A Belated Announcement

I met a guy.

We skied Taylor together with mutual friends on a late March morning with the unresolved promise of rain. The snow was subpar. The boy was interesting and fun to talk to. I distinctly recall saying to my friend in the car afterward, "He's cute." My friend would go on to date my ex, so all's fair.

The guy and I developed a pretty great friendship. I inserted him into my big noisy group of roommates and extended friend-family, and when we weren't partying or riding with them he and I did something that I wanted so badly and didn't have a partner for: long runs. We talked constantly. I couldn't stop. I imagined bigger adventures, overnighters, traveling together out of the valley to find new mountains, feeding my craving for novelty.

I was an outlier in my friend group. Our ratio of getting high and drunk and socializing and hanging out versus going hard, going uphill, maintaining constant motion, was a little out of whack for my taste and I would get antsy and agitate for action. They put up with me but I was kind of annoying to them, and they were kind of annoying to me.

Also I had a boyfriend, had had one for over four years. He was strange and so smart and incredibly funny, loyal to a fault, passionate, stubborn, and polarizing. But he didn't run and hadn't read a book in quite some time, and while I thought we were probably going to get married, because I settled into that mindset pretty easily in relationships, I started to dream of climbing mountains, fastpacking, bikepacking, talking for hours about books and ideas. 

And then I did something about it. I poured my sadness and dissatisfaction and longing into a vessel that didn't fit and gave it to my boyfriend with little explanation. I moved out and forfeited the dog we owned together. I hid from our friends and tried to find normalcy and cried a lot.

But I also started pursuing this other opportunity. He was a big reason I did what I did, although I've barely admitted that to anyone. It's probably obvious to everyone now but I so, so, so didn't want to hurt my ex even more by putting that out into the world, that simple, common trope: she left you for someone else.

This guy though, he was sexy and funny and smart and interesting and engaged and kind and full of joy. He wanted to go everywhere and said yes without hesitating to every questionable adventure I cooked up. He was there for me always. Before we were together and I got the job at the newspaper, he was more excited and proud and supportive than anyone besides my parents. He still reads every article I write, and when I bought my house he threw his time, money, and expertise into the task of doubling the property's value. And he puts up with my fixation on the "right" way to wash dishes.

My mom and her sisters met him in 2018. That was five months after he first talked to my parents, when he stood outside the operating room and called to say I was under the knife after a potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy. Fortunately my parents are good, understanding people and appreciated him and that hard call, instead of placing blame.

Anyway, my mom obviously liked him, because he's easy to like. And then he came to New Hampshire,  to the Tellman stronghold itself, even though for a couple years I felt too burned by the decimation of my past relationships to try and draw him further into my family. But it was fine, great, he was an ally and he charmed my sister and was open and kind to everyone and during dinner prep one night my father, who has been able to find something to like in all my young men although he clearly wants the world for me, leaned over and said, "I love him," with that emphasis.

While it rained we talked in the New Hampshire breakfast nook about engagement and titanium rings and none of it was surprising. But then we were back at home and he did manage to surprise me, on one knee with a ring box as I turned back around after applying sunscreen on a mountain plateau during a run in the northern Teton range, with a titanium ring that he had bought even before my whole family asserted that I should have a titanium ring, and I shouted in shock and cried and wasn't sure, because what is marriage? And are all relationships really doomed to failure like I've already convinced myself?

I told almost no one about our engagement for three months because it's a small valley and I still didn't want to hurt the other guy. I couldn't figure out how it wouldn't hurt. It turned out to be okay, ish, and we actually went for a big bike ride, the three of us, on my birthday last year and it wasn't that tense. I also kept the engagement a secret because I didn't see myself as a fiancee, and because I don't talk about relationships a lot or post about them on social media. That was a habit I picked up when I was younger, when I was doing some shady shit. And I have this stupid idea that love makes you weak or vulnerable.

After three years I'm still one hundred percent into this guy. He's just so great and I have friends who still regularly comment on that fact, which I love. So that's why we're getting married in September.

