Zoom

I opted to skip the receptions last night after 10 hours of conferencing and head downtown on my bike. It just so happens that at the same time that Minneapolis is hosting the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, it was also hosting part of a week long series of pro bike races. Who knew this town was big enough for all of us?

The women raced first: 40 laps on a 1.2 kilometer course through city streets. I parked myself at an outside corner and could see them take two corners and the straightaway to the finish line. I was surprised to see how different the women were in size, shape, and age (okay, that part I could only see after the race) -- lots of rippling muscles, but muscles on very different types of bodies from stocky to long and lean. There were a few teams, but all were small. Compared to the men who came out later, it looked like the women were doing a lot more individual work. Four strong riders up front traded off the lead -- all from different teams. There were a few stragglers, but the women stayed fairly well clumped. I know nothing of the riders or the teams, but it was fun to watch the race and to chitchcat with the fairly diverse crowd that came out. These were bikey folk, but all different kinds of bikey folk. Our little corner had riding companions of racers, fixie hipsters, dad with trailer and toddler, lycra dude, and me (historian chick on a rented commuter bike that does not express my personality).

For the men's race, I made my way around the whole course. Once the pack passed my spot, I'd move along. I did happen to be on the backside when some sort of crash happened in the thick of the pack. About a quarter of the field (123 riders) went down or got hung up 20 yards down from my perch. The barricades got knocked over, but no one seemed hurt. A couple of bikes were out of the race as a result, but everyone walked or rode out of the heap under their own power.

The men had big teams (6-8 riders, maybe?)and the Bissel boys were up front for 32 laps. Then the olive oil guys took over for a while, but none of them won. Who won? The guy in the Wheaties jersey (meaning he had won the bike race the day before) who had been buried in the pack the whole race while other people pushed the wind out of the way for him. Then he took it in the sprint. This kind of racing is a team sport... but individuals win. Bike racing is a weird sport.

After all the hoopla, I -- like many people on bikes -- rode part of the course before they took down the barricades. No worries, I rode about 14 mph... not 43mph (the speed for the final sprint!).

The evening was nice so I explored the northwestern part of town a bit -- lots of condos butting up against the warehouse district -- found some Thai food for dinner and made my way back to the dorm to rewrite my presentation for the umpteenth time.

History is a Cucumber

I've been to 8 sessions now and had my brain poked and prodded from all different directions. I've heard "homonormative" bantered around in multiple talks, learned about the class implications of oral versus digital sex among lesbians in the 1940s and 1950s and pondered the "publicness" of bathrooms in Chinese-American homes in LA at the end of the 19th century. I did my own song and dance calling for seeing cities as gendered spaces and seeing gender as an urban process. At this point, the only thing I can take away from it all is that the essence of what we (historians) all do, is find a new way to prepare the cucumber: we slice, we dice, thick, thin, strips, chunks... it is still a cucumber, but we do this in the hopes of seeing something new, seeing old things in new ways.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done... at least until tomorrow when I shift out of conference mode and back into research mode. I have three oral histories scheduled, which is ambitious.

A City in June...

A city in June is usually a lovely thing. It is such a good time to meet a city. People are so happy to be out in the sunshine, flowers are blooming, summer heat hasn't beaten anyone down yet... I often hit new cities in June (takes me a month after school ends to get a trip planned, it seems) and over the years I've had lovely affairs with Atlanta, DC, Portland and Ithaca.

My current crush is Minneapolis. And tomorrow, when I head to St Paul, it'll probably become a polyamorous thing.

I was in Minneapolis/St Paul exactly a year ago for my first visit. Now I'm back for research and a conference. I know just enough of the geography and offerings that everything is pretty easy. Just to extend the crush/fling analogy, it is like having sex with someone for the second time.

Despite my bike having been stolen last year during my visit, I've opted to bike the cities again. I rented a snazzy red Trek commuter -- fully outfitted with rack, trunk bag, lights, lock, spd pedals, etc. -- so I am feeling very free. Right now I'm having a lovely beer at the Town Hall Brewery, but soon I will roll on down to the bike path and say hi to the Mississippi river.

Today's adventures included checking into a dorm room. The conference I am attending is held on college campuses and they open the dorms early so that people can come research before the proceedings begin. The twin bed looks disturbingly small and oddly high, but the room is fine and I like being on campus. I like the lounge three rooms down that has a view of the Mississippi. I like that there are towels, since I neglected to pack any.

Next up was renting my bike and taking a very roundabout (and pleasant!) route to the downtown public library -- a stunning building. Many of the mechanicals have been left (intentionally) exposed, so you can see the guts of the escalators and elevators, for example. There is lots of glass, including between the rungs of the stairs that float out into the atrium. I'm sure all the blonde wood will soon look dated and worn, but I love huge, ambitious public buildings -- especially ones that are libraries.



