PAgent’s Progress

I just haven’t had much of a chance to go walking lately, so I made a special point today of heading out at lunchtime and walking down to the river. I crossed the (seemingly) constantly torn-up Naito Blvd to Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Toward the south end of the park, I could see people setting up for the Waterfront Blues Festival. Near the Salmon Street Fountain, there were a bunch of folks with a big multicolored parachute, letting children use the parachute to toss small squishy balls into the air. It reminded me of some of the activities my kids used to take part in when they were that small.

Since it was plenty hot, there were children playing in the fountain. Here’s an official tidbit on the fountain from Portland Parks & Recreation:

Designed by Robert Perron Landscape Architects and Planners, the fountain is controlled by an underground computer that changes the pattern of the fountain’s 185 water jets. The three cycles of the fountain are called misters, bollards, and wedding cake. At full capacity, the fountain recycles 4,924 gallons of water per minute through as many as 137 jets at once.

It’s a damned impressive fountain, although the little ones running through it probably weren’t thinking about the computer-control, the throughput, or the technology. They were just running through the cool spray on a hot day.

Then I saw something wonderful. A little boy, possibly with cerebral palsy, was running through the fountain. This kid probably couldn’t even walk, but he was strapped in a harness that was suspended from a frame on wheels. The suspension was spring-tensioned, and adjusted to his weight so that he could put his feet down and push the frame around. And bounce up and down.

God, it was beautiful. Here was a boy that was profoundly handicapped. And on a hot day in June, he was running through the fountain in a swim suit. Miracles happen every day. You just have to look for them.

I’m more or less fascinated by the big jets on the outer perimeter (are those the bollards, or the wedding cake?). They’re pretty impressive when they come on and start building up pressure.

Unfortunately, I am an adult, with adult responsibilities. And I couldn’t just toss my shoes off and get soaked with the kids. But I wanted to. Oh, man, did I want to.

After the mechanical hijinks of last night, I was fairly determined to ride my bike to work this morning. I packed a change of clothes and a pair of work shoes in my panniers, clipped them on the new rack, and headed down the street.

I was wearing my new recumbent cycling shorts, which are awesome. It’s like wearing conventional lycra thigh-length riding shorts, only without the chamois padding between your legs, and with a loose overshort over it. Very comfy.

Nevertheless, something didn’t seem right. The fenders weren’t rubbing. The panniers weren’t causing any problems. I checked to make sure I had put both sets of brakes back together again. There was nothing I could see or feel, nevertheless something was definitely wrong.

Then it hit me. I had hurried out without my gloves. I had often joked that I would rather ride without a helmet than without my gloves, and was disturbed to realize just how true that was.

When I was a kid, and I started riding a 10-speed, I had to get cycling gloves. Wearing cycling gloves was a statement. It said you were a serious bicyclist, like Eddie Merckx, or like Dave Stoller, the bike-obsessed ‘cutter’ from “Breaking Away”. Cycling gloves said ‘I spend so much time in the saddle that I need padded gloves to protect my hands’.

Of course, as soon as I started wearing them, I realized that cycling gloves served a completely practical purpose. The first time I did a header over the handlebars and saw how much gravel was embedded in the triple-thick palms of those gloves, I got downright attached to the idea of wearing them whenever I was on a bike.

Tan calfskin fingerless gloves, with white crocheted backs. It was the classic bike glove. As you sweated, the leather turned your hands orange. If you wore a pair long enough, they stiffened into the shape of your hands, standing empty with fingers curled in a half-clench, like the Invisible Man was wearing them. And they had a characteristic smell, too. Leather, and sweat, and cotton, and effort. But the best part was the oval patch of tan skin they left on the back of your hands. That was the mark of a serious cyclist.

I never got on a bike without a pair of gloves. It was like wearing a seatbelt in a car, completely automatic.

When I started riding again as an adult, the aches and pains of cycling meant I couldn’t just use any old cycling gear any more. I started buying lycra gloves, with gel pads in the palms, hoping to stave off finger numbness and tingling. These were gloves you could throw in the washing machine. They didn’t have the character of the old tan classics, but they were more comfortable.

Then I got my recumbent. Some folks say recumbent riders don’t need gloves at all, because you don’t have weight on your palms when you ride a ‘bent. I couldn’t imagine being on a bike, of any design, without wearing gloves. I got a pair of Specialized gloves with only a thin pad in the palm, that are very comfortable. But I still wore gloves.

And I bought gloves for my kids. They didn’t always wear them, but I made sure they had them. My daughter tried to do a trick on her Razor scooter the other day, and ended up flying through the air and skidding to a stop on the asphalt on the palms of her hands. Fortunately, she was wearing her cycling gloves, and just dusted herself off and got back on her scooter. ‘Remember that,’ I thought to myself. ‘That’s why you wear those things.’

