Baltimore

In celebration of Paps’s birthday today, NBBB is having a casual ride to Fell’s Point.  Here is the poem I will toast with:

I’m off’n wild wimmens
An cognac
An sinnin’
For I’m in loOOOOOOOve!
~ E.H.  Paris, ca. 1922.

Next month, Waverly Main Street and Greater Homewood Community Corporation are hosting the National Night Out Kick-Off parade, which includes a Bike Pageant.

Download the flier here, which I host with permission from GHCC’s PR person.

People can ride in the parade by signing up.  I might do it in a dress or some other feat of daring.  Daring because I don’t have a step-through frame, not because wearing a dress is necessarily brave.  I played a little gig in a nightgown once, in college.

Even more info can be found at Waverly Mainstreet’s blog.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my grandmother was staying with my parents in Hampden this spring.  She went home to Canton three weeks ago.  Everything was fine, and then she could not move yesterday.  So my mother, her twin brother, her older brother and I spent yesterday at the hospital.  We were there pretty much the whole day.  They X-rayed my grandmother’s hip; couldn’t see anything.  We sat around for an hour and half waiting for someone to get her and take her to get a CAT scan.  Finally, the nurse got fed up and took her down herself.  Nothing was broken.  All day in the hospital for them to tell her to take Tylenol.

But what’s very weird to me is seeing her re-arranged rowhouse.  While the couch, chairs and TV set have been replaced a few times, the arrangement of the furniture in my grandmother’s house has remained unchanged since I was born.  Seriously.  Even before my parents were married, according to photos I’ve seen.  Now, the dining room table is gone, and there’s a bed there.  Large wooden things have been moved around, and the plasma TV my least favorite uncle bought has been ignored in favor of a smaller TV closer to the bed.  It looks like a different house, and it signals something sinister to me.

That my grandmother is on her way out, not a pleasant thought.  Nor what that means for my mother, her brothers, the ton of grandkids and greatgrandkids.  Not a pleasant thought at all.  I don’t really know what/how I think or feel about the downwardly-sliding situation.  I am really trying not to do either of them.

I do know that it’s frustration to be able to do nothing.

Geez, with the bike blog and with my free time being tied up in bikes right now, I’ve been neglecting this blog. Sorry. Go on over to NBBB for more on Ikea bikes.

But I won’t do something jerky like make that my “this weekend I spent hours fixing bikes” blog.  That’s this one!  My pal needed work done on his front derailer (Sheldon’s spelling), and Mrs. P. needed both of hers attended to.  Thing is, I forgot about the moving sun where I was working, and I got a bit of a sunburn.  I’ve gotten a few of those this year.  That’s not going to help the fact that I already look older than I am and have reached the age where that’s not good news anymore, just news.

But fixing things is always fun, and when you’re helping people to keep biking, that’s awesome, too.  Sunburn be damned.  A liter of water, an energy coffee drink dealy and Chinese food, and I was ready to face the world.

Which I did that evening, and Mr. Dan and I blasted all over North Baltimore, in search of a milestone on his new cyclometer.  We celebrated with cold drinks and chocolate, Mr. Dan’s treat.

I recently watched all six Star Wars films, too, in chronological order.  That is, in the order of The Force, not The Box Office.  Mrs. P. had never seen them, and I tried to keep my mouth shut.  I really did.  I hate how they changed the song at the end of Return of the Jedi, one of the most [musically] triumphant movie endings ever.  The other CGI stuff, I don’t know.  Whatever.  I’m pissed about that song!

Where are all these frikkin storms?

Damn.

When people are ragging on the Hon thing and Hon Fest, I hope they’re not crapping on Hampden entirely.  There’s much more to this cool little neighborhood than the big-haired tourist trappings.  I’m not saying that I hate Hon Fest or anything.  Certainly not that I hate Hampden, where I grew up.

Hon Fest this year was kind of boring for me, though.  It was the same thing as last year.  Even more ignorant county yuppies, too.  Not all people from the county and not all yuppies/buffies.  It’s a special brand of white asshole who walks with zero awareness of other people (just how they drive, which is scary as hell); wears special boring white people clothing that you can only find outside the city limits; displays a sense of entitlement to own Hampden because they went to Cafe’ Hon once — at night!  “Look, Chahllles, the city’s not so frightening!”

I think that a large part of Hon Fest’s popularity is that it’s an excuse for white people who fled the city to come back to it in a way that they feel is safe.  Hampden is still mostly white, and most of the people at the festival are white, too.  Don’t think pointing out a minority you saw this weekend proves me wrong.  I said “large” and “most”!  And I’m only half kidding.

Personally, I don’t enjoy celebrating Hampden’s “heritage” in itself.  The Hon stereotype comes from a lack of money, education (if you say “lack of class” I’ll kick your nuts!) and exposure to other cultures.  If you’re actually from Hampden, you know that the neighborhood’s non-Hon heritage involves racism, punks and blandness, underneath all the things Cafe’ Hon allegedly celebrates.  The only thing to celebrate about Hampden’s past is that it’s gone.

