Merry (Belated) Christmas to Me...

It was 16ºF when I rode my bicycle out toward Mickey's...

I had some Christmas money, that is to say gifts of cash given to me, that in my mind were earmarked for cycling gear.

In particular, warm boots and a cycling jacket.

The boots were actually purchased, in fact, at Mickey's Surplus. They have a pretty restrictive return policy, but my first commutes to work had resulted in a bad case of toesicles and I wasn't having it.

Then Corinna found out the boots I was riding in had steel toes, and she thought that was the problem. It's a pair of waffle stompers I bought when I was twelve, and I never thought about the steel toe, but apparently once it gets cold it really wants to suck the heat out of the flesh toes in the boot.

Speaking of Corinna, I spotted this old Army bike at Mickeys that was so...her.



My waterproof boots have no such toe, they're cheapies from Wal-Mart bought because of chronic basement/garage flooding, and while they don't have a couple pounds of high-tech insulation for each foot, they do block the wind and don't act as a heat sink to suck the warmth from my toes.



And for $1.29, on days when I'm going to be out awhile, I can put Toastie Toes chemical warmers on and I'm good for ten hours even in the single digits. So I wanted the $137 I paid for the boots back and hoped I hadn't managed to scuff them enough in my bedroom to be stuck with them.

The jacket would still be nice. The thing about cycling jackets is you want to block the wind on your chest and shoulders but you don't want your back all sealed up. You're exerting and you sweat no matter how cold it is.

Fortunately, I was a big Mork & Mindy fan growing up, and I realized that if I put my coat on backwards, it would function perfectly in this regard. I'm certain I looked as ridiculous as a guy riding in the snow with a Hawaiian shirt and half a tutu on his head, but my arms and chest were warm and my back was comfortably vented.

What to do with that Christmas money then? A thinking man would probably have fixed his damned garage door opener, but my inner child drowned out this thought for a couple of weeks by shouting, 'CAMERA! I WANT A NEW CAMERA! YOU SEE WHAT KIND OF FREAKIN' CAMERAS YOU CAN GET FOR LESS THAN THAT OLD POWERSHOT COST YOU?'

My inner child kept this shit up for weeks. Really, the whining started a couple years ago, and it's not as if I don't use a camera.

Since I bought my last PowerShot, I've clicked off over 54,000 snap shots and videos. Sure I want a pro camera, but I don't have the budget for the glass, let alone the frame of a decent dSLR.





And when I do, someday, find myself in the way for a full frame dSLR, I'll have some idea how to use it from snapping so many pics with my pocket cameras in manual, aperture priority, shutter speed priority, etc. In my obsessive way, I've become the opposite of the guy with the pro camera that's never been off 'auto,' I'm the guy with the amateur camera that might as well not have an 'auto.'

And lovely as those full frame dSLRs are, you can't put a two pound camera in your breast pocket. You can't take that monster into the circus or most concerts, and you can't shoot video of your girlfriend riding down Beardsley from the saddle of your moving bicycle with one hand. So even if I had a Nikon D3 I'd still want a pocket camera with some balls.

Mickey's refunded me on the boots, and I resisted the worst temptation ever while there. I bought some wool socks and an extra balaclava, but there were these gloves that almost had me deciding to get another year or two out of that A570IS PowerShot.



Ridiculous, I know, but in a perfect kind of way. A pink tulle helmet poof, a coat on backwards, to top it off you see your friendly neighborhood commuting cyclist pedal up the street in biker gloves he obviously stole from Gene Simmons' dressing room.

They seemed like warm gloves, and who could beat them for visibility? But they were expensive and I already have warm gloves and mittens that have so far served me well into the single digits. And I couldn't really get the camera if I said yes to the sexy armored gloves.

And as I say, my inner child was looking at the 4x zoom capability my 7 megapixel PowerShot offered and seeing cameras with double the resolution and over three times the optical zoom and my inner child was having a tantrum.



So the gloves stayed at Mickey's and I rode off to Crick to buy my camera except I didn't make it to Crick. I was trying to make the 3:00 ride in the Crossroads, and there was a Wal-Mart so much closer.

