Lydy's Anarchist Revival Meeting

I went to the main campus for the Cleveland Clinic today to get my ID badge.  Once again, the automated fingerprint reader had trouble reading my fingerprints.  We eventually got that done, but it was a bit irritating.  On my drive there, I saw a barber barbering in a barber shop, without a mask.  I involuntarily cried, "Why, my dude, why?)

When I got home, it was about 37 degrees, and I have not been on a bike since November 23rd.  I could check my records, but I'm pretty sure that's the longest I've gone without a bike ride since I started riding in May.  I got Jezebel, my folding e-bike, out of my car, unfolded her, and set off in a random direction.  I was basically planning on just doing a couple of miles.  I took whatever road looked interesting and not too busy, and trusted that Google Maps would bring me home again.  This did, indeed, work, and I ended up riding about 6 miles.  I got honked at for riding in a perfectly safe and legal fashion on a slightly busy street.  Welcome to Cleveland, I guess.  The pedal assist is, among other things, really easy on my knees, to the point where I'm wondering if I can ride without my braces.  It was a lovely ride, even though it was a very dark, grey day.  I wore my high visibility vest, and put on the blinkies front and back.  Then I folded Jezebel all by my self (first time I've done it without David's help) and put her back in my car.  It was a lovely ride.  Even if I only get another couple rides this season, it will have been worth it to pack Jezebel. 

There's a squeaky rattle in the front.  I suppose I should see if I can find a local bike shop.  Sigh.

I start work on Monday.   I'm very excited.

I just want to say that the sheer number of people who have helpfully informed me that if I wish to see Lake Erie all I need to do is drive north is adorable.  The idea that I, Lydia Nickerson, could somehow use that as information that would help me choose a direction in which to point my vehicle points to a touching faith in my ability to, I dunno, read a map, maybe?  I have literally no idea what direction North is from here.  I have a vague feeling that Minneapolis is West of here and NYC is East of here, but I honestly would not want to bet money on it.

So, I ended up buying the Aquarian Tarot and the New Palladini Tarot, because the art style really appealed to me, and I couldn't choose between them.  I was also entranced by the Hush Tarot ( https://www.etsy.com/listing/788646643/hush-tarot-cards-guidebook-set-oracle?ref=hp_rf-6&cns=1  but I don't feel that I could read with the deck, although I very much like the art.  

I was yesterday years old when I discovered that there is such a thing as an insulated skirt.  And then I found this:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/592028368/black-riding-skirt-for-winter-equestrian?ref=hp_rf-1&frs=1

So, yeah.  It's expensive, but Naomi Kritzer said that if I thought of it as a winter coat for my legs, it was reasonably priced.  So, yeah.

I think I have too much time on my hands, or something.  But I bet that skirt is fucking amazing.  

So, I want to make a quick record of possible symptoms, in case I need to rely upon it later.  I'll put it behind a cut, because you may well not want it in your feed.  But I don't have any of the most notable symptoms.  No fever, no shortness of breath not explained by exertion, and reasonable SpO2.  

( Symptom Log ) 

"Queen's Gambit" is a 7 part series on Netflix about Beth Harmon, who is a hot mess but really really good at chess.  It is set in the mid-Sixties, and most chess people seem to think that the chess is pretty good.  I have declared bankruptcy when it comes to chess.  I might remember which pieces move how, but I can't even remember how to castle.  So, yeah, I cannot critique the chess.  The actress who plays Beth is really, really good, and that is probably the biggest strength of the show.  One of the things I actually liked a lot is that Beth's emotional landscape is sufficiently alien that it seems incomprehensible, to me.  It is consistent and coherent, but not emotionally accessible.  And I really liked that.  I'm pretty neurotypical, and most non-neurotypical representation spends a lot of time trying to explain and explicate.  Beth just Is who she is.  There is a ton of stuff to like in this show, and I liked it quite a bit.  In the end, though, I have some very serious problems with it.  In my opinion, it had some extremely important failures.

