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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Tue, 29 Jan 2008
Of snow tires and winter gloves
The crazy winter weather has brought us a few days of maybe-snow, which have prompted me to load the snow tires on the bike again. This second take on them has been interesting. Now that I know what to expect, they're not as hard to ride on as I'd first thought. They're definintely more resistant to going forward. I probably drop two or three miles per hour off my average speed while I'm using them. The weirdest thing is the way they feel riding on dry pavement (which is pretty much all I've done -- thanks Seattle weather!). The studs make an odd gravel-crunching noise as I ride along, and I can make them noticeably louder by pedalling hard, or braking aggressively. What gets really strange is going around a corner. There's a lean angle that's about comparable to my comfortable turn rate where the tires seem to shift, and get squirmy. It's almost certainly the point at which the tire rolls over onto the row of studs, so that there's more metal hitting the ground. There's no evidence of slipping, but it's a very disconcerting feeling. These things all combine to make me want to get the tires off as soon as possible. As I thought the first time, I'd leave them on if there were any reasonable chance of encountering ice, but given the mid-30s and higher temperatures Seattle usually experiences, they're an unwelcome distraction. A few weeks ago, I stopped into REI, and looked over their selection of cold-weather gloves. I first selected the Novara Cold Front gloves, attracted to their cold plus wet claims. They felt a little strange (oddly slippery, with a slick, smooth fabric), but I bought them. I rode away from the store with my new gloves on. Within a couple hundred feet and a couple disgusted glances at my hands, I turned around, locked up my bike again, and returned the new gloves. They're constructed with multiple layers (inner, gore-tex or something like it, and outer), and each layer feels squidgy against the next. The end result is that it felt like I was grabbing the handlebars through a layer of wet hair gel. It wasn't exactly slippery in the sense of losing my grip, but it felt like I had a very tenuous connection to the bike. Very disconcerting. In exchange, I grabbed the $10 cheaper Novara Headwind gloves. These are made with a thin layer of neoprene over the top, and a thickish layer of leather for the gripping surface. They didn't feel like they'd be quite as warm, but there was no doubt that they'd feel much more secure. I rode off, and was sufficiently satisfied that I made it past my first U-turn location. However, I quickly realized that these new gloves, while nominally designed for cold weather, were noticeably less insulated than the old, falling apart pair of Activa gloves I was trying to replace. That's not very helpful. I haven't returned them, and may not. For all that they're less insulated, they're still decent gloves, and will be useful. A large part of the year sees temperatures between 40 and 60 degrees, and these are the perfect gloves for that temperature range. They're also nominally somewhat more waterproof than the Activas, which are definitely not waterproof. The one time I had the misfortune of riding in on a really cold and wet day with the old gloves on, my hands were frozen solid. Someone (I can't remember who it was now, maybe my friend Josh) said they have a coworker who swears by alpaca-wool gloves for winter bicycling. I'd have to find the right gloves to believe that. As much as I want my gloves to keep my hands warm, they also need to protect me if I fall for any reason. I think I'd be more inclined to look into lightweight motorcycle gloves for serious winter bicycling. I'm fond of wool, but abrasion resistance isn't really one of its strong points. Posted at 19:24 permanent link category: /bicycle Mon, 21 Jan 2008After another Seattle-ish one-day bout of snow, I decided to try out my fancy studded bike tires. I levered them on their rims last Friday, and rode into work. It was a difficult ride -- the studded tires (Nokian Hakkapelitta W106s) weigh about double my normal tires, and have much higher rolling resistance. When the weather cleared up, I determined the normal tires had to go back on. So Sunday night, I put the normal tires (Vittora Randonneur Pros, which need to be replaced soon) back on. While I was in there, using my shiny new workstand, I also pulled out the brake pads to see if they needed to be replaced. They seemed alright, so I shoved them back into the calipers, and put the bike away for the night. This