DC, with worse pictures than ever!

This weekend my mom and I flew down to Washington DC for a family friend's bar mitzvah (sorry if that's spelled wrong, my spell check has no better suggestions!). I told my mom that I'd agreed to join her because I like the family that we were visiting, but in my heart of hearts I knew I was going for two very selfish reasons:

1. To get to run around the National Mall and see all the monuments and museums in one go.
2. To get the hell out of the cold for two days.

This post will be the usual Claire-style form of tourism, complete with horrible cell phone photography, but I'm going to go into "family time" a bit too. This is not to make you suffer, and I really hope that by the time I'm done it will have been worth your while.

Our flight was an evening flight on Friday, so I had time to come home from work, and eat some dinner before we left for the airport. We were off to a bad start when I decided to fill my shuffle with a brand-new playlist which wasn't done downloading in time, so we left the house 10 minutes late. My mom was already pissed, but I contend that that was time that we could have easily made up on the way to the airport if she would even come within 15 mph of the speed limit. When we got to the airport we found that our 9:00 flight had been delayed 3 hours: meaning that we wouldn't get into DC until 1:00, definitely wouldn't get a rental car, and might not be able to check into the hotel. I saw my mom drop her hands, thrust her jaw forward, and rock back on her heels, which means that she's about to give up, but not without throwing a temper tantrum and making life miserable for everyone around her. Luckily we got to talk to a competent airline representative who offered, "Would you like to take a US Air flight into Reagan instead?" (We were supposed to fly into Dulles) before my mom could blame her for everything bad that had ever happened in her life. Mom blew a puff of breath into her bangs, which is what she does when she gets her way but wants to show that she's not happy she had to fight for it and said, "Yeah, that's fine". We were quickly instructed on how to get to the other terminal for the 8 o'clock DC flight, blah, blah, blah and then I looked down at my watch. It was 7:20. Shit! "Are we going to have time to make it?" I asked, trying not to let the tone of my voice belie to my mom that she had just cause to continue with her aborted temper tantrum. "Oh yeah, you'll be fine," said the airline representative, who I'm sure had learned that this is always the correct answer, whether it's true or not.

Now, let me explain something to you. My mom is overweight and has been ever since I can remember. I think that's why my brother and I have always had a kind of weird relationship with food. In my head all of her shortcomings are related to her weight problem, not the least of which are mobility issues. My mom is the slowest walker in the whole entire world, I'd always accepted this as an annoying fact to be disdained, but put up with; annoying but harmless things like her annoying habit of smiling at strangers and her obsession with Home and Garden Television. I chucked her boarding pass at her and took off towards the other terminal, telling her I'd make sure they knew she was coming. I kept slowing down to look at signs, and when I got to the terminal I stopped to look at my ticket to find out the gate number before I went through security and realized that we still had to check in with US Air! I stopped in my tracks to wait for Mom and was surprised at how quickly she caught up with me. I vowed to remember this tortes-and-the-hare-like lesson the next time I wanted to slow down in a race to gather my strength. No sooner had she caught up when I whisked her back down the terminal towards the check-in desk. It wasn't till we got there (me first, then her half a minute later), that I realized that she was in tough shape. She was bright red, sweating, and she had an awful wheeze in her breath that I'd never heard in her before. I knew that sound, she sounded like an asthmatic runner 2 seconds after a sprint finish, or a cyclist about to get off and walk his bike up a hill. "Are you alright?" I asked, and didn't dash off to security until she shot an angry, "Yeah!" at me, like this was all my fault. Of course they had to give BOTH of us the full security scan (only made longer because we didn't have time to check our bags). Had I not been with my mom I would have enjoyed the fact that my frisker was obviously hitting on me. When they finished with me I pulled my suitcase off the table and all my stuff fell on the floor, underwear and all. My frisky frisker hadn't zipped my suitcase. I cursed, threw it all back in and fled from my mom who was still standing unattended in the strip-search coral before she killed someone. As my girlfriend chased me down to return the watch I'd left behind, it turns out that the other security guards were surrounding my mom trying to make sure she was alright. "Are you sure you're alright, ma'am? You're really red. Would you like to sit down for a minute?" Mom was seething. It must humiliating, not being able to do something as simple as chasing down a plane or not even get to put up with a degradation security scan because the TSA officials were afraid they were going to have to take the paddles to her. Or maybe she didn't even put together that not everyone looks like that after walking briskly from one terminal to another, and she thought that this was just another random inefficiency and humiliation you have to go through in airports. But I noticed, and I also noticed that it took almost the whole flight for the redness to drain from her face.

Mom sure was cranky still when we got back to the ground, and it was everything I could do to convince her to go get the rental car rather than paying a hundred bucks for a cab. I was the one who was in my right mind to drive, so grouchy became my co-pilot. At one point she reached to get something in the back seat, and I noticed that the twisting squeezed the breath out of her and she was winded for a few minutes after the effort. Then, later that weekend she climbed into the passenger seat and flailed her arm trying to reach the door to close it. "I hate it when they do that," she said. What? "Make the door swing so wide that you can't reach it and you have to get back up again to close it." I'd never had that problem. I looked over at her reclined in the seat and realized that she wasn't able to lean her torso out to get to the door handle. I thanked my lucky stars that I still have my range of motion.

The next morning we got to watch Noah become a man. It was my first bar mitzvah, and I enjoyed it for the first hour and a half, but I have to admit that after that I got a little bit bored. The prayer book really confused me and I kept turning the pages the wrong way. I tried to read the phonetic transcriptions of the Hebrew for a little bit, but I just wound up singing "Tralala" most of the time and trying to spot what page the Jews were looking at so that I could pick up the English when that came up again. My ear was desperately looking for something that it could recognize, and eventually it found something that sounded like almeja in one of the choruses. Almeja means "clam" in Spanish. "Mom, I think they're singing about clams," I said. "Clams aren't kosher," she pointed out. "Well duh," I said. "They're probably singing God Save the Clam!" Of course I knew they weren't singing about mollusks, but I felt as out of place as an octopus in a garage in that temple.

