Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

The tail light on my bike wasn’t working when I got home this morning, and wouldn’t turn on again. New batteries, right? Except that didn’t make it go. I was thinking disparaging thoughts about Portland Design Works, but then I remembered that my tail light has been through two accidents in the last six months, the latter of which destroyed my headlamp and both brake handles. The poor little tail light may have taken some damage.

I’ve got a new PDW tail light on its way now. And it occurs to me that if you’re going to lose a bike light, the time to do it is during the spring or summer. There’s enough morning light now to render me pretty visible in my eye-watering hi-viz jacket or t-shirt.

You know how when the temperature is below freezing, fog can form ice on streets? Yeah, I wiped out going down Phinney Ridge on my bike this morning. TL;DR: I'm fine, but my bike isn't.

I spun around a little as I slid down the hill. That must have looked kind of cool if you weren't experiencing it.

At least this time there were no other vehicles involved. The driver of the car behind me stopped and checked in, which was nice, and said that it was a narrower escape for me than it seemed. Uh, yikes?

I landed on my right hip, shoulder, and elbow yet again, but this time I'm completely ambulatory if bruised and scraped. Yes, I have taken ibuprofen.

Here's the property damage:

1. I tore a hole in my serious mittens. That's not too bad; the grippy stuff on the palms was already wearing off due to — wait for it — riding my bike in them.
2. I tore a hole in my hi-viz jacket. It, too, was looking pretty grungy and therefore less hi-viz. Not so bad.
3. The handles of both my brakes are pointing in weird directions. I stopped halfway home and walked the rest of the way.
4. I couldn't even find the LED from my headlamp. Mind you, I wasn't too inclined to look hard for it because cars were trying to drive on the icy street I'd just wiped out on.

So, shopping at REI is in my near future.

As for the necessary bike repair, that too comes at a good time. My rear derailleur has become unreliable, which probably means I've worn the cassette down. I've ridden it about 3000 miles.

You know, the streets didn't look questionable for the first mile or so of the ride. It only takes one icy patch, though, and Seattle's many steep slopes don't help. Am I some kind of maniac or what?

Edited to add: I hope that wiping out on your bike isn't one of these things that come in threes.

I was invited to the friendsgiving that I went to last year, but I wasn't feeling it. I stayed home, cleaned house, and had Korean instant ramen with seitan for dinner. Je ne regrette rien.

Oh: I discovered on Thanksgiving afternoon that my front bike tire was flat. I may have neglected to mention that my accident was right in front of a construction site. Yeah, you know what happened: I pulled an entire nail out of my front tire. I'm lucky that

1. That nail didn't puncture me when I hit the ground.
2. I was able to ride three miles home with it in my tire without even noticing for a week.

As I'd planned before my bike accident, I went out to the Mercury with Funny Lady on the night of Thanksgiving day. So I did get some social on.

With regret, yesterday I blew off the annual gathering of grad school classmates because a) it took me too long to recover, b) their place isn't all that convenient by transit, and c) I had on call stuff to do. But! I did make it to a trans and non-binary Leather social at Cal Anderson last night. It was a little cool in the shelter house, but it was packed with information. That mass transit trip was more than enough for my hip; it's for the best that it was the only one I did yesterday.

Came home, got to bed at a reasonable hour, and slept for ten hours. I have nothing to do today except pick up groceries & bike tubes. Bliss.

Saturday: lunch with cupcake_goth's pal T. I got to show her around lower Fremont and buy a couple of things, namely a little mead and a lavender to replace one of the hydrangeas that the builders planted in direct sun. Nice & mellow.

I'd planned to hit the Merc with Dancer Saturday night, but she was in some wedding-related drama with her sister and wasn't feeling it physically, due to poor sleep, or emotionally. I was disappointed, but I understand. I told her the tale of my Good and Evil Sisters, which she found a bit shocking.

And speaking of Evil Sister, she & I have exchanged mailing addresses — directly, and without Good Sister on the text thread! It's the first one-on-one communication that we've had in sixteen years. Might this be the beginning of something? Wayell, I don't have my hopes up. So far she's acting as if she never treated me like shit, which isn't OK.

But back to the Merc: a lovely time was had. I wore my spiky black bra and scratched people with it. I danced in heels for the first time in months and wrecked my feet a little. I was annoyed to see that the late-night schedule on the bus home from the U District has changed to hourly. It seems that the optimal time to catch the train is 0030; I left too early.