It's hilarious that nearly half of the photos of us that exist are candid, awkward laughing photos at special events. We don't take photos together. Ever.

The Pronouncement

I was in the kitchen in New Hampshire, probably a fifth grader in a baggy tee and long shorts and lopsided glasses, when I made the pronouncement to my grandmother that I would not be having children. She considered the statement and then told me that she had found that people who didn't have children tended to be selfish.

That nugget lodged itself in my brain, because I think highly of her opinion and I certainly didn't want to be a selfish adult. I still couldn't imagine forfeiting my body to a parasitic entity and also had pretty strong views on overpopulation and the plight of unwanted children, so I resolved to adopt.

Ten years passed, and in another conversation with another woman, in which I attempted to assert my aversion to pregnancy, I was told in a patronizing tone that that would change in time.

As I aged I began to encounter friends who had tried to wade through the bureaucracy and expense of adoption, without a single success story among them. My doubt grew. This country is adept at obstructing women from abridging their pregnancies but does not appear interested in easing the postnatal experience. 

But for a long time I was in a relationship, what I thought was The Relationship, with a person who did love kids and was happy to imagine his future as a father. I laid waste to that relationship eventually but still carried with me this strange assumption that I would eventually be expected to procreate or at least shop for spawn.

Somehow it was only last year when the idea crystallized, perhaps because I work in an office of mothers, all a little harried and a little resentful, that I do not have to have children.

The echo of selfishness still rattled around in my brain so I decided to address it head on and realized that some of the most involved, philanthropic, selfless people I know have chosen to do without progeny. They are the mentors, the electeds, the heroes of nonprofits, the ones with their fingers in many pots, while the parents, granted, are probably finding their own kind of fulfillment, albeit a little more home-focused.

The couples I know without kids lead lives I want to emulate. They have enough money to be comfortable, they can go on adventures, and they can devote themselves to volunteerism.

The parents I know seem to always describe their lives with a dependent "but" clause. "I love my kids more than anything in the world, but..."

Fortunately my partner is in complete agreement with me. I just recently made my pronouncement to a friend and she asked, "Well, how does he feel?" even though she would never have asked that if I had said I wanted a boy and a girl, three years apart. And then she asked who would care for me when I'm old and lonely, but there's no guarantee that you'll get any return on your life's worth of investment with children. That's not how our culture works.

Now that I have truly made my decision, few days pass without a rushing sense of relief. Whether it's worrying about screen time, climate change, pink eye, strep throat, or autism, or wondering if the LDS kids would try to convert her or ostracize her, or if he would use slurs to impress his friends, or if she would be raped by a boy she trusted, or if she would dart in front of a car, or if work would dry up and the twenty plus years of endless expense would engulf and ruin me, or if parenthood would kill a partnership or suck me dry of motivation or excitement, the thought passes through my brain and is then swept out by a deep sigh of contentment: I'm not having children.

Toxic

My office is made up of five women, and I think not working with men has made me even more intolerant of some of the rank and casual unpleasantness that men can display. It came to the forefront at a party I went to this week.

A sixty-year-old man and his wife, both fit cyclists who loved to travel, were with us at the party. It came up in conversation that I used to be a racer. The man asked if I raced road or mountain, and I said mostly mountain.

"I should've guessed, you're not skinny enough to be a road racer," he said in a jocular tone.

I was pretty shocked by that and immediately told him in no uncertain terms that that was absolutely not something he should feel comfortable saying to a woman.

His assessment of my body didn't bother me, fortunately. While I'm not content with my weight, it's because I want to be stronger and fitter and more motivated, not because I want to be attractive to men. I don't have body hang-ups--I don't feel a need to apologize about the space I occupy.

Also, he obviously didn't know enough about cycling to know that, with the way racing works, a woman with some heft to her can make it a lot farther in the competitive road world than as a mountain biker.

I tried to think through why it made me so mad. I josh my male friends about their appearance. But I wanted him to understand that it's not his job or his right to observe me and tell me what he thinks about my body. I thought about one of my athletes, a girl who started out a little pudgy and is now a state champion in the throes of an eating disorder. What if this bozo had said that to her instead of me? That made my blood curdle with cold anger.

