Alleycat, musical obsessions

Last night, I did the Independence Day Alleycat in downtown Raleigh. An alleycat, it turns out, is a jolly bicycle scavenger hunt across town. Alleycat races were originally organized by bike messengers in New York and other big time towns to test the mettle of messengers in the face of heavy urban stuff - traffic, construction, crowds, etc. I reckon the edgy urban daredevil punk chic of it has brought it out of the big cities and into, well, somewhat less intense environs. But Raleigh's got bike punks - somewhere at the intersection of urban hipsters (sporting the latest local designers and copious tattoos), CrimethInc anarchist types (outside the system, below the radar, dumpster diving romantics), and bikers (think dressed entirely in spandex with clips on their shoes), there is the bike punk. A fabulous breed, really.

They kicked our asses, the bike punks did. The race took us a full two hours to complete. Word on the street was that someone had already won by the time we were about halfway. Tee hee. Kate and I were, at intervals, nauseous, giddy, grunting in pain, and shouting at the tops of our lungs that our asses hurt. But we finished the race (arrrr), in 30th and 31st places, out of 41 riders. Take that!! I wish I could scan my map of the race to show you all - it shows the whole convoluted route, and is tattered from 2 hours spent in my sweaty butt pocket, but alas, you'll have to take my word for it. It was long and sweaty. :)

It made me think about how Raleigh ain't that big. If I could bike, like, the entire town in one evening for a race, why couldn't I bike more places on an everyday basis? I really ought to. It'd be fun, and doubtless very good for my out-of-shape self.

It also made me think about how much more in touch you can be with your city if you spend most of your time biking and walking around it, as opposed to driving. In the car, you are really in your own little world. You can't stop and chat, you can't (usually) say hey to people you pass. Even beyond the potential for social interaction, you're just not so in touch with what you're passing - with what the air smells like, how the weather is, the scenery, etc. Biking, it's a little easier to feel in touch with all that. Part of Raleigh is just beautiful at night, and busy. Other places we biked through were downright sketchy and ugly. Construction sites, bad neighborhoods, etc. I think it's important to really feel all of that stuff when you're passing it, not just plow on through. I think it puts you in better touch with what, and who, is really in your town. No one and no place should be invisible, no one shouldn't matter to you, as a voter, and as a human! At the same time, being on a bike means you're safer (and faster!) traveling through rough neighborhoods than if you were on foot, and that's important, too.

So yes, I would like to bike more! The alleycats are highly recommended to my Raleigh friends with bikes.... and don't worry, they're not ALL bike punks, there are plenty of bike dorks, and just plain dorks, who participate as well. :)

In other news, I've got three awesome musical discoveries to share -

Beirut. Ah, be still my Polish heart. This album makes me feel lost in Eastern Europe. And stoned. But not in a bad way - I actually hate to be stoned, and hence haven't been in 7 or 8 years, at least. I mean in a good way. Kind of dreamy, like traveling, like when you're first riding into a new destination, or sitting quietly and watching a foreign town go by, and letting the newness and differentness and beauty of the place just seep into you. Your mind is quiet, you are in awe, you are taking it all in. It's an awesome feeling.

My Brightest Diamond. Moody and beautiful and rocking. A taste of Tori Amos, but in a rock way. I first saw them live, opening for The Decemberists, and they knocked my socks off. Also highly recommended!

And of course, The Number Twelve Looks Like You. I am SO PROUD of my brother for the new album, Mongrel (arrrr!). Wait 'til you sample some of it! You know, I don't generally dig the scream-o stuff, but even I can tell this album rocks. And look at the band glam shots. Holee crap, my brother (at far left in this pic) is always the freakiest looking one in all the pics.
I love that kid. :)

HOT

It's summer and it is hot hot HOT. Hecklers are out in full force in downtown Raleigh, hooting and shouting sweet nothings -
"Where have you been all my life, angel?!"
"Hello, beautiful!"
And the best one, from a young man waiting out front of a store on Wilmington Street yesterday - "right now I'm wishin' I was a little older!"
He was very young and cute, so that one was a little more sweet than icky. Just a little.
Shucks, fellas, thanks.
But generally, they're not so bad - there's not a whole lot that could scare me in broad daylight on a busy street. It is strange behavior, though. Does that ever work, do ladies ever go for a random catcaller on the street? Doesn't it scare off more ladies than it attracts?
Anyway, high temps mean the garden is growing at what seems like warp speed, weeds and all. Check out the giant, GREEN tomatoes. We keep thinking, oh, they'll turn red any day, but they don't. They just keep getting biggeR!

Garden6-28-07

I'm headed to the beach for the weekend, but not for fun.....for work! Not that work won't be fun, it will, and not that I won't squeeze in a little beach time on the side, I will, but it's less fun to go to the beach without friends, or even the dog. AND I have to wake up at an ungodly hour of the morning tomorrow. Bleh, I am so not a morning person.

Gigante

The garden is GIANT. Seriously. I am overwhelmed by how quickly things are growing, and by the quantity of food that is coming out of it. Aye carumba! Back when it was mostly dirt, it looked so modest. Just a few seeds thrown in, then little sprouts, and I thought, sure, what's one more tomato plant, or a few more lettuce seeds, throw 'em in there.
Well, we now have a lot of food. And, most of the kids have been at summer camp for a couple weeks, so they haven't been around to help with the eating of stuff.

