here

a sneak peek at my new Stockholm guidebook

Alert readers (hi Karl!) may already know that I have a new guidebook out -- well, a few of them, actually, but the subject of today's post is Stockholm Pocket Precincts, a very cute and practical guide to Stockholm's neighborhoods.

Is it not adorable?

This is the first book I've written in a while that was mine from scratch, rather than an update of an existing work. So I used it as an excuse to talk about ALL the good stuff: 

• the little cafe in the back corner of the underground food market where I used to go eat fish stew with Mormor (and still go with Mom and Dad whenever possible); 

Yes, you do want the blob of aioli on top

• my favorite art museum, where I go to visit old friends I first met through my grandfather; 

Öyvind Fahlström is my friend

• all the good beer halls (obviously) but more importantly, the best pinball bar in town;
• the only place to get these incredible little almond-cardamom cake-bomb things in Gamla Stan;
• a veggie restaurant with the world's most addictive dark-brown bread (free! all you want);
• the stylishly cylindrical library;
• a handful of other museums I really like, including Ethnographic and Mediterranean;
• even shopping!

Plus: day trips to the archipelago (tiny red cabins!), the royal palace (by boat!) and Uppsala (for SCIENCE!), and all the usual travel tips (for example, how to pay for public toilets in a city that doesn't use cash -- although I'm still kinda figuring that one out tbh). 

You can get an idea of what the book is like in this Newsweek article, which is also the buried lede of this glob post.

And if you like that, check out the book at indie bookstores or online (or, if you're in Portland, talk me into hand-delivering a signed copy).

Actual Stockholm travel is recommended but not required for purchase. 

:) 

deadlining

Thoughts I have when I'm on deadline, pretty much every time:

• this seems like a good day to organize my bookmarks
• and my bookshelves
• I deserve to watch that new movie - no ALL the new movies
• definitely need to redesign my resume
• baseboards are looking awfully dusty aren't they
• let's put 27 books on hold at the library for when we're done
• Buffy/Alias marathon?
• I should work out
• spring clean! everything!
• plan trip to ??
• maybe I should go back to school
• does napping help you lose weight
• is crying healthy
• what IS the best way to pack a backpack?
• always wanted to learn swahili
• I need to take more online tests to reveal my best career path 
• hey do you remember that scene in that one movie - wait it's probably on youtube
• ... 
• crossword puzzles are broccoli for the mind
• mmm, broccoli
• I wonder what time it is right now in the main office
• these socks are itchy
• how do you make yogurt
• HIDE, RUN AWAY THEY'LL NEVER FIND YOU

disappearing dives

If you know Portland, you know it loves its dive bars. I mean, this is the city that revived PBR. We like to drink cheap. But these days the really divey bars – the places you'd hesitate to recommend to out-of-town visitors – are rapidly disappearing. (Anyone remember the Paragon? It came up in conversation the other night. I don't mean the one in the Pearl. I mean the one that had a cage at the front door and a guy who had to buzz you in, the one that smelled like burning plastic inside. "Dive" doesn't really cover it.) 

Anyway. One of the best (worst? cheapest? most enduring?) was Hanigan’s, universally known as the ‘Vern (broken T and A on the "Tavern" sign). It was the kind of place where you could get a pitcher of beer for $4, where your friend's band could definitely play a show, where you’d risk digestive purgatory for the 25-cent tacos even though you would not willingly touch the floor, the tabletop, or anything in the bathroom. 

It was always too bright and smelled terrible. It had a real jukebox (immortalized on a “Best of the Vern” compilation CD). In short, it was perfect. Then it died. 

But the Vern has now risen like a phoenix from a birdbath. Its new owners have already remade a bunch of other bars in town - the Elvis Room, Sandy Hut, Lay Low, Alibi. They have a distinctive but easily replicated style built around relics leftover from doomed Portland bars (such as the great Club 21, which they ran until it was demolished to make room for condos, and whose iconic neon “STEAKS For Your Enjoyment” sign now hangs inside the Vern). Think velvet naked-lady paintings, vintage lamps and kitschy beer signs, red leather booths and low lighting. Add pinball, burgers and Olympia tallboys, and voila: an aesthetically pleasing Portland dive bar whose carpet doesn’t gross anybody out.

