. Helping our rowers develop good habits and boathouse etiquette is a constant and ongoing project. You could say the same of boathouses everywhere.

2. The cherry tomato onslaught is beginning:



My new favorite snack: Cheez-its and cherry tomatoes.

3. Care package from a dear friend:



The care package deserves slightly more backstory. A week or two ago, my friend K contacted me and said, "While I was doing some tidying up I came across some chocolate that I had been intending to send to you shortly after your dad died. Would you still like it or would it be too weird and awkward to send now?"

So I mean...am I going to say no to chocolate?

But more than that: when a dearly beloved person dies, the lives of those who are left behind are changed forever. There will always be moments of fresh grief, but more than that, we will always continue to honor and speak of their memory. So thoughts and stories and condolences are ALWAYS welcome. I also hope that this helps encourage me to continue with similar small gestures of thoughtfulness and caring as well.

One of my students wanted to interview me for a campus sustainability newsletter, but of course the interview got sidelined for a while by all the coronavirus upheaval. The request came in the context of me winning the Sustainable Commute Bet last fall - which really felt like cheating but it served my larger purpose/agenda of connecting with other campus bicyclists.

So just yesterday, they finally just followed up by email to ask: "I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about why you bike to work and what sustainability means to you."

I figured I would put my reply here because it was nice to have a chance to reflect and respond, and I thought a number of you might appreciate it.

My perspectives on both topics have been deeply influenced by my upbringing and my family, especially my father. Over his lifetime, especially while growing up in the mountains and valleys of Montana, he spent a lot of time outside, hiking and exploring and bicycling, and through those activities developed a strong love for the planet we all inhabit. He also came to feel that it was important for all of us as individuals to take responsibility for our impacts on the planet, so he raised myself and my brother and sister with this in mind, the idea that we should always consider the impacts of how we live on the communities and broader world around us. We also grew up spending a lot of time outside and because of this my siblings and I also developed a love of the outdoors - all three of us are biologists!

Thanks to this upbringing, and thanks to growing up in a city where it was relatively easy to get around on foot, by bus, or by bicycle (even as a kid on my own!), I never felt like it was urgent to get a driver's license. I could take the bus or ride my bike to school and to sports practices, and could easily carpool at other times. I already had the freedom and ability to get to whatever places I wanted to go to on my own, so driving just wasn't important to me. It wasn't until I was about to start graduate school that I finally did get a driver's license because it seemed like a good idea to be able to drive for conducting fieldwork.

I also almost bought a car at that point, but the thought of having to deal with all of the expenses and uncertainties was so stressful that I changed my mind at the last minute and started grad school in Arizona with just a bike for transportation. Arizona was eye-opening: when I first moved there, I was the only person I knew who didn't own a car, and I encountered a lot of people who acted as though this was an extremely unusual decision that must be incredibly inconvenient and dangerous. I also encountered streets and drivers that were more hostile to bicyclists than what I was familiar with in my hometown in Seattle: in Arizona, the main streets are wide and straight with 50 mph surface speed limits, so they are incredibly dangerous for people on bicycles - not to mention, extremely unpleasant! But instead of just giving up, I decided to learn more tricks for how to ride safely in traffic, and over time I also got connected with other people who didn't own cars either and who rode bikes for fun and for transportation.

And this habit has just continued with every new place where I've lived. I'm usually careful to pick places to live where it's relatively easy to walk to important things, like the grocery store and the college, and spend a lot of time scouting out good bike routes that rely on bike trails and back roads. So for me the question has been more like, why would I NOT bike to work, when I already know that it's great exercise, fantastic for stress relief, better for the planet, and fun? And while it can be tough to saddle up and ride to and from work on days that are cold and rainy, or where there's a chance of icy conditions, I never have any regrets as soon as I'm out the door. And I still think driving would be too stressful and too much of a hassle. So I wouldn't trade my bike commute for anything. In the winter, I do sometimes wind up taking the bus instead, and if anything that has only reinforced my love for the bike commute. I would note that the days when I take the bus are also days when I would definitely NOT want to be driving because those are the times when the weather conditions are so dangerous that I think the driving is best left up to the professionals. Plus I can then get some knitting or reading done!

Lastly - my dad passed away just last spring from cancer. Because a huge part of my connection with my dad comes through bicycling, my bike commute has also become a time to process my grief.

So for me, sustainability means living a low-impact lifestyle to the extent possible - reducing my fossil fuel consumption as much as I can, minimizing the waste I generate, and maximizing the things I both enjoy and value, like riding my bicycle and thinking about creative ways to weave in reuse to my life.

Another one of my dad's siblings passed away not too long ago. She's one that has been challenging, for me. I was struck, the last time we visited, by how her conversational style consisted of asking a question and then answering it for the person the question was asked of. But by that same token, she's someone who was always a hard worker, especially on the behalf of loved ones, and she made the most of many challenging life circumstances. I do hope that through death, she is at peace.

We're also coming up on the one-year anniversary of my father's death. This time period is an emotionally fragile one, now. Last year, there was a small sense of relief that Dad lived beyond his 73rd birthday, on March 3, although that's a small comfort when you consider he was in no condition to be aware it was his birthday or of the passage of time. He died the morning of March 7th. I can see where that happened in my notes and lectures from Animal Physiology. So here we are, not quite the end of winter, not quite the start of spring.

The lists of the dead never get shorter as one gets older, only longer.

Meanwhile, when S is gone, household dynamics change, too. For all that Emma is a handful and even more of a challenge as she's gotten older, it's still a damn good thing she's there as some form of living creature full of affection and wants and needs. Most recently, when she has been meowing, I've been picking her up and putting her on my shoulders (wrapped around my neck). To my surprise, she hasn't been leaping down instantly every time.

