It's the first day after spring break and I am feeling very blah in the gray Providence weather. I spent a week in Puerto Rico with a couple of friends which was amazing. I'd never been to the Carribean before, nor had I really ever "done spring break." Well, it wasn't the typical college spring break at our old folk and family resort, but the beach was beautiful and I had a wonderful, relaxing time. I got to go hiking in a rainforest, swimming at the bottom of a waterfall, and kayaking in a bioluminescent bay at night (which was pretty extraordinary).
Now that I'm back at Brown I have a week and a half before my thesis presentation and a little over two weeks before my first draft is due. I made a resolution to ride my bike every day but already on the second day I've fallen down on the job -- I spent the morning working in the lab with some data, and then I had class, and after that it was raining and I was back in the library (where I still am). I just discovered this amazing piece of software called endnote which will apparently organize all of my citations and references for me and even write the bibliography -- so all is not gloomy.
I'm taking a spinning class which meets Tuesday and Thursday mornings as part of my training for the trip. When I signed up I was pretty sure that I would hate it; I mean, an hour of super-intense cycling, in place, crammed in a room with a ton of other people, being yelled at by some fitness-crazed instructor? What's to like?
But, it turns out it isn't that bad. My instructor is actually the physiology professor at Brown who's both knowledgeable and (thankfully) calm. He talks a lot about heartrate zones (from 1 to 5) and the importance of recovery. Now when I bike around campus I'm more aware of how hard I'm working it helps to know that even though the hill I'm biking on may look long, I know from spinning that I can keep going at this intensity for enough time. So I'm gaining a lot of confidence in my riding. It's also kind of a rush to imagine when we're biking up a "hill" in class that I'm biking up some huge mountain in the desert or something.
Another piece of good news is that I'm going Wednesday morning to get fitted for my bike! I am so excited. Here's the bike I will most likely get (unless the guys version fits my unlady-like self better) . It's quite a step up from Esmerelda.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Esmeralda
The photo at the top of my blog is a picture of the first bike I ever called mine. It wasn't really mine but an old beater left behind by some scientist who'd moved away from Koeln before I got there. Alexis, one of my co-workers, had locked it on an outside bike rack a few blocks from her flat in Ehrenfeld. When we went to get it, there was a flat tire and one of the rods holding the fender had been pried loose. It was bright emerald green fading the bright sparkly purple, covered in spots of rust.
I didn't know how to fix a flat tire and neither did Alexis, so we found her roommate -- a muscular German who I think worked as a telemarketer or phone operator and was trying to learn Spanish so he could expand his clientele. We needed a new tube and the hardware store would close in five minutes. So the three of us ran to Alexis's roommate's car and he zipped through the city to the hardware where I bought a tube. Then we zipped back and Alexis's roommate repaired the tire. Oops, he said, we bought a size too small. When I got onto the bike, the front tire sagged. It will be ok, he reassured me. He then pointed out other things i'd need to have fixed: the bald patch on the rear tire, the protruding fender-attacher thing.
I wasn't very good at biking back then, especially on the narrow pathways in the central city, so I walked my bike to the U-bahn and carried it down the stairs and on to the train. When I got back to my own U-bahn stop, Aussere Kanalstrasse, I weighed taking the bus closer to home but, feeling adventurous with my new bike, I decided to ride. I was really shaky and with each pedal the bike crunched. On the one hill I faced, I tried to shift gears but nothing happened.
The next day Alexis showed me the toy store/ stationary store in Vogelsang which also fixed bikes. The repairer didn't speak English but I could sense his disapproval when I wheeled my sorry looking bike into the shop. He started mumbling to himself, as if taking notes of everything that needed to be fixed. I managed to explain that I'd only be using it for two months and all I needed was it to be safe -- not perfect. Ok, Ok, he said and I walked out into the garden outside to wait. I read and two children played around me. One ran up next to me and screamed "Hier ist ein schoene Ort fuer PISSEN!" I didn't need an interpreter to understand and I spent the next hour walking around until the bike was ready. The gears still didn't work but the crunching was a bit better.
I biked all over Koeln on that bike: to the healthfood store on Venloerstrasse, into the Neumarkt to go shopping, and up the Rhine just to explore. I still have faint scars on my forearm from when I crashed into a thorn bush on it. Leaving my bike in the bike rack at the Max Planck was much sadder than i thought it would be. I like to name bikes, and I named this one Esmeralda. I wonder if she's still sitting on that bike rack or whether some poor temporary worker at the MPIZ is riding around on her, cursing the gear changer.
I didn't know how to fix a flat tire and neither did Alexis, so we found her roommate -- a muscular German who I think worked as a telemarketer or phone operator and was trying to learn Spanish so he could expand his clientele. We needed a new tube and the hardware store would close in five minutes. So the three of us ran to Alexis's roommate's car and he zipped through the city to the hardware where I bought a tube. Then we zipped back and Alexis's roommate repaired the tire. Oops, he said, we bought a size too small. When I got onto the bike, the front tire sagged. It will be ok, he reassured me. He then pointed out other things i'd need to have fixed: the bald patch on the rear tire, the protruding fender-attacher thing.
I wasn't very good at biking back then, especially on the narrow pathways in the central city, so I walked my bike to the U-bahn and carried it down the stairs and on to the train. When I got back to my own U-bahn stop, Aussere Kanalstrasse, I weighed taking the bus closer to home but, feeling adventurous with my new bike, I decided to ride. I was really shaky and with each pedal the bike crunched. On the one hill I faced, I tried to shift gears but nothing happened.
The next day Alexis showed me the toy store/ stationary store in Vogelsang which also fixed bikes. The repairer didn't speak English but I could sense his disapproval when I wheeled my sorry looking bike into the shop. He started mumbling to himself, as if taking notes of everything that needed to be fixed. I managed to explain that I'd only be using it for two months and all I needed was it to be safe -- not perfect. Ok, Ok, he said and I walked out into the garden outside to wait. I read and two children played around me. One ran up next to me and screamed "Hier ist ein schoene Ort fuer PISSEN!" I didn't need an interpreter to understand and I spent the next hour walking around until the bike was ready. The gears still didn't work but the crunching was a bit better.
I biked all over Koeln on that bike: to the healthfood store on Venloerstrasse, into the Neumarkt to go shopping, and up the Rhine just to explore. I still have faint scars on my forearm from when I crashed into a thorn bush on it. Leaving my bike in the bike rack at the Max Planck was much sadder than i thought it would be. I like to name bikes, and I named this one Esmeralda. I wonder if she's still sitting on that bike rack or whether some poor temporary worker at the MPIZ is riding around on her, cursing the gear changer.
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