Garden6-15-07

In other news, Amy and I had an anniversary yesterday. No, not the date we met, not the day we hatched our greatest scheme or anything like that. It was the 5th (is it 5th??) anniversary of the day we got ridiculously horribly obscenely publicly drunk by drinking alarmingly cheap bai jiu in a plastic squirt top bottle, a.k.a. "The infamous bai jiu incident." We meandered through the sleepy little town of Kangding, drinking our portable stash (it's what squirt top bottles are made for, baby!) and yucking it up in two languages. I remember skipping, I remember song and dance, I remember talking to random people, I even remember stopping to use the bathroom - one of those terrible stinky pit toilets where you have squat and suspend yourself over the chasm...in the dark...and somehow, our drunken selves did not fall in. It was a rather amazing night, right up until Amy got sick (ahem) and sorta passed out. From there on out, it was scary. It's a kind of horrible, but also kind of wonderful anniversary. Why do we remember such a painful day with such glee? Maybe we are so ridiculously squirt-top-bottle-half-full about life, we still appreciate the joy of that night, even though it ended so terribly. Or maybe we're secretly giant lushes.

Bottoms up, love!

PS: I miss Wu Bangfu, Amy. Among the many hilarious Mr. Wu stories I have, there is one from the morning after the infamous bai jiu incident, when he got called in to "handle" the situation (at 9 freakin' AM the next morning!!). After we'd had the formal meeting with the assistant headmaster and English department chairs to express the school's concern for our safety given our (admittedly ridiculous) behavior of the night before, Mr. Wu and I were left in the office alone. He said to me: "you must not be feeling so well." And I: "uh, no." He: "Well, me neither. I drank a lot last night, too, and they woke me up very early to come down here!" Me: cracking up. Mr. Wu: "One time, I got so drunk, I was sick for two days. But really, I'm a very good drinker. Next time you want to drink, you should be sure to invite me." Then, he bought me breakfast and laughed at me all the while, as it became apparent to both of us that I was not in fact hung over, but rather still somewhat drunk. Ah, Mr. Wu. I love that guy.



Wu Bangfu plays a little ditty on a tin whistle, drunk from the bottles of beer which he uncapped with his teeth. Don't ask me how - the man was just a little bit bionic. He also walked very fast.

strawberry smorgasbord

Kate and I went strawberry picking on Friday at Hilltop Farms! What started out as a royally disappointing afternoon turned into a pretty gorgeous evening. We'd been planning this strawberry picking trip with the garden crew from the Boys' Club for at least a month. The kids got their permission slips all filled in and planned out the questions they were going to ask Farmer Fred about his all-organic farm....and then the trip got postponed because of bureaucratic issues at The Boys' Club. Oh, how they whined. But we rescheduled.....only to have the bus break down the day we rescheduled to. Kate and I, upon learning this, were already convened and ready to bolt from work early to head down to the farm. After a brief spell of whining ourselves about the poor kids, we said, hey, let's go anyway and pick strawberries for the kids. And we did.

When we arrived, Farmer Fred happened to be giving an interview for a local newspaper about strawberries, and the whys and wherefors of organic food. Media darling that I am (hah!), and long-time member of Fred's CSA, I contributed my two cents and posed pretty for the camera.
Then we picked strawberries. Oh, glorious Sweet Charlies, oh heavenly blue evening, thou didst make all my troubles melt away. Strawberries plucked from the bushes and eaten immediately are mind-blowingly good.

strawberry picking 5/18/07

Then, after a mellow round of strawberry picking, we were invited in for beers and got to hear about Farmer Fred's nomination to be part of the 100 People Project. Have you heard about this? I had a vague recollection of hearing the words before, but didn't really understand what it was about, still don't entirely, but damn, does it seem cool.

The [100 People] project will find and capture in film, photography, music and text 100 individuals who represent the global population, proportionate to annual global surveys and statistics. This World Portrait will be used to make an introduction between the peoples of the earth and to facilitate a greater understanding of the diversity and the commonalities among us.

Check it out, it's quite cool. And, under the "videos" tab, you can see some beautifully done trailers, a piece from Niger, AND a piece from NC featuring our own Farmer Fred. It makes me get all misty, it's so beautiful.

Tomorrow, we make strawberry shortcakes and spring salad at the Boys' Club. I'm still disappointed the kids couldn't have come to the farm, but I hope eating the strawberries will be a halfway decent consolation prize.

Coming 'round the bend....

Ah, I'm coming 'round the bend in that funky little side track I've been on the past month or so, and it feels really nice. It's hard not to feel kinda nice on a day like today - it's cloudy and breezy and mild, the world is lushly green and still dripping from yesterday's thunderstorms, and the air has a quality that it occasionally gets in Raleigh, it's refracting light in just such a way.....it sparkles just a little when the sun comes out, and everything looks as though it has just a bit of a sheen. Not quite a glow, it's less like light and more like energy. Like auras. It's very animate, though it is air and trees and clouds. It's really beautiful. Makes me think of....

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty in the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Ah.
Doesn't that just open something up inside you and make you want to sigh with relief?

This funk I've been in, it's got me thinking about funks and how they come and how they (hopefully) get gone. It's so easy to get ourselves stuck in a funk, easy as a habit. But the getting unstuck, that takes some time and effort and faith and hope. Hard. I think that one of the most important things that we can learn to do in life is to help ourselves out of a funk, to have a forward orientation and put one foot in front of the other and climb up out of a stuck place, get back up someplace high enough to see what's on the horizon. We need help, we all do, but ultimately, we have to do the climbing ourselves.

So here's to getting un-stuck, to the hope and faith in ourselves and the ones we love and the world that helps us get through the stuck times, and to all the good teachers who've helped me get un-stuck from previous funks. I'm really proud to say that I learned something. :)

UPDATE: Relatively recent garden pictures from 5/14! I think the way this slide show thingy works, is if you click on a picture, it'll take you to the site where all the pictures are posted. Check out the pumpkin jungle, I think that's my favorite picture!