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I struggle with this time of year, like many. Being an atheist, I celebrate the holidays for family. It’s a good excuse to find goodies for the kiddos and to shop, which I hardly ever do anymore. I mostly enjoy the decorating and music, although certain over the top displays and opinions can send me into a negative jag.
As I embrace my life as a somewhat single forty something, I find myself enjoying my alone time more and more. I do date and have a regular fella. We enjoy each other, but we are both in a phase of our life where we are working on erasing debt, planning for an uncertain retirement in 20 or so years. Not to say this won’t change, but for now, we are not planning on a future together or even on a short term future beyond our next bike adventure. I like coming home to my bedroom where I can sleep in peace. I also like the absence of drama.
Yesterday was solstice. I had lift tickets for The Summit at Snoqualmie from their big sale after Thanksgiving. Too bad it rained all night on Friday. The snow conditions weren’t too bad, but the base wasn’t deep enough and there were runoff ruts that showed up in annoying ways, one time sending me flying. At least I got to test my new bindings. They pop out just fine, I’m happy to report. I went with my roommate and we were both testing out new skis. We had to avoid thin spots, but mostly enjoyed the short runs they had open.
It was snowing heavily the second half of the day, so I think the base will be better soon.
After getting home, I went out to do some shopping and got most of the gifts bought. I did almost all of my shopping in my neighborhood, except some socks I’d gotten directly from Defeet. I’m not great at making a list and checking it twice, so I still have a few more things to get and I need to get a package in the mail for my son, although the main part of his gift is in the mail already. Thank goodness for shops that gift wrap and ship!
I also stopped at the fabric store and got some fleece to make myself a sleeping pillow. Not for my head, but to hug and keep my arms/hand from going numb in the night. I’ve had various stuffed animals over the years that have served this purpose, but the most recent–a blind bunny I got from my niece–has seen better days and as I was sewing up a mend the other day, I thought “why don’t I just make my own?”
On the way home, I stopped at Bitterroot, a restaurant in Ballard named after the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. My roommate, who is from Montana, met me there and I treated him to a birthday dinner (it was a few days ago, but he was neck deep in work then.)
All in all, an excellent day. Here’s a snap of the sunset from downtown Ballard on the Solstice.
I took a long vacation, with a short work stint in the middle. Then took a long weekend. I’ve had a few adventures.
My friend and I went bike camping to Tolt MacDonald Park in Carnation WA. It was a glamping trip really, since we got a Yurt for the two nights (you have to book 2 nights). It was fun and relaxing. We spent time on the river and I rode Stella around the trails a bit. On the way back, as a way to avoid a mile of 10% grade, we took a very flat detour that added a few miles to our ride, then also added miles by using the Burke Gilman Trail rather than the 520 trail. It was very pleasant, although I am pretty sure that I was just as tired as I would have been if we’d done the hills.
A few days later I flew to Reno to visit family, especially my one year old nephew. We had a nice hike and visited a few breweries. I got to spend some quality time with the little one.
I worked for 3 days, then took another 5 days off. During that time, I did some intense Bike Bingo-ing. I often revisited locations with friends as they went around. I got a blackout and some awesome prizes.
I also attended a bike/walk rally for safer streets with a couple of silly bananas. I gave out my thank you notes for a bingo square that day. It would have been cheating, except that everyone was so interested in Bike Bingo that I think it did the job well.
Next time I’ll tell you about hiking around on Mount Shasta!
I watched the weather and waited, and finally it was close enough to my vacation to call it. We were going bike camping!
It’s barely spring in the Pacific Northwest, so the weather could have been torrential rain–and it’s supposed to be starting tomorrow–but we got our window of partly sunny, highs in the upper 60s.
I’d some some research where I wanted to go. I eliminated two places I’d gone before; Fay Bainbridge and Manchester State Park. The first was too close and would be more crowded. The second I’ve been to 3 times now and I’m ready for something different and a little further away.