My friends' hackles were up too and they spent the rest of the night telling him how badly I could kick his ass on a bike. He seemed very sheepish and clearly didn't mean to sound like such a dick.

He never actually said sorry though. And then the next morning a guy we were giving a ride up to the ski hill showed up twenty minutes late and didn't apologize. Cy threw up his hands and said, "Men are terrible! Why don't they ever say sorry??"

The male gender continued to display its shittiness that evening. Later another guy, much younger, said that LeBron James was this century's Rockefeller. I said I thought that was a false equivalency, since LeBron built his fortune on talent and entertainment value rather than plundering the country's resources and using child labor. Suddenly this man started talking about how everyone who is not in the one percent is a slave, how we're all enslaved by our jobs and "the man," for lack of a more creative phrase. I think Cy and I both felt compelled by all the stuff we've read and listened to recently to speak up, to not let this person coast on his bullshit.

We both started arguing with him on his word choice, how it was flawed and stupid and inappropriate to misuse a word with so much historical baggage, how people who have to work for a living are very different from people who are bought and sold like chattel.

He pushed back hard and I felt for the first time like I was arguing with someone who trolls forums and Facebook. I interact with a lot of old school conservative people because of my job, but I had never talked to one of these put-upon alt-right men you read about in the left-leaning media. He was not interested in hearing what we said.

After Cy walked away too angry to continue, the guy informed me that he was a brainwashed liberal, which is truly laughable considering Cy grew up in a fundamentalist sect and his views have changed because he is compassionate and intellectually curious. I was shaking with fury the whole ride home.

Did I overreact? Or is it correct to keep holding these shitty men accountable for the stupid, thoughtless things they say? Is that how we fix a world where men have been unchecked for millenia? I really don't know.

The Fire

Once you open the door to housesitting in a new place, you get tons of requests. I watched my coworker’s big dumb Goldens for a couple weeks and then her wealthy friend enlisted me to watch an independent Bernese, some chicks (she described their care with bemusement—her kids were in charge of the poultry), and a semi-feral cat.

The house was nice-not nice, a model I’ve seen so many times when housesitting. Shockingly expensive touches (immaculate gas range, flagstone flooring) compete with chintzy touches (all of the doorknobs barely functioned). I have stayed in modest, thoughtful houses and I have stayed in garish houses where the thoughtful touches happen to exist because they were the premium option.

I am hopelessly nosey. When I stay at a house, I poke around, observe, judge. My biggest takeaway is often a suffocating claustrophobia—how can these people own so much STUFF? I have moved almost twenty times in my adult life and the thought of filling every drawer, closet, rafter, and bureau in your four thousand square foot house makes me choke on anxiety. I was in the midst of moving the last time I stayed at this particular house, and I stashed all my earthly possessions in a single bay of their three-car garage.

Four days after they returned from their most recent trip, I was lazily checking Facebook in bed and started seeing posts about a fire.

The house had burned to the ground. Every matched pair of toy firetrucks (twin boys), every elaborate wall hanging, the countless drawers of stainless steel specialized-use kitchen implements (pizza scissors?), the three sets of flatware ordered by occasion, the pantry full of organic kid’s energy bars, the four-post king-sized bed with decorative throws, the shower with multiple heads and a sauna setting, the four bikes, three stand-up paddleboards, and two lawnmowers…all gone.

By some divine grace, a neighbor saw flames coming from the house at 2 a.m. and was able to wake the family. It sickens me to consider the alternative. The gregarious Bernese also survived.

I went to the property, shifting roles from family acquaintance to journalist. I took photos of the blackened shell, smelled the aftermath of the burn, registered the empty space where the big wooden chicken coop had been.

The outpouring of support online was immediate, because people are good. Well-wishers were offering food and clothing donations. The family’s friend took me aside and asked how the newspaper could help head off this generosity—she didn’t go quite so far as to say, “They don’t want other people’s used clothing,” but it was implied.

