Bike Trip 2010

Of course, that's still more than I have from a quick work trip to Jamaica, but, other than the inside of a meeting room, a hotel room, and some restaurants, I didn't actually see anything. Well, not true, I looked at a lot of websites documenting the ongoing Dudus Coke extradition situation and warning of violence. We got out 24 hours before *that* started.

But hey, camera stolen = reason for new camera! And I got a sweet new camera, and it can geotag! All of a sudden, I feel like taking pictures again. Like these ones, from a work-related trip to Australia!

Australia 2010

And then I took way more pictures than I have in years on a super short kayak trip! It was fun, but not long enough. And now, if I continue to use the geotagging feature (I have it in "flight mode" to save batteries, so it isn't on all the pictures), I guess you'll know where all my favourite campsites are. Hmmm. The pictures are are here:

Georgian Bay 2010

Now, what would be the writing equivalent of a new camera to get me out of my sloth with updating this page?

Last year, I started going again, but I slept in a tent myself. And it was the best thing ever. I could hang out in the crowded, warm yurt in the evenings, ski during the day, eat bacon, and sleep in my own space. Brilliant. Dan's style of yurting had caught on with a bunch of people by then (and Kevin outdoes us all by just sleeping outside, no tent!)

This year, we showed up in time for the last snowmobile shuttle in. I was feeling pretty smug about all the warm clothes and the fleece liner I brought for my sleeping bag and the forecast: this was going to be the best sleep ever. Moreover, there was no shortage of bacon in the cooler, and I had both skis and snowshoes. I was ready to do it again!

That is, until I went to set up my tent this year. The poles, as always, gave me grief in the cold, but I popped into Jim's hot tent and got warmth and help. I marched back to my campsite in the snow and finished setting up just the inner tent, and then, with a flourish, unfurled my sleeping bag. This was quickly followed by a sinking feeling: I'd packed the sleeping bag in a gloomy garage, with my mind only half on the job. And I had half the sleeping bag I needed: I had packed a summer bag, size small (which is fine, for summer, given that small means short and I am short... but in winter, I like to shove my water bottle and various other things I do not want to freeze down into the extra toe room). I realized it would be a chilly night, and decided not to think about this until after dinner. After all, it was time to hang out in the yurt and drink some beer and eat some food and listen to politically incorrect jokes. Weekend. I am needing weekends lately, there is always too much to do and no time to just turn off and stop thinking about it.

It was a cold night on Friday. Oh man, was it a cold night. The thermometer apparently registered -23, which is by no means the coldest I have ever slept out in, but is definitely the coldest I have ever survived without my big puffy winter bag. I lined the space between my fleece liner and the wimpy bag with jackets and spare long underwear and shirts, and of course I wore a whole lot of clothes and my toque to bed. By the end, I had assembled such a complicated system that the thought of leaving the cocoon at any point to pee was ... well, it wasn't an option, and I didn't have to. Mind over matter. Mind, however, did not turn off so well, and there wasn't so much sleeping.

Ah, but whatever. There was bacon at breakfast, and the sun came out, and the chickadees landed on outstretched hands - which, kind of a cool feeling. I went for my first ski of the year, on the back loop of the yellow, on my own. I came back to find Chris doing all the dishes from the night before, and hung out with him while he did the domestic thing. Then I joined him for a walk to the lake to check if John, intent on ice-fishing, had caught something as good as bacon. He hadn't, but he'd attracted a bunch of other people, and we hung out for a while. Then, I got hungry, and made my way back to the yurt for some lunch, and then there was another turn on the back yellow. It was good. It wasn't until days later that it became clear that somehow, my energetic poling (probably, I'm not sure if it was the poling) actually got a rib to pop out of place in my back. I didn't feel it until the chorus of angry muscles made life miserable back home.

The second night - not as cold as the first. Still not particularly comfortable, but at least I did not have frost buildup on the top of my toque. Perhaps it was -15. In any case, there was bacon (and french toast, and sausages, and eggs, and probably some other stuff but that is what I went for) in the morning.

And then the weekend was over, and I fell asleep in the car as soon as I turned the seatwarmer on. (No, I was not driving at that point!) And then it was Monday and I was in class and wondered why it felt like somebody was viciously stabbing me in the back, but all in all, you know, it's still worth it. I'm going next year. With my winter sleeping bag, my fleece liner, and a spare sleeping bag in the trunk just in case. You never know...