morning, it was blazingly cold out. It had been very clear last night, and my outdoor thermometer read 29° F. I bundled up, wishing that the weather would make up its mind so I could pick a tire and stick with it. But there was no ice on the ground, so I hopped on the bike and pedaled off. The brakes felt a little weird, like they weren't biting well enough, but I figured that was just due to the cold, and kept riding. I took the less speedy but less windy route down to Greenwood, and ground slowly up the hill past 85th. The flat section, from 80th to 56th, passed without incident. As I started down the slight incline that becomes the Fremont Avenue hill, I blasted past another rider since I hadn't had to slow for the light, and she'd been stopped. I glanced back to make sure I wouldn't cut her off when I pulled back to the side of the road, when I heard something go clink! as I turned my head back. I saw something skitter off away from me, but figured it was yet another piece of road jetsam. Things have a way of getting under a tire and doing a really good impression of something falling off the bike. I joked to myself, "I hope that wasn't something I needed," about the skittering object, and started powering down the hill. Something niggled at the back of my head, and I decided I'd better test the brakes. Good thing, too, the front brake wasn't working! Eeek! I eased off the downhill power pedalling, and started slowing. The rear brake worked fine (actually, it seemed kind of weak too, but it was still working), and with some planning, I came to a safe stop at the mid-hill light. The second half of the hill was taken much more cautiously. The rear brake, even at its best, is a mediocre way to slow the bike, and the cold seemed to have sapped the brakes of their strength a bit. With no small amount of luck, I made it to the light at 36th, and pulled to a stop. The road flattens out after 36th, so I was out of the major danger zone. I was also less than 1/4 mile from my destination, but I thought I'd ride by the local bike shop to see if they were open, and could sell me new brake pads -- I'd decided that I'd somehow dropped a pad on the road at the top of the hill. I rounded the corner towards the shop, when I heard another clink! skitter, and with a start, grabbed the rear brake lever. Nothing. I said something along the lines of, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" as I vaulted over the toptube of the bike and landed on the pavement, executing a clumsy but effective Flintstones-style stop. I turned around and spent a few minutes looking, but couldn't locate the AWOL pad. Freaked out now, I stood one foot on a pedal and rode my bike like an ungainly Razor scooter the rest of the way to work, walking down any incline of any length or slope. Once I was safely at work and had figured out a rescue plan (calling upon my Flexcar membership to go retrieve the new pads I had sitting in a drawer at home, since all the local bike shops are apparently closed on Mondays), I started thinking. What I realized is that I'd become complacent. When I put the brake pads back into the calipers last night, I didn't follow the directions, which are pretty explicit -- insert the pads until you hear a distinct click! Instead, I'd inserted them until they seemed about right. Well, as you can doubtless guess, that wasn't good enough. The calipers hold the pads so that if they're not securely in place, they will gradually slip lower and lower until eventually some bump in the road causes them to go clink! skitter out of the caliper. When I went to replace the pads tonight, I found one remaining pad out of four in place. That's... not a good record. I realized that I should have taken the reduced bite this morning as a warning sign -- the pads were slightly out of alignment, and so they weren't making full contact with the discs. I should have known that, but I weirdly assumed it must be the cold. They've never been affected by cold before. There's no reason they should have been this morning. I was, to put it mildly, extremely lucky. It's a rare event that I need to brake hard for any reason, but to be without that ability, particularly as I embarked on one of the bigger hill descents in Seattle, is a sobering thought. To lose one brake is bad enough, but to have both go on the same ride is just frightening. It's also absolutely hilarious, in a way that was best demonstrated by the first Werner movie (if you weren't in Germany in the early 90s, you probably won't get the reference, but that's fine). Werner is riding his ridiculous clapped-out scooter down a hill towards his jobsite. The hill gets steeper and steeper, and he's