A sweet portent

I had a dream while I was in Baton Rouge last month:

It was a cold, rainy fall afternoon in Seattle and I was walking down a sidewalk with the rain dripping down my face. I was smiling and enjoying the wet, sleepy day because by my side was a fellow whose company I enjoyed. We were bundled up in our northwest woolens, huddling close as we walked to avoid the raindrops en masse. We opened the door to my Fairy Godfather's shop to get out of the rain. It was warm and dry inside and his windows were steamed up. We only stayed for a little bit, then continued on our walk to a coffee shop down the street.

I thought I woke up after this dream, but apparently I didn't, because you've been by my side this whole cold, rainy autumn, riding next to me as we go to the shop to enjoy its warmth, new toys, and endless stories. Then again I must be awake because I can look into your brown eyes and feel your fuzzy face against my cheek, what no dream could ever provide, no matter how much I tried. Yes I must be wide awake.

The miracle of rest

All ballz out for 2 months of singlespeed cyclocross racing plus a few alleycats and drunken weekday rides thrown in for extra merriment. The knees had cried uncle. The mind and the body had thrown in the towel in search of rest and recovery. I could barely pedal my bike let alone walk up a flight of stairs. The race at Steilacoom had pushed my right knee to the edge of tolerance. One too many steep hills. A dozen too few gears. The thought of getting up in the dark on a Sunday morning to race made me roll my eyes and pull the covers back over my head. Fine. I'll rest. I'll take a few weekends off from racing and pull out the geared bike to let the knees recoop. Rosemary can stay in the stable chewing her alfalfa and getting fat. Her mom can get lots of rest and enjoy the freedom of sleeping in late and nuzzling up to a well trimmed beard when the day finally awakens us from slumber.

Ahhhhhh rest. It was wonderful. But something was unfinished. We went to the Evergreen race to cheer on our friends who were still gunning it for 4 laps every Sunday morning. The people. The colorful kits. The pinning of numbers. The laughs. The blown lungs. The bulging eyeballs. The fog. The cowbells. The fleece. The mittens. The wool hats. The hugs at the end. The relief of testing your body and succeeding by crossing the finish line. The mud. The sweat. The hamburgers with lots of ketchup and freshly sliced tomatos and lettuce. The $2 bottles of Henry's.

I wanted to return. My three weeks off had done me good. I stirred. My legs wanted to throttle again. My mind was eager to challenge myself and others. I wanted my points back! I had averaged 5th place out of 30 ladies in every race. On my singlespeed dinosaur mind you. Only two races left in the season and I was not ready to call it quits. South Seatac's sandpits called my name and I etched it on my calendar.

The morning broke with cold sunshine. It was SWEET! The rain from the preceding days had formed a slick layer of black mud along the shady singletrack while the sandpits absorbed the rain and formed a firm track to ride on top of rather than sinking down to your rims. Jane pinned my number, I rubbed some Greyhound Juice on my bare legs, and we warmed up twice around the course. At the start line I was no longer called out front with my top 10 placings so I resigned to the back of the pack. Bah. No worries. I shall pick you off one by one. GO! We set off up the hilly pavement and I passed half the girls as they contemplated what gear to shift into. The sandpits, the dismounts, the slogging, the bottlenecks, PASSING YEE FRAIL SOULS, the singletrack, the mud, the cowbells. I loved it! Tick tick tick I passed them all save four. I sprinted the last 200 feet as Tim egged me on to pass one last lady. Flying through the finish line and came to a stop and leaned over to hurl, not my breakfast shake, but a mouthful of warm spit. I watched it drip off my heaving lip and into the mud at my foot. I love this shit! Hugs all around. Faces splattered in mud like we're six years old. Mud in teeth. Mud in ears. Mud up your ass. What a fabulous return. Next week at the Kelly Creek final it's all ballz out. The last race. The last hurrah. I'm ready to eat more singlespeed love.

Patience

Watching waiting luring teaching living. Not forgetting what remains to be discovered after leaving the comfort of all that is known. Detaching from what is expected to be obtained and finding how it is to live. The smallness, the goodness of a temple standing solitary in the high desert. Its colors breaking the line of the sky and earth with markings of golds and reds and yellows and greens and blues. Its walls resonating a deep, steady song into the air like a siren beckoning a weary sailor. The eyes of Buddha guiding you along your path. Open the door and breathe in the warm, sweet smell. Close your eyes and absorb the moment. Welcome home.

