I Need a Golden Helmet...

I need it because this is how I feel. I got a little teary when I looked at this guy's expression. This is how I really feel tonight.

Somewhere Inbetween...

Do you ever get the feeling that your life has paused between key frames in a film. You feel blurred, in motion from somewhere to somewhere. But for the moment you are paralyzed, and you can't see who you were a moment ago or who you're going to be when the motion ends.

I've been feeling that way yesterday and today. I numbed my mind last night with all the stuff I use to distract myself from myself, but felt horrible in the morning, like I always do when I'm like this. The morning usually brings a little clarity, but only a little.

In the night I was in the shower and decided to shave my face into a new shape. I was going for a kind of Buffalo Bill look, but I think it came out more like a prison inmate. What I was really thinking was that I wanted a real Van Dyke, like I was a character in a Rembrant painting. The goatee is too round though, and I was too chicken to trim the sideburns higher and more pointy. So it became Buffalo Bill, or more realistically, prison inmate.

So I'm I shot the photo, and it was very blurry. I didn't want to set the camera up again, so I just photoshopped it until it looked lookable. And now I have to try to figure out how on earth I can teach the kids something tomorrow.

PS - This is what I have been listening to this evening.

Playing with Bikes...

So, you might not realize it but you're looking at about two pretty solid days of work. Yesterday I spend the better part of the morning, all of the afternoon affixing the brake levers to my satisfaction on the home made bullhorn bars, then scraping all of the decals off of the bike with my thumbnails. The bullhorns and brake levers were ok, but the decal removal was awful. I tried using an exacto-knife at one point but it brought up about as much paint as decal, so I reverted back to the thumbnails. They hurt terribly.

In affixing the brake levers I realized a couple of things. When I cut the drops to make the bullhorns I should have left more of the vertical part. They're too short to be able to support the levers and allow for one course of bar wrap above. Originally I was assuming that I could get some mountain bike style brake levers, because I'd seen single speed bikes with them. Well, I don't know how they work them out, but I couldn't find them online anywhere, and the old levers were fine. In any case they work ok. The other thing I realized was that the cable housing for the brakes was so old and weathered that it had cracked at the point of insertion into the brake lever on both sides, and I'd need to replace them.

I'd bought some new cables previously, because the cables on it were scary rusty, but I hadn't put them on yet. The yellow housing was one of my favorite parts of the bike, and the housing on the new cables was the dull black you see on it. Oh well.

Before I started on the cables I decided to run to the library where I had some items on hold, and to stop at a bike shop on the way to buy some of the cushy jell inserts that you put under the bar wrap these days. But the bike shop didn't have them. I'd struck out with them before on Slime tubes to fit my 27" x 1.25" wheels. Maybe I should go back to the other shop up in the avenues. This one is just so convenient.

Anyway, after my trip, with bare bars and cracked cable housing, I came home and started working on the rest of it. The first cable I changed was for the front derailleur. Due to bad design, the cables had been totally exposed and they were really rusty. So I switched that our and bent the metal bits that routed the cable to try to fit the whole housing along the cable's route. It didn't work well, and when I was trying to fix it I got sidetracked adjusting the derailleur. I'm no good at it. I never have been.

But this time was worse than most. I was playing with the clamp position on the seat tube, and while trying to loosen the bolt that held the clamp closed I inadvertently tightened it until it sheared off at the midpoint, leaving the threaded in the clamp. So, I'm going to try and drill it out, but I might have just given myself an excuse to update the drivetrane. What a mess. I was very frustrated and angry, and watched Topgear for a couple of hours to calm myself down, then went to bed.

This morning I decided that the fact that I'd crippled it wasn't a reason to finish the cables, so I set to work on that. It took a surprisingly long time, mostly because the bolts for the brakes are located in places that are about ten millimeters too short to be able to get my little ratchet into. Then when I did get to them the fell apart unexpectedly, pieces flying over the dirty floor, and getting lost under all the mess. Eventually, however, I was able to finish it all.

