The Day the Music Died

...not really.

Sweetpea Lust

Sweetpea Bicycles. Made for women, by a woman. Something more to save up for...plus I've always loved sweetpea as a term of endearment...

Same same, but different

Sometimes, it rains.

The showers passed, but the gravel was wet. On the road we went. Not used to doing that with these guys, or on my War Axe. The sun came out, the temperatures rose, and I quickly regretted forgetting both sunscreen and sunglasses when leaving in the rain. Still a nice way to start a Saturday, though...

You Make Lincoln Good

So back in 2011, on the Fox Hole 100 ride, Patrick and I were riding along together. The weather was perfect, we were in pretty exuberant moods cruising down the canopied Jamaica Trail en route to Wilber with about 45 other riders. We were having this great conversation, then this long pause, then Patrick turns to me and just says...

"You make Lincoln good."

It was a perfect moment. I couldn't think of anything other than saying it right back to him. 

I've been thinking about this concept quite a bit, as I'm about halfway through my graduate program and looking at where and how to invest my energies, knowledge, and passions. I had an incredibly productive meeting with one of my professors today in which she remarked that I really had such unique and extensive knowledge about my city and state, and (while I'm not holding my breath) I think I have found a really productive, engaging, and moreover useful project to undertake for my thesis that goes way beyond something to turn in for a degree. And it involves being here. 

Back to the point...

Look around you. It's easy to get lost in the overwhelming pieces of our work, school, social, and emotional lives. It's easy to get frustrated. It's been really tempting to want to throw in the towel, pack up, hide away somewhere, or who knows what else. It's easy to push out those negative feelings onto the people around you, blame the environment you're living in, and do nothing about it.

But, DAMN. That is such a terrible way to look at things. There are a whole lot of people around that MAKE LINCOLN GOOD. Thanks, y'all.

Ouachita Training Camp

Some people have fancy training camps with dietary plans strict schedules. Some people rent a cabin in the Ouachita National Forest and ride bikes all day and then partake in serious beer drinking in the evening. Yeah, more of the latter than the former. Crushed out over 100 miles of singletrack in 4 days, spent excellent quality time with fantastic friends, saw some blooms and buds and felt spring breezes...oh, pretty good. What follows is a kind of burnt-out grad student's photos & musings...

Basking in the afternoon sun, even though it wasn't terribly warm, felt really nice. 

So many leafy sections, barky sections, rocky sections, different kinds of rocky sections, creeky sections, and dirty sections. All made different sounds; it would make a nice audio collage. 

Lots of love & gratitude for my riding buddy MW, keeping just enough ahead of me with an eye back so that I could ride in my zone and not stress out about keeping up or getting left in the woods to die after falling off one of the leafy benches. Being stressed riding techy singletrack is not good. Challenging yourself is. Balance was struck. Also, balance came in handy on those benches. (This was a terrible grammatical segue...been hitting the academic writing too hard tonight.)

Stinky, wet socks from all the creek crossings. It was pretty much impossible to keep the feet dry, even when I was succeeding at making it all the way across the creeks. The biggest note here is that I don't think I would've even attempted many of them a year ago. Helped to have several lines to watch go through before trying it myself.

We rode a whole heckuva a lot of the Womble Trail, from one end almost all the way to the other. It was truly remarkable to be almost exclusively on singletrack.

It's so nice to ride on a course like this and not have it be race, as much as I enjoy racing. You don't get nice stops at the overlooks when you're just focused on the next checkpoint. It was a good reminder, too, to switch myself back from 'cross brain into endurance mode for eating. On our longest day, I didn't pack enough food with me. Always making notes, improving practices.

Speaking of food, in a nice change from the ordinary, we had equal numbers of vegetarians and non-vegetarians on the trip. I served as head chef and was pleased to have a seemingly happy crew of eaters. I made high-protein burritos, channa masala, green Thai curry, and enjoyed perks associated with being the one cooking at night. (Thanks to PC and JV for getting my bike clean every night!) We also had stout floats. Oh yum. Oh, and some folks ate SPAM for breakfast. Seriously.

I could've taken a half-hour nap in this sun. My feet were soaked and frozen (common theme). Even when I'm the last to get to a break point and have a shorter break and don't want to, I need to learn to adapt to that, since shorter breaks will improve my times on longer events. But, I mean, SUN NAPS.

