why yes, we are hardcore (part 2)

saturday morning and sallee and i had a plan to ride 50 miles, or thereabouts. with only three weekends left until the little red riding hood century, we are sort of out of time to mess around. plus, it was a gorgeous day, and there is little better to do on a gorgeous day than ride around on your bike. we were both a little tired from chocolate fundraisers and the return of fiancees (respectively), so we settled on a later start time and figured we might grab some lunch on our way home.

as i am walking out the door, sallee calls. flat tire. she'll call me back when it's fixed. a few minutes later, the phone rings again. she can't find the leak, so she doesn't know where to patch. we decide she should go to the bike shop down the street, get a new tube and put it in. she'll call me when she's done. a few minutes later, the phone rings again. good to go. but then a few seconds later, the phone rings again. her tire had exploded. back to the bike shop. the phone rings again. she's all sorted out, for real this time.

i hop on millie to ride up to our rendezvous point on campus. just a block and a half or so from my house, i have to cross some train tracks that sort of curve around up the hill (can you see where this is going?). i miscalculate the angle of my own turn (math has never been my thing) and my back tire lodges in that hole between the rail and the road. the bike stops and i, of course, don't. i fly instead, and take about 90 percent of the fall right on my chin. the small silver lining? i somehow, miraculously, came unclipped so my bike did not fly with me.

i call sallee. she meets me a few feet from the scene of the incident and we decide we better head back to my house to wash out my wounds and take further stock of the situation. my chin rivaled jay leno's in size, but otherwise my injuries were minor. i didn't see anything wrong with millie, either, but when i hopped on to ride home i realized that the left-side brake mount was, shall we say, askance, and the brake was being permanently applied to the front tire. less than ideal. sallee loosened the front brake so i could ride home, but riding with no brakes on the front tire is also less than ideal. i definitely needed to get it fixed before we could go much further.

briana, who was trying to enjoy a relaxing morning at home, was understandably a little surprised to see us walk through the door so soon after my departure, but she jumped to the rescue, assessing the damage (moderate), disinfecting my chin and filling me with homeopathic remedies (some of them tasted downright nasty, and i can't remember exactly what they were supposed to do... i heard the word trauma... but i am sure they helped).







meanwhile, sallee called my friend marc, bicycle psychologist extraordinaire. he said to bring millie down to the bike shop and he would take a look.

though he would probably deny this, i am pretty sure marc couldn't help laughing when he saw my face/enormous chin/dirt-and-grime-smeared shirt.




he was nice enough to confess that he, too, has crashed as a result of train tracks, though his chin was not involved. i had no idea how bad millie's injury was, or what it would take to fix her, and i was, frankly, a little nervous. marc took a look, let out a long sigh, took a firm grip on the brake mount... and jerked it back into place. with his hand.

me: that's it?
marc: that's it.
me: good as new?
marc: better than new.
me: that's embarrassing.
marc: i'm a professional.

and we were out the door.

after all our mishaps, sallee and i figured we would just ride a quick 15 mile loop, take ourselves out to lunch and call it good. but, once we were going it felt so good that we just kept on going, for pretty much our whole original route. we made it all the way to the mouth of little cottonwood canyon and then came back around. it was a pretty intense ride with a lot more climbing that we usually do, and i am not embarrassed to say that we had to stop at granite bakery on our way home for some cookies to get us through the last few miles (sallee chose the ones shaped like the temple). but, where even a month ago i would have given up after the first obstacle, or certainly the second, let alone the third and fourth, we rocked that ride and we rocked it hard. because we are...? that's right. hardcore. i would say these bruises on my leg, which appeared later in the day, pretty much prove it.

a chocolate carnivale for all!

ok, i spent the whole bike ride to work this morning trying to think of a clever way to start this post, and all i came up with was a clever way to drop in that i rode my bike to work this morning. so, i am just going to get right to the point.

i am on a board at the ywca of salt lake city, we are hosting a FREE event this friday and you should come!

the event is called, officially, "chocolate carnivale: a celebration of successful young women." you'll get to throw on your "cocktail" (i am going to say that means semi-formal) attire and make a red carpet entrance at 7p.m., with a photographer there to capture all your glory, and there will be mounds and mounds of FREE chocolate to enjoy once you get inside. there are also some pretty amazing silent auction items (including a basket full of shabby apple goodies, and some gems from the boy roommates' store) and we'll have live entertainment as well. we're also giving away awards to three incredible young women from the salt lake valley, so you can eat chocolate AND be inspired, which i think is a pretty unbeatable combination. and there's a cash bar. that pretty much sealed the deal, didn't it?