The reception was informal, in the lobby of the synagogue with bagels and tunafish, cookies, and potato chips. "Claire, come get a bagel, there are a few with cream cheese." "Did you see there are cream cheese bagels?" "Do you eat fish?" "Here, take a plate, try the cookies." There was nothing on that table that looked appetizing to me, so I took a couple of stalks of celery and a couple of carrots. "You don't fool me for a second," said the new mitzvah's mother, "you didn't put anything on that plate!" and I had to fight another volley of bagels. After that everyone went their separate ways for a few hours, most to eat lunch (for a second time).

Family tree provided for educational purposes only to keep track of the relationship
between people mentioned. Any attempt to invade the privacy of this family would be
really messed up, so please don't.

That night there was a small family gathering at the house to wish Noah even more mozel tavs and I got to know the extended family. I found myself talking to Syd, who, by all accounts had always been a lanky kid, but 65 years had caught him with a bald head and a big pot belly. "I used to be as skinny as Sara," explained Syd, "but now I just like to eat!" Sara's 15 and has been blessed with the body type and height to be a supermodel. When I told him about my plans to see all the monuments, he told me about his treadmill. "Yeah, a couple years ago I started having labored breathing and my doctor told me I'd have to get moving. It's amazing how much better walking on that treadmill makes me feel!" Later, at dinner Syd went up for seconds and thirds, and when there was still meat left when it came time to wash the dishes, he took care of the surplus using his gullet as a garbage disposal.

Syd's daughter, Alissa, was of the type that you know after talking to her for 20 seconds that she will never be cool, not even in the nerdiest crowds. As my dad described her, "She's your stereotypical New York Jew."
"No she's not," I said. "She's not funny." I decided that I really wasn't going to want to talk to her early in the evening when I was telling Syd about my plans to run past all the monuments. "So do you like to run, or do it for some other reason?" she asked. I thought it better not to go into my dysfunctional relationship with running, and told her I liked it. "Oh, so you're crazy." It wasn't so much a witty comment like rocketpants makes when she calls me crazy, it was more like condescendingly stating a fact. I decided I didn't like Alissa, so therefore I give my readers permission to not feel sorry for her. Alissa was also very, very heavy. Her ample rump easily covered an entire couch cushion. Sid was explaining to Sara that she had to look at her family history to know how to take care of herself while she's still young. Alissa pitched in her unsolicited advice, "Chocolate is the cure for pretty much anything. You have really bad PMS, just drink a glass of whole milk chocolate milk..."
"I don't really like whole milk," said Sara, I'm sure trying to deflect the conversation from her menstrual cycle in front of all her aunts and uncles.
"They also found that chocolate milk is the best recovery drink that there is for athletes, even better than Gatorade."
I tried to bite my tongue not wanting to get into any conversation with Alissa if it could be at all avoided. She was a know-it-all who had to know more than you about everything and have the last say at all costs. I mean, this kind of behavior is acceptable in a college student, but this woman was pushing 40. Not only that but she was one of those people whose sense of humor is so awkward it makes your skin crawl. I mean, she was weird. She did fencing in high school and now is very active in her Medieval reenactment group. I really didn't want to get stuck in a conversation with Alissa, but no one else seemed to want to get in a conversation with Alissa either, and when the awkward silence was about to kill me I ventured a very flat, "Well, yeah, they say that exercise improves pretty much every aspect of your life, physically and mentally."
"Oh, I can't do exercise, It makes me sick." Alissa interjected, desperate not to let the conversation turn away from her.
I looked her up and down. Of course it does, lard ass, I thought. I kept going like I hadn't been done with what I was saying. Save the conversation, I thought, don't let her ruin it for the rest of us! "Yeah, they say that it can improve your chances of fighting just about every disease, even mental problems and they find that active kids do better in school..."
"Because I have asthma," she went on when I ran out of things to say. "Yeah, I used to have really bad allergies, but then one day my allergies got better but my asthma got really bad. So that's what I meant when I said exercise makes me sick. Because breathing is good. Yeah, you never know how nice it is till you can't do it. So exercise makes me sick..."
Sara swooped to the rescue and started talking about how (pushing 6 feet), she's taller than all her friends. "Well at least you can reach things," I said. They'd been making short jokes at me all day and I'd started to accept it. "And no one ever picks you up off the ground, I bet. I used to get picked up all the time. I'd just be standing there and someone would grab me around the waist and lift me off the ground."
"Yeah, me too." Alissa had decided to play the short card. She wasn't really short, but since she couldn't compare to Sara in height, it would be easier to jump in on my team. "I have all these friends that are like 6'7" and stuff..." Nobody has "all these friends" who are over 6'7, not even basketball players, I thought, but held my tongue. "Yeah, they pick me up all the time. You don't know how disorienting it is to be on the ground and then suddenly you're not." I looked at Alissa, she couldn't weigh less than 300 lb. I didn't believe for a second that anything but a forklift could lift her off the ground. Why would someone do that? Lie just to be a part of a conversation? She oozed low self-esteem so bad that she made everyone around her feel uncomfortable, but did she really thing that bold-faced lies like this were a way to get someone to be your friend? And did she really think that if she told doozies like this that I would begin to believe that she was thin? I just didn't get it.

