On Your Left

I bought a small throat mic for my Olympus DS-2 voice recorder. I want to be able to talk to it while riding my bike without having to stop and rummage around my messenger bag looking for the recorder. I set the recorder up to be voice activated, put the mic on my t-shirt collar, place the recorder in my pocket and head on out. I am not certain whether I look more suspicious talking into a recorder or just talking to myself.

So I am now listening to the results of my first experiment. I recorded a ride to Microsoft. I didn’t talk much until the end of the ride, where I had a couple of cool thoughts to record. We’ll hear them at the end of the recording.

The recording is 24 minutes long. I know I only spoke (to myself) for about two. I am wondering what the rest of the time is filled with.

0:00 - The unmistakeable sound of me clomping in bike shoes on a softwood floor. I am moving my bike and locking the door. I can hear myself leave the house then go back in to get my helmet. Putting on the helmet makes lots of noise. There’s lots of heavy breathing as I carry my bike down the 45 stairs to the street. I hear myself click into the cleats. This should be over now and on to the good stuff.

4:39 – I get on the road. The sound of the freewheel is loud – it is a Chris King hub that “rolls good with angry bee sound”. As I approach Nickerson I can hear the sounds of the heavy traffic. I push the button for the pedestrian signal. I hear the traffic noise change as I ride across the Fremont Bridge. It isn’t supposed to be recording all this traffic. I must have it set too sensitive.

9:23 – I say “On your right,” as I pass someone.
10:53 “On your left.”
10:59 “On your left.” Ok, I am going to abbreviate this to OYL.
14:08 – OYL
14:30 – I say “On your…” and then it tails off. I think this is because I said it too late and I was past them before I got to the left part. Oh well, it is the thought that counts.
15:06 – OYL
15:34 – OYL
15:53 – OYL
16:35 – OYL
16:55 – OYL OYL OYL OYL OYL OYL.. I am realizing that for most of my ride all I am going to say is On Your Left.

21:45 – The crossing near the old Albertsons goes “ding” to help the people from the nearby old folks home cross the road. This is only a quarter of the way through the ride yet I am near the end of the recording.

24:54 – Recording ends. Aarrgh!

Lesson of the day - most of the time I pass people on their left.

Steve and Brent Ride to Subway

Steve and I are on the phone, talking about a bike ride. “Don’t bring the fixie,” he says. This means he’s going to go fast. We meet up at Gasworks Park and ride along the Burke-Gilman Trail. I’ve ridden the B-G a lot but I still ride there because it is pretty and I’m less likely to get squashed by a car.

The ride has to destination. We just ride. I don’t have any water bottle cages on my bikes so I stop at every water fountain to drink. I know where they are. Steve always offers me his water but I refuse. If I’m going to be dumb enough to not carry water then it is my responsibility to fill up along the way. Water stop number one is just past Ti Cycles, famed for their Titanium bikes, although part of me feels that a Titanium bike is like having unidirectional speaker cables. Get over it.

This ride Steve needs to pay a visit to the bathroom. There’s a park halfway to the top of the lake so we turn into it. I’ve never been here before. This park is on the lake, there’s an area for kids to paddle in the water. There’s plenty of space and not many people. There’s also a water fountain. Another one to add to the list – water stop number two.

I count the gulps as I drink. Twenty gulps. On a hot day I drink thirty. I used to just drink a lot of gulps then break for air. If I’m already breathing hard this doesn’t work so I figured out a system where I gulp, breathe in, gulp, breathe out, repeat. I think I’m odd for doing this, but it works for me.

At the top of the Lake we keep on going. At this point I know I am eating into the afternoon. The ride to the top of the lake and back is about two hours and I haven’t turned around yet. Water stop number three is here, but it is closed for a few months as they renovate the little park it inhabits.

As we keep riding we pass onto the ‘Sammamish River Trail’. This confused me at first. The B-G used to go all the way to Marymoor Park but they renamed it at some point recently and forgot to tell me. So when I passed the sign for the SRT I figured I must have taken a wrong turn and it took me fifteen minutes to unfigure it.

