Mt Lemmon, a ride of a life time (Day 6)

Yesterday we climbed the flagship ride of the trip, Mt Lemmon. Instead of loading our bikes onto our non-existent car to drive comfortably to the base, we rode out through the city workday commute. I am loving the ever-present bike lanes in Tucson, even through box store plaza waste-lands. Some of us in the lanes were obviously pedaling to the office, some of us were pedaling to the mountain looming to the northeast.

 

 

 

Riding to the ride.

 

Le Buzz coffee shop, (yes, in a parking lot plaza) is the unofficial start of the ride up Mt Lemmon. Katie Buddy and I piled into the shop, where other be-jerseyed bicycle folks were congregating, eating carbs and caffeinating. Katie was dressed reasonably in a racing jersey kit, while I had on my home-cut arm and leg warmers and looked like someone's high school art project. I received some calculating stares from the serious classic-aged bicycle men.

 

 

Stretches while waiting, and my ridiculous outfit

We chose our carbs from a very attractive line-up; I opted for a huge cinnamon roll, thinking of my sister and how much she loves them. What the cinnamon roll lacked in flavorful cinnamon it compensated for in unregulated sweetness. I did not actually enjoy eating the thing, but I knew I would burn most of it before even getting half way up. My leg started a buzzed high-energy tap; I was eating a bomb. 

 

The pre-ride beauty contest of possible fuel at Le Buzz

 

 

We started up the mountain. Opuntia and saguaro cacti were everywhere, and the road zigged up through them ahead of us. Already I was removing my extra layers, oh mid-morning heat. The grades were about 4-5% on average for the whole climb. We passed a group of retiree-aged cyclists, a couple of whom were on electric bicycles--yay accessibility for all! Other folks chugging up were obviously pros, shifters clicking with that metallic cleanness that comes from expensive bikes. A couple dudes shot past me, one yelling to the other "one second!"; they were working on one of the countless Strava segments. Fifteen thousand people are on the Strava segments around here, what a popular place.

 

Our first tree!

 

After a couple thousand feet, we saw our first tree! A sycamore I think. Something that wasn't cacti. The biome was changing! Climbing this definitely took focus and leg power, but it wasn't so steep that I had to stand on the pedals (ever), I just set myself to Moderate-High for hours and rotated along. That cinnamon bun was excellent fuel, because I forgot to eat my dried dates for quite some time. I had 2 liters of water and I was staying hydrated. The scenery was jaw-dropping, the sweeping valley with the city getting progressively smaller, and rock formations piled above like a giant toddler had been squeezing sand shapes out of a clenched fist. The road twisted through this epic foreign landscape, continuously going upwards. The task very clear, just one road, just churn on up it.

 

 

 

Curving road, rock formations

Jaw-dropping everything

I thought this would be a duet experience with Katie and myself, just the two of us battling up alone. But there were so many other cyclists it felt like a community event, like an organized fundraiser ride, just none of us had bib numbers. As we slowly crept upwards, cyclists in the other lane shot past us on their earned descents, banking deliciously around the curves, wind breakers flapping. Imagine looking at this mountain from the air, all of us colorful cyclists moving on it, like a bunch of ants or bees to the hive and back, doing something greater than any single one of us. And I found I could strike up a conversation with basically anyone. This was good, because Katie wanted to pound up at blow-out speed, while I knew that pushing might ruin my knee and lead to regret. She was out of sight within 2 minutes, while I made a number of friends. I met a guy who had ridden this mountain 40 times! And had a conversation about half-moon cookies from someone who had visited central NY.

 

And then. I entered another ecosystem: the pine forest. Juniper, Ponderosa pine, white pine, fir. Smelling them was as strong as walking through a cloud of someone's marijuana smoke. In the sun it was striking hot, entering the shade was like a blast of air conditioning.

 

 

High up enough for pines now.

 

The "Elevation 7,000 Feet" sign: "oh good, only 1,000 more feet to climb" I thought to myself and then laughed, that is a thought I've never had before. A thousand foot climb around Ithaca is usually The Main Event of whatever ride you're doing. Then I had a religious experience cookie and bummed some water re-fill from one of the many vans for the supported riders. Upward!