Syd's sister's name was Karen. Karen had the sarcastic wit and dry delivery that I stay up nights wishing that I had. We like Karen. "What are you going to do in DC tomorrow?" she asked. I told her about my plan to run past all the monuments. "They've made it harder than it used to be. You can't get as close to them as you used to in a car." I thought she was talking about parking, but still I grasped that I wasn't understanding something. As I usually do when I don't understand something I kept talking like I knew exactly what was going on. Later that night her brother, Norman was gave us driving directions to the Mall. "So when you get to Constitution St. you're going to start looking for parking..."
"No, Norm, they want to see all the monuments," she corrected him.
"Right, she's going to run past them," explained Norman.
"What do you mean? I thought she was taking the car?" asked Karen. I got the idea that none of us were trying to be witty and this was a real conversation.
"No, like on my feet," I explained.
"You didn't know that that's what she was going to do?" asked Norman.
"Well yeah, she told me... I just didn't know why anyone would choose to do that, like voluntarily." She wasn't kidding.

So I guess this is what other people do. They eat bagels when they're not hungry and eat whatever's left over, even when they've had their fill. Exercise makes them sick and when they have to run to catch a train, they have to risk cardiac arrest. And when they want to see a whole park full of monuments, they need to reserve more than an hour for it. I couldn't wait to get away from the "normal" people for a bit and get back to my "crazy" lifestyle.

We woke up at 7:30, and by 9:00 we had parked and I was ready to go. I filled my bottle with water that tasted like dirt from a water fountain and started running. I wasn't in any hurry and before I'd even run 5 minutes I'd stopped my watch three times to take pictures and cross streets. I didn't really have a set rout planned out, so I just ran until I saw the big stuff, and then ran towards it. I started out running towards the Capital Building.
As usual I tried to include myself in the photo only until I realized that it was essentially impossible. I figure that the abysmal quality of the shots is proof enough that I was, in fact, the photographer (and not just a google image source). But meanwhile, I'm sure you can recognize the top of my head by this time. .

Soon I came upon a greek-style building that had a set of stairs just begging to be run up, so I did. Had I had a running partner to take a cheezy Rocky imitation photo I would have. Instead you'll just have to use your imagination.


Next I came up on the Washington Monument. I wasn't too enthused about it. I mean, it's an obelisk. Boston has one just like it, and I'm sure there are others too. I bet George Washington feels a bit gypped.
Next I ran past the reflecting pool and up the interminable steps to the Lincoln Monument (where I took the above picture). I realized half way up that I really should have counted all those damn steps and wondered if I could go back and count with a magnifying glass and a penny later. I mean, if they put a tiny little Lincoln in his monument on the penny, they probably have the right number of tiny little copper steps, right?
I knew that the Vietnam memorial was close by, but purposely avoided it. It was Veterans' day, and although I was having fun not taking the symbolism of the presidents' monuments seriously, I didn't want to do the same with any war memorials. I inadvertently passed Korea on the way towards the Jefferson Memorial and it gave me the heebie jeebies. That memorial is way too life-like.

If you know the layout of the Mall you know that the Jefferson Memorial is set off from the rest, way off on a little peninsula jutting off into the Potomack. In the park next to the river I saw a 10k race finishing up, and I kicked myself for not looking for races before coming down. It was a beautiful day, though, and I didn't need a race to enjoy running along the river with the fall colors all around me. My phone seems to have a mean streak to it seeing as the picture with the prettiest colors came out with the worst lighting.

Finally I ran back to the Mall and was surprised to see my mom sitting on a bench and find myself already back to where I'd started. "I missed the White House!" I said, disappointed. "Where is it?" I had really wanted to see the White House with the same kind of fascination as people who like to glare at photos of people they hate. I wanted to see where the bastard lived. I told my mom I'd be right back, looked at a map, and ran off to find the White House.

Coming of age during the "W" administration I'm suspicious of the US government and anything associated with patriotism, and truth be told, DC made me nervous. I was quite glad I was running, just in case someone tried to chase me down and send me to Guantanamo for ex-patriating or just thinking unpatriotic thoughts, I was already prepared to run away from them. When I passed the White House I didn't linger so as not to endure too violent a visceral reaction to what I knew to be inside. I was afraid that all the men standing around in suits with ear pieces in their ear could read my thoughts, so I tried to think patriotic thoughts. They came out kind of like this:

With running, photos, and crossing streets my whole Washington DC tour came out to about 7.5 miles in an hour and a half (1:11:30 of which were running). So maybe I'm "crazy", maybe a bit "abnormal": I don't risk cardiac arrest when I'm late for a flight, I don't eat food I don't need, I don't think chocolate is a cure-all for everything from PMS to high blood pressure, but in the whole busy weekend, I was the only one who managed to get the whole historic Washington DC trip in on a beautiful day. Call me crazy, but I'd rather do it my way.

No Wetsuit Girl does Capital City

I'll be spending this weekend in DC visiting some family friends with my mom. I'm hoping to get to run around the city where our country's biggest decisions are made. Don't worry, I promise to behave myself! I'm hoping to go on a run and see how many famous monuments I can hit in one morning.

Also on the agenda: I'm coming to the Big Apple! I'm meeting up with some friends from California the weekend of November 30-December 2. So far all I know about the trip is that we're going to be staying "somewhere in New York" and that we're going to see Phantom of the Opera. I hope I get to meet some New York bloggers like Renee, Michelle, and Satan (although I could never keep up with the fallen angel if we were to go running).

So story time will be back soon. In the meantime, here are some exciting developments and recent observations:

1. I got a bike trainer, which took me a good half hour to put together (it's got 3 parts, including my bike). Now I can do two of my favorite things at the same time: ride my bike and watch CSI. One problem though, I have to turn my TV up to full volume to be able to hear it over the whirring of the trainer. Oh well, I think my parents can deal.
2. I've been running in the cold. I can't feel my legs by the time I get home, and I think that's fucked up. This is how people get hurt!
3. Daylight savings: I would just like to find the guy who invented streetlights that turn off when there aren't any cars around. I want to have just a few words with him. Most of those words will only have four letters in them.
4. They have the Total Immersion book and DVD at my library! Too bad I still don't have a pool. More to come on this topic as well.
5. It's too goddamn cold in my house, it's too goddamn cold in my cubicle (there's a draft so strong it blows the blinds around!), and it's CERTAINLY too damn cold outside!
   

