http://www.cyclingnews.com/cross.php?id=cross/2007/sep07/crossvegas07

NO!!! WHO KNEW???

DHL…I’ve never had much luck with DHL as a shipping company.  Why?  It seems that their company motto is, ‘Don’t find us, we’ll find you’.  That’s been my experience, at least.  My insurance replacement phone was sent quickly, more quickly than I was told, and I had it sent C.O.D. to pay the deductible, like people used to do in the old days since I don’t rock a credit card.  This is just another example of how unAmerican I am to not run through life on credit cards.  But back to the mystery of DHL..

I missed the delivery after pulling an all-nighter finishing a proposal for work.  About mid-afternoon, I talked to my roommate who told me that I can get my package ‘between 5 and 5:45 out by the airport’, so I hit the trail for a quick run and embark on the journey ‘out by the airport’ to get my phone.  The mission was complicated by not having a phone.  And, further complicated by the fact that DHL didn’t leave a slip and doesn’t have a listing in either phone book, yellow or white pages.  I google them.  What comes up is “Broadway”, but East, not near the airport which is West, so I start at the airport anyway and drive the length of Broadway til I hit the listing, 1001 E Broadway.  It’s a shopping center with an Albertson’s and a little Shipping Depot and it’s now 5:47pm.  I explain to the guy that I missed my package and have to get it and get my money order to them…where the heck do I go?  He tells me the DHL guy hasn’t been by yet and I should wait.  DHL guy gets there and says it’s his first day and “I didn’t anticipate something like this OR ALL THESE DAMN PACKAGES THAT I HAVE TO CARRY”.  I’m confused.  Did DHL tell him something altogether different during the interview?  How illusive is this company?  Did they even have an interview with this guy?  WHO IS THIS DHL IN THE SKY SOMEWHERE and what are they doing??  …I’m beginning to think DHL is up to something grander all of a sudden.  I snap out of my paranoia and get frustrated.  Really frustrated.  I even choke back tears I’m so frustrated because the guy is telling me over and over how he hates packages and I NEED TO LEAVE HIM MY PHONE NUMBER! so his supervisor can get ahold of me.  Finally, I snap and say, “You’re not understanding me.  If I leave you my phone number, you’ll be calling my package.”. 

I write a note, place the money order in it, make copies at the Shipping Depot, and will now wait for this DHL entity to come to me, like a cat that doesn’t like to be held.

Later, I’m coming back from the Good Food Store, going just above the speed limit at 28 mph after getting a speeding ticket last week.  Turns out, I was wrong.  People in Missoula don’t drive slow cuz they don’t have anywhere to be or don’t know how to drive with a purpose, they drive slowly because you get ticketed if you don’t.  In any event, a car rushes me from behind, about 4 feet from my back bumper, so close that I can’t even see his headlights in my rearview.  I am determined not to speed it up, especially after he honks and honks and hooooooooooooooooooooooooonks. I hit the brakes because I am like that.  To my surprise, it escalates.  I take it down to 13 mph, not understanding what he wants.  I guess I mistakenly thought he was warning me that I may be going too fast.  We arrive at the stoplight, head to head, him turning left and me going straight.  I stare at him and then calmly give him the finger.  He has a handicapped sticker in his rearview mirror which may make me feel a tinge of guilt, but not in this case, so I continue starring.  Then it dawned on me.  I bet this guy is somehow affiliated with DHL and am more puzzled than ever about this company.

BB

I made it longer than I thought I would, actually, and I’m keeping some of what I learned from my experiment, refining it a bit and adopting some things and incorporating them into another experiment.  This one is as follows and is by the force of the universe, not  the force of my choice.

I’m terming this experiment: Can I live without a phone?

I dropped it into tea (this is the mayhem that comes out of caffiene-free living, mind you) and it’s dead. Assurion is sending me one on the 19th. On top of that, yesterday, I was told that I can’t get my numbers out.  This sort of thing is exactly what I was aiming for when I embarked on the previous experiment.  A purge.  This sort of purge though, is more than I bargained for.