pleased to have any headway after the poor scooter coughed and spluttered on the way up the hill. As the moment to brake comes, he gives the handle a squeeze, and the film goes slo-mo. The brake lever explodes into several separate pieces, which tumble gracefully past Werner's face, the threads on the screws carefully drawn in. He turns to watch the departed parts disappear behind him, making an "Oh... crap!" face. The film speeds up to normal speed again, and he explains, "My brake just took itself apart!" in the clever observant way of all people who are about to enter a world of pain. And, as if to prove to me that anything's possible, I found the exact scene, posted to YouTube. Viva la Internet! The relevant scene starts about 40 seconds in. So yeah, now that I know what happened, that's kind of how I should have felt watching that first brake pad skitter across the road away from me. Posted at 21:10 permanent link category: /bicycle Thu, 17 Jan 2008As a conversation piece, I have a couple of pistons sitting on my desk now: 
On the left, a BMW R100 piston; on the right, a Honda CL175. That's the right-hand piston from the CL 175 on the right, with the huge sparkplug divot in it. For reference, the CL175 piston is just a little bit bigger than a shotglass, and the R100 piston is a little bit bigger than my fist. Posted at 12:26 permanent link category: /motorcycle Mon, 14 Jan 2008With amazing speed, the awful minivan has left my life. That's what ya get when you post things for far below their apparent value on Craigslist, I guess. In all, I had about 6 people call or email on it, and fully half of them didn't understand that it had a broken head gasket. The guy who actually bought it was the first person to call me last night, who stood me up this morning when he was supposed to come look at it. So, note to self when posting to Craigslist: assume a 2nd grade reading level, and ADD on the part of the reader. Bulleted lists are the order of the day. But at least it's gone. Posted at 20:34 permanent link category: /misc
Craigslist shoppers: not so literate
So, my $1000 Previa has generated a surprising amount of interest. In the last 12 hours, I've had four contacts (and possibly more in email that I haven't looked at yet). The first one, and the most literate so far, was someone who wanted to come see it. He'll be here in the next hour or two. No real problems, although he managed to call when I was outside near traffic, and between the traffic noise and his accent, he was a little hard to understand. The second was perhaps the most hilarious in his in ability to use written language. His email to me read: hi there do u still hv your van i hv the money and will buy it and will buy it, No further comment necessary. The third started to illustrate the "can't really read" trend, when I got a phone call that went like this: Him: Hey, I'm calling about the Previa, is it still available? Me: Yeah, although I've got someone coming to look at it tomorrow morning. Him: Ok. How many miles on it? Me: [thinking: "That was in the ad 3 times"] ... two hundred thousand. Him: [aside, off the phone] Two hundred thousand, I told you. [back to me] And does it have any problems, with the engine, or the transmission or anything? Me: [now seriously questioning his ability to read] Did you read the ad? Him: Not the whole thing, no. Me: Well, it has a broken head gasket, although everything else is in pretty good shape. Him: Oh. Really? Ok, well, thanks. [click] Now, in the second paragraph of the ad, I state very clearly that it has a broken head gasket (actual phrase: "a gaping hole in the head gasket"). In the third paragraph, I explain that this van needs an owner who wants to install a new engine, and I go on to explain about what that would cost for a moderately skilled backyard mechanic. The next call was perhaps the weirdest. I tend to take a long time to wake up, so I had specified, right next to my phone number, that callers should limit themselves to 9 am to 10 pm calling hours. Naturally, the phone rang this morning at 8:27 am. I should have been awake, but wasn't really. I asked him, "Did you read the ad?" and went on to check his reading comprehension. He had in fact read the ad (and knew about the head gasket, most importantly), but had somehow missed the fact that those numbers after the phone number might have meant anything. Clearly, I overestimate Craigslist shoppers. Next time, I'll just list everything in bullet-point form. Perhaps I'll rmv mst vwls just so it looks more like what they're apparently used to. Posted at 09:02 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 13 Jan 2008
Psst, buddy: wanna buy a minivan?