Their cell phones and three (four?) cars burned. Their friends quickly provided them with new phones and a new car. Someone in their network set up a GoFundMe page and it’s currently sitting at an incredible $24,000.

Looking at that number, more than I make in a year, and thinking about the size of the insurance check that I know they’ll get, makes me sick and confused. The tragedy of losing everything, birth certificates and wedding photos and special art, is a terrible blow, but these people are positioned to weather it with minimal suffering. I couldn’t help thinking what $24,000 could mean to nonprofits, other families, people less blessed with opportunity, affluence, or a support system.

It made me squeamish to question this family’s right to benefit from the generosity of others, but I also kept imagining the McMansion they’ll be able to build with their insurance pay-out--bigger, better laid out, more storage space for newly-acquired possessions.  

Then I ran into her at the grocery store. It was the first time I'd ever seen her without make-up. I was scared to engage but she didn’t mind talking to me about the fire. She said they were looking for a long-term rental while they rebuilt. “Housing here is hard,” she said with tired amusement. I choked out an agreement. Housing here is hard, and it’s harder if you have a limited budget and if insurance isn’t footing the bill.

I used my mournful tone (I’m so awkward with condolences) and tried to express how glad I was that she and her husband and their two boys had made it out alive.

There is no right answer.

Floating?

I woke up on Sunday with a bump on my noggin from flipping in a kayak, cuts on my soles from clambering barefoot over pebbled river banks, and incredible soreness in unusual spots like my shoulders and outer thigh muscles.

Saturday was Cellarmaster Max's birthday and he was going to float. He likes to toss my blog phrases back in my face sometimes so we were invited with the acknowledgement that it would mean "giving up a magical unicorn butterfly day." Tyler RSVP'd a firm yes for both of us but then his mom said she was coming into town that day and he opted to go for a ride rather than risk being on the river until dusk. But I was committed. My pride was involved. I didn't even flake when some acquaintances said they were riding the Big Hole Crest. Nope. Floating.

Good job Subaru
Pic courtesy of Andrea

 Andrea and Shannon picked me up and we braved the Pass with two borrowed creek boats strapped to the roof of Andrea's Impreza. She got her river permits in the Park and the ranger handed us a pamphlet about floating the Snake. The stretch we were aiming for, Moose to Wilson, was classified as advanced, with lots of alarming advisories like "fragmented channels, snags, and logjams make for difficult navigation" and "swift current can be dangerous for inexperienced boaters." Don't worry, my friends said, this is directed at the lowest common denominator, and I looked around the GTNP visitor's center at the crush of humanity and felt better. There are indeed idiots amongst us.

Our motley flotilla arranged a shuttle and put in: one driftboat, one raft, two creek boats, one whitewater canoe, and four inner tubes. As my competent friends fiddled with straps and coolers, the bizarre realization dawned on me: I've never been on any sort of watercraft on a river. Yeah, I've paddled and SUP'd and waterskied on lakes before but I've never even tubed on the French Broad, preferring to mock the tubers from shore. My parents were California river rats in the long ago and my dad got into whitewater in WNC but when he suggested teaching me to roll a kayak I heard "trapped upside down underwater" and never again considered river sports.

Could not have asked for a nicer day

I admitted this and everyone laughed gently at me. I got a spot in the driftboat, the driest and steadiest of vessels, and devoured the views as we meandered through the wetlands at the feet of the Tetons. We startled a young bull moose and he splashed across an inlet behind us.

The whole gang!
Pic courtesy of Ashley

Our raucous party stopped regularly to carouse on sand bars and eventually, my nerves soothed by liquid courage, I volunteered to man a creek boat. It was a Corsica, a kayak my dad used to own and love. I remembered a tiny bit from paddling around Laurel Lake but the broad fast-moving Snake presented new challenges. The rapids broadsided and swamped me almost immediately so I dragged the boat to shore, drained it with help, and got back in, vowing to pay better attention. (Jenna is cringing as she reads this because I don't know any paddling lingo.)

