Biker vs. Bender, or: Pedal Adventures in the Finger Lakes, or: Actually Not April Fools Day

I decided the other day, with matters pressing in against all aspects of my life, that I was deficit in elevation change and mileage on bicycle. A ride to Lodi would fulfill this hunger and the need to check out the historical society there in need of a pipe organist to offer a recital.

So there we were, ShortHairedBikinggirl (Biker) and ChefBalletBeau (Bender) meeting in transit, one leaving from Ithaca and the other from Trumansburg for a rendezvous on Route 96, the main artery between lakes. A SAT math problem, if you will: if Bender leaves at 4pm going 15mph and carrying 2 cookies and if Biker leaves at 3:30pm going 13mph with a 5mph headwind, what time will they intersect, what speed will they be going in knots at the time of intersection, and what color will Biker’s hair be?

In fact the town where we turned to aim for Lodi is called Interlaken, German meaning "between lakes."  It's this amazing area that at once you look upon it and see a glimmer of a lake, but being that you are higher above where the glaciers clawed out ditches to be filled with melt that we call Seneca and Cayuga, you see mostly hills and farms.

But the meet-up.  

I was pedaling slowly, anticipating that I had left before my ridemate crossed my entrance to 96.  I noticed the red-and-white splotched Croc sandal, sitting solitary as though tossed from a window (a prank a friend pulled on another?) and set it as a flag for further trips (I'm passing the Solitary Red Croc now!). On a bicycle you can take in details that would otherwise be missed in a car. Not long after this croc, I heard "UN OEUF!  UN OEUF" from behind and immediately bursting into laughter we met, cycling along, remembering a terrible joke Bender told Biker the day before. (“How many eggs are in chef’s omelette? Un oeuf! (Enough)”)

Good to be with each other, to have a chat and joke, poking fun at how people get locked into poor speech habits of "Ummm" and "sooo".  When you begin to realize you have these linguistic crutches, you get a bit self-conscious about how you appear to one another.  I suppose in this way a single unifying ride helped peel back a layer, to show how we see our flaws and can laugh, and maybe individually evaluate ourselves a bit more.  Call it Shared Perspective or maybe Shared Self-awareness.  Either way, as we pressed up hill and slope, air whooshed and pushed softly around us, as we sliced through to atop between the lakes.

Not far from Lodi, the competitive streak started to settle in both of us.  "On step," which is Cruising Gear, is the basecoat for this streak. In this, I feel like I am taking steps, and as I grow in rhythm I simply apply more pressure and thus stronger steps.  But its more than a physical feeling; it's a mental state that ignores fatigue or pain of pushing.  Instead there are endorphins and the need to fly, and with the cars buzzing by I want to hug closer to catch a ride from their down drafts.  You get comfortable and suddenly you want to poke a little bit.  At first Biker pulled ahead, only to be shortly overtaken.  It was just a little test of each other, seeing how fast we could pick up from cruising speed.  For me it felt like a little tap of the gas and feeling the power of the engine, and wanting to draw from the raw power of it.  Bender, being a bit cocky, commented "I mean, you've got more than that right?"  

And thus the real race began!

Biker, striding hard, pulled ahead by maybe 25 yards, her green helmet just inches above the bar, decreasing the profile and becoming a bright green dart.  Bender sat back a bit, giving her the benefit of the lead.  Having been a ballet dancer he reasoned, meant that he could out perform her in the short runs but not the long game.  Best to let her lead and overtake her and let her wear down.  So it went, with Bender flexing his many plie'd legs and applying maximal effort, flying past Biker.  

In this race it was more about the fun of opening up on the country road after climbing so many hills to suddenly feel as though you are going so fast that you are bending time.  If you pull back to the existential part of this scene, we did bend time.  The time spent with this other person usually results in not caring about what time it actually is anyway.

So there we arrived at the Lodi Historical Society where the aforementioned organ had been sitting for nearly two yeas of non-use and forget.  We were greeted by Harry, 71 (which he eagerly announced), with hair that suggested he wanted to hold on to what he could as the top was very bald and the sides and back had a length that fell over the ears, almost like a monk who had not trimmed in some time.  We enquired about bringing our bikes into the building for safety. “This is Lodi,” he said, “There’s nobody here.”