( Spoiler Cut )In the end, although I really enjoyed it, it felt like a huge set of missed opportunities, and more like cotton candy than a substantive piece -- except for the chess which was evidently quite substantive.  Unfortunately I don't know enough chess to appreciate that bit.

I have no problems with spoilers in the comments.  This post should serve as a cut-tag for spoilers.

I am thinking of opening a chat channel on Discord to talk about the results.  I am fully aware that we won't have final results Tuesday (barring something intensely unforeseen), but I don't see how I'm going to be able to avoid watching the returns.  I could use some company.  

Here's a link that should be good for 24 hours.  I'll re-up it if it seems like there's interest.

This will be a very anti-Trump space, and if you are rooting for Trump, please, please go elsewhere.  Like, forever.  

Here's the link:

https://discord.gg/NSWk5F


P.S.  I've never tried to do anything on Discord, so there may be technical difficulties.  Help and or suggestions welcome.

 

If you would like some books on tape, and by this I mean actual, honest to god, cassette tapes, I am getting rid of my collection.  To be clear, deacquistioning makes me tired and sad, so I am not dusting, sorting, or cataloging.  I have almost entirely unabridged editions (any abridged editions would have been purchased on accident), and it is largely sff and mystery, with some classics and nonfiction.  If you are looking for something particular, and I think I have it, I will try to find it for you.  But all this lot goes to the Goodwill in a couple of days.

I know that I have some Heinlein, Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, a number of Jane Austen books, the Harper Hall books by McCaffrey, Dragonflight and Dragonsinger, The Hobbit, all of LOTR, Dune, a bunch of Robert B. Parker, some Sue Grafton, a fair amount of Dorothy Sayers.  At least some of the Laura Ingalls Wilder, I don't think I managed to acquire the entire series before I stopped collecting books on tape.   

I will cheerfully drive a butt load of audio books to anywhere in the Twin Cities.  If you want the lot, I would be utterly charmed.  I could be talked into shipping them, but you really need to be taking a bunch of them in order for it to be worth my while to make it the post office.

It is always wrenching to me to give up possessions that at one point I cherished, even if they are not longer useful to me.  It feels like giving up a part of myself.  And yet, time waits for no man, and I'm not even a man.  So, then.

So, I stayed off my bike for a whole four days.  Couldn't stand it, today, went for short ride.  This may or may not have been a bad idea.  I was planning on waiting until a thigh brace came, and it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, but, well.  Patience may be a virtue, but it sure ain't my virtue, is what I'm saying, here.  I have acquired a number of tech and non-tech toys for my bike, and I'm gonna just neep randomly about them.  If this stuff bores you, really, there's no reason to read farther, I promise.

Safety vest: I got a very cheap, bright yellow with reflective stripes, mesh safety vest which I wear if I bike after dark.  It does make me vastly more visible, which is a good thing.  It also has four pockets, and I am keeping my headlamp in one of them.  The headlamp also functions, when not attached to the bike, as a pretty nice flashlight, which has been invaluable for locking and unlocking my bike in the dark.

Speaking of which, headlamp and taillight:  I bought cheap ones off Amazon.  The headlamp has an option of two levels of intensity, the 400 and I think 200 lumens.  200 lumens is really quite sufficient.  One can also set it to blinky, but I don't.  Even with the bicycle basket in the way, it does provide enough light to miss small potholes and such.  It has a rechargeable battery via USB.  It is entirely adequate, and also came with a red taillight that takes CR 2032 batteries, and does a steady red, a slow or a fast blinky.  I usually put it on slow blinky.  These, plus the safety vest, plus the red blinky on the back of my bike helmet, make me feel highly visible after dark.  So far, no one has run into me.  Yay.

Urban Biker App:  David found an app for Android phones called Urban Biker which will keep track of your route, and give you speed and duration and a lot of other data.  The speed is an average based on GPS data.  It allows you to set up a number of different profiles, and also has profiles for walking, driving, scooters, and so on.  It also doesn't share your data unless you ask it to.  I've been using it pretty consistently, and it claims that I have now ridden Jasmine 291 miles.  Which is kind of amazing.   It also has the option of synching with a variety of sensors, and the FAQ lists the sensors it likes best.  If one had a Fitbit, for instance, it would report your heart rate if you asked it to.  As I am really not biking for health benefits, I don't care about that.  But I am interested in speed.  I also became interested in cadence.

