Jorpblog

Last Sunday I got up at 4:10am to join about 20,000 other bikers riding on Lake Shore Drive.

I was pretty nervous about the event, but in retrospect I don’t really know why. I guess part of it was just the anticipation of getting up that early in the morning. Also, I’d never riden 30 miles non-stop before. I think the longest ride I’d had before was to Sara’s parent’s house in HP–about 15 miles. Of course I did ride back later that day, but that’s still different, isn’t it? And that was a pretty leisurely ride with Sara.

The Drive was open to bikes from 5:30 to 9:45. The information packet I got in the mail after registering suggested different amounts of time to allow depending on whether you were a beginner, intermediate or expert rider. I don’t own a $1000 road bike or hundreds of dollars in hi-tech clothes (see photos for proof), so I wasn’t sure how to rate myself. Most of my riding is the 7 miles each way to work.

They said that if you were an expert rider (15mph) to allow 2:30 for the whole ride and if you were intermediate (10mph) to allow 3:30 hours, in each case with a 1/2 hour break. So I decided to allow 3 hours for the ride and an 1:15 to get downtown where it started.

I rode to the Howard El station (conserving my energy) and then took the train downtown. By the time we got to the Jackson stop there were about 8-10 bikes on my car alone. That felt good. Some non-bikers were coming home from parties, others going to work, others…who knows.

It was dark when I left but pretty bright by the time I got downtown. And the streets were full of bikes! The turnout was so overwhelming and satisfying…tandems, triple-tandems, low-riders, recumbent and recumbent-tandems, kids, seniors, disabled, families, bikes with trailers carrying boomboxes playing James Brown…I wanted to slow down and ride with that guy, but I couldn’t do it.

I raced. Not the whole way, but full of excitement, I couldn’t ride slowly (that’s often tough for me). In the end, it took me 1:52, which translates to 16mph. I only stopped once to take off my fleece and finished before 8am.
Later that day I drove a car (BOOO!), and with Sara out of town, I drove to work every day this week.

But I think I finally found a decent biking route to the new work place, so I plan to get right back to it next week.

Some great pictures by other folks on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jthorvath/2531933520/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sailorv202/2529642970/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/khim/2525878369/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whateverland/2521265457/

Most of my friends are artists and musicians, and so when I meet new people–usually a friend of a friend–they often ask me if I’m a this or a that. No, I say, not really…and then I go on to explain that I’ve learned things here and there, but no, I’m not a [whatever]…

I taught myself the basic blues harp long ago, fooled around with a wood flute my parents picked in Indonesia, and learned some Moroccan rhythms through osmosis. I’ve collected 3 frame drums, 2 classic Quentin drums, a set of quacaba, a mizmar, nirra, and ghytta, and then some cow bells and a Chinese stone flute and some Moroccan horn that I can’t even remember the name of. Then there’s the coconut shells and the weird gray dowels I found at work that happen to be excellent claves.

Still, I’ve always considered myself an outsider. I’d jam with my friends, but when the spotlight was on, I’d be in the back or dancing off to the side.

But this Sunday was the first performance of the Chicago Aissawa Project, and since I am one of the founding members, I have promoted myself to musician effective immediately.

OK, it was 15 minutes, in a gymnasium with kids hula-hooping as we played, and it was for free…but it was also loads of fun, people liked us despite most of them having no experience with that style of music, and things went pretty well for a first performance.

There’s about 15 sometimes members, and usually about 5-6 at any given practice, but we had 10 for this Sunday’s show and that’s a good number. 12 is better (add a nefar, add a tasa player), but 10 works fine.

With any luck, you’ll be seeing more entries about Chicago Aissawa.

Here are some short movies that Sara shot of the performance:

Quest Fest Movies

This past weekend I went caving for the first time in a wild cave near Bloomington, Indiana. First of all, caves are amazing, beautiful, otherworldly. The other point about them is that they’re all over the place!

Here you can see Quentin and Heather climbing across a stone bridge in what looks daring and perilous, but was really just for fun and to get a different view. The ground–about 8 feet below–was perfectly safe to walk on, but in several places like this you could choose the low road or the high road. In some places, there were two shelf levels, so you could even choose the middle road.

We were in the cave for about 5 hours and were glad to get out…but now I’m ready to go back in.

On one of the hottest weekends of the year, we made our pilgramage to EarthCircles.

Other than the usual wood gathering and cutting and food prep work, we had to trim the grass to avoid the onslaught of mosquitos and ticks. Aaron drove around the riding mower, but Sara volunteered for the handmower. Looks like she had a lot of fun. Maybe if we buy a house someday she’ll get a chance to make a hobby of it…though I see us as cultivating the natural prairie plants rather than the ubiquitous green lawn.

OK, this was actually a 12″ long baby milk snake that Sara and I saw on a walk along the nearby road. Still pretty cool though.

There’s also a pond that they made recently, and here you can see the deck that Greg and Robert worked on while we were doing the plastering.

I’d say the pond is maybe 100 yards across. Now it’s stocked with little fish and tons of tadpoles. Because that isn’t enough, there’s some plan for an underwater chamber, though the design and engineering haven’t been worked out yet.

Jamie, Ryan and I went for a nice swim shortly after this photo. It wasn’t too cold on the surface, but you only have to go down a few feet before it gets frigid.

So there is this other house on the land…Apparently, just a couple years ago this was a 1-room, door and windowless, corrugated aluminum shed. Now it’s an amazine barn-style house with a really open feeling, lots of light (despite the short windows), and beautiful furnishings.

If you don’t feel like roughing it, you can be in the country, but sleep in style. The kitchen counter has got to be my favorite piece in the place.

Here’s a good view of the windows, welded by Quentin, and some of the facets of the roof.

Greg puts everybody to work, and now I’m proud to be part of the club. Before working on the treehouse, Jamie did raku for Greg. Heather is pretty much running the Raku Vessels business now. And Sache is working on his “All the…” projects.

The treehouse is built on a slope (the structure itself is level) and the windows look down the hill, so you’ve got quite a view. Of course you’re in the woods, but near enough to the edge to see for some distance.

The natural light is great, but you know there have to be outlets in the walls and solar panels on the roof.

Greg doesn’t seem to do anything the quick and easy way. Not that he can’t work fast–he and Robert put up a shed in a day and a half. But on the walls withough windows, he decided that solid wood would be boring and there should be some contrast.

So he and Jamie cut out the rectangles, built frames, filled it with recycled denim insulation and then left it to us to attach the metal grille and plaster it over. (It’s a light weight natural plaster, by the way, since you don’t want to put unnecessary weight onto a treehouse.)

It’s nearly done here–just a little sponging to even things out. The painting and trim will be done sometime soon.

So it does exist after all. I’d heard about this tree house for about 2 years–the 9 trees supporting it, the working kitchen and bathroom, the many-faceted roof, etc.

It seemed entirely possible that Jamie was just making it all up to support some mysterious double life she was leading. Maybe she was going to Wisconsin every weekend for a secret rendezvous with some cowboy…

But there it was, nearly finished as promised. And it’s going to be gorgeous. Should be ready to move in by the end of the summer.