Category: To Occupy my Time

Requiem: college-era tape player.

I bought this tape player at BEST–a store that seems not to exist anymore–right before I left for college. I was excited at the duo tape and the high speed dubbing. Many, many mix tapes were made on this player. Over the years the radio has started to fade out and I rarely listen to my tapes, so it was time for this to go to the great electronics recycler in the sky.

Red Rosie is gone


I just sold my road bike.

It needed to be done. I’ve got the blue bike, the workhorse, and the road bike was taking up space I don’t have. I put her up on Craigslist at 4:00 and she was gone before 8:30. I’m $125.00 richer, which is nice, and I hope that the woman who bought her likes her as much as I did.

I bought her in the winter of 2002-2003, when I was getting serious about long distance road biking. I wanted a lighter frame than my mountain bike, and also toe clips and to be bent over the handlebars, like a serious long distance biker. We went on a lot of long rides around Portland, while I was increasing my distance. I named her Red Rosie as we rode over the St. John’s Bridge and the first time I saw the Kenton Neighborhood, I was with her. We were resting on a bench on a beautiful day in a park and I looked around and thought, “There are some nice houses here. It would be really nice to live here.” The park was Kenton Park which is just down the street from my house and I walk by that bench all the time.

I loved how clean her lines were, how light she was and how she had that old school Trek logo on the front. I loved how I felt fast when I rode her and how she continued the tradition of my owning and loving Trek bicycles. I love that she had old-school down tube shifters, because she reminded me of a bike my dad had growing up, and it was like she was something that was handed down to me, rather than bought, shiny new–though I actually did buy her at City Bikes.

She hung in my studio downtown, in the apartment Matt and I shared, and most lately in our house, where she had her own shed. She took me all over Southwest Portland when I trained for the triathalon and then 18 miles during the triathalon and I can still remember how good I felt when I conquered Hillsdale and Multnomah Village’s steep grades early one morning while training before work. When I first bought her I walked two blocks to an incredibly boring job, but when I went to graduate school, I rode her every day to my two student teaching placements. First we traveled just over the Hawthorne Bridge to Environmental Middle School, then farther across the Broadway Bridge to Grant High School. I looked at her longingly when I had my post graduate school boring job–too far away to bike commute–and we were happily reunited when I rode the one and a half miles each way to The Emerson School, and then 4 miles each way to from the new house.

In the end, she was just a little bit too big for me. When I rode her my neck was at an angle that was just a little bit wrong and I ended up with chronic pain. During those last few months, it was hard to ride her at all, both because it hurt and because she needed a tuneup. We were both in need of something new. I hope she likes her new owner and the new owner likes her. I will miss her.

Poem for July: Love Song, I and Thou

Love Song: I and Thou
Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh, I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it, I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

I’m right now listening to Peter Sagel (12/26/2003) talk about this poem and his story of meeting this poem is great. Plus you get to hear Alan Dugan reciting it.

And now that I’ve heard him read his poem, I have to say that I prefer the way I recite it.

I think I squealed with glee when I first read this poem. For a literal standpoint, I am often mid-project, working a bit beyond my abilities, and somewhat frustrated. I’ve got three unfinished projects going–or rather stopped–right now. I’ve often found myself “drunk on my prime whisky: rage” and feeling rather martyrish. It’s at this point that Matt usually talks me down, or peps me up, if that’s what the situation calls for. I think every Amish-type, project person needs a counterpart to keep them going, or resting, if need be.

I’ve never been a fan of the big, extravagant wedding, because I think the vows that really matter are the ones that are said repeatedly in small ways over a long period of time. I believe that helping with projects, whether physically or emotionally is one way that makes a couple solid and actually married.

Good point.

From Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert

“And this is my beef, by the way, with social conservatives who are always harping about how the most nourishing home for a child is a two-parent household with a mother in the kitchen. If I–as a beneficiary of that exact formula–will concede that my own life was indeed enriched by that precise familial structure, will the social conservatives please (for once!) concede that this arrangement has always put a disproportionately cumbersome burden on women? Such a system demands that mothers become selfless to the point of near invisibility in order to construct these exemplary environments for their families. And might those same social conservatives–instead of just praising mothers as “sacred” and “noble”–be willing to someday join a larger conversation about how we might work together as a society to construct a world where healthy children can be raised and healthy families can prosper without women having to scrape bare the walls of their own souls to do it?”

Bus Tips: Vomit Wisely

I’m willing to bet that 87% of the vomit in public is the result of over consumption of alcohol. So most of you may be too drunk to make a better choice, but could you please pick a better place to throw up than exactly where I stand every morning to wait for the train? Two steps to your right or left would have had you puking either on the tracks, or over the railing.
The problem isn’t just that you have made the area where I stand a disgusting biohazard, it’s also that Trimet doesn’t come around to clean very often. I’m sure they do the best they can, but your stomach acids and bits of food sat there for several days soaking into the concrete and they have created a stain. I’ll be looking at that stain for a long time, thanks to your choice.

So next time please aim for the tracks or the street. Thanks.

I-5 Bridge North at Rush Hour.

I had a class to get to in Vancouver, so off I rode on my bike. There is a section of the bike path to the I-5 bridge where the path is surrounded by freeway and freeway on ramps.
On this Thursday night traffic was not moving.

Not on the freeway, not on the on ramps, no where.

I beat a lot of these cars over the bridge.

Though then I had a long ride up a gradual hill before I got to my class.
I don’t want a huge bridge to replace the current bridge, I think the people who choose to live in Vancouver and work in Portland have made their beds and need to lie in them. I would, however, be in favor of a bridge the same size with a rush hour tolling structure, and the extension of light rail across the Columbia into Vancouver. In the meantime, I’m glad I have no reason (nor car) to drive across the bridge during rush hour.