Looking at Marley Blonsky’s post, A Non-definative Guide to Bike Overnighters Within an Hour-ish of Seattle, I settled on Kitsap Memorial State Park. A coworker seconded my choice–it was nice to talk to someone I know who’s been there. It’s a 20 mile ride with lots of other options for exploring. A grocery 5 miles away and a convenience store nearby. The hiker biker sites have tables and a fire ring, which isn’t always the case at other places.
We ended up leaving at around noon on Saturday to get there.
The timing was good because the ferry was easy and check in time was 2:30–no problems checking in early, but there was no camp host, so no on site firewood. We got some the second night from the convenience store.
It was hard to find the entrance to the hiker biker sites, but they were nicely secluded from the car sites. They were hidden down an unmarked trail directly to the left at the entrance to the parking lot.
We spent some time at the beach and exploring the park. It’s really small, but the view was nice. We got some camp neighbors that night who were biking around the peninsula, and this was the last night out. We went to bed early, but they stayed up late, chatting by their fire.
The second day we explored by bike, taking a round about way back to Poulsbo for groceries. I do love the Central Market.
We got back, bought wood, enjoyed the beach some more, took a shower (tokens purchased from a vending machine with $1 bills) and made a fire.
The next day we had a leisurely breakfast by the fire and rolled out around noon again.
We rode back through Port Gamble and Kingston. After the ferry, we stopped at Walnut Street Coffee for a caffeine and cookie pick me up, but still the hills in Edmonds almost kicked our ass. We persevered and made it to The Yard for celebratory tacos, and then it was only a few miles home.
A really great weekend. Here are a few more photos.
Life sometimes gets away from me. Early in April, my grandmother went to the hospital and then passed away, all in the span of 2 weeks. Then there were the arrangements and the memorial. There’s more, but not for me to worry about, since I’m not named in the will. Some will find this odd, but I’m glad I’m not. I loved my grandmother dearly and I don’t really want to be involved in the dismantling of her life and her home.
When she was young.
The view I will always remember
Since then, I’ve been buried in work, helping plan out trainings for my peers that will pave the way for Teen Service Learning in our library system. It’s ambitious and I’m excited to see how it will work out for us and our teen patrons.
Chris has been working on Raven’s diesel motor for the last month as well. That day that we were supposed to have our second sailing adventure, I had to bail to go tothe hospital. He went out with our friends and the motor stalled. They still got out for a little while, but it was the start of quite a few problems–more going wrong with each thing fixed. It’s ending up being almost a complete overhaul, but hopefully when that’s done we’ll be underway once again. I’m not sure we’re going to make our Mystery Bay plans for Memorial Day weekend.
She did serve as a great place to have a party. Yesterday was completely gorgeous. I couldn’t have planned better for our Bike to Work team BBQ. We combined with the other SPL team and had around 25 people on Raven to celebrate.
There were more people below deck!
This is my third year being team captain and it’s really fun to motivate people to ride. And now I’m looking forward to our next party.
Here’s the bike when I went to pick up swag for my team.
Tonight we’ll be breaking out the bbq things again to celebrate The Boy’s 21st birthday. Hard to believe.
Enough with all that negative stuff. Summer is going great. We’re having a lot of fun giving out books and signing kids up for the Summer of Learning. The teen program is less fulfilling, but I still love giving teens books and for right now we still have some to give, so that is wonderful.
The sign up for two of my teen programs are filling up. We have an Arduino program and a Digital Fabrications showcase planned. The rest of the summer is filled with drop-ins where teens can use our region’s new iPad mini to make digital content for our Tumblr or just make something fun with the supplies I will put out.
In reading news, I just finished the yummy new book by Scott Westerfeld that’s coming out in September, Afterworlds. A longer review will come in the next few days.
I got to see The Boy for dinner and a movie on Sunday. I took him and The Mister to see The Fault in Our Stars and it got all three of us sniffling (sorry to out you guys, but I saw you crying! :) It is a truly wonderful adaptation of the book. The Boy’s been waiting for his new job to start and the date keeps getting pushed back. It was great to see him. I wish he was closer or interested in working in Seattle.
