leap years

i completely forgot! yesterday  (march 1st) was st david's day. i suppose it's not much of a celebration unless you're welsh, and it's not as ceremonial as eating haggis, but hey, we used to celebrate andrzejki, in fact, my family still does. it's not much of a thing anymore though.

and if the point of a blog is to celebrate the everyday (okay, the point of this blog anyway), why not point out all the mundane and seemingly inconsequential trivialities to bring them out of the mundane and inconsequential? and what is a birthday if not the everyday? so here goes, with the inconsequentiality:

my arms hurt today. this is neither a revelation nor a surprise. but i'm not complaining - i sort of like this feeling.

BUT NONE OF THIS COMPARES to the extraordinariness of the everyday that occurred on the everyday of february 29th (which is not really everyday since it comes once every four years. (all those proto-feminists up there, shut up for a second, this has nothing to do with that).

lookie what came in the post!

a friend of mine very jokingly called it 'a giant wheel of gouda', which wouldn't be a bad name for a bike. though i was contemplating 'bronislaw', though perhaps something less stately and dated (it is my grandfather's name, after all). i will let you know when i think of it.

here was the grand surprise!

and that's me sitting on my newly-unpacked Trek 1.2. it's my first real road bike, so i'm tremendously excited! i was a bit alarmed when it arrived all wrapped up (WITH NO BOX) in bubble wrap and parcel tape, but boy did the chap do a good job! the thing is in mint condition, shiny as silverware. i don't know what it is about animals liking shiny things, but i definitely don't mind being a magpie for a day (apparently they're not very well liked here - you can even destroy their nests!); heck, i'm a magpie every day, picking up shiny things off the road.

SHINY SHINY SHINY!

what a great leap year it was indeed! i also found out that my supervisor's aunt, dorothy robinson, turned 100 (or 25, depending how you look at it) on the 29th as well! she sounds like an absolutely endearing woman! BBC interviewed her on her birthday: you can listen to the little clip here. she is absolutely adorable!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOROTHY!

what gorgeous spring days are for

i went for a cycle this morning.
that is a bit of a lie, it was more of a commuter cycle, but i enjoyed it tremendously nonetheless. it was one of those intensely foggy mornings (i can never get up without the excitement of a 5-year old on her birthday when it's like this outside! and it always smells so good!) visibility could not have been more than 50m, maybe even less! i wanted to stop to take a picture by thought it was wiser of me to enjoy the ride instead... that'll do.

i attended yet another seminar at the OUCS, this time on choosing the best Referencing software that works for you. as a linux user and a devotee of OpenOffice, as well as being a poor, unfunded student, i found it really hard to find a satisfactory system that doesn't compromise too much. either i must fork up about £100, or switch to Word, or continued referencing by hand.

i managed to get rid of my frustrations however by going to the gym. The had a new machine this time, one of those for those beefy guys who like to pump their arms and then look like little chickens down below. as i have no worries about looking like a little chicken down below, i went away at it. it felt great, until... i got home and had to shower. i could not keep my hands above my head long enough to massage the shampoo in. tomorrow is going to be interesting, that's for sure.

now i'm off to this: http://www.romanticrealignments.blogspot.com/2012/02/double-bill-this-week.html
it's my supervisor giving at a talk at my seminar. well, i co-convene it, but it's becoming a baby of mine. i'm a bit attached...

:D

precisely what summer is for

the uk countryside in the summer months lends itself every so beautifully to cycling. rolling hills, dozens of back lanes and b-routes, long hours of daylight. every time i set out on my bike i find it all too overwhelming & come home much later than anticipated, having given in to curiosity, adrenaline, or both. cycling does another thing - it clears my head, better than tea or running or swimming or rowing. whereas some things require too much attention to technique (rowing), and others allow you to zone out completely (swimming) cycling provides an ideal combination of head space & body awareness.

now, i'd say i classify as an amateur amateur cyclist at best, riding the £150 bike i pieced together from ebay & my old frame (the deathtrap). i envy and admire those who do it seriously. about two weeks ago i met some people who cycle for a living--from a clock made of spokes, to an entire wardrobe full of lycra, not to mention a shed full of spare bike parts, i was pretty impressed. but at times i really am torn as to what the bike really is for. it has become, as many things do, a sport for the elite.

this chap articulates my point exactly. for him, it's not about the carbon frames and shimano parts, but rather, the 'lazy, languid, long distance cycle rides'. stopping at a pub along the way, some locals commented:

"Respect to you," they said. "You've got your socks tucked into your corduroy, you're riding a bike like that. You're not like those Lycra lunatics." Adding a silent punctuation mark, a racer with all the gear sped past. Knowing glances were exchanged.

i have to admit, i am partial to those lycra lunatics. (this could be just my profound love of lycra; more on that later) & god knows if i had the money i'd deck myself like a little lycra leprechaun on a sweet carbon frame bike. or bamboo! but a recent purchase from my darling boyfriend has me whizzing through the back roads of oxfordshire looking like a giant soreen malt-loaf on a bike. :D

this chap is great though. he rides with the same mentality i meant to set out with on my unaccomplished LEJOG last year--"man, not machine". however, having been scraped & bruised a few times too many, i can't quite say i share the same affinity with his naivete.