But are these reimagined places a little too ... ? If you woke up suddenly inside the new Vern’s back room, you might easily think you were in the Lay Low or the Hut: There will be at least one guy with a big beard and trucker hat at the bar; he’s probably a craft brewer, or he makes bicycles. The jukebox is infinite. The place doesn’t smell. It doesn’t smell! The bathroom is decorated with hologram cat pictures, and the door sticks, but you’re not afraid to go in (for health reasons).

The new Vern is totally fine. By any objective measure, it’s probably better than the old Vern. But it’s hard not to think something was lost in the transition.

(Then again, it was probably something icky.)

secrets of guidebooking, revealed

Those of us who write guidebooks for a living like to make a big deal about how it's totally a real job and we're not just getting paid to bum around checking out cool stuff on some fat company's dime. It's work, you guys! We are working.

Real talk, though: guidebook writing is not rocket surgery. Mostly it's a lot of wandering around with a notebook and a cellphone, looking like a dork because you spend way more than a normal amount of time on a sidewalk in front of a storefront, not really going anywhere, seeming completely lost.

(Or running on fumes in search of a trailhead at the end of a road that appears on no maps, unless it's that one you passed a few miles back and ignored because there's no way anyone could possibly drive anything but a tank down that road....) 

It's not hard. But it is slow work, and it doesn't pay much, so in order for it to be worth doing, you have to make it fun. This is easier to do if you happen to get a thrill from discovering and writing down things like 

• bus schedules 
• train schedules
• ferry routes
• average menu prices
• opening hours
• size/number of potholes in access road
• for how many miles?
• ticket prices, entry fees
• number of cougar attacks last year
• currency exchange rates
• phone numbers
• what is that flower
• do ticks around here carry Lyme disease 
• asking for a friend
• rules about border crossings
• immunization and customs requirements
• GPS coordinates in three formats
• backcountry permit requirements
• hotel room prices that vary by day of week/mood of receptionist
• rental car policies esp re damage caused by potholes

Bonus points if you enjoy squeezing all this information into a small imaginary box with a strict wordcount. 

Then again, you also get to go on scenic hikes, ride weird bus routes, hang out in bars, and sometimes eat delicious food (or at least take photos of it). Every day is different.

Anyway, here are a few scenes from the fun parts of putting together the brand-new, updated edition of my latest guidebook, Walking Portland: 

Portland' skyline has changed a bit since I first started writing about it. This photo shows an Imperial Star Destroyer parked illegally on the east end of the Burnside Bridge, next to a goofy little office building called the Fair-Haired Dumbbell, which I've tried to hate but reluctantly kind of adore.

Kay's Bar in Sellwood - an old favorite, with the best lamps and pretty good nachos.

Gena Rowlands hangs out near the pinball machines at Holman's on 28th Ave - I visit her a lot, even though this corner of the bar is right next to the bathrooms and smells terrible

I don't care what you say, these stupid little electric scooter things are super fun.

Sometimes, in Portland, you go to a bar just to play a little pinball and the place is full of youngsters in pajamas with little backpacks on, for no apparent reason

Pinball is a contact sport and can be dangerous

The typical Portland diet includes a wide variety of foods 

If you're in Portland you should try to get out on the water (just don't touch it) (the Willamette River is poison)

The best chicken salad: at Basilisk, in the Zipper building, a hipster food court on NE Sandy Blvd

Olympia Provisions - preserved meats designed for world-class gold-medal athletes.
(Not true. But they are delicious.)

Spider Jerusalem hangs out in front of the comics library at Reed College

City of Roses. (Fact.)

Your author with a few examples of what's been taking so long.

just keep walking

Walking is a great way to think. Lots of important thinkers have written about it, from Emerson
and Thoreau to Nietzsche to Kierkegaard – who supposedly said, “If one just keeps on walking, everything will be alright.” (Seems worth a try.)