They gave me decaf

This foul, grumpy mood brought to you by the fucker who gave me decaf for my afternoon medication: You fucking suck shit. I wasn't born fucking yesterday. I know what decaf will do to me. Witness:

- To the fucker with the 3000 watt light riding up my ass on the way home tonight: You fucking suck shit. 1) Get the fuck off my slow ass. My knee hurts and I don't appreciate being blinded from behind and being forced to stare at my shadow instead of the fucking bike trail. 2) Get over yourself and learn how to ride at night with lower wattage. The lighthouse on your handlebars will do nothing to increase the size of your dick.

- To the slow artsy fucking chick taking her time in the middle of the bike trail: Move the fuck over and get out of the way of riders who actually fucking ride. Your thrift store outfit will not make me think twice about knocking you over.

- To the fucking jackass son of a bitch who is stalking my friend at the Emerald City Cyclocross series: You fucking suck shit. If you fucking dare pull that shit on her again this Sunday I will come at you with my fucking pedal wrench and send you back to fucking Jesus. When a woman doesn't give you her fucking phone number it does NOT give you the right to look up her name in the standings and Google her and find her phone number and call every half hour and leave her paralyzed with fear in the only place she thought she was safe. It does not give you the right to lurk and trail her at a cyclocross race where she should be strong and free of low life scum shitheads like yourself. I fucking dare you to come within 100 feet of her. Make my fucking day shithead.

- To the people who are so self-serving and narcissistic that they cannot live without causing pain in other people's lives: You fucking suck shit. May you eat a huge serving of humble pie and know what pain and suffering are. Oh wait - you are in pain and suffering. Thanks for projecting it onto the rest of the world who tries to love you.

- To the fucking creep at our cafeteria at work who had the gall to use email to ask me out: You fucking suck shit. I did not give you my email to take advantage of me. I was nice and said you could send me some Katrina photos that your family took along the Gulf. I did not fucking invite you into my life. Get a fucking PhD and know how to make love to a bike and meet the Dalai Lama and maybe you'll get a fucking hall pass. Oh wait - you never will! So get the hell out of my life and don't fucking serve me decaf ever again.

- To those who have the dignity to treat a chick with respect, intelligence, a smattering of hotness and treat her bike like a princess: You fucking rock. Let's go to Tibet.

The Best Advice

"Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast…a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.”

- Ed Abbey at a 1987 Earth First! Rally at the Grand Canyon

Fall Back

Into my arms. Into my life. We turn the clocks back tonight, but things are moving forward. The trees line the streets with less color and more gray than the weeks before. When I ride to work the sun rises more to the south than it did yesterday. It arches over a more southernly peak of the Cascades every time I turn the wheels, like I am pushing it along it grinding path to another universe. Despite the darkness and clouds there is still the bright orb that we don't always get to see. The sun is still emitting its energy, still showering the world with life. The days are darker and colder and wetter, but I'm finding more warmth by its glow. Someone once said that nirvana is looking above the gray clouds, believing in what you cannot immediately see with your eyes. I have been struck by a few blinding rays and I welcome their sharp awakening. Because darker days do not beckon death, but bring us closer to the life above the thick autumn clouds.

Singlespeed Luv

Remember when

Remember when we used to ride through the woods, the sun finding its way through the kaleidescope colors of leaves above our heads. The dark earth beneath our wheels, soft and forgiving as we wound our way along the trails and along our lives. The air, the earth, the trees, the sky, the crunch of dry leaves that we picked off one by one, insistent that we not leave this place until we touched each one, reinforcing our presence to no one in particular, just the trees who weren't looking anyway. It was a game that left us out late with the stars and our breath, our noses dripping with glee, our cheeks red from the hour.

Close your eyes and remember. And go back. Back to that time of goodness and freedom, youthful and limitless, boundless until dawn. The woods weren't about hiding and neither was the night. It was about being found inside and out. You brought me there. You were my vessel, my chariot to this world. And now I have you back to relive this passage again. It's all timing, they say. It's all a full circle. This circle may arc into another path, but we'll stay on it together hand in hand.

