Tales of Slow Brave Athena

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June 27, 2005

Filling up, and spilling over

I got a project done that I've been sweating at work, then went home on Friday. My stress level had hit a new high, and my body was just not cooperating. Though, amazingly, I felt much better when I got home. No doubt the bike ride helped. Though the bike ride hurt too. I just wasn't feeling that great, and the trek up the hill wasn't that fun.

Saturday morning, I thankfully felt okay. I ran late, as usual, and missed seeing the purples step off, so I got a map and just started walking. It was overcast and cool—it looked like it might rain. I decided, for some reason, that I would do intervals.

I have no idea where I got this, so don't try this at home, but the intervals I decided to do were based on the alarms on my heart rate monitor. So first I warmed up for 15 minutes. Then, I walked as fast and hard as I could until I hit 85% HR. Then, I'd slack until I hit 65%. Rinse, repeat. Except, once I started to catch up with humanity, or as humanity began to catch up with me, I'd start speeding up when I was trying to slow down, or vice versa.

So I did the intervals for the first 6 miles. Now you might be saying to yourself, gosh, I don't think that VJ has talked about doing any real walking for weeks, and you would be, in fact, correct, so why did I think that doing intervals would be a good idea? Well, why indeed? Suffice to say: they were not a good idea.

But, in spite of that, I was very happy to be out on a real walk. I got thinking about my walking route website idea and got really into it. I was enjoying saying hi to people, and looking at things, noticing the madrone growing along the trail, complete with hacking homeless person. Hmm, does he have TB? Yikes. I liked looking up at the road, way up high, and the caverns carved out by homeless people. I liked seeing the giant eagles nests on platforms above the electrical towers. I saw two crosses along the route, up off the trail, and I wondered who and why?

A runner who looked incredibly like Athanasia Tsoumeleka (the 2004 Olympic Racewalking champion) stopped and pointed out a bald eagle, perched on a stump in the swamp. The eagle appeared to be just hanging out, waiting for breakfast, and enjoying a little out-of-the-nest-time. I watched it for a long time. Then, as I softened my focus on the entire swamp, I could see that it was entirely infested with blue herons. I've never seen so many in one place ever.

I also spotted a beaver. In the wild. Damn!

So, the non-intervals 6 miles was less fun. I was moving slow, heart-rate was up, and I kept thinking about this Mac store in town that was having a garage sale, and it really was on the way back into town. I'd just need to walk, I dunno, six blocks out of the way. But I was afraid that if I did, I'd not finish the walk. Well, yes. So, I finished the walk. Slowly.

Afterwards, I did run to the garage sale, and it was just eMacs and G4 towers at that point. Poop. I talked to one of the sales guys, and he said that everything good was gone by 9:30. It was 10:30 now. Oh well.

After the ice bath and lunch, Sweetie and I went scootering to do some errands. We stopped at Ptown, we stopped at my fav yarn shop, and then, we spotted the Multnomah County Bike Fair, so we stopped and checked it out.

One of the things I absolutely love about Portland is its embrace of the kooky quirky contingent. Here, there are two types of bicyclists, not entirely mutually exclusive: there's the serious spandex-wearing bicyclists riding expensive fast bikes that do Seattle-to-Portland and Cycle Oregon—the athletes, and then there are the d-i-y bicycles, usually riding hand-me-downs or thrifted bikes, wearing, well, not a lot of spandex—the human-powered activists.

We have a local organization, Shift2Bikes, that tends more towards the latter. They do a monthly breakfast on the bridges for bicyclists, and they have a great calendar that you can post your bike events. They sponsored Pedalpalooza this year, and thus, the MCBF.

The fair was full of all sorts of quirky, d-i-y stuff. A smoothie stand whose blenders were powered by a bike with a generator. Our local zine folks. And, a stage area for performances, music and bicycle related.

I was so excited and I immediately started talking about bicycling down to the park. Sweetie reminded me that I had just overdone it, and maybe I should hold off on the cycling. Okay.

After a nap and a quick dinner, I scooted back to the Fair to do some documentation. I got there at the end of the last event, the Tallbike jousting, damn it! But as I hung out, there was suddenly this free-for-all, where lots of people were jumping on their bikes and riding around in circles. There were tall bikes, of course, a homemade recumbent whirly-bike, a longbike, and lots and lots of people enjoying themselves.

It was just beautiful. Here it was, a sunny warm evening, with the shade from trees here and there, and lots of people were out. Normal looking people, and people who had obviously dressed for the occasion. Vibrant and alive.

I want to be part of this. Yes!

The highlight of the next day was getting the strawbales. I promised myself, if I cut the grass, I'd see if any Feed and Seeds were open, and there was one. So I hightailed over there, got a couple of galvanized containers that I'll use as planters (thanks Fran!), and then decided to get strawbales.

See, you can build raised bed garden plots with strawbales. I've done it before.

So, I bought 4. I had sweetie's truck, and I was surprised to see that three fit nicely in his bed, but the fourth one had to go on top. Hell, the last time I bought straw bales, I was single, and I got 4 of them in my car, which is not terribly big.

Did I tie it down? Why tie it down? Ha ha ha ha! So of course, the bale flew off the truck in the middle of an intersection, in the middle of two 5 lane roads.

I managed to get the damn thing out of the street. But then I found that I couldn't lift it. Even by the strings. Damn it! Long story shorter, it was the help of strangers, 4 of them, that got the bale back into the truck, where I tied it down.

Posted at June 27, 2005

Comments

Posted by: Nancy Toby at June 27, 2005 9:19 AM

Posted by: vj at June 27, 2005 9:25 AM

Posted by: Jon in Michigan at June 27, 2005 9:56 AM

Posted by: Megan at June 27, 2005 1:57 PM

Posted by: neca at June 28, 2005 4:58 AM