And here I was, in traffic, riding bare-handed. I felt completely naked without gloves. The cold morning breeze blew across the backs of my hands, and the unfamiliar grooves of the rubber handgrips pressed against my palms. My hands grew damp with sweat, and I could feel the dampness, slick, against the grips. It was…very uncomfortable.

All drama aside, even riding barehanded I made it to work just fine. I still need to get home without my gloves, but I assume the ride home will be similarly uneventful. Then I can start working on going another twenty-five years without forgetting them again.

Installing fenders on a recumbent can be confusing. This instruction sheet is provided as a general guide to help you with installing your fenders. The bike pictured is a RANS V-Rex with RANS 20/26″ fenders, so it is important to keep in mind that your fenders may have different hardware than what is shown, but the concepts involved in installation are similar.

Translation: The guidance provided in these instructions is similar to the guidance you actually need to install your fenders. By ’similar’ we mean that in both cases there are wheels, fenders, and a recumbent bicycle involved. The actual parts depicted are not the parts we have provided. The smudged and blurry pictures provided herein illustrate a method of mounting a fender that is completely inappropriate for the fenders and fender braces we provided for you. In fact, it should be apparent that your fenders do not even have the apertures necessary to mount the fender braces. We have confidence that you will be able to figure it all out.

And I finally did figure out how to put the damn things on. At least I think I found the right way to install them. The front fender can clip the pedal if I’m not careful, so I guess I’ll just have to be careful.

After my epic struggle with the fenders, I just had time to install my underseat rack before it got dark. That went a little smoother, thanks to some meaningful assembly instructions (thank you, Terracycle). With the rack installed, I can mount my new Ortlieb panniers, which means I can actually carry a change of clothes to work. The mind boggles.

I still have to mount my fairing. I say a little prayer to St. Gardner Martin in fervent hope that it will go smoothly and efficiently.

When I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois, I taught undergraduate chemistry for a couple of years. To be more precise, I taught introductory organic chemistry for non-chemistry majors.

You might ask, why on earth would a non-chemistry major subject themselves to the horror that is organic chemistry? And that would be an excellent question. Let’s just say that there are some majors that require O-chem for misguided reasons related to hygiene and sanitation. For example I had a hotel management major who nearly burst into tears of frustration every time she came by for office hours. But I digress.

Since this was a class that was generally a) boring as hell and b) outside their major, it was difficult to really motivate my students. I told stories, drew cartoons on the board, did everything but tapdance in front of the blackboard, but there were some students that were just there to take up space and there was no way I was going to reach them.

Part of the class was a lab section. These labs were not rocket science. In fact, if you showed up on time with the two or three pre-lab questions answered, you got about 25% of your points right there. Nevertheless, I had a couple of students that would show up habitually late, and habitually unprepared.

One, in particular, was a huge guy that played on the football team. He almost never spoke, and overall did fairly poorly in the class. I vividly remember taking him to one side in the lab and basically pleading with him to show up on time with the prelab questions done. “Dude,” I said “Just write SOMETHING down. As long as it looks like you opened the book and read through the lab I can give you some points for it.” He mumbled something and went back to his bench.

A couple of years later, the Fighting Illini had been invited to some post-season bowl or another, and I was watching the game with some friends. The camera was following some Illinois player zigzagging across the field, and his name flashed up on the screen in big yellow letters. My jaw dropped. It was the big guy from my lab section.

It set me back on my heels. This guy couldn’t manage to show up prepared for class, whereas I was a doctoral candidate at a prestigious institute for higher learning. And yet, he was on national television, with his name in big letters, while I was trying to figure out how to make each meager paycheck cover expenses. It really made me think, about a lot of things. Like the priorities our society has, and how we define success, and how I would never, ever have my name in big yellow letters on national television.

I hadn’t thought about that guy in years, but today I had a strong sense of deja vu. The Oregon State Beavers are the College World Series Champions, and as part of the celebration they brought the team into Pioneer Courthouse Square. The square was packed with Beaver fans, and periodically the roar from the crowd would intensify, crescendoing off the nearby buildings like the rumblings of a tsunami.

And I pondered the fact that I will never know what it is like to be given a police escort into a crowd of adoring fans, fans who pour out their approval and admiration like that. I am not in a profession that rewards success that way. In fact, the only way I could ever possibly attract that much attention would be while wearing an orange jumpsuit and being led away to my trial for bilking senior citizens out of their pensions.

What must it be like for these young men, at the beginning of their lives, to have such a reception? I can’t imagine it. I hope they treasure it. And as much as I wistfully wonder what it would be like to have that, I really don’t begrudge them this moment. They earned it. They are the best collegiate baseball players in the country, and that’s worth something.

So, even through I am still enough of a curmudgeon to stop and wonder at the importance that we as a society place on these gladiators, it won’t stop me from congratulating them for their achievement.

Go Beavers.