Instead, when I celebrate anything about Hampden, I celebrate what’s new and better about it and about The Avenue.  Places like Atomic Books and Atomic Pop, Salamander Books, Common Ground, Dogwood, Golden West, bike racks, a night life, people who aren’t all white — these are things worth celebrating.  This is all much preferable to the shithole Hampden was in the 80s and early 90s.

Yes, it was a shithole.  If you don’t know that, that’s not my fault.  You weren’t here.  But it’s true.  What’s also true is that Cafe’ Hon didn’t save anything on its own, no matter how much that gets repeated.  It took a lot of people and a lot of business owners to make that happen.  I’m sick of seeing one person get all the credit, and someone who lives in the frikkin county at that.

Dudes, you gotta check out North Baltimore Bike Brigade site.  It’s getting written on, yo.  It’s here.

[Larger.]

Bikes locked together at the Ecofestival a few weeks ago.  Mine is on the right.

Photo Friday: Difficult Shot.

Dang, I need to get outside more.
But I am going camping this weekend.
And I did walk all over North Baltimore yesterday.
So all is not lost.

The sidewalk chalk area during the Ecofestival in Druid Hall Park last week.  North Baltimore Bike Brigade!  I really have to finish our website and get a ride together and go seriously public.  For Photo Friday: My Little Secret.

Didn’t get this up last week. Quick one. For Photo Friday: Cold. This is from the Washington Monument Lighting in December. That is all.

[Larger.]

Last time the weather changed, I was embracing darker images. That was a very very hot day in October, at Robert E. Lee Park, just north of Baltimore City. I was excited about bunking down for the eventual fall and the winter. I was livid that it was so hot, especially since we were to take a daytrip to Washington a day or two later.

Now, I’m happy when the forecast is warm. I am thirsting for some color, some sun, sandaled feet. I am bummed at this weekend’s forecast, which means movies and reading and cooking. But no fun outside awesomeness, especially since I woke up with a tickle in my throat today.

Poor me.

It’s been cloudy and crappy so many days this spring that I would enjoy a nice, sunny, hot day today.

Remind me, in two months, that I said all this.

Photo Friday: Fragile.

My grandmother, pictured here on Easter this year, is at my parents’ house in Hampden.  She fell in 2003 and required a metal rod be inserted into her leg; she had heart surgery then to boot.  Before, actually.  She fell last week and wrenched the same leg.  While the X-rays came back negative for breaks, they think she either sprained or tore something.  I am watching her today while my mother goes for a doctor’s appointment, then with my mother and uncle to take my grandmother to the hospital for her appointment to see the extent of the damage in her leg.  I don’t like seeing such an independent woman laid up and unable to even walk.  Or the look on my uncles’ and mothers’ faces when they realize that their mother is getting older.  I am just hoping she will pull through and literally get back on her feet.  No one ever thought she’d get around after her last accident.  I did not believe she’s ever get upstairs in her Canton rowhouse again.  But she did.  She loved walking around in the grocery store with a cart.  I hope she gets to do it again and soon.

View larger to see my street in the red ball. Got this by accident. I have not been taking a lot of photos lately. I did update to the newest Wordpress, though, along with some theme-related updates. Like it?

I thought I saw snow flakes blowing around outside my fourth/top floor window a while ago. Strange, I thought, it’s warm today. Then I realized they were bugs.

[My wife's Blinktastic bike, which she commutes on. It, sorry, she has a cool name, too.]

I am teaching a group of little dudes about cycling, a sort of course/class. Safety, maintenance, the difference between all them there tubes rolling around on a bike, etc. The kids are between the ages of 11 and 16 and are definitely into video games and the like. Two of them have ridden a bike like twice. And, frankly, they don’t go outside to play like I did when I was their age. I was afraid that they might not be all that interested when my surrogate uncle suggested the endeavor.

Last night, I explained in general, how a bike works, where there are bearings, how everything on a bike has a purpose, how they can learn to ride around sans car and driver’s license, how they can be self-sufficient and free on a bike. Most of all, that riding a bike is fun, not just something for hippies, raceheads, the Dutch and people who don’t want cars.

I think they dug the idea.

They actually asked questions, thought using a chain tool/breaker (which we did because a chain needed to be replaced on someone’s bike) was cool, wanted to know more about things like fenders. Of course, I haven’t showed them how to grease wheel hubs yet, what tire Slime smells like (ick!) or taken them into traffic where they have never ever been in the position of driver. That can be scary for anyone. But I think they have it in them. If the project continues, I think the cycling community might gain a few young members. Enthusiastic ones! If you see ten people with blinking red lights (my rule) riding around North Baltimore city this spring, that’s us.