Walking and writing go well together, too – just look at Wordsworth, or for something a little more contemporary, Rebecca Solnit (who wrote the wonderful Wanderlust: A History of Walking [2012]). 

Anyway, it beats sitting at your desk and struggling to dredge up something useful to say. Writing, even travel writing, involves a surprising amount of sitting at a desk. When I'm on a deadline, I dream up excuses all morning, little errands that surely need doing: groceries to pick up, packages to mail, something on hold (or more likely, overdue) at the library.

So if there’s one thing I hope for the new edition of Walking Portland, it’s that it gives readers 30-odd new excuses to go outside and take a walk.



Although the book works just fine as a travel guide for visitors to Portland, it's really less about getting around than it is about slowing down and seeing the city differently.

Portland is growing and changing at breakneck speed. It’s hard to keep up, even for someone like me, whose job is to keep up. Things move fast: apartments spring up on the tombs of old dive bars; restaurants open to great fanfare, then close again before I have a chance to eat there; entire streets are rerouted or redesigned.

The pace of growth in formerly sleepy little Stumptown is exciting, but for some of us it's also a little alarming. I find that walking is a nice way to slow it all down, take stock of what's new, and absorb the changes at street level. (I still miss a lot, and I'm constantly amazed at new buildings and businesses popping up where just yesterday I could swear there was nothing.)



Most of the walks in the book are built for sauntering aimlessly through urban areas with a high potential for distraction and discovery. (A few are more remote, incorporating wide-open meadows, riverside paths or leafy trails through the woods.) They’re easy to customize: you can mix several walks together, do half one day and half the next, get tired and hop a bus, or even just “walk” vicariously while sitting in a pub, reading the book.

I support that approach.

As I mentioned in the first edition – and it’s still true – some of the best things in Walking Portland are gone: The old steakhouse with the deep red leather booths. The creek that disappears. The rock club that turned into a pawn shop. The building shaped like a shoe.

Some of the walks are ghost walks now – so much of what they pass is lost. But there’s still a lot in Portland waiting to be found.

The new edition includes three brand-new walks and one bonus walk, as well as all new photos and updated descriptions of the original 30 routes. Ideally, it should work like any good guide: point you toward a neighborhood and give you a general sense of its character, then turn you loose. After all, it’s much more fun to discover interesting things on your own. (But do let me know in the comments if you find things you're excited about sharing!)

Portland...oh no

New edition of Walking Portland out Tuesday!

Coming SOON! A brand-spanking-new edition of my guide to exploring my rapidly changing but eternally weird hometown, Portland, Oregon:

Walking Portland: 33 Tours of Stumptown's Funky Neighborhoods, Historic Landmarks, Park Trails, Farmers Markets and Brewpubs

It's due to publish February 5, just in time to seriously test your devotion to walking in the rain. But why wait? You can pre-order it now from Powell's, Annie Bloom's, Broadway Books, or whichever indie bookseller is your favorite.

Book Review: Heart of the Original

In his 1984 essay “On Reading to Oneself,” William Gass admires a sentence by Gertrude Stein: “It looked like a garden, but he had hurt himself by accident.”

“If, when we say we understand something someone’s said, we mean that we can rephrase the matter, put it in other words (and we frequently do mean this), then Gertrude Stein’s critics may be right: you can’t understand such a sentence,” Gass writes. But this is exactly why he loves that particular sentence: “It cannot be replaced by another. It cannot be translated without a complete loss of its very special effect.”

He goes further – it’s William Gass, it’s a great essay. I happened to be reading it when my copy of Steve Aylett’s new book, Heart of the Original, arrived in the mail, and it occurred to me that the Gass-on-Stein paragraph ties in nicely with what Aylett is up to. It also provides a handy test: if you’re the type to find more delight than bafflement in the very special effect of the Stein sentence and Gass’s examination of it, you are probably going to love Aylett’s book. 