so, to review. this friday, may 16th, 7p.m. FREE event with FREE chocolate at the ywca of salt lake city, 322 east 300 south. coming because you love me is, obviously, reason enough, but coming to support the ywca and their mission of empowering women and eliminating racism isn't such a bad way to spend a friday night either.

see you there!

connect the dots

there is a theory of social connectedness i refer to as "the theory of the 1,000 person clique." it is, essentially, that practically every person you know knows someone else you know, and that our tight "inner circle" is really a vast and interconnected network of people. example: i met adam at an 80s dance party, an introduction that would lead me to believe he was completely unconnected to anyone i already knew. but, in fact, adam worked with lauren, who volunteered with me. and lauren, in turn, was old friends with my friend suvi. so really, adam had been a part of my 1,000 person clique all the time. or, here's another one i've actually posted about already: i lived in spain with elna, who moved to new york and performed a show witnessed by suvi, and also taught a sunday school class attended by my friend ryan. not to mention that both elna and her sister, christina, grew up in seattle with oertel, who was in the mtc with me. 1,000 person clique again. figuring out all the people you know who know each other is pretty fun, and you should try it. as long as the prospect of never being able to escape your extended social network doesn't make you want to die.

a few days ago, susan sent me this article by malcolm gladwell, which takes the theory of the 1,000 person clique a step further. before i continue let me say, in the interest of full disclosure, that i have a deep and true love for malcolm gladwell. though i am 100 percent positive that he is an emotionally unavailable narcissist (something that has, unfortunately, been somewhat manifested in his writing as of late), i think he is brilliant and funny and a truly original thinker and if he asked me to have his babies i would say yes. but, i digress.

in this article, and to a greater extent in his book, "the tipping point," malcolm gladwell posits that all of that social interconnectedness is actually the work of a few uniquely talented people he calls, unsurprisingly, "connectors." connectors are the people who know everyone, and can always put you in touch with exactly the person, or kind of person, you need. an event planner in new york city? done. a manufacturer in guatemala? done. a public relations professional in tokyo? well, you get the idea.

to prove this point, malcolm engages in an exercise whereby he traces all of his good friends back to the original source. and, as you might expect, most of them came back to the same one person. this all sounded sort of fun, so i tried it myself. it would go something like this: i met jed because he went to law school with nicole, who is a clerk with jessica, who was introduced to me by dana, who i know because she and susan had mutual friends at stanford, although they had never met until they were both living in salt lake. and i know susan because she was roommates with ck, who i know because i was roommates with ck's sister jane. so, no jane, no jed, even though jane and jed have never met themselves (at least as far as i know. but let's be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if they had).

fun, huh?

but that was the best line of connectedness i could come up with. most of my other friends had shorter and much less interesting ways of coming into my life. there are, i think, two reasons for this. firstly, i think being a mormon and meeting people in a ward (congregation in the non-mormon vernacular) often eliminates a lot of these steps. ultimately, for example, i met and was roommates with jane because we were in the same ward, and the same is true for a lot of my close friends. i can trace them, in not too many steps, back to a ward or a friend from a ward. this does not mean the bizarre interconnectedness is any less; in fact, sometimes i think the mormon thing makes it worse. (like my ward friend joellen's sister being best friends with the ex-wife of my then-boyfriend, who was the ex-boyfriend of my good friend robin, who i met in my ward. got that?) but it does mean that the chain of command frequently leads back to a ward instead of a "connector."

my second conclusion is that, perhaps, i myself am a connector! i need to test this a little further, but i think it might be at least partially true. maybe not to the extent of the examples in malcolm gladwell's article (i am not friends with lenny bruce, for example), but i'd like to think my circle is wide enough to bring together a pretty good variety of interesting and necessary people. (my most recent crowning achievement in this department was when ck was frantically looking for a photographer in virginia and i remembered that my friend berto is, you guessed it, a photographer in virginia. voila!)

i am going to keep working on tracing my friends back, and maybe i will uncover a brilliant and talented connector other than myself. and how about you? what is your craziest line of connectedness, and who is the ultimate source? me? i wouldn't be surprised...