Then I found myself with the camera and a battery I didn't recognize. The shape of the body was all wrong, and to top it all of the F-stop range wasn't as wide as the old camera.

I so wished I'd gone to the camera shop and let the camera shop guys ply their expertise. I bought my last camera at Crick and while they're not always the cheapest, they're not far from it and they know photography. I described what I like to use my camera for, what I objected to in the new PowerShot, and told them that I basically had some buyer's remorse and was thinking of returning this sucker to Wal-Mart and bringing the refund to Crick.

What I paid for the new camera was, in fact, the exact dollar amount of the old camera I bought at Crick in 2007. Surely they could turn the same sum into another three and a half years of photographic satisfaction.




What camera would they recommend? In the end, the salesman told me he'd probably keep the camera I bought. Talk about honesty, he could have probably talked me into anything in his case at or below the same price and he instead told me the optics of the lens on the camera I bought were worth the price of admission alone. I could, in his view, save forty or fifty bucks but I'd be giving up more than that in performance and by the time I've shot fifty thousand frames, would I really benefit?

I missed the 3:00 ride anyway, so I definitely should have toughed it out and gone to Crick. I did, on the plus side, manage to spend eight hours in the saddle on a day that never even threatened to get above freezing. I had some hamstring cramps in the evening, I need to remember to hydrate as if it were hot outside when it's freezing cold.


And of course I took pictures of everything, even my cell phone.

First Friday of 2011

Made another First Fridays with the Poet Laureate. I was late getting downtown, then it took forever to get my bike ready to ride, and then to find her. The 'rolling bicycle based health fair display booth' should be pretty easy to spot, especially with the helmet fluff and on a night when the cold and wind kept most people home, but I finally gave up and called her cell.



The cold wasn't that bad, but the winds were epic. I was impressed that she was able to ride with the banner in place. I'm pretty sire if she'd caught the wind just right, she could have gotten pulled over for speeding without even pedaling.




Inside the Bad Seed, the folk band was playing, and I went over to watch and listen, but the singer told everyone to turn around and check out who just walked in. And I realized as I was ready to snap what had been intended to be a picture of the band and its audience that what I really got was a shot of my own audience getting a load of the guy with the Hawaiian shirt on over his wools and half a tutu coming out of his helmet.



I suppose I do cut a figure, but yikes. I didn't mean to upstage the band. A really adorable little girl came up to me a minute later to tell me she liked my helmet and that it was 'awesome.'



We ran into some of Corinna's posse, a group of urban cyclists, including a couple I remember from the Chocolate Dumpster and from Cranksgiving.



A gent was handing out what felt, in the dark, like money. I looked down to see it was a million dollar bill, one with a message about going to hell on the back. It's Jesus money, which means it saves but doesn't really spend that well. I've been carrying it around ever since and enjoying the expressions on cashiers' faces when I ask them if they can break a million.



I also saw a dude in a skirt. Not a kilt, though it had the appearance of maybe being a Slavic equivalent. Maybe that was the hat, a big, gorgeous fur thing I coveted shamelessly. A hat like that, who'd even need a helmet?



I asked if it was an ethnic type thing and he said no, it was a look of his own devising. And the folk singer thought I was worth comment, at least I was wearing pants. I've always wanted a kilt but I don't see myself wearing it on a night like this, especially what with the risk that the wind would expose my bits and pieces. If I'm going to show the arts district my junk, I definitely don't want icy cold temperatures making it a study in minimalism.



Back when I met Corinna, the first thing I asked was if she knew which street turned into the Heart of America bridge, which has a famously new bike-pedestrian lane. I didn't really need to get to the other side, but trying to chart out certain trips I'd come to realize that getting across big rivers was a major problem. Most bridges over such things are Interstate highways, and I can't legally ride them even if I wasn't too risk averse to do so.



