Our Past Tents – Page 19 – Aly & Bryan are always up to something…

July 30, 2010October 20, 2023

Bike Polo Update

In the couple of months since we first visited the polo courts, we’ve played more and more. My polo bike has become somewhat infamous for being heavy and making terrible noises. Bryan bought a new bike for polo and has made some adjustments, like narrow handlebars and brakes.

For some reason, this summer bike polo has become a sort of strange Little Rock media darling. There have been articles in several local news-magazine-papers, which have produced some good photos and some bad quotes.

Here’s the links to the news articles followed by some random polo-related photos.

DemGaz article Arkansas times article Sync Articlehttp://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

July 10, 2010October 20, 2023

Hike Little Rock

On the day I picked Mandy up from ecology camp, I got to meet Inge, her favorite other camper. Mandy said that Inge is from Little Rock, so I said hello to Inge’s mom and got her email address. We made some arrangements earlier this week, and picked up Inge for a hike along the River Trail near Burns Park. We walked up the Emerald Park trail to the knife-edge bluff overlooking the river, then across the back of the old quarry, past the backyard of the VA hospital, and down to the River Trail again.

After our hike, we drove downtown for a little unicycle practice near the Clinton Library. Mandy was pleased to show off a little for her friend, and her friend was suitably impressed.

We all enjoyed Inge’s company. She’s smart and silly and unselfconscious in a way that most twelve-year-old girls aren’t. We called her mom to ask permission to keep her for awhile longer, and Bryan and I took the girls to the Purple Cow, a local hamburger place, for supper and milkshakes. After dark, we drove the girls out to Pinnacle Mountain for a ‘star party’. The local astronomy club sets up in the parking lot there, sometimes, to let people who don’t have telescopes come out and enjoy looking at things. We saw Saturn and Venus, and the Dumbbell and Ring nebulas, and we still had Inge home right on time.

July 4, 2010October 20, 2023

Oklahoma!

For the long weekend of the fourth of July, we made plans to visit Bryan’s Aunt Julie and her family, on their farm in Oklahoma. Continue reading “Oklahoma!”

June 25, 2010October 20, 2023

The Ocoee Trip, and The Accidental Spacecamp Visit

It’s our anniversary! There’s no need for wine and roses and chocolates and romantic cards. I got a new hammock, and we went on a road trip with Mandy and our great friends Britt and Debbie. And some pipe cleaners.

I picked Mandy up from her ecology camp around lunchtime on Friday, somewhere between Hot Springs and Mount Ida. We stopped in Benton only long enough to pick up Bryan, and in Little Rock only long enough to switch cars at the Thompson’s. We didn’t arrive at the outfitters’ in Ocoee, Tennessee until the very small hours of Saturday morning.

And on Saturday, we were up bright and early. I did a load of laundry for Mandy (who arrived home from camp with super-stinky stuff) and we hopped on a bus to the put-in point to float the upper and middle Ocoee. Britt and Bryan have floated it before but this was a first for Debbie and Mandy and I, and holy crap it was fun! I don’t think any of us stopped grinning the entire trip.

When we got off the river, tired and giggly, we put some effort into searching out a Outback Steakhouse, consumed amazing quantities of food, and then went back to collapse into our camp. We headed home first thing Sunday morning, but didn’t get very far.

Britt grew up in the area around Birmingham, and cut his caving teeth in the pits in the neighborhood. Souda Cave is closed now but we parked at the gated road and walked to the entrance.

Like so many other caves in the eastern and central US, it’s been closed to visitors because of the spread of white nose syndrome in bats.

There’s a tourist cave in the area still open, though, and Britt wanted to show us. He explored Cathedral Caverns with his father when he was a kid, years before the cave was commercialized. It’s a beautiful cave, and they’ve done a pretty good job of setting up the tourist trails and lighting.

The car trip through this whole area was fun. Britt and Debbie have spent so much time here caving that they’re both full of stories about ‘what’s in that hill over there’ and ‘the time we went to the cave that’s down this road.’ And those stories moved into ‘when I went to Mexico’ and ‘the first TAG Cave-In we did together.’

It’s funny how much better you can get to know people on a road trip. We’ve spent lots of time with Britt and Debbie, but one thing we didn’t know is that the reason Britt grew up in Alabama: his dad worked for an engineering firm involved in the space program. So a quick side trip past the Space Center in Huntsville was a sort of requirement. We had no intention of doing more than peering in the windows, since we were pressed for time. But Debbie somehow wheedled the Front Desk Person into saying that we could go inside free since it was the end of the day. It’s five o’clock, and we’re in Alabama, and everybody has to go to work tomorrow. Should we stay? Of course!

Britt and Mandy and I rode the Super Scary Giant Torpedo Thing. (This is probably not its real name.) Bryan rode the 4G with her, the bin that spins around and around until it makes you stick to the wall and wish you were dead. We did some other rides too, and got to see lots of interesting exhibits.