My hotmail will not come up on my computer and several others and hasn’t been able to open for several days.

Add to this sugar free, dairy free, caffiene-free, meat free, wheat/gluten free, alcohol free, medication free and sex free for 12 whopping days and you have….a panic attack, of sorts, that kind of comes and goes like the tide.

I went to the River City Roots Festival last night with some friends after not looking at my email for three days, and having lost my LG (’Life’s Good’, yes, we had some good times) phone with no hope of speaking or seeing the friends in my phone ever again I thought, and drank about 7 beers and ate one ground beef taco and a big, fat burger with American cheese douced in a half pint of ketchup.  F-n hell, it tasted good.

The night before this event, I spent two hours watching a black beer about 20 feet away from me eat over 50 apples in an apple tree.  He would get up in there, shake the tree, jump down and eat the apples I spied earlier up high, then go back up in the tree and gobble more fruits.  I was terrified, but sat there ready to jump behind the door, if I needed to.  I would have missed this event entirely if I had email, I bet.

So, back to porridge and fresh figs.  I’m seeing what the universe takes away from me next. The more I lose, the more I notice things around me.

Being a guilty Catholic kid most days, I was a little bummed that the first thing I went for was a PBR after work with the guys at work. Of all those things, I broke for PBR first.

Wonder what that says?

BB

Many changes for me.  I think I’ve done it.  I am a human test tube. I just can’t wait to see what I blow up in the lab…

Most cyclists like to get fat in the fall. Not me.  Nope.  I’m tired of these bulky legs.  They get in my way. They get in my way walking. My ass, too.  I used to have no ass. I dream of the day that I can shake my sorry white girl hip bones, like my genes intended.  So, just as I turned my body into a top-heavy swimmer in ‘98 after having my second stress fracture in my foot and being confined to a cast with only two things to do: work on my swim twice a day and lift, I am determined to look like something other than some sort of squat/deadlift queen. My goal is to actually wear normal jeans that fit my thighs AND waist (I’ve given up on hoping to design these jeans I ‘ve dreamt of for years for us types, for now at least). And, I hope to have some demons come out of me along the way.  I’m sort of kidding, I don’t believe I have demons.  I have angels and they have some not-so-good friends.  Like the kind of friends that Cheri Wiley wasn’t allowed to hang out with in highschool.  Friends that taught her how to smoke on a Chevette at the fairgrounds,and lie about punctuality, like me, for example.

I made it through the storm after several failed attempts at detox. I was determined to beat the awful grip of my caffiene addiction. And with free beer and a new festival every other hour in Missoula, I can’t say it’s been easy or fun. For the past seven days I’ve been booze, caffiene, dairy, wheat/gluten, sugar, meat, and all medication free.  It’s not bad.  I’ll do it til I get bored, which may be next week. I know I’m not meant to be this squeeky clean, but I do have a whole new appreciation for the folks that are.

Of course, this whole thing points to one thing, if you know me at all: I’m gearing up for one hell of a binge when I grow out of this phase.

Hey, speaking of, I’m going to need correspondents from Bermuda and Vegas.  Please drop me a line with a concise paragraph citing your intentions for each or either at beckybroeder@hotmail.com .

From the coffeeshop where I’m drinking a sad, cold peppermint tea that is doing nothing for me,

BB

I wrote the following words two days ago on the Five Valley Velo / Team Stampede listserve addressing a couple of young guys that got the beatdown from a fellow angry automotive specialist. The assailants were driving a white Avalanche, wearing backwards caps, dressed like every kid at U of A (they looked like Prolavito, maybe). One biker got his teeth knocked into his head during the altercation and was sent to the ER. I felt like I needed to make a reasonable point, but, I’m not a reasonable person, so the world got back at me today…I am in no place to say things, apparently.