The tallest mountain in Costa Rica is Cerro Chirripó. It's 3,820masl. That, in the grand scheme of things, is not really all that tall - but the ascent is considerable, you start hiking at about 1,400m, in San Gerardo de Rivas. Me, I came from sea level the day before that.

Now here's a thing you didn't know about me - I mean, I didn't know it either (though I suspected). I am very altitude sensitive. Let's add that to my other great physiological advantages: I get very motion sick, I am a super light sleeper, and I am lazy. Yes, yes, you could argue that the last one is psychological, not physiological, but regardless - I reluctantly made my way up Cerro Chirripó, because Elke, who I was traveling with, was incredibly determined to climb the highest mountain in Costa Rica. And non-planning lazy person that I am, I of course did no research at all before the trip and thus was on someone else's (someone else who did a lot of research, and consequently had a very detailed itinerary planned) agenda. Fine. That's not all the lazy, either - I don't really get that much of a charge out of trudging up mountains unless there is going to be a view. I will do a lot for a view.

So, where was I? Right. 1,400 to 3,800masl in a short time, altitude sensitive. Now, the trail up Chirripó ascends a wee bit steeply - you walk 14.5km to get to Base Crestones, and at least 2km of that is level or downhill. Base Crestones is at 3,200m. That means that most of the trail, uphill - and relentlessly steep for a large proportion of that. Me, I relied on a brief obsession I had with running in the fall to make it to the halfway point, Refugio Llano Bonito, without any difficulty whatsover. Well, not unless you call being very sweat soaked difficulty. Whatever. From there, though, the trail is brutal for some time. At about 2,500masl, I started needing to rest. The frequency of the rest stops increased - by 3,000m (the *first* time I hit 3,000m, before losing 200 precious vertical meters in a downhill stretch), I was more of a walk 25m, take a rest sort of hiker. By the second time I got to 3,000m, it was probably walk 15m, rest. Yeah, it was all kinds of fun.

Still, I got to Base Crestones sometime around 12:30p.m., and I checked in with the ranger and checked out my spartan bunk. Base Crestones is no luxury, that you should know - it is, as they say, perfectly adequate, but that is about it. Still, I met some people, I made some coffee, I hung out chatting for the rest of the afternoon and waited for Elke. All was fine, I was even warm enough if I wore all the clothes I brought with me at once. I ate my dinner.

Alas, that dinner was the last thing that went in, really. By morning - after a fitful sleep, but again, light sleeper to begin with - I had no appetite. Sure, I had a coffee, but I was disinterested in food. If you know me personally, you realize just how highly unusual that is. Actually, you probably know that just from reading five random entries on these pages. So, yeah, not hungry - but also no matter, because it was pouring rain and completely socked in. Some people went for the summit, they came back soaked to the bone and had seen essentially the same thing as you do when you're driving along on one of those fall days and hit a super thick fog bank. I was not going anywhere. I met some lovely Polish people, and hung out with them, and generally felt a bit off.

Midafternoon, the rain let up. I joined two of the Poles in a summit quest. Well, a more accurate description was, two lovely Poles cajoled and bullied and all but carried me up to the summit, with the patience of saints. Because, you see, there were all these little knives stabbing into my chest if I tried to breathe. So I kept slowing down, and - if anybody stopped walking to take a picture, actually sitting on the nearest rock. It wasn't so fun. And we didn't see so much at the summit, and it took hours to return to Base Crestones even though it was only 5km and *downhill*. We got back well after dark.

And I was still not interested in food. Plus, in addition to the stabby little knives and the going off my feed thing, I had a headache and... uh... well, I was glad I brought extra toilet paper. You could have set your watch by that part, every 30 minutes like clockwork, whether or not there was... uh... significant production or not. Boy oh boy, was I looking forward to having to do 14.5km of this, with my pack on, the next day. Then again, I also didn't want to stay at Base Crestones. Really, I wanted a damn helicopter.

And so, the next morning - a beautiful day, and I'm sure people that day had a good summit view - we made our way down. Elke was out of my sight within the first 20 minutes because I was back on the walk a little, rest a lot rhythm. I saw nobody save all the porters coming back (cause, you see, most of the Ticos? They don't carry gear, they pay someone else to do it.) After the porters, nobody, for a long time. This was good, because I ... uh... well... (oh man, this is embarrassing), I had an "accident".