Sunday: art at Base Camp Studios with Tacoma Girl, and then at her suggestion Uwajimaya for grocery shopping, which both of us badly needed to do. I really like hanging out with her, and no, that's not dirty.

Dinner at Meesha with the Womanhandler, a drink and very trans chat at Mr. B's, and then some womanhandling until I got tired. I don't regret shifting my schedule to the mornings, but it does put a crimp in my dating life.

During one of the wee hours, my intestines emptied out rather dramatically. What did I eat that caused it? Either Meesha, which I don't want to believe because it was delicious, or the badly needed snack on the way home from Uwajimaya.

Good Sister has sent the other two of us the first paperwork for selling Mom's house. I think she's working ahead in the grandest GS style.

Edited to add: Sometime shortly before I finished my bike ride yesterday, I punctured my back tube. The back tire is bald and I found a crack in it through which I could see daylight, but I felt around for something stuck in the tire, found something, and extracted it. Or so I thought: I replaced the tube, but that one's now flat too. I'll be getting my exercise today by walking to a bike shop and getting a new tire and tubes. Le sigh. But honestly, it had been a long time since I had this kind of problem, and I really need to replace that tire before the fall rains. I'm kind of proud of myself for completely trashing a bike tire in less than a year and a half.

If you have a weird obsession with me, you may recall that I messed up my shoulder back in September while pushing my bike up my front steps, an activity necessitated by the local population of goddamn thieves. After six months of my shoulder maybe kinda sorta getting better, I listened to the Tickler and made a physical therapy appointment for this afternoon. So how did it go?

Not bad, only a few gasps of pain. The exercises aren't as strenuous as the ones for my knees over five years ago. I assume that's because this time the goal isn't to build muscle to make a joint less mobile, but to make it more so. There's a long list of exercises that I'm supposed to do more often than I really wanna, but if I want to put my coat on in a reasonable amount of time, or hook my own bra behind my back without crying out and taking a break for a minute afterward, I need to do it. Executive function R us here at the Devil Girl House.

Did I feel like I had the least serious injury in the whole clinic? Yes. Am I letting it bother me? Not that much.

I went to Dr. Funnyname for routine blood work, and he did something I wasn't expecting: a baseline EKG, my first ever. It seems I'm of a certain age where it's a good idea to get EKGs every few years. Harrumph.

The only thing unusual about my heart is something that's been obvious to doctors for years without an EKG: I have a very low resting heart rate thanks to bicycling. They said that they'd worry if it were under 40 beats per minute; mine is 41.

So, ride a bike! If a car doesn't flatten you, you'll live forever, more or less. And a good way to avoid cars is to ride early. I suppose you could ride really late but a) you'd ride in darkness much of the year, and b) it gets me too wired to sleep at night.

OK, there's a thing all primary care docs do that drives me meshugah: they'll ask me when my last, for example, colonoscopy or tetanus shot was. All I can remember is that it was yeeeeeears ago.

For the third time in as many days, I replaced the front tube on Miss Indigo Bike. Yeah, it took me three tries to pull a piece of surprisingly fine steel wire out of the tire. It was almost certainly debris from one of the two construction sites on my usual bike ride, both less than two blocks from my place. I could have avoided them by riding an extra block, but neau, I pushed my luck. I wonder at which stage of construction the danger of this sort of thing largely goes away. They're not quite done framing.

Remember how I said my rear bike brakes are squishy? Well, I stopped by the bike shop and I learned a thing or several:

1. My brakes are hydraulic! I don't know what they were on FM Bike, but Miss Indigo has hydraulic brakes.
2. The cheaper kind of hydraulic brakes use mineral oil as the fluid. The more expensive kind use "DOT", i.e. Department of Transportation, brake fluid just like cars do.
3. Of course I have the cheaper brakes.
4. The seals on these mineral oil brakes don't perform as well at temperatures below 50°F (10C). Remember, folks, I live in Seattle. I've got many months of riding in those temperatures every year. (The bike mechanic I talked to is from Alaska. He says they always use DOT up there.)
5. Like any hydraulic brakes, you can have somebody "bleed" the air out of the brake lines. That didn't help me noticeably, though. I haven't had a serious issue yet.

Bad: I appear to have tossed my spare key with the lock packaging. Poo. I've ordered another one that, if I understand correctly, I don't have to pay for. And it appears that I never used the spare key for the previous lock, because I found that one without any difficulty. Le sigh.