In that indulgent and timeless way that some older men have, Harry regaled us of the history of the 150 year old church.  To put in perspective our timeline, bikes weren't really around this area when the Lodidians settled here.  When General Sullivan's troops came through the area bikes were most certainly not around, and neither was Harry.  But, he spoke about the history of the church, the town, his home and farm, as though he had been there the entire time, curating the various nooks and details, knowing the families that brought the town to being, and seeking endlessly for the precise dates when so and so left Lodi for the Big City, or whatever tidbit he could remember.

The organ however, was another story.  Much like our talk on language crutches, Biker began to plod away at the keys and pedals.  Instead of the decadent and resonant ring of organ pipes what was brought forth was more like an "uhhmmmmm" and "soooooo" from this old device. No exuberant and well pronounced notes rang forth but still the sound of an organ in an old church brings out parallel emotions, though they are more like whispers.  Hopefully, after the Curator Harry has a chance to meet with the Lodidians who oversee the Historical Society we will see its return to a champion of proper proportion, capable of speaking on Bach, Mozart, or maybe even Saint Saens.

With all this happening in my life, the new adventures, the daily grind, the people leaving us, this time warp was exactly what I was looking for.  A time out of place situation, in a place unto itself. 

And then, post organ and Historical Harry, we continued into the golden glow of the Finger Lakes on towards Two Goats Brewery, a perhaps unwise decision given the distance, but it is summer and we are alive.  Two food trucks (count them, 2!) were there, one with pizza (Pi Truck) from a wood-fire oven, run on wind and solar power, indeed we’re not in Kansas.  The other is an impressive taco truck (Global Taco) and both of them are becoming local institutions.  Then Biker gleefully ran into long lost friends, residents at a local artist’s commune, making this stop at the brewery seem meant to be. Given the scenery and the delicious food and beverage offerings, it could be Patagonia, or Northern Italy here, but it isn't.  It's the Finger Lakes.  The own corner of the world full of realities of beauty and life.

Sunset on Seneca Lake was a glory, but then the reality of returning to the other lake and home. And so we pedaled off, bright lights blinking, with the sun dipping below the range opposite us that traces up the west shores of Seneca.  Thus begins our next phase of the trip wherein things begin to fall apart.  Biker, with her many miles of experience and Green Gary with his fancy shifting could approach upward climbs with grace and poise.  Bender with his legs and Blue Lotus had all the power, but literally nowhere to put it, with older style gears and shifting. Without too much clinical explanation here, the chain derailed again and again.  Eventually the hill was met, and cruising picked up again but not without a steady stream of expletives (Chefs use those like they do salt) before then.  At this point the sun is down and the headlights are up, the temperature has dropped and the desire to fly has picked up.  Not because the open road calls us but because the warmth of home.

Finally the chain fouled as though some gnome had pulled it from its place, twisting under the pedal, the occasional car whizzing by as the two of us tried in vain to understand the mystical workings.  Eventually a truck-traveler pulled over to offer us assistance.  As it turns out, Truck Clayton lived just "up there" (we’re in the boonies, mind) and could give us a ride to a better scene for chain repair, resplendent with light.  Not long after that his brother Truck Chris joined us as well, and there were had two bearded brothers who by their back-and-forth you could tell they were kin. 

Totally bemused by the problem of a twisted chain and flipped derailleur—that if only we had better bike knowledge we could have fixed—we began thinking about Plan B. Which ended up being a younger Truck sister driving one of the trucks, Truck Chris in the cab to keep her company, with us and bikes back to Ithaca. We were beside ourselves with gratitude for these strangers taking pity on us, people from a very different way of living.

The Truck Siblings were keenly interested in our passion for cycling while not being interested whatsoever in taking it up.  At one point they marveled at Biker’s ability to ride at night alone up hills.  Bender explained, "Yeah sure, but she also just biked through part of the Andes." Truck Chris responded, spitting tobacco into his plastic water bottle, "The Dandy's? What's that?"  We explained, both of them laughed: “You guys are two fit people talkin’ to two rednecks.”

