I’m starting to feel nervous about Bike Across Kansas. It was all very well in March to say “I’ve got plenty of time to work up to 70 mile rides by June”. I started with 20 and 30 mile rides. But it’s May and I haven’t gotten beyond 20 and 30 mile rides. So today I was determined to go at least 40 miles.

Deb called at 10:00 to say she was done with her morning roto-tilling and how about we start at 10:30. I was in the middle of my garden so I put away the tools and washed up and went to see to Crush, who needed a little attention. The magnet for the odometer fell off on Friday when she fell over. I summoned Nell so she could learn a little more bike maintenance. She aired up the rear tire and put the magnet on the spoke. I aired up the front tire and cleaned the chain. I switched my flat kit out from my basket to the trunk, added a couple bottles of water and a banana, changed into bike shorts & a tech tshirt, and headed out right at 10:30, about 10 minutes late.

Deb & Keith were waiting for me. It was already warm. We put sunscreen on.

We went out Illinois to Highway 11 east. We turned south on J. The lettered highways are so much hillier than the numbered highways. I ate a banana and finished off my 2nd bottle of water. There was a woman holding a garage sale and she let me refill both water bottles. We rested a few minutes in Brashear, but my banana was gone and I hadn’t brought any more food. I had eaten a good breakfast, my usual 2 eggs on a bed of lettuce. But I was pretty hungry and we were just halfway done.

From Brashear we went south on V, then west on F. Those were both plenty hilly. At the top of a very long hill we stopped in a driveway. I had half a bottle of water left. I drank some and poured the rest on myself. I knocked on the door and refilled both bottles again. I had drank 4 bottles of water at that point, and sweated it all out.

That road took us to Hwy 63. Going north back into town on Hwy 63 is a joy. The wind is always from the south and it’s downhill. I don’t know how the wind is always from the south on Hwy 63 but it is. It makes it really hard going south and really easy coming back. I flew along at a pretty good clip despite feeling hungry and weak. My shoulders were starting to ache, and at the higher speed of the downhill with the wind at my back, I could ride with no hands easily despite the high speed traffic just to my left.

But then I took the exit to Baltimore St. It’s a steep exit ramp and overpass. My odometer counted up to 9000 miles. That’s 9000 miles since I bought  my bike in September 2008. It felt like it was 9000 miles since I’d left the house that morning. The top of the next hill I had to stop. My head was prickling from the heat. I wasn’t thirsty. I drank a little of the cool water and poured some more over my shirt. I moved on, coasted down the next hill, and struggled up to the stop light, where Deb & Keith were waiting for me. I was feeling awful. “You’re almost there,” they said encouragingly. “There’s not any more hills.” I showed them my odometer reading 9002 miles.

They turned on to Franklin and I continued on Baltimore. I considered La Harpe but it has a little bit of a hill. But so did Baltimore. My legs weakly turned over the cranks. Suddenly my weakness & hunger turned into extreme nausea. There is a big ash tree in front of the new urgent care clinic. I leaned my bike up against the tree and sat down in the shade. I waited for the nausea to pass. I wondered if I should call Iain to pick me up. But that seemed ridiculous. I was maybe a mile away from home.

I was still waiting ten minutes later when Ivy pulled in. He’d seen my bike. “Whatcha doing?” he asked.

“I guess I have a little heat exhaustion,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m going to throw up. Can you give me a ride?” In retrospect that might not be the most persuasive way to ask for a ride…threatening to throw up in someone’s car. But of course he did give me a ride. I stood up dizzily and stumbled to the car while he loaded my bike.

I tried to eat at home but I was still nauseous. This was disappointing because my favorite part of a bike ride is coming home and eating, and eating, and eating. I had been anticipating that part of it for so many hours. All I could do was nibble. A couple hours and a nap later, I was feeling better, if not exactly energetic.

I’m more worried now. That was only 40 miles. The shortest day of Bike Across Kansas is 43 miles, and one day is 80 miles. Kansas in June will be hot. On the other hand, Missouri  miles are hillier than Kansas miles, except maybe through the Flint Hills. And now I know better than to try to go 40 miles with only 1 banana. I should have brought 2 bananas and 2 V8s to go with the 5 bottles of water I drank and poured over myself.

But I try to run on the trail once a week anyway. It’s different than road running. I read somewhere that runners hold their elbows about an inch further from their body when they are running on trails than they do when they are running on a paved surface. At the end of the Trail Half Marathon last year it was my shoulders that hurt as much as anything else. So even if I’m not getting as much of a workout for my heart and lungs, I’m strengthening the ligaments in my ankles and knees, and strengthening my shoulders, when I run on a muddy trail.

