Pickle your Battles
I stood there in the kitchen with a large knife in my hands, a yellow flowered apron, bloody red everywhere. The fight was hard, but I was victorious. A crimson red fluid dripped down the side of the drawers and cabinets, and I was tired, but wore a slight grin on the side of my face.
I had just taken a 10 pound bag of farm fresh beets through hours of scrubbing and boiling, cooling and peeling, slicing and spicing, pickling and canning until victory was mine: 12 perfect pints of pickled beets lined up like little soldiers.
During the struggle, I overheard a snippet on the radio about pickles and warfare.
Caesar distributed them to his troops to fortify body and spirit. Napoleon’s need for a stable pickle supply for his soldiers led to the development of modern canning techniques. Pickles were rationed in WWII, so that the good guys could eat them and fight the bad guys. And we all know who won.
Despite what it looked like, the carnage in the kitchen wasn’t a battle against the beets at all. It was a struggle against our common enemy: the perishable summer.
The sun is setting earlier now and I regularly hear crunchy yellow leaves beneath my feet. I must accept that some of my tomatoes may never ripen. But I won’t accept the fall without a fight. And so I march into battle with a knife in my hand and a middle finger for the end of summer.
After it was all over, I savored my victory. They were a little sweet and a little sour. And some cold day in November I am going to pop open the spoils of war and feast on a slice of stolen sunshine.
The Miniature
(The author and her editor on a mini-vacation.)
About once a day, like a faithful geyser, Austin will turn to me and say: “Whoa. I think I just had a great idea.” And for as long as I have known that boy, I am still utterly unable to predict whether the great idea is going mean we make pizza for dinner or start a project that fundamentally changes our life.
A few weeks ago Austin had a fantastic idea that I haven’t been able to shake off. I’m calling it Austin’s Tiny Timeshare. He noted that summer has taken a long time to get rolling and that we don’t have much leeway for vacation this year, but we are itchy to make the very best of it. He proposed that we get together with some friends to construct a tiny house in Bend. Imagine us darting out from under the oppressively verdant canopy of the Willamette Valley to make a run for Bend. We’d strike out on a whim with bikes, dog and trail shoes to our launching pad for adventure, our 200sq ft claim on a life outside our norm.
The idea has fueled my day dreams of an imagined future, but the need for escape that it speaks to is present and real. And so Austin’s Tiny Timeshare bobs along in my mind at once delightfully buoyant and sadly out of reach.
But I think the idea of the Tiny Timeshare holds within it another idea ready to unfurl like a parachute and bring this whole scheme back down to earth where we can use it. And that is the idea of the miniature. Specifically, the miniature as used in a Japanese garden.
Japanese gardens use miniature elements like rocks, gravel, and moss to represent larger landscape features. Rocks become small islands, gravel becomes a rolling sea, and moss becomes forested lowlands. Through an artful cultivation of scale and vantage point, the small garden is transformed into a spacious landscape.
The tiny house, of course, has a similar knack for expansion. Its diminutive stance makes the clearing broader and the sky larger. It’s tiny inside reminds you how much outside the world has to offer. But until it is real, I can work with the principles of the miniature in my present landscape and with the time I have.
For what remains of our summer, I will let the small experiences make the rest of my world feel larger.
- A sub-24 hour bike camping trip in place of the weeklong bike tour.
- An hour in the park with a magazine rather than a day at the beach with a novel.
- A pint of blueberries from the farm stand instead of the day spent picking and jamming.
I’ll be jumping lightly among these moments, like jumping from rock to rock in a garden that is really islands in a great big sea.
A different kind of bike love.
“A bike should look good on it’s own, but it’s incomplete until a person rides it.”
Bound for Glory
At the bottom of our last major descent of the day, my tandem pilot Bob yelled back to me “Sprinkle water on the drum brake!” I watched a weak trickle from my water bottle sizzle and pop. Water turned to gas, and it was gone. Burned up by the accumulated heat of so much resistance. If I had been capable of poetry at that point, I would have understood this as our last physical sonnet to glory.
The Rapha Gentlemen’s Race prides itself on its brutality. It is unmarshalled, unsanctioned and takes as its battle cry “Glory through Suffering.” This route dispatched us to 123 miles of grinding climbs, false summits, dust and gravel. The day handed us searing heat.
Before the race I had questioned the necessity of hitching “glory” to “suffering.” With some cheeky Buddhist logic, I dismissed suffering as a matter of perspective or mental attitude. But by the time we hit Pittsburg Road, I was reminded of the noblest truth of all:
Suffering is as ordinary and inevitable as the next breath. Glory is a state of mind.
Only 7 of the 27 teams that started this race made it to the finish intact. Riders went down with one flat after the next on the steep gravel descents. Tires blew off of rims. Riders spun out and fell at 3 miles an hour. Chains dropped. Chains broke. Drivetrains derailed. Sunstroke and dehydration plucked off even the strongest riders.
At the bottom of that last major descent, our remaining team had nothing to race but the sunset. We’d been the first to start at 9 in the morning and we’d be the last to finish, 11 ½ hours later. At this point, I winced at every bump in the road. I had sunscreen in my eyes and my hands had gone numb. We all got quiet. I think we were looking inward for what was left. I poured my last drops of will and joy into the pedals to keep them turning. It all burned up, meeting the sun at the horizon.
As I rolled into the finish, I realized that glory wasn’t waiting for me. And that all I was left with were fleeting moments of beauty and hours of transition: Water into gas. Hurt into motion. Sun into darkness.