Again, a place unto itself.  From lakes to hills, from old churches to new breweries, from older men with vast knowledge to young men with so little, this area is a magical and mysterious place.  Finally, the startling truth here dear reader, is that I am not Biker writing this entry.  I'm Bender, ChefBalletBeau, and just like you I'm discovering this place for the first time, again, en biciclette, and loving all of it.  Bumbling chains and verbal crutches and all. (Granted, some editing help provided by the pedantic Sandra)

The play's the thing

When I was a child I kept imaginary horses, no more than three at a time. 

Any more than three and the time investment was too hefty and I couldn’t keep track of everybody. I had one white Arabian mare, who was the most stalwart of all the horses, and it is a great sadness that I cannot remember her name. I remember deliberating over her name; it needed to be graceful and romantic. Genevieve or Tara maybe.  Gwendolyn.

I usually also kept two young black horses, faster than my Arabian mare, but feisty and harder to handle. They probably had names like Black Diamond or Velvet. These horses would run behind my father’s car when we went on road trips, which offered me a sense of comfort, that something awesome of mine was also coming with us.

I kept the horses in the garage, in small transparent stalls between my mother’s gardening supplies and my father’s motorboat. These are full size horses, mind you; somehow they all managed to fit in that space. But someone was always moving the wheelbarrow in the way of my horse system. Writing this right now, I can hear the scrape of the wheelbarrow as I moved it aside to get through to my horses.

While I was going through this horse period (before I started taking riding lessons on visible horses), I could be found every morning opening up the garage door, then walking calmly with my two hands in the air, leading two horses at once out to the front yard. This yard was most conveniently fenced in electric and had a nice gate, and I was satisfied that my horses were content and healthy there. In the evening, the reverse happened: hands in the air, leading horses back to the safety of the garage. I would usually also ride in the evening too, trying to get my sister to join me. Then we would slap our thighs with a thin stick and prance and run around the driveway.

Now this was just my imaginary horses. I could write likewise about the town of Lego people and dry beans we had (“Beanville”), or the extensive village of rocks by the lake where we made seaweed cakes to sell (we were enamored with the suffix “-ville”, apparently, so this was “Rockville”), the American girl dolls and the living room carpet floods they survived in their laundry basket lifeboats, the plastic horses and their world travels chosen by spinning the globe with eyes closed and a finger poked down, the huge families of barbies and their dramas and infidelities and love lives, or the space ships on the couch manned by an expert crew of beanie babies.

I would play tirelessly, endlessly, with no thought of hunger or time or the importance of setting the table. There are no words to describe how delicious this was, one of those incredibly satisfying drives that needs to be expressed as a young human. I can say with utmost clarity that my boundless opportunity to be allowed to create my own worlds of play was the greatest benefit of homeschooling.

My first greatest heartbreak came when my younger sister sat by the beanie babies in their spaceship and called me over (I was worlds away with a book on the couch), “Let’s play! Come on!”  And I couldn’t.  I couldn’t play.  It no longer felt “true” to craft the imaginary stories and take the figures in my hands and move them across the couch.  I was surprised and sad and felt that something was wrong with me, that I couldn’t muster this anymore. But I was taken away by someone else’s story now, the books, and I had less of a need to craft my own stories. And I was putting my energy towards horse riding lessons, planning for horse shows, getting excited about systems that were outside of my head.

What is play, really? Can adults play? What is different between adult play and child play?

I think play is where importance and whimsy meet. As a child, it is critical and necessary of energy that your horses survive the tsunami on the carpet—there’s the importance—but also whimsical and safe. For instance, at any time you could stop the game or Daddy comes home after work all comfort and safety, and these things are the foundation of feeling not actually in danger, of not actually being in a tsunami.

I think play is also about creating something from within yourself. As a child, it’s writing an intricate story about your barbies or caring for your imaginary horses. As an adult, on good days, this can come from making music on the pipe organ or finding just the apt word to describe an experience. In a much broader sense, I suppose all of life can be playful, provided you’re in a period when things are not troubling, and where living, and being aware of living, the intricate story of a human experience comes as self expression.

As an adult I feel that sense of time stopping, about something being important and whimsical when I’m crafting in my kitchen, for instance. Not following a recipe, which would be just plain adult, but puzzling over what’s in my fridge and then imagining up something to create from it. What about curry powder and chocolate! On soy nuts? Yes! It’s whimsical because of the strange combinations, a little bit of self expression. And it’s important because this is taking care of my health and well-being.