There’s not much I can do about the fact that running on a muddy trail tears up the trail.

I biked to the TCC. That’s the only trail that’s convenient to get to by bike. Rainbow Basin isn’t too far but it requires three miles of gravel and I hate biking on gravel.

I didn’t notice the fog until I got to that side of town. The fog was even thicker in the woods. Spider webs, white and heavy with fog, littered the forest floor like used hankies after a bad cold.

The forest at this time of year looks like a page out of a coloring book that a toddler has scribbled on with a Spring Green crayon. Naked tree trunks outline the forest. Where the redbuds grow the toddler used Lavendar. There’s a little Burnt Sienna crayon where last year’s oak leaves linger on the trees.

In the open areas, the grass is orange and green.

Squirrels rustled noisily in the fallen leaves. I heard a grunting and I wondered maybe a deer? I didn’t see it. Birds chirped and chattered, and I heard geese. I heard a bird call or cry that I didn’t recognize. I heard a beating like a drum and saw a huge bird, maybe a turkey buzzard, flap away.

Not many smells made it past my congested sinuses. Where the trail met up to Ray St. I ran along the gravel road for a little bit and smelled the sharp odor of dog poop.

I’m experienced enough to know to walk down the steep slopes when the trail is slick like this. But I tried to run up the steep slopes. On the first one I slid, lost my balance, and fell uphill. My ankle ached a little and after that I walked up as well as down the steep slopes. There are a lot of steep slopes on that trail.

They take their St. Pat's day festivities seriously.

We were struck by the quantity and variety of soap available.

If none of the soaps on the counter suit you, there are a few more up there.

Guys hammered snakes with trees 104 times, once for every year St. Pat's day has been celebrated at Rolla.

After hitting the snake 104 times, they bit the head off the snake. Each headless snake is a point for their club.

St. Pat is the patron saint of engineering.

Any organization could apply to paint a square on the street or in one of the tunnels. This was the Fencing Club.

Not bad for a Hummer.

This 2-story lab can simulate an earthquake. The columns tested were about 15 feet tall. Some of them stood up better than others.

While we were watching, they failed to launch their enormous kite. Later we saw some students failing to fly normal little kites. It was windy, but too gusty for kites.

The visit was very convincing. Iain was nearly convinced to go back to school. However, he isn’t allowed to until we have paid off his student loans!

Nell is very interested in Engineers Without Borders. The Missouri S&T chapter goes to Guatemala and Brazil. In Guatemala, they dug a well for an orphanage. Before the well, one or two kids died of dysentery each year. Now, no kids die. They are building plumbing for a village. The students are involved in planning every single foot of miles of pipe. The materials engineers have designed ceramic water filters using Guatemalan clay.

We stayed in a lovely bed & breakfast that night. The owners were friendly, the husband was an engineering professor at Missouri S&T and asked many questions about our tour. We were so tired and slept soundly. The next morning we drove to St. Louis to see the Star Trek exhibit at the Science Museum.

They didn’t let us take pictures at the exhibit. But there were opportunities for photos which we could then buy. Initially we decided not to spend $20 on a photo but we couldn’t resist when we saw the bridge and the transporter pad. And it was only $5 for the 2nd photo.

Engage.

Three to beam up.

The second picture has holographic treatment so that when you move it back and forth we appear and disappear, like we are beaming out. The scanned image looks like we’re mid-beam.

There was a green screen and when we walked past it, it looked like we were walking across the bridge on the tv on the other side. Nell’s green jacket was the same color as the green screen so it was just like an invisibility cloak.

We went upstairs to build bridges, a more meaningful experience from some of what we had learned the day before at Missouri S&T. Nell’s been studying them in Physics recently too, so she could tell us all about the strongest design.

We finished our day appropriately at Pi Pizzeria, and then a long drive home.

There is in fact a trail head at the end of Royal Oaks. So far so good. Unlike at Rainbow Basin, it’s easy to find the actual trail from the trail head. It went north, again a good sign. I soon came to a fork and took the left one.

Someone (hopefully rangers) has been out with a chainsaw. Lots of trees are cut down. Maybe they are thinning the woods, or maybe preemptively getting rid of ash trees before the emerald ash beetle spreads to our area. When the trees were cut down, they were cut so as to fall downhill. This meant that where the trees were uphill of the trail, they fell across the trail. I jumped over quite a few trees.