 

At about 7,500 feet my right knee felt that pierce of pain that I've known on occasional high-stress rides in the past. I tried to channel the power coming from my glutes rather than my quads, which usually helps relieve the pain. Roadside, a woman cheering committee for another group yelled at me, "GIRL power!" and then added, "hey! You are a stud-ette!" Never got that one before, hehe, I'll take it! Knee, feel that!

 

 

There is snow up here!

There were piles of snow up here, festering away in the shade of the pines. Then at last, the 8,000 feet elevation sign. I'd made it! As I'd been riding my boring trainer in my boring living room this winter in preparation for this ride, I'd imagined breaking into tears at the top. But that didn't happen--I just felt proud and tired and trying to take it all in-- and emotions just don't behave the way you expect; the real end of the ride was actually anti-climatic, after a descent into the town of Summerhaven (there's a town up there!), I found the congregation of all the other riders waiting in line for face-sized $7 cookies at the eponymous "Cookie Cabin". Some Chicago riders (amazingly, who remembered Katie from races 10 years ago) invited us to bunk up at their table, and they let me taste all the cookies. Being in fun, friendly, shared-event community, this is one thing I love about bicycling. I felt excited to be back among my Fingerlakes riding buddies when I returned home.

 

Thank you, legs!

 

The requisite I DID IT picture

 

The hardest part was the unexpected reverse climb in what was supposed to be The Downhill Chapter, getting up out from the town, a part I hadn't mentally budgeted for and my knee was hurting. But the reward after was endless swooping descent. Magically, the road was such that I barely needed to brake, I just floated down at 30 mph. I never thought I'd get inured to descending, usually a descent is so brief and so relished that its like taking an espresso shot. But this was like sipping a huge bottomless mug of coffee. After 10 or 20 minutes I started that kind of day dreaming you get when looking out the window of a bus. The pines, the snow, the swooping views, a soaring hawk. I'd been worried about a chilling cold ride down, but we'd chosen a hot day, so it had been a rare 60's at the top. I still had my arm and leg protection on, to help against wind and sun. This time I was the guy flying by in the other lane as the next set of riders inched their way up. Imperceptibly it got warmer and warmer, and then I saw the return of the cacti again!

 

Swooping descent.

And then the descent was over. It was nearly 90 degrees at the edge of the city and we had to cross 15+ miles of blazing pavement to make it back home. That experience sure wasn't pretty, especially with a now-bum knee, but the promise of a cold beer steered me back. Pleasure after a little suffering is really just divine.

Taking a break in the only shade around.

It wasn't the hardest ride I've ever done (that might go to trying to keep up with 'Team 545' 100 miles around Cayuga Lake last summer with a headwind, or that informal CT gravel race riding up basically stream beds) but I certainly had to focus, dig deep and manage any unhelpful thinking. It was the most I've ever climbed in a single day: nearly 7,000 feet all told. But of all my rides, all over the world, this one goes down--as cheesy as it sounds--as the ride of a life time.

 

Mt Lemmon climb

 

 

Saguaro National Park (Day 4 & 5)

Yesterday it was sunny! And we rode bicycles! We took Broadway all the way east out of the city, with its fat-shouldered bike lane and braved the endless blocks of McDonalds, Taco shops, and hair salons. It feels like most of this city is generic Americana strip-malls, everything flat and wide, but surprisingly bike-able. We headed to Saguaro National Park; that there were other cyclists in the entrance line along with all the cars demonstrated how bike-centric Tucson really is. 

 

We're on Broadway, as it were, braving the strip malls, heading to the National Park

 

 

A velvet 8-mile paved loop was the way to experience saguaros and other cacti in the park. The road was so perfectly smooth, with curves and ups and downs as if engineered for the ideal bike-sensory experience. Prickly pear, huge looming saguaros, barrel cacti--the diversity of shapes and the brilliance of the blue sky contrasted with the craggy mountain backdrop made me feel as if I were in the brightest of curated environments, like someone's prize-winning tropical fish tank. The cacti kept reminding me of coral in their striking way, what an incredibly visually captivating place. And the air was so still.

 

It felt like a tropical fish tank

 

My new hat

 

Mom always loved the importance and intention of national parks, and she'd want to read all the interpretive signs and stop at every view pull-off. While 'Lil Buddy' raced ahead, I needed to take the loop slowly and give reverence to each interpretive sign. I read about pack-rats, learned how to pronounce cholla correctly (CHOY-ya), and saw how mesquite serves as a nurse plant for baby saguaro dots.