There were hardly any other BIKES on the trail, let alone any illegal users. We only saw 7 other riders the whole weekend, and 4 of them were friends from KC. Pretty amazing.

We did a lot of nighthike crystal hunting. I'm happy to report I came home with my coat pocket full of shiny little rocks. This sign helped us find our way back to the cabin.

Choice quotations from the weekend:

"I'm going to Recoverite before I recover wrong." -Biggs, mixing post-ride drink while also scoping out beer.

Regarding RMCC radio in Mena, AR, featuring music ranging "from the sublime to the ridiculous.": "Are these guys streaming? Because if they're not, we need to get them a Kickstarter to start streaming." -MW

*UPDATE* They are not streaming. This little 500-watt station might need our help. We were continually amazed by its programming.

All in all, it was a great weekend. I feel like my comfort level on singletrack bounced just about back to where it was at the Dakota 5-O, with some technical skills much improved by the different terrain. I've never ridden that many miles of singletrack like that back to back, and that was pretty great, too. Moreover, it felt great, after a few months away from the mountain bike, to absolutely fall in love with riding it all over again. While I love all sorts of riding of bikes, there's a special feeling to ripping through really fast flowy singletrack that is just unmatched by anything else.

But more than anything, it was great to spend time in a beautiful place with such a good blend of people. We took care of each other, had a great time, laughed a lot, and came home with a nice stable of good vibes as we ease out of winter and into spring.


My Week #202 (February 25 - March 3) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

That's a happy lady on a bike right there. Yeah, sure, it was day one and I was feeling pretty fresh, loving the golden hour light. But I was just as happy on day 4... Super special thanks to Corey & Biggs for remembering what it's like being in grad school and helping make it a reality for me.

Sheclismo Herstory Hustle

Dang, that Berly Brown...what an artist! Meet her at Pepe's Thursday at 7:30 PM with $5 and a Barbie(ish) doll. And just in case you were wondering, both men and women are welcome to race. Very welcome. ;)

More info at http://lincolnhustle.blogspot.com

What does high school teach girls?

I'm hopping over to the Sociology department for one class this semester, and it does not disappoint. Take a deep breath, read this, and then consider what, if anything, has changed since James Coleman wrote this in 1960:

It is commonly assumed, both by educators and by laymen, that it is 'better' for boys and girls to be in school together during adolescence, if not better for their academic performance, then at least better for their social development and adjustment. But this may not be so; it may depend wholly upon the kinds of activities within which their association takes place. Coeducation in some high schools may be inimical to both academic achievement and social adjustment. The dichotomy often forced between 'life-adjustment' and 'academic emphasis' is a false one, for it forgets that most of the teen-ager's energy is not directed toward either of these goals. Instead the relevant dichotomy is cars and the cruel jungle of rating and dating versus school activities, whether of the academic or life-adjustment variety.

But perhaps, at least for girls, this is where the emphasis should be: on making themselves into desirable objects for boys. Perhaps physical beauty, nice clothes, and an enticing manner are the attributes that should be most important among adolescent girls. No one can say whether girls should be trained to be wives, citizens, mothers, or career women. Yet in none of these areas of adult life are physical beauty, and enticing manner, and nice clothes as important for performing successfully as they are in high school. Even receptionists and secretaries, for whom personal attractiveness is a valuable attribute, must carry out their jobs well, or they will not be able to keep them. Comparable performance is far less important in the status system of the high school, with its close tie to the rating and dating system. There a girl can survive much longer on personal attractiveness, an enticing manner, and nice clothes.

The adult women in which such attributes are most important are of a different order from wives, citizens, mothers, career women, secretaries: they are chorus girls, models, movie and television actresses, and call girls. In all these activities, women serve as objects of attention for men and, even more, objects to attract men's attention. These are quite different from the attributes of a good wife, which involve less superficial qualities. If the adult society wants high schools to inculcate the attributes that make girls objects to attract men's attention, then these values of good looks and nice clothes, discussed above, are just right. If not, then the values are quite inappropriate.

From The Adolescent Subculture and Academic Achievement, James S. Coleman, 1960

 

I fear that while some of the "job titles" may have changed, the status indicators and values have not. Then again, if you're to believe a recent column in the Daily Nebraskan, feminism just needs to admit it's over and women's rights have been "achieved" once and for all. Since, you know, it's hurting the job market and relationships and stuff.