A few months ago Nau approached us and said they wanted to do a video about us for their website. We were honored. This was a company that worked in bold stokes. They were ambitious, talented, and incredibly smart. They wove sustainability into everything that they did, and managed to make something truly beautiful. We are so sad to see them go. This video gives you an introduction to Sweetpea Bicycles, but it is really about Portland: why we ride, why we love it. One last thing: I am not sure if they got our Pant Spec, but they nailed the Skirt Spec. My denim skirt fits a U Lock in the back pocket and rides like a dream.
Every year around this time, my wife reads me this wonderful poem by Gary Snyder:
For All
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.
Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.
I pledge allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
In the genre of comment cards, content typically falls into two categories (this sucks/this is great), and style is all but absent. It is all message, and no real consideration for the reader. I mean, who really takes time to think of the person whose task it is to sit and wade through the 30 second message from consumer to corporation? Someone has to read these. Where is the humanity? Gone from what I can tell.
That is why Natalie and I have gotten into the habit of writing comment card haikus. Granted, writing a haiku is fun, but I should clarify that we don’t fill these cards out willy-nilly. To date, we have had two glorious examples, and today we even had a haiku-off. Continue reading ‘Comment Card Haikus’
Among Portland messengers there is a convention of leaving items on one another’s locked up bikes.
Usually it is something like a piece of chocolate pilfered from a receptionist’s candy dish and left a buddy’s bike saddle, or flowers left on the handlebars. Sometimes its a race announcement or a party invite. When I feel like spreading the love, I’ll leave a tea bag or Emer’gen-c (Super Energy Booster) packet underneath the u-lock.
But my little beverage routine was upstaged last week. I found this beautiful poem from Ayla tucked beneath my u-lock.
Damn
Your bike is
BRIGHT
Orange, like the sun
That has gone down
For the next 8 months