Yes, the minivan is up for sale. To the previous owner, who somehow neglected to mention the whole "gaping hole in the head gasket" issue? Fie upon you, sir. Posted at 17:09 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 11 Jan 2008For Christmas this last year, I got two DVDs I've been vaguely wanting for a while: seasons 1 and 2 of the Venture Brothers. The show is a fairly smart and tongue-in-cheek cartoon about the adventures of a sort of anti-hero Johnny Quest-like family. Fortunately, for the purposes of this discussion, you don't really need to know anything about it. I had enjoyed watching the show on TV, back when I was still blowing my $30 a month to the satellite TV company. It was even more enjoyable to be able to watch them again, in order, and back-to-back. Being a professionally produced DVD, they also had a bunch of extra features, including creator commentary. As is usually the case with these things, they essentially gathered a few of the people involved with the show in a room, started playing the episode in question, and recorded whatever sounds they made as a result. Sometimes these commentaries are really insightful into some aspect of the show, sometimes they're really a waste of time. I started out kind of annoyed at the commentaries. Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick (the co-creators of the show) are the primary commenters, and they would go frustratingly off-topic as the episode played as an occasionally beguiling distraction in the background. I could hear traffic outside the window, the distinctive clink of Zippo lighters being deployed, and so on. For the second season, they'd mysteriously arranged the microphone so that one of them sat right next to it, and the other sat some distance away, putting the distant one's voice slightly below the level of the quiet episode sound playing underneath. As I listened more, however, I became increasingly fascinated. These weren't two aloof jerks who thought they were god's gift to cartoons, they were just a couple of guys. At one point, Mike Daisey showed up in a commentary. The same Mike Daisey I visited in his tiny New York basement apartment when I went to New York with Flaming Box of Stuff lo these many years ago. That was really the moment it hit home -- if they lived in Seattle, it was likely that I'd know these guys, and they'd just be, well, guys. With my love of behind-the-scenes-ness, I'd probably even be friends with them. I started to feel like I knew them. I could picture (particularly with the help of a special features tour of their studio) being in the studio, seeing the stacks of paintings (Doc is a painter who's doing the cartoon thing as a kind of side project, and he seems to be a painter in the same way that I find myself on two wheels -- there's no way to stay away), smelling the cigarette smoke in the air, moving carefully between the unstable piles of clutter. They became just some more people in my life. In the commentaries, including some with James Urbaniak, the voice of one of the main characters, there's discussion of various blogs they keep. This sent me out to where I quickly rounded them up, and read through them. James in particular is a prolific writer, and has an engaging personal style that, again, brings him close to the reader. Of course, I don't know them. It's unlikely I ever will (although the thought of begging an introduction through Mike, whom I know only passingly, occurred to me). And that setup, all those words you just ploughed through, are background for my musing: fame is really weird. A related thing happened to me with, for instance, Bald Faced Lie. I had seen them on stage, heard them on the radio, even seen some of them on local TV. They were larger than life, yet when Sibyl introduced me to them, they were just folks. Really nice folks, and we ended up working together so well that I was a member of the company for the last few years of its existence. I was able to contribute materially to Speechless, which I consider to be the best comedy show, and possibly the best show of all I've ever worked on. Through BFL, I met Bill Radke (whose show Rewind was probably my favorite news-comedy show on the radio) and was one degree away from Bill Nye, a perennial favorite from Almost Live to The Eyes of Nye. One day, I walked past Bill Nye crossing the street in Pioneer Square. I had a sudden urge to call out, "Oh, hi Bill!" as if we were old friends. I didn't, because, of course, we aren't. I've never actually met him in person before, but I felt like I had. All of which leads me to say, fame is really weird. It must be a very odd thing to have people recognize you and act all chummy, when you've never met them before. I can't even imagine going to a convention (such as both Doc and Jackson have done) where you're the object of fanboy/fangirl interest. It must be surreal, tiring, and thrilling/terrifying all at the same time. The only glimpse