A sense of play happened during field work the other day. Monsieur Visiting French Scholar, who is a wonderful combination of analytically brilliant and very silly, and I were working in neighboring plots of cover crops. The setting: something important (we’re doing science) but also whimsical, because as I’m bent over I feel a light tap on my butt. Looking up I see Mr Scholar grinning ghoulishly from his plot and that he had excellent aim with a grass weed arrow he had flown at my butt (root ball acting as weighted arrowhead, stems serving as feathered shaft). We laughed and of course there was no danger in any of this. Later I found him bent over, curve of lower back exposed, and so I planted a dandelion down the back of his pants.  The basal rosette of the plant popped perkily from that place, a novel flower pot design.

I believe that without the setting of importance (we were all out there being productive and scientific), there would be less of a life spark to beget creativity and see grass weeds as arrows and behinds as flower pots.

Let me describe for you a scene of play that is not of a child, that happened recently, and that brought happiness and whimsy mixed with that sense of drive and importance. If you told my ten year old self that this would bring me so such giddy glee, I would have disbelieved you indeed. 

I went grocery shopping with a friend.

The farm store was mostly empty that evening and my sweet friend Tall Bri (“lets be tall happy dancing woman together!” we’ll say before a Friday night) and I gathered carts and rolled into the dreamy land of local, minimally-packaged, and impossibly inexpensive food. You don’t get prices like this in Wegmans or at the Ithaca coop. It takes a Mennonite Grocery Shop in the small town of Seneca Falls.

“Jams!” Tall Bri crowed, “cheese!” I called, and we giddily rolled into the separate lands. For me this was a jubilant unfettered conquering of good food, where I didn’t have to sigh wearily about how expensive fresh ground peanut butter was, and where I could buy a simple plastic bag with walnuts in it, not some glossy colored cardboard-plastic-structured container with a small essay of labeling on it.  I bought two containers of peanut butter, a giant glugging pillar each, with that self-satisfied understanding of I’m Stocking Up For the Future While The Gettin’s Good.  “The Asparagus is so CHEAP!” I could hear Tall Bri from the land of fresh vegetables. I hooked my right foot up into my cart and skate-boarded gleefully to join her. Grapefruits and apples and eggplant, again, the cornucopia of plenty.

Rolling along, admiring left and right down every aisle, as if in Disney Land, simply so pleased by everything. Blue AND red popcorn, just because they both existed, went into my cart. I saw Tall Bri’s head skimming along a few aisles over. “I found the nuts!” she sang and, in a pang of leaving the many varieties of bulk flour I was studying, I rolled to join her with the pecans. The pang of leaving something good for something else good cannot actually be a pang, it is in fact a celebration.

We had the dose of importance from the nature of buying food for oneself and the dose of whimsical because the food was so simple and pleasing and local and nearly half the price of things at Wegmans.

A Mennonite grocery store offers not only a highly economical shopping experience but a cultural one as well, the products that you don’t find in your middle America grocery store.  For instance, I bought a LOG of butter. “Amish butter roll” said its name tag. I passed a bag of breakfast cereal the size of a small child, disconcertingly pastel circles and squares and stars made from wheat and corn syrup, whimsical indeed, “Happy Shapes” it read on the bag, by a company called comfortingly “Hospitality”.

The manufacturer of cheese curds, some tiny brand that was local to upstate NY, Stoltzfus Dairy Cheese.  Stoltzfus. Of course I took a packet home, just to enjoy that sneeze name each time I opened my fridge. 

Two women in blue and green dresses, white aprons, and little bonnets rang us up. I just about pranced each item onto the belt and fluttered with urgency to deploy my battalion of reusable bags for the haul. “I’m so excited about these spices!” I said as I topped the 8^th container on the stack I was creating; it shuttered its way balanced on the belt toward Miss Bonnet Cashier. She was totally unfazed by my giddy enthusiasm and with complete composure scanned each item for me. The sum came to more than I have ever spent on groceries in one swipe, but with that much peanut butter and popcorn and maple syrup I won’t step into a florescent grocery store for anything besides soy milk for months.

Whatever it may be, grocery shopping or goofing around in the field, I never want to lose that whimsical importance I used to feel leading my imaginary horses to the front yard.