Yes. I did just admit to shitting myself on my blog.

But I was carrying my own pack! And in my pack, clean(ish) clothes! And even some leftover toilet paper and wipes! No problem! So I did what you do when you have done what I did and are nice and alone: I speedily took off the clothes on my lower half (cause, ew!) before even thinking about digging through the pack for other clothes.

The trail at this point, kind of narrow.

Yeah. You just know what happens next, don't you. There I am, bare-assed, bent over my pack. And over there, oh look, a porter with a horse, coming my way. Nowhere for me to go, and *of course* I then get hung up on a zipper.

Hey, at least I picked up the pace after that. There was *no way* I was going to let that porter catch up to me on his way down.

Yeah. This is what busts through the blog updating laziness. Not burblings about fantastic bicycle trips in Europe, or fall in the Côte d'Azur, or a super wet and miserable Superior trip or not wet and not miserable trips on Georgian Bay and the North Channel, nor the two trips to Chile (though! there is another poo story! I got food poisoning from some goat cheese in the High Andes! And I barfed on the tarmac while walking out to a plane and everything!), or the early December visit to Amsterdam, or all the lazing about I did in hammocks in Panama. No... I'll go right to the most embarrassing moment.

Sometimes I wonder how my mind works too. Happy New Year. I may even start taking pictures again!

I am not a violent sort of person. I never raise my voice, I don't hit or even kick things. Oh no, I am all about the internal seething, which always results in the do you grind your teeth question at the dentist's. (No, I do not. I gnash them.)

Teeth gnashing is triggered by many things. Littering is one of them. I do not understand litter. I do not understand what goes through a person's mind when they open the car window and assume everything outside that little environment is a big rubbish bin. In my world, a cigarette butt flying out of a car would be prosecuted just like speeding - with demerit points, and increased insurance, and all the rest that goes along with it.

Here is another. I have never - ever - been to a woman's home and found the toilet seat sprinkled in urine. And yet, I would say at least half of public bathrooms have this feature. I understand that there are women whose posteriors are so posh that they could not conceive placing them on a toilet seat that may have touched someone else's bum. So they hover over said seat. Now, these are likely the same women who would throw sixteen hissy fits at their boyfriends if they did not lift the seat to do the exact same thing albeit facing a different direction at home, no? Are your *hands* also so precious that you cannot lift the seat if you must hover? Are you too delicate to clean up after yourself? Because it is *much* easier and more pleasant for someone who *didn't* make your mess to clean it up? I do not get.

I do not get the young ladies and men who stroll, slowly, three abreast on sidewalks - and do not significantly move over when a pedestrian comes the opposite direction. Never mind being aware that the slow slow slow stroll is blocking people who are walking at a normal pace behind them.

I do not understand why texting while walking is so popular. Or adults riding bicycles on sidewalks - when there is a *bike lane* on the road. Or - and this one is way up on the teeth gnashing scale, far beyond the texting and strolling and all that - the jerks who, when traffic is very heavy, pop out in to the merge lane, drive all the way to the end of the merge lane, and then push back into the lane they just exited. I was stuck on Highway 8 during an accident on my way to the airport some weeks ago. We were not moving very quickly - after all, it was a busy time, and we were down to a single lane over a bridge. And we moved even more slowly because of the constant stream of the merge lane maneuver folks. I was grateful for the driver of the big rig who, after a good 20 minutes of this, himself switched to the merge lane (well, first I thought, you ass, so you'll get 2 km further before being stalled again) but he put himself into that merge lane, and stayed right beside me for the entire 2 km. I grinned up at him, he grinned back, and I happily let him back in when the time came (and it did make a difference in average speed, when there is only one lane and you have a steady stream of one lane pushing into two already crawling lanes... well, you'd be happy with 10 km/hr...)

