Changed a bike tire today

Professional bike mechanics must have the strongest thumbs imaginable. People must think they are constantly hitchhiking.

Biked halfway to work today. I think next time it might be easier to just bike all the way - leaving the former-railroad-bed bikepath for the bumpily-paved hills of Tokay was torture for my out-of-shape quads. And then I was way early for my bus out of paranoia. Google Bikes says the full ride to work would take an hour, but I am dubious.

There was a 75-year-old man who passed me on the path. He was impressive.

An inventory of wondrous things

bicycle with fresh-pumped tires, trued wheels, oiled chain, sturdy rack - 1

pounds of camping gear/books comfortably carried in backpack/on bike rack - 30

dead raccoons - 3

dead weasels - 1

very very very fallingapartanatomyallvisible dead cats - 1

cornfields aging green and yellow like grasshoppers - 20-30

old cemetaries hidden in the cornfields - 2

cats almost run over - 1

red ants boiling out of the ground - thousands

red ant babyqueens boiling out of the ground - dozens

sandwiches eaten - 3

mosquito bites - 3

pages read - 200

pieces of wood burned - 7

cost of burning 7 pieces of wood - $4

degrees dropped between sunset and 2a.m. - ugh, lots.

adequateness of sleeping bag - not.

blue heron, barely moving, 3 feet away - 1

other people who got to see this heron - 0

autumn leaves fallen on the water- 235

difference in the sound of a kayak pushing through open water versus through heavy layer of duckweed - whoah.

people who nod or wave because you are on the same road going in opposite directions, perhaps about to discover some wondrous thing they have just departed - 5-7

Slapdash August update. Holy cow, it's August.

From the life update I sent my South African editor-friend. For people I am unable to update in person (sorry Aunt Meg), this is what you get.

"Baraboo is slow but I get to write as long as I think I need, and
generally pursue whatever ideas I want also. I go hiking after
work because I can. Farm dogs chase me when I go on bike rides. I love
how much contrast of location my life has seen in the last year.

I'm trying to decide the best way to befriend a conservationist I
interviewed last week. Baraboo is so small, I am paranoid that any
friendship whatsoever is a conflict of interest. Okay, not quite, but
it is something that weirds me out."

I am also signing up for a Spanish class in the fall, and attempting to (finally) get into some literacy tutoring. Sending poetry to magazines. Starting a collaborative book project a friend if I can ever get it together to call her back. Reading pulp fiction from the 1940s. Sleeping through any chance of joining the running club. Spending a lot of money on gas and filet-o-fish at McDonald's on my pell-mell scurries between work and fun. I know, eew, McDonald's.

Go see do

I bought a bicycle on Friday. It's pretty sexy for a really basic mountain bike. Saturday I rode it up and down a mountain, so now it doesn't look quite as embarrassingly shiny. There is something giddying about summer starting (again), a good bike, a million places to go.


I've been asked to post more photos (sorry, Mom), so here are some examples of these million places to go.


Silvermine Nature Reserve & mountain bike trail.



Llandudno Beach


Llandudno Beach with dog


Hout Bay from above

Getting around

I've been getting prickly lately at how hard it is to get anywhere without a car in this city. Not only is this a sprawling city with a lot of really good stuff in the suburbs (e.g. mountains, beaches, forests), but there are definitely places a person shouldn't be on foot after a certain time of day. Or before it. I'm conscious of being a small female more than I ever was in the States. As one friend put it, "You're at the abused end of the food chain." I get indignant and then call a cab. I think I know every cab driver in town, at this point.

I'm in the process of hunting down a used bike that I could purchase and then sell before I leave. This isn't the best city for biking, and I definitely yearn for ANYTHING like Madison's trails and bike lanes and pissed-off-but-used-to-it drivers, but a bike would widen my range for solitary wandering. Not to mention slow the inevitable hemorrhaging of my bank account.

Around Thanksgiving, I'm going to Victoria Falls via Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia with my roommate and whoever else we can find. 14 days overland, camping and driving in an enormous 4X4 with 20 fellow travelers. It'll be a real honest-to-goodness-and-terribly-colonialist budget safari. I'm in the process of researching things to do on the way to Swakopmund, since we're leaving a few days early to allow a slow jog up the coast. I'm pretty excited.