tacoma biking, part 2: chupacabra ride.

The true purpose of the xtracycle snapdeck, revealed.

One of the pleasures of home is that after living in Philly, Tacoma feels a little quaint.  It's always refreshing to go home and find familiar faces around every corner of are not-so-tall city.  There are some seriously nice folks who gather for a festive booze cruz every now and then.  Big Brother is a frequent flyer, and I myself had the pleasure of riding on the Christmas ride (and by riding, I mean, sitting on the back of the xtracycle while BB hauled my ass all over Tacoma).  It's a merry and low key mix of beer, food, bikes, and light costuming. What more could you ask for?

For info on future Mob Rides, check here and here.

I go to the rides for the sweet spokes-cards.

I was very pleased that the Chupacabra ride occurred during this last trip home.  Naturally, I hopped on the back of BB's xtracycle and we made our way to rally at one of Tacoma's best bars, the renowned hot dog bar The Red Hot.  After some brewskis, we made our way to the Taco Truck on Sixth Ave, where BB and I enjoyed some Mexican coke.  The group rode on to downtown, and BB and I made our way home.  

Our favorite part of the ride occurred as we passed a sporty guy cycling for exercise-- he was like, "What are you guys doing?" And BB was like "We're riding to get beers!" and the guy was like "I'm coming with you!" and did a u-turn to join the crowd.  Warm fuzzies and all that.  I also liked the part where BB found 18 dollars on the ground-- allowing us to completely recoup the cost of our night.  That's definitely one of the perks of not being in a car.

Tacoma Cycle Chic at its finest.

I was excited to see so many people on bikes while I was home-- like everywhere, I think Tacoma is on the verge of a bicycle explosion. 

(BB speaks to the local paper about Tacoma's emergent cycle culture here)

tacoma biking, part 1: my little french friend.

This blog isn't dead! Really! Between the end of the semester and being called home last week for family business, I haven't had a whole lot of blogging energy.  But I'm done! I'm back! So get ready for me to start blowing up your Google Reader like whoa.


The first two days of my trip came at the end of #30daysofbiking.  I was really committed and wanted to ensure that in spite of my travel and stresses, I met the goal.  As I was to be spending a lot of time going back and forth between two family homes linked by a bike lane, biking at home was an easy and feasible transportation choice.  Big Brother asked a family friend if I could borrow the vintage Peugeot folding bike that BB rehabbed last winter. Alas, to my delight, me and The Peug were joined together for 8 wonderful days. The link above will give you better insight into the specs of the bike, so now I can just prattle on about the bike's awesomeness.

This bike fits me the best of any bike I have ever ridden.  I have a long torso and short inseam, so my smallest-size Old Dutch is a bit of the stretch, and the Dahon is you know, fine.  But The Peug fits perfect.

This bike is what you would see if the Old Dutch Treat and the Dahon had a baby.  Size-wise, The Peug would fit nicely in a car trunk or small apartment.  Size isn't everything, though, so you still get all the amenities of a city bike- nice upright position, a skirt-friendly frame, built-in lights, and a rear rack.  The positioning is great-- riding the bike, it feels like your sternum is being thrust out in a very "Hello, World!" kind of way.  Compact bike happiness if I ever saw it.


We are very grateful that the person who loaned me the bike generously ended up giving The Peug to our family.  I am looking forward to riding this bike when I go home at the end of the summer... and will probably start trolling Craigslist for one of my own.  It's that fantastic.

 

Moms and daughters alike love Peugeot folding bikes!

disclaimer: for once, church of the granny bike is going to be a little churchy.

True fact: whenever I get homesick, I listen to grunge music.  I get homesick when it rains because I think, hey, if I really wanted to live somewhere where it rained so much, I could just go home.  It's been raining a lot lately.  So I rediscovered Nirvana's Unplugged album. 


Did you catch that logic? Are you with me?  


Anyways, this time around The Vaseline's cover "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam"  caught my ear.  My latent inner Mormon has some theories as to why.  Thinking of Stella's post over at The Exponent,  and maybe even actually thinking about Jesus for a second,  the song is a good answer to the question of "How can we view and follow Jesus in a way that will actually bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth?"  Maybe Jesus wants us to be more than Sunbeams- maybe he knows what we are made of and that's enough.  He is our advocate, after all.


What this song also invokes for me a time I confessed to a guy I was dating that I didn't have very many hobbies.*  He suggested that I learn how to play the accordion.  This song makes me want to learn how to play the accordion. At home. In the rain. 

*I know, WTF. This blog is evidence that I have tons of hobbies. But whatever.

a pack of strays.