The Special Collections in the library are chock full of interesting things -- including clipping files on "pornography" and "Chicago Ave" (both related to my current research). Some dedicated staff people read the papers every morning/week and dutifully clipped out articles on protests at dirty bookstores and neighborhood organization meetings over the last 40 years. Yay! They were so happy to have someone there loving on their stuff, the archivist offered to stay a half hour beyond official closing (4:30pm!) so that I could finish the folder I was working on. (I know, it should be "the folder on which I was working" but that just sounds dumb.)

Interestingly (okay, perhaps only to me), the library is around the corner from the warehouse district where all the "adult businesses" landed after the zoning ordinances of the late 1980s drove them out of neighborhood commercial districts. I'm amused by researching the history of the built environment that just out the door and down the block. I rolled around the block once just to take in the "girls, girls, girls, all nude, all the time" signage...

But then the ride from here to there (library to brewery): Minneapolis is bike friendly. There be bikes EVERYWHERE and the drivers of cars are almost scarily polite to bikers. But the city has these FREAKY bike lanes that run down the middle of downtown streets. On some, the bikes lanes are double wide -- with lanes for bikes going in both directions. It is wild (somewhere in between insane and cool) to have a bus pass you on the right... in rush hour traffic. All is good, except on Hennepin Ave where the middle-of-the-road bike lane gets to an intersection and just ends. No hints. No explanation. Nothing.... except 2 full lanes of traffic between you and that right turn. Hmmm.... I tried to catch a guy in full bike dork regalia to get the skinny, but the light changed and he got away. I muddled through, but this is a mystery that must be solved this week.

More reports to follow, I hope.

Dead People

Can I go back to researching dead people now, please? Pretty please? I am just a ball of adrenalin after making a bunch of cold calls to potential oral history subjects for my upcoming research trip to Minneapolis. I'll take the adrenalin over the anxiety I had before the calls, but, geez, this is not a part of my work that I enjoy.

It seems so simple... "You were involved in this thing. I want to know more about that thing. Will you talk to me?" But it's not. I hate to impose, I worry they'll say no, I worry I haven't prepared well enough, scheduling is a nightmare, finding a location is an even bigger nightmare...

I've only done a dozen or so interviews, so the whole process is still daunting. Though, honestly, I think I will still be twitching on my 100th interview.

Some of the stress I invent. I always expect to have to work harder to prove myself but now that I think about it, no one has ever asked for my cv and no one has really interrogated me about what my motives/politics are or what kind of argument I intend to make with this research. I guess that is the advantage of interviewing activists. Obviously they thought the cause was good enough to devote some significant part of their lives to, so I guess they just assume that my interest is the same as theirs!

Two interesting bits from today's calls: one guy did ask was my interest was in the topic, but then he was a business owner in the neighborhood and not an activist, and he was easily satisfied by my two sentence reference to community organizing around quality of life issues in neighborhoods and surrounding commercial districts. Another woman turned out to be an activist from a later period than I have been working on (see one of those surprises I dread!) -- but her story is great and she is wonderfully thoughtful about her participation, local politics, tactics/strategies of community orgs, etc. that I am going to interview her anyway. All I could think while I listened to her on the phone today was, "I should get her in front of my class" -- they would be amazed.

So... it all turned out fine. I have 5 interviews lined up or coming together. All is good. Now I just need to calm down.

Tripping

So I've been "involved parent" this week and last and chaperoned trips with both the kids.

For O, the outing was to the Toledo Zoo. These kindergarten teachers had each kid bring a "special adult" so that no one adult would end up managing multiple munchkins. Not surprisingly, some kids didn't these kids would just not get to go. In reality, though, these kids were placed with willing adults who could attend.

I've heard folks raving about this zoo for years, but this was our first visit. I didn't like the layout of the place -- lots of land to cover -- but the exhibits are well set up for human-animal viewing. I don't know if this works all that well for the animals (I hope it does, soft-hearted vegetarian that I am), but I know it worked well for the human animals. We spent a long time watching the orangutans, in particular. The momma even dragged her tarp over to one of the windows, and laid it out for a nap. Then her kid came over to playfully pester her, but she gave as good as she got. Roaring white lions, a pacing snow leopard (with a giant fuzzy tail!), a meandering hippo with shit all over its hind quarters were all amazingly close. Watching the polar bears belly flop into the water was a treat. O was done by this time, but I was fascinated.

For O, though, the trip was much more about the social world than the natural world. He didn't want to walk around with just me and look for animals, he wanted to be with his classmates. We ended up spending time with one pair of boys and then a larger gaggle of kids (escorted two parents). When the latter group hit the gift shop, my boy nearly lost it with envy. "What do you have?" and "Where are you going?" meant far more to him than whether we got to see any zebras or otters. In this sense, the teachers' plan didn't really work all that well. I was just not enough for him -- until he slumped over on me for a good long nap in the bus seat on the way home.

