Another Day, Another Bike Wreck

I was cruising through Turia Park the other day on a Valenbisi bike and pumping my guts out. There is a little dip as the path goes under one of the bridges. As I was grinding up the other side, rounding the corner the chain broke. I was standing up on the pedals at the time and I started to fly over the handlebars. I was able to stop myself but I was going down and going down hard. My Professor at my old jiu-jitsu school would have been very proud of my break fall as we call it in marital arts. I was able to kick the bike away from me and slap my left arm down to help break my fall as I instinctively tucked my chin to protect my head. The scrapes I have on my left arm, leg, and butt cheek are evidence that I did everything according to plan as the wipe-out occurred (to me it was like in slow motion as I have practiced falling so many times).

The lesson I should take from this is to stop treating the Valenbisi bikes like rented Porsches and try to take it easy. With that said I’d also like to point out that this isn’t the first chain that I have broken on these bikes. In my cycling life I have only snapped two chains on my mountain bike and that was when I was climbing two gruelingly steep hills.  Chains shouldn’t be so easy to break.

El Piso (The Apartment)

Take note of cloudless October sky.

This is the view from my dining room. A lot of people might think that the back side of Spanish apartment blocks are unsightly and hardly qualify as a "view." I'm not saying that I wouldn't trade for a view of the ocean but I love sitting at my dining room table looking out at interior of my block. You hear things more than you see them: caged birds singing away, people talking, football matches on TV, and power tools as there are always renovations to these old places (ugh!). The good news is that this is Spain and construction workers—how do I put this—aren’t exactly killing themselves with long hours.

For people who live in single family homes this urban density may seem a little overwhelming but you have to keep in mind all of the wonderful advantages. Take a walk around the outside of this block and you will see. There are several cafés, a supermarket, a bike shop, a pricey Italian food store, a cinema, a bank, and a hardware store.

Battle Stations Ready!

The Chinese character for disaster is also the word for “shithole,” or something like that—I don’t speak Chinese.  My kitchen is disastrously small for someone who cooks as much as I do so you have to be creative and use every square centimeter (I’m metric!). As you can see I have used the door as a very convenient storage area. To me a kitchen is—above all—a work shop.  Function trumps form every time, at least for me. When I’m cooking I want everything I need to be within easy reach, and this means not having to root around in cupboards. I especially like the little spice rack I put up with my most used tools: kitchen shears, knife sharpener, potato peeler, apple corer (for tomatoes, primarily), and pizza cutter.

 Ah yes, there's nothing like contemplating a fascist massacre of a peasant village while sipping a quiet cup of coffee in the morning. I found the Guernica print and thought it went well in the dining room.

This apartment is very typical of most apartments from this era of the 1930s and 40s. Scores of apartments here have the almost exact floor plan and differ only in minor details. In most of these places the bathrooms are in the back facing the inside courtyard shown in the first picture. This dining room was originally an outdoor patio but has been enclosed to add another room to the house.

Corner Office w/View

 My office is an ongoing project. The painting was a gift from the painter. Florescent paint wouldn't be my first choice but the painting adds light and acts like a window for this interior room of the house.

I really, really love this apartment. You get the sense of what Howard Kunstler means when he talks about places we build that are worth caring about. I really enjoy just being at home these days. Maybe I'll feel differently when it is cold and wet but for right now life is good. Temperature 68 degrees at 10:49 am.

And finally (at least for this post) is a picture of the lovely piano that was here when I moved in. It was for sale and I knew that I should have bought it and worried later about the wisdom of such a purchase. Moving a piano in these apartments can be a costly affair. Someone is supposed to be coming by to take it away. I just started playing again and now I will have to deal with not playing...again! I may start playing the guitar although I tried before and it never really appealed to me. 

Soon to be gone?

The Daily Show Strikes Again (and again and again and again...)

The Daily Show
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Once again, if it weren't for The Daily Show pointing out the incredible inconsistencies of the Right I think I would totally lose it. How can you watch this clip and still be a conservative? The Right is so full of shit they can't even see above it. Jon Stewart's comparison of the Tea Party and the Wall Street protests was brilliant as was his use of the Sean Hannity clip from 2009 praising the Tea Party.

More Valenbisi Propaganda

I just passed the one year mark with Valenbisi, Valencia’s great bike share system. The system itself began in June of 2010 but wasn’t really completely operational until last December or so. There are still some proposed new stations but it is all pretty much in place and working well. About the only complaint anyone could have against the program is that it is too popular. There needs to be more stations in the city center in order to accommodate just how wildly successful the system is right now. There are somewhere around 135,000 subscribers thus far which represents a bit over 10% of the population—not nearly as popular as the Vélib’ system in Paris after which our system here is based.

I was a hardcore cyclist long before the idea of bike sharing but Valenbisi has made my life much better. No matter where I am in the city I have a bike available to me. I go everywhere around town by bike. Almost everywhere because last night I was so tired after a great workout ride in the morning to the southern beaches I decided to take the bus home from my French class. I stepped out of the door from class, walked a half a block, hopped on the #19 bus, and got off two doors from my apartment. As easy as the metro and buses are in Valencia I rarely use them because the bike, for me, is the perfect urban transportation solution. I suppose that public transportation is a nice option when the weather is crappy but that isn’t the case very often here. Besides, I don’t mind riding in the rain.

Torres de Serrano Station

There definitely seems to be more cyclists on the road now than there were only one year ago. There needs to be a lot more, but I think that will happen. There is still the major problem of brutish drivers and the overall lack of respect given to cyclists here in Valencia. The bike path network is growing every day so it’s not like the city itself isn’t committed to making bicycling a viable option in Valencia.  I think that I speak for many citizens here when I say that I’d like to see Valencia become a first-rate city for bicycles sooner rather than later. 

My Rushmore

Herman Blume: What's the secret, Max?

Max Fisher: The secret?

Herman Blume: Yeah, well, you seem to have it pretty figured out.

Max Fisher: The secret?  I don't know. I think you just gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore.

 

Sage advice, indeed and great counsel for someone looking to improve their physical fitness.  If you don’t like your exercise routine chances are that you won’t stick with it. I was lucky to have found something a long time ago and have done it my whole life. My Rushmore is cycling. If some scientific study were to be released saying that riding a bike is terrible for you and shortens your life I would keep doing it anyway. Cycling for me goes way beyond personal fitness. Riding a bike is my main form of transportation as well as one of my fondest entertainments.

My first great bike was a Schwinn Super Sport ten speed that I bought when I was 15 with money I made working as a busboy.  It was stolen some time later and I bought a Raleigh Competition which was a truly fine bike. I rode the bejesus out of that thing. My next bike was a Bianchi Campeone d’Italia.  This bike was so gorgeous that I used to sit on my bed and look at it in my dorm room. I bought another Bianchi many, many years later when I moved to Seattle. I bought it used at a shop in Freemont (which later moved to Ballard although the name escapes me).  I have three bikes in my current stable: a Trek mountain bike with street slicks on it which serves as my sport bike; a funky city bike with a basket; and the fantastic Valenbisi system which I use on a daily basis.