Happy thoughts, Anita, happy thoughts!

Remember this purple wall?



It's in the garden I went ga-ga over on the Shoals tour in ... Lavish slobbering was carried on here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

That gardener, Phillip, started his own blog, called Dirt Therapy. You should check out his Christmas decorations. This one in particular just makes my mouth hang open. Isn't it amazing that real people do this, and not just when they're expecting a visit from magazine photographers?

Anyway, now he's tagged me for a meme about "eight things that make you happy". So here are some recent happies:

Girls Dominate the Siemens Competition. Woohoo!¹

The library left a message that my copy of An Ice Cold Grave is waiting. Yay!

Latin Via Proverbs.

A little birdie told me that we might be getting a few really nice knives for Christmas.

My daily email from The Writer's Almanac (which is really more of a Reader's Almanac if you ask me). Each entry includes a short poem, and "Literary and Historical Notes," which often contains biographical tidbits about writers or artists (on their birthdays). Example from December 4th: "It's the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke … who made a career as a poet by seducing a series of rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote his books."

Stephen Duffy & the Lilac Time have a new album, Runout Groove. Had to get it from amazon.co.uk, but that's ok because it was dispatched in a hurry.²

Brittlestar's new one is out soon too. Well technically it's already "out" but due to my computer-with-not-one-ounce-of-spare-memory problems, I'm forced to wait for the hardware version.

The last one, I think I'll expand into a separate post.

---------------

¹ Must... resist... saying... "You go girls"!

² You can listen to some of it on their myspace page.

Eustacia Meets Frida

Today Eustacia Vye (my Pashley Pricess) met up with her new friend Frida, the fetching Batavus Fryslan that belongs to Margonaute of ZOMGBicycles.

Margo and I tagged along and sat at an outdoor cafe while the bikes frolicked nearby.

The Batavus Fryslan is a very pretty and comfortable bike. It is a higher-end model than the Old Dutch I tested last summer. It was getting dark and impossible to take decent shots, but Margo has more pictures of this bicycle on her weblog. Especially nice are the shots from last weekend's Tweed Ride - Frida looked so elegant with her owner's stunning outfit!

Despite their differences in wheel size (28" on the Batavus Fryslan vs. 26" on the Pashley Princess), we were surprised to note how similar Frida and Eustacia looked, including their overall proportions. My handlebars are set quite a bit lower, but that was an intentional modification on my part. Margo prefers hers higher. The bicycles also have matching cream tires, matching Brooks B66S saddles, and matching Wald rear folding baskets. So cute to see them together like this!

One really cool thing about Frida is the DIY handlebar bag. It is a small leather purse, with the strap wrapped around the flat part of the bars.

Here you can see the handlebar attachment. A simple and elegant idea that shows you don't necessarily need to spend tons of money on bike-specific accessories.

At the end of the evening, Margo test-rode my bike while I carefully tried hers on for size (Frida is new and I was too worried about her well-being to ride her on the street).

Margo on my Pashley. She is slightly taller than I am, so ideally the saddle would be raised.

My own impression is that the fit of the two bikes is similar, but the Batavus has somewhat more relaxed angles. Weight-wise, the Batavus is a bit heavier. They are both nice bikes, with the main differences being the fork crowns, the wheel size, the lighting systems, and the shape of the handlebars. If you are choosing between a Pashley and a Batavus, I'd really suggest test-riding each.

Here is to lovely bicycles and to lovely bicycle friendships!

Neighbors Dogs

My neighbors dogs playing in the snow. A few years ago I bought one of the indestructible balls for horses to play with and of course my horses that play with a cheep football wouldn't have anything to do with the special ball I bought them with the handle on it. My dogs didn't like it either. My friend wanted something her Great Pyrenees couldn't destroy so I gave her the special ball but she didn't like it either. But my friends other two dogs thought it was the perfect thing for them. They love it. Finally some a pet likes the ball.

On Holidays and Travel

With all the talk about skyrocketing costs of airplane tickets for Thanksgiving, many people I know have decided to stay home this year and keep it low key. But rather than being upset about it, they seem relieved: A casual Thanksgiving with the immediate family instead of a full-on family reunion and hours spent in airports? The very idea seems to be an instant de-stresser.

The decision to live far away from friends and family - combined with the expectation that we still ought to be close and get together as frequently as possible - creates an uncomfortable predicament. Though many are reluctant to admit it even to themselves, getting together with loved ones for the holidays often brings more stress than joy, fanning the flames of family conflicts and fostering new resentments. And when it's over? Well, so is the long weekend, and back to work you go.

But people are not built to function like this - moving from one set of stressors to another, with no sense of relief. A holiday is meant to be a break, a time to relax. Airports and airplanes are not relaxing to most people. Neither are hours spent driving. Despite our society's quest for an ever-better quality of life, it seems that we've unwittingly designed our lives to maximise stress.

Why bring this up on a blog about bicycles? Because the travel-induced stress of the holidays strikes me as the same type of problem as the stress of commuting long distances to work in a car or via public transportation.There is a great deal of new research coming out about the effects of travel and transportation choices on physical health, mental health, familial and social relationships, and overall quality of life. In retrospect, all of the findings are common sense - which only highlights the fact that society as a whole has been moving away from common sense notions of well-being. For those of us who are trying to get back to those notions, the bicycle has been a great help - not only in the immediate sense, but also in the sense of helping us realise all of this at the most basic and visceral level.

Regarding Mercedes

While going through my grandmother's papers (again) this weekend, I found this picture, probably taken on the same day as the one at the bottom of this post.

Mae was the adopted daughter of William James Dunfee and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Walker. Jane is my grandmother's sister, Hazlette is my grandmother, and Mercides is the object of my quest in unraveling a little mystery. It's a guess, but I'd say the picture was taken about 1918-1920.

And, another clue, which just goes to show that it pays to look at all of those little scraps of paper! The problem is though, that I don't know when the note was written, but from what I can tell, it was in the late 1960s or early 1970s that Grandma started working on her genealogy. I'm pretty sure that the ACPL (Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne) has some Detroit City Directories. One of these days I'll get to the library...

The note reads:

This is Mercedes
Name & address
Mrs. A. Vinet
13822 French Rd
Detroit 34 -

Invasion

A sample of how it looks from my house when the balloons take off and fly over Albuquerque. It was a bit hazy for taking a good shot this morning.

Writings under a drawbridge in Amsterdam

Drawbridges are typically Dutch. Because the Netherlands is literally a swamp country, meaning there is water everywhere—canals, rivers, seas, lakes, everything that you can think of that is a body of water, we have that here in the Netherlands.



Ergo drawbridges. We cannot escape from them. They are everywhere in the country, and in the city as well. They come in different sizes, shapes, styles and material. They can cause traffic too.



This one I found in Amsterdam is quite unique. There are writings underneath the drawbridge. It’s in Dutch but the fonts are quite complex for me to understand.



At first glance, it looks like Hebrew to me, but it’s not. It’s Dutch. Can you read it?



Visit Period: July