I'll admit to a degree of naivety on my trip. As probably the last person working for the Guardian to not own a smart phone, I had to rely on the old-fashioned and frankly outdated concept of talking to people. I didn't bring a puncture repair kit or a spare inner tube. I had no plan for what to do if disaster struck, but I imagine it would have involved an expensive taxi ride. If it rained? Well, trousers get wet. It happens.

i supposed i enjoy the speed at which i move through the landscape. sometimes walking seems atrociously too slow--whereas two wheels is exactly what makes you feel invincible. huzzah!

a couple of weeks ago i was sitting in a cafe that is now around the corner from me, having a carrot & ginger juice, discussing sabaticals in italy with a friend, when he asked me about a certain cadence i had written: 'i will wait for you in cuzco, / will that make me the fool?' and i blanked. i had no idea what it referred to, or what i was thinking of when i wrote it. i knew it had something to do with pound (vaguely) and a poet-friend of mine (w.b.). cuzco remains a mystery.

this is not my first blog. it is yet another start-up project in a long lineage of failed endeavours; perhaps a gene for a weakness for public writing. or something. there have been many abandoned works, some were explanatory rants about a current mission of mine, some general blah-blah about the monotony of everyday life i so adore, some just filled with things i like. either way, something always got in the way - the mission aborted, too much information exposed, a lack of time. this time, i vow to be committed. at least once a week, for 30 minutes, i will make the time to indulge myself in my own thoughts, if only to never forget why it was cuzco, after all.

let's take my first online endeavour. it was a livejournal, the ideal venue for any moping, hormonally-inbalanced teen. i was 15, i loved the colour 'maroon' and wanted to play lead guitar in an imaginary rock band in which my best friend was the frontman. trapped in the convent walls of an abbey, i was rather pleasantly confound to my catholic-all-girls' school existence. self absorbed in endless issues of academics, school board politics and choirboys i found plenty to rant about. it helped to have a circle of friends with livejournals - we would post comments on each other's blogs, fuelling each other's 'talent'. our lj's had names like 'theholyseeinc', 'suchagoodexcuse', 'adyingatheist', 'dreamyambience', 'pretteepink'. there was 'meloise' who posted the most dreamy drawings & later went on to study art at OCAD, & 'fairyfetus' who is not living in a caravan with some hippies (i think). but for the life of me i can't remember what my own lj was called. i'm sure it had what i thought was a 'witty & clever' name, probably taken from some U2 lyric i was obsessed with at the time. maybe someone out there still remembers it. in the end, i deleted & purged it, which i now regret a little, dreadful as it was. there were posts about broken hearts coded as 'dusty roses' and posts about my favourite bands and 'artistically written' posts about the cute biology teacher i flirted with after hours. i snide at it now, but i remember those late nights procrastinating on msn & livejournal, agonizing over a boy or checking out new portishead songs rather fondly.

livejournal was also the first place i made 'online' friends. i would have been uncomfortable with the term then, but i couldn't resist the curiosity of what other people were posting. i specifically remember one chap, bluetouchpaper or something, who i met online. he would post photos of himself in a white peacoat - unusual for a chap, i thought, but trendy. we exchanged addresses (he lived in san francisco) and began to write letters. mine were always written in pencil (in case they got wet) and looked somewhat ephereal, they were so light & pale you could barely make out the lines on the page and the writing between them. they discribed the electric field just by my house and other trivialities of the oncoming autumn. his in turn were written on thick, manilla paper with field flowers pressed into it. he wrote in blue ink, heavily slanted to the right, with loopy letters but jagged ascenders/descenders. he told me about drunken nights in alleyways and parks, and a butterfly. there was one letter about a butterfly. years later, when i bought my first typewriter, i found these letters and decided to write (or rather, type this time) a letter back to see if he still lives there, and if not, to the current occupent. i sent it, but never heard back. but a connection had been made, even if ephemeral.

after i deleted my livejournal (i saw an as an immature reaction to Life and was desperate to clear my image of any immatury, as at the ripe age of 18 or 19 one tends to do) i didn't write for a while. i moved to paris & started a short blog that tied into my college online publication -- this one had an objective purpose: entitled 'fluctuat net mergitur' (i thought i was being clever) it served to detail my experiences of moving abroad to paris at 19 and living on my own. my first post was about a trip to a brocante where i acquired a new pair of opera binoculars - the perfect tool for my tiny 8th floor apartment. subsequent posts included a voyeuristic view into the apartments across the street; lives of the french, realtime. i did not see anything wrong with this. there were posts about another golden-voiced highly literate young chap i was crushing on back home. a few posts about the french patisserie downstairs (that i now regret not having used to its full capacity), a few about the french revolution, (and french men, and french cheese) and posts about my endless walks, flaneur-esque, through parisian streets. often i would come home at 3am, having been out walking with a friend, or alone. however, my hobbies soon faded, as did my blog. i have kept some of the posts this time, but no trace of it remains.

my next endeavour was a tumblr. i got one because my best friend had one. i could post pictures & songs and general useless shit that i happened to deem important because it tickled some fancy of mine, or appealed to a certain aspect of my oh-so-refine aesthetic. i recall what seemed like a never-ending flow of pictures of k.d. lang, who i was crushing on at the time. there were melodramatic imagined conversations, always one sided, always in first person. those spurred many individuals who narcissistically assumed the 'you' was them -- this was the end of my tumblr. posting personal affairs resulted in unresolved issues. and plus, i was 'too melodramatic for my own good'. i kept a few mementos, again, but that was all.

from there, i embarked on my latest project. i decided to stop indulging the 'general public' (usually about 5-10 readers who were all my friends anyways) in the affairs of my private life which they would hear me talk about in person anyways, and started a blog with a mission. my mission was to cycle across the uk, known to those that do it as 'lejog'. you can, i think at this point, guess what happens.