And we got to see Spacecamp! Not only did we look at the building where the Spacecamp kids stay, we were under the shuttle when some Spacecamp student groups were spread out on the grass having class sessions. So we eavesdropped on them. Mandy and Britt say that they want to come back next summer and go to Spacecamp together. They’ve been funny all weekend, linking arms in parking lots and skipping and singing songs. They’re such sweet friends. If only the center would allow sixty year old men and twelve year old girls to go to Spacecamp together, I think they’d have a wonderful time.

It was such a fun trip. We didn’t stop talking the whole time we were in the car, telling stories and laughing. I won’t admit what time we got back to Little Rock, but we all managed somehow to get a little sleep and show up almost on time for work on Monday. Was it the best road trip ever? I’m thinking it may have been.

June 20, 2010October 20, 2023

Mandy Goes to Camp

Through the geology instructor I had last fall, we found out about the Halberg Ecology Camp, a week-long program for middle school kids, run by Audubon Arkansas. Mandy had to apply for the camp, which included recommendations from teachers and an essay. But she was accepted! (And I had to send a big fat check, also.)

This was her first ‘sleep away camp’ but as predicted she didn’t miss us at all–she had a wonderful time. She spent a week in the heat of summer outside, and sleeping in a forest service cabin without air-conditioning. She spent a week with a group of kids who also like to be outside, and who like to learn about science and nature. Best of all, I think, she got to spend a week in science classes taught by high-school and college science teachers. The kids learned about mammology and herpetology and geology, got to spend time in canoes, and ate good food.

She came back tired, happy, and using big words. A handful of this year’s campers get to return next summer for a ‘senior camp’. Mandy’s looking forward to finding out if she made the cut.

UPDATE 11/15/10 –
I got an email today from the director of the Halberg camps. Mandy has been invited back for “senior camp” next year, and so has her favorite other camper, Inge. Hooray!

June 19, 2010October 20, 2023

We Have Bats!

While working on an outdoor faucet last weekend, Bryan noticed a bat on the bricks nearby. We scooped him up gently in a newspaper and moved him to a tree where he’d be out of harm’s way. This Little Brown Bat (myotis lucifugus) has several friends in the gable-end attic louvre. We can tell because we hear them talking as they wake up in the evenings, and because of what’s collecting on the brick ledge underneath their new home.

June 13, 2010October 20, 2023

Fencing update

Last winter, I found out that there was a fencing club in Little Rock. I knew Bryan had some equipment, having fenced briefly in college, and I thought he might enjoy getting involved in the sport again. So I pointed him toward the group.

In a happy coincidence, I found out that one of my favorite coworkers teaches the club’s beginning classes. Mandy thought it looked interesting too. (Mandy thinks EVERYTHING looks interesting.) The club meets on Thursday nights, and I’ve been able to work my class schedule around it.

Six months later, all three of us are fully outfitted with beginner-level fencing gear and are nearly done with the beginners classes. We’ve been able to determine that Bryan has some natural ability. Mandy’s gift of intense focus may be an asset in the sport. I have no such advantages, but have always cultivated the skill of enjoying things I’m bad at, so it all works out.

June 12, 2010October 20, 2023

Alys Super Cool Polo Bike

When we decided we’d like to try playing bike polo, we started looking for a ratty old bike to use. I was surprised at how difficult it was to find an adult-sized bike at pawnshops and thrift stores. After several days of dedicated effort, I found this great girls’ 1975 Schwinn Varsity at a scary pawn shop in south LR. The guy wanted $40 for it, but I told him it was clearly not worth it, since the back brakes didn’t work and the tires were too rotten to hold air for more than eight minutes, tops. (Should I feel bad about this? I’m not sure.) Fortunately, I’d worn black pants to work on Friday, so grubbing around in the back room of a pawnshop was okay, because the grease didn’t show.

Schwinn used to make great bikes, back before they became a toy company and started producing full-sized bicycle replicas instead.

I guess I have a soft spot for the old Schwinns. (And I’ve noticed that Bryan’s an amazingly good sport about it.) This bike’s great, a real classic, made in Chicago, and came with many entertaining features, such as Giant Reflectors The Size of A Cat, Awesome Upside Down Homeless Guy Handlebars, and those old paddle-style shift levers that look like they should be used to serve draft beer.

Saturday, Bryan and I spent lots of time happily fiddling with the bike. We removed lots of unnecessary parts. He took off all the reflectors, and everything related to the non-operational back brake. He removed one of the chainrings and the guard, along with the front derailleur and cabling. I chopped off the kickstand with a hacksaw.

Earlier this spring, when we remodeled my Voyageur touring bike, we replaced the useful but ugly Michelin gumwalls with nice new Schwalbe tires. We’d saved the Michelins, though, and I was thrilled to find that they’d fit on the polo bike just fine. We only had to buy new tubes and rim strips for it.