And maybe beer and a shower.
Haunted
An architect cannot haunt a house before it is built. This is among my favorite true things. You can design a building with wall-to-wall theory, beauty, and meaning, but then something like a grumpy spirit comes along and becomes the single most remarkable thing about the place. The dead thing brings it most to life. How about that.
I just bought a pair of blue leather clogs at a consignment shop and I dare say they are haunted. The toes look like they’ve kicked and the heels look like they’ve dug. I swear to you, they have as much verb as they do noun in them. They bear the evidence of having been cobbled, worn, and recobbled with quirky asymmetry. They have gobs of glue at the seams, a few repairs to the heels and say “Oscar Austad” on the bottom of the wooden sole.
For five dollars, I bought more than a pair of clogs. I stepped into the ghost of one particular pair of feet that have wandered elsewhere. Oscar, wherever you are, thank you for your shoes.
My aspirations usually run toward minimalism. In my fantasies about myself, I live a compact life weighed down by no more than the bare essentials. At the slightest provocation I will tell you with awe and admiration how my brother’s friend has just one bookshelf and won’t keep more books that can fit on that one shelf. In my ideal future, I am equally efficient and lean by design. I may even live in a tiny house. But that’s just fantasy. Don’t look in my garage.
My bicycle obsessions tell a different story. The bikes that I own and the bikes that I covet prove me to be quite the opposite of a minimalist. I add features. My “fast bike” has the couplers and takes fenders and a rack. Even my fantasy track bike has two water bottle cages. And disc brakes. And brass fenders. And a chaingaurd. Oh! And the ability to convert it to an internally geared bike if I want. See what I mean?
My latest bike obsession has forced me to come face-to-face with my miminalist/maximalist conflict. I want an long tail. Specifically, I want to transform my Two Bite Curry city bike into the Free Ranger with the Xtracycle’s Free Radical conversion kit. If you ask me why, I will tell say:
- 15 pounds of dog food and a bale of hay
- Bike camping
- Carrying your new Sweetpea to the final fitting
- Putting my mom on the back for a picnic at Laurelhurst Park
My inner minimalist asks me if I haven’t been doing just fine with my current basket and panniers. It reminds me that I already have a trailer. My inner minimalist asks me if more “stuff” is the answer.
But here’s the catch. I don’t suppose it’s a material problem I am looking to solve. I am willing to admit that the physical things I want perhaps speak more directly to the intangible things that I want.
I want to feel that any adventure is possible.
- I want to imagine that I am one good idea away from a bike trip to the coast.
- I want to broadcast generosity of spirit at every frequency. “Let me carry that for you!” “ Can I give you a lift?”
- I want to get pulled over for reckless optimism. With my mom riding shotgun.
I don’t know yet if and when I will be getting the long tail. But I am inclined to believe that some of the best stuff you’d want to carry with you down the road doesn’t actually weigh you down at all.
Should I take off my fenders yet?
The removal of fenders is a decision that involves as much mysticism and soul searching as it does weather forecasts and allen keys. Portland had it’s first beautiful balls-to-the-wall sunny weekend last weekend, and we spent it outside with the rest of the city. And as we pedaled home from our Saturday ride, Austin asked me in sun-drunk optimism “Think I oughta take off my fenders?”
In years past, I might have been able to answer with confidence. You just do a gut-check: yup, feels like summer. So you take them off. Or you look to outside indicators: Fleet Week, Pedalpolooza, Rose Parade… and you take them off. But this spring it has rained like gangbusters, and it just keeps coming. It has soaked my intuition and drowned my faith. Times like these call for a new methodology. See if you qualify for fender removal below:
This is what I want from the world.
I haven’t surfed a day in my life.
It struck me while watching this video that you could replace the surfboard with a morning ride, an early trail run, a mid-winter cross country ski. I want that feeling of space, movement, and utter ease in the natural world. I want to find the pace that gives me access to profound beauty. If I get a glimmer of that from time to time, I know I’ll have gotten what I came for.
Flat Pedals: set your intention
Last week I tweeted a photo of a customized Little Black Dress. It was a gorgeous bike – such a deep red it looked fast even at a dead stop. And a few minutes later (such is the way of the internet), I got back a mixed review:
“Everything about that bike is foxy. Except the pedals. It’s like house slippers paired with a little black dress.”
Two things of note:
Yes, those pedals did not belong on that bike. At the time I conceded, explaining that I threw the pedals on so I could give the rig a test ride.
But no. Flat pedals are not house slippers. They are not a frumpy stand-in for something more appealing. Flat pedals are more like flip flops. More intention than substance. They are the easy ambivalence of summer, like an open patio door or a two week vacation. They invite you to come and go as you please and take your time doing it.
I’ve been riding flat pedals on my fixie for a couple of months now and it has changed my relationship with that bike. I am on and off like its no big deal, no real commitment. I’m riding and then I am not. I roll out to a coffee meeting with a customer. I cruise to the store in sneakers and rolled up pants. I even rode to a bike advocacy fundraiser in high heels and a dress.
Flat pedals nudge you in the right direction. They tell you to slow down, to enjoy the relaxation, to soak in the summer. They might not look fast, but these are the months when you want it to last.
We’ve talked about these guys before. But it sure is exciting to get a call from a company that you admire and respect on a number of levels, and have them tell you that they dig what you are doing. We’d be lying if we didn’t say that they were part of the inspiration behind starting Sweetpea. I mean, if a bunch of surfers, climbers, and mountaineers can do it – and do it right – then so can we.
