Dis-connEXion

Day 1 of NO HOME INTERNET since my isp dumped me for not being able to see the wood uh radio tower for the trees. Life in the remote mountains is no walk in the park. 

Hello, my name is kd. I am an internet junkie. 

 Taking it one day at a time. When the craving gets too bad, I do have a library only a 5 minute bike ride down the road. No, I will not hang out in that place with the bright yellow arches for free internet. 

 There IS a bohemian coffee shop in town with wireless if I am sick of my work place. And the Spoko fuel stop convenience store also has wireless. Oh yes, the casino too, but I doubt I will go there. 

Yeah, I have options.

Actually I had been thinking long and hard recently about how hanging out online was possibly impoverishing my life. This is a blessing. 

 I think. 

Bring on the real. It is time to say goodbye to those things in my life which detract. I can do this. I gave up sugar and salt water once.

Enter the antelope

Seems I have have tapped into a sudden vein of good bicycle karma this year.

Less than 24 hours after I had advertised the Iron Horse stolen I had three offers of bicycles. Not my Iron Horse, but members of the community who felt so bad about my bicycle having been stolen. The condolences from other members of the community poured in.

As it turned out a good citizen did see fit to report the Iron Horse and it was retrieved as reported a few posts back.

Nevertheless yesterday I drove a way out of town, past the lake and deep on dusty roads into the woods where people live in beautiful soulful hand built wooden houses the way I imagined they would way back in the Whole Earth Catalog years, to pick up one of those generous gift bicycles: a graceful, tall green and purple Trek Antelope.

It was dark by the time I got home so I had to wait until dawn to take her for a ride out into the hayfields and along the river where the curious cows burped their cud and dribbled river water at my photographing antics.

She IS tall - my feet barely touch the ground over the bar, but she has lovely lines and a lightness which is is indisputably feminine, that high bar notwithstanding. I am thinking that with her height, this antelope is probably more suited to Lionheart of my heart. She has no shocks, but a fine array of 28 gears gives her versatility while thick deeply treaded tyres do cushion the bumps a little. No frills here and no kick stand either.

Nothing however, I discover on this first test drive, comes close to Iron Horse.

Unbinding joy to the angry lady Gaubancex

Hands off my people, Wild Lady Irene! Juracán, we salute you!

He who binds to himself a joy
Does a winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
~ William Blake, Eternity

For a bit more on the angry lady Guabancex go here

Don't think twice

Ever get the feeling you are watching the sun go down on yourself?

Kitchen chemistry

Just made my first Inland Northwest goat milk cheese. Remarkably easy. Remarkably tasty. Flavoured with homegrown chives and garlic nogal.

In another life I am a goat dairy farmer, barefoot in the kitchen. Nubian nannies needing to be milked nuzzle me awake before dawn. A ripe old billy eats laundry at the back door.

Who knows? Maybe one day even this aging, alien nomad will return to her roots. In her dreams.

Iron Horse is baaaaaaack! Small town victory!!!

Found behind a trailer in the rv park at the 49er motel on the south side of town.

Blinged out and a bit battered - one hand grip has been melted, the valve caps are gone and the rims of the wheels have been spray painted gold (yes ugh!!) but my beloved Iron Horse is BAAAACK.

After I plastered the town with posters offering a reward for information leading to the return of stolen spruce green and silver Iron Horse bicycle, as well as placing a classified in the local weekly paper doing the same, I receive a 7 am phone call.

Chief of Police tells me that the person who phoned in this allegedly abandoned bike, is a known drug user. The story is complicated, as they always are, but somehow Iron Horse had become currency in the local drug cartell...what adventures!

Now: anyone have any good suggestions for best way to remove horrible sticky gold aerosol spray paint from my beloved metal mount?

Who would think that spraying the rims gold would mask the identity of a stolen (and very unique) bike in a real real small town? Surely the frame with the identifying colours and singular Iron Horse branding (the only iron Horse in this whole town, this make of mountain bike is not available in the United State)) would be a better way to go. But oh yes, huffing aerosol spray paint fumes does wonders for cognitive functions, doesn't it?

Better pictures in the morning. It is late and dark now.

If you are wondering about the reward? Yes, I intend to organize a voucher for the local grocery store. If I can find a way to ensure that the voucher is only spent on food and not on beer or wine. Otherwise they are getting a Flowery Trail coffee shop gift card.

And for anyone looking for lodging in Chewelah: I recommend you look elsewhere than at the 49er Motel and RV Park. It is a little wrong side of the tracks and turns out that the company they host is a tad unsavory. Those full hookups they offer on their website? Hmmmm....yes. You get it.

Iron Horse is currently being smudged with fragrant Dry Falls sage.

Never be tame is restored to the rightful stable. What joy! to ramp the railway line and eat up the streets again.

Attachment/liberation

Yes I was going to ride the streets angry tonight, looking into backyards for the green and silver of my stolen mount. Every bicycle I see now snags my attention. Alternately, hope flares that someone will be moved to make right and return that steed to me.
Balance sheet of the season: allowing the sun to set indigo and saffron on Iron Horse, I take a newly lubricated Columbia Princess out into the mosquitoes and the moonrise, peddling, peddling until the light is all drained into moonlit night.

Columbia Princess rides again: vintage cowgirl

It doesn't have the bounce and cushioning in ride which front shock absorbers gave Iron Horse, and definitely doesn't have the speed, but I do still have a mount. The town might be one horse, but you didn't think this cowgirl had only one horse in her stable, did you?

