Tag Archives: postaday

High Tension

Posted on by Bill Chance

As I look around this interweb thing at other people riding bicycles I see things such as a beautiful multiple day tour along the Danube, an afternoon on the streets of Paris, or a civilized ride through Napa valley, complete with wine and gourmet food.

Here’s a cool trailer for a documentary about a bunch of elite skilled mountain bikers in the most amazing isolated places you have ever seen. It’s not about me.

But I don’t live along the Danube, in Paris or in Napa Valley. I live in Dallas, Texas. I ride through horrible baking heat underneath high tension wires.

As the cities of North Texas struggle to backfill their infrastructure with transit options they have to do what they can with what they’ve got. One thing that has proved useful are abandoned rail lines – made in into rail transit corridors or rails-to-trails conversions. Another, less glamorous lemonade-from-lemons option is the open space beneath the high tension power lines.

These lines contain rare and precious undeveloped land underneath their buzzing clusters of wires strung between tower steel transmission towers. Because of the enormous voltage carried on these lines, there can be nothing underneath – no houses, trees, or even scrub – only bare grass with an occasional road sneaking across. In theory this makes a perfect path for a new bicycle trail – all you have to do is pour a wide sidewalk snaking back and fourth along the right of way.

The only problem is that it is aesthetically awful. Bare grass, towering gantries of metal, and buzzing wires bursting with voltage… and nothing else. No beautiful meandering rivers, bustling city centers, or impressive distant views – only the wavy mirage of heat waves rising from bare concrete baking in the Texas sun.

What it does offer is mileage. These trails can go on for a long way, crossing huge swaths of dense city. Riding one of these trails gives the illusion of isolation – you forget you are in a hornet’s nest of millions of people – because you barely see anyone other than another rider every now and then. Even the suburban developments that line the right of way have high wooden privacy fences and appear from the trail as a long, ragged, wood stockade.

I went on a long ride the other weekend on a complex of these up in Plano – the Bluebonnet Trail running east and west – intersecting with the Preston Ridge Trail running north and south (which, unfortunately never connects with the Preston Ridge Trail running under the same power line farther south in Richardson).

I rode a long way, though I didn’t exhaust the possible mileage in the long intersecting Plano trail system. Maybe another day… maybe when it isn’t as hot. Don’t think I’ll miss anything in the meantime.

The trail winds beneath the giant towers

When you fall into the illusion that you are isolated in the middle of a bustling city, you come across an oasis of civilization – a busy cross street, a Whataburger, a Taco Delite

A rare and welcome amenity is a shady bench where I can sip some water and read a bit on my Kindle – I carry that in my handlebar bag.

Took my camera…

Posted on by Bill Chance

…on a little bike ride in Duck Creek Linear park, downstream from my house, after work.

They don’t call it Duck Creek for nothing.

Feeding (and mocking) the semi-wild fowl.

Ducks on the pond… at sunset.

Baiting the hook.

You caught a big one, Daddy!

Raleigh Technium

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’ve been doing good – riding my crappy old mountain bike almost every day. Over the week of July fourth I took a couple days off – plus I’m commuting home from work at least a couple times a week (when I don’t have to go somewhere after work and I can get someone to drive me in) so I rode over ten miles each day for ten days straight. I’m not losing as much weight as I want (yet) but my bike riding fitness and skills are improving faster than I thought they would at my age.

The mountain bike works well as a cargo bike or a fitness bike. It’s inefficient so it works well to build fitness. With the panniers mounted it can hold a surprising amount of groceries or work clothes and stuff. Like me, it’s not very cool and it creaks in unexpected places – but it gets the job done.

But something was bugging me – tickling the back of my brain. Out in the garage is my old road bike, my Raleigh Technium 460.

I bought the bike back when I was a young, thin, serious bicycle rider… as best as I can remember that was 1986 or so. It was a very popular and common entry-level bicycle – but was innovative in its day. The three main tubes are aluminum – one of the first affordable aluminum bikes. To keep the cost down the rear triangle was steel. Instead of welding, it is all held together with custom swaged fittings and is glued with industrial epoxy.

At the time a lot of people were afraid of a bike held together with glue. Now, of course the best frames are carbon fiber… sheets of woven fabric impregnated with adhesives… so I guess the idea was proved out.