The SRT has much nicer pavement than the B-G. Maybe this is intended to highlight the spiritual differences between the Eastside and Westside, like changes in road surface as you pass from England to Scotland. Although I have driven from England to Scotland, expecting the road to get rough and potholed and inhabited by wild Haggis but instead the road quality improved. The Scots were making McAdam proud.

Water stop number four is a crescent shaped structure with a map of the B-G and SRT inlaid on the concrete outside the toilet block. Two Titanium Serottas are parked there. The Eastside has nice bicycles. Continuing on we pass a salmon watching area. Yes, people are watching salmon swim up the Sammamish River. Good for them. We race by.

Water stops number five and six are by sports fields and close enough together that there’s little need to stop there. We overtake a couple. He’s riding a Davidson, made in Seattle and a nice shade of red. I say “Nice bike,” and ride on. He smiles.

As we get to Marymoor Park we have been gone about two hours, maybe more. I might know where all the water stops are but I don’t bring food either and I have no idea where the food stops are on the SRT. Marymoor Park is near Redmond Town Center and there’s plenty of food there. I didn’t bring a bike lock so one of us will have to guard the bikes while the other gets food.

Despite my hunger we must first find water. Marymoor Park must have water stop number seven, so we ride around and look. We ride into a cluster of baseball/softball pitches and there see something unexpected yet welcome. A Subway. There’s a franchise of Subway in the middle of Marymoor Park. I join the line while Steve guards the bikes from the hordes of thirteen year old soccer girls. One twelve inch meatball sandwich later and I’m fueled enough to head back.

But not fueled enough. At water stop number five is a concession stand that is open. Hundreds of school-age kids and parents are milling around watching various soccer games. I buy chocolate. There are bags of chips sitting out in the open on stands. It remind me of something Kevin’s sister said when visiting us in Seattle and seeing all the bunches of flowers outside Metropolitan Market – if this was Australia they’d all be stolen.

Back on the Seattle side of the lake a pedestrian motions us to slow down. We look ahead and someone is sitting in the middle of the path. A protest? As we pass it becomes clear that a cyclist has knocked down a pedestrian. As we dawdle past he scene two policemen arrive and ask some dude standing there, “Are you the cyclist?” I hear him say yes. We leave the sad scene.

The next few miles are up a gentle slope and we don’t talk much. We maintain our pace up the hill. I can feel it working my legs hard, the effect magnified after four hours of riding, and making me thirsty. In this state I don’t look around at the view or admire the trees or feel the wonder of cycling, I just want a drink. At the top of the hill I smile – water stop number one is close. This is my favourite part of the ride. I’m thirsty, the wind is at my back, I am going downhill towards the water fountain and the track is wide with few pedestrians. Life is good.

Alain de Botton Highlights the Fear of Wasting my Life

Saturday afternoon and I’m on the Gunnar. The Gunnar is my commuter bike, a cyclocross frame set up to be a pothole-diving, car-dodging fast city bike. The frame is in high-visibility black with a couple of dark green bits for hubs, headset and skewers. It looks it came out of some factory in military industrial complex. I ride the Gunnar if it is going to be wet or I have to ride a long way. On Saturday the clouds were thick and the forecast said “Seattle in October”.

I am riding to the Seattle Public Library. If I ride my ddn8r fixie down Dexter I have to spin but on the Gunnar I can change gears to something nice and tall and put the hammer down. As usual, I envision car doors opening into my path as I fly down the hill. Maybe it adds to the thrill.

Downtown I am riding up Fifth Avenue. Seattle is hilly and Fifth is no exception. I get to the front at each stoplight. There’s always an open lane on one side or other and I sneak into it. As the light goes green I sprint off, and I can beat most vehicles. A lot of this sprinting is uphill. I am breathing heavily. I park under the Library by the security station, figuring that should be safer, although having seen ‘Bike Thief’ I have my doubts.

I am twenty minutes early in the lecture room. I figure I should read a book. I have a pannier full of Alain de Botton books and one I haven’t finished yet. But since I am sitting waiting for a lecture by Alain himself, I’m feeling self conscious. If I read “The Architecture of Happiness” waiting for a lecture on the Architecture of Happiness while a giant screen in front of us reads “The Architecture of Happiness” I feel like a sucky teachers pet. I decide that valour is the better part of discretion and pull the book out. I needn’t have bothered, I’m still so wired from sprinting through downtown that I can’t focus on the words. I put the book back and try to relax instead. My efforts are interrupted by a stream of people wanting the seats either side of me. “I have friends coming” I say. I hope they arrive.