The trail went along a ridge for a bit and then straight down to a creek. There it appeared to end. Some trees were cut down and it looked like maybe the trail continued on but had been obscured by trees. I also noticed several trees with blue paint on them. I thought maybe the blue paint was to indicate the trail.

I looked and looked and could not find the trail by the blue trees. I thought maybe the blue paint was to identify trees that were supposed to be cut down. I went a little ways in each direction and came back. Finally I found a path leading away. It might be a deer trail so I looked back a couple times to make sure of where I am.

I’m really, really good at getting lost. I had left my keys on the wheel of the car, probably not a smart habit but I didn’t have pockets. I didn’t have my phone or wallet or anything to identify my carcass should I wander here lost forever. (Ok, I knew what direction the sun was, and I’m sure I’d have gotten out eventually.)

Then the trail reached a pond and became a track and it clearly wasn’t a deer trail. I followed it on. It led up the hill and intersected with another track. These tracks were more like something you’d drive your truck on, not so much a foot path. According to the map I should be hooking up with the Rainbow Basin trail, which I’ve been on several times. This track didn’t look like that trail. To the left it ended with State Park Boundary signs. I went to the right.

From that track there was another track leading off the way I’d come, and I was starting to get worried that I would have difficulties finding the right track back if I decided to turn around and go back the way I’d come. I headed on a little further. I passed some Conservation Area Boundary signs.

This track led to another track that seemed a little better traveled. I could go left or right. To the right I saw something that might be part of an old truck, the sort of thing you might see on private property. I wasn’t sure I was still on public land. I was more than halfway through the amount of time I’d wanted to run. If I kept going, I was almost sure to get lost–if I wasn’t lost already. Even if I didn’t get lost, I didn’t know how much further it would be to get back to the trail head. So I turned around.

Amazingly I took the correct track back. It led straight to the little pond and I found the possible deer trail leading away. I think now that the track is an access track to the pond, and the possible deer trail is just a deer trail. I found the creek and the blue painted trees and after only a little searching, the trail.

This part was very overgrown with prickly things and I have slashes on my ankles now. Ow.

On the way back I crossed a creek I’d crossed before. There were trees with blue paint near the creek. Maybe blue paint means “this tree is near water”. Just in case you’d missed the creek.

There were a lot of birds out. A black and white and red woodpecker was tapping away at a stick not very far away from my head. I stood still and watched it. It flew to another tree and tap tap tap. It flew again and tap tap tap.

The little black and white birds with the high pitched chirp that have a funny name I can never remember, flew up in a great flock as I passed by. More and more appeared out of the grass. It was so funny–first there was one and then a few and then they just kept appearing.

Back at the trail head, another vehicle pulled in. A young plump couple and an adorable beagle-lab got out. I asked them about the trail. He said a little further up is a second fork, and that is the one that makes a loop and connects to Rainbow Basin. The first one, the one I took, only goes down to the bottoms. It’s not on the map at all.

There had been some steep hills, and mud. The descents were slippery and treacherous, and the ascents required power that my legs are unaccustomed to, and they are also slippery and treacherous. It was sunny and almost warm otherwise. The creeks all had a little ice and a little water. I just wanted to sit and rest when I got home, but we needed groceries, and we walked to the store with our collapsible grocery cart.

With that long introduction (already at 162 words), I finally introduce the topic of today’s post: fair trade business casual clothing. It doesn’t exist.

Why fair trade? Recently I came across the Slavery Footprint calculator and determined that 44 slaves work for me. I remarked, “That’s probably lower than most people, but still kind of high.”

Nell replied, “One slave is too many.”

True. So we are more conscious now of the contributions of sweatshops to our lifestyle. What I’ve learned so far is depressing. Without going all Possibility Alliance or Dancing Rabbit (i.e, hippie communes), it is absolutely impossible to live in mainstream culture without supporting sweatshops somewhere. The only electronics company to address this at all is Apple, and all they’ve done so far is join the Fair Labor Association which will now investigate Apple’s suppliers  like Foxconn and give Apple a grade. It will, no doubt, be a very low grade. None of the other companies have done even that much. A low grade is higher, in this case, than no grade.

If electronics are impossible to own without supporting sweatshops, perhaps I can dress myself in Fair Trade products. I started browsing the web and discovered that Fair Trade clothes are hippie clothes: long flowing skirts and yoga pants.

My options are to employ slaves, or to look like a hippie, or to learn to sew and find the time to do it myself. (That would take a while. My sewing skills are rudimentary and it’s not something I enjoy tremendously.)