I loved that bike. I would ride it around White Rock Lake after work more days than not. Never a racer – I rode organized rides – including the infamous Wichita Falls Hotter than Hell a few times. On weekend I’d take long rides out from East Dallas north into country roads piercing the cotton fields around Frisco and Murphy (these are now endless tracts of suburban sprawl) until I’d fight my way home bonked, tired, thirsty, and with weird sunburns.

All that ended when my kids were born. I bought the mountain bike hoping to get in short rides here and there but the time it took to stay in riding shape was all soaked up by work and soccer practice. The road bike fell into disrepair and disuse. I thought about throwing it away but there was always some dusty, cobwebby corner of the garage where I could stuff the thing or some disused rafter where I could hang it.

I haven’t rode the Raleigh Technium for at least a dozen years.

But it was bugging me… so I took a look at it. It was dusty and a little rusty, but other than the tires, it seemed to still be in one piece. So I found some tubes and bought some tires (it has 27 inch tires instead of the now-standard 700c, so it was tough to find some to fit) and sat down with some solvent, soap, oil, and wrenches and had at it.

About five hours later I had black grease stains tattooed deep into my hands… but I also had a bicycle.

The Raleigh Technium – an example of bicycle technology of the 1980’s. I think bikes of that vintage are gorgeous in an almost sculptural way.

It sat there for a while… I had a surprising amount of trepidation about climbing on board. It was like a time machine had suddenly popped out of thin air and sat beckoning, the siren song of the past forever gone. Finally, as the sun was beginning to set I walked out to the bike path that runs behind my house, leaned on the bike, and swung my leg over.

The seat was set too high and my foot caught. Both me and the bike tumbled down hard on the pavement. I now have a big black bruise on my thigh from the motionless crash. I guess I’m not as flexible as I was over a decade ago. I pulled out my hex wrenches and lowered the seat a bit, raised the handlebar about the same, and set off again.

This time it was amazing. I slid my feet into the old-school toe clips (I have some Shimano Clipless pedals I will put on the bike soon) and hunched down over the dropped bars, pumping the long light alloy crank arms – I felt the bike shoot forward in a way the clumsy mountain bike can’t and won’t. It felt like a leg-powered rocket. It was a little unsteady, the steering more twitchy than I was used to but it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it. I looped around the ponds at the end of my block, came back along the trail, went down to Saigon City on Jupiter and then turned and rode along Duck Creek to Plano.

What surprised me was how much more efficient the road bike was in cutting through the wind and going up slight inclines. The lighter weight of the bike, more ergonomic positioning, and less wind resistance made so much difference. I must have been grinning like an idiot as I looped over the creek and started north along the Owens trail under the high tension lines.

Quickly, though, the front tire began making a noise and I realized I had a flat. As I dismounted to look at the tire, the seat dropped down against the tube – I had not tightened the bolt enough. Now I remember the rigors of road bike maintenance – patching the narrow high-pressure tires, trying to keep everything adjusted and lubricated, trying to keep the myriad bolts tight. I had shot away without any tools or even my phone so I had no choice but to walk my bike the mile or so back to the house.

I couldn’t find any reason for the puncture… but I looked at the box the tube came out of (I had the tube in a crate in the garage) and it said Oshman’s on the price sticker. Oshman’s went out of business over a decade ago – so I guess that’s why the tube went.

So, after work, I stopped off at the bike shop and bought new tubes and a portable pump, and made the bike ready again. This time I was able to make a long ride in the evening without any major problems – stopping a couple times to adjust the seat or brakes with the tools I carried. I rode until I wore myself out.

The thing is fun. Still, though, the back wheel is seriously out of true, the bottom bracket has an ominous click, and the seat needs adjusting. I need to dig through the garage for my long-idle bike tools (if they are still there) and then try and buy what I can’t find. I’d like to bring it… if not up-to-date, at least back to where it was in the waning years of the last century. The problem is that bicycle technology has passed it by – I find myself looking at new road bikes. Christ! The things are so expensive – I paid around five hundred dollars for the Technium… I think, back in the day. That was a lot of money but I was able to just go to the bike shop and write a check. I didn’t have the expenses then that I have now. I didn’t have two kids in private college. There is no way I can buy a five hundred dollar bike right now.