Which takes me to the Mangene speed and cadence sensors:  these are sensors that the FAQ says that Urban Biker likes.  They were relatively cheap on Amazon, and although it said they came without batteries, in point of fact, they shipped with batteries.  CR2032, of course.  The sensors are identical, and you can switch them from speed to cadence by taking out and putting back in the batteries.  The cadence sensor goes on the pedal crank, and the speed goes on the front hub.  They were easy to install (David helped) and easy to synch to the app.  I did a fair amount of reading about desired cadence, a great deal of which was very confusing, and a large it of it geared toward peak performance for racing or endurance, and of course, I care about neither of these.  It sounds like the ideal cadence is between 70 and 90 per minute, which is most efficient for the muscles, or something.  But the other thing I saw, that really got my attention, was that lower cadences were associated with more knee strain.  I believe this to be because lower cadences are associated with higher gears, and therefore harder work for the knees.  What I do notice is that when I target cadence instead of speed, I am more willing to downshift, and less enthusiastic about up-shifting, and that my knees do hurt less.  My average cadence, at the moment, is about 67.  On hills, it drops into the low 50s.  But it has increased since I've been paying attention.  My average speed is about 9.7 mph, which isn't too bad, especially when you consider that when I started out, my average speed was about 6 mph.  (Yes, children, I am very old.  And very, very out of shape.)  I also got the speed sensor because it is supposed to be more accurate, but I will say that the speed it reports seem very similar to the speeds that the GPS average system was reporting.  (And for those of you who have been paying attention, yes, I am interested in the whole performance thing, a little, but only as a way of thinking about what I can and can't do, and what's fun, what my range is, and not as a way of achieving some other health goal.  I mean, I'm sure I'm getting some health benefits, and that's great, but it is not my focus.  On the other hand, being aware of what my range and stamina is helps me plan rides.)

Padded biking shorts: I bought an incredibly cheap pair on eBay, and wore them for the first time, today.  They help...I think?  I mean, my butt is still sore, but maybe it was better?  It wasn't transformative, but it did seem to be an improvement.  I am unsure if this means that a better quality would be dramatically better, or if this is all there is, and there's no point in the much more expensive shorts.  But, well, I expect that these won't be very durable, so at some point if I decide I like them, I will have to decide whether to replace them with more expensive shorts or not.

Windbreaker: I bought a used, very cheap windbreaker on eBay as well.  Its a mens XXL, and a bit too large for me, but as I said, dead cheap.  And it did help a lot in the weather, today.  And when it rained a little bit, I did not get very wet.  So, we'll call that a win, too.

And, enough of bicycle neeping.  I do hope those of you bored by this didn't bother to read it.  

 I appear to have acquired my very first sport-related injury.  (I am not counting a dodgeball to the face, because in point of fact, dodgeball is not a sport but rather an exercise in group sadism.)  If Dr. Google is to be believed, I have a very minor strain of the right abductor longus, otherwise known as a groin injury.  Apparently, this is one of those really common sports injuries.  It doesn't hurt unless I raise my leg in certain ways, to do things such as step into the bathtub, put on pants, or mount my bike.  It doesn't hurt to ride, or walk short distances, or go up and down stairs (though my knees continue to protest stairs) but it is also not getting better.  It's been going on for a couple three weeks.  I kept on hoping that if I just ignored it, it would resolve.  And, as I said, it doesn't hurt very much, nor very often.  But it is also not getting better.  So, reluctantly, I have decided to stop riding for a bit and see if it heals up.  The fact that it's cold and rainy makes it less of a sacrifice than it might be, but it is still frustrating.  

If you had told me in the fall of 2019 that I would be upset about having to forgo regular exercise because of a sports-related injury, I would have looked at you as if you were speaking Greek, or possibly had falling through a wormhole from an adjacent universe.  We are emphatically in the land of "What have I done with the real Lydy, and who am I now?"