Five minutes before the scheduled start I see Alain wandering around. He looks the same as he does on video. Youthful face, always the potential for a bright eyed look. He’s also tall, taller than me. I wonder how someone so tall can come across so soft. Maybe he’s gentle on the TV but a rugby-playing brute offscreen..

The lecture is brilliant. He goes through the content of the book, enlivening it and adding emphasis where he feels it is needed. His timing is spot on – he leaves a photo of a Holiday Inn hotel room on the screen for a while before commenting on it. He describes how it made him feel. Worthless. We signal agreement with our laughter.

Most of these events have one magic element. One thing that sticks in your mind and alters how you see the world. When I saw Curtis White talk he listed his goals in writing as to create something beautiful, to misbehave and to win. I recall his words when I think about what music I want to write or what stories I should tell.

With Alain de Botton the magic moment came when he was describing the walls at Versailles. He showed pictures of their elegant, gold-decorated features. The designs were detailed to a tiny level. The artistry was fine. It was clearly expensive. In my house we choose a paint to colour our walls. On Seattle’s Eastside they don’t even choose a colour, they just pick Bellevue Beige. At Versailles they hire artists and craftsmen to create gorgeous masterpieces on their walls.

Alain’s theory is that the French Kings put up such extravagant walls to help them overcome their fears. And what is the greatest fear of a French King? To be poor! So the walls remind them of their wealth, easing their fear. This was magic for me since I have been trying to understand people’s actions in terms of what they are trying to achieve. There may be times when I’ll learn more trying to figure out what they are scared of.

The lecture ends and I line up to get my books signed. I brought four of them, three of which are second hand library copies that cost me a couple of dollars each. I don’t tell this to Mr de Botton. If he examines the covers he’ll think I nicked them from libraries around America and moved to Seattle to avoid prosecution. Alain signs my books and we exchange small talk about Australia. Kent gets a book signed (How Proust can Change Your Life). Kevin didn’t bring any books, although he may have more of de Botton’s books than Kent or me.

We head to the Lighthouse coffee shop in Fremont. Riding up Fremont Avenue on a geared bike is easier than on the ddn8r but that ease means I work out less and feel less achievement when I get to the top. Do I ride everywhere on a fixie just to make it more or a challenge and more of a reward? If so, why don’t I leave the bike home and run everywhere? In heavy boots. To resolve this I am going to choose a transportation method based on what feels right. If the journey fits the Gunnar, I’ll take it and be happy despite lowering my technical difficulties.

At the Lighthouse a lot of conversation is on how people act to help cope with fear. We all wonder what the fears are that drive our actions. I haven’t got far yet. I think there’s a fear of wasting my life that is in heavy conflict with a fear of being bored. The conflict arises when my boredom makes me want to fill my life with small pleasures. These eat away at my time and I don’t achieve anything big. I’ll be pondering this for a while yet.

Some Kind of Band Meeting - watching Metallica on DVD

We are proud owners of a new Netflix subscription. My first order was for the ‘special features’ version of V for Vendetta which was full of special features but no actual movie. After that misfire things got better. Last night we finished “Some Kind of Monster”, the documentary on Metallica making a new album, getting over the loss of a bass player and dealing with the niceties of band meetings.

When Jean and I watch movies the dvd remote is always in hand. We can’t help but pause the movie and comment on it. For Some Kind of Monster the paused conversation added an hour or more to the length of the movie. When we go to the cinema it gets frustrating since you can’t pause “Last King of Scotland” to replay Forest Whitaker’s charming ways.

Those boys in Metallica don’t know how to communicate without anger. At the end of the movie they are saying how calm and reasoned the process has become but they still can’t say what they want or be open about the decision making process. They poke at the other person to point out their errors.

For nearly two years they had a psychologist working with them. He was nicely paid at $480k a year. In a band meeting without the shrink present James Hetfield stated how we was worried that the psychologist felt he was in the band, and that they didn’t need him beyond the first week of the upcoming tour. The rest of the band were not protesting at this, and in Metallica that seems the way agreement is stated. I thought that was a good open statement of how he felt.