Heart of the Original is part manifesto, part satire and part encouragement for those among us who tend toward despair at the state of the creative universe. The book demands a certain mental restlessness, but its premise is simple: it’s a rallying cry for originality, “the making of a thing which has not been in the world previously” – a thing that cannot be replaced, cannot be translated without a loss.

Aylett’s central observation is that while everyone says they love originality, most of us when confronted with it feel discomfort. We don’t know what to do with something truly original; it’s alien. By definition, we’ve never seen anything like it before; we have no existing category in which to file it, so we reject it.

Lucky us, we live in an age of pastiche - the sequel and the remake and the reboot - Jane Austin and zombies, Spidermen ad nauseam. Marketing wisdom tells us that the best way to sell something to the public is to promise them it’ll be exactly like the last thing they enjoyed. In our art and entertainment, collectively, we like a safe bet. It’s easier on the brain, and we have enough to worry about already. Aylett identifies this as our “not-so-secret desire to be robotic and dispense with the complication of variety.”

This atmosphere has a dulling effect on the creative instinct; why should an artist try to make something genuinely new when anyone can just slap a misattributed quote onto a photo of a kitten or a sunset and be celebrated as an internet genius? It’s discouraging.

Fittingly, Heart itself is difficult to understand in the same way as that Gertrude Stein sentence: it can’t easily be rephrased or translated. Aylett’s fiction is built of intensely compact high-octane sentences, full of ideas and no wasted words; early in his career he made promo stickers that said “AYLETT SAVES...TIME.” His novels and stories are short and dense. Heart is equally if not more so, but midway through the book he offers readers a key: “Write three sentences and remove the middle one,” he advises; “often the deleted sentence is implied by the remaining material.” Who knows if that’s literally the way he wrote Heart, but it could be; he’s certainly removed all connective tissue. His sentences hurry along, the tone ranging from urgent to impatient, at times creating the impression that Aylett doesn’t quite expect anyone else to follow – or, more optimistically, maybe he hopes those he’s speaking to will be able to catch up. Observations and dismantlings come pell-mell one after the other, occasionally interspersed with rampaging hens (Aylett loves hens). The distance between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next often feels like a Battlestar Galactica space-jump. Strap in and hope you have the right coordinates. “A life or text in which every link is spelled out will be expunged of mischief, leaving no task to the mind,” Aylett writes. No worries here.  

Hopefully that doesn’t make it sound like the book is all work and no play. Aylett is always fun to read. His scorn for those he considers ripoff artists is pure and sincere, but he’s smart enough to play it mostly for laughs. He goes off, but he never sounds like a crank. And he’s equally intense when he’s writing about people he thinks are genuinely innovative. An undercurrent of exhaustion peeks through now and then, a perfectly rational if quiet voice asking why bother making something original, what is the damn point if nobody wants it?, but this is balanced by the satisfying thought that maybe irritating the masses is reason enough. The cumulative effect of the book is heartening – icewater in the face, and someone yelling, What are you waiting for?

cabin-ette

Well, here I am, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Yesterday morning around 6.30 I opened the front door and interrupted a little red fox trotting alongside the edge of the fish pond. He froze and stared and sized me up – “harmless; smells funny” – and then he got on with his day. (Or she.) It wasn’t even really light out yet, sort of a misty, grayish-yellow, unripe morning. The fish were leaping clear out of the water, like somebody skipping rocks; nothing to fear. Alleged overnight temperature: 28 degrees.

Later on I saw these two huge trout get into the small-pond equivalent of a fistfight. And a bunny!

Anyhow, I’m settling in for the winter. This is my parents’ cabin, up in the Colorado mountains (9000 feet elevation! Fun fact: jogging here causes immediate emphysema), remote-ish but actually not all that far from the neat little town of Salida. There are a few other cabins in the area, but right now I’m the only one around. I’m pretending this is one of those fancy writers’ retreats people do, only without all the gossip and the lengthy application process.

(Plus they let me bring the cat.)

Goal: finish a book. (I mean writing one, just to be clear.)

