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.

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 it looks like when we plan our future.

Beautiful photos by Shetha.  See the rest of them here.

I was there.  Not in spirit, like someone sitting with coffee and a waffle at the kitchen table thinking cheerful thoughts for a hearty bundled-up peloton.  No, I was there in the wind-chapped flesh.  Only I was a half mile across the highway, a half hour late, and in an industrial park of misery.

For brevity’s sake, let’s call that Hillsboro.

In retrospect, I can see I was ill-prepared.  It wasn’t what I didn’t bring – I brought my earnest intentions, a buttered muffin, and a Max ticket. . . It was what I failed to leave behind that did me in.  I deboarded at Orenco Station with the useless assumption that NW 231 st surely mustn’t be too far from NW 235th, where you were all waiting cozily to begin your ride.  I set out, at 13 minutes to nine, to find the next block, orient myself, and head your way.  After five minutes, it became clear that the street grid was pocked with condos in the way you might imagine a really rough patch of the space time continuum to be pocked with black holes.  I sought a native guide, a woman with an eager terrier and a snappy jogging outfit.  Her directions were confident, her hand gestures were vigorous, and she shouted over the sounds of wind and traffic “head that way, you’ll see signs!”

Yes I did.  I saw signs for HWY 26, a tile warehouse, Ocean Beaches, any number of likely contractors for the US Defense Department and the garage door opening industry.  I squinted into the sun, and like a dog circling three times before settling down for a nap, I circled around and around before settling down into a serious funk.

I wanted an urban planner.  I wanted an explanation.  I could have been dropped into the middle of Paris and gotten directions from a mime troupe with better results.  Or at least found my way to a cafe au lait, a pain au chocolate, a bon jour!

I pulled the phone from my jacket and called home.  Austin consulted the internet, and I was once again on my way.  But by the time I arrived at the Longbottom Coffee and Tea, it was 9:47 and you were gone.  The Portland Velo ten o’clock ride and a group of triathletes were milling about speaking breezily of recovery zones and electrolytes, so I pointed myself into the wind, and headed toward the hills.

It was too late in the game to trade up my patch kit for a suitcase of courage.  I would like to report a certain pluckiness or determination to make the best of the situation, but over the course of the next three hours, there were down trees and wrong turns.  And, as long as we are being honest here, there may have been a roadside tantrum of sorts, either the cause or the result of a pair of day-glo polar fleece mittens blown down the road like a pair of addled tumbleweeds.  But we don’t talk about that anymore.

At long last, Austin met my arrival with embraces, declarations of love, and a grilled cheese sandwich.  We took a trip to Stumptown Coffee just to be sure that both body and spirits were restored.  (Mocha, lots of whip.)

So this is just to say that I tried, and that I would still love to go for a ride.

Next Sunday?  Maybe someplace closer in perhaps?

But I did not commermorate my anniversary with blackberries and sunshine. I say, let those non-native invasives, as sweet as they may be, wither on the vine. Summer is too easy. Anyone can fall in love with a Portland summer. It’s the winter that weeds out the fickle, and the winter of 1998 proved my heart was true.

My grandfather could recall a winter or two that were wetter than 1998, but few had the heart to quibble over rain data as we approached our 40th day of rain with neither a break nor an Ark.  As a newcomer to both Portland and to being a bike messenger, whatever I lacked in experience I made up for in exposure. My rain jacket leaked, my fender was flimsy, and my corduroy knickers soaked up water like a luxury bath towel monogrammed “ROOKIE.” Most of my waking hours that season were soggy. I grew to see the line between wet and dry as permeable and best regarded with a certain non-attachment. Comfort hardly seemed the point.

And so, this weekend with a winter storm warning in effect, I celebrated my Portland anniversary recalling the memory of my first really stupid and epic outdoor adventure.

(The author with ten years of Portland under her belt.)

Early in that first December, I has asked another messenger for some good ride routes and was given vague instructions for the Sauvie Island Loop, a thirty mile jaunt that promised a spectacular vantage point for taking in the snowy west hills. I dressed in my most technical riding gear: Levi’s polyester permaprest action slacks (cuffs rolled up), a shrunken wool v-neck, and a pair of army surplus socks.

On my way out of town, I stopped to make a purchase that I had been contemplating for months: arm warmers. I ducked into the last bike shop in city limits, and emerged with arm warmers on and $1.50 left in my pocket. As I set out, the quarters marked my cadence brightly at first, and were then drown out by the snapping of my pants and sleeves in the wind.

I turned onto the Suavie Island Bridge with a sense of purpose. I had arrived. And so had the weather. The snow on the hills that called me out had now come to join me in the lowlands. I pedaled faster to keep warm. I kept my head down in deference to the wind, and met each new stretch of road as a new shake of the snow globe. I felt the road turn rough beneath me with no evdience of progress around the island. I was in Columbia County, where potholes grow militant and take over the streets. Suddenly, this mattered. I imagined that my fingers, already numb, were now in danger of wiggling off inside my gloves. I made fists. I gave them pep talks. We bargained, and I turned my bike around.

