The Ink-Pot and the Palette

During my long absence from this platform, I noticed, then was a bit bothered by, then was slowed down by, and finally (and rather suddenly) completely incapacitated by arthritis of the hip joints. I began managing symptoms with ibuprofen, then cannabis (yay cannabis), and gradually forgot what it was like to go to sleep at night without drugs.

Last year around this time I committed to an August writing retreat in France. I knew my travel activities would be limited, but what I didn't anticipate was the degree of pain I would suffer getting from an airport to a train to an underground. I could not have imagined needing an entire day and night immobile in a hotel room (in the heart of London! What a waste!) just to recover enough to walk even a few steps. I never envisioned myself needing wheelchair assistance in airports.

But I did.

And that's what it took to get me out of fantasy land. As soon as I got home, I interviewed a couple of orthopedic surgeons, magically chose the one who, it turns out, practices the advanced method of hip replacement that Misha Collins benefited from, and booked myself in.

The left hip was replaced on November 1. In to the surgery center at 6:30 a.m., home in my own bed by 2:30 that afternoon, back on my bike three weeks later. The surgeon came in as I was waking up from anesthesia and with the most pitying look on his face said, "I don't know how you stood it. Your bone spurs had bone spurs."

I have named that new joint Titania.

The right hip was my Christmas present, December 20. Same incredible method, same miraculous recovery.

I call that one T2.

Three weeks later I rode my bike to the clinic to turn in my excess opioids (and boy do they prescribe those things in abundance!), and I've been sleeping every night since without any chemical assistance.

The COBRA health insurance I've been lucky enough to carry since retirement six years ago though-I-had-to-refinance-my-mortgage-to-pay-the-premiums has paid off.

My time of significant disability was humbling and eye-opening. This second chance is so wonderful that even in the midst of pandemic, I'm taking joy in my ability to stand in the kitchen long enough to cook real food. Go down my front steps. Walk to the store. Get on and off my bike. Get in and out of my bathtub.

If we ever fly in airplanes again, I'm kind of looking forward to having Titania and T2 show up on the scanner.

Oh, and despite everything, the writing retreat in France was wonderful. And I got to see ravurian in London.

It's been five years since I got the sudden wild idea to buy a bike. Since then I've lost 65 pounds, sold my car, reduced my transportation expenses to $75 a month, let my driver's license lapse, and, in a not-entirely-unrelated development, retired¹.

( Five Years By Bike, in lists )

Thing Two in a Five-Thing Visit To My Favorite Portlandy Things

After our tour a couple of weeks ago around the waterfront, I take you now to a much less glamorous site, not frequented by visitors at all: The Going Street Neighborhood Greenway.

( Going Street )

It was a perfect day for a Going Street grocery run today: chilly, clear and still.

I asked my sis to take some in-context pictures of my newly-festooned bike this evening. A little inadvertent bokeh ensued.



With my phone in the handlebar mount, I've discovered that the LED flash makes an excellent additional headlight.



Runs the battery down like crazy but I'm rarely rolling for more than an hour at a time anyway. And this way, nobody can fail to see me. Heck, almost nobody can resist commenting on how pretty Eleanor looks!

(Crossposted to bicycles)

After being an absolutely vile human being yesterday (mood swings of a sort) and kind of hating myself for it, I was grateful to put in twelve hours at work today. Less time to dwell on my vileness.

The long workday was broken up by a couple of walks. It was gorgeously autumnal, and Eleanor needed work, so I rode her to the shop on the east side before work and walked across to my office on the west side, then back to the shop in the afternoon. The altered route took me past one of Portland's stranger and more charming features.

( Go figure )

I spent my lunch hour today with my sister and Mary Stewart, an architect at Alta Planning + Design. Alta is the firm responsible for the bike-share systems in Washington, New York, Minneapolis, a bunch of other US cities, and soon, Portland (yay!).

Through a comment conversation on BikePortland, I was invited to view Alta's array of amazing bike-parking racks, one of which can accommodate my big Dutch bike.

( Bikey day )

...that I love the internet?

Recent studies show that young Americans are losing interest in driving, and are actually preferring mass transit and active transportation over car ownership.* Of the many reasons suggested for this decline in driving, my favorite is that when you take transit you can amuse yourself with your mobile device the whole way.**

Eleanor O being in the shop overnight, I was riding the #8 downtown this morning, enjoying this very benefit. I was reading the many emails flying among vampirefan, sffan, llaras and me speculating about what the hell is going on in Teen Wolf, when ravurian pinged me from the end of his workday in London. I ended up chatting with him all the way to work. (Swype works quite well as an input method on a bouncy bus).

Is it just me, or does that still feel like magic? Sometimes--seriously, at least once per day hour--I am simply awestruck with delight at the global brain and what it has wrought.

* This shockingly un-American trend has sent a panicked auto industry into an advertising blitz, some of which targets the uncoolness of riding the bus, riding a bike, or walking. You know it's real when they're that desperate.

** Yes, you can do this while driving, but please, please don't.

Just got in from the late showing of Much Ado. It's playing at Cinema 21, an unapologetically crappy old movie house in a neighborhood that was hip when I lived there in, like, the Reagan era, and seems, after a period where it started to feel a bit corporate, to have been re-hippified.

I picked up my ticket, wandered across the street to a bar I'd never heard of, and had a mojito and a really good spinach, strawberry, goat cheese and hazelnut salad. Since I almost never drink, I was a wee bit tipsy when I crossed back over at showtime.

( I honestly don't think the rum was solely responsible for my delight. )

This picture of an attractive Dane on a bike was posted on BikePortland the other day.

I have since decided that I will signal no other way than the cool way that Mr Copenhagen there signals. (How else could you signal, you wonder? Well, I'm typically more emphatic and full-armed about it because Portland, though bike-aware, does not have Copenhagen-levels of bike-awareness. But screw that. I'm going to be cool Danish-signaling gal from here on.)

The extraordinary editor of BikePortland, Jonathan Maus, is currently posting dispatches from the two great world bike capitals, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. He has mentioned the amazing bike-riding skills of the citizens, and since we're not talking Tour de France racing, I'm assuming he means stuff like riding steadily in slow and crowded conditions, navigating safely around pedestrians, riding handlebar-to-handlebar with your friends while conducting a conversation, gauging traffic, or riding with two kids, a cigarette, a cellphone and no helmet.

No, I'm not being facetious about that last item. Americans think of cycling as a competitive sport requiring speed, power and endurance. (My daily commute is often made uncomfortable and even dangerous by cyclists of that sort.) We don't seem to place much emphasis on casual ease. And let's face it, casual ease requires skill.

I shall henceforth be all about the casual ease. (I'll probably keep the helmet, though.)

Crossposted to bicycles