Bubble wrap!

Click here to play with bubble wrap!

There were less than 2 days to go before I had to get all my worldly posessions onto a plane to fly back to the US. I couldn't put it off anymore, so I went to Mailboxes, Etc. (yes there are some here in Spain, and they old name has managed to survive the UPS takeover) and got 8 meters of bubble wrap (about 26.2 feet, I didn't do that on purpose).

When Shane was here he'd happened upon a huge box in the street and carried it the 6+ blocks to my house. Upon inspection he said, "Once you take the wheels, pedals, handlebars and downfork off it'll fit perfectly!" Shane builds his own bikes from parts that he buys on ebay and knows how these things work. I am not as mechanically gifted, I have problems with pencil sharpeners. I'd taken off my seatpost before, adjusted my handlebars, gotten my wheels off all by myself, and even seen someone changing a pedal; but that fork thing I wasn't so sure about. I thought, It doesn't add that much more length, I can just leave it on. In typical me fashion I didn't ASK how to take the fork off. I think that's called hubris.

The wheels came off with relatively little effort. The quick release levers put up a little fight and I realized that the open/close lever on my front brakes had been open for God knows how long (probably why my brakes weren't working), but I was off to a good start.

Next the seat post. Came right off with a little help from my handy, dandy bike tool. I'm an ace.

Now for the handlebars. I opened the little screws on the front of the bike and pulled off the handlebars. But the brake and gear cables were still attached to the bike, so they just kind of hung there looking kind of grotesque. Hm, I hadn't thought of that. I decided to just tuck them back against the frame. I knew better than to fuck with cables.

Next, the pedals. I examined the pedals and the crank arm until I found the little screw on the inside of the crank arm that releases the pedals. It took me awhile to find the size allen wrench that fit in perfectly. I stuck the wrench in the little eyelet and pushed. Nothing happened. I pushed even harder and the pedal swung away from me. I braced the pedal with my leg and pushed as hard as I could. The whole frame skidded across the floor. I kept trying to push, occasionally having the allen wrench slip out of its spot and occasionally pausing to look for a different screw to get this damn thing off. I tried the other pedal, same deal. I went and found some WD40 and sprayed the screw like I had a grudge, but to no avail.

Finally I called Silvia. She told me where the tools were kept (9 months living here, and I'd never so much as needed a screw driver!) and I found a standard allen wrench of the right size. "You don't know any boys, do you?"
"What?"
"You know, guys? With big strong hands?"
"No."
"Me neither." This gave me pause, perhaps I am missing something with my preferred lifestyle.

I went back to the bike and spent several more minutes fighting the pedals with my whole body, legs holding bike in place, shin bracing crank arm, and anything above that pressing every ounce of my strength onto that damn allen wrench. I paused to gather my composure. Okay, Claire, I says to myself I says, Okay Claire, you are going to put every ounce of your strength into that allen wrench and it is going to turn. I visualized it turning, then I checked my body position to make sure nothing was going to slip mid-attack, and pushed like my life depended on it. Finally the screw ceded! I rejoyced, filled with self confidence. I believed I could get off that second pedal. I set to work pushing with all my might on the second screw. I was a little scared of the sharp teeth of my chain ring menacing to slice my fingers open if I slipped, but I was lucky. After several minutes and trying several different bike and body positions I heaved a giant grunt and something moved! I thought I'd gotten it past that first big umph and now I just had to twirl it out. I tried to line up the allen wrench in its place again, but it kept falling out. Upon closer inspection of the tip of the tool I saw that my sheer superhuman strength had seared the little corners off the metal. The pedal had BROKEN the allen wrench. ("Allen" seems to be a bad luck word for me this week).

Fuck it, I thought and went to see if the bike would fit in the box with one pedal on. It left a friction dent in the card board, but I could make it fit. I tucked the handlebars (as you will remember were hanging by a thread) under my top tube and pushed it all the way down into the box. Just like Shane said, the damn fork was peeking several inches out of the top of the box. Dammit, how do you take the fork off?

I took a couple of screws out of the handlebar stem and pulled. Nothing happened. I tried pushing. Nothing. I looked for more screws all along the stem. Nope. I turned over the bike. There was a screw that went all the way through holding my brake release in place. That's it! I said, and took out the screw, washer, casing, and all kinds of other things I don't know the name of. The brakes hung down limp like the handlebars. Push, nothing. Pull, nothing. What the FUCK?! I wanted to call Shane but it was only 2:00 am in California, too early, so I went on the internet. I read God-knows-what about using a rubber mallet, which didn't sound too wise to me. Then I read something that said that that little disk at the top of my steering column would come off.
(Mine looks a bit different from the picture, it as a little nipple-like circle in the middle and is slightly raised from the ring-thingys with the screws). Eureka!

So I went back to try to get that thing off. It wouldn't be easy, so I took a screw driver. I tried twisting it, nope. I tried prying it up with a screw driver. I tried shoving the screw driver in the little ring-y thing and pushing it up from underneath. I was so frustrated. I don't know what made me focus my attention on the nipple. I thought it was just there for decoration, but just out of curiosity I poked it with the screwdriver, then I prodded and pried underneath and the most amazing thing happened, it came off and there was a SCREW underneath!!! I felt like I'd discovered burried treasure. I unscrewed the screw and the fork finally came off with a whoe bunch of little pieces (including a steering thing with ball bearings that I was afraid to touch). It seemed like it was covered with more vasaline than a triathlete trying to fit into a too-small wetsuit, but it was OUT! I put back all the little pieces of the steering column and took a break for lunch.

The next step was, as Benson had suggested, getting some bubble wrap and packing tape and going to town. I wrapped up each individual piece in about 2 layers of bubble wrap and closed it up tight with the tape. The frame was hard, especialy bubblewraping the gears and that one damn pedal sticking out, but in the end I got it bubbled up.