I made it back to rowing practice this morning, although my cough isn't completely gone.

On Friday my mom told a story about how, sometime last fall, while cooking in the kitchen, my Dad exclaimed that suddenly he could no longer find his favorite kitchen knife. They looked high and low, but couldn't find it anywhere. Just this past week, she finally found the knife, which had somehow fallen underneath the stove. It was one of those moments where she ached to tell him the ending to the story.

I suspect we all have this human tendency, the ache of wanting to continue talking to our loved ones after they die.

Ever since my Dad started having liver procedures, I have wanted to write a poem, an ode to the liver, which I've wanted to share with him, although it has always seemed to me like his mind was tuned so much further outward than deeply inward, in the visceral sense, at least.

For now I am just loosely gathering information about the liver, the still-unexplored universe within us. Here, for example, is an article about new methods that now allow scientists to separate out individual cells and find out what kind of activity is happening within each individual cell, as applied to the liver. This method and associated discoveries are pretty incredible because they take us even further beyond earlier discoveries that indicated that the liver is not simply a homogeneous mass, but a set of interconnected, coordinating, specialized cells. Instead, these new methods reveal that even further subdivision and specialization are present; a veritable internal galaxy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1373-2

Your liver is an orchestra, a symphony of activity, transforming energy for storage and for use. It has remarkable abilities to regenerate, but when it fails us, it fails in a profoundly different way than other louder organs like our heart, our stomach, our minds. Its failure can seem quiet, but is catastrophic, and so it takes a different form of listening to hear it.

Updates will be sporadic for the next week or so, I'm concluding.

We did make it to Minneapolis, spent every minute we could with scrottie's family, got almost all the mats out of his mom's cat's fur, and then got back on the train.

I feel like I really struck out, this time, on being able to sleep in coach. The train from Minneapolis to Seattle was much quieter than the train across New York, but my body decided it was tired of those seats and there weren't many workable alternatives.

Ah well.

One of the sponsors for this year's Seattle to Portland is the Washington State Potato Council. I am an enthusiastic supporter of this idea. Potatoes are a perfect ride food. Even better, they had potato schwag at a boot when sytharin and I went to pick up our ride packets. So I am now the proud owner of a potato fanny pack and potato neck scarf thing.

It is good to be here. Hard to be at home and getting ready for a big ride without Dad, but I know he would approve.

With tonight's insomnomnomia, here's a topic I've been contemplating: costumes for the Seattle-to-Portland.

I'm not feeling the pirate regalia for this year.

I might just pin an earth flag to my shoulders, one my parents gave to me.

I also keep thinking about the t-shirt my father used to wear, that said, "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children."*

Two contexts:

1. With climate change, have we actually entered a period of massive sorrow? I feel like I'm seeing less evidence of fighting over, "It's not real," and a shift towards more glum news stories documenting things changing in rapid, unexpected, and disturbing ways.

2. When I agreed to serve on this rowing club's Board, I inherited the club's history. On the one hand, here's something to be amazed and grateful for: there's a rowing club here, with a boathouse full of boats that we can use for rowing. (I mean, just consider those Texas boats for ten seconds).

On the other hand, being part of leadership means keeping closer tabs on finances, and learning more about the club's financial history. Things inherited: deferred maintenance backlog, a dock reaching the very end of its useable lifespan, some debt. The deferred maintenance backlog is so bad that boats are going out of commission frequently.

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I would love to be able to turn these pictures around. I keep feeling that feeling, of being handed huge problems and told, "Well, we broke it. Good luck."

My father has given me tools for healing. I have my bicycle, and my own two hands. I have at least some level of patience, and a whole lot of stubborn persistence. He did his best to teach me about financial responsibility.

I hope I can continue to be a source of encouragement for others.

I also keep thinking of one of the Berkeley rowers from the Old Man Double, the one who was unfailing and so persistent in always speaking positively about the incredible qualities of the people around him.

We must carry these things forward.



*Quick oogley-googley search attributes this to Wendell Berry!

That book, Why We Sleep, talks about how, when we're asleep, memory processing is normally decoupled from emotional states associated with those memories. So one of the functions of sleeping is to consolidate and process memories without having to go through the emotional experience of those memories. The author has the hypothesis (with at least some support) that part of what happens for people suffering from PTSD is that this decoupling of emotions from memories during sleep and dreaming doesn't happen, and so people with PTSD wind up with recurring nightmares. He presents some clinical evidence that supports this hypothesis: some of the people who take medications that facilitate this decoupling have reported having the same dreams as during PTSD but become able to process the memories and start to move forward.

Anyway, I woke up this morning one minute before my alarm went off, from a dream where I was standing in the kitchen at home in Seattle while my father made pancakes for Saturday morning breakfast. But I was confused and had to ask him what he was doing there, because I knew he was dead, and I told him as much. He did not reply. I was and am still glad to see him there, in my dream, and I told him that much as well. But I also noticed that I wasn't feeling any emotions about this dream experience, while I was dreaming, which seemed odd. It is how it is.

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Last night's weather forecast wasn't promising for rowing this morning. When I got up, there was a flurry of text messages among those of us who were signed up to row about whether or not anyone was going to play chicken because it would take all of us showing up to actually row. I wound up deciding that I would show up regardless, just for the practice of showing up for practice. After we all got there, we concluded that it wasn't worthwhile to try. So we wound up going to get breakfast instead, which was important and helpful in other ways.