why yes, we are hardcore.

saturday morning and the bikes are loaded up, millie for me, synergy for sallee. (sallee's old bike, jem, left us last weekend in a most dramatic and unexpected fashion. let's just say bike parts strewn on the road. she never would have made it 100 miles. but synergy is a champ!)



being hardcore, sallee had changed a flat tire by herself the night before. good as new. also being hardcore, sallee thought she could ride in a tank top. but, she was wrong. we rode a few feet and then went back and got her sweatshirt. it was cold.



this, my friends, is what we call clipping in. that's right, my shoe is actually attached to that pedal. and it is just as terrifying as it sounds. but, it means i am hardcore. and that's what matters.



thanks to a very detailed map provided by travis, sallee and i pretty easily completed a 21-mile-or-so loop out by the airport. we even rode over the boundary into north salt lake, which somehow makes it all seem so much more, well, hardcore. and, other hardcore road bikers were waving at us in comraderie, which makes me think we finally look like we know what we're doing. pretty rad. the only not-so-rad thing about the morning? a poorly aimed snot-rocket (what sallee calls a "farmer blow"). the landing spot was (unintentionally) my shoulder. gross. but clothes wash. and it was all ok because, i think as you can see here, frances+millie=true biking love.

frances cake, take four

miaken is the very definition of a friend crush. i had seen her around on facebook, linked to a lot of my friends and in a lot of pictures of things that looked totally awesome and i wanted to meet her so bad. and then i invited myself to rob's art night a little while back, and there she was! i may or may not have totally accosted her and forced her to sit next to me. or it may have just happened that way on its own. i can't quite remember. but, we traced our hands and turned the shapes into pictures, and she gave me a really great lead on a story for the paper and i invited her over for cake. friend dreams do come true!

miaken and i were meant to be friends because we were both craving some kind of lemon cake, but i didn't know she wanted lemon, too, until after i had already picked a lemon cream cake recipe. so it was like fate, you know? and we decided to make cupcakes, because lemon always tastes better in a cupcake form, i feel.

there were no major glitches in the preparation or baking. in fact, the cupcakes were practically perfect, as you will see for yourselves in a moment. the only minor snag was the frosting. we decided to eschew measuring and put in as much lemon juice as we wanted (the more the better, right?) but that made for some consistency problems that proved slightly difficult to remedy. the final product was more of a glaze than a frosting, but it was still completely delicious.

and, in the meantime, i learned that miaken is from kansas and she had her first stitches that very day (non-traumatic for her, in case you were wondering. she sort of liked it). we also talked about how she wanted to go back to school to study film, and she just found out this week that she was accepted! hurrah! it's a frances cake miracle!

susan just bought a new camera and was testing it out this particular day, so she documented the proceedings. i think she captured the divinity of these particular cupcakes very skillfully.

my body, myself (confessional #2)

i have a new bike. her name is millie. 100-mile millie to be exact, because i am going to take her on a 100-mile bike ride in one day less than one month (panic now). this is all incredibly significant to me, and i am going to tell you why.

i have never loved my body. now, before anyone panics, i should also say that i have never hated my body, either. and i have certainly never done anything on purpose to harm it. in fact, i am a total wimp and avoid the risk of physical harm pretty much all the time. what i mean to say is that i have never really loved my body in the sense that i have never really trusted my body to do anything, and i have certainly never counted on it to do anything well. i think i have the classic always-picked-last-in-elementary-school-gym-class syndrome, which becomes nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy in adulthood. the thought of doing anything physical-- running, water skiing, biking, playing soccer-- and particularly the thought of doing anything physical in front of other people who could, and most certainly will, judge me, fills me with insurmountable dread and self-doubt. for basically my entire life, i have avoided it at all costs.

this information often comes as a shock because i have a generally fit-looking body. i am, if you will, lean. and this, believe it or not (though i hope you do), poses a set of unique challenges. in our body and thinness-obsessed culture, i think we often make the assumption that skinny=happy. we assume that people who are thin must not worry about the appearance of their bodies at all. and that is simply not the case. i have felt just as much as any other woman that my body is unattractive and undesirable. i have worried just as much about what people think of how i look in a pair of shorts or a bathing suit. but because my body happens to look a certain way, i have often felt those insecurities were invalidated. this is not meant as a "pity me" moment. we all have insecurities. that is all i am trying to say.