Meh: I've figured out how to get my bike out of the house with a minimum of fuss: backwards, out the door and down the front stairs.

Good: I have a top tube bag from REI. It fits my wallet, phone, and keys, which is all the carrying capacity I need for ~90% of my rides.

Even better: I've figured out how to lean my parked bike in the foyer in such a way that it doesn't intrude into the way of anyone walking on the stairs, and it doesn't leave marks on my walls. No need for a stand! Hurrah!

Because I Must Bike, behold Miss Indigo*:



I've so far ridden her about eight miles, from Gregg's Green Lake Cycle home yesterday and then on my usual route today. To simplify my life, I ordered (an updated version of) the same model in the same size, in the only color that was available at the Seattle Gregg's: indigo. Here's the scoop, from front to back.

Tires: Miss Indigo's are 700cX40 and knobby. FM Bike had 700cX38 Alligator tires, so Miss Indigo feels more like a mountain bike. That may eventually be good for Burning Man and, I have to say it, not skidding in general. The Alligators are good for puncture resistance, though. Bonus: I can still use the three 700c tubes I have.

Fenders: Instead of the all-too-easily removable straightish plastic jobs, I let Gregg's install real commuter fenders on mine. There should be less mud on my clothes, and more fenders on my bike.

Front fork: This bike has a suspension, as did FM Bike.

Grips: They have a flattened trailing edge. That makes them way more comfy. It's funny how big a difference a detail that small can make.

Shifters: Indexed as before, but this time the drive train is 2x9 instead of 3x6. For you non-bike maniacs, 2x9 means there are two chain rings in the front, and nine gears on the "cassette" in the back. I'm mostly OK with this difference because I hardly ever used the largest ring on FM Bike. However, I've noticed that on Miss Indigo, the larger ring with the smallest gears chatters a little, and the smaller ring with the largest gears tends to slip and skip.

Brakes: Disc, as before, but the rear ones seem to be a little... inconsistent? Sometimes they really grab and sometimes they just sort of grab. Maybe it'll shake out. If it doesn't, I'll hit Gregg's in a few days. There's something I learned that I don't recall from when I bought FM Bike: when you take a wheel off a bike with disc brakes, you're supposed to put a shim between the brake pads to keep them from getting stuck together. I took the wheels off FM Bike many times without doing that. Did I get lucky?

U-lock: The same model as before, velcro'd to my frame, where it stays out of the way nicely, at least for now. I used to put it in my handlebar basket. I could have sworn I tried this before and didn't like it. I did not buy another damn cable.

Saddle: Less slippery than FM Bike's, and ventilated. Nun-approved. I may need to raise it again, though.

Basket: I don't have one yet. I'm not crazy about carrying my purse in my Chrome bag; it's not that comfortable. I'm thinking about getting a pannier, if it'll fit on my bike. Or, or, I could get one of those little bitty bags that fit underneath the saddle, but that rubs against my Burneresque compulsion to have stuff ready at hand when I need it. Besides, my light is there already. Speaking of Burning Man, a handlebar basket is actually perfect for that – access to stuff without dismounting – but I would again need a custom-made fitting from gfish to keep it from rotating, and he spent so much time on the previous one that I don't have the heart to ask him again.

I just verified that my hi-viz bike jacket has a rear pocket that I've never used, and that could fit my wallet, phone, and keys. But what would I do during the summer? A quick look at REI tells me that there are little bags for every part of a bike! Top tubes! Handlebars! Oh, rapture! And for serious cargo, there's always my trusty Chrome bag. I must ponder. And measure my wallet.

Oh: I've registered Miss Indigo, serial number and all, with the Bike Index in case she too gets jacked.

So does Miss Indigo fit in my foyer? Not quite, as I feared. She intrudes about three inches into the stairway to the living room & kitchen. But a helpful (and, of course, fit) young lady on the staff at Gregg's schooled me on free-standing vertical bike stands. I may either go that route, if my rear fender doesn't prevent it, or screw a hook into a ceiling stud if I can find one in an acceptable place because I own this house.



*A local teacher of burlesque and excellent commedienne whom I know from my grad school days goes by Indigo Blue. Does she prefix it with Miss? Yes she does, I eventually found out. The choice of name for the bike was not meant to imply any association with her, attractive and super gay though she is.