Aly – Page 7 – Our Past Tents

April 7, 2012October 20, 2023

Falling Water Gravel Tour

Mandy’s shaping up to be a singlespeed rigid mountain bike girl. She wears plaid and she smells bad and she says she has three speeds: pedal, pedal harder, and walk.

We spent some miles last weekend on gravel roads up near Sand Gap. Jarion decided to play SAG wagon / fisherman, which meant we could ride light and put our gear in his Jeepett. It was a great weekend of grinding up gravel hills, flying down them, wading in the creek, eating steaks in the rain, and playing cards in the middle of gravel roads. Continue reading “Falling Water Gravel Tour”

April 5, 2012October 20, 2023

The Rebel Alliance

BACA, our local bike advocacy group, has been pretty stagnant for awhile. Membership’s sort of gone flat (click here to sign up). Lots of clubs and groups don’t feel represented. Lots of minor events are sponsored, without much effect. Meetings felt useless to most cyclists, and people stopped coming. The most recent board tended to get into shouting matches at their meetings.

Major local issues went unnoticed, or worse, BACA board members said the wrong thing in public and other cyclists and groups spoke up to disagree. The city and county government stopped listening because they didn’t know who to listen to. BACA could have an enormous impact, but it doesn’t.

Or it didn’t. Some of us got together to talk about it. It turned out that a lot of cycling families and groups felt the same way we did. We extended some olive branches to teams that have been feeling like outsiders. The sort of vague, leaderless group ended up hatching a group volunteers excited about serving on the board to make it a wider, louder, more active advocacy organization.

I managed to get a spot on the nominating committee, and four days after that committee was established, we had a full slate of officers to nominate – mountain bikers, road racers, blog writers, trail builders. The April BACA meeting saw that group voted in, amid angry confusion and loudish cheering. It makes me smile to watch people do what they care about, and I’m looking forward to this year. I’m looking forward to having an advocacy group here in LR. I think they’ll accomplish great things, starting right about now.

March 26, 2012October 20, 2023

Slackline

Bryan got me a Mother’s Day present, but he couldn’t bear to wait until May to give it to me.

It’s a slackline! It’s a lot like a truck tiedown strap, made of heavy yellow synthetic webbing with a burly buckle to pull it tight. It’s supposed to be looped around a tree at each end and tightened to take out as much sag and wiggle as possible. And we’re supposed to walk on it.

Slackline contests are popular with climbers, and I can see why – it’s fun. But also really, really hard. The first time my foot pushed down on the line, it waggled uncontrollably back and forth. I looked down, feeling a little betrayed- what was wrong with my foot and ankle, that they were behaving so unpredictably? I tried looking forward, but it didn’t help. I actually grabbed my knee and calf, hoping to steady my foot, but it continued flailing back and forth wildly.

Bryan took a turn, then Mitch, then Monkey and Nick. I think they all thought ‘oh, I can do a ton better than that.’ But we were all equally awful at it. Finally, after some practice, we got better. ‘Better’ meaning “can sort of stand on one foot for about two seconds.”

Maybe by Mother’s Day I’ll actually be able to walk on the damn thing.

March 24, 2012October 20, 2023

The Tall Bike Project

Our friend Mitch got a welder for Christmas, and ever since then, we’ve been thinking about that welder. He doesn’t know how to weld but he’s got a book. Bryan doesn’t know how to weld but he’s been around his dad who can weld. I don’t know how to weld, which makes no sense because all the guys in my family can, but they never taught me, which I’ve always been slightly offended about.

We’ve all been thinking about tall bikes for awhile. And we have this lovely welder. Welding can’t be that hard, right? You just wear a funny hat, put pieces of metal near each other, and poke them with that stick thing. Continue reading “The Tall Bike Project”

March 23, 2012October 20, 2023

National Bike Summit 2012

I’ve been doing a ton of work with Little Rock’s bike friendly community committee, so when they offered me a chance to represent LR at the National Bike Summit this month, I was eager to go.

At the last minute my flight from LR to Dallas was cancelled, and I was rescheduled on a flight the next day. A day’s delay would have meant missing part of the conference, so somehow, with me standing at the ticket counter inside and Bryan in the truck looking up flights on his iPhone, I managed to get on a different airline’s flight to Chicago and then to Washington DC, right on time.

Continue reading “National Bike Summit 2012”

December 26, 2011October 20, 2023

Priorities

We’re done! We’d been way behind on the blog again. Our excuse is just that it was a busy autumn, and I just didn’t make telling stories and posting photos a big priority. In many cases, we would have the photography but no story, or we’d have the story but the photos weren’t finished. Or we’d be finished with one post but an earlier one wasn’t ready and we hate to publish things out of order.

We’d like to thank all our readers (yes, all three of you!) for your patience. We’ve spent chunks of our holiday vacation finishing up posts from the last 5+ months.

And now we’re operating in real time. Everything that happens now, is happening now. We’re at now now.

–Bryan & Aly

Holiday Decorating 2011

When we pulled up in front of Bradbury’s Christmas Tree Farm, a boy in a red ball cap met us at the truck with a smile and a saw. Bryan and Mandy choose our tree based on height, color and even-ness; I have veto power because I’m the one who notices when a tree’s trunk is so crooked it won’t fit well in the tree base.

Then it was home to put up the tree. This year we recorded another time-lapse video (that’s it up top) of decorating the house. And now we’re ready for the holiday season, full of music and food and naps and presents and friends

December 4, 2011October 20, 2023

Mandy’s 14th Birthday

Mandy’s fourteenth birthday’s come and gone. For breakfast, she got homemade waffles with strawberry syrup and whipped cream. Her presents were practical this year – some clothes and shoes and a new bag for school.

Fourteen years into this, I have to say she’s a good kid for the most part – a little disorganized, a little lazy, a little thoughtless. But when we think about the other teenagers I see, with their skin-tight shirts and their sneery attitudes and their noses in their text-phones, we’re glad we have her. She’s smart and funny and wise and cheerful.

Happy birthday, Mandy. Let’s make this next year a good one, too.

December 3, 2011October 20, 2023

Jingle Bell Jubilee Parade

Our Unicycle Support Group decided to ride in the Little Rock Christmas Parade this year. Since we hadn’t thought to register separately, we just rode with the cyclists from BACA. But we all wore green shirts and we made a sign. (We forced the non-unicyling member of the Vire family to carry the sign, and he handled the task with aplomb and grace once we removed most of the tinsel.)

The parade was fun. I rode a bike with panniers to hold the green and red beads (leftover from Mardi Gras 2010) we passed out to the people we rode past. Mitch and his kids and Mandy and Luke did stars and hopped around and played tag and were just generally goofy. Since we were between a float sponsored by a windshield company (complete with a grumpy-looking old lady in a plywood sleigh) and a handful of Quakers with “Peace on Earth” signs, people enjoyed having something funny to watch. The parade was a success and we’ll do even better next year (when I can ride, too!)

November 28, 2011October 20, 2023

NOLA Pukefest

We always look forward to our visit with New Orleans family at Thanksgiving time, and we always enjoy our time there. Almost always. Maybe not so much this time. But we’ll get to that.

We arrived in Metairie at our usual 2am on Thanksgiving morning, after the long after-work drive from central Arkansas. Hayduke and I got up early on Thursday for beignets and a trip to the dog park while Bryan and Mandy slept in, and then Hayduke went down the street to stay at Kevin’s house while the family enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner. It’s such a treat to spend the day with family. Continue reading “NOLA Pukefest”