This illuminates an issue I’ve noticed with bike/ped. (See? It all comes back to the bike, eventually.) Some of the bike/ped “community” (whatever that is) (I appear to have a penchant for parentheses this morning) seem to be more interested in selling their lifestyle than in selling bike/ped. This is something I feel pretty strongly about, in fact. I want to bring bike/ped into mainstream culture, not try to convince mainstream culture to join my side and feel all smug and superior when they don’t. (I find other opportunities to feel smug and superior, such as when I’m looking down my nose at people who feel smug and superior.) (I think my overuse of parentheses is because I like to use a lot of parentheses, and I’ve been restraining myself from overusing parentheses on the Daily Express blog, so now I have a lot of pent up parentheses.)

Anyway, I want to bring bike/ped to mainstream culture, not bring mainstream culture to bike/ped. Mohammed comes to the mountain. Fair trade idealists need to provide fair trade clothing for  mainstream culture, not try to convert mainstream culture into wearing long flowing skirts and yoga pants.

During the holiday season lots of people bring in delicious treats. I don’t have a problem turning them down even if they look so scrumptious. The problem comes in the next day when I feel sorry for myself because I didn’t get the scrumptious treat yesterday. So I buy myself a nasty coke and candy bar which is not even tasty. And I consume them furtively in my dungeon office. (Some people call it a basement, not a dungeon, but there’s even a labyrinth.)

I’ve been thinking also about the social role of food. I read an article recently that people with celiac disease experience higher rates of depression than the general population. It’s worst when their symptoms are flaring up and it gets somewhat better when they have their symptoms under control, but they are still at higher risk for depression than the general population. The primary treatment for celiac disease is to control your diet, which means no gluten. No wheat, no flour. The authors of the study speculated that the stress of maintaining that diet in our wheat-filled society puts them at risk for depression.

I could easily see that. It has to feel like everyone is inadvertently trying to kill you, because you have to be so careful what you eat to avoid gluten. When someone brings treats for the department, they actually are bringing treats for everyone except you. When you go to a potluck you provide food for everyone else and yourself, because everyone else brought food for everyone but you. Even if you know it’s not intentional it’s got to get to you.

Food plays such an important role socially. I don’t have a problem with disrupting social order, but if I’m going to do that it’s going to be about oil and transportation and bicycles, not about food and sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I want to eliminate insulin surges from my life without rocking the boat.

So here’s the new rules. No liquid poison (aka coke) and no cheap mass produced candy bars. I get to eat treats that people bring in– but only if I want them. See, that’s another weakness, is that when I wallow in self pity, I’ll drink a coke or eat a candy bar, not because I want to, but because I deserve it, since I didn’t get whatever treat yesterday. Since I started the no-sugar thing, I’ve eaten a lot of candy and stuff that I didn’t really want, just because it was my official sugar day. If someone brings in Hy-Vee cupcakes for a party I do not have a problem turning those down.

We’ll see how that goes. I can already see a potential problem–do I let my husband buy me chocolate? Because there’s this gray area there from him on his own going out and buying me chocolate, me “subtly” hinting that I wouldn’t be adverse to a gift of chocolate, and me outright asking him to buy me chocolate.

By the way, if you feel like baking something for me, I’d like homemade chocolate chip cookies WITH nuts. But I’ll accept brownies with nuts too. Or, well, pretty much anything.

I clean my chain about weekly or more often in bad weather. So when we moved to Kirksville, I was using the repair stand more frequently again. But when we moved from the house on the highway to the house in town, the repair stand had to live outside. There just wasn’t any place for it to live inside. The plywood base quickly rotted through. I had only painted the top of it.

First step: Unscrew the nuts & bolts holding the plate to the plywood base. They were rusty.

Next step: Find a new plywood base. I asked around and someone brought me a very large piece of plywood. I cut it in half. It took 4 coats of paint, and I painted both top and bottom.

The plate was rusted onto the pipe. I took the entire thing to Westlake. They got it apart and found the right size bolts and suggested T-nuts. I got the 4 bolt holes drilled into one piece of plywood, using the plate as a template for where to place the holes. I did the same thing on the other piece.

The 4 holes wouldn’t line up. I could get 2 to line up and then the warped pieces of plywood would start to straighten out and the others wouldn’t line up. Since it had been over a month since I’d cleaned my chain, I went ahead and used the stand, but it was even more wobbly. I could see that even if I could get all 4 bolts in, it was still going to be wobbly, even with the additional piece of plywood.