For some extra protection I planned to mummify my frame and cover every inch with packing tape. This also seemed like a good idea since the bubble wrap was adding width and I wanted to compress every millimeter that I could. I would be a really bad candidate for an engineering degree, I know. When I finished my bike looked like a giant sting ray.
Please fit, please fit, please fit! It did! I was so excited! I was celebrating my victory and throwing saddles and forks and all sorts of things in the empty slots when I turned around and saw... SHIT! THE WHEELS! I had no bubble wrap left, but I stuck them in just to see if they would fit. Not a snowball's chance in hell. I took off the tires and tubes, but they were still sticking 6 inches out of the top of the box. I wanted to cry. I wanted a beer. I needed more bubble wrap.

After buying the bubble wrap I stopped in at a bike shop to see if they could sell me a bigger box. "Do you have a box that's bigger than 96x74x25?" I asked. The guy showed me the boxes that he had. They were long, sleek, and WAY narrower than my box. "I need something wider," I explained, I couldn't get one of the pedals off and now it's wrapped in about 6 meters of bubble wrap and packing tape."
"You know the left pedal screws off backwards right?" he said. "So that it doesn't come loose while you're pedaling." There are no words for how I felt after that. Stupid? Frustrated? Angry? All of those and then some. Why didn't I just pay someone to do this for me?
"Well anway, the handlebars are thick too," I defended. I explained that they drop bars were sticking off a bit in one direction while the brake hoods stuck out almost as far as the pedal in the other direction.
'What did you do?" He seemed confused. "Well you just need to turn the handlebars all the way to the right and then lower the angle so they fit around your top tube."
"Well I took off the downfork, so it should be even more compact..." I tried to explain.
"You did what?!" It was like I'd told him I'd sawed the thing in half. "Here, let me show you how we pack our bikes." He whipped out a box cutter and opened up a brand new bike. There it was, with the fork still on, handlebars still on (arranged like a U, not in a C like mine), back wheel still on, and the front wheel, seat, and pedals stuglled comfortably along side. It was like watching my own death, looking my own stupidity in the face like that. My heart sank and I promised myself I would never, ever try to figure something out on my own again for as long as I live. I didn't know whether to buy a separate box for my wheels or what. I decided not to think about it any more today.

The next day I wrapped up the wheels and stared at the box sullenly. Then I set to trying all possible wheel-frame combinations. Just when i thought I'd tried everything, I finally found a way to get both wheels in on the bottom and then shove the frame in. I may have killed a couple of spokes, but it fit! Well, sort of... the box was bowing pretty heavily, but it was in there and I could close it! There was even room for my pump!


I stuffed crumpled up newspaper into all the little nooks and crannies to keep stuff from moving around too much. The only thing left to do was to close up the box. The industrial staples were giving in several places and the top wasn't squarely closed, so I thought the safest bet would be to mummify the whole thing like I had the frame. The end result (finished only 3 hours before I had to wake up for my flight) was this:

(Coke can added for size comparison)

It took some six hours or more when all was said and done, but I packed up my bike ALL by myself. I might even rebuild it myself, but I think I'll let a mechanic take a good hard look at it before I try to ride anywhere!

Wasn't meant to be

My friend Dipika (who is not from California, but does do yoga) believes that if you want something bad enough, The Universe will align itself so that you will get what you want. But, if you don't in fact get what you want, The Universe has other plans for you, and in the end you'll understand why. I pick and choose pieces of this philosophy as they're convenient to my life, but since I value her opinion, I at least give it some thought when I've been disappointed.

Today, The Universe didn't want me to go to my race (today, as usual, the part of The Universe will be played by public transportation). I was slated to do a little Aquathlon (Aquathon? I swear I've heard the word in English, but have no idea what it is???) in the town of El Prat de Llobregat right next to Barcelona. El Prat is far and away THE ugliest place in all of northeastern Spain. It is home to little more than the airport, the shipyards, the industrial areas and warehouses, drug dealers who decide to live where there is little police surveillance, and empty lots left over from when it was a farming town and Barcelona had no industry. It's so ugly that I can't even find an image on google to give you an idea of what a dump the place is. But they have a tri club who put on an Aqu... a triathlon minus the biking, and I'd committed to go.

I wasn't too pumped to do the race, especially since Shane showed up on my doorstep Tuesday morning (8 days early) after spending all his money in Italy and it was all I could do to get ONE training session in all week. But I'd sworn up and down to my club that there was absolutely, positively no reason I would not be at this race. I meant it. I'm sick of flaking.

But then The Universe made her debut, this time dressed in the costume of Iberia airlines. Shane wanted to change his ticket and go home as soon as possible since he was broke. We went to the Iberia headquarters to make arrangements where The Universe told him that there were no available seats from Chicago to San Francisco until the 11. "I don't want to fly on September 11," Shane said gravely.
"Ah, si, es veritat" (Oh yeah, that's right), said The Universe, who in this scene was being played by a middle-aged Catalan woman. The Universe told us that we would have to talk to American Airlines to try to change the itinerary since his ticket wouldn't allow him to change his rout via Iberia. The Universe spent the next day hopping back and forth around American Airlines, Iberia, and Expedia.com (making some stops to fuck us over by not putting us through on some international phone calls) until finally she settled down in El Prat at the Barcelona Airport. Finally, face to face, The Universe granted Shane a ticket for Saturday morning, just in time to take off at the same time as my race started.

Now the plan was for Shane to carry a suitcase home for me which my dad would pick up on his business trip to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. However, The Universe quickly changed costumes in order to play the part of the board of executives at my dad's job, which was in the midst of major layoffs. Dad got the axe, which meant no trip to San Francisco, which meant that instead of a suitcase I would be sending a self-addressed box home with Shane. I bought a box and packed it up with winter clothes, CDs, and a couple of trophies I couldn't bring myself to part with. When I picked it up it was HEAVY (16.6kg/36.6lb) and unwieldy. I figured if I made a handle out of packing tape the box wouldn't make it a block. I figured I would either have to cough up cab fare to the airport or go with Shane myself.