It's complicated but the short story is, 4th July weekend, when feeding the pigs in Ellensberg, I scored a vintage 1982 Columbia Tourist 3 speed ladies mount.
She has a real leather sprung seat and a lot of class, even though her gait is slower and there's a bit of tarnishing on her chrome. Her garnet and carnelian colour scheme, along with her upright stance is downright royal. I am sure there is a product on the market which will help me clean up the chrome. And look: there are mudguards and a chain guard! All the better to ride to work in skirts, my dear!

I doubt I will be ramping kerbs or running wild and swift the the way Iron Horse allowed, (after all "Never be tame" is that company's motto) nor will this classic lady take potholes and road construction in her stride, not with those thin tyres which possibly only have a few months life left in them.

This evening after work I took the Columbia Princess out of the storage room, dusted her down and rode her rather carefully round the block to my connection who has a tyre pump. Unfortunately his can of that lovely WD40 cleaning, lubricant gunk had run out so that's top of my shopping list tomorrow.

Then the Princess and I went for a little 3 mile test ride in the dusk. A three quarter moon swelled silver above the Colville River breaking into a million fragments in water which will join the Columbia a little way north. And the Columbia eventually, after much journeying, adventuring and moonbeam infusing , will join the salt water.

Braving clouds of mosquitoes, I paused a while on the bridge to give my sorrow away, mourning the loss of the Iron Horse which brought me so much joy.
In the same place, moon and river as witness, I welcome this vintage princess who brings her breeding and heritage to my stable. According to her badge, she originates from the Westfield, Massachusetts factory and thus can trace her genealogy right back to 1877 and the first bicycle manufacturing company in the United States. Some class act there, even if the leather seat hadn't told me so.

Iron Horse company only began bicycle manufacture in 1987, a full 110 years later, and since bankruptcy in 2009, Iron Horse bicycles are no longer sold in the USA having been bought out by the Canadian Dorel Industires (Cannondale, Schwinn etc). The spirit of Never be tame undersold by Chinese inferiority flooding the big boxed junk stores.

Somehow I see a bit of Zen and the art of bicycle restoration in my future. Somebody has to do right by the Princess.

Gotta hand it to the Fav Tribal Elder, way back there on the clear salt water : he does deliver the goods, geographical divide and purple mountains notwithstanding.

Iron Horse cowgirl un-mounted

Was just finished talking on the phone to Robert the Incomparable back in the old country this morning, about how safe I feel in the mountain eyrie.

Then I went out, trouser legs all clipped, ready for my morning ride to work. There was no Iron Horse.

STOLEN!

Mean horrible hoss thievin' varmits. Gonna set my posse onto you.

The geometry of geography

From a heat faded bluest of skies, the sun bakes down day after day now. We are in the celestial dog days. Summer's minimalism, cloudless. Sirius rules.

Cast away in Corkscrew Canyon

Heading down Hwy 231 with B2T2 in the back and a weather forecast for mid nineties coming over the radio, I impulsively decide to take the Corkscrew Canyon road after Springdale, lured by the boat launch sign. Sometimes it helps to hop onto another lily pad. Get a new perspective, go somewhere different.

The road winds through scrubby pine before the turn off to Lake Spokane campsite and boat launch.

I am early. There are just a few family fishing folks on the shore, campers I am sure. The expansive double concrete launch with dock in the centre and cement wall with rings for mooring boats should have alerted me.

I dither a little before unloading, trying to make up my mind whether to go into this vast man-made drowned valley or not, reading the instructions of how to behave should an aircraft need to gather water for fire fighting purposes. Clear the centre of the lake.

It is only 9:30 in the morning but the sun is already hot on my shoulders and the water crystal and inviting. The clarity of this water is especially attractive after the previous day's horrible, murky paddle at Benewah lake.
I launch, having parked and displayed my brand spanking new WA state parks Discover Pass. As I am readying myself two other kayaking parties arrive. I paddle up the shore line to my right, hoping for turtles. The other kayakers cross the open water to the far shore

I don't see any of my trademark reptiles but do see herons, many floating logs and the biggest fish beneath my kayak. And of course light on water, ripples and reflections, enough to feed my addiction. There are steep sandy banks and rocks and fairly far down the canyon, I discover a Robinson Crusoe castaway kind of shelter poking out of the steep sandy canyon wall.
I am glad that I was on the water early. As I am coming back I get to have a lot of practice paddling in waves with the churn of colliding wakes from all the Sunday afternoon motorized watercraft joy-riders.

At one point a beer drinking party of jet skiers resting against a sandy bank greet me as I glide past. "Is that a kayak or a proper boat?" they ask. I just smile and keep on paddling. Whatever floats your boat. I am having more fun this summer exploring the lakes of this region with B2T2 than ever I imagined when I bought the little piece of moulded blue plastic buoyancy less than six weeks ago in June.
A somewhat harassed park ranger is keeping an eye on all the comings and goings as I arrive back at the launch. The water around this shore has filled up during my paddle. There are canoes, jet skis, and motor boats of all sizes. A veritable log jam of trailers and heavy 4x4 trucks rev, exhaust fumes from their idling flooding the air of the parking lot. I watch the park ranger pick up a used syringe from the side of the dock and warn a gaggle of teen girls that there will be no swimming from the dock. There's a definite big city element here.

I load and go, offering up my parking space to the jostling trucks with their boat trailers. At least someone will be able to switch off their engine. Please!

Advice to prayer paddlers: come early if paddling this place. Being so close to the big smoke of Spokane, the biggest city between Chicago and Seattle, means easy invasion by day trippers with city ways. On the other hand I can see that paddling a little earlier in the season would be a magnificent way to see wildflowers in bloom, right down to the water's edge. The water IS very clean and clear and the canyon walls do have magic in them. Most of the congestion, the day I am here, is around the dock launch - paddling a way down the canyon one can find a kind of peace on the water.