So we bombed the HOA. The hill leading down to the bridge is fantastic if you wait for a fresh green light at the first intersection you can break 30 miles per hour with a 30 mile per hour head wind. We only rode about halfway across, it was cold, it was windy and we didn't really need to get north of the river. We did want to check out what kind of free food was on offer at the Mayor's headquarters. Funkhouser's lackeys had been handing out leaflets in the Crossroads promoting the event.

Oh, after I put that YouTube up, I got to thinking perhaps a soundtrack:

Heart of America Bridge from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Funk is hard for me to figure. He's as close to a straight shooter as anyone I've ever seen attain an office as politically significant as Mayor of Kansas City. And I've maintained for a long time that he's the best mayor KC has had in thirty or forty years: for once there aren't a bunch of crooked TIF deals going through to rob the handful of unfortunate taxpayers that city still has to pay racist developers to build money-pits in the name of the City Beautiful. The million bucks or so it's cost to deal with Mrs. Funk's antics is a bargain compared to having another Glover Plan or Power & Light District.




What I can't figure out with Funkhouser is not why he insists on bringing his wife to work, it's why someone as wonky and basically descent as he seems to be would want anything to do with politics.

I felt weird being there because I don't live in the city so I can't vote for or against him. Then again, I pay the stupid Earnings Tax, truly a case of taxation without representation, so I guess I have a dog in the fight after all. Not that Funk is, as far as I can tell, against the Earnings Tax, but he does seem to be against pissing it away.



We did pay a brief visit to the grate I ate back then. I'm now officially a litigant against the city, by the way. I complained through the city's web site and was told to fuck off in polite terms, that I have 'a duty' to pay attention when 'driving' my bicycle on their streets. My attorney then sent them a lawyerly version of that complaint and they told me, politely, through him, to fuck off.



So I filed suit. I'm certain I have a winnable case, that I'm right and they're wrong. I'm told I shouldn't take it personally, but I have real damages and continue to suffer real pain, and it's not my fault if the KCMO public works people suck at their jobs. I want the city to at least realize that it would be cheaper to replace a few hundred dollars of steel grate than to keep defending an indefensible piece of infrastructure. At least they could fix the street before someone going faster than I was ends up crippled or killed.

I'm sure these things move at a glacial tempo. I won't try waiting under water.



I'm told by the Poet Laureate that the city has done a lot to improve its bicycle friendliness, and I'm relatively new to urban cycling so I have to take her word for it that Kansas City could have actually been worse at one time. From what I see, Olathe has more bike lanes and no homicidal grates in their streets, this paid for by a population a fourth the size of KC's, so KCMO would need to do more than put a concrete divider by the shoulder of a bridge and paint a few 'sharrows' on Armour to win me over.

First Friday of 2011

Choir Concert

Em's choir concert had been iced out back in December and the rematch was tonight.



I had fun playing with my camera, and maybe I played harder because I had Camera Envy when it came to the woman sitting behind me with a monster dSLR.



I was never aware of the shutter noise of a camera in a concert before this, but hers made that ratchet-ish sound I associate with the old 32mms.



My camera doesn't make a squawk like that, but it's not silent, or it wasn't. I searched the menu and discovered it has a 'mute' setting. Only three and a half years, maybe 80,000 shutters, I found it out fast.



Knowing my camera doesn't do much good in low light at distance has never stopped me though. 256 frames I mashed out in self-conscious silence. Thinking a time or two, is that sound still a physical phenomena, the result of the mirror swinging out of the way of the sensor? Or is it puffery designed to make someone feel they got their eight hundred bucks worth?



Partly it was my usual shutterbug tendencies, but hearing that high end camera at close range, I found myself clicking away even when my kid wasn't on stage.



Desperately, I tried shutter speeds and ISO settings, zooms and pans with the intention to crop. I shot dark with the intention to Photoshop things brighter.



And in the process, I got some hero shots, despite the limitations of my antique Powershot. Including some shots of this girl from one of the 'feeder' choirs who didn't seem to do much singing, but sure seemed to get lost in the moment.

Putty

I had the green therapy putty with me to work on rehabbing my gimpy finger while we waited for Em's choir concert.