Oh, and this is really in the cranky spinster category - it may even veer into cranky spinster librarian with glasses on a string, and make sure they're glasses where the arms attach at the bottom of the lenses and then swoop up - what is with "thankful"? Why does no-one use "grateful"? It is a much better word - just like there is gratitude, which is so much more elegant than thankfulness. I have long lost the argument about the distinction between "affect" and "impact" (for the record: to me, if one thing impacts another, there is a physical impact. If I were to give my teeth gnashing more physical expression, my foot might impact your butt, for instance.) Neither one of these arguments can be won, since common usage has moved on. Doesn't mean I don't get my knickers into a - metaphorical - knot over it. I also mourn the demise of the adverb.

Oh, and can we talk about the word "site"? As opposed to "sight"? As in, she was a vision in white, it was quite a sight? If it's a site, then I am assuming you are talking about the wedding chapel or something - a site is a physical place, if you are referencing seeing something, let's go with sight. Idioms have etymological roots. I don't care that spellchecker seems to think it's ok. Spellcheck, after all, flags itself (no, really, sepllchecker and spellcheck are both underlined in red on my screen right now!)

More bloody rudeness. My local Superstore has gotten rid of all the plastic shopping baskets. No substitute. So it's monster cart or nothing (they don't even have the half carts, or smaller carts). I prefer the plastic basket for many reasons - not only because I don't have to buy that many things at the store, and always taking a basket prevents me from chucking unnecessary things into the cart, but because the aisles are *always* blocked with some person who parks their cart in the middle and then lounges about surveying the soup display. You cannot get past, though you can squeeze by quite easily with a basket. But no more! And you know why? Because people were *stealing* the plastic baskets! Taking them home! Because a plastic bag costs you five cents! (which, also - WTF is the fuss here? I am so very pleased at the effect this minor levy has had. Time it was, I would be the only person hauling my cotton bags to the store, and I got plenty of eye rolls from the bagging boys - and I didn't WANT their help, I prefer to pack my own bags, and I am faster at it as it is, and oh the rudeness of the people who just stand there - probably texting - and watch the cashier do the work after she rings in their purchases. But this tiny fee has resulted in most people bringing their own bags. Except for the dinks who steal the baskets. I have switched grocery stores in response. No, really, I have. Sobeys has baskets, albeit with those security tags that squeal if you take them out of the store - because that is *stealing*)

Then there are the people who mark up library books. The people who park in mamababy and handicapped spots when they should not (just because you have an empty car seat in the car or your spouse - who is not with you - has such a permit in the car...) The middle lane drivers, when traffic is clearly moving a whole lot faster and people keep passing on the right - that's your sign! Move over! The unabated cell chatting when it is now a traffic violation - I cannot wait until the police issue actual tickets for this!

And Remembrance Day poppies. Sigh. I understand the sentiment. I don't understand why they can't be designed so as not to leave *pins* littered all over the place. After so long of no flat bike tires, two in the last week. I'll be walking home today, carrying my back wheel. Because I have nothing better to do.

Ah. Better.

You wouldn't know that I'm so very happy these days. Well, happy is a funny word. I am very aware that I am satisfied with how I am living my life. Things are going well. I am tired of sharing elements of my private life on the internet. It is what it is.

Yesterday, I had 45 minutes before my next flight after I cleared customs and straightened out boarding passes and all, so I went to the Maple Leaf Lounge in Montreal. To my utter delight, that lounge has a designated cell phone free zone. Sure, there were people emailing on blackberries and texting and I had my laptop open, but one of the things I have always hated about the lounges is the legion of self important little men in cheap suits shouting their importance into portable communication devices.

Two minutes after I sat down, of course one of these conversations started up. I, being a big chicken, just sat there and seethed. Some other dude, in a less cheap suit no less, took one of the many cell phone free zone signs that were on all the tables and placed it in front of the phone shouter and asked him if he could see. The offender took off in a huff, phone in hand.

My faith in the suits is restored.

(Also? Swiss upgraded me to business class on an eight hour flight. That *never* happens to me on Air Canada.)

That picture, by the way, is from a float down the Beaver River from Heathcote in a 14' Necky kayak with a giant cockpit and no sprayskirt. No sprayskirt = damp lap the entire time. The trip itself is fine. In the upper reaches, there are a few beaver dams and logjams that require a bit of wiggling and/or rocking - hence the rental shorter plastic boat is a better call than a 19' glass sea kayak. That section was reminiscent of the Minesing Swamp. You don't really want to get out of the boat here, since it's all ankle-sucking muck and slippy banks. In the lower reaches, it gets a bit boring after a while - lazy meanders and cows and geese. There is one so-called rapid, with a big red warning sign on the river. You would be overstating the case to call it Class I.