 

Something about this place, with the majestic ancient cacti, the still air and the sun, made me miss Mom in the most intense way. I wanted to "fix" grief, like I fixed the squawking door hinge in the Airbnb with some clever olive oil, but there is nothing to be done. I wanted to send her a photo of the huge cacti. I sat on my helmet in the shade of a mesquite and ate a very delicious hamantaschen from a strip-mall bakery and did some crying. I think coming out here, and making space for this, is probably part of this Arizona trip. Also, when I can realize that her spirit is with me, that she is in the waxing gibbous moon (all week so far), that feels like a possible new way of carrying onward. 

Saguaro National Park, Javelina Rocks

 

Tomorrow we are doing the flagship ride of our Tucson time: Mt Lemmon. If I make it up there, it will be the longest single climb I will have ever done in one day, about 6,000 feet of elevation gain. This will be like going from downtown Ithaca to Cornell's hill-top vet school 12 times. Because of this, I took a "rest day" (of sorts, which meant a 9 mile walk through historic neighborhoods and the botanic garden) today, to try and give my poor legs their best chance for tomorrow.

Hanging with the Coral Aloe in the botanic garden

 

 

Free heart shaped cactus pads! One of the most joy-producing sights I've seen all trip.

As a plant person, I am incredibly excited about Mt Lemmon. It is a Sky Island, which means that due to its much higher elevation than the surrounding desert, it is an "island" with vastly different flora and fauna. Sky Islands receive more moisture (see: elevation, temperature decrease, dew point, clouds) and thus can sustain plants that the desert cannot. Mt Lemmon is also a famous road climb for cyclists from all around the country, because it can be done year-round and the pavement is lovely.

 

I am seriously intimidated by the ride ahead, though, wishing I could cultivate Katie's easy-going attitude. Katie seems healthfully separated from her ego, is non-competitive, and doesn't seem perturbed by sore legs, and maybe doesn't even experience sore legs, because she's been riding mountains in CA and racing cyclocross forever. I, on the other hand, am sensitive to everything, feel bad about myself if I can't keep up, and have negative self-talk loops that I would love to figure out how to get rid of. So tomorrow is an opportunity to practice being Stoic and also kind to myself. And also see some mind-boggling views and plants. 

 

 

 

I loved walking through the historic neighborhoods of Blenman-Elm. This house had a front "yard" consisting of California poppies glowing yellow.

Mt Lemmon looms above Tucson neighborhoods

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opening Day of Cactus Season! (Day 3)

On the east coast I am an incorrigible morning person, which translates to waking at the crack of butt-crack here: 4:30am or so. There's no alarm even; I just pop awake in the dark full of maps, cacti identification, and the intent to google "best churros tucson".

Yesterday's 4:30am was quite convenient as I was about to try my fourth attempt to get from Tempe to Tucson. My bicycle had been there for days already. The night before was attempts #2 and #3, involving a FlixBus that never showed up, their app vs website giving contradictory updates as to the actual arrival time of the bus (is it 20 minutes late? is it 190 minutes late?). 9pm still waiting, sitting on my bag at the Tempe bus stop,  I received a FlixBus notification: "You have arrived at your destination! We hope you enjoyed your trip!" What trip. At that point I gave up and starting hiking back to Adorable Ann's house to re-strategize and warm up and sleep on the couch. 

FlixBus rescheduled me for free on the 5:50am ride yesterday, so I enjoyed a sunrise bus blast through the desert. The selections of craggy red hills glowed with neon edging until the sun blinked over the flat landscape, everything tinting orange. Arrival in Tucson plunked me in a sleepy neighborhood, low houses, cacti lazing about, no rushing cars. What a contrast to where I stayed in Tempe! After walking two blocks from the bus stop to our Airbnb (how fortuitously convenient! and when we booked this place we hadn't even known I'd be taking a stop-gap, failed-flight bus ride either) a white car drove up: airport delivery of my bicycle bag. Reunion! Thank you Delta for delivering that, it was the least you could do after that broken gate bridge hassle. 

Desert bus ride

Gorgeous post-flight assembled machine

I also reunion-ed with Katie Math, my fast fit bicycle buddy for the next week, an unflappable person, in contrast to my sensitive-to-everything person. We laughed over how we've both been mis-gendered lately, someone having called her "little buddy", and someone calling me "sir." We decided those would be our Road Names for the week, "Lil Buddy" and "Big Sir". We both sport functional super-chopped haircuts and flatness everywhere in our clashing bright bike jerseys. I'm just 50% larger, like the SUV version of a sports car.

