The month of June.

Urban Farming -

It's strawberry season, and currently, our front lawn is a mass of tiny organic strawberries. Who knew berries would grow so well in the middle of a city. They were a grand garnish to my lovely lunch salad of Cosco greens, Treasure Island yellow pepper, avocado, and tomato.

Children - Who knew that working in a bakery would be a lesson in child-rearing? Many kids have been coming in with parents because it's hot and we sell ice cream. Brunette girl walks in, probably around 6 or 7. I ask the parent, "can I help you?" He replies, "one moment," as they walk over to see the ice cream flavors. They come back to the counter, and the girl looks at her dad, who nods. She asks, "May I have a scoop of the rainbow sherbert please?" Which made me smile. I gave her an extra big scoop. Later on, a blonde girl, maybe 3 or 4, tucks her chin on the counter, screams, "ICECREAM!!! Ice cream!!! Ice cream!!! I want icecream !!!" I raised an eyebrow, and looked over at her father, who smiled at me and said, "The queen wants icecream." I did not smile back, as I kept flicking my glance between the smiling father and child who was continually screaming about icecream. I didn't even know what to say.

Icebergs - The dry cleaners is mad hot these days. Consider the factors against us:

1) Pressing machines. For several hours a day, the pressing people flatten hundreds of shirts, pants, and suits using scorching hot steam. Try calculating the specs on an HVAC system that could handle that. I bet the unit's size would be comparable to the size of the building we work in.
2) We work in an economically build brick box building with few windows. There are a few overhead fans, but they are definitely not large enough to cool off the entire building.
3) There is an existing cooling system for the non-pressing side of the building, but it's a swamp cooler, and apparently it always leaks moisture when in use. The ducts are right over the racks with newly cleaned and pressed possibly expensive clothing. Compared to angry customers, I guess heat is the lesser of 2 evils.

I've been racking my brains for a solution to this HVAC problem (in classic nerdy form). Combatting the steam-generated heat using electric methods, ie "Active Systems" seems exorbitantly expensive. Unless there were some way to capture the heat for cogeneration ... "Passive Systems," such as installing low and high windows for passive cooling seems to be a more viable option, but I imagine the single story walls are actually load-bearing not structural steel, so windows seem difficult. More massive overhead fans? Groundsource "heat pump" style passive cooling? Radiant cooling? Ah, the options are endless. Anyways, the heat makes me fondly desire some iceberg pets. Norwegian, Arctic, or Canadian. I'll take any.

Rides - Some great rides recently. I finally made it out to Willow Springs through the not so great neighborhoods into rolling suburban hills. I informed everyone that I was carrying 1040 calories for anyone who felt like they were bonking, and I consumed 700 of it before the ride concluded. Bike and Build trained. I stayed behind the fast group with Sarah Bransfield. Looks like she finally might have found a bike that fits her, which is great news. Also, we had Marc's father with us. We let the French men pull us back to Hyde Park. Sadly, I will now represent the only Korean woman rider on the team, as Liz has abandoned us for her cooler friends in New Jersey. She'll be flying out to S. Korea on the English-teaching Fulbright which is super exciting!!! I hope she keeps a blog :D

Court Theatre - Liz invited me to see a production on standby through our Tati connectin (Rory!), and it was a blast. "The Piano Lesson" by August Wilson had very minimal set movement, but they managed to tell an intense, layered story all in one house. The best part was when Rory took us backstage! We saw the piano up close, with the microphones all rigged up, the shop where they build walls and furniture, the costumes shop, and lastly what Rory called the boring stuff: initial planning and architectural floor plans (!!!!!). I've seen many Court productions, but this was the first time I got to see backstage.

Graduation - Bernard got hooded with the strange looking PhD hoods this past June. The ceremoney was, to be honest, quite boring. The PhD speaker I liked, because she reminded the PhD's that they should still be able to laugh at themselves every so often. The MD speaker clearly thought that only MD's were real people and I stopped listening to his speech early on. The highlight for me was when one of the Pritzker family children spoke for receiving and honorary fellowship (?) of some sort. Pritzker family, as in, the people who give out the Pritzker Prize in architecture !!! They're real people ?!?!?! Congratulations, Bernard!