i have also learned that we make assumptions about people based on the way their bodies look, most of which are mistaken. for example, i believe there are people who are just physically intuitive, who can pick up a basketball or put on some hiking shoes or hop in a kayak and just know what to do and do it well. i am not one of those people. (me+basketball=endless hilarity and/or serious injury to myself and others.) but i think i am often mistaken for one of those people because my body looks a certain way. i have often felt that people who are physically active and intuitive, but who do not look that way, resent this, or rather, me. i have a very clear memory of a girl in one of my college women's studies classes tearing up when she told us that she couldn't go to her senior prom because she couldn't find a dress that fit, even though she could run a mile faster than any other girl in her class. this still breaks my heart, and i agree that it is supremely unfair. but hate the thing, not the person. you know? as it happens, i myself resented this body-based tendency to assume for a long time, i think because it only made me more aware of things i couldn't do, but felt for some reason like i should.

needless to say, my experience is not unique and the purpose of this post is not to fish for some kind of assurance or pity, but merely to open a small window into life experience, which is what this blogging thing is all about, right? and the point i am really trying to get around to is that i started the process of tackling this issue head-on, which is what brought millie, and so much more, into my life.

the fact of the matter is, my body is exactly that: mine. mine to shape and to mold and to love and to take care of, or not. there is not much i can do about what my body looks like, but there is a lot i can do about what my body itself can do, what it can accomplish. in her book "reviving ophelia," the psychologist mary pipher talks about how important it is for girls to see their bodies not as decorative but as functional. functional! and when my body is functioning well, when it is riding a bike for 100 miles or getting up on water skis for the first time, it always looks better to me. it is easy to love my body when my body is doing.

the transition probably began last spring, when sallee and i started training for our first century (that would be 100 miles, people. i want to be clear about that) bike ride. we talked a lot as we rode up and down canyons and around and around parks about why we were doing this crazy thing. the answer? because we could. because it was empowering and invigorating and incomparable to teach our bodies to do something new, to help them do something hard, to look in the face of years of insecurity and doubt and to laugh. and then speed away towards something better. we rode 100 miles on our bikes! (and i totally dropped the f-bomb when we were done.) it was, quite literally, something i never thought i would do. and it felt oh-so-good. (it was also something that i, quite literally, swore i would never do again. millie and my completely sore, um, saddle, prove otherwise.)

i felt like the circle was complete, or getting closer, when i walked through the front door the other day in jogging clothes, sweating, carrying a yoga mat under one arm and millie under the other. it seemed, frankly, strange. was this me? well, yes. it was me. a new me. a me doing my best to become a better me. my old always-picked-last-in-elementary-school-gym-class insecurities are still there. i still get a pit in my stomach when someone suggests a hike or a game of ultimate frisbee. i still refuse to run with other people. i still beg not to be judged or left behind. the difference? when i am done worrying, when i am done begging, i do.

vernal equinox

here are some things i love about being an adult, particularly an unattached adult with very few responsibilities to anyone but myself. i can have a milkshake and french fries for dinner. i can leave my room messy. i can buy irresponsibly expensive shoes. i can go to movies on weekdays. i can stay up way past my bedtime watching cliffhanger episode after cliffhanger episode of "battlestar galactica." and, i can decide on the spur of the moment to go to vernal and visit the vanderlindens, some of my most favorite people from the mission, and some of my most favorite people on this planet earth.




in planning this weekend getaway i discovered that there are many a vernal-naysayer in the world. well, you should all know that there is plenty to do out there. a dinosaur museum? check. hiking and biking at flaming gorge? check. hilarious small-town movie theater? check. even more hilarious small-town gossip? check. see? more than you thought, huh?

the vanderlindens and i had so much catching up to do, we didn't get to most of those things, but we did take a lovely hike through dry fork canyon to see the indian petroglyphs. we're not sure what they mean, but we did learn that the V-shaped human form is called the "vernal man" because it is most prevalent in that area. vernal even has a native american human form named after it. and you thought it was boring!





































i rounded out the trip by stuffing myself with sister vanderlinden's famous pretzel dessert, and visiting my cousin natalie and her adorable family on my way out of town. and driving home i didn't even come close to hitting a single deer. aah, adulthood.