Still, a pretty fun way to spend a Sunday. More fun than, say, sitting in my backyard taking a screwdriver to the non-functioning part of my vacuum cleaner (no success, but then, we don't really expect success when I take a screwdriver to anything), which is what I did for part of Saturday. And, realistically, I best get to liking these sorts of daytrips because that's all I'll have time for in the coming months. Summer is over. Sigh.

We were heading to the McCoys out of Dillon. On that route, you are sheltered for the first 8km or so, and then gradually more exposed. After the Herzberg archipelago, you are *really* exposed for almost 3km.

I was paddling David's NDK Explorer, which was the first time I had a skeg boat out in serious wind. David was in his new-old Romany, which has no skeg. Not having ever paddled a skeg boat at a time where you might actually need the skeg, I had no idea how to go about it. I dropped the skeg, since there was so much wind from the side. The boat was determined to turn downwind, and I was edging and hauling on one side to compensate, and I thought, this sucks. I want to be in one of my ruddered boats. Of course, soon after that we took a break and David said that the Explorer without skeg will always turn into the wind, and to try a little bit of skeg. A little bit of skeg? Novel concept. Now, that boat, the skeg is controlled by a rope in a cleat, and you have no way of knowing if you have a little or a lot except by feel. This is a good thing, since now I paid attention to what the hull was doing, and what do you know, it worked like a charm! As I was fiddling with it, the waves got bigger and bigger and I was heading for the exposed bit. David was not that far behind me - maybe 300m? - but I can't say that I was paying any attention to him in the first blush of falling in love with the Explorer.

Then I looked up, and saw a thunderstorm bearing down. Now, I had the 3km crossing to Big McCoy left to do, I had 20knot sidewind (and building), I was in a not intimately familiar to me boat. Then there is also my healthy respect for lightning, reaffirmed by this story (we have camped on Champlain Island many times). And, most relevant to my decision-making at this time, we were in the exact same spot as this time, after which we both said we never wanted to do that again.

So I made a decision. I turned my boat 90 degrees, and surfed that sucker downwind to Herzberg. I couldn't help but love the boat even more, because the waves were approaching 2m (shallow, over shoals, so bigger than out in the open) and the Explorer, fully loaded, wanted to play. I, however, wanted shelter from the coming storm, and I saw an abandoned little cabin and figured that on its porch, I'd be safer from lightning. I ducked behind some rocks and found a reasonably calm spot to land, hauled the boat up, pulled on my bright orange storm cag, and bravely made my way out to the rocks to flag down David.

Except David? I didn't see him anymore! I thought I saw him by a shoal, but when that phantom paddler didn't move for any length of time, I realized it was another rock. When the storm hit in full force, I retreated to the porch and kept looking out. He wouldn't do that crossing in a storm - would he? I would see him if he went by, wouldn't I?

I was there for over 45 minutes, and the storm had passed. The winds were still high, but the sun was out. No David. Oh crap. I didn't really know what to do now... I figured, he was ok somewhere, but had no way of knowing if I was ok. If he didn't find me, would he call the coast guard? and what if by some fluke he wasn't ok? what if he was swimming? And so it goes when you are by yourself and unsure what to do, you start to freak out.

I was starting to regret leaving my VHF radio behind (David had his, after all). But I had a cellphone! Of course, I didn't have David's cell number with me... but I had Kevin's! And Kevin has David's number, and maybe he'd be home! And he was, and managed to actually decipher what was going on from my "I lost David!" phone call. When I said, what if he's swimming, he asked what David was paddling, and on hearing me say Romany, he declared David to be fine. He left a message on David's phone (I had hoped he'd pick up, but no) and gave me the number. And then I was back to my own devices, and sat on my porch and sent David a text as to my location. I wanted to make sure he'd see it if he pulled out said phone to call the coast guard (I was still worried about him using his VHF to do the same).

And then I saw him paddle by me, less than 100m from where I was sitting on my porch. I yelled, I whistled, I jumped up and down - but no luck. He kept paddling, and looking around, and paddling. Now what do I do? I'd just said to Kevin that the water was big enough that I didn't think it was smart to do the crossing on my own. Now I called back, and declared myself to be launching and if he didn't hear from me again, I was dead. He didn't even ask if he could have the coffee machine, so I guess he didn't take my possible dead state seriously.