And I thought about rudimentary bike skills and how applicable they are to other sports. I don't know shit about boating but I know how to look forward, take a dynamic stance, widen my knees and arms, and engage my core. I consciously hit oncoming rapids on the perpendicular and pumped over waves like they were bumps on a trail. Do kayakers call it pumping? Probably not. But I started riding the water like singletrack with better form than I usually have on the bike (familiarity breeds laziness) and suddenly I was having a blast! I started figuring out which paddle motions were more effective and chasing down the little white riffles that meant interesting water. I kayaked the rest of the way while everyone else got chilly in their boats and I was sad to see the Hwy 22 bridge that indicated the take-out. We had traveled fifteen miles and somehow it was already almost 7:00.

Appropriate
Pic courtesy of Andrea

Then we all grilled out and lounged in hammocks and listened to 90's music and ate birthday cake. A great day. I'm not going to start floating all the time but I was pleasantly surprised that what I assumed would be a sedentary day was an active outing that left me crippled with soreness the next day. Win!

Hammock life
Pic courtesy of Andrea

I Voted

My mom emailed me to say she'd gotten my "voter report card" in the mail and that I'd voted in the last three out of three elections. I felt a twinge of pride. Even if the sole purpose of one of those forays to the polls was to elect Dickson (i.e. KOP) councilman.

I am woefully uninformed on the world at large. Gone are the days when I can just sit at the dinner table and absorb my parents' analyses of current events. Now I'm too busy reading articles about biking, skiing, books, and music to ever check the news (except Ebola, which has reignited my lifelong and morbid fascination with plague). But I do hold a certain naive pleasure in being a part of the democratic process, maybe because the first time I voted was the first time North Carolina skewed blue since, oh, I don't know, Reconstruction?

Politics are polarized here. You can pedal through a neighborhood and tell who you might want to hang out with; it's easy to discern the Momo houses from the outdoorsy houses by the campaign signs. I went to the courthouse to do my civic duty and realized that by wearing a brewery hat, I had basically stapled a completed ballot to my shirt. Alcohol is one of those lines in the sand. In a recent battle to maintain Victor's ability to have beer sales at the lucrative summer concert series, the predominant argument against alcohol was that it "enabled child molestation". Of course.

The race for county commissioner is really important, my friend the campaign manager tells me. Fifty votes decided the last outcome. So many of the young people that flock to Teton Valley for the deep pow and gnar trails simply can't be bothered about the future of education and the economy here, even though it could very well impact our lives. The incumbent commissioner deals in shortsightedness, idiocy, cronyism, and aggressive anti-bicycle rhetoric. Some argue that anything would be an improvement.

I've gotten to know a lot of people who are a part of the Valley's alphabet soup of non-profits, maybe because involved, impassioned people often like to play outside. Weird. Regardless, I've never encountered such a fervent "us against them" attitude in local politics, but I suppose the dichotomy between deeply old-school Mormons and the influx of outdoor recreationalists is unusual. It's a battle between progressive, pro-education, pro-growth liberals and the stalwart, book-burning, regressive fundamentalists.

Tyler, to my bemused frustration, is a non-voter. It's odd because he's the one with a poli-sci degree and the one who used to have aspirations to be a city planner. He reads the local rag to raise his blood pressure and always rides his bike by the aforementioned commissioner's ranch to make a political statement. He had a Subaru and NPR upbringing in Boise's most liberal neighborhood. But then, as a native, he's well-versed in asinine Idaho politics and knows the futility of voting Democrat here. That doesn't change the fact that he should rally for the local race, but I think he's been harangued by one too many strident campaign volunteers who haven't spent a tenth the time he has in Idaho, and he is nothing if not a stubborn contrary bastard. To each his own I suppose...but that statistic of fifty votes still haunts me.

My intractable partner aside, I await November on tenterhooks because I do sincerely believe that local elections matter, as one who plays outside, as a local employee, as a potential future homeowner, dog-owner, parent, whatever (WHOA, words). Sometimes I like to pretend I'm an adult.