We moved the handlebars, but only a little bit. We decided to, for the most part, retain the Awesome Upside Down Homeless Guy Handlebar arrangement because it’s surprisingly comfy. We took off the ratty handlebar tape, and after much experimentation, settled on a new placement for the single remaining brake lever.

Proper polo bikes, we’ve learned, have spoke protectors. This makes sense. It seems as if mallets, balls, and other peoples’ feet would not only make for bad crashes, but could really damage a wheel. So early in the week, I secured a generous supply of corrugated plastic scraps from the sign shop at work. We traced the wheels and cut out circles, making a straight slit along the radius so that the discs would ‘dish’ properly along the spokes. Then we marked the spokes, drilled holes through the plastic, and attached them to the wheels with zip-ties.

Being less than amazingly creative, I copied the old Schwinn “star” pattern from the frame of the bike and filled it in with Sharpie. I threw in some polka dots made with paint from Mandy’s crafts box, just on the principle that polka dots are usually a good idea.

I’m ready to play. The back wheel discs aren’t quite done, because I’m waiting for some sort of creative inspiration. We may make some changes to the handlebars and brakes at some point. But for now, it’s great. Total cost: $38, for the bike, rim strips, and tubes.

It rides beautifully. 3-2-1-POLO!

June 7, 2010October 20, 2023

Date Night for Bike Nerds

We heard at the last minute that Ian Sims, the founder and CEO of the Australian recumbent trike company Greenspeed, would be visiting Little Rock late this afternoon. It was very cool to meet him (and Greenspeed’s US marketing person, Deanna) and ride the X5 trike they brought with them. (BOO CHAINWHEEL BIKE SHOP STAFF, for your total lack of marketing and general pigheaded ignorance about this event.)

After a nice supper, since we had our Greenspeed GTT in town with us, we went out to Two Rivers Park for an early evening ride. The weather was perfect and the park was uncrowded. I wonder how much more traffic those paved trails will get after the new bridge is completed?

Then we headed to MacArthur Park, near the Arkansas Arts Center, to watch the Little Rock Bike Polo club play. They use an old tennis/roller hockey court that’s only half-lit, so they bring their own lighting for the other half and run extension cords across the grass. And what they do looks like a ton of fun.

It would be easy to say “we don’t have time to play” or “it looks dangerous.” It would be easy to say “what a silly idea.”

But when I’m all used up and it’s time for me to die, I want to say things like “remember the summer we played bike polo? Remember how the weeds grew up the sides of the court, and how we drank cheap beer in the dark, and how we laughed?”

June 6, 2010October 20, 2023

Tour de Hoot

The Tour De Hoot is an annual bike ride in McGehee, AR, offering cyclists a chance to help support the small town’s Boys’ and Girls’ club. There’s a pasta dinner and other fun activities the night before, free air conditioned indoor camping, a big breakfast on Saturday morning. We’ve had a busy week though, so we just rolled in on Saturday morning just in time for the ride.

We opted to do the metric century: 100km, which is about 62 miles. (There were other options, too. Riders could register for as little as 25 miles, or as much as 100 miles.) Rest stops along the way were sponsored by area organizations. The best stop by far was the first one, around mile 15. The Red Hat Society of Arkansas City (and the county judge) provided sliced melon, homemade cookies, dried fruit, and cold drinks.

Sag support trucks were never far away, and an ambulance made the rounds too. It was clear that if anyone had trouble, help would be nearby. Food might not be, though — some rest stops had only weak Gatorade and warm pickles by the time we arrived, and there were no convenience stores or restaurants along our route. The weather was lovely. It was about 90 degrees, but the sun stayed behind clouds almost all day. Most of our route followed flat, two-lane rural roads, and though shoulders were narrow or nonexistent, the traffic was so light it didn’t matter.

We hadn’t brought much to eat, so our energy was flagging toward the end, and Bryan’s legs hurt. My new Brooks saddle is beautiful but not yet broken in, so I wasn’t totally comfy, either. We were both glad to get back to McGehee, where a handful of people sitting outside the Boys’ and Girls’ club clapped as we pulled into the parking lot.

When Emil gets helmet hair, he REALLY gets helmet hair. We caught up with him, finally, at the end of the ride, when we shared barbecue sandwiches and chocolate milk. He’s 67 years old and still using his original legs, but he’s still faster than us.

When I say “Our friend Tom is an excellent wind-block,” I am not commenting on Tom’s width. What I mean is that Tom is an understanding sort of fellow, who can see when Bryan’s hurting, or when I’m frustrated with the wind. Tom just gets in front rides a straight line, at a perfectly even speed. You can put your front tire right on Tom’s back, and he’ll pull you in. And that, I think, is just about the best kind of friend to have.