“Although the assailants sound like absolute jerks, I think it’s important to consider a couple of things. There are two, or more, sides to every story, and given my experience with situations like this, it’s impossible to act reasonably when adrenaline takes over after being assaulted. Pretty sure some words were exchanged… I’m all for vigilante justice, but you gotta understand the math behind confronting asses like this. I stopped flipping off drivers about 5 years ago, and stopped inviting motorists that piss me off to pull over about the time that one did and I ran because they were going to win, without a doubt.

Somthing takes hold, though, and I have been guilty of becoming a superhero more than once when my friends/teammates and I have been assaulted. The unfortunate equation is that we are skinny cyclists and they, who hold our lives in our hands more often than not, are angry, possibly ‘roid raging, more possibly on meth, and even more possibly carrying a gun.

It pays not to escalate these sorts of situations, is what I’m trying to say, cuz you could lose a lot more than teeth. Get the license plate and fight that way.

My 2 cents,

Becky”

Well, today, yes Labor Day by the River (I know better, damnit), I got nailed by a thrown half full beer can. I was bitch-slapped. And Pissed. Pissed. Like, if I had a fucking hammer or a loaded gun, I’d have unleashed. Thing is, I go to my angry place on my road bike, pretty much every time I’m on it. My angry place is fucking ugly. I address my ugly angry place on my bike so no one else has to see my angry place and it looks like I smoke dope the rest of the time because I’ve gone to my awful fucked angry place. If you assault me while I’m raging in my fucked up angry place, I will want to hurt you. Badly. Fortunately, it ended with me pissed off because the beer made me sticky, which I hate. The fuckers were going about 50 mph. It hurt a lot less than it would have if they had stopped. I think I’d have gone nuts on them like that bitch that stabbed all those people at the Testicle Festival last month during a meth binge.

My 2 cents,
BB

I looked in my inbox this morning to find:

1. A chain email with a guardian angel graffic on it and all of Bobby Lea’s personal contact info sent from someone back in the chain, requiring that I forward it to masses. It mentions that someone will contact me with something I’ve been waiting to hear. I thought I’d refrain from passing it on…

and THEN, this!

2. “I am khalid mahmoud, A Bahrain national I have been diagnosed with Oesophageal
cancer .It has defiled all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only
about a few months to live.I am very rich,but was never generous, I have given
most of my assets to my immediate family members. I have decided to give alms to
charity organizations.I cannot do this myself anymore because of my health.I
once asked members of my family to give some money to charity organizations,they
refused and kept the money.I have a huge cash deposit of Eighteen Million
dollars with a finance House abroad. I will want you to help me collect this
deposit and dispatch it to charity organizations.You will take out 20% of this
funds for your assistance.DO REPLY ME VIA MY PRIVATE
EMAIL(khalidm66@yahoo.com.hk) TO ASSIST ME.”

Right on,

BB
 

.

I give up this blog every other day, especially when some joker tells me I don’t write about cycling anymore. I never really wrote about cycling. And here’s the deal: I especially don’t mention it much anymore, cuz I don’t do it much anymore. Why ruin a perfect day with a training session? Or, worse, a training session followed by a blogging session about my training session?

Friends have been asking, ‘what the hell you up to?’.
Wellllllllllll,

I entertained the “WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CRITERIUM” for about 13 seconds on my first road bike ride in three weeks yesterday. I almost pulled over and gave my bike away as a result of thinking that hard. You would think such a race on The Strip during Interbike(!) would get me hot. Nope. Not even close. Sorry J-dub, Bellie, and Liza. Bermuda? Nope. Sorry Liza.

What is it then?

I made it back to my homestate with a car filled so full with so much strapped to the top, that the pic was too big for me to even post. I had tied the main portion of Klackbo (only the Danes and Corinne fully know the chair named “Klackbo”) to the roof and it went sailing across the freeway between LA and Vegas. I was horrified, as this is my second worst fear— being impaled on the Interstate by some assholes’ tie job. I pulled over, retied, then thought I’d go back and JUST SEE if Klackbo ate shit. NO! …and it was safely on the shoulder where I could nab it. I shoved it into the last remaining few vacant square inches in my passenger seat and opted out of needing mirrors for the remainder of the 1000 mile trip. Klackbo has some road rash.