La Gastronomie

I spent a rainy Saturday reading a Peter Mayle book purloined from Tyler's grandparents, and it transported me back to my parents' unrelenting Provencephilia and those hard-won seven days we took in the south of France each spring for several years. The book is so evocative of sunshine and light wines and hours devoted to each meal, busy marketplaces and alarmingly narrow roads and friendly, leathery locals, each trip an experience I probably didn't appreciate enough at the time but which has stuck with me in a very sensory way.

On the same day we attended a farm-to-table beer-paired dinner, taking advantage of an absent brewer's ticket. The brewery staff and significant others took over a whole table and I was happy to be friends with all of them. Teton Valley has a Slow Food chapter and a thriving locavore scene and the dinner was hosted in the weathered but architecturally inspiring barn at Snow Drift Farm, who provided the bulk of the produce. GTBC is not of the hop-aggressive Cali or Colorado breed; the head brewer and cellar master have a firm and affectionate grasp on classic Belgian and German styles, which are far more conducive to balanced and complementary food pairings. The cellar master, twenty-four but already resembling a high school history teacher, is the wunderkind of the brewery, deeply passionate and knowledgeable about any and all genres and styles of beer, and he led each course with an insightful discourse on the offering. The executive chef of the Four Seasons in Jackson introduced the food, eyes aglow with excitement at the produce and game with which he was presenting us.

We lingered over five courses with flawless pairings, light yeasty wheat beer with crisp vinegary greens and pickled turnips, Oktoberfest lager with 2-row barley (culled straight from the brewery's supplies) and the richest, most delicious rabbit I've ever had, warm raisiny Scotch ale with bison that tasted like the flame it was seared in as a dedicated sous chef crouched over the fire in the drizzling rain. The plates were beautifully arranged but not precious. Dessert was a sweet and sour Berliner Weisse paired with honey lavender panna cotta and a couple pieces of various fruit, each candied, grilled, or frozen to achieve its full flavor potential.

I love good meals for the food, but I also love good meals for that first forkful of each course, where eyes around the table pop from surprise and delight. A meal undiscussed and unappreciated is not nearly as wonderful. It occurred to me that most gustatory experiences I've had up to this point been have been with or enabled by my parents. Even if they weren't at the table with me, even if they were separated from me by hours or an ocean, I would still scurry back to them, literally or figuratively, and give them a play-by-play. My food upbringing has had such an influence on my life, and it is gratifying to know that I have found another place that celebrates food with people that are open to the experience.

Bad Tidings

Bathed in the glow of aspens and Indian summer sunlight, camp has undergone a very strange and sad week. In such a small, isolated, tight-knit community, any incident reverberates through the staff and leaves us all at a loss.

Two staff members were fired as a result of a flirtation that soured irreparably and caught the attention of certain managers that wanted to set an example, no matter the fairness of the decision. One staffer was shunted back to Georgia, the other stranded in the limbo of South Lake in October. The latter was a riding friend and I can't help but resent his perfunctory termination. 

In the tense, quiet aftermath of the firings, our wonderful dining room manager received word that her young, healthy husband had died in his sleep. 

She was devastated. Catatonic. 

Laura and I escaped the funereal pall of camp and rode our bikes down to Taylor Creek to watch the salmon spawning, and saw two bears munching blissfully on the plentiful fish carcasses. Then we went to Kiva and sat in the sand and eventually started talking about love and grief and the terrifying fragility of life. 

It was necessary. 

Just a Bit of Reflection

In the final gloaming of what felt like a breathlessly quick year, I'm browsing the internet, killing time before I don my party frock and go out dancing to celebrate the next calendar page. Fingers crossed the new year will be even better than the old.

2011 wasn't much of a growth year for me. Until I make some kind of substantial change in my life I'll be coasting on this flat, beautiful stretch of road, doing an effortless 28 mph with a tailwind. It's both comforting and suffocating, to know that I have to do so little to achieve happiness, but to know that I could do so much more. I discovered on Google Maps that Trader Joe's is an easy five mile commute from my aunt and uncle's house in Orinda, and aren't we all impressed with the heights of my ambition? I can shake up my peaceful little existence by moving somewhere and settling into another food retail job.