What I needed was something really heavy, like a house. Or a concrete patio. I looked into how to attach things to a concrete patio or a brick wall. Then I hit on the solution. The shed! Not as heavy as a house, but it is attached to a concrete pad. Heavy enough even for my bike.

In the past when I’d used my bike stand, the height (4 feet) was an issue. It was pretty awkward and uncomfortable to crouch down to clean my chain that was only a couple feet off the floor. I set the plate at 4 1/2 feet up the side of the shed.

I took the bike stand to another shop to get the elbow join off the pipe that made the arm. It had also rusted on there. If I do much more of this I ought to get my own pipe wrenches.

I got the plate attached to the shed and screwed the arm into it. Then I put a bike up there and found the last problem to be solved: at 4 1/2 feet, it’s difficult to hoist a heavy bike up there. I’m thinking a step stool or something will probably take care of that.

A couple weeks ago we bought MineCraft. I love it. I played it for probably 5 or 6 hours on the weekends, and as much as possible on weekdays. Within a few days I had an upper back injury. I stopped playing for a couple days, then decided it had healed enough and I would just “be more careful” of my posture while playing. My upper back hurts like the dickens today.

I think it’s impressive that I could get the same injury working out, or playing a computer game. Around me, nothing is safe!

In addition to these two somewhat debilitating (but temporary) injuries, I frequently get a crick in my neck. Sometimes I think I know what the cause was, sometimes I have no clue. I couldn’t get into the OMM clinic today but I went downstairs and got an appointment with Family Medicine, which also does OMM. The resident worked on my neck a long time. He got it a lot looser but it will still hurt until it heals. I have heat on it.

I’m not a fan of pain killers. They work by blocking processes that happen for a reason. I prefer to let my body heal itself as much as possible. I’m not saying I eschew all modern medicine, or even pain killers in general. I just don’t use them lightly. Anyway in the past when I’ve had a crick in my neck I take ibuprofen and still have a crick in my neck.

I’d like to figure out why I’m prone to upper back injuries and cricks in my neck. Maybe there’s a way to avoid them in the first place. Based on the Chi Running stuff I’ve been reading, I think it comes back to posture, not strength. If it has anything to do with strength, it has to do with core strength, not upper body strength.

Every winter, I have to re-learn how to dress for the temperatures. Every winter, I tell myself I ought to be writing this down so that next winter, I won’t have to go through this again. I never have gotten around to it, but other people have. This chart was developed by a friend who lives in Norway. She bicycles to work every day. I guess I thought Norway had rougher winters than Missouri, but after converting her chart to Farhenheit, I was surprised that she thinks 5F is “too damn cold!”

What her chart really tells me is that dressing for winter is very personal. Different people have different comfort zones. At 55F, I wouldn’t wear anything on my head. (I’m don’t even know what a Buff is.) I start putting on my balaclava around 25F. My Norway friend and I clearly own different clothes, and wear different clothes. I don’t have knee warmers, leg warmers, and unlined tights. Then, as the year progresses, my comfort zones change. In the fall I might wear a balaclava as warm as 28F. But a balaclava on a 28F spring morning would suffocate me!

The Bike Co-op recently hosted a seminar by PedNet, Columbia’s bike/ped advocacy organization. The title was “Beating the Biking Brrrr”. Gina Overshiner has several years of experience not just biking in winter, but also leading the Bike Brigade, a group of kids who are now middle school age, and who bike to school nearly every day. They have biked through some extreme weather conditions and so she has experience with keeping these kids warm. Gina has her own set of ideal cold weather gear, but she knows how to make do with whatever a kid happens to have on hand (or foot).

She asked the kids what advice they would have for winter bicyclists. Their #1 advice was attitude. It’s not freezing, it’s invigorating! Brisk! Rejuvenating!

Not an all-weather bicyclist? A recent study showed that if midwesterners bicycled just four months of the year for most trips less than 2 miles, that would have a significant impact on public health, gas, environment, finances, and economy. (Money that goes into our gas tanks–and into Canadian oil–doesn’t do much for the economy. Take that money out of the gas tank and save it, pay down debt, or spend it on bicycle clothes, and you have a positive influence on our economy.) So if winter biking is not for you, take pride in your fair weather bicycling. And then maybe, try out something a little cooler than you normally do. You might be surprised at how…invigorating…it is!

I can answer that! No, it wasn’t the same lady, because that lady has to be me, and I didn’t bike today.

I got a huge kick out of that. People recognize me.

Actually, I do use the gears. The low gears. I can get anywhere without breaking a sweat.

You know who else wore yellow? That’s right, the man in the yellow hat.