I've had into this world of fame (of which I want no part, despite my narcissistic ramblings on this petite leaf of the massive tree-of-life we call the Internet) was related to me by Sibyl (ex-girlfriend, and stylist extraordinairre) the last time I got my hair cut. The topic came up that Jesse (my best friend, and fellow motorcycle nut) and I always seem to come in to get our hair cut at very similar times. In fact, this last time, he and Basil (who was in BFL, also a friend of mine) had crossed paths. Jesse and Basil have met at my parties on many occasions, and they'd struck up a conversation of several minutes before Jesse left. "You know Jesse?" asked Sibyl of Basil. He smiled in a dazzling grin, and said, "I have no idea who that was." Basil does the fame thing pretty well, even if it is only the fame of having a friend in common. So, Jackson or Doc or James, if your wanderings on the web have mysteriously brought you to this place, hats off on a job well done on the show. Keep up the good work, and stay personable. Posted at 23:57 permanent link category: /misc If you would like to be a useful member of the flying community, this may not be a good way to help your fellow pilots. I got a new comment on my 4th of July flight video, which read as follows: So let's do the math. 500' terrain / obstructions. 1500' Class B. 5 miles from BFI. Flying under SEA final. At least 3 network helo's. Maybe another Police helo or two. And then, flying, watching and operating a camera. Hmmmm. You must be one of those guys setting my TCAS off. I taught out of BFI for years. You're not set to deal with everything. That's why the pros have a pilot & film crew. This is, in essence, aviatrical condescension. Pull out a bunch of jargon to wow the non-pilots, and end with the implication that I'm not a pro. Well, good catch, dude. I'm not a pro. I'm also not an idiot. I replied to him in a private message (which is how I would have expected his criticism to arrive at my door, or at least that's the polite expectation), which I won't recount here in all its tedious defense of my professionalism (whether actually a paid professional or not). Because I'm not an idiot, I was flying the plane while my passenger operated the camera. Because, you know, not an idiot. Implying that I am one in a public forum without all the evidence in front of you (particularly without my having been an idiot in the first place) is a great way to get on my bad side, and not much else. So, now that that's over, it must be time to eat some ice cream and reprise some Venture Brothers... (For those keeping score:
Posted at 22:57 permanent link category: /aviation Possibly one of the most reality-jarring moments I've had in recent memory was when I was listening to the radio. I was happily following along to Marketplace on the local NPR station. Markets, numbers, etc. It's the only way I've ever been able to stomach financial news. Then, the story ended, and they cut to some quick interstitial music. I felt my face freeze as I tried to identify it -- I knew the melody, but it was... wrong.. somehow. Then it hit me. They were playing an adaptation of Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie and the Banshees, for string quartet. Suddenly, I felt, well, not old exactly, but very bizarre, as if reality had skipped a little bit. A similarly odd moment hit me recently as I was perusing the blog of Jackson Publick (one of the creators of The Venture Brothers, about which more later). Livejournal apparently encourages bloggers to list their current music, and Jackson had listed: Current Music: "Into the Light" - Siouxsie & The Banshees Weird. Mostly, it's weird because I never seem to meet other fans of Siouxsie (which is, in part, because I'm not an overt fan, and also, you know, the band's been history for years now). Not that I met Jackson, but reading another person's blog is a bit like meeting them. More on that later, too. So, of course, now I have to say: Current Music: "This Wheel's On Fire" - Siouxsie & The Banshees Posted at 09:37 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 07 Jan 2008Jesse came over yesterday, and helped me get the engine out of the CL. In all, we ended up spending about 6 hours unbolting parts, draining oil, lifting, and disassembling. By the time we were done, the engine was in three major pieces (crankcase/transmission, cylinders, and head). A quick inspection looked good, but upon peering closer, we discovered some exciting stuff. That's not a good kind of exciting, but I'll be replacing all the damaged parts, so it's not a big deal. The first thing we did was to look at the cylinder bores. They were pretty clean, but the right one was a bit rusted. This is the cylinder which is uphill when the bike is on the sidestand, so it's more likely to let rainwater in past a sparkplug, or have crud fall in when the sparkplug is out. Still, the bore looked good enough that I wasn't too worried.