I was glad I had the hang of the skeg by then - I followed David's line and needed the maneuverability. I was motoring pretty good, but David was already almost 1 km out by the time I got on the water. I didn't catch him, but I got close. 100m close by the time he pulled up to our friends on McCoy, and I saw him ask Bill something, and I saw Bill gesture to me, and then I saw a look of complete relief on David's face. Turns out, he was sweating the whole way over, thinking he'd see the hull of that Explorer and look for me swimming. And when he didn't see that, he figured I'd gunned for it and he'd see me there already, and when that didn't happen, he thought he'd call the coast guard.

Heh. Now that that was cleared up, we had ourselves a beer, and the rest of the weekend went off without a hitch...

(Yeah yeah yeah, there are lessons learned about staying closer together and discussing a what if plan and both carrying VHFs and agreeing on a channel just in case, yes indeed, and I learned those lessons too. No need to give me a lecture.)

Not so much with the cool now. Just walking to the corner makes me sticky. And the walking, well, I'm kind of doing a lot of that this week. See, I love my commuter bike. So much so that I haul all sorts of things on it, including a pannier full of cans of beer, sometimes. And the bike developed this not very fun sounding creak. Since I had bike-knowledgeable dudes visiting, well, I asked, and Basil diagnosed the creak as a broken spoke before he got to the end of the driveway. I don't own the right tools, so Kevin took the commuter home to fix, and, unless I put Friday together and repurpose it as an around town sort of bike, no everyday bike.

By the way, the I want I want I want list is growing again. It amazes me, sometimes, when I look back at these old lists and realize just how much of what is on that list of want I ended up getting... but now, I want to go on one of Basil's Mexico bike trips. Seriously, if you have a job where you can take a proper vacation at the time El Tour is running their tours, you should totally do this. And then tell me all about it, because I can't...

One of the reasons my car didn't make the trek north was that it had developed a rather violent shaking at speeds from 60 to 80km/hr. Now, a year ago, there was some talk about how my brakes have a "shudder" and I should have that checked out but la-la-la I no longer commute, you can tell me this and I will ignore it! The on-again off-again ABS light is just pretty, too!

I ignored no more, and last week, I paid - among other things - $60 for the mechanic to tell me that the ABS light was currently off. Indeed, I did. I suppose I also paid to be told that there was no error code in memory. I guess I imagined that brake light. Except for the part where it flickered back on on the way home, but hey, no more seized caliper, no more worn brake pad, brand new rotors, no-longer-neglected credit card. Yeah.

So, car that has spiffy braking ability, sitting in driveway. Except today, when I took it to big box hell to buy roller blinds. I don't know if they changed something about the streetlights or not, but of late it seems as if an orange searchlight is trained on my window at night. And while my wooden slatted blinds are very pretty and all, they bleed light along the edges. The way my bed is positioned, if I turn onto my left side, a bright bright beam hits my eyelids, and that wakes me up, and then I grumpily turn over and the cycle begins anew. Time to fix.

So, roller blinds. Unattractive as the vinyl things are, they block light quite effectively. My window, including frame, is 35" wide. The frame sticks out 1.5" from my plaster and lath wall. The roller blinds come in 37.5" widths. Hmmm. So I mounted the brackets on 0.75"X1.5" pine, cut to 40" length, and I screwed that onto the wooden frame. Great, that, except that now the blind starts out 0.75" and change from the brackets beyond the window frame, and we have lots of light bleed. So down that goes, up goes more of the 0.75x1.5" pine, this time screwed carefully above the window frame, and then the pine with the brackets on that gets screwed to that, and I am smug and this is perfect.

Well, except for the part where I have to "tension" the stupid roller blinds. The first one, I have more luck than skill, and it works. The second one, not so much. First too floppy, then too tight, and then the ratchet seizes up altogether. This is the part where a reasonable person would have taken a break and figured out how the ratchet can be made to let go (thank you internet, I wish I'd asked you earlier) and a quick tempered person with less than average mechanical ability might take the screwdriver to the thing to "explore". So I'll be going back to big box hell tomorrow.