Secondary goal: figure out life. (Suggestions welcome)

Third-ary goal, already accomplished: escape, briefly, the rapidly escalating cost of living in Portland. (Also the evil rain of winter) (Although it’s raining here as I type, so maybe I’m not as clever as I think)

I’m also ostensibly helping out my parents, although so far that’s been an almost perfect mirror image of what is happening. :) But you know: just in case they need anything.

To get the internet here you have to stand barefoot on the cabin roof holding a wire hanger aimed toward a far-away hilltop, where a barely visible tower zaps messages to the outside world. So if you don’t hear from me about something it probably just means I’m afraid to go out there in the dark or wolves have surrounded the cabin or I am napping.

Anyway. Current plan is I accomplish goals 1 and 2 in this cozy, peaceful, budget-friendly habitat and then return victorious to Portland, where my motorcycle and motorcycle club await. I’ll keep you updated!

one-bike garage

[drawn by Mike Russell, obviously]

Well, the Hawk has the whole garage to itself now. I finally decided to sell the little race bike. Should've probably sold it years ago, but I kept thinking maybe I'd want to race again. But I never did. Some of the guys borrowed it now and then, but mostly it just sat in the garage, looking cute for no one. So - it was time. The guy who bought it will be racing here in Portland as well as in Washington, so it'll have plenty of adventures. No regrets! Bikes are for riding.

When she was brand-new (to me)

Down the road a piece

So long, little buddy!

But...well, now I'm worried that the Hawk* will be lonely. Technically I also own half of an SL175, but it lives clear across town and I never see it (joint custody thing, it's totally amicable). Which means it's time to start daydreaming about my next motorcycle! Mind you, I do not currently have a job or any money, so when I say daydreaming, it is not a euphemism for planning, or browsing Craigslist for six hours, or asking artificially casual-sounding questions about interest rates.

But that's OK: there's nothing like total impossibility to really open up the field of possibilities. What sounds good to you guys? Sky's the limit!

Last night at the Neu Sandy Hutte we saw a candleholder on a nearby table catch fire (beyond the usual) and spurt a stream of hot wax into the air like Old Faithful. A guy who worked there tried to blow it out but it fwoomped into a fireball and scorched off half his beard. No one was hurt.

Still.

Be careful out there, everybody.

*The Hawk might finally have a name. Last week I got together with a bunch of fellow and former Lonely Planet authors -- Portland has maybe the highest concentration of LP folk in the known world, outside of company headquarters, plus we had a few visiting. At some point a couple of them strolled over to look at the bike, no doubt drawn by its ragged majesty. One of the guys nodded at the peeling Hawk logo on the side of the gas tank and said, quite reasonably, "Hank." So there we go. Hank.

roadtrip report

Trip report, so far:

1) The day I left, when I woke up and went downstairs to make coffee, there was a little bird flittering around in the living room. No windows were open. No idea how he got in. How long had he been there? It's not all that big an apartment. Anyway, I opened the front door and out he flew, happier no doubt.

2) My travel buddy, the Admiral 589 (a kitty), hated me for about a day and a half but has now settled into her role as lead navigator and rest-stop wizard. So far, so good.

(She's out in the car now, smoking a Kool with some trucker.)

3) The following rock songs came on the radio more than once in a single day -- Def Leppard, Animal; Rush, Closer to the Heart; Bon Jovi, Livin' on a Prayer.

(On one memorable trip in Sweden I swear Graceland haunted me. I must've heard You Can Call Me Al at least a dozen times. It was only two or three years ago. Why, Sweden?)

4) No distinctive food item has stepped forward to be included in my quest. I'm a little too early for huckleberries, and knock on wood I haven't even seen a Rocky Mountain oyster yet. Stay alert!

5) I don't wanna jinx myself, but people out here so far have been really friendly. Maybe I'm just used to working in Sweden, where folks are typically a little shy and not given to casual chitchat with strangers. I mean, I'm not the world's *most* suave, but Stockholm brings out the socially awkward like nobody's business. (I love it there. I do. I want to go back soon! But it does start to feel a bit girl-in-the-bubble after a while.) Anyway. Casual chitchat with strangers. That's what's up.