Are you, like, the SAME person?
(We're so thrilled to do our first Arizona bike ride!)

We set out west through the city of Tucson towards the famed Gates Pass for our first wake the legs ride. "This is WAY better than the trainer!" said Katie ahead of me in the bike lane. "I know! I'm putting in work and actually GOING somewhere!" We smelled wafts of taco joints, powered through intersections, bumped over the railroad tracks, and then increasing numbers of tall saguaros started to replace the houses and shops. Climbing up out of the city, it was amazing to look behind me and see this impossible congregation of humanity in the desert; we're really not supposed to be there. My legs were pumping and the sun was blaring down on us, we flowed up, down, and around the smooth pavement up to the pass. I thought about how it takes 50-70 years for a saguaro to grow a single arm. 

The rarely seen Teddy Bear Dumpy Cactus.

Classic views from the road.

 

I felt the poignancy of Doing The Thing you've been waiting months for, riding that awfully boring trainer for. Our east side climb of Gates Pass was low-burden, and at the apex we found a sweeping view of valley moonscape. Just moon studded with cacti. This is Tucson Mountain Park, all plants and terrain of the Sonoran Desert. The west side of Gates Pass was a coil of road descending, un-kinking itself onto the moon of cacti below. I felt like I'd forgotten how to bank my turns, but I still was a soaring hawk as I flew down from the pass. 

Fun with cacti. I think these are Cholla.

We did a loop in the park, relishing the looming cacti and the mountains in the distance. My thoughts on default-mode kept going to how I wanted to text Mom a selfie of me smiling on the bike with a saguaro behind me. She always would say to me, "I just want you to be happy." I knew it was important to her.  I wanted to send her photos that would say without words, "Mom! Look! I'm feeling so great right now! It's possible! This is amazing!" 

WEEEEEEEEEEE

The return east back up to the pass meant crawling up that curving swoop I had sailed down as a hawk. If there's glory in your heart flooring it to max, mashing up a steep curving grade in the windless sun-baked nook of the pass, it sure didn't feel like it. But then there was the top and I was awarded breath again, and the flying descent down the other side, Tucson off in the distance. 

Our opening day ride, Gates Pass and Tucson Mountain Park

 

 

 

 

Be sure to thank your water source.
I didn't know if I'd need to refill my 1-L water bottles, but definitely yes.

Arizona: Feet & Sky (Days 1 & 2)

I was supposed to be in Tucson--but flight delays, broken gate bridges, and misdirected luggage make not for a unique story--so I'll just start at the part where I arrive safely at my friend's house in Tempe (Phoenix area), in the itsy-bitsy morning hours, after being awake for nearly a day-length. This new destination is an unexpected happening where I wheedled with Delta to send me here vs to a dismal Detroit hotel, and my Tempe friends were last-minute willing to receive me. 

 

When you miss your connection

My eyeballs were so tired my contacts felt like little porcelain cereal bowls under my lids. But! To arrive! To see cacti along the highway under the sinking orange moon! To put my hand in the manicured grass of the apartment villa, grounding myself after flying (a ritual beloved Peter Watson taught me).

 

I am not on one of my standard bicycle tours. Because pandemic. Because Matthew couldn't come with me due to his job. Because nobody wanted me to go to Mexico. But I am leaving Ithaca, heading towards the sunshine, a new xeric landscape, a near-month of my long-accumulated vacation time (that build-up was getting dusty!). I am taking my carbon road bicycle and my bike-friend Katie Math is joining me for some of the month. We plan to take epic road rides from Tucson into the surrounding landscapes. Then I will head back up to Tempe/Phoenix to be with Adorable Ann and her delightful husband, Ritwick.

 

But it's my first morning waking up not to slush, computer work, or habituated grey brain patterns that come from grieving the death of my mother, the pandemic, and heavy clouds. There are cacti and sunshine out here. My bicycle may still be at the wrong baggage claim long-lost in a different city, but I have some practical shoes and my legs. 

Foreshadowing of soon-to-be-location of practical shoes.

