Back in the Pink

I remember a movie I saw on TV as a kid, black & white, Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Okay, I don't really remember the movie except it was about a boxer who died by mistake, or someone else who died by mistake and a boxer took over his body or something like that.

It was a long time ago, and especially as I kid I had trouble tracking black & white movies most of the time. Except I remember this phrase the protagonist had for being in shape: 'in the pink.'

I'm sure I don't meet that definition of the phrase, but I am indeed back in the pink. When I met Corinna, she had a pink helmet mohawk made of tulle. It was awesome. Not long after we started dating, she gave me one just like it.


After awhile the things faded out, and she made a new one for herself out of some fine-textured pink tulle that I just didn't dig. She got a bunch of it when she bought it, so if I wanted to match I should have just made one out of that stuff, but I didn't like it.

When I went to buy some large-gauge, coarse tulle, I thought maybe purple for the color. So then we were riding with different colors and textures, and while anyone outside us would say they were pretty much the same thing I didn't feel like they were.

So we were in the grocery store the other day and they had shower scrubbies in a bin for a buck. I was in a shit mood, no interest in retail at all, but Corinna tipped the display over and started rooting around for pink ones.

She was right: shower scrubbies are texturally the same but most of the sewing is already done for you. And these had little cubes of colored sponge embedded in them for extra clownish density.

So last weekend I sewed two sets of three together and zip-tied them to our helmets to restore symmetry and geometry to our romance.

Whoop Dee Doo

Plaza

I got this from the top of the UMKC student union building the other night. With more time, a tripod, and less wind, it'd be a pretty good place to shoot the Plaza from.

Banjo

Plane Crash

St. Patrick's Day Parade

I've watched plenty of parades, but this is the first time I've been part of the show.

BikeWalkKC was, I think, the 84th entrant in the Kansas City St. Patrick's Day Parade.

I was riding in a panic to get there by 9:45 as instructed. I needed some green helmet mohawk makings, so that meant a stop by a Wal-Mart. Which meant chancing the 18th Street Expressway to get to Roeland Park on the way to midtown.

It's not that scary a road, really, except there's not much of a shoulder for a lot of it, and the traffic (what little there is early on a Saturday morning) moves fast. The main danger point seems to be the exit to Kansas Avenue, which isn't any too long, so cars figure they have to make a dive for it even if that means diving in front of a bike.

But they're diving so much faster than me, there's not much chance for a collision. I hope.


Anyway, as I approached the parade route, there were cars everywhere. Parked, looking for places to park, trying to find a way through despite all the cars.

I got to a road block and decided it would be wiser to seek forgiveness than permission, and cruised right by a cop. Nobody said a thing, and I cruised right up Broadway the last five or six blocks to the staging area unmolested.

One of those things you can do with a bike. Try that shit in a car or even on a motorcycle and you won't even get to explain that you're part of the parade.

Anyway, the bike-pedestrian people were all still decorating their bikes, too. I only had green shower scrubbies to make a green helmet mohawk (more of a three-puff array than a mohawk it turned out), but was offered balloons and crepe streamers and spent over an hour decorating my bike thinking that any minute we'd be mounting up.

Nope. This is a huge parade, and we were near the last of it. So I got to take plenty of pictures.

The wind was pretty intense (I'd notice the headwind riding out to get there), but it blew the clouds away and we had a bright, sunny crawl down Broadway when we finally did get going.

An old black man with a cigar sticking out of his ear* joined us on the route. He wasn't at the staging ground, but his bike was decorated. Not for St. Pat's necessarily, but he had improvised reflectors running the lengths of his spokes. When the parade (frequently) stopped, he would hold out his shirt front to make sure people could read it.

It was a t-shirt advertising the Green Duck Lounge on Prospect. I thought I remembered it from twenty years ago when I had a distribution route to run down that street. A seedy joint as I recalled. A Google search reveals that a few months ago it drew the full attention of Jean Peters Baker's prosecutor's office because so much drug dealing and murder was going on in and around it.

There was a band near us in the staging area with a stage set up on a trailer, with their girlfriends to rotate the drum riser (which was on a sort of Lazy Susan).

Also the roller derby girls, no doubt the sexiest entrants in the parade.

It was, I think almost two hours after the official parade start time when we were finally rolling. I could have stopped for breakfast and shopped in three or four more places for decorations if I'd had any idea.

Even once you're moving, it's a real stop and go affair, more so than I would have thought by watching parades.

I really want a green head-to-toe suit. For cold winter days, it would be perfect: socks, gloves, thermal underwear and balaclava all in one.

The pelican bike wasn't very green, but the guy riding it claimed to be color blind.

After the parade was over, making my way back through midtown the traffic was even more jammed up than coming in. It was liberating to be able to weave between cars that had no possible place to move.