Quiz Time

You finished your first cyclocross race 12 hours ago. Do you feel:

1. Splended. In fact I've never felt better. I think I'll take my dog Binky out for a stroll in the night air.
2. I'd answer but the morphine drip prevents me from writing coherently.
3. Like my legs have been through a meat grinder.
4. I am SO STOKED for this season I'm going to do laps running up stairs with my bike first thing in the morning, and then I'll go around Discovery Park practicing hurdles, and then go do some more steps, and then some more hurdles, and then go to the gym and lift weights. And then I'll do some more. All before 7 a.m.
5. My boyfriend said I looked so hot in my jersey it totally made me, like, forget where I was. I swear I could have pulled him into the woods, and, you know. Oh, and sorry I got in your way when I walked down that steep section of singletrack. It made me so, like, totally nervous. I just can't, like, concentrate on what I'm doing when I think of my boyfriend. Ya know?
6. They expect us to do this in the RAIN?!?!?!
7. I never knew how consistently recognizable a Balance Bar could look when yacked over a period of 35 minutes.
8. There is a masseuse out there who could retire early with the money they'd make off me right now.
9. Ya know, I, like, feel really totally awesome! I can't wait until next week! It's gonna be, like, so much FUN!!! It was like, so beautiful and sunny today, it just really made me love being outside and feeling good about myself. It was like one of those "Life is Good" t-shirts. In fact I think I'll go to REI and buy another one with a big smiley face on it.
10. There is a reason they invented autumn. It's a time to harvest God's bounty: mass quantities of Oktoberfest microbrews and brautwurst with mustard. Fuck this exertion shit. Bring on the beer and weiners.

Blingy Blingier Blingiest

Having the best dad/ebay shopper in the world gets the new track frame new toys (at half the price).

Blingy Bling Bling

All work and no play gets Rosemary new toys.

Baton Rouge Velodrome

From my Bell 212 helo overflight. Sweet-talking the pilots has its advantages.

Quote of the Week

"God must really hate red states."

Out of the frying pan

Into the glamorous life of the largest environmental disaster (formerly called Louisiana)that the states have ever seen. Welcome to the world's newest and largest Superfund site. I'm at the Baton Rouge command post at a refinery facility, which happens to be a smaller Superfund site, holed up with I don't know how many hundreds of more Coasties in a dozen double and triple wide trailers. The field outside has about 50 RVs where people have taken residence. Like a college tailgating party without all the revelry or sleep. I landed a plush hotel room with one of my idols, one of the most talented and famous women scientists in the world. If I had known 5 years ago that I'd be rooming with her I'd have choked. Turns out she likes a glass of white wine before bed, uses a rose scented lotion, and can get ready to leave in under 5 minutes.

We're here to do the real field work of the Katrina response. This is where we're mapping the +30 oil spills, the boats that are smashed or underwater, and tracking the oceanic convergent zones that are sweeping bloated human bodies towards Florida. Three of us are stuffed in a room about 8'x8', with 4 laptops, 3 printers, and assorted office supplies to keep it cozy. The wireless connection sucks. Email goes in and out all day. The room is like a meat locker in the morning but by noon it's easily 85F baking in the Louisiana sun. The people are just as hard core as the conditions. Dedicated, brutal, truthful. I've never met such a group of responders or scientists who act like such cowboys with 10 gallons of guts and brilliance under their hat. Just the renegade posse needed to herd the hellacious riprap left behind Katrina.

I'm printing out yet more maps for yet more Admirals. Their eyes will sweep across the pretty picture as the commanders brief them on the response status in about 8 hours. My show and tell contribution to feeding the beasts. I did some maps the other day for Bush. That Bush. Stayed up until 2 a.m. He wouldn't look at them. Just pretty colors. My Pet Goat on a map.

I miss....

- Home.
- My new home away from home full of bike parts and bike language and grease and dreams and good people. My fairy god-father. I called him the other day and it was good to hear his voice.
- Rosemary
- My singlespeed Fat Chance
- My friends. All my friends. The laughter. The smiles. The bonds. The hugs.
- Dark beer. I will drink a porter and drink it slowly and savor every sweet sip of flavor over my tongue.
- My morning ride to work and the sights and sounds of a city freshly cleaned by the dawn.
- The Ballard Bridge. The mass of aged concrete and rebar and its colorful murals.
- Coffee shops. As ubiquitous as they are, it's good to know they're around.
- The Arboretum. To get away from it all.
- KEXP.
- The grungy, crunchy, liberal, whiney people of Seattle.
- Grungy, crunchy, liberal, whiney people's newspapers.
- Organic food.
- Reading a book.
- My wool hats. I knew I should have brought one.
- My sweet wool bike jerseys! Arrggggg I knew I should have brought one of those too.
- Rainier and the other mountains.
- The trees. Oh how I miss the big evergreen trees.
- And the water. The smell of salt water and being so close to the deep, cold ocean.

