windy days

The wind is tougher than the cold. The cold you can beat with layers and exertion. The wind you can't.  Beat.  Just fight . . . and survive, in little ways . . . you keep going, you don't cry.  The whoosh of a dump truck flying down the hill as you struggle up, and your momentum is sucked away just like you hit the brakes.  Then on the next hill there's a big truck going with you, and you feel the pick-up as it passes.  Your eyes scan the face of the land with new eyes - measuring the dips and turns - seeking the tucks where there will be sudden peace. 

You breathe ragged so long you don't notice anymore, and try not to curse halfway up a slow incline. You see, impassively, the cloud shadows on the mountains, the subtle fall colors sharpened by the wind, and smile to yourself, but don't really understand how you feel or where this fits. 

Then, finally, a right turn and it's quiet. The stretch is steep, but blessedly still. The white house on the climb with four cars outside. A girl in camo sweatpants and a bright yellow jacket walks with a tiny dog on a leash, into the yard, with movements and a scowl that scream impatience, maybe anger. The little dog shivers with excitement, oblivious to her mood. I am almost home, still breathing hard, wondering what made this girl's day so bad, and whether mine is good or bad.

The next two days the wind stays strong, the bike stays overnight at the shop, I stay at my parent's house, and accept rides from them and from my aunt, from Alex. We stand outside for two hours and don't make it inside to see Obama. Others wait five hours or more. It was good, even so, seeing the crowd, if not the man himself. In the end we sat on the floor of a student lounge and watched the speech on the TVs on the wall. He talked about "choosing our better history." And I hoped.

somewhere near the edges

We listen to the daily worsening economy news on NPR, wonder vaguely if the demigods who run this country have ideas ingenious enough to prevent loss of homes businesses, jobs, a way of life. Suddenly the conservatives are all behind regulation . . . even something that looks like a partial nationalization of the banking sector. ZX jokes that while China and Russia move toward a privatized economy, the Europe and the West are moving towards socialism. We laugh with the freedom that comes from youth, and the knowledge that we don't need much.

The other day I went through the cedar closet at Mom and Dad's. It was packed thick with blankets and clothes, and the thought crossed my mind that if I needed to, I could easily clothe and keep myself for the rest of my life with the contents of this four-by-four closet. The blue polyester pants that my mother sewed thirty years ago I will wear, but not the velvety white skirt and sweater set. I tried on the yellowed lace wedding dress, and found the high neck and long, tight sleeves unbearably constricting. A concession for conservative relatives at the wedding? I wondered, but Mom says it was the style then.

Last night on "Fresh Air" the Nobel prize-winning economist admitted there is a sort of glee in being here in this place, this time, and getting to watch all the shit go down. Before he said, he had to fly to Indonesia or something to see crisis of the moment; now he just takes the subway downtown. (As a citizen, though, he's "terrified.") I don't really know enough to be terrified, but I know what fascination feels like.

getting there on skinny tires

Too much chocolate and sitting around this weekend; I gave up, got off the bike and walked up the top of a hill for the first time this morning. It was the first really cold day I've biked, but not as bad as I had dreaded from my barely-warm bed in the drafty upstairs of the farmhouse.

Trying to cross 33 from Sterling to Reservoir I discovered the helplessness of a biker facing a light triggered by a magnetic sensor. Tim had warned me. He said they sense metal at two places, so the only way to get a green on a bike is to lay it down wide across the area. Slightly inconvenient. Who knows what the woman behind me would have thought if I'd done that this morning. When she pulled up I'd already watched the cars opposite me get a left-turn signal, and the 33 traffic get greens twice. We waited through another cycle together and I realized that she needed to pull up to trigger the sensor. She'd (very kindly, I suppose) left a good ten feet between me and her. I motioned for her to pull up, and we finally got a green on the next go-around. 

Sigh. It's those kind of things that are discouraging, that make you feel small and like you're struggling with just a few allies, against a very large beast. But the people at the Blue Ridge Cycle Shop are helpful and friendly, and Wayne Teel said making this statement with our lives (by biking) is the way we start moving to lower carbon-dioxide production. 

And every afternoon when I bike back into this sloping land of Melvin and Betty's and the sun is lying all golden on the fields and the cows are rustling in the barn, I swear I'll stay here until there's actual ice on the road and I'm absolutely forced to move in close to a bus stop.

slowing down

Small leaves drift down Bruce, along with me and the bike. I'm glad to have started building on a paycheck, but it barely seems worth even going in to work for four hours on Wednesday and Thursday. They teach me how to make iced chai lattes and then two hours of "e-learning" on the dusty computer in the back of the kitchen. I laugh aloud at some of the test questions that come, but admire in a detached way the efficiency of the system I have entered. Food safety, dining room awareness, the "Panera Way." 

It's the "business model" approach that another group described in a recruiting meeting I attended on Wednesday. A more efficient way of making money than the time-for-money formula of a traditional job or small business. They started with an assumption that everyone wants more money. And time. But what good is time if you don't have money to spend enjoying it? Funny, I've found a whole lot of enjoyment out of watching the sunset clouds outside of Jill's window. Doesn't take a lot of money. I'm not opposed to earning money, but I'm cautious, wanting to take the slow way. The slow ferment that makes good bread, good cheese, good wine. Slow transportation that makes me notice the faces of the places I pass. Maybe even a slow approach to economic growth, Wayne Teel suggests in sunday school last week, might do us some good.

sweet ol' harrisonburg

I'm a sucker for color-splashed downtown. For the little potted flowers tucked in the curves of brick buildings on which you can still see the old names in fading white paint. For the people and the breads and the greens at the farmer's market. For the folks who take the bus, and walk, and bike.

It's my second early morning in a row parked at this coffeeshop with my new macbook, and yesterday I got spotted over on benches in front of the library by the same person who'd seen me here in the morning. He called me a transient, and I took it as a compliment. There are bikes all over this city, and a vibe I don't remember being quite so strong or so cool.

________________

I applied at Clementine and saw the "eat fresh, eat local" poster and felt the warm afternoon camraderie of the staff, and decided that's where I want to work. But they want commitment, and I am still young - commitment comes hard.  I went back out to to think in the sunshine, then leapt, and felt as if I was answering life again, same old formula, new freedom. We (women, mostly) have marveled at focus and a narrowing of interest that leads to "success and happiness" perhaps. I want that, or the passion at least. The women I was asking said for awhile they had wanted that too.

_________________

It's been barely three days of biking, but so far it feels good. There are sunsets and rolling hills north of town. There are burning thighs and the old questions about how much I can push. There are shops that I notice, and explore. The eight-dollar Keens at Granny Longlegs.

There are the hazards too. Glass shards scattered wide on the bridge on Reservoir. So wide I have to pick up my bike and carry it over them. Those damn train tracks on Country Club. So far I've swung wide to hit them at close to perpendicular. I hold my breath when the dumptrucks go roaring but, but Kratzer feels safer than 11, like Dan said it would. Sailing down that big hill out on Kratzer for the first time, I placed my fingers on a bee which had settled on my handlebars. I can't remember the last time I was stung. My finger swelled and ached. Somehow though, the fall air on my face and the view of the rolling hills lessened the sharpness. And Jill is waiting for me in the white farmhouse with walnuts in the yard and a hundred cookbooks on the shelf. There was a shorn field that I passed going home - I wrote this:

Round bales lie on the field

rolled so smooth they shine.

In the second afternoon I see

the tractor moving, the front fork,

the fast reverse, effortless lift, a line

made neat at the edge of the field.

Beyond it all - behind the bales

and the field and the tractor and

the invisible farmer, back behind

the mountains, the sun is setting.