The next thing we noticed was that the top of the right piston had an odd-looking dent in it. After pondering it for a moment, I realized it was from a too-long spark plug. Someone had installed a spark plug that was so long that it left a deep divot, and three lines of thread impressions, in the top of the piston. It must have been half an inch too long, which is really long. Jesse pointed out that some previous owner had installed Helicoils in the heads, to repair or prevent spark plug threading problems. This is generally a good thing, since aluminum heads' spark plug holes are pretty easy to mess up, and they're a pain to fix. Unfortunately, the inserts were far too long, protuding into the cylinders by several millimeters. This poses a number of problems. The first one that occurred to me was that the exposed coil (which is nothing more than a fancy spring) would heat up to red hot, and lead to pre-ignition. My guess now is that this helicoil business must have been done pretty recently, or it would have burned a hole in both pistons. The next problem we discovered was that the helicoil was long enough to hit the piston. There are indented rings visible on both pistons, although the left piston is more clearly marked. I think it was the right helicoil which looked all melted at the end, suggesting it had been shedding chunks of coil into the combustion chamber. This theory was confirmed by other evidence.
The left piston was actually the more frightening, from the helicoil standpoint. It has a little silver spot at one point in the circular impression left by the coil, which is where the melting-hot end of the coil was probably liquifying a little bit of piston on each stroke, spattering it across the top of the piston as little bright flecks Jesse pointed out to me. That couldn't have continued for too long before it would have put a hole in the piston, and racing with it like that would have certainly led to piston failure. After I started cleaning up the head, I discovered more divots on the right side -- this time on the top of the combustion chamber. Something big (like a small nut, or possibly a broken-off spark plug or hefty chunk of helicoil) had gotten in there and been rattled around. It didn't cause any serious damage, though, and I was able to grind down the walls of the craters so they won't provide pre-ignition points. Also on the head, Jesse pointed out to me that the bike must have been run for many thousand miles without having had the cam chain tensioner adjusted. It's a simple adjustment, just loosen a bolt, and let the spring take up the correct tension, but it's supposed to be done every 500 miles or so. The head has two deep, camchain-width grooves cut in it now, although fortunately they won't cause any problems. There were also good things we found. The head and valves appear to be in really good shape (minor divots and grooves aside). The cam and rockers are in beautiful shape, and it looks like I have all the important spare parts I need. The inside of the crankcase looks good. I was able to remove the starter and substitute my newly procured starter plug, which will save at least 10 pounds on the bike. It's still got a kickstarter, and push-starting is easy, so the starter won't really be missed.
The cylinders are even now sitting in the queue at Autosport Seattle, and should be done in a week or two. I'm going to take the head into Hill Machine Headworks (which is the same shop that did a beautiful job on my R100 heads lo these many years ago) as soon as I've got it cleaned up. I've started on the head clean-up, but I need to get together with Jesse again and remove the valve springs and valves before I can make much more progress. This also gives me a good chance to do things like drill a variety of important bolts for safety wire, and work on a laundry-list of other projects on the bike. I'm glad to be back from holidays, and making progress on the bike again. Of course, I'm worried about time: my new racer clinic is on March 19th, which represents a very definite deadline for getting the bike race-ready. Two months feels like a very small amount of time, although I'll be much more sanguine about things once I get the head and cylinders back from their respective shops. It's the "I have to wait for someone else to do things" factor that worries me right now. No time like the present, though. I'm back off to the garage to continue grinding carbon deposits out of the exhaust ports! Posted at 19:47 permanent link category: /motorcycle Fri, 04 Jan 2008The wind is at my back. The tiny, frail arrangement of tubes and cables, tires and spokes beneath me hums. I am flying. Up the hill, parked cars whiz past, hulking dark forms, loaded like traps to spring in my path, but they cannot catch me. The tires glide effortlessly along the broken, dark pavement. Glittering glass. Crunch. But it does not matter. Level ground now. My legs strain against the grasping, protesting hands of reluctant mass, and