When they next met the psychologist James didn’t say that to his face. There was a painful discussion where the psych was saying that things were going great but the band still had a long way to go and he had personal plans for all of them. The band members, especially James, had pained looks on their face, clearly not agreeing but without the words to communicate that. James poked at the psych’s manipulative ways, calling out that he had a conflict of interest. The psych defended himself. Then after a few minutes you could see the light in his eyes change. The full realization of what was happening hit him. He figured out he was getting dumped. I loved the irony – they can’t communicate “You’re Fired” to their psychologist.

It was hilarious to watch the band try to get touchy feely. They made their previous albums with atrocious communication, why bother to change? Still, they get major respect for being open about the process and letting some documentary filmmakers expose their inner workings.

The magic parts of the movie were when the band got it all together and played. Bands are either about music or fashion and Metallica aren’t sashaying down any catwalks. They start playing something and their expressions change and it all makes sense. It doesn’t matter how they produce their records, so long as they make them good.

Elevator Number Four

I’m at a work dinner at a fancy restaurant in San Francisco. There are two tables of people in our party. I am at one table and my wife is at the other. There are about twenty of us in the party and most of us drink wine. We go through bottles fast. Since they know I like wine each time a new bottle arrives at the table the table tries to ensure I get a glass to sample.

Although I like wine I don’t drink very much of it at a time, two glasses at most. Three glasses puts me in the “Oh fuck, why did I drink so much” state next morning. I’m being very careful with my wine consumption – I make sure people only pour a small amount and I drink it very slowly. If I can keep this up all night I might still feel good in the morning.

Jean walks over from her table and leans next to me. She puts her wine glass down next to mine. Her glass is full, mine only has a splash in it. She talks to me a little. She picks up my glass and walks off back to her table. I stare at the full wine glass, looking my hangover in the eye.

Jean is pregnant. She’s still working. It is early enough that you can’t tell by looking at her. This is our second baby and Jean knows from experience that when you are pregnant at work people treat you differently. They don’t treat you seriously. They think you are a short-timer. They touch your stomach. Jean hates this. So she acts as though she’s not pregnant.

Jean likes wine too. If she didn’t drink even a glass of wine at a work dinner colleagues would notice – they are smart, perceptive and suspicious. So Jean tries air-sipping the wine, which leaves her with the problem of disposing of the evidence.

At the next table I have a full glass of wine. I have to be careful here. I take my time drinking her wine.

“Hey Brent, try some of this Brunello – you like Brunellos, right?” says a coworker. They are drunk enough to start buying expensive wine. “Finish that Rhone and try some of this Tuscan stuff!”

My glass is now refilled with the strong and potent red wine. I am beginning to observe my own behaviour. This is a dangerous sign that my control is diminishing. The Brunello tastes good.

Jean is next to me again. “Hurry up, will you? I need the empty glass.” I knock off the last of the Brunello and Jean walks away with the empty, leaving me contemplating another full glass. This is going to hurt. I console myself with the thought that with her pregnancy nausea she feels awful most of the time. I’m just going to feel awful for a few hours.

At this point of the evening I have drunk about twice my usual. My boss is on the next table and he is brandishing one of those bottles with a plain, old school label. This means fancy wine and judging by the shape of the bottle, a Bordeaux. Here it comes again.

“Brent needs to try this,” he says in his commanding voice. “He’ll appreciate it.”

I finish Jean’s second wine glass and watch as the Bordeaux is poured in. Most of the fore part of my mind is not caring about the consequences, but there is a feeling of panic pushing in from behind. Desert arrives – Bananas Foster covered in Brandy, but they set fire to it so the alcohol burns off. I am thankful for that.

Next morning the family is at at breakfast. I have trouble articulating words. I stare at my food. This is a nice hotel, expensive and modern. What is normally divine, fresh food is trash talking me. The orange juice is telling me how useful it is for lubricating my stomach contents. The eggs are just tempting me to try to swallow them. The bacon is the lone voice telling me it will make me feel better. I try a bite. I wash it down with orange juice.