"Up" - Bernard and I went to see the new Pixar movie, "Up" in theatres, and I loved it! Aside from the fact that there are houses the fly using helium-filled baloons, talking dogs, and giant rainbow colored birds, I thought it was surprisingly realistic in terms of the ups and downs of life. (Spoiler alert! Entire story synopsis to follow!) In the very beginning of the movie for example, although Carl marries the love of his life, she passes away before they are able to go on their dream voyage to Paradise Falls. The rest of the story is also quite simple: Elderly Carl flies to Paradise Falls in South America. Young Russell accidently accompanies him. Along the way they meet Kevin (a bird), and Dug (a dog), and run into a discredited explorer seething to reestablish his reputation by capturing a bird such as Kevin. Carl, Russell, and Dug all work together to save Kevin, and in the end, have each other as companions for the future. I really admire Pixar's ability to tell stories through very little naration.

Fisheries! Prom! Icecream!

50 mile ride to Indiana today.

The sunny weather brought out a sizeable group of people: Jesse, Francisco, Bernard, Sasha, Andrew, Marc, Rory, and J. Liz did manage to show up eventually.

It was a good ride :D And on the way back, Bernard, J, Liz, and I stopped at Calumet Fisheries. They're famous for their unique way of smoking fish, and they're right next to the bridge where they filmed the Blues Brothers bridge jump scene! AWESOME!

Calumet Fisheries has a very humble exterior. It's also take out only.

They smoke the fish outside, right next to the restaurant building.

The inside's covered in Blues Brothers paraphernalia. The owners are huge fans. Apparently they hosted the entire film crew for 3 full days while they shot the bridge jump scenes at the beginning of the movie!

Disreputables chowing down.

In other news, I'm back to working part time at the dry cleaners. Being the holiday weekend, and down one worker on vacation, I've been tagging for eternity. The week previously was more exciting because it's prom season!

A little too wedding like for me, but quite nice :)

The front one must have been a nightmare to press ...

I like this one, but the color's a bit drab. How about orange?

Some random tidbits too. The other day, Bernard and I went up to Wicker Park for dinner at Earwax. We wandered around and happened upon I Cream, a modern style icecream place. You choose yogurt, pudding, or ice cream, then flavors, then toppings. And then they make it for you entirely custom.

Front lobby, where people wait for their orders. It was packed!

That tank at top is where they store the liquid nitrogen.

The liquid nitrogen is fed into snazzy Kitchen Aid mixers to freeze the yogurt or milk into delicious ice cream. Yum.

Bike Races and Bike Crashes

Bad News First, because it really put a damper on the whole race day for me.

In my first race, I heard the unmistakable metal on asphalt sound of someone crashing behind me. It does happen, and the race goes on. However, it turned out to be bad enough that they called an ambulance and stopped the race early.

I've seen crashes before, but in general, it happened to people I didn't know well, or the crashes weren't too bad, and the people walked away afterwards. It's not like I knew Vanessa that well. I had raced with her once previously. At the starting line yesterday though, she called me out to mention she remembered me from the Half Acre Crits, and that I had beaten her. She said it with a smile that acknowledged my win without negative bitterness and promised challenging and friendly competition in the ensuing race.

Another Tati teammate, Janna, was right behind Vanessa before she crashed. Janna saw Vanessa's front wheel rotate far beyond what it should have, Vanessa went down, and someone right behind Vanessa rode over her. Apparently she had a seizure for a few minutes, with no history of seizures, but then she did try to get up. Someone on her team was either an EMT or a medic, and made her stay lying down until the ambulance came. They stopped the race early to let the ambulance through, and the last I saw, they were opening up the ambulance's back. I really hope she's doing ok.

Anyways. Liz got second in our first race (cat 5/4 race) after staying in a race-long breakaway with Cathy Frampton. I got a slow-leak flat tire which I didn't realize until my back wheel felt oddly shaky on the corners, and I finally borrowed Tim Hermanez's wheel to finish off the race. The race finish was confusing because they stopped it very short, and I don't even know how I fnished.