Following that I was going to secure the cable housings with some zipties, but when I looked for them in the store I found only neon colored ones, and decided to pass for the time being.

The next thing upon which to work was the helmet. I purchased the retro-reflective tape some time ago, but hadn't put it on the helmet as an excuse not to ride my bike to school in the morning. I hate riding in the dark. If I'm not visible, then I don't have to. Anyway I decided it was time to begin remedying the situation, so I pulled the tape out. I was thinking of making a skull out of small square pieces at first, but moved on when I couldn't design a pleasing one on my computer. I couldn't figure out what to do instead of the skull and sat thinking for some time when it came to me all at once and I started making a pattern to cut from. It's not perfect. I made it from two strips of 1.5 inch tape, so it's 3 inches wide, and the sides turned out not to be perfectly symmetrical. But it was close enough for me.

Anywho, so much for the first two days of vacation.

The Ride I Intended to Take...

So, yesterday I took the ride I intended to take last week. It's turned stormy and cold here, and yesterday was the preview of it. It was just on the edge of cold, and they sky was that steely version of a clear sky in fall. It's like the impending cold bleeds the color out. Today it stormed, and the sidewalks were full of brightly colored leaves. Maybe it's a water color, all the paint running toward the ground as the water comes down.

Anyway, I slept late, then spent the morning working up a group of songs for a new music mix around the mood I was getting from this one song by The Mountain Goats, called So Desperate. It's this really beautiful, sad sort of song. You can hear it here. But this was before the ride.

I finished amassing the list of songs without mixing them, and it was already the mid afternoon, so I got my new bike and left the building. It was lovely out and there were lots of people walking in the park at the entrance to the canyon. Soon I reached the entrance to the upper canyon, the part to which I've never been, and I was expecting more of the same. There wasn't nearly as much foot traffic on the road, but there were several bikers that passed me. I wasn't going very fast.

About three miles up the canyon I passed what looked like a water treatment plant, and the road narrowed and became less evenly paved. There were bits where the ground got marshy on the north side and water ran across the path, turning the dead leaves into a ground up sop. There was a stream running on the south side of the path. This path made sharp turns sometimes, and curiously steep jogs. It seemed like the engineers who plotted it didn't want to mess with the nature much. It fit, because not long after that the deciduous trees gave way to tall pines and the air became cooler and far more aromatic.

Among these pines I saw the creek far below to the right, moss covered boulders that are more brightly and darkly colored than the ground around them. These were nice little vistas, opening and closing as I went along. I kept thinking that I should tell the film teachers at school about this place. They'd be great locations that might give the kids films a bit more depth.

The top of the canyon is full of picnic areas established by and dedicated to Rotarians. There are big plaques in each one, and a couple of big gear monuments, then at the very top is this great pavilion with a very sharply pitched roof, covered in pine shakes. It looks vaguely swiss, and the trusses must have been in trouble because it was warped in a very picturesque but dangerous looking way. It was really fantastic.

I've been thinking I'd get rid of the drop bars on my bike and replace them with a homemade pair of bullhorns, but I might have to reconsider after riding down the canyon. I got in the drops and kind of let it go, speeding down the narrow pavement in a way that surely would have frightened anyone going up, (as the people passing me on the way down had frightened me a couple times), but it was late in the afternoon and there wasn't anyone still on the way up. The bike was really quite stable at speed, really a joy to ride. It was exhilarating, but I was careful not to let it get away from me. I realized early on that the brakes need to be tightened up even a little more. On the other hand, they're great brakes; far smoother than on my mountain bike.

From the upper canyon I went up to the east side into the avenues, as I did last week, then on down to my building. The sun was setting, around six, as I came out of the canyon, and it was twilight as I walked my bike up the steps to the building. It was night when I stepped out soon after to go get some dinner. Writing this post I realize that it was a singular kind of evening, as today is the end of daylight savings. I guess every evening is singular. This was just one of the ones that let you know it. It was a beautiful day.