That one mouthful has transformed me. Now I am doing all I can to stop puking. I calm my mind. I sit still. I look in to the distance. I take a deep breath. I put the orange juice down and sip some water. This is not good. I stand up and figure out my exit. I don’t know where the bathroom is. It is not a good feeling know you are going to puke but not knowing where the nearest toilet is. Rather than trying to hold a conversation with a waiter while trying not to puke on them I race out of the restaurant. My plan is to catch the elevator up to our room and use the bathroom there.

I am focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. At the elevator lobby I push the up button. I wait. There are four elevators here. One is coming, I can see the numbers counting down as it heads towards the lobby. It stops on the way down, picking up passengers. Fuck. I know the firefighters have some override sequence they can use inside an elevator to make it go to a specific floor without stopping but I don’t know the special code to summon an elevator in case of emergency or imminent hurling.

The bell rings. The doors open. Out dawdle an elderly couple with lots of bags, checking out. I fight my way in through the bags before the door closes and push the 11th floor button. The elevator starts and lurches up. I can’t deal with lurch right now. I can hold back no longer.

As I’m evacuating my stomach I notice that this isn’t my regular spew, but more like what people call projectile vomiting. Well now I know what that’s all about. The entire elevator floor is a mess. The focus I feel when vomiting is intense. I need to empty my stomach while also making sure I can breathe enough to live. Some part of my mind knows the post-vomit peace is approaching. I can’t stop my stomach retching even though there’s nothing left. I want this to end. I want that peace.

At the 11th floor I rush to the room past a maid. I tell her that I’ve puked in the elevator and it needs to be cleaned up. She acts as though I didn’t talk – it is someone else’s problem. In our room I wash and change t-shirts.

A different elevator arrives to take me to the lobby where I go to the front desk to confess my sin.

“Uh yeah, you’ll need to send someone to clean up Elevator Number Four. I vomited in it.” The desk lady looks at me like I’d just puked on the floor. Now I know what that look is. “I’m serious, it’s a mess.” She stays silent and shocked. I don’t think she wants to deal with a hungover vomiting guest. I wander off back to the restaurant to rejoin the family.

At breakfast I feel a lot better. I eat some toast. About half an hour later we head back to our room. The yellow Warning cones are out around Elevator Number Four. “That’s the one.” I say, pointing to its doors. “Don’t use that one.”

I drive a Minivan. I am Invisible.

We have two kids with one more on the way. I ride bicycles and sometimes need a ride home - broken down, lazy and drunk are fine excuses. There’s a pile of old furniture out in the yard that needs to go to the dump. We can’t go on road tips because our kid won’t sleep in the car seats. I’m nearly forty. My wife has an impractical car. We’ve been resisting for years but finally it is time to succumb. I bought a minivan.

It is the start of a new model year and I want the outgoing model. There’s virtually no change between years and I should be able to save more money than I will lose in resale.

I mail several dealers asking for their internet price on various Honda Odyssey vans. Each dealer has an “Internet Manager” that will likely also deal in Fleet sales and Costco sales. I’m not an expert on current sales value for new vehicles so I rely on market forces by opening up conversations with multiple dealers. I am open about this – I tell each dealer that they are one of several options.

Two dealers – Small Honda and Large Honda – mail me back with a good cheap Internet price. There are few old year models but I get quotes for the new year model. The Odyssey is a popular van and the prices are well below MSRP, around a grand above ‘invoice’. Not bad for a first quote.

One dealer, Hardsell Honda, call me up rather than use email as I requested. They tell me what a great deal I can get, with a great trade in and a price somewhere below MSRP. This is not what I expect; this is the usual car sales talk and not an Internet sale.

Behind The Times Honda wouldn’t give me prices in email. Why not? Everyone else did. I told them so. I relegated them to backup in case I couldn’t get something with the first two. Their loss.

Slothful Honda didn’t reply until a week later, when I had already bought a van. I sent them a happy email. Perhaps they’ll be quicker with the next customer.

Hardsell Honda calls me again. This time a different salesman is calling. He’s way better than the first one and promises to come back with competitive prices in a short amount of time. About two minutes later the first Hardsell Honda salesman calls me, dismissing the previous salesman as filling in for him while he was late. He goes back to the sales patter. He’s a little rude, he talks over me and interrupts. They go to the bottom of my list.