After seeing all the vendors along the parade route and not having had breakfast, I was hoping for a vendor to be stationed at the bottom of the route to sell to hungry paraders. No such luck, though I did get a truck that was packing up to sell me a couple of hot dogs at half price. The street sweeper was a half a block away, the pedestrians were gone, and he was going to have to throw them away if he didn't sell them to me. I probably should have driven a harder bargain than half price.

*You ever taste your own ear wax? This was a Swisher Sweet type cigar with the plastic holder on the end, but surely when he takes it from the ear and goes to light it up and take a puff, he gets that nasty, bitter, awful earwax flavor. Just when I thought smoking couldn't be made more across-the-board disgusting.

Rosedale Arch

The Three O'Clock Ride wound up at the Rosedale Arch last week. I hadn't been up close to the arch since high school. As I recall, back then me and a couple of friends went up there to drink Bacardi & Coke and eat Taco Bell burritos.

I'd forgotten the steep roads approaching the arch, but it all came back to me. When you're a passenger in a car driven by a teenager who swears he drives better when he's fucked up, hills like those make an impression.

Or when you're coasting down them at 45 mph despite the drag of your panniers and tweaking your brakes periodically because there's a stop sign at the bottom.

But you can see forever from up there.

Comets

I didn't know the Comets were still a team. I remember going once or twice when I was a kid and they were the Kansas City Comets playing at Kemper Arena.

Same sport, same strange basketball-style scoring and team size, even the same synthesizer generated theme song.

But now they're the Missouri Comets and they play at the Independence Events Center, which is just like Kemper if you took out the overpriced parking and the shitty seats (there's no upstairs at this arena).

Mo dug the action and Corinna marveled that the players' level of play. She's played a bit of soccer and knows what it looks like when it's played well. I don't understand soccer or the appeal of soccer, so maybe I was more distractable than usual. Which is pretty damned distractable.

I don't remember cheerleaders when I went to the comets as a kid, but they had them here. Actually, they seemed to have a couple of squads, and one went away and another came but I couldn't see where their counterparts had gone.

The cheerleaders were the best part of the show. One in particular. I don't mean because she's a looker, that's a given, pretty much all cheerleaders make good eye candy. But this one was the busiest, most enthusiastic cheerleader I've seen in a long time. I knew photography was hopeless: I was too far away, in too little light and her moving like a dervish.

But I couldn't help myself. After trying to catch her by skill alone I set the ISO up to the max and let the camera take bursts as fast as it would. Which isn't fast, really, with my camera, but I got a couple of shots that at least show you how hard this girl was working for the next-to-no-money indoor soccer cheerleaders probably get paid.

Hours

I got to the barbecue store (to scope out smokers), and it was closed. This sign is, apparently, no joke.

Who Are They For?

I saw this on the Three O'Clock Ride.

If the steps aren't safe for pedestrians, who are they safe for? None of the more dare-devilish mountain bikers were along on this ride, or I bet we would have found out if they were safe for cyclists.

Hilarious

Seussically Speaking

We went on the Three O'Clock ride, with the plan that we'd ditch the group in time to come home, fix dinner and get to Bishop Ward's production of Seussical the Musical.

For a couple of months, we've passed the signs for this play, and I think each time Em has asked if we could go see it.

Every time I answered in the affirmative. Our original plans included her having a sleepover with some of her classmates, but that didn't seem to work out. I won't say it's a class thing, but I grew up in Johnson County and I know the map a lot of folks there rely on shows the edge of the world guarded by serpents and dragons at 47th Street (aka County Line Road).

I almost had a meltdown on the ride back from the Three O'Clock. I'd lost track of time and realized around the time we were at St. John and Belmont that it'd taken us ninety minutes to get where we were and we had barely over an hour to get back.

It wouldn't be the first time I was tardy getting back from a bike ride, but it would mean Em missing a musical she's been begging to see. Something I'd promised.

Quick stop for groceries on the way back, though I was so beside myself no stop could have been quick enough, and as we approached home, Corinna took the groceries that were on my bike and we split up so I could go get tickets and she could get dinner going.

I wasn't sure how widely attended Bishop Ward's musicals were, but I wasn't in the mood to risk it. As I approached the school I realized I had no cash. I knew there wouldn't be any debit card swiper at a high school musical ticket table, so I had to ride to an ATM to make a withdrawal and then back to the school.

My anxiety was misplaced: when I arrived with cash at the door, it was about three minutes before they were supposed to open the doors. I got the tix and got back home in time for us to eat together and walk up to the school for the show.

What a fun musical. The costumes alone were worth it.