The second race was cat 3/4 + Masters women, and it turned out to be much more challenging and exciting than the first. The women were clearly more experienced, the pack was dynamic and cohesive and intriguingly didn't break up into smaller ones but rather, chased down all the break aways except the one with 3 laps to go. Anona of Wildcard took off, and I tried to chase her but missed her wheel. The chase group mobilized, but I missed that too after trying to chase solo on the end of the back stretch. A couple of riders caught up to me, said let's chase. I said ok ladies, let's do it. This one woman racer, I don't even remember who anymore, pulled me and Cathy Frampton all through the tail-wind stretch, Cathy Frampton took over on the first half of the windy back stretch, and I just barely made it on to the back of the chase group. I'm not even sure they knew I had made it back. On the last lap, I stayed behind everyone on the windy stretch, took the corner wide, and slingshot past most of them (but never caught the breakaway) to get 5th in the race, 4th in cat 3/4. Now that I think about it, I didn't sprint very intelligently. I probably could have tucked behind someone for a while, but what I ended up doing was madly charge past them in stead, screaming on the top of my lungs, kendo style. Of course. Dumb luck?

The rest of the race, I corner marshalled and ate constantly.

I hope I hear word of Vanessa from Spider Monkey soon.

Kendo!

Dead biceps!

So this morning was the dreaded LEED exam. I was worried about staying awake and sharp during the exam, so I had 2 more cups of caffeinated beverage than usual ... and the obvious repercussion was needing to go to the bathroom really badly by about 3/4's of the way through the exam. I cut it short, but whatever, I PASSED! YEY !!! Anticlimatic.

I tempted Liz with bulgogi, but she'd have none of it. SO TASTY. She totally missed out.

Bernard's friend, Mark Sasaki is in town right now, and he invited me to kendo at U Chicago. Again, not thinking about the repercussions, I joined them. Generally speaking, someone who's done kendo a long time can tell if another person has done kendo for some significant amount of years, even if they are out of practice. I didn't bring armor, so that I wouldn't have to deal with it, and also so I could sit out of the bogu session ... or so I thought! In stead of treating me like any other beginner, the highest level gentleman there kept making me practice with the other guys, even though I didn't bring bogu (armor). OMG. So, advice #1 from Master Choi, was not to breathe so hard because the opponent knows you're tired. Just don't breathe. Easy, right?

At one point, they started actual sparring, so I was sitting out. I was explaining some things the guys were doing wrong to Bernard who had never seen a kendo practice before. One thing I saw a lot of guys doing was bouncing up and down in stead of keeping very level. I also mentioned that they weren't completing their moves, they were trying to do moves too quickly.

All of a sudden, the Master was very clearly yelling at me to come over to the other side of the room, so I run over. I guess he wanted to help me with my out of practice form. After a few mene's and kote's, he gives advice #2: you should go slow, try to get the movements right. Speed will come later. A few more mene's and kotes. Advice #3: Don't bounce up and down so much! You should walk like a cat or a Geisha.

..... Sigh. I wanted to say, dude, I know that! I'm just really uber out of practice! But I bit my tongue and tried to address my form in stead. Oh, the irony.

Anyways, it was fun. Repercussions being of course, that my biceps are out for a little while ...

Enchiladas con queso + 17 miles on bike ???

Tonight the team meeting was dinner out to Pilsen for Mexican food. So authentic you pretty much had to order in whatever survival Spanish you knew. We rode up with a motley crew of bicycles: commuter steel frames, custom Tati single speeds, Bianchi fixie, Specialized Roubaix, orange Dutch bike with coaster brakes, and carbon Storcks. However, none of our bikes were nearly as awesome as the custom cargo bikes we saw at this icecream place. We all wanted to roll up to a line on one.

At this point, I'm not sure the enchiladas con queso, ciocolate caliente con leche, and icecream was such a great idea. The potholes didn't make for a smooth ride ... but it's worth it in the end?

Floral Bike Shorts???

Headed out for a crack of dawn type bike ride to make it to work in time. A few other people joined me up to Fullerton, so we had a small crew of 4 people total on the way back. We pass this one guy on some kind of touring bike with racks wearing ... floral print bike shorts??? Liz and I were in back, so we were the ones to hear his query, "do you mind if I join you guys?" We ignored it at first ... in my younger more foolish days, I probably would have said sure, but now I am more wary of people's bike handling skills. Anyways, J told him, oh go ahead and pass us, and I thought that was the end of floral bike shorts guy. Around 31st St, Bernard, J, and Liz turned around to intercept the UCVC social ride going up north again, so I puttered back home alone ... until I saw floral bike shorts again. I couldn't stand the idea of having to go slow and have to stare at the floral bike shorts all the way home, so I decided to hammer past him. And then Floral Bike Shorts has the nerve to try to draft off me! No way was I gonna let that continue on. At this point, I'm just time trialing like mad to drop Floral Bike Shorts, and not too long thereafter, I hear a whistle (of defeat) and a welcome silence.