I fly faster. Faster and faster. The wind laughs behind me, urging me on. Cars slow down and start flowing backwards, like a wheel spinning faster yet seeming slower. Brakes whirr against their miniature discs, slowing for a pedestrian foolish enough to put herself in the path of my flight; the light-trail behind me swerves, tracing my path to the dismay of any competitors. Pick up the pace, legs ache so beautifully, chain thrums against the sprocket, spokes elongating in the wheel as the watts flow in, stroke after relentless stroke. Cars slow again, but I fly past, gliding over rough pavement, my eye wary, always looking for those caged, sleepy drivers. My lights wink out at them, I am here. The stoplight stumbles from red to green with a silent ker-chunk of miniature relays, and whumm goes the chain as I pick up speed. Downhill now, the wind whips past my head. In my ear, the radio whispers of Huckabee and recession, McCain and musicians, but I don't hear. It's not important right now. The night flows around me, darkness pouring over my arms, sleeves rolled up to dissipate heat, heating the world as I pass with the quiet zzzz of the freewheel. Uphill again, straining against gravity, but gravity will lose this battle. Over the cracked sidewalks, headlights glaring angrily at no one and nothing, the oncoming cars locked into a crawling hell of their own making. Beneath me, the thrum-thrum of pedal strokes. Click, click and snick, snick, up through the gears, each one allowing a bit more speed at a slightly higher cost. The night swirls around me again, the dark air drowning out the chatter of pundits. Around the circular barrier. It slows the cars, but I barely deviate from my course. Left. Right. Nothing coming. Go. With the thrum of the chain, and the gentle caressing sussuration of the liquid darkness, the noiseless, watching zzzz of the freewheel, the silent bright quickness of the light, darting and scattering off debris in my path. With the aching strain of legs, the breath rushing in and out.... This is what I call a commute. Posted at 18:36 permanent link category: /bicycle Thu, 03 Jan 2008And now, a bit of story time with Ian. Way back in junior high school, I was a sad little kid. I was convinced no one liked me, which naturally reflected back on me in the fact that no one seemed to like me. Shocking, I know. Anyway, one of the things that happened is that I developed a sort of panoply of crushes on different girls in school. Each of them was completely sincere, but also as completely unexpressed. I'm probably the only person who knew what was going on in my head. That's a good thing, of course, because had I expressed them, I probably would have created all sorts of problems for myself. In any case, one of the girls I found my eye favoring was K. She shared a math class with me for many years, and I think I sat behind her in the 7th grade class. She was very attractive, with dark hair cut in a bob, and an easy, genuine smile. I was, naturally, completely incapable of talking to her. We continued sharing math classes through the curious machinations of fate. Nothing ever came of the crush, although I did finally work up the courage to ask her to sign my yearbook in 10th grade, just before I moved to Oregon, completely abandoning my suddenly burgeoning social skills. (Yes, asking her to sign my yearbook represented serious progress. It's ok, I'm much better now.) Fast forward numerous years. This will seem random, but bear with me (it's still pretty random, but it does all join up). Now in college, I met B. She was my first real girlfriend, and we shared a relationship that lasted years. Shortly after we started going out (and being very serious despite the mere months we'd been together), I went to Scotland for a year. It was something of a shock to the relationship, but we seemed to be able to manage it through the exchange of long emails and the occasional high-priced phone call. Eventually we worked out that we could send microcassettes back and forth in the mail at a pretty cheap per-minute rate compared to the phone. One morning, for one of our strictly meted phone calls, I realized that she'd been mentioning the name of a male friend rather a lot. Long story short, she admitted that she'd slept with him numerous times in the last week, but was still in love with me. Even longer story short, I spent the next two weeks about as miserable as I've ever been. She ended up flying to Scotland a couple months later, and everything was fine. We never talked about the infidelity again, and it wasn't an issue. We went on to have several happy years. We broke up eventually, but we'd both seen it coming, and despite my strong reaction to it, it was for the best. We had dinner years later, and although it was interesting to see her again, we didn't have much to talk about. No hard feelings on either side, but there were good reasons we weren't still going out. One of the things we discussed during our years together