I started a new job today as a landscape designer. They fully know my design expertise is in interiors, so this will be a learning experience. For them. And me. And, possibly, you.

Why the pick of the goofy Irish people? I was scrolling through my pics of my car that are enormous and found this one of this Irish band that came to Missoula about a month ago. The bongo player kissed me. Only, it’s not a bongo, but some Celtic-named thing I can’t say..anyway, Bongo Boy stuck. Uh-huh. We were with the band….what?!?! c’mon!

I’ve been walking / hiking / running / exploring / socializing A LOT.

I ate my body weight in sushi. And man, it was Good Sushi, with my childhood friend /sister, Corinne, last week in LA.

The next day, I drug her to the beach where I got carried away by a longer run than I expected, then a longer swim than I (and the annoyed beach lifeguard) expected and she broke out in a heat rash while waiting for me from the sunscreen I had just sung the praises of about being the best invention ever.

I took some guy friends in LA to a dive bar in Hollywood to see some band I heard and kinda liked on MYSPACE, but first had to endure “CARLOS LOS GUITAROS”, a horrible LA storyteller who is older than the hills and must be someone at that bar’s uncle or something to get the gig. ‘Course Carlos, about age 70, found his way through the crowd, of 20 or so, to ask ME to come to his next gig because he’d “like to get to know me better”. Mike told him to play Missoula, I think. I’m beginning to wonder about my new-found ‘hobby’ as a groupie. I like music. Really. Really varied music apparently.

I have been mountain biking with my girlfriends who look like professional expert stunt bikers compared to my break-neck speeds of 8 mph on the descents.

I, for once in a long time, don’t feel anything but peace and quiet, not feeling like I need to be somewhere else running from something on some bike or plane.

And, lastly, I’m hoping Missoula stops having a festival, or three, every single weekend, cuz my liver is starting to hurt again.

Is you have to go get your shit at some point.  After spending the last four years strewn out across the universe, I’ve begun the task of getting myself together, so to speak.  I’m writing from the fine Italian couch I loved that I gave Andy, after having driven from Missoula to Tucson, to LA tomorrow, back to Missoula, five days in the car in seven days.

And I didn’t get what I needed from my house in Tucson, so I have to come back.  Which means I may have to come down here to ride in the dead of winter a time or two.  Or, May, when I put my house on the market again. Or, three years from now when the market improves so that I can put my house on the market again.

This trip cross country is like a trip of my favorite places, as opposed to the Missoula to Chicago trip, which was a trip of my least favorite stops (Fargo-Moorhead).  I spent last night a couple of miles outside of Bryce Canyon, UT, sleeping out under the stars, then got up and marched around for a couple of hours before getting back in the confines of the car.

Speaking of confines.  I started an experiment that went WAY wrong. This is not the first time I’ve tried this. Thing is, I hate being trapped.  When I think about my love for coffee, I feel like I’m being controlled, maybe even manipulated, which makes me nervous.

The experiment is as follows:

DETOX of Becky, Part Six

Logic: Woke up on day after massive backpack trip with dogs and Heidi, a bit sore, rejuventated, challenged, after 12 hours of sleep because we (Otto with his little dog pack that carried my wine and I) were wiped out, with an idea: I want to be detoxified because I eat too much chocolate, beef, and cheese and I drink waaaaay too much coffee and wine.

The Procedure: Eat only fresh fruits and vegetables, drink NO coffee, eat whole grains and nuts, drink water or 100% fruit or veg. juice for however long (I didn’t set goal), not less than a few days.

Process: Since I’ve become a pro long distance driver, I like to throw in obstacles.  I’m bored of and have mastered the No AC til I nearly suffer heat exhaustion trick, this was next: The Dale Tye Diet and NO COFFEE.

Hour four: Headache. Spacey. Flipping the bird at drivers that pass me (jerks, they must have had coffee).