That night I sat down to look at the race's web site and figure out how long I would need to get there. I figured I could just take my race stuff to the airport and go directly from there. However, The Universe (possessing the body of the El Prat Triathlon Club's webmaster) made the site really hard to navigate. When I looked to find directions to the start, all I could find was a screenshot of a close-up satellite image of the beach.

From top left to bottom right: "Transition Area 1, 2, 3, Triathlete parking, swim start".

This was not a link. I looked all over the web site for an address and there was none. Finally I was reduced to zooming in all the way on google maps and looking at the El Prat coast200m at a time until I found something that matched my picture. After a little more investigation I found out that where I was looking was in the extreme northwestern corner tucked under the airport (Barcelona is southeast). In order to get there, I was going to have to cross all of Barcelona, all of downtown El Prat, all of industrial El Prat, and go around the airport. On top of that, neither of the town's train stations were anywhere close, that is, unless I wanted to walk around the airport. Here is a crude map to give you an idea:

I plunked a virtual stickpin on where the start was and looked for driving directions to my little stickpin from my house. The first directions I got told me to take a ferry. I found this even a bit over the top for The Universe, but then I realized that it was directions from the street Sant Antoni Maria Claret 121 (my address) on the island of Mallorca. I looked at the Sant Antoni Maria Claret 121s that there were all over the world, but none of them were my street (it's a main street!!!). Finally I got working directions which ended in the following instructions, "Take a left, take a right, take a right, take a left, take a left," there were no street names of ANYTHING in the last 6 directions or so! I took a few more looks at the map and figured I could do it on my bike... until I saw the freeways that made up about half of the rout. Crap, there's got to be another way around this! I went to bed and decided I'd deal with it in the morning.

Meanwhile, on his final night in Barcelona The Universe led Shane to a sushi party where pretty girls convinced Shane to drink too much wine and stay out until 3:30 in the morning (only an hour and a half before his 5:00 wake up call). When his alarm went off at 5:00, he didn't get up. At 5:10 I poked him a few times, "Shane? Shane?" No response. At 5:25 I turned on the light and shook him saying, "It's time to get up now."
"I just need to rest a little more!" He whined. At 5:45 I finally got him to get his ass out of bed. I'd already put on clean pants and sat down to read my email and drink coffee while I waited. Only he didn't tell me when he was almost ready, and I rushed to put on my shoes and get out the door while he held the elevator for me. We walked down to the metro station, taking turns heaving the huge box and his suitcase filled with wine past all kinds of drunk people and a couple of whores ("yoo-hoo, guapo!" a whore cooed, waving her hand in front of the box that was perched on my shoulder to try to get Shane's attention). Meanwhile, The Universe was settling in 3 stops away in the station that goes to the airport. We schlepped with the box through the longest transfer in all of Barcelona (a half kilometer hike underground) and went to buy our special tickets for the airport.

When we got to the ticket machine The Universe was cleverly hidden inside. I reached into my pockets, "Shit! Shane! I left all my money in my pants from yesterday!" I tried with my debit card: DE-nied! I went to another machine, where The Universe was also waiting for me: DE-nied! I went up to the window, where The Universe said, "We only take cash. If the machine won't take your credit card, we can't either." Shane only had enough money on him to get his own ticket. We tried my American credit card and also Shane's even though I knew it wasn't going to work, "We are unable to process your request," paaaa-tewey! it spit the cards out at us. Finally I just had to bum the money and we went down to wait for the train (when we got to the airport I found some money in my wallet, so that took care of that).

The Universe finally delivered us at the airport at about 7:00 for Shane's 9:30 flight, but we still had to wait in line to get the box wrapped in a huge sheet of Saran Wrap. I'll never understand why Europeans are so keen on this practice since customs is likely to rip it off anyway, but my precious box needed a little extra padding since it was already dinged up pretty good. The Universe (back in its comfortable Iberia Airlines uniform) had arranged for some 6 (huge) flights all going to the American Continent to leave at the same time, and allotted them only 4 check-in desks, so the line spanned the width of the terminal. While Shane waited in line I went to buy him some water and a sandwich and looked at my watch. 7:30. The transition area was to open at 9:15 for a 9:45 start. It would take me an hour to get home (in the end I didn't bring my race stuff with me) and another hour or so to get to the start, that is, if I didn't get lost.

What kind of jerk sends their friend half way around the world with a box that weighs a ton so he can pay to ship it half way back again and then leaves him in the check-in line? I counted all the good excuses that I had not to go: friend unexpectedly needs to go to the airport, no transportation, lousy and dangerous bike commute, the chance that I'd get lost anyway, the fact that my club doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about me, my glands that felt kind of swolen... and decided to wait it out with Shane. On the way home I thought about the online conversation I'd had with my cousin last night while I was looking for directions. "It's not worth it," she said. "Your directions are telling you to take ferries and unnamed streets, of course you're going to get lost. You only have 2 weeks left and those guys kind of sound like jerks. Screw 'em." All the good reasons didn't keep me from feeling like The Universe was being a bit of a bitch though. I'd DNSed in more triathlons than I actually participated in!

My stats for this year:
Catalan duathlon champs: Did Not Start because of travel issues.
Tri-Trials Barcelona: Did it, but no results were recorded because I didn't get my chip.
Witch City Triathlon (Salem, MA): Done and dusted.
Nutmeg State Sprint (Washington, CT): Got there late, but managed to pull it off.
Banyoles Olympic Triathlon: Did Not Start because of travel issues.
El Prat Aqua... Thingy: Did Not Start.

When I came home I thought, I'm ready for an off-season anyway, and climbed back into bed.

A montage of recent occurances and revelations

I don't have any material/brilliant thoughts for a complete blog, but there are a bunch of little things floating around in my head. Seeing as I get on a plane tomorrow back to the US, I'll give more of a summary of what's been brewing in my noggin.