Big box hell also includes Canadian Tire, by the way. And they, in their infinite wisdom, sell precisely one replacement antenna mast, with about seven "adapter" configurations. Sure, I got the threads to fit my mount using one of the adapters. The thing is three times as long as what it replaces, since the one universal antenna fits all vehicles (ergo, none, properly), but at $14, I so don't care. It's not like I won't put some boat or bicycle up there and break it again anyway. The way my day went, I'm glad I didn't strip the threads trying to figure out the adapters.

Today also included putting some window film on the cutouts in my front door. See, uh, my front door is direct line of sight to the bathroom. I live in an older neighbourhood, where the postie comes up to the door and shoves the mail through a slot. I figured it was only a matter of time. So I got the fancy window film (not as fancy as the Emma Jeffs stuff, but I will buy an ill-fitting $14 replacement antenna instead of the $50 make-specific one, do you really think I'll buy the designer window film?) I carefully pushed the sheet into the first hole, marked where I needed to cut, and cut.

And realized I'd cut a mirror image of what I needed. Sigh. So next I used paper to trace those holes, and get them to fit properly, and flipped them over and cut the film with a mat, ruler and exacto knife. That worked great, well, for two of the three cutouts, I still managed to do the mirror image on the third.

I wonder what other projects I can tackle today?

1. I don't have the bike. I wouldn't even know how to go about buying a fast bike.
2. I don't like fixing flats.
3. I don't like the outfits. Like, at all. I like t-shirts and shorts. I despise the sausage pants with the padded ass, and reserve them for when I've had more than four or five long (like >80km, it's long in my world) days without a rest day.
4. I like to look at scenery. That is best done sitting upright, not focused on the rear wheel in front of me.
5. I like all sorts of detours, and don't want to worry if my rims can handle the gravelly washboard / mud / potholes.
6. I like to take along a bunch of crap. Today, in my pannier, I had my lock, a raincoat, a long sleeve shirt, my camera, three liters of water / iced tea, a map, a gps, and a whole lot of snacks.
7. The snacks are the real reason. I think guzzling gatorade and slurping energy gels is a fate worse than spinning class in the summer. Over my 91 km today, I ate leftover pasta, drank a whole liter of iced tea, and had a whack of cherries. Can't fit that stuff in three pockets on the back of your jersey.
8. But don't forget, I'm slow. And not just because of the snack breaks.

When I got to Germany, it was 24 degrees and sunny and I did have a beer and some dinner outside. By the time I got to Bonn that same day, a low pressure system had moved in, and the whole week was mid to high teens and rainy. The sun came out in Bonn the day I left for the Allgäu, but I got rained on the second I stepped off the train in Kisslegg. Then there was a day of 22 and sun and apple blossoms and cake outside while cycling before the snowline dropped to 1000m and it was cold and wet for several days. By the time I left, though, it was in the mid-20s and we were back to drinking beer outside. I left this wonderful weather to meet Kevin in Stuttgart, where it started raining so much that basements flooded (including my uncle’s basement). We hopped on a train to Köln and Düsseldorf, where it was cool and rainy – we did drink beers outside, but we kept our jackets on and zipped up. When we first got to Bamberg, it was a bit wet, but it cleared up the next day. It was sunny and in the high teens – cool enough that neither one of us felt the need to deal with the campground showers the first night. From then on, though, we had full-on mid to high 20s, bright sunny summer weather. Many beers were consumed sitting outside in t-shirts, though there was one night where it rained so hard that the cook at the village inn decided to drive us back to the campground. Our second night at that same campground a few days later, though, I remember sitting on a wooden bench under a tree ‘til well after it got dark, and my jacket stayed in my pannier.

Of course, when we got Šumava, we were back in rain and cold, and I put on my long waterproof pants one day even. That only lasted two days, though, and then it was back to shorts and t-shirts and summer weather. By the time we were back in Germany and cycling along the Danube, I was bitching about being too hot (that, however, was probably due to the lack of beer gardens in lower Bavaria. My bitching stopped once we hopped on a train to Regensburg – same Danube, same heat, but much better scenery and oh! The beer gardens!)