As I've said more than once, now, my primary emotional response to suddenly taking up biking is, "What have I done with the real Lydy, and who am I now?"  I do not have answers for these questions, but I do find them amusing.

I am biking very nearly every day.  I find that, unlike a lot of my friends who also indulge in biking, I am far more heat tolerant than they are, but far more morning averse.  And while I was living with Patrick, and could be reliably gotten out of bed with coffee at ungodly hours of the morning in order to bike before the heat of the day, living back at home, getting up at six or seven a.m. is just a bridge too far.  On the other hand, I can cheerfully bike for a reasonable amount of time in the heat.  Beth, with whom I often bike, gets rather frighteningly knackered in the heat, and David just declines.  

My stamina and strength are clearly improved.  Hills that were a problem are now a dawdle, hills that were impossible are now just really fucking hard, and some hills remain impossible and I just walk my bike up those because life is too short for an asthma attack, I tell you what.

I have little blinky lights on my bicycle, a white one in the front, a red one in the back.  (They will also emit a steady light, but since I use them to alert other vehicles, and not for illumination, I set them on blinky.)  This has meant that I have been willing to bike after dark.  (I should probably invest in a high visibility vest, at some point, as well.)   The last two nights, I've donned a spectacular amount of bug goop, and gone biking around the neighborhood after dark, and it was been wonderful.  I've always really liked walking around the city after dark.  Biking is even better.  I could wish there were more street lamps, since I hit one or two pot holes by surprise, but the air is sweet, there's very little traffic, and there are stars and clouds and there's a feeling of peace that one doesn't get during the day.

Two nights ago, while spraying my legs with bug goop, I noticed a weird bulge in my right calf.  Concerned, I examined it more closely.  It was...muscles.  I mean, I am aware that people who exercise do acquire more muscle definition, but those people have never been me.  It was startling.  I am not losing weight, nor did I expect to.  I might be gaining a little, one hopes this is muscle mass, and not more fat.  But, well, I'm not biking for health, I'm doing it for fun.  

As far as health benefits go...well, my resting heart rate is lower, so that's probably a thing.  My knees continue to give me trouble.  I do think that there are some days when it seems like they are getting better, but other days, it seems like they're the same or getting worse.  I now own three different types of knee braces, each of which has its own flaws and benefits.  If anybody has any suggestions for good knee braces, especially ones that ameliorate pain above and behind the patella, do let me know.  

I had been told that regular exercise would help reduce or eliminate general aches and pains.  Yeah, not so much.  Possibly has increased them.  So, that's a bitch.  Also, I've been told that it helps sleep, and again, yeah, not so much.  I'm still having a lot of problems falling asleep.  Weirdly, my sleep issues are worse since I returned homes and I don't know why.  Now that I'm home, by body really, really wants to revert to going to sleep between three a.m. and five a.m.  I have not been winning this fight, I may surrender.

The final piece of "my god, who am I now?" is that I bought a trainer.  Ok, it was very cheap, from Craig's list.  But it's a dealybopper that you attach your bike to and lets you turn your normal bike into a stationary bike for exercise.  I need to shovel my office so that there's space for it.  I am thinking about the winter.  And I don't know how fun just riding in place will be, and possibly this was not money well spent.  But I also don't really want to go without biking all winter.  And while a lot of my friends are good with cold, I am not.  I chill easily, and stay chilled for far longer than a normal person would.  So, um, we'll see about the trainer.  

I don't really know what to say to all my friends who have been into bikes and who kept on trying to tell me how great they were.  I mean, you were right.  But I don't know what I could say to past me that would convey why biking is so much fun. I honestly don't know how to explain it to present me, and present me is doing the biking.  But I will say that if you have a friend who's asthmatic and says that they can't exercise because of exercise-induced asthma attacks, you might suggest biking, which really does let you titrate the effort in a way that can avoid attacks.  At  least, if you're biking in largely flat areas.