So, I’ll fix what I can and hope nothing else breaks. I’ll do what I can to muddle through. I’ll try to keep riding every day, keep expanding the times I commute by bike, get stronger, get thinner. I feel like I’m looking into a time machine, trying to roll the calendar backward. I have been here before, I’m here again – with the same hunk of steel, aluminum, and rubber. We’ll see what happens, won’t we.

Hugh’s Bicycle Blog – Raleigh Technium 460 Restoration Part 1

Part Two

I just purchased a lightly used Raleigh Technium bike from a garage sale for a few bucks.?

Raleigh Technium Fixie Project

Dallas Star

Posted on by Bill Chance

I have an entry half-assed written, but I don’t have time tonight to finish it – have to get another scene on a short story done.

So, into the photo folders… and here are some more photos from the Chihuly Exhibition at the Dallas Arboretum.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Knockemstiff

Posted on by Bill Chance

After I finished Volt I moved right on into another book of short stories set in the gray area between doomed small-town America and the outskirts of hell. This one is called Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock. The eighteen stories take place from the sixties to the nineties and contain a lot of interconnected characters – all living (if you can call it living) in a small Ohio town with the odd name of Knockemstiff. It seems like a stretch of literary license to make up a name like that for a set of stories like this – but the town used to exist. The author actually grew up there. There is even a map in the front of the book – like a trailer park trashy Lord of the Rings. One woman that shows up in several stories has KNOCKEMSTIFF as a tramp-stamp tattoo.

The author says that some of the events in the stories were inspired by stuff he saw – but the real inspiration was the decades he spent as a blue collar worker  – a meatpacking plant and thirty years at a paper mill. After three marriages and four stints in rehab he quit work to write.

The first story, about a boy with a drunken, violent father, who gets the both of them in a nasty fistfight in the concession stand of the Torch Drive-in movie theater during a showing of Godzilla. It was pretty horrific in its details – the kid’s father drinking whiskey from the car’s ashtray and wiping the sweat off his head with a paper bag – but it was well-written and effective and not too over the top.

Now then, though, the second story, Dynamite Hole… well, to say it was over the top is a bit of an understatement. These are not stories for the easily offended or the weak of heart. Dynamite Hole is a true journey to the heart of perversion and hopeless doom. Do not read this book if you don’t have a strong stomach and a good sense of the separation between fact and fiction.

Now, I really liked this book. That does not make me a bad person. This is a fiction, these are lies. Even if the town once existed – this stuff did not really happen like this (I hope). It is a set of horrific tales about the dregs of human scum… all of which somehow end up in the same tiny hamlet – soon to become a well-deserved ghost town. Maybe sharing a read with these folks makes me feel a little bit better about my own flaws… I don’t know. It’s well written, interesting, entertaining – that’s good enough for me.

Even the titles of the stories seem to seep with quiet disaster.

  • Real Life
  • Dynamite Hole
  • Knockemstiff
  • Hair’s Fate
  • Pills
  • Giganthomachy
  • Schott’s Bridge
  • Lard
  • Fish Sticks
  • Bactine
  • Discipline
  • Assailants
  • Rainy Sunday
  • Holler
  • I Start Over
  • Blessed
  • Honolulu
  • The Fights

Minor characters in one story turn out to be the protagonists in another. I thought of going through one more time and making a chart of who was related to whom and who did what and what nasty end they came to. But before I could get started, I decided I didn’t really want to spend that much time with these people… at least not right now.

Despite the deep horrific lives these folks live – the Bactine huffing, the living for years in abandoned cars out in the woods, the tons of stuff I won’t even write them down here – there are moments of hope and redemption. In one of the last stories, Blessed, a father is driving with his family into the city so his wife can sell some blood (he can’t sell any because of the hepatitis). The father’s promising burglary career as a second story man was destroyed when he fell off the roof of a pharmacy in the middle of the night. The little family road trip goes about as horribly wrong as possible. What really bother’s him, though, is the fact that he has come to realize that his son is mute. When they return home, his wife won’t let him back into the house until he cleans up (for well-deserved reasons).