I pulled into the Cracker Barrel, the island’s tiny fish bait and grocery store, and pulled the change out of my pocket. This would have been a swell time to ask myself, “What impulse calls us out into the wild, inspires us to do great things, only to be undone by mundane errors in judgement?” Instead, I asked myself, “What can I buy for $1.50 that keep my hands toasty for a little while?” Coffee. With sugar and non-dairy creamer (for nutritional value). I sipped slowly, trying to buy some time, but I could only feign interest in fish bait and tackle for so long. The Cracker Barrel could not save me. I had to get back on my bike.

As I headed into the wind, the coffee proved useless. I need fuel I could burn. My thoughts turned to donuts, and to the parts of me that weren’t cold. Like my elbows. Maybe I could seek refuge in my elbows pulling that last ounce of power and warmth to get me home. . . 

But it didn’t come to that. Something better happened. A woman on a road bike appeared looking warm, strong, and speedy. I learned that she was a racer, and she had no doubt seen this kind of thing before. She took pity on me and tucked me into her draft. I sat on her wheel focusing on her encouraging chatter, grateful for every minute and every mile that passed. An hour later I was home.

After a couple of donuts and a hot bath, my recovery was complete. Feeling had returned to my fingers and toes. A good feeling. They belonged to me, right where I was standing, at home in Portland.

I got up, let the dog out, and jumped into the shower. No sooner had I pulled on my favorite pair of shop pants and an old t shirt, than a voicemail appeared blinking on my telephone. I hadn’t had my coffee, and already I was missing calls. It was Bicycling Magazine. They wanted to ask me a few questions to go along with the photos they took a couple of weeks back. Where is that coffee? Are we really out of sugar?

I returned the call, left a voicemail, and drank some coffee while checking my emails. A customer had a few questions about her bike design which presented some interesting possibilities and a couple of conversations later, we were looking at an intriguing and innovative solution. The computer, which was going to be packed into the backpack to head down to the shop, was now plugged into the wall while I plugged my ideas into BikeCAD Pro to try them out.

This design would be pretty new, so I got on the phone to review some of finer points and a few calls later I found myself talking to Grant Petersen. He asked me a couple of questions to gauge what he was dealing with, and then he asked point blank if I was mostly using carbon (he said “plastic”) forks on my bikes. I said I’ve used them on two bikes. “Well, then you are only going to hell twice.” I hoped he wasn’t the final authority on that, so we moved on to bottom bracket drops for 650B bikes and he offered his brake reach-centric fork designing method.

Back in the kitchen, the dog needed a treat. I administered a frozen treat-stuffed kong, and got back to BikeCAD. Since I was already at the computer, I started digging into some methods of making some of the technical decisions easier on my customers. A little while later, I was neck deep into Basecamp and had enlisted a couple of customers to be guinea pigs.

Uploading pictures of cable routing choices for mixte frames, I got the call I had been waiting for. Bicycling Magazine had questions for Sweetpea. Sweetpea was on her second cup of coffee and was ready for a lively interview. Talking about bikes and why women deserve the best gets me pretty stoked. It gets me thinking about all the really fantastic women who are in line for a Sweetpea, and reminds me just how lucky I am to be doing this.

After the interview I called Michael Sylvester, my bicycle fitting mentor to check in about some of our upcoming Sweetpea fittings. We went over some outstanding decisions and decided to gather some information and meet back for a bike design jam session. Next thing I knew his 4 o’clock appointment was calling. Really? Was it that late? I hadn’t even looked into the lathe purchase I am thinking of making for my new shop, let alone touched metal all day. I spent the next chunk of my afternoon coordinating a shop visit to look at some machinery and getting an education in the benefits of large spindle bore diameters on metal lathes. (To sum it up once and for all, bigger is better.)

By the time Austin came home and the puppy was roused from her slumber beneath the kitchen table, I had packed in a full day and barely left the kitchen. When you come home brushing metal shavings off your sleeves and wiping oil smudges off your forehead, you know that you’ve been making something. On days like this, work is a bit less tangible. Important work? Yes. But it doesn’t quite feel real unless something is getting bent, chopped, brazed or filed. Its days like this where I have to remind myself that if its a small failure not to touch metal, then there are times when you just have to fail harder.

Here is a preview of a rig that just came back from paint.  We are calling it Two Bite Curry: the first bite is hot, the second bite sweet.

Sweetpea Bicycles announces the addition of a new Assistant (to the) Production Manager.

After a long and in depth search, Sweetpea Bicycles has selected a new Assistant Production Manager – Greta the puppy.  “With weeks of experience in looking adorable and a recent graduate from the Humane Society, Greta the puppy is a welcome addition to Sweetpea Bicycles, LLC.” Natalie Ramsland, Owner.  Greta is being trained by the current Production Manager whose role was recently expanded to lead the sales team.