was our mutual dislike of marriage as an institution. There are reasons for it, but I won't divert into that discussion just now, let's just establish that it was one of the many things we agreed on. Fast forward again, to this morning. For some reason, I found myself wondering where K (my math class crush from jr. high) was. I do this occasionally, and listlessly poke around to see if I can find the person I've suddenly remembered. This time, Google combined with a relatively uncommon name hit the jackpot. I found K's wedding announcement from 1996, and a moment later had found her current business's website. She's living a few states away with her husband and three young children, and it looks like life is pretty good for her. After a moment's deliberation, I composed and sent an "I don't know if you remember me..." email. To my happy surprise, I got a reply a short while later, and she not only remembered me, but sounded pleased to hear from me. Encouraged by this, I sent her a brief recap of my life between the last time I'd seen her and now. Chuffed by the success of this venture, I figured I'd try looking B up. I still think about her, and wonder how life is treating her, so why not? I quickly found a site mentioning her, and it seemed to be a listing of where this person I'd found was registered. I figured I'd gotten someone else with the same name (improbable, but I guess it could happen; B has a pretty uncommon name). I looked around the site a little bit more to make sure I'd found the wrong person. As I looked, I realized that, no, this was the right person. It was the same B. I further realized that this was her wedding website. That was a bit weird, but as nothing to the shock I felt when I realized that she'd gotten married to the guy who had been the recipient of her attentions while I was in Scotland a decade ago. The world seemed to tilt sideways to gravity. B got married. To that guy! My head felt strange, it was as if gravity had split and was tugging me two different ways. The rest of the day passed in a kind of haze, my mental state and reality seeming to come at each other from odd angles. Now that I've had most of a day to examine my reaction, I recognize that it was mostly combined shock that she'd gotten married at all (and used the phrase "united in holy matrimony" no less -- she's completely atheistic last time I checked) along with suddenly resurgent memories of how I felt for those two weeks in Scotland, swaddled in hitherto incomprehensible grief and impotent rage. Those feelings and memories have long since faded into the background of my life, so it was odd to feel them again, even if it was only a shadow of the real emotion, a mere whisper of the true feelings. Further examination, once the feelings faded back again, reveals happiness. I find that I'm glad B found someone she loves enough to marry (considering her previous aversion to the idea). I'm also perversely glad that my two weeks of hell in Scotland weren't for nothing. She wasn't hooking up with some random swain who didn't matter to her -- that was the man she'd go on to marry, a decade later. I still have an unreasoning dislike of him, but that's not based on rational thought, it's based on emotional impressions that are now so much ancient history. I may have exchanged ten words with him in my life. Probably the worst part, once the emotions had receded to the background again, was that she didn't invite me to the wedding. I don't know whether it was from forgetfulness, or a calculation that watching that particular union might not be a tasteful thing for me. Either way, I'm a trifle miffed, although I also think I understand. It doesn't matter anyway, the event is months old, and it seems likely that we'll never be in contact again. I now find my head swirling with fond memories of both K and B, clashing with an odd feeling of unreality after (somewhat masochistically) reviewing B's wedding photos. My head is a very strange place for me to be right now. As if to cap off a supremely weird start to 2008, I received email near the end of the day that one of the musicians I'd been playing with on and off has died. He was around my age, and seemed like a very nice guy and a skilled guitarist. I don't know the cause of death. This recalled the beginning of 2007, when I discovered that my long-time friend Kjersten had been killed in a drunk-driving collision in Oregon. Kjersten was also a skilled musician, and a valued friend, although we hadn't been in contact for many years. I really didn't know this guitarist well enough to be deeply affected by his demise, but I can't sit unmoved by the death of someone I knew, even in passing. In all, this has worked out to be a really weird, square-peg/round-hole kind of a day. To K, if you're reading this, thanks for the pleasant response to my email: that was a bright spot in what clearly ended up being a bizarre day. Posted at 20:03 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