Today, everyone who owns a bike in Chicago took it out to ride. The 50 mile ride to Indiana crew even saw quite a few people going south for once. Gorgeous though :D

200k in one day!

April 25, 2009 - Team Tati rode 200k in One Day.

T-Storms lurked on the weather forecast, but the day disarmed everyone with its sun and balmy temperatures ... I hesitated while packing my Arc'teryx Beta AR, thinking I'd regret having to cart it around all day and the resulting sweaty back. Even if it does rain, I thought, perhaps I would be really hot in this jacket. For some reason, I even packed a Craft long sleeve base layer. As I shed my arm warmers within 2 miles, I considered myself insane and wished we had a Bike and Build style van that I could pack it into.

Before the ride, I had told people that I would ride Bike and Build style: 15 mph no matter what. It started out that way, but then J attacked, luring out Liam, Maris, and Loren. Dan, John Ozik, Liz and went a more sane pace. At some point it was just Liz and I, and we got in a lot of great girl talk (haha). Us women gotta stick together in the sea of testoserone.

Some 10 miles into the ride, it got darker and started to rain. Then it hailed. Liz and I each put on our respective jackets, and continued on. It did start to T-storm a bit, and I wished I had a camera to capture the imagery of bike riders against the livid skies.

By the first rest stop, it was pretty cold, but it wasn't too bad yet. By the second rest stop, it was freezing, and everything about it reminded me of the 6 days of rain through Pennsylvania. At that point, I changed out my sopping cotton socks for my thermal Craft socks, which I discovered randomly in the pockets of my Arc'teryx. I also covered my toes with sandwich bags. Bernard found these free disposable plastic gloves by the food display, and most of the people opted to try them out.

On leg 66.9 miles - 100.3 miles, I somehow found myself pulling J, Dan, Liz, and Bernard at 19 miles per hour, even hitting 31 mph on the downhill. I thought, odd, will I even be able to keep this pace much longer??? It didn't last too much longer, but we still kept up a ridiculous pace.

At the final rest stop, I simply couldn't stop eating. Energy gel, Larrabar, coffee, small bean burrito, 1/3 of a churro, potato chips. It wasn't inhaling pace, but as long as we sat there, I kept eating. Delaying the hardest leg, probably. I told Loren about the reason why I no longer ate donuts during a ride. Liam told people about his stomach gnome that needed to be placated. Everyone agreed that the gloves worked - our hands were still cold, but they weren't absolutely stiff and painful.

Leg 100.3 - 128 miles, J, Dan and Liam sped off at race attack pace. Loren took a monster pull for probably over 10 miles at 18 mph with Liz and I holding on. Liz vanished at one point, to take a phone call. Dan told her that apparently J and Liam both got lost and lost their cue sheets... Yikes. (They did get back safely eventually, but rode an extra 10 miles) However, the last 15 miles were just me and Liz ... She took a monster pull into a long stretch of headwind. We mooed at gloomy looking cows standing in the rain. At some point I took a pull, and then we kept up a steady cycle of short pulls until finally ... 2 miles ... 1 mile ...

The early arrivals had rented a room in the Super 8 to take showers. Everyone took showers and relaxed in the sauna like temperatures of the room: awesome. At dinner we shared stories of what we started to hallucinate after mile 100. One person imagined having handlebar tape on his bike that notably has none. Another heard voices and saw bears. As for myself, during Liz's monster pull, I kept imagining that the paint stripe on the road was telling us to turn right, out of the headwind. Go figure.

Conclusions:

1) This ride has converted me to Arc'teryx-ism. Previously, I thought people were insane for considering getting these ridiculously priced technical outergear, but it's probably the biggest reason why I'm not hacking up a lung right now. It kept me dry, but breathed enough that when I did warm up, I didn't get too hot. Also, although it's not snug-fitting, it did not flap in the wind because the fabric is really stiff. Of course, more than the jacket, it might have been the socks I discovered in the jacket pockets that really made me happy. Take your pick.

2) Team Tati =/= Bike and Build !!! OMG. On Bike and Build, I was usually in the front group going at a decent, steady clip. Here, even with randomly interspersed 19 mph pulls or pacelines, I was usually in the "slow group," with the fast group going upwards of 25 mph. Atmosphere was entirely different too, much more business-like.

3) Tati women's team >>> Tati men's team.

4) Nebraska is still worse.