Results released for Sunday's Fucked-Up Triathlon Extravaganza

After obsessively checking the results page from Sunday's Crash Course in Xenophobia I finally found the results posted on the Catalan version of the page. I can't be sure it wasn't just a "happy accident" that when I opened the Catalan version of the page for the first time, the results were there when they hadn't been on the Spanish version (because I didn't check the Spanish version for several hours afterwards), but it should be noted that the page loads in Spanish by default. But, let's just assume they were being elitist assholes.
After comparing my unofficial data with the site's, I found that I would have come in 34th out of 67 female athletes, exactly in the 51st percentile. The most significant discovery from my scouring of the website every 5 minutes, however, had nothing to do with me. The bitch who looked down so mightily on my aero bars (evil number 12, an unlucky number for me in billiards) is actually the 3rd ranked triathlete in all of Catalonia at the moment. She finished just over 10 minutes in front of me, 3rd in the overall female results for this race, and her name is Mar. I have declared war on this tri slut and plan to beat her into the ground next season if I'm here. Mark my words, Mar, your ass is grass!
In other news, the chip confusion was all my fault. It figures. I'm always a bit of an airhead, but in general things aren't as well explained here. It turns out that I was supposed to have gone to federation HQ to pick up my chip in advance, but since it didn't occur to me to ask, how was I to know?

Barcelona in the dark since Monday morning

A major power line somewhere in the city fell at 11am on Monday morning, causing subsequent short-circuits and dramatic explosions in 4 of Barcelona's prominent power circuit hubs. 80,000 houses and businesses were without electricity on Monday, and 50,000 continue without power tonight. Only 60% of the city's traffic lights have been restored at this time (37 hours after the original incident). It is estimated that normalcy won't be restored until sometime Friday (which, knowing Barcelona, may be Friday of next week). Hospitals are running on generators and the federal courts just had to switch to battery power this afternoon.
The city is in some sort of subdued chaos. What else can you do but keep going? We were among the lucky ones to not lose power, but half of our block has not been so lucky. To the right is one of the few stop lights that still works in western Barcelona, but you have to walk half a mile to find another one that works. On our block only one business has not lost power- the psychic downstairs, leading me to believe in her powers. Many businesses have decided to close including BOTH my gyms (between a 20 and 30 minute walk away each), but it's amazing who has decided to stay open. "Do you want to buy furniture in the dark?" "Come buy our fruit, we have a generator!" "Come to the Kwick-E-Mart, we have no power, but we'll charge you more for the beers in the fridge anyway." The pizza shop downstairs stayed open in order to make some revenue off the cigarette vending machine, and kept someone on the job just in case the lights came on.
Yesterday evening I saw the neighborhood drunk standing on the sidewalk with his head against the wall smoking a cigarette. He looked in despair. I understood when I looked across the street and saw the bar, HIS bar, with its doors shut. Tonight people took to the traditional manifestation of social unrest, begun in 2002 with the invasion of Iraq and instrumental in the election of the current Spanish president 2 days after the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004. For 30 minutes people stood on their balconies with pots and spoons and banged away constantly to show their disapproval with the situation. Had I lost power too I would have been the first one out there with pots, pans and whistles.

Claire lands on US Soil tomorrow (7/11) at 9:00 pm EST

At 9:00 Eastern Standard Time on July 26, 2007 I will land in Boston Logan International Airport for my longest stay on American soil since 2005. Allowing 2 hours for delays, 45 minutes for customs (they always have a lot of questions after "And how long were you in Barcelona?"), 30 minutes in baggage claim, 10 minutes walking to the parking deck, 15 minutes for my mom to figure out the parking ticket validation machine, 5 minutes to find the car, and 90 minutes for my mom to drive home at 5 miles per hour I should be safely at home. I should be home at 2:15 in the morning barring exceptional circumstances. Wish me luck that there aren't further delays!

Incoming!

Did you know that I'm Italian? I've always been Italian in that my father's mother is Italian and his father had Italian blood from the Ellis Island era; but now, I'm Italian like from Italy. I have an ID number and everything, but still no document to prove it... but we'll get to that.

If you're pressed for time then you can skip over the small type and move on to the big news below...

As you may or may not know, for the past year and a half I've been living as an (whispered) illegal immigrant here in Spain. What I haven't shared with all you people is that I've been working for much longer, well over 2 years, to get my paperwork sorted out. When I came I thought, 'This is Spain, not Texas, and I'm American. No problem.' It IS a problem, as it turns out. Which is why I've been driving myself crazy and starving to death teaching English, because no other industry will hire an illegal.

I've had a couple of minor heart attacks in this time, like the time that the Spanish department of work came to inspect one of my classes, the time they questioned me for 20 minutes in the Amsterdam airport, and five uncomfortable trips through customs in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

I tried everything to get my papers worked out quicker. I considered getting married. I tried to find a business that would sponsor me for a visa (there were a few that were willing to do it, but then called me back after a couple of days saying, "How about you just call us when you have your papers sorted out?" - Thanks a lot, assholes!). I thought about going back to school; went to the university to get some information about visas and wound up walking out with another English class. I talked to a lawyer (actually, no, I talked to friends who were talking to lawyers) and found out that unless I was a surgeon or civil engineer then there wasn't going to be any amnesty for me. I even tried the idea that was too simple to work, just renewing my ID from when I was a student here. No dice.