Then Mo got hold of it and played with it the whole night.




I fretted some that it would get stuck to her clothes (not impossible, voice of experience here). But I think I'm going to try to bring a lump of it to everything I need her to sit quietly for. I'm pretty sure she'll work harder for green putty than she would for my personal approbation.

My Block

A sign greeted me on the way to the choir concert:

Bubba

On the way in to the choir concert, I saw this trophy, a monster, in the school's display case. Being a football fan, I was sad for GEHS to get knocked out of their best shot at a state championship in probably ever. But what I hear is football isn't even Bubba's sport, he's even more promising as a baseball player.



I can relate, if in a small way: I made State jazz band my junior year of high school and when I sent my audition tape as a senior, I was so much better than I had been a year before that it was shocking to find out some other guitarist had snagged my spot.



And given that there are probably a hundred young quarterbacks for every high schooler with dreams of headlining the Village Vanguard, I'm sure I discovered I wasn't the biggest fish in an even smaller pond.

The Urban Night

Some shots video from urban odysseys I went on with Corinna this week. A rumble-bump gravel ride along a levee I failed to fully appreciate; a loop around the bottoms and along a spooky-ass bridge under Central; a ride into a theoretically dodgy neighborhood for a poetry open mic.



The first video needs some explanation: I was prepared to be skeptical of Donnovan's poetry, and when I realized how good he was I'd already missed the best thing he did Tuesday night. He seemed to be free-styling, but there were so many internal rhymes and double entendres and layered meanings that it didn't seem possible it wasn't memorized verse.



As great as this clip is (if you can hear, the clarity from my camera really doesn't measure up to live), what he did right before this was bigger and badder.



For that matter, even though he was going like an auctioneer, I found myself able to follow the twists and turns. Like he was on a fast motorcycle in the mountains and I was riding bitch and just hanging on.

Commute

The forecast said it would be 13ºF when I set out to commute from the Poet Laureate's abode to work on Monday.



To my pleasant surprise, it was a balmy 28ºF. To my less pleasant surprise, I had a case of toecicles by the time I got halfway there. My boots seemed to do okay on the 18ºF ice cream run, but that was a much shorter ride. The steel toe is apparently the culprit, once it gets cold it sucks the heat right out of you.



The other thing I totally underestimated was how sweaty my body would get. The coat I wear isn't much in the way of insulation, it's mainly wind and water resistant. Cycling jackets are ventilated to allow some of that buildup out, and I think I may need to invest in one of those.



Though actually, on the return ride I broke down to just a thin wool sweater and a Hawaiian shirt and my upper body was fine in the 30-ish temperatures.



On the second day, I saw this sign while waiting for a train in the West Bottoms. I should have heeded the sign. Corinna had ridden me about half way in on Monday, knowing the Bottoms have a learning curve (the streets tend to look alike and they run at about 45º angle relative to the city's grid). Not having her to sherpa me through, I just waited for this idiot freight train, freezing my ass off for probably twenty minutes. If I'd gone back a block and turned right, there's a bridge that would have taken me over the tracks and into Downtown.



Owing to where I parked, I guess, I missed this big sculpture when I took the girls to the Gao Bros. exhibition at the Kemper.





Corinna met me a bit more than half way on the return trip Tuesday. I realized after the fact that our rendezvous was right about where we met on our first date.



We ran into some of her friends at the Broadway Cafe while I made gear adjustments, shedding gear I had thought necessary that now seemed only appropriate for an Antarctic ride.



The friends were on fixies, single speed bikes that require the freakish athleticism most people never have, especially after the age of eight or nine. One had a modest hand brake just in case, but the other was a pure track bike. I commented that it was utterly innocent of brakes and Travis waved his and dismissively, saying, 'Brakes are for stopping.'



So then it was Taco Tuesday at El Bonito Michoacan, where I ordered four Chorizo tacos and a Barbacoa. Corinna asked, 'What did you ride your bike or something?'



Yep, 54 miles in two days that would normally have been goose eggs for mileage due to temperature alone.