I got back to Canada, and it felt like late April had in Germany – kind of cold, kind of not like wanting to sit outside, kind of rainy. I spent a weekend in Thunder Bay shortly after I got back, and it was sunny but we mostly kept our jackets on. Little Felix wore a fleece sleeper the whole time I was there, and Sebbie insisted on his boots. Since I’ve been back to Ontario, the 14-day forecast graph has stayed consistently below the seasonal average line. Being away for six weeks did not mean I missed blackfly season, as I found out that one weekend at Shawanaga Landing. But the one really hot period, I was on Georgian Bay, and it was warm enough to use a plain air mattress and keep my sleeping bag unzipped. I swam almost every day.

Now, it’s July, and we’re still on the well below seasonal line. There has yet to be a night where I start eyeing the controls for the central air and then grudgingly turn the fan on myself. Last week, I went to the closet and got the winter duvet out again.

I think it’s fair to say I’m seasonally confused. It feels like it’s been summer forever, but also like summer hasn’t come yet, though some days, like I missed summer altogether and it’s over already. I went to the farmers market on the weekend, and I didn’t even know what would be in season. I had strawberry season in May in Germany, and grapes in Chile. There are Ontario cherries already? I haven’t missed all of the strawberries? Where are all these peppers coming from?

I have nothing to complain about. For once, I do not wish to take a roadtrip to Maine..

All this is to say that the things the average (at least the average female) consumer is expected to be able to do, I can do. And yet, I become a quivering mess when it comes to doing anything more complicated than changing a windshield wiper or pumping up the tires on my car. Even the windshield wiper mechanism had me in a frustrated heap until someone talked me out of it. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that my response to “I think your low beam is out” is “crap, I guess I’ll make an appointment at Crappy Tire” (Right. It’s Canadian Tire, not Crappy Tire. But after they took a tire with less than 3000km that had a leak so slow that I could get by just with pumping it up every other day, declared it so damaged that it had to be replaced after they had my car up on the hoist, and then, after I’d authorized that, called back to say that they didn’t have a matching tire, I needed to buy TWO tires, but that was a good thing, and I needed to get home, I authorized that but had the presence of mind to say that I wanted to keep the damn tires – and then I showed up, and of course they didn’t have the tires they took off, because they were “so bald” they had to dispose of them. Expensive tires that had less than 3000km on them, right… I *do* call it crappy tire. They declared my perfectly good tires crappy and stuck me with the bill, and completely disregarded my unambiguously worded “please ensure that the tires you take off are returned to me”)

Oh. It seems I am not over that little bit of fun from a year ago. Anyway! My low beam is out! The solution I have is to take the car to Crappy Tire. Kevin makes an appalled face, and gives me the sort of look I give to people who declare that one cannot possibly ever consider living without a clothes dryer. (That look, if you need it spelled out, is roughly interpreted as “are you an idiot? It appears so”) That look works on me, in that it makes me feel like I am fundamentally dumb if I cannot do this myself. Consequently, yesterday I trudged to the store, and flipped open the book that told me what bulbs I needed. I got the right book, though I was a bit confused that they only listed things like blinker lights in the section on “exterior lights”. Are headlights not exterior lights? After many long confused seconds, I saw the “headlights” section. I found my make and model. I got stumped by the year. I can think in terms of 99 and 99.5 for VW Jetta model years (mine is the 99.5), I could even wrap my head around 99A and 99B, but the options I had were “two lights” and “four lights” and something about sealed cartridge even. I have two lights, I thought, triumphantly – a low beam and a high beam! Because, you see, I know that my high beam works, but not my low beam, hence, two lights! But then I realized, I have low beams and high beams on two sides, so I have four lights? Hmmm. I had walked to the store, so I did not go stare at the car. I clung to my, the low beam works, the high beam doesn’t, it must be two.

It never occurred that one bulb could do two different beams. I guess that’s what is meant by dual beam lights. At least, this morning, when I screwed up my courage to remove that cover and remove the bulb, I noticed that a) it did not match the one in the package sitting next to me; and b) there were no other bulbs to investigate under that cover. And that cover was directly behind the headlight. Hmmmm. This is when the dual beam glimmers first began to glow. I confirmed this by reinserting the bulb, and observing low beam gone, high beam there. Then I unplugged it. Low beam gone, no high beam either. I cannot triumphantly report victory.

Oh, also, I finally got out for some paddling. ]]> Johanna 2009-07-01T19:14:32-05:00