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COMPLETE HANDSOMEST MAN IN CUBA USA TOUR CHRONICLES
Movie Clip: Happy birthday Lynette! (0.5 Mb)- chocolate tofu pie par excellence
Movie Clip: An example of 21st century technology (0.5 Mb) - and we have a tough time getting someone to fabricate our fenders the way we want them!
SEP 6: WINSTON TO WESTMINSTER WEST (40-ish miles - felt longer)
The Bike Friday TravelTrailer has one of the advantages of a car - it's effectively a trunk you're towing back here. It's an open invitation to indulge in yard sales because you can. Becka started it all by stopping at a sign saying FREE, and scored a large woven fan she promptly left adorning the shed of our Winston hosts. On the way to Westminster west we screeched up a driveway which looked promising - several tables of collectible figurines at just 10 cents a piece. Did I need any of this stuff? Of course not! Hence, I bought:
A little Woody Woodpecker in skateboarding position, for my skateboarding neighbor and Pocket Llama owner James Larson; a ponderous Grommet of Wallace and Grommet fame for my roommate Tim; a Lara-Croft-style action woman which I gave to James' girfriend just because; and the crowning glory: a robot figurine with a water-filled bubble for a head containing a pink brain with two eyes which when you depressed an orange button on the robot's stomach flipped over and did somersaults in captivity ... Did you get all that? Of course not, so here's a pic:
 Why am I so taken by this piece of frivolous plastics engineering? For years Bike Friday have tried to get fenders made according to their specifications, - that is, just a couple of inches longer for starters, and were met with constant resistance from the manufacturer. Yet, take a look at this robot - a complicated mold, third angle CAD/CAM projections were done, a mockup was made, marketing and distribution strategies were formulated - in short, someone in a suit had a meeting about this for Pedro's sake. I always wondered about adult entertainment industry, how people in suits would be strategising this latest gizmo that would ... well, let's not go there. I now see it's all in a day's work. Today ended with a long climb up to Pocket Rocket Pro owner Tim Cowles' self-designed architectural masterpiece of a home set in a most beautiful part of Vermont, about 12 miles out of Brattleboro. Tim is an artist with a Georgia O'Keefe bent, and his home is a riot of concrete angles and surfaces, pitted and painted over in post modernist shades of cotton candy pink, eyeshadow blue, fishtank green, sunflower yellow, scorched earth orange ... well, instead of me trying to labor it in words go take a look at the gallery where I show how nuts I went with my little digital camera taking arty-farty closeups a la Kurt Schwitters meets Kandinsky (I am not schooled in art; as a kid I leafed through the F for fine art section of the World Book Encyclopedia about 10,000 times, so I know every artist and just one of their paintings mentioned in that volume). Tim has been married to Waow, a Thai former reporter, for 17 years and they have a son. Waow is largely responsible for the fabulous garden design, an artfully rambling mosaic of rocks, ground covers and the occasional whimsical 'cairn'; the result is a complete antidote to the staid old swathe of lawn everyone in cul-de-sac suburbia seems to obsess over. Tim is also flying over to Italy this year to meet 'The Winningest American' Davis Phinney, who owns a Bike Friday and is known for winning the most stages of the Tour de France. Davis is undergoing treatment for Parkinson's disease, and Tim is an expert helper in that area, having already assisted a friend in recovering from it. Tim has a pretty cool life! Tomorrow: To my second talk of the series, in Brattleboro. +++ SEPTEMBER 5: SHARON TO WINSTON (40-ish miles or less) |
More dirt roads. More hills.
"Look, a McDonald's", I remarked on seeing a pair of golden arches for the first time in VT (the capitol Montpelier has so far managed to keep them at bay).
"Golden arches? Didn't you even notice we're standing in the grounds of historic Constitution House?" said Becka.
Becka had a surprise in store for me. A looooooonnnnng tunnel. The Cornish-Windsor bridge, the longest covered bridge in the world. Long enough to feel like the other end was just a leetle too long coming as you roll over the smooth, creakless floorboards. If the cars could be kept out of it, it'd make a great dancehall.
Our hosts were Jimmy and Donna, of Winston. Their house, sent on a large property, was wonderful and cozy country chic. Their sportstar kids had just flown the coop. Jimmy's mum lives in a charming stone house right on the property. There's a pond out back. I found myself wistfully lamenting how I was out of the room when functional family lives were being handed out.
"Lynette, it's called suburban life," warned Becka, her patience with my unsolicited soliloquies about life impressive, to say the least.
Jimmy's mum is 85, with a fading memory. Don't you believe it. The dinner convo got round to how trucks were damaging highways by carrying too much load. "Is it advantageous to make more trips with lighter loads or fewer trips with heavier loads?" she suddenly piped up, causing Jimmy to choke on his salmon and chicken.
Tomorrow: A seminal discovery at a yard sale.
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SEPTEMBER 4: MONTPELIER TO SHARON (50-ish miles or more)
As we headed down the hill, Becka on her green New World Tourist towing her bright yellow Samsonite suitcase and me on my midnight blue Crusoe towing the cavernous new Samsonite Flite suitcase, we looked across at each other and shouted: "we're on our way!" TIP: Start any bike tour out by going downhill, if you can, because the uphill ain't too far away unless you are in the Netherlands ...
First stop was the Vermont Statehouse for a stately shot, where Becka and fellow Bike Friday owner Tim Cowles often rattle their chains in the name of bicycle advocacy.