As he peers into the window, he sees and hears his son talking excitedly to his wife, the boy’s mother. He isn’t mute – he only refuses to speak in the presence of his dad. The father takes this as a good sign and determines to go on, as best he can.

Such is life in Knockemstiff.

 Gothic Hillbilly Noir?

Winosburg, Ohio

‘Knockemstiff’ Writer Pulls No Punches

REVIEW OF KNOCKEMSTIFF BY DONALD RAY POLLOCK

Volt

Posted on by Bill Chance

I had a little money left over on an Amazon.com gift card and began to choose some Kindle books. I picked up a couple of short story selections, Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock and Volt, by Alan Heathcock. Pretty much by a flip of the coin, I read Volt first.

Volt has eight semi-connected longish short stories. Right off the bat, the description of a farmer accidentally killing his son while tilling a field resonated with me. I’m a father and have spent a little time on a tractor seat bouncing in the heat and dust, watching a mile-distant fence line slowly, inexorably approach.  That awful scene was enough to justify the price of the book and the time to read it. I thought that first story could have ended after those two pages.

It didn’t though, as the father, destroyed by the accident and jolted by a near miss with a freight train – runs away. And runs and runs and runs – putting Forest Gump to shame. He ends up wiping his life away and building a new one, of sorts. It’s a journey worthy of Odysseus, and likewise, he finds that home is not what it used to be. Too much water under the bridge.

The stories are all small-town Gothic. They are set in the hopeless wide-spot-in-the-road of Krafton… an imaginary town. Trust me as one who knows – there are a lot of Kraftons out there. One hell of a lot. These are forgotten hamlets where everyone with any ambition or brains left town long ago – leaving the impression that the remaining conscripts – imprisoned by tradition, lack of imagination, and ennui – exist simply to work their way back down the evolutionary chain. There is even a Biblical Flood – though plenty of unworthy survive.

There is one hopeful character, Sheriff Helen Farraley, a plump middle-aged former grocery store manager pressed into service to combat evil no mortal should have to face. Her decisions seem insane, until you try to see her world through those eyes.

At the end of the finely crafted book, I felt I knew the doomed citizens of Krafton, and hoped somehow, someday they find the redemption that they deserve, even if they don’t see it or don’t chose it for themselves.

Now, on to Knockemstiff.

New York Times Review – Stories of Small-Town Strife

‘Volt’ writer Alan Heathcock’s internal duality fuels his gripping prose and creates his epic stories

‘Volt’: Stories for Mourning, After A Nameless Loss

BOOK REVIEW: Alan Heathcock

Bookslut – VOLT BY ALAN HEATHCOCK

Armored Pole

Posted on by Bill Chance

I have always been fascinated by the armored utility pole. That’s a wooden cylinder – lights, power, telephone –  that has been used as a guerrilla bulletin board for so long, had so many handbills stapled to it, that it has become covered in steel. You see these in the cool, hip neighborhoods – places with a lot of bars and live music. Places where folks run along with staple guns and stacks of freshly printed band flyers and click… click, there’s another one.

It’s generally illegal and the streets department takes them down… but look at the poles.

What is the ultimate end of this? Can a pole have so many staples in it that there can be no more shot in? The accretion of metal – the slow sculpting – the combination of nature and man-made steel violence… it’s life in a nutshell, posted up there for everyone to see.

Here’s one I saw the other day. A pole densely festooned with staples – then a big chunk is taken out by a careening car – a collision hard enough to split of a healthy sliver but not enough to take down the pole. The fresh wood is exposed and, soon enough, the staples start reproducing. In a year or so the wound will be completely healed.

Old Band Flyers

Flickr: The Band Flyers Pool

50 Amazing Gig Posters Sure to Inspire

The Best Art Band Flyers in Chicago

Ducado Vega

Posted on by Bill Chance

During the Deep Ellum Food Truck Festival a band set up along the side, in front of a recording studio. It was Ducado Vega (facebook) and Zenya – winners of the Dallas Observer Music Award for “Best Funk/R&B Act.” They were nice and loud and a lot of fun. Especially when they moved back in time for some classic James Brown funk and some unusual covers (Rolling in the Deep).

Great local music.

Support your local bands. Ducado Vega will be in the Colony this weekend.