 

Adorable Ann hands me a gallon jug of water and her car keys, and instructs me to go hike Phoenix South Mountain Park and Preserve (a huge 16k acres, wilderness strikingly situated in the suburban spread of Phoenix area). After taking a giddy selfie next to the acacia (when was the last time I got to see one of those famous keystone desert species?!) adjacent to the car port, I ejected myself from the safe and quiet apartment grounds onto a speeding suburbia road. Tight fisted and determined not to die, I made myself take deep breaths as I merged into countless lanes of traffic. It feels like these roads are wider than they are long. 

 

Acacia selfie

All I want to do is get from here to there, and instead I am entering what feels like a high stakes drag race event. A low-profile BMW zeered by on the right as I steeled myself to make a left turn. On-ramps, highways, off-ramps, double-wide turn-lanes. Build the roads and the cars will come. Not a bicycle lane in sight. Welcome to car city. I was encased in this speeding hunk of medal flanked on all sides by similar hunks. I am a small town human who bikes everywhere, thank you very much. Everyone thinks bicycling is so incredibly dangerous, but driving on these fatty speedways feels way more deadly to me. 

 

Terrifying-to-me traffic and supersized roads

 

I drove past block after block of strip malls, parking lots, intersections the size of baseball fields, this great flat smear of a city. And then I saw the red craggy mountains from an over pass. I yelled WOW at the windshield and decided I was doing the right thing.

 

The hike started behind a warehouse… juxtaposed by saguaro cacti and a trotting coyote and a hummingbird, all of whom I encountered within 10 minutes of starting out. The coyote was small and yapped an echoing hello to another across a hill. I felt so bared and windy and exposed; sun and sky and rocks and no shade but a couple pillars of cacti. The sun felt hot but the wind was cooling; I could not imagine anything as physically pleasurable in that moment. 

Walking

 

Allegedly I am on a hike, although I am not making much progress, as I have to stop and look at every spiney lump and looming stalk. It's really amazing to let the concept sink in that there is functionally nothing I have to do, nowhere I have to be. All winter I have been as focused as an unblinking stare on productivity, writing reports, making lab hires, house searching, wedding planning, all through a veil of mind-altering Mom-loss sadness.

 

I walk and reflect how I miss Mom, not that she would be with me on this trail even if she were alive, but that I would be texting her pictures and receiving loving, concerned reminders to apply sunscreen. I'd send her a picture of my thrifted sun hat and I know she'd be proud of me for wearing it. There's something dear about a mother that you can tell her any little boring thing and she will be disproportionately excited about it for you. I was disproportionally excited to be out here under the huge sky. All those years I blogged unquestioningly, knowing there was one very important person who was going to--without doubt--enjoy what I had to say. And now I don't have that. I've had to ground myself and focus to try and put this entry together. But I'm doing it. 

 

When you see all these new forms of existence, and you've been in Winter for so long, where life is covered and still, and you just want to inventory every life you see, all giddy. I don't know who anybody is yet, so I entertained my walking thoughts by making up names:

~South-leaning Thumb Cacti

~Pillar Cacti

~Sunshine Aster

~Stick Figure on-a-stick Cacti

~Fish-tank Coral Cacti

"Sunshine Aster"

 

I am very taken with Saguaro shadows

The trail kicked up and down along a blowy ridge, views of the city to my right, wilderness to my left. I came to a place called 'Fat Man's Pass', a narrow passage between two huge boulders that you either squeeze through, or find an awkward way around or over. I needed to turn sideways and take my backpack off to make it through, rock scritching against my back and front. I felt like a child, testing limits, exploring and playing. After, I sat in the rare shade cast by the huge boulders, and to my enormous delight a live-in-the-flesh certifiable fat man came along! He was with a group of ladies, all speaking French. Of course I couldn't understand them, but I could indeed understand them; there was much giggling, conferring, and pointing as he approached. I left at that point, even though I was extremely curious. 

Fat Man's Pass

 

I ended up walking 8 miles out there. I can still remember when I used to think a 4-mile hike was long. And I did this alone too! There is so much satisfaction in finding your current version better able to take on the world than your previous version.

 

This second Tempe morning I woke up at 4:30 am, my Eastern Standard Time legs eager to play again. The speedways were a little less frightening before dawn, but I still breathed huge relief when I arrived at the trailhead for Camelback Mountain. Which reviewers on Google Maps said was "extremely taxing" and "not a beautiful hike but a beautiful climb", and "great views, but a haul." It was just over a mile at 17% grade. I faced a looming stack of red boulders. If my dear Matthew had been there, he would have explained that this is less than what I've done with him in the Adirondacks, but as it was, I felt sufficiently intimidated to be excited about going up.

