One-Legged Dancing

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I don’t dance.

But when Nora was a baby, and she had a hard time sleeping, I would take her into the living room and put on music softly and cradle her in my arms, dancing around the room.

The record I remember playing most – it was my favorite at the time, I guess – was Bonnie Raitt’s Takin’ My Time, which I think was in Lissa’s half of the record collection back in the early days of our merged lives.

Well I’m guilty, honey I’m guilty, and I’ll be guilty for the rest of my life
How come I never do, what I’m s’posed to do
Nothin’ I try to do ever turns out right.

The closest I come to dancing these days is when I’m listening to music on the headphones while I crank away on a stationary bike. I’ve learned a sort of dance step to the music, altering the resistance and the cadence to match the tempo. Which is more of a challenge than it might sound.

Doubly so now that I can only pedal with one leg. Instead of the smooth shimmy, the machine makes this kind of wheezing noise as it spins on the left pedal downstroke, then coasts (clickclickclickclick) as the right pedal rolls through – “No resistance, no weight.” But I’m getting it. It’s the best I’ve got right now, so it’s what I’ll do.

Tonight, I got off the bike all by myself. Lissa was there to spot for me, but no help. Woot.

Sunshine Spin

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In honor of Lance, and my goofball friend Barbara, and that guy with the cast, I reprise Bonus Time:

Back at the finish, we sat around on the lawn in the shade of a big tree for a while. The guy on the beach cruiser was there, grinning, and Charlie and Katie rolled in the grass.

Later in the afternoon, everbody got back together at the park for drawings for a bunch of swag. Barbara, the organizer, called bib numbers and if we were there, prize action ensued. There were bike tires and Harley Davidson beer glasses and water bottles and all manner of goods donated by the event’s sponsors. I won a helmet and explained to Barbara that it was destined for the head of my cancer survivor wife.

The guy on the old beach cruiser came up to collect a prize – I wish I remembered what – and Barbara pointed out that he is a cancer survivor, one year out. So now I understand the grin, and the fealty to a beautiful old Schwinn beach cruiser and the way he didn’t seem to care about the discomfort of riding with a big cast on his arm. This guy is on bonus time.

If you’re in Albuquerque and you’ve got a bike, you could do worse with your Sunday morning a week hence than riding in this year’s Sunshine Spin. Barbara Tyner, the organizer, an artist and bike racer and impish angel, uses it to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. She understands the importance of living strong and celebrating survival and the next great thing after you get through the current one when the current one might suck. She understands bonus time, and whether you hammer the long ride or just take the leisurely river ride, it’s a chance to celebrate being alive on the morning of July 17.

No Monsoon. Yet.

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We’re on the cusp of the normal start of the monsoons here (July 7 is the average onset date for Albuquerque), but it’s hot as hell and dry and there’s no monsoon in sight.

We had a bit of a false start two weeks ago with a slug of moisture and some big thunderstorms, but things have dried out, with a big ridge of high pressure blocking the moisture from the south that we need to get the summer storms rolling. A couple of things I watch: Rain in Mexico. Watch for the storms to start firing up over the Sierra Madre Occidental, creeping north up Mexico’s central mountains. You can see that as of this writing they’re still stuck quite far south. The other thing to keep your eye on is the dewpoint. It really needs to settle in above 50 – the higher the better. I also keep an eye on Tucson, both because it’s a harbinger for us (usually they get monsoons first) and because I have friends down there who are as fascinated by the monsoons as I am.

Lance Armstrong’s War

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Stuff I wrote elsewhere: my review of Daniel Coyle’s “Lance Armstrong’s War”:

It is a story that would read like a good novel if it weren’t true. A remarkable cast of characters light up the tale. There is the gritty and lovable American Tyler Hamilton (“How could someone who loves his dog so much cheat?” I said to a friend after Hamilton was accused last year of blood doping.), the wildly talented but inevitably unpredictable German Jan Ullrich, the fearless Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov, the cocky Mennonite Floyd Landis, the teammate who rode at Armstrong’s side in victory.

The complex and dark world of European pro cycling provides an almost Dickensian backdrop? a hardscrabble existence where most cyclists make a pittance compared to other pro athletes, where injury rates dwarf those of any other sport.

Injury Report

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The knee’s on the mend, but the annoyance level with not be able to put weight on my right leg is growing. Another four to six weeks of that, I fear.

Back to work all week, working slightly shortened days so I can get enough time in my “bendy buddy” leg-mover machine. So it’s pretty much get up, bendy buddy, work, then back in the bendy buddy ’til bedtime. Inspried by Daniel, I’ll try to get some snaps of the inside of my knee up this weekend.

Math Whiz

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Stuff I wrote elsewhere

I love to write about interesting people, and Bob Cordwell is one of the most interesting people I’ve run across in a while:

“Think of a circle with a lot of points on it? in fact, 79 points.” Eighteen-year-old Bob Cordwell stands at a chalkboard heading cheerfully into terrain that would make most of us uncomfortable.

For Cordwell, though, mathematics is a familiar landscape, like the keyboard for a piano prodigy, or the hardwood for a teenage basketball star.

“That’s a fairly sad circle of points,” he said with a laugh at the lopsided orb he drew, picking at it to smooth out the curve.

Points on a circle, and the lines joining them, are central to a mathematical proof the recent Manzano High School valedictorian worked out last summer.

“Obviously,” Cordwell said, “there have to be copies of every edge length.”

Well, no, it isn’t obvious to most of us. But Cordwell’s gift, and his charm, is that it is to him.

Fleck’s Tour Picks

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I know this is gonna sound cheap, because the Prologue’s already history, but here are my Tour podium picks (I swear I announced before the racing started, Mom and Dad are my witnesses):

  1. Lance Armstrong
  2. Alexandre Vinokourov
  3. Ivan Basso

Strong riders with strong teams. If all it took was a strong rider, I might have picked Floyd Landis higher (a sentimental nod to my Pennsylvania roots). And yes, I picked Vino ahead of Ullrich before I saw Ullrich’s performance in today’s time trial.