Today, I went to The Henry Ford with E's fourth grade class. She was delighted to have me along, though I did get a few too many lectures about all the rules we were supposed to be following. Since her BFF's mom was also attending, she and T ended up in separate groups but we scored her buddies N and O, along with another girl I hadn't met before. I am super proud of E for making sure that J, who is not a part of E's usual gang felt included. She even insisted that J pick the first place we visit. Yay!

The kids were great. N is hilarious -- such a suck up. He laughed loudly at all my jokes, stayed glued to my side, and always asked ever so politely for the map. How many 9 year olds do you know who greet you with "It is so good to see you again." Hehe. He is one of 6 or 9 kids... wonder if he is desperate for adult attention.

I thought it might have changed, but my overall impression of the museum is much the same as when I was a teen and last visited. It is such an odd hodge-podge of stuff. The kids loved the trains, the 1940s diner, and (I swear, I didn't lead them at all on this) the bicycles -- especially the 8-seater. They were awfully good sports when I asked them the "what do you think that was used for?" questions and made them put a post-it note response on the wall under the question of "What does freedom mean to you?" before they could have lunch. The trouble of having E's mom (aka: the History Professor) as chaperone is that you are going to have to discuss hearth ovens, the Selma to Montgomery march, and the significance of Amelia Earhart. Ah well, they survived and E didn't roll her eyes at me once.

Peer Pressure in the Springtime

I'm not going to give in. Since so many of my friends seem to be overrun with garden-mania, I am just going to proclaim here and now: I don't garden. How uncool is that? All I intentionally grow is grass, really, and that is just because I like to roll around on it with my kids. I don't really even pay that much attention to the grass.

I do find myself swept up in the romance of the tales of planting running around the friendly blogs these days and I'll probably envy their haul once things get going, but I'm just not that kind of hippie. Oh, okay, I might put in a few herb plants (that someone else started) and a tomato plant (but that is just so that I can use my composting worm's poop), but no more.

Just remember all you garden freaks (and I say that with love), I'm happy to soak up your extra produce and I make excellent zucchini bread!

Well done, Bike Ypsi... but now what?

Run down of the bike festival:

1. Gorgeous day. Bright and chilly in the morning, but stayed bright and got warm quickly.

2. Lots of folks. Maybe 20 on the long rides and 60 on the not-so-long rides. Over 100 rode the community ride.

3. Good booths. Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition, St. Joe's, Project Grow, PEAC, Rails to Trails, and the Ypsi Food Coop all had tables. Wheels in Motion and Tree Fort really turned out. The former tweaked mechanicals on lots of bikes, including a bit o' work on my back wheel and squishy brake. My next biking business will go to them.

4. Minimal no-shows. AATA was supposed to send a bus so we could let people practice putting their bikes on the racks but some sort of crisis downtown distracted them and the bus never came. I did get a call from them this morning apologizing (good) and they are eager to come out to our next happening. Two Wheel Tango notified us a few days before the event that they were not going to come -- disappointing, but at least they let us know. Ypsi Cycle just plain did not show. I do not understand that one.

5. Surprise hit. Bike polo and kids apparently go together quite nicely. I was really happy to see that the usual crowd of polo playing adults mostly wore helmets and then happily worked with the kids who got curious to teach them the game and let them play.

6. Nice rides. It looked for a while there like I was again going to have to shorten my ride, but the folks who were not up to the 19-20mph pace of the fast group proved happy to do the whole 30 miles at 16mph. I don't mind riding slow... as long as I get to ride long. I did have to do a few wicked sprints to move between the front and back of a way stretched out group (which we eventually broke into two) and a mechanical breakdown and the main group. Pretty fun to see that I could get 23.5mph -- and not just on a downhill. The community ride (pictured above) was a bit intimidating to launch but rolled nicely once we got going. Letting the group break into groups during the ride actually seemed to work, but that was mostly due to having sooooo many Bike Ypsi people there to make sure somebody who knew the way and would look out for the group was at the head of every clump of riders.

7. No major disasters. One kid fell (he was fine), we ran out of hot dogs (Andy got more), we forgot to mention that we were selling t-shirts (let me know if you want one!)... but really? Nothing big. No fires to put out. Nice.

So now what? I've been a part of planning the Bike Ypsi Spring Ride and Festival for months. K tells us it has been [deep breath] 5 months in the works. Wow. I didn't really notice that because there were a few other issues along the way (like weekly rides, Bike to Work, and preserving the Ford Blvd road diet/bike lanes) and because I really enjoy the people in Bike Ypsi. The meetings were fun, the post-meetings involved happy hour at the Corner, and the between-meetings meet-ups usually had us on bikes pedaling out and about in the world.

I suspect that with this second big and successful event (you might recall that we had a fabulous fall ride in Oct 2007), there will be some fresh blood looking to get in on the Bike Ypsi love and the group will change because of that. There will be new agendas. Organizational issues will have to be dealt with. People will take us back over ground we have already covered. Personalities may clash. I'm happy to have new recruits (we don't want to burn out!), but I just gotta say, this first year has just been a blast.