 

Pre-dawn Camelback start

 

 

I took stretching steps up those red scrabbly rocks, sometimes hauling myself up a railing, sometimes playing mountain goat, the meditation of choosing where to step. There was no flat walking: only Stairmaster. I have memories of such steep hikes in my past: shaky legs, labored breathing, tired and grumpy, shin splints. Thanks to Matthew, the greatest walker in local history, and my friends in "Club Foot", and begrudging squats in our living room, I was feeling better about my hiking self. I'd done those squats all pandemic winter, staring out the grey window, wondering if this work would one day serve me. And now here I was at the top of a little mountain in the sunshine, in a place I've never been, feeling as easy as one of the billion-dollar Scottsdale villas below. 

 

Diabetes cake with a view

 

I know I've worked well when I eat a small handheld diabetes cake and don't even feel sick afterward. I didn't even feel like I ate anything, in fact. I just felt amazing. This diabetes cake was molasses and raisin. Pleasure unbounded. 

Ogling the pockmarked red rock at Camelback

 

 

Sitting up there was like playing around at the natural history museum and looking at a diorama with all these toy sized houses, warehouses, streets, and tiny lines of creeping cars. I watched the aircraft take off from below, waiting until they reached eye level as they slanted up into the sky. The trees look like tiny emerging seedlings, and the other mountains off in the distance are like oil paintings. All of this feels like an oil painting. It's amazing I'm here.

 

Needless to say, I'm feeling happy and novel and like an old self I haven't known in a long time. I'm so grateful to be here. 

From the top of Camelback

 

Words (about nothing) In The Time of Coronavirus

I am not propped on a lumpy pillow in a questionable little hostel room, tapping out this entry with my two thumbs on a warm phone screen. There are no palm trees outside. I’m not in Ecuador or Colombia or Mexico or anywhere remotely interesting. I write voraciously and volubly when traveling, when glorious adventure and new observations shove me to description almost without my own volition. 

But can I write when the opposite is happening? Can I take the near reverse of exotic adventure—sheltering in place at home—and somehow make it readable, palatable, dare I say even, interesting? 

Let’s find out. 

Hereunto I will cover the dubiously enticing topics of waffles, Zoom meetings, hair growth, and mayonnaise. 

Out my Mansard apartment window I’m watched the crosswalk sign blink redly for nobody. I’m sheltering in place in this third-floor, three-room apartment, just a block from where concerts and bars and bustling and gathering are now venerated history. It may be three-room, but now that I’m working from home there are offices all over the place. Also with me are the wonderful company of a cat shaped like a box, my love Matthew, and 40+ houseplants. That may sound like an overpopulated jungle, but I love it, and some of that population are Matthew’s household which he brought for our combined sheltering. We’re now a combined-household multi-species plant family. I like this.

I wander around the Mansard multiple times a day, peering into foliage, turning pots, exclaiming over a new compressed leaf packet soon to open. I wave Matthew over, “babe! There’s a LEAF!” and he comes over like this is perfectly normal and coos too. For a couple years now I have felt the delight of caring for plants, but this delight is even richer now, something alive and green and growing and changing right in my newly-shrunken world. When there is grey most days in Ithaca between October and May (aka, winter) I consider plants to be physical manifestations of light. They can feast from my happy light and purple grow light, even while days go by with just clammy shrouds of soul-sucking grey weighing heavily from the sky. Ithaca is more miserly about sunshine than Seattle herself. The result is that when a sunny day does occur, unfettered jubilation sweeps around our souls and we go outside and smile at everyone and wear fewer layers than we should and feel motivated and make time for walking like we wouldn’t. 