The content of the musical is absolutely awesome, the immovably contrary Horton who won't back down even to a Sour Kangaroo and Judge Yertle the Turtle, the parents who want to know what to do about their child who keeps thinking, it's great stuff.

Birthday Girl

Birthdays for kiddos with autism are tricky. Everyone wants to get together and celebrate, but that kind of intense, mass social interaction can be stressful for the kid. And trying to get straight answers from said kid about what they really want to do can be impossible.

My first idea was to take her to each of the grandparent's houses, make it several discrete, small celebrations.

As we got closer to the day, it seemed Mo wanted to have more of a conventional party. I thought about her sister's birthday the month before, a joint operation with the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster, involving pretty near everyone from both sides of the family. I didn't do a great job of preparing Mo for it, and when all her peeps descended on the house all at once, she beat a hasty retreat.

As hard as it is to figure out the right way to handle these things, the one thing Mo was unambiguous about was the color of birthday cake she wanted. A chocolate cake of course, but red. Red frosting sounds easy enough, but red food dye makes pink frosting.

Pink until you've used a full bottle of red food coloring and two tubes of red gel. It quits being pink anyway, though I thought it was more magenta than red in the end.

Everything went pretty well until it came time to blow out candles and open presents. Here is where autism gets tricky. Positive excitement can seem overwhelming, the social stimulation overblown. When Mo retreated before we could do cake and presents, I wasn't sure what to do with the whole situation.

I went up and tried to talk her into it twice, but she didn't want to come downstairs. I asked if she was happy to see her people, grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc., and she said yes. When I asked if she thought it was too much downstairs I didn't get an answer, but I may not have parsed my words well enough to get the question across.

Finally, I asked her, "Do you just want everyone to go home so you can get back to your routine?"

"Yes!" she said.

"Well," I said. "They came to see you blow out your candles and open your presents. They can't leave until you do that, right?"

It worked. She came downstairs, couldn't wait for us to light the cake. She blew out candles, opened presents and then seemed to acclimate to the whole party. She ate some cake and ice cream, pulled up some YouTube videos, and generally relaxed and had a good time.

Warmth

Gear for commuting in all weather is a thing you kind of have to experiment with. A light base layer and a wind resistant cycling jacket is a pretty good call when it's in the 30s of a morning, but I had a new garment and wanted to try it.

I've ridden in pretty cold weather with a light base layer and a heavy sweater before, but I think it was more like in the teens. The sweater I'd found for $1.25 was 100% virgin wool and heavy. I put a long sleeve t-shirt on under it and set out for work.

After a brief climb, my morning commute includes about two miles of downhill followed by a mile or so of relatively flat road. By the time I was in the Westside neighborhood, I was itchy and overheated. This sweater would be ideal for a 12ºF ride.

While I was making wardrobe adjustments in front of this church, I noticed their sign, and then the minister pulling into his parking spot and heading in to work. He appeared to be in maybe his fifties, well dressed, and my first impression was he would fit perfectly with a Johnson County congregation (i.e. predominantly white and relatively wealthy).

He greeted me cheerfully enough, then two Mexican men walking down the sidewalk and began speaking to them in effortless Spanish. He instantly engaged them, apparently joked with them and from what I could tell made their mornings as they approached the bus stop at Summit.

I'd misread the guy as badly as my clothes for the ride in. He's exactly where he fits, a Baptist preacher in an urban neighborhood with a large, Spanish-speaking Roman Catholic immigrant population.

Dolly Lama

Originally, Corinna wanted us to meet at a gallery that was showing art inspired by heavy metal. Sounded like something that could plausibly be interesting, but before I could get there she texted me that she had the wrong night.

Then she texted me that she'd "found the show at La Esquina."

Well, not quite. She'd found a show, or something like a show. Ari Frish's installation "High Seas Low Plans" was billed as a sort of all access, multi-purpose temple. There was a long list of guidelines for how to use the temple, but it was a full letter sized sheet filled on both sides with dense type so I just wandered in.

Free form new-agey music was being played by musicians of various disciplines, and gauzy curtains were hung through the dark space.

There were a few chairs and quite a few meditation pads on wheels, Dolly Lamas, I supposed. I scraped the shit out of my knee the day before crashing my bike, so I declined to get down on a dolly, settling on a chair until my attention span had been exceeded—perhaps three minutes. Then I spent perhaps five minutes trying to photograph the space using the chair as a tripod.

A fellow who was walking around outside the curtain that enclosed periodically howling to add to the music found Corinna's bicycle bell and then mine. He really liked the sound mine made, loved that it was old and tarnished and brass.

Night Train

This train was parked across the tracks in the West Bottoms the other evening. I knew routes around it, but was trying to figure out where Corinna was so we could rendezvous. Plus, it was a beautiful evening, so why not crack open a beer and shoot a few pictures?