But then, some stuff happened this year. I visited some cool places, I experienced some minor successes on two wheels. My dear Subaru turned ten and hit 100,000 miles, my sister turned into a cool real person. Many dinners were cooked and enjoyed with friends, many customers were pleased with their BMB and B&B. I bought my first stupidly fancy bike, I embarked on my first "grown-up" trip to Europe. Not much to write home about, but I keep taking little steps forward. (Maybe. Or maybe I'm shimmying from side to side, or just hopping in place. Regardless, it's motion.)

Ignore the musings. Whether or not I do something drastic in the coming year, whether or not I race bikes or change jobs or meet life-altering people or move somewhere or buy a house or just cheerfully maintain status quo, I do sincerely hope it is a happy 2012 for us all.

Reverie

April is waning and suddenly it's less than two weeks until my rendezvous with the white blazes. I have been making some attempts to prepare, inasmuch as one or two ten-milers a week can prepare me for a thirty-miler (the probable answer: notsomuch). I think it is helping more mentally than physically--after all, the Art Loeb is nothing but prolonged steep uphills and prolonged steep downhills, my two favorite features of Pisgah. If nothing else, I can turn my brain to the right setting for that noise.

If I really want to rev my engine beforehand, I probably ought to read Born to Run for the third time--it never fails to ignite a temporary lust for long plodding miles of singletrack. That book does the same thing for me as really good DH videos, which may be indicative of the nature of each sport. Running is my cerebral, solitary retreat, while I like riding because it is adrenaline-pumping, sphincter-clenching, and delightfully social.

There may be nothing finer than a well-made DH video. I entertain no dreams of gravity racing but those films have universal mountain biking appeal. Something about the perfect integration of images and music elevates both to their maximum potential. For example, I watched Made the other evening. Long ago I had decided that Tegan and Sara wasn't really the band for me. But on this viewing of Made I noticed how perfectly the angry, plaintive rock of "The Con" meshed with some righteous shredding at Bromont, and I fell head over heels for it. That song has now been on repeat in my head for a week.

I love how a different perspective or context can completely alter and improve a song. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' first album always left me a bit cold because it seemed too simplistic and punky, but then I listened to a podcast that explained the song "Maps". It was a based on Karen O's disintegrating relationship and in the video her face shows unbearable pain. Another song that is now running through my brain nonstop.

Sometimes when someone I respect really likes a song or artist, I give it more time and consideration than I otherwise would. I recently downloaded the Sleigh Bells album because it got so much buzz last year. After a few plays I relegated it to the Meh pile as being too noisy and repetitive. Then it came up during an unintentional listening session with some friends, who all thought the album was great. It inspired in Rimmer this flawless gem of musical criticism: "The intro [to "Treats"] makes me want to set fire to a car, and the rest of the song makes me want to watch it burn."

Needless to say it's back on my playlist.

Forgive the tangents but this is what I was thinking about on my run today, through smothering humidity, cloudbursts, and the intoxicating smell of wet ferns. I never talk about music on this blog. It seems like a pretty personal and subjective pleasure, and similar to people who constantly label themselves "foodies", I think people who are deeply enamored with their own opinions about music are beyond annoying. But I think we all know what it's like to be really affected by something we're listening to, and that is why I feel okay talking about it.

Question Du Jour

Holly and I were pondering this head-scratcher at the bakery this afternoon.
Why does everyone wearing a bluetooth look like a douche?
It's a chicken/egg conundrum: does purchasing a wireless cell phone thingy to attach to your head make you a douche, or do only douches buy permanent body-decorating phone fixtures? Is it because earpieces are the status-seeking equivalent of highly visible tattoos--both broadcasting your very specific values and opinions? Or do the wireless signals burn holes through the tactful part of your brain and turn you douche?
Look, some examples:
Now this one's pretty easy, because with or without device, he is obv a d-nozzle.

But here is a prime example of the corrosive power of the bluetooth. Old man, looking very friendly. Add ear weevil, he looks patronizing and fake.

Career douche. Second strike against him: gel in hair.


Methinks more time and research need to be devoted to this question.