Meanwhile, since early spring of 2005 I've been trying to become Italian. With a passport from any EU country you can work legally in any other EU country. It's like having a driver's license from Montana and working in Florida. You see, Italy has this law that if you have Italian lineage on your father's side and you can come up with all the documents to prove it, then you can be Italian too. I told my parents this in 2004 and they laughed at me. Then, in beginning of 2005 my dad called me and said, "Did you know that if you have Italian family then you can get an Italian passport?" The conversation went like this:
Dad- I was just talking to Bill (Something Italian) from work and he said something about having an Italian passport. He said that you can get an Italian passport if you have Italian ancestors.
Claire- I know, I told you that last year and you laughed at me.
Dad- Oh, well I'm sure you didn't have all the information.
Claire- Yes I did, I told you just as you're telling me now.
Dad- Oh, well I was thinking maybe it would be a good idea...
Claire- I know, that's what I said last year. I even sent you a link to the embassy's web page, didn't you read it?

So we started the process. I planned to move in about 8 months, that's enough right? Some of the documents were hard to find though, and my parents wound up paying $150 per document to something like a private investigation agency to get some documents. Other things were hard to find too, such as:

• My grandmother's birth certificate from Milan, 1924. (This required a couple of emails and phone calls to our Italian cousins who don't like Americans and don't speak English).
  
• My mother's birth certificate, the long form. You can get the short form through the mail, but to get the long form you have to go to the hospital yourself. This chore took two day trips to Manhattan.
• My dad's birth certificate from the Hackensack, NJ town hall that changed addresses without leaving a forwarding address. It took 2 months to track them down.
  
• My grandfather's death certificate from Florida.
• My grandparents' divorce certificate, which hadn't been seen since the 1970's.
• My brother and I had to officially change our names since our middle names are our mom's maiden name. In Italy you can't have 2 family names, and therefore we had to officially change our names in a country that still had no official record of us.
• My grandmother's valid US passport, which hadn't been valid for 10 years. So my dad had to cart my her out of the nursing home to get passport photos, then to the US post office to order a renewal.
• My grandmother's naturalization papers, which she said were somewhere in the apartment she sold 4 years ago.
  

Finally we rounded everything up and took it in to the consulate where we found out 2 things:

1. I had to present the papers IN PERSON, so I would have to come home from "California" where I was on an "extended vacation".
   
2. We had all the wrong forms. All the certificates (birth, death, marriage) had to have an official stamp on them called an apostele (or something like that), so it was back to town halls in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Florida.
   

And then, in March we had it all together and I flew home for 3 days to hand in the paperwork. "You can probably come in with passport photos in about 10 days," the Signore at the consulate said. April went by, no answer. May: no answer. In June we finally got a letter in Italian. I can understand Italian, but I couldn't understand this damn letter. I understood the words, but not the content. There were numbers and acronyms everywhere and a bunch of ambiguous past participles. When my brother got the same letter later that week he went in to the consulate to get some answers. What they told him: we're finally Italian, we have an ID number, and only need to get the passport to have proof!

So last week my brother finally got his passport. My brother is now Italian and we know that there are no more hoops for me to jump through. So...

I ' M C O M I N G H O M E F O R 3 W E E K S !

That's right, folks! My neoprene-free ass will be in the United States of America from July 25 until August 14. So here's the real reason for me writing this blog: Who wants to do stuff with me?!

Unfortunately, for a place where I lived for 18 years of my life I have surprisingly few resources in the Boston area. I will have no pool to swim in (unless I find a masters team willing to take me in) and so I'm down for all kinds of open water swimming (Cape Cod anyone?). My bike will be my mom's old bike from the 1970s which I will deck out with clipless pedals, a bottle cage and nothing more. I have no idea where people go for long bike rides in Boston?! The only thing that I'll have that won't be ghetto is lots of lovely New England roads and trails to run through (and FINALLY a track!). I won't always have a car at my disposal since the car I learned to drive on, the Battleship (born in 1992) was just sold to some friends for $1 and I'll be sharing a car with my mom, but hey, I can get around that.

However I WANT TO TRAIN AND RACE! Does anyone know any triathlons/open water swims/running races in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or New York in the next 3 weeks that still have open registration? Also, other than the car constraint, I can be flexible about schedules since my only commitment in those 3 weeks will be 2 mornings in the Italian consulate.

My parents' house is in Winchester, which is a small town about 20 minutes north of Boston (inside 495), so if you are within like 100 miles of there, let's get together. Who's coming with me?! C'mon, it'll be fun!

Hey there, Waldo Watchers!

I'm always extremely satisfied and impressed with my workouts, but it's so hard to see results in the short-term and so hard to keep track in the long term. One bad day in a bench mark or a bad race makes the whole season look like crap. Since over the next year or so I'm going to be concentrating on volume I decided I'm going to do a virtual tour of certain parts of the world to keep myself motivated:

I'm going to swim from Barcelona to Rome. I'm going to bike from the northern tip of Newfoundland to the southern tip of Chile. I'm going to run from New York to Los Angeles. Clearly I'm not really going to do this, but I'm going to stretch my high-tech know-how and trace my "progress" on 3 google maps (I have such a geeky obsession with maps!) which I will put a link to on the sidebar of my training log (see link in the top right corner of this page).

This continuing effort, an enormous triathlon if you will, began on April 14,2007 (a day of no real significance, just a day I got disgusted with myself and decided I needed some extra inspiration), and will have a cut-off time of 8:59 am on May 16, 2008: my 25th birthday and 2 days before Lanzarote.

Routs in real space would be impossible. That's why I've devised a superpower for myself: I can bike across all surfaces and I can run over short bodies of water such as streams and small lakes. Also, I will not always be able to measure distances, for example, I'll assume that I go an average of 25 kmph on the indoor trainer in the gym, and will do my best to guess running distances. Since I am also doing this with a combination of the high-tech services offered by google, and the low-tech services of my tape measure against the screen, not all distances will be accurate. Here are the approximate distances I plan to cover:

Swimming To Rome: 844 km
Northern tip of Newfoundland- Southern tip of Argentina = 8,667 mi
New York-Los Angeles = 2,150 mi http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&channel=s&lr=lang_es&om=1&hl=en&z=2&msid=118209305642889227553.00000111fee9dce11baa0&msa=0