I have been taking an unreasonable delight in making waffles. I can be found most days, bent over my wretched, overworked, $5-thrift-store waffle iron, picking wads of burnt bean from between it’s teeth, the counter a scene of crumbs and massacre. I routinely create chaotic and ill-fated waffles, pushing the laws of kitchen science and sensibility, and I love it. Follow a recipe and make a basic white wheat waffle for syrup and butter? How pleasing and un-messy and reasonable that would be! But me? Nope. I want more protein, more flavors, more experiment. Let’s be honest: more legumes. I am going for the peanut-butter-swirled-chocolate-black-bean-brownie waffle, or the green-pea-and-ramp-pesto waffle—all green and moist and would traumatize a child off waffles for life—or a bean-and-cottage-cheese-and-red-pepper-and-flax-waffle. For that last one, I learned that cottage cheese wants me to believe it’s a helpful protein-adding binding agent, but once encountering the hot iron it fizzles and faints and dribbles in a ring onto the counter. That flaxmeal serves as glue, so you not only have that muddy ring on your counter, but a waffle iron pasted shut, and, once pried open, two delicious savory umami crisps adhered to both top and bottom jaws. Matthew informed me that it smelled like I was grilling meat, so I guess something was sufficiently compelling and carnal about that waffle. 

In addition to waffles, this is the time of Zoom. I spent Wednesday morning negotiating with Zoom’s Microsoft plug-in, the Microsoft add-on (why both a plug-in AND an add-on?), and just the plain Jane online interface. My simple goal was to host a group lab meeting for Friday afternoon. I added and deleted an abundance of Friday afternoon meetings, and given Zoom’s automatic emailing service which helpfully alerts one to every meeting created and deleted, my inbox preview read “ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM.” Like a baby moving her arms around experimentally and whacking herself in the face, I felt I was inadvertently spamming my dear colleagues with a bunch of these automatically created emails and calendar invites any time I did an action. “Sandra Wayman has invited you to a Zoom Meeting.” “Sandra Wayman has cancelled a Zoom Meeting.” “Sandra Wayman has created a Zoom Meeting uselessly for yesterday.” 

Forget the plug-ins and add-ons. I tried the Zoom website directly: schedule a meeting for 2pm Friday, a very reasonable time, even though the system decided that 8am right now was better. I finally scheduled a meeting for the correct time, but now the box for “invite attendees” was greyed out. What? A Zoom meeting with just myself? I might as well wash all my dishes (if my office happens to be in the kitchen) or fold all the laundry (when my office is in the bedroom) or water the plants (office is anywhere). And I wanted a recurring meeting… Good, so now I had 10 meetings every Friday until the foreseeable future with just myself. I went to delete the 10-meeting series. A pop-up message: “the meeting might have been deleted already.” MIGHT HAVE? Since when is software subjectively questioning in this way? “Let’s not be too concrete”, “Let’s stay flexible and open to other’s interpretations.” Finally, after I thought I’d successfully created a meeting for people other than myself that was slated for the future, I was notified: “Meeting ID is not valid.” 

I gave up. Time for a radical change of scenery. I walked the 10 feet to the parlor office, where my love was tapping away diligently on his laptop, writing about tree phloem to basal area ratios and radially symmetric climate-mitigated assessment profiles. I vowed to stay quietly on the rug, do some hamstring stretches, not interact with this beautiful forest ecology man who was obviously trying to focus. This lasted about 25 seconds. “I have an idea for LUNCH,” I decreed with enormous relish. “Would you want to try a black-bean-and-wild-ramps WAFFLE?” Oh damn. So much for my staying quiet and respectful.   

Thursday I stared mutely into my happy light and fantasized about clippers, shears, scissors, buzzers, razors. Fantasizing about the vibrations near my ear, the wind in my face from a hairdryer fluffing clippings from my shoulders. If only I could be finding itchy hairs in my collar. The feeling of someone’s fingers carefully working my cowlick. My hair on the side of my head has grown out enough that I look like a little hedgehog. A little puffy hedgehog that’s put on a few pounds. Hairs grasp over the top of my ears like adventitious roots trying to gain a hold. The pride and pleasure I usually take in my appearance has evaporated. Now when passing my mirror I’m rolling my eyes and looking away. Maybe it’s time to deploy The Hats.   

Or maybe I should cover the mirrors with scarves and order some nice perfume of nutmeg or vanilla from online. Turn up the other pleasurable senses and turn down the ones that aren’t serving me. 

Instead I wheedled Matthew into helping trim my hedgehog. After calibrating himself by trimming his beard, he carefully took his little mower to the side of my head as I folded my ears down. “Does it look good to you?” I asked hopefully when we finished. “It looks good to me,” he responded.

“Everything looks good to you.”

He countered, “It looks good to me because if it didn’t, then I would have to deal with it and then I would mess it up.”