Quote of the week

From my very facetious co-worker as someone plays U2 really loud on their laptop tongight:

So is Bono going to ask all the Third World countries if we can have our money back?

Who really saved the day

This article from the Washington Post sums it up. While the rest of the fed gov't fucked up the Katrina response, the Coast Guard was there in the trenches initiating response and helping people. I've seen nothing but Coasties giving 110% while their own homes lay in ruins and they have nothing but the blue Coastie uniform on their back. In the article they interview Lt. Cmdr. Jim Elliott whom I was fortunate to work with at the Athos spill in December '04. I remember him as the essense of leadership, a man with a soft spoken voice and piercing steel blue eyes, a leader who sees the strengths of everyone under his command and speaks to each of them with intelligence and respect. Keep up the good work, Jim, we're all proud of you and your charge.

Coast Guard's Response to Katrina a Silver Lining in the Storm

By Stephen Barr

Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page B02

Let's have a round of cheers for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out Coast Guard stations in Gulfport and Pascagoula, Miss., and looters wrecked part of its New Orleans base. But that did not stop the Coast Guard from sending out rescue helicopters and cutters on dangerous and exhausting missions to save lives and clear waterways after the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

"We started the night that the storm hit," Jason Shepard , a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, said yesterday in an interview from Mobile, Ala., one of the agency's staging bases for Katrina.

Shepard, who carries the formal title of aviation survival technician first class and has served in the Coast Guard for 18 years, called the Katrina rescue effort "probably the biggest thing that has happened in our careers."

Coast Guard crews have rescued 22,000 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Petty Officer Andrew Kendrick , a Coast Guard spokesman in St. Louis, estimated yesterday.

The Coast Guard, in many ways, is a model agency. It is relatively small -- with about 45,000 uniformed and civilian employees -- and believes in "cross-training" so that each employee can perform more than one job.

It also is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard's response to Katrina in recent days has again illuminated the importance of capable leadership and a clear chain of command in agencies during a crisis. Hopefully, as Congress moves to probe how the government handled the Katrina crisis, the Coast Guard can serve as a model for fixing what's wrong elsewhere in Homeland Security, including what many perceive as poor leadership at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jim Elliott , who is helping oversee rescues from Mobile, said the agency set up a unified command with states and local industries before the hurricane roared ashore.

"We know how to join with other organizations to get the job done," he said. "We were out the door as soon as the winds died down."

Elliott has been getting by on three to four hours of sleep each day for the past week. Shepard said rescue operations are running round-the-clock, with crews working "anywhere from six- to 18-hour missions, depending on what was going on."

The work is demanding. Rescue crews that normally would be asked to pluck about 20 people from danger on a tough day have been "doing 100 to 120 hoists" in adverse conditions that include heat and humidity and exposure to contaminated water kicked up by chopper rotors, Shepard said.

The work is hazardous. Pilots have had to hover between electrical and phone wires and drop cables from heights of 10 to 180 feet, Shepard said.

The Coast Guard trains personnel to rescue people from buildings, trees, mountain cliffs and sinking ships. While the employees often specialize in certain types of operations, they all train to a standard so that they can form up as teams in emergencies, with each person knowing what each job entails and how it fits into overall operations.

As Katrina approached, the Coast Guard pulled its regional command out of New Orleans and relocated to St. Louis. Aircraft and cutters were dispersed out of the storm's path.

The Coast Guard has put about 100 chopper crews, typically made up of four people, in the air each day for the past week and has flown more than 900 sorties, Kendrick said.

Shepard and Elliott said their great satisfaction has come in helping pull families and children to safety. "It is amazing the lives that we have saved," Elliott said. "It is a great feeling to be a part of this operation."

Coastie rescuing an innocent victim from the Superdome

Lost little girl

Coast Guard helo survey