I've been touched lately by the thoughtful Christmas essays featured in The New York Times recently.  One spoke to the realities- and hopes- of being a single person during the holidays, another, more poignant, answered for the struggles of the unmoored and the families who take them in on festive days.  While I have never been in the foster care system or experienced even half of the traumas the author alluded to, I have felt the pinball feeling of ricocheting off of other people's (and sometimes my own) family events as both a grateful participant and an uncomfortable intruder.  Confronting this feeling annually involves a late, reluctant, and resigned purchase of an airline ticket and a frustrating blend of enthusiasm and dread.  I love, love, love being around my family but I struggle to really enjoy the holidays (coming home in the summer is so much easier!).  After reading this NYT story about people skipping the holidays- I, feeling very curmudgeonly (probably from gorging on candy and teriyaki to cope with, you know, the stress) was like, YES! Maybe next year I could just spend the holidays at home in Philly in my most amazing bed that I miss so much, without any drama or feelings of holiday malaise!  Maybe I could just skip it, all of it!  Validated in my dark and brooding state, I was plotting a dramatic iCal reminder that would suggest I consider traveling after New Years so that I could just bypass all of the running around and the inexplicable misery I feel in the midst of all this apparent happiness.

It's like you see me making a white sauce, but really I have this complicated inner life. 

I recognize that I'm not the only person on the planet to feel this, and I recognize I'm probably not the only person in this house who feels it either.  Which is why I'm so especially grateful that my some special folks rallied our pack of strays this evening.  Fragments of an extended family, we boast a large percentage of single people.  We lack a clear leader- there are no matriarchs or patriarchs here, just a  contingent of several generations willing to go where they are called.  Suddenly planned, the food was simple, the giving was directed primarily towards the children, and the evening involved the installation of a car radiator.  This was not some ungainly production, but an effort of basic pragmatism:

We would all celebrate Christmas elsewhere, but tonight, we needed to celebrate our Christmas.  We gathered from the far-flung corners of Seattle, rural Pierce County, Tacoma, and Philadelphia to be together.  And perhaps, because of the nature of the season, we were able to see in each other qualities we'd missed or thought too long dormant.  It was an awakening moment for me.

It is easy to see the holidays for what they aren't, for what ones' life isn't.  It is a default, for some, to feel lost and aloof amidst endless hams and cookie platters.  It is not difficult to focus on those feelings, it just happens.  And that is why it is so blissful when that moment of grace presents itself and you can't feel anything better than the love and caring that comes from being a part of a family.  We say we're coming together for the holidays, but really, we're coming together for each other. It is good to be reminded that we are no longer strangers and together we are no longer strays.

God bless us, every one.

file this one under 'things that make me happy.'

Nothing like clicking into the NYT this morning and seeing this on the front page:

Oh Mount Rainier, how I've missed you so! It's not even mid-semester but the littlest things make me homesick.

"this is not hicktown."

I'm here. I'm saving myself twenty phone calls (for now) and writing it out because I am still reeling from a day of travel and air sickness, weeks of drinking, playing and packing, and months of not having an address that was actually mine. So now I'm home for the first time in months and setting myself to the impossible task of trying to absorb it all right away.

Some first impressions:

1. Flying over the city upon descent, I didn't believe that this was actually where I was going to live. The city is vast and tall and industrial. You would not believe the port on this city! It even has an aroma. I feel right at home.

2. It's hot and humid and diverse here.

3. From my windows (two!) I can see: a trolley line, a house that looks straight out of Rocky or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or, let's go crazy here, Sesame Street (my house probably looks like that too), and people out enjoying the evening on stoop and sidewalk. One person just defended Philadelphia against Pittsburgh, saying, "This is not hicktown." No, it's not. And I'm not in Kansas anymore.

4. The thought of twenty-seven g*d d*mn boxes showing up is terrifying. A yokel from the moving company called me while I was in San Diego to tell me it would be difficult to get a truck onto my street annoyed me, but now, surveying the street and my narrow little stairs, twenty-seven g*d d*mn boxes is a math equation that I can't solve right now. And don't get me started on getting the Old Dutch Treat in and out of here. I'm going to deal with everything tomorrow. In the mean time, I'm going to loose twenty pounds instantly going up and down our stairs.

5. On the cab ride home, I couldn't help but feel that I had no idea what I was signing up for when that big white envelope showed up last spring. I've had a sense of that as I have done the unthinkable- turning down a good offer from another program, selling my car- but up against downtown the gravity of my decision stood out in sharp relief. It wasn't a bad thing, but it was overwhelming. I don't doubt what I chose for a second, but man, I'm feeling what it meant to take the risk that I did. And I'm loving it because not in a million years could I have expected any of this.

i needs me some of this.

I woke up homesick.