6) Saw a family of beavers in Coeur d'Alene, but then it turned out they were only muskrats.

7) Heard some elk.

8) This morning when I woke up, I could see waves and mountains without even getting out of bed. So the next time you hear me complain about any aspect of my job, smack me upside the head and remind me that I have it pretty good. :)

I'm being lazy with the photos and mostly just zapping them up onto "instagram" until later when I download better versions. So if you're curious, here they will be: https://instagram.com/fasterbecky/

contest!

I'm road-tripping through the Rockies this spring for Lonely Planet. One thing I like to do on these trips, strictly for my own entertainment, is to give myself some kind of quest, a secondary mission. Lately this quest has taken the form of an informal contest to determine the greatest possible version of a signature food item. (For Sweden: kardemummabullar. Platonic ideal found on the southern archipelago island of Utö.)

For the Rockies, what do you guys think? Will this be the year I finally tuck into some Rocky Mountain Oysters? Colorado's easy: green chili. Most of the other obvious choices seem to be various shapes of fried and breaded beef drenched or dipped in heart-attack sauce. There's also the huckleberry pie option. But we do have my arteries to consider.

My pal Zach used to order a Denver omelette every morning on a road trip, noting the infinite variations of the form. But I don't like Denver omelettes all that much.

Anyway - suggestions welcome! It doesn't even have to be food. Cutest infant buffalo? Ultimate wildflower? I'm open.

revising tony

Alert readers may recall that I've been working my way through the fitness program P90X, thanks to my awesome brother (hi Karl!). It is super fun, and of course I adore Tony, but sometimes you want to just do the workout and not necessarily watch the video. For those occasions it's helpful to have a brief description of each move, to complement the official worksheets where you commit your specific failings to paper.

I like to customize these for easier recall. Here's a sample from today's workout, to give you an idea. As you'll see, it's pretty brutal.

Slow Motion 3 in 1 Push-up: Do one push-up. Counts as three.

Side Tri Rise: Lie down on your side. Try to get up. How many tries did it take you? Write it down.

Floor Flys: Lie on the floor on your stomach. Flap your arms up and down like you're flying.

Throw the Bomb: Grab the P90X DVD in your left hand. Throw it out the window. Now, using both hands, grab the television. Throw it out the window.

In & Out Shoulder Flies: Time to refuel with a burger! Double-double animal style, from the drive-thru, and when you're done, throw the empty bag over your shoulder on the fly. (See?)

Side to Side Push-ups: Lie down and curl into the fetal position on your left side. Weep freely (remember to breathe!). Roll onto your other side and repeat.

Chair Dips: Pretty self-explanatory - set a bowl of chips on the table, place dips on a nearby chair (you need to be able to reach them from where you're lying on the floor). Enjoy.

Lying Triceps Extensions: Lie on the floor on your back, dumbbells at your sides. Stand up. On your worksheet, lie about how many triceps extensions you did. Remember to exaggerate the weight of the dumbbells.

Pike Press: Coffee break! Pike press is just like a french press but you stand on your tiptoes while it's brewing. How long can you hold the position? Write it down.

Clap or Plyo Push-ups: Watch as your buddy does some push-ups. Applaud.

One-Arm Push-ups: Come on, who are we kidding.

One Arm Balance Push-up: Get into push-up position. Tremble. Collapse. Cry. Repeat as needed.

Weighted Circles: Hold your arms out straight at your sides, shoulder height, and have your workout buddy pull them off, one at a time.

Don't forget the cool-down! 

(It's a milkshake.)

entertainments

I would watch any movie of any length in which any or all of the following occur: 1) Matthew McConaughey walks across a room (2) Benicio del Toro says "creepy" (3) Joaquin Phoenix.

(Inherent Vice has two of the three. You guys should go see it - so much fun! And it is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, so every single frame looks gorgeous, not just the close-ups of Joaquin.)

* 

The other day I started reading a biography of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, by Megan Marshall. Fantastic so far, really vividly detailed and lively. Fuller strikes me as someone who should be a lot more famous than she is. I don't think we even studied her in j-school