Hours Five-24: Severe headache when I move that’s so intense it’s like an icepick in the back of my right eye. Moving makes it throb.  Middle of the night, around 3 am, I get up and look through the car for the ONE JOLT gum piece I knew I had.  Lo and behold that shit is just that and false advertising because it does absolutely nothing.  Being at altitude doesn’t help.  At one point, I awake sweating like in a sauna, thinking, “God, why did I do this?? WHY DID I DRINK SO MUCH!?!” but then I remember I hadn’t had a drink in a couple of days.  I felt hungover.  Worse than any November 1st, ever.

Test: I did what I do when I’m hungover: I beat it out of myself through exercise.  Lacing up my running shoes at 7 am sucked more than anything, and those first attempts of running, followed by grabbing my head and curling over for a few minutes were beyond awful.  I walked and walked then saw the most amazing trail, as I was in Loosee Canyon and among the bright red arches and the bright green pines and the bright green pines framed by the bright red arches.  I was in love and forgot my woes, or my physical aversions.  It was like I was 10 again, coffee-free.  I ran back and the headache went from I want to die to dull.

Outcome: I drove another hour caffiene-free to Kanab and got a cup of coffee so I would stop being such and idiot and just enjoy myself. The skies parted, my music sounded really good again. 

The rest of the detox is on course. Til LA, that is.

BB 

August, for me at least, hasn’t meant fair time in, well, too long.  It’s fair time in Montucky, which engages that type of person in those certain parts of the nation to those sorts of activities.  I turned down Warrant at the Dawson County Fair last night in order to take in what may have been one of the coolest times I’ve had myself in a long time.

I began the day with what will prolly go down as on of the most majestic hikes I have ever been on: Warren Pass in the the Pintlar Wilderness.  I got a good dose of girl time with one of my closest buds, Heidi, and her pooch, Chloe, for ten miles of hike, four glacier lakes, and a near miss at getting pretty lost, at nearly 9,000ft.  One moose, no bears (I think we were chattering too loudly).  I blasted out of her house to meet my guy friends at THE WESTERN MONTANA FAIR.

Bickell had set me up with VIP parking and tickets to the DEMOLITION DERBY.  All I could say to him, CFO of Missoula County (also unknowing participant in my migration back up North and good friend for over ten years), was: “Fuckin’ A”.  I found my testoteroned up posse (I go both ways: having male and female personality traits, as anyone I’ve dated will atest, blessed and cursed), and was beaming.  I HAVE NEVER CLENCHED MY PBR AND COORS LIGHT, one in each hand, SO TIGHT!  It was amazing.  Before I knew what hit me, we were placing bets and passing dollars around the VIP section. I use this term, VIP loosely, as I think that everyone there was there only because they could potentially do something to shut this opertation down.  Ian, the 10 year-old from Pennsylvania, even got in on the betting after we got his father’s permission.  It was fantastic and felt SOOOOOO GOOOD to be a bad citizen for a night.  As the sun set through the wildfire smoke and burning oil and tire smoke (thank God for the Smoke cuz the sunset was AMAZING!), I could only wish J-Dub and Hamblin were there for a moment before I placed all my singles on #29 cuz he was a total hotdog and a bully (reminded of hotdog as I envied my friend’s hotdog).  We conspired to come up with a car sponsored by the ONE LESS CAR CAMPAIGN (bike mounted on top) while I smashed my cans and threw them on the ground below me for someone else to clean up.  I told Fred, “I’m sure they have kids doing community service out here tomorrow”.  We thought out our pit crew for next year, as we watched car after car burst into flames, only to rise up and start again, and I reminisced with my lack of voice from screaming at this point about how I had two CHEVY CHEVETTES in highschool because my dad made me buy an identical one to match the one I drove for parts due to my horrible track record.  Mark my words, I wanna be THE female driver in the Derby next year.

Amazing day.  Cars and Wilderness.  Girls and Boys. Beers and Wine.  Two for One deep-fried Meat-On-Sticks at the Norwegian Booth and organic green beans. No Bike Racing.  Still haven’t showered.

That’s a great Sunday.

BB