I was asked in emails 'how are you liking the autumn leaves of Vermont? Inspired by Bob B, a poetry prof of the minamalist kind at Pacific Uni, Corvallis, I penned this poetic posturing:
The famous autumn leaves of Vermont
Gold, red, red and gold
Nowhere to be seen
It's too early
Vermont is famous for hills - of the gravelly kind. Remember that movie 'Ice Age' with the little critter and his giant acorn? That was me and the 50 lb trailer. Despite sending books, posters and Bike Friday literature ahead, the stuff I was carrying seemed to weigh a ton. I have to re-state how great my new gearing is (see September 1 entry for details). Some people think a 17" gear is to low but I disagree - I was crawling up that hill quite nicely thank you, and walking with the setup would have been awkward as my shoes do not have brakes to stop me skidding down the hill.
We made it to a floating bridge at Brookfield, where the rich and famous cavort with the comfortable and anonymous in the winter snow. There's a grass embankment where you can lounge around and eat rosehips off the bushes.
Several pizza slices, packets of maple jerky and ice creams later, we climbed a big dirt road up to the B&B of Bob & Nancy in Sharon.
Bob & Nancy have crossed the USA on bicycles with schoolkids 4 times. The next trip they're planning is adults-only. We holed up in their basement and met Rose, an exuberant cancer-survivor who told me not tell you that Savannah, Georgia is the place she wants live in the whole of the USA. "Architecture, culture, food, scenery, off-beat people," she enthused. I made a mental note to see if there are any Bike Friday owners in downunder Savannah, Georgia...
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SEPTEMBER 3: 42 YEARS YOUNG ON A FRIDAY
I kept saying yesterday, 'I'm 42 on Friday'. Becka kept saying, 'um, that's tomorrow, Lynette'.
So today I woke up and expected the answer to life, the universe and everything to come banging on the door. Instead it was Becka, all dressed up and ready to go, strongly suggesting I get myself onto East Coast time or we'd never get to Brattleboro.
We planned to spend the next 4 days riding south to my next talk in Brattleboro, staying with Bike Friday and VT Bike/Ped Coalition hosts along the way. Instead, Becka had a mailing to finish and having just printed and mailed 2500 postcards to all you folks on the east and west coasts urging you to avoid a $55,000 fine by coming to my slideshow, I had just the skills to help her out.
David Jacobowitz flexed off from work and led me on his favorite Burlington bike trail: past the Intervale (a rural area of farms and homesteads) and to the very tip of the Causeway, a 5-mile packed gravel trail that rises out of the water like Moses parting the Red Sea, ending abruptly at pleasant boat watching passage. We spent so long lounging on the wall between a cloudless sky and jockeying waves we had to beat it back to my bus 13 miles away in a record 40 minutes.
From there I bussed it to Montpelier, Vermont's stately capital. With some commanding old architecture it feels a little like chancing across a Roman city in the boonies. I popped into Bear Pond Books, who had bought a handful of copies of The Handsomest Man in Cuba sight unseen. They deserved a visit!
Becka and I spent so long attacking our mailing we attempted to catch a birthday dinner too late - there was nothing to be had after 9.30pm other than Tex Mex and any readers of my warblings will know that's one rung above McDonalds for this little black duck.
So it was back to Becka's house where a spectacular birthday dinner was whipped up: homegrown squash fried in olive oil and garlic, steamed kale and some fancy imported pasta, followed by a slice of the main event:
Becka's Tofu Chocolate Pie
1 block of silken tofu 1 bag of chocolate chips melted 1 gloop of maple syrup (the real stuff please)
Blend, pour into Graham Cracker crust and chill.
What made it special were the 42 candles minus the first 40 stabbed into each slice. Bless her. Tomorrow, we'd head south on our Fridays.
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SEPTEMBER 2: KILLER CRABCAKES AND ... THE BURLINGTON PRESENTATION
I've just returned from my first talk of the tour: Burlington University. The local free press published a giant photo of me in their Seven Days guide, thanks to the PR efforts of Bike Friday owner Becka Roolf, VT Bike/Ped Coalition Director, and local bike nut and host David Jacobowitz, which netted a polite group of around 30, I believe.
The talk took place in a strange cavernous round room with a domed roof with people seated at a big round table, a bit like the kinky mansion scene in Eyes Wide Shut, which I mentioned in a moment of witty inappropriateness ... (you are not, repeat, not, downunder, Ms Chiang). The crowd eagerly entered our Win a Friday contest - once I'd demonstrated the fold with a flourish and answered all permutations and combinations of 'but don't you have to pedal more?' 11 books were snapped up - apparently not bad for a Tuesday night crowd, "especially for a nobody" a bookstore kindly informed me. The local community channel sent along a cameraman to film it, no doubt good fireside fodder for the long cold winter ahead. Later, Glenn Eames of antiquarian bike shop, the Old Spokes Home, shouted a group of us supper at a very Eugenian style cafe complete with tofu shakes - in honor of my birthday on Sep 3. The gesture was so kind I had to forgive him for fast forwarding me kicking and screaming into my 42nd year.
Burlington is a tidy little lakeside university town in the northern frontier of the state, population circa 12,000. To decide to live in Vermont is apparently a conscious decision, given the savage winters - a bit like choosing to live in Alaska 'where people are bold'. A waterfront bike path winds around the shore of Lake Champlain, passing by local bike rental and advocacy outpost, Local Motion, which kindly received my books for the tour. In early fall this trail felt distinctly Riviera-like, all my worldly worries dissolved in a couple of bends in the path.
Highlight of the day was, without question, a kickass crab cake sandwich at a place called the Burlington Market. At $7.99, it'd want to be ...
Lynette Chiang, lynchiang at yahoo dot com
COMPLETE HANDSOMEST MAN IN CUBA USA TOUR CHRONICLES
All words and images copyright 2004 Lynette Chiang
For more information, follow this link http://www.galfromdownunder.com/cuba.