In my biking, I’ve had 2 chains break–on different bikes–in the last month. I guess I’m just hard on them, as they both still showed signs of life when I checked them at the co-op. I’m picking up Lucile (Bike Friday Tikit) tonight after work. I had her looked over to make sure there wasn’t anything else major I was overlooking. I’ve been riding my Surly while she’s been in the shop.
I have to say that bike repairs are much more affordable than car repairs were. I certainly don’t miss that.
We had a lovely time in Florida and somehow I managed to put out of my mind that going to Florida would make it near impossible to do 30 Days of Biking in April. Oops. Oh well, I’m back on the bike and now using MapMyRide to keep track of miles for the National Bike Challenge. I’ll also use it for the Cascade/Adobe Commute Challenge, but I don’t think it will do the auto upload thing for that–which it shouldn’t, only commute miles count for that.
So, Florida. The Mister chartered us a sailboat and we sailed in the Keys for a few days. It was in the 80’s with good winds and plenty of room on the boat for the 5 of us. We had a wonderful time exploring the reef and Key West and then we went to Honeymoon Island outside of Tampa/Dunedin. Click on the picture below for the entire album.
People in Key West ride bikes, but I did not see one helmet.
Now that I’m back I’m in full swing planning bikey stuff. I have 3 major things going on. Sound Cycling biking info fairs at the library this weekend, the Commute Challenge–I’m a team captain for the Paperback Riders, and for Books on Bikes we’re hosting a Bike to Work day booth at the Green Lake library. Our Seattle Public Library Teams will be challenging the King County Library System’s teams this year. They have 5 teams and 25 riders. We have 2 teams and about 20 riders, so we’ll probably base the competition on percentages of commutes ridden. They also have a lot more ground to cover in a county than we do in a city, although that might not be a big deal.
As for reviews, I have two I plan to write today, although I’ll probably try to set them to publish a day or so down the road. They are pre-releases anyhow, so you can’t get your hot little hands on them for another few weeks. Still, good to place holds early and often!
Oh, as an FYI who know The Boy, he is moving to Spokane next week to try his hand at job seeking there. It seems that the Darrington/Marysville area is pretty barren and that Seattle is just too big for a small town kid. Wish him luck!
One week from now, this time, I should be at the end of my first day of STP. I missed my last semi-long training ride yesterday. I thought I had the day off, but was sadly informed that was not so by a coworker the day before. I have my priorities straight though, I did get off a bit early yesterday to go to the International Beerfest at the Seattle Center with a couple of friends.
The new Mr. rode in STP in previous years but told me he’ll only ride next year if we do it in one day. I did ask for a boyfriend that would challenge me ;) He’s not riding this year, although he is meeting me in Portland on Sunday and driving me back on Monday. He’ll get to attend our celebratory dinner as well. The first part of the weekend he’s moving his sailboat down from Anacortes to a much closer moorage.
I’m currently missing him since he and the girls are camping at Mount Rainier and I am stuck here working. Crossword puzzle lady has called twice, which would be great to break up the time if she weren’t so annoying. Soon I get to go home and partake of a bbq that my housemates are throwing.
Alexsis’ comment on my last post reminded me that I should update. The Paperback Riders did come in first, both in miles (widely) and percentage (barely). I’m really proud of my team and I have heard from other staff that observing us participate in Bike to Work month has motivated them to start riding to work as well. Which is really the goal, right? ;)
I’ve finally done some real riding on the Surly, and she is a beautiful machine. Really light and fast. I went on a short ride with the new Mr. a week ago and I blasted up a big hill, leaving him in the dust. Evidently he didn’t realize I had it in me and had settled in for a long slow climb. Oops, I’ve got to stop complaining about hills. It gives the wrong impression.
I just got back from a Union convention in LA, where the only exercise I got was swimming in the salt water pool on the roof of our hotel and lots of walking. And breathing, that felt like exercise in LA.