I arrive at Small Honda. I find the Internet Manager, which is easy since he’s the first salesman I see. He’s a gentle sounding guy who doesn’t act like the typical salesman. I like him. He takes me for a test drive, I drive up the freeway and round some city streets. Yes, it drives just as I expect a minivan to feel. This is no SUV - I sit high and look down on cars but I don’t get that feeling of domination that SUV drivers crave. It is easy to weave my way through Seattle’s streets. Years of refinement of minivans have worked – this car is a good tradeoff for its purpose. It is way easier to drive than a real van (one with chassis rails), it has way more utility than a car and it costs a fraction of a Mercedes G-wagen.

The Internet Manager does not know his Odyssey feature set well. He doesn’t know the differences between model lines or between a 2006 or a 2007 model. I spend time going through the car brochure to figure this out for myself.

I need to test stereo quality differences between models. I only brought one cd with me, and it isn’t a good test cd. It is ‘Lipstick Traces’ by the Manic Street Preachers and, although it is a wonderful collection of music, it is a collection of b-sides and live music so there are no suitable reference test songs. I try the cover of ‘Take the Skinheads Bowling’. It fails, as does their cover of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’. I settle on the b-side track ‘Just a Kid’ as it has some quieter bits.

I’m sitting in the Touring edition with the upscale stereo when I get caught out. Zach is staring at me through the window. Zach rides bicycles and drives a Honda Element, which was in getting a service. He is laughing at me sitting in a minivan in a showroom playing with stereo controls. He gets sucked in to the test quick enough but dismisses the stereo for having no separate control of the subwoofer. Bugger.

So we get to the negotiation part of the day. The Internet Manager seems a little uncomfortable here. It could be a reaction to my manner since I get very focused at these times. I am waiting for him to make an offer on my trade-in. He is asking me for the price I am looking for. I tell him I want his best offer so I can compare it with the other dealers. He doesn’t like this and we waste time. So I pack my bag and head out, telling him we can negotiate over email and I need to visit Large Honda before the day is over.

I get the ‘bring in the Sales Manager’ technique. I enjoy this because it gives me the option of ignoring the salesman. In this case the Sales Manager is a vast improvement over the salesman. It gives the discussions a kick in the butt and we get to what I believe is their final offer. I tell them that I will take that offer and consider it over the weekend and if they improve it by a certain amount I’ll buy it now. It is the end of the month and they are pushing to hit sales targets so they are keen for the sale but they don’t go for the offer. I head out, happy to get a break. I am enjoying this.

At Large Honda the Internet Manager looks like a more typical salesman – larger, stronger, louder, big handshake. I tell him I have a good offer from Small Honda and I want him to see my trade in so I can get a competing offer and then choose. He doesn’t mess around – he shows me his Costco price list, the one they also use for Internet sales and it compares favourably with the collection of prices I have from the other dealers. They inspect my Corolla and we talk price and the overall deal is better than Small Honda with less fuss and pain.

Late in the process I change my mind. I notice that they have a 2006 model on the showroom floor in the model I like and a colour I like. Despite my research and logic, I think I picked it because it had the best colour scheme. We negotiate a deal on that van. I drive it home.

I’m driving home down one of the main cruising streets in Seattle, listening to my one cd of the Manic Street Prechers. I am stopped at a red light. I look at the cars around me, checking out the vehicles and their drivers. It is Friday night and a lot of hot cars are out. After a couple of miles I notice that nobody has looked my way. I drive a minivan. I am invisible.

Next morning Hardsell Honda calls back. The conversation went something like this:

HH: “So when are you going to be in today to check out our Odysseys? I know we can make a deal!”
BC: “I’ve already bought a van.”
HH: “It must have been a Toyota Sienna then.”
BC: “No, it was an Odyssey.”
HH: “Well you got second best then.”
BC: [losing it a little] “I don’t appreciate how you are trying to make me feel bad…”
HH: [trying to interrupt] “Well you made a big mistake…”
BC: [talking over the salesman] “I do not like how you talk over me, I do not like how you interrupt and I do not like your manner. That is why I did not go to your dealership. I will not be recommending people to Hardsell Honda.”

Hardsell Honda hangs up.

That was enjoyable. It isn’t often I say the right things in the heat of the argument.