A conclusion was reached by him informing me, “I feel like your head is just uneven.” He swept the stray hairs from my neck, hurrying them down inside my collar

I was ecstatic when, a couple days later, someone told me over Zoom that my hair looked good.   

Maybe getting out of the Mansard, and away from hair-reflecting mirrors, to go make a trillion sandwiches would be a good idea? I wanted to help combat local food insecurity, which is becoming even more stressful because the world is ending these days. My dear-dearest Grannie used to volunteer at Loaves & Fishes, a delicious soup kitchen downtown, and in her honor and because of the times, I signed up to volunteer too.   

My task for my shift was to help make approximately a trillion sub sandwiches. There was a huge 5-story jar of sunshine yellow mustard with a little (aka plentiful) mustard sheltering in place in its basement and a sabre spatula with which to coax it out. I was also assigned a large-batch mixing bowl of mayonnaise, with its refill jar standing duty nearby; “Extra Heavy Mayonnaise” it read and I shuddered. Lordy, how could mayonnaise be heavier? I gathered some out with a long-handled spoon, drawing it across an expectant slice of bread. The mayonnaise huddled in the curved crux of the spoon, unyielding even as the spoon contacted bread. The bread stayed pure and the mayonnaise wouldn’t budge. Awful emulsified white clot. But I was not to be out-clabbered! I used the back of the spoon and whacked a white wad onto each slice: splat, splat, splat. Then spread it out like acrylic paint. I used as few strokes as I could; I had a trillion sandwiches to make here people. Raised by two engineers, to me efficiency was as instinctive as breath. Then squares of cheese, then circles of turkey, and then shuffle that sandwich into the most feeble of tiny sandwich bags. Other volunteers, also in masks and handling obscene sizes of condiment containers, made sandwiches too. 

On this sandwich project, I felt I was part of a biological reaction. We were all enzymes (I was mayonnaise-ase) making storage-organ carbohydrates from sunshine and water, the reactants and products, the soup kitchen equivalent of bright happy lights and plants. 

Another young woman was there, drapey of hair and slow of hand. Though I was new and of zero authority, I offered she should go source a hairnet or hat. Upon return, she took a sandwich from the enzymatic assembly line, tentatively worked it into a bag, daintily wiped her gloved fingers off on a paper towel, and then walked around behind me to place the sandwich in a box. Oh no you don’t honey I thought, and indicated the box I had put next to her feet, “Would you like to put your sandwiches in there?” No one is going to be walking around in this reaction. We have a trillion sandwiches to make. Folks gotta EAT. Let’s go. 

Did my Grannie feel pain in her back from working at a table at the wrong height? Did she wear her classy cat-eye glasses? Did she feel secretly annoyed at someone being inefficient? Was she graceful and funny and loving? I can’t imagine she ever had a bad haircut. I wish I knew more of what her time was like here. It felt such a new context from little kiddo me (“Grannie can’t play with you because Grannie’s at Loaves and Fishes this afternoon”) to adult me ("wow my back hurts and that’s a lot of mayo"). 

But that packing box of sandwiches, growing marginally heavier with each one, was incredibly satisfying to view. I felt so good contributing to something greater than myself, and it was incredibly humbling (coaxing sandwiches into bags is not easy) and how ever do food service people manage work like this day after day??

Friday morning. I plunked back down into my office chair at the dining table office. Having just spent time at the standing desk in the kitchen office working in R, I was ready for a rest. Immediately I popped back up to grab a single fig out of a jar I suddenly saw. And I wanted the fig on a plate so I could feel dignified and savor it. (Here’s to retaining that drop of dopamine for longer than a moment.) But the stack of cupboard plates was non-existent, so I opened the clean dishwasher and started methodically unloading it. Until I realized I was supposed to be writing that R code. I moved back to the dining table office. Then Matthew left the couch office to riotously mix it all up, and set his computer in the kitchen office. 

Lost in a world of R nonlinear regression and my single fig, I moaned grouchily.
Matthew: “What’s wrong?”
Me: “R lost my block object.”
Matthew: “I’m sorry R lost your block object. Dang klutz if you ask me.” 

I am so incredibly grateful that this positive kind sweetheart is sharing this space with me during this time. There is no one with whom I’d rather pass a pandemic. At one point mid-afternoon on some grey quiet day, he circled his arms around me in defiant protest of physical distancing, “We can hug each other any time we want.” The simple delicious truth of this struck me. Let me not ever take this for granted.