Pedals

...as in effect, not bicycle.

This board has, among other things: two flavors of overdrive. a fuzz, three kinds of modulation, two reverbs, and a delay. It's probably clear this is for Shoegaze.

Off-Bike Activities

I recently came up for some mountain biking air after a few-year side trip into playing guitars, or at least trying to. I've remained a committed bike commuter throughout, but most of my fun-ride time was turned into playing time, bike swaps were swapped for attendance at live shows, and pedals came to refer to effects, not bike parts. BeanSS and I finally put some dirt under our wheels last week and I got out again today as a sort of New Year's resolution. As the photos show, it wasn't exactly a backcountry adventure, but it did the job. Oh, and it was 75 degrees out, reason enough not to plug a Jazzmaster into an amp.

Riding away

The past two days have been surreal. After having begged off of happy hour with my colleagues and their non-work friends for many years, I finally threw in last night. Unfortunately, it was to attend a wake for another mutual friend's untimely passing. A pint of his favorite stout was placed by his urn, and his friends and family shared stories about his life. There was some crying, but there was even more laughing - just as it should have been. This afternoon, I helped spread his ashes. Given that he was a mountain biker, I got on my own mountain bike, zipped down a hill, and cut a portion of his remains loose over a couple hundred yards of a local trail network he'd ridden many times.



It felt a bit strange to have done these things. The fact is that I hadn't spoken to him in the year since he'd retired from our work. He kept going to the bar with the gang, but I was never there. In the past, we'd talked at length about cycling and shared a lot of laughs during work. We ran into one another now and then away from the office - once at a trail and a few times at a bike shop or the bike swap meet - but we certainly never met up on purpose.

On the other hand, he had an enduring influence on my life. I was complaining about my sore back and he said I needed to start lifting weights and working out. I followed his advice, and am still with it 11 years later. He was even more of a Clydesdale than I am, so his recommendations for bombproof bike parts were taken seriously. In turn, I gave him crap about sticking with 26"-wheeled bikes as 29ers, then 27.5ers took over. I picked him up at the hospital once; he'd had surgery to repair his broken (while biking, of course) wrist.

His death was tragic and entirely unanticipated. I felt that being there to celebrate his life and to help lay his remains to rest in a place he loved was the least I could do for his grieving family and friends.

Take care, Mark.

New girl

It took a long time to feel ready to add another heartbeat to the household after having lost persnickety little Dora and dear sweet Clayton. It took another good amount of time to get around to making this announcement.

This is Stella. She's very nice and has unlimited energy.

She's supposedly some sort of cattle dog mix, but she might well be a Konaby (the impossible offspring of the late Kona and Barnaby) or maybe a even melanistic coyote.

The best dog ever

CLAYTON

2005-2014

This perfectly kind boy was taken from us yesterday, without any warning and with no opportunity to fight for his life. The grief is incomprehensible.

"In the end, all you can hope for is the love you felt to equal the pain you've gone through."

Tom Smith, Editors, Bones

Pedaling through

It's been just over a week since BeanSS and I said goodbye to our little Dora. One thing has nothing to do with the other, but it seems many of our most trying times with our dogs have occurred during the summer, either the abject inferno of June or the nearly unbearable heat and humidity of the months-long Mexican Monsoon.

I've long used bicycling to clear my mind, and I've been riding quite a bit lately. I still tear up from time to time, but the burning in my quads does help distract me from the aching of my heart. And while the stifling air hasn't kept me from riding, it's meant that I've been opting more often for a road rather than mountain bike. It's uncomfortably sultry no matter what, but it feels a little more tolerable to be zipping along on pavement rather than grunting up a rocky climb with sweat pouring into my eyes.

This morning's ride was actually fairly nice, though I ended up riding into (and back out of) the path of a small rain cell. My "rain bike" is a sweet, steel Kona. And this, by the way, is where it all started. Our first dog is the only one so far which we actually named ourselves, and the name we picked was Kona, partly for the coffee but mostly for the bikes, which I lusted after at the time.

And this would be an even better rain bike if I'd go ahead and put fenders on it. That's not some retro splatter paint job, it's flecks of mud.  I'm still not clear how crap gets on the front of the head tube, but nevertheless, there it is.

Another goodbye

DORA
2002-2014

Friday morning's passage of butterflies meant the time had come. The mid-afternoon heat dried our tears and warmed our broken hearts. The thunderstorm and rainbow at sunset assured us she'd be with us forever.