Salt water pool on top of the Standard
Now it’s time to start training again.
That sounds like an admission of guilt or something. In reality, I’ve just been living and not really had anything I wanted to write about. Life keeps on moving. The boy went back to his father’s house shortly after my last post, things got really busy at the library and my energy was needed for other things.
On to bigger and better things:
May is bike to work month and I’ve been going full swing. My plan is to ride 100% to work this month and I’ve done it so far, with only a few days left to go. I’ve got 227 commuting miles under my belt and have actually ridden at least 20 more (I stopped keeping track) for side trips before or after work. My team is amazing, having ridden 1130 miles this month so far. We’re beating our rival team by over 200 miles.
The boy and I went to the University Street Fair on Saturday and we got him a bunch of art supplies for his birthday. I let him pick what he wanted, but was happy that he asked my opinion. I’m not terribly artistic, but I’ve used most mediums at some point or another and have had artists as friends, so I was able to steer him towards some nice brush and thin tip markers and we got him a calligraphy set inspired by an artist we saw at an all ages show last year.
On Sunday we went to my dad’s and I put the new bike together…well, mostly. It turns out I was missing a headset, so I’ve ordered that and I don’t think that will be hard to put on. Then I’ll need to practice because I’ve never spent much time on a road bike. It’s really different from the upright of a mountain bike. I am so excited to ride this bike during STP.
And finally, I’m seeing a new special someone. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I’m optimistic (probably too much so). I keep expecting someone to jump out at me and say “you’re not allowed to be this happy, give that back!” He’s sweet and strong and fun and that’s all you get for now.
Ciao!
Wow, I haven’t been here for a while. Lots of things have changed and every time I sat down to write all of it felt a little too heavy to drop on the page. Nothing is bad, there was just a lot of life going on.
I suppose bad is relative though. I did break up with the Mister. Long distance relationships wear you down after a while, and for me, our relationship got worn down to nothing. There’s no he said, she said, just an end and a new beginning. I am happy being single and it isn’t that different from being in a long distance relationship. At the moment, I’m happy being me. Maybe someone else will come along that is also happy with me being me and we can be happy together. There should probably be a law against using the word happy that many times in a paragraph.
Libraryland has been wonderful. I’ve been participating in our programming committee and feel like this is a group who’s work will make a difference. I got approved to have a Teen Space at my branch too, in addition to Teen Advisory, so now we will have a once a month hang out spot just for teens. Reading Marathon is coming up in about a week and we go next week to the middle school to promote it at lunch hour. I love having a specific program to promote–ok, I just love tabling and all the teens I see. I feel like a mini celebrity bribing the kids with candy to love me (I mean, love the library of course). Oh and we got a new regional manager. Yup, another new manager.
The Boy is very nice to have around. He’s at an awkward phase where he wants to be a gentleman, but he forgets sometimes and lapses back into teen sas. I am diligent in reminding him to “be nice” and he’s always pretty quick to come around. Unless there’s school work involved, then it takes him a little longer. He got a bit of a scare this quarter though, so even that attitude is changing. For now. I understand wanting to be in charge of your own life but failing school isn’t a good way of proving you’re ready to be a man. Oh, and when it takes you two days to empty the dishwasher, that means I have to wait that long to do the dishes. (That’s an exaggeration, in case you’re wondering). We’ve been having a nice time together generally. The power struggles have gotten shorter and we have some pretty good conversations when we sit on the couch in the evenings.
This snow is awesome. I had Wednesday off to take The Boy to his doctor appointments, but of course they were all canceled. I stocked up on groceries on Tuesday night and I’m super glad because I haven’t been outside for the last 2 days for more than taking pictures and taking out the trash. I got the house clean and organized yesterday and now am enjoying the warmth and quiet. I think I’m going to go hang out in my newly reassembled bed for some quality reading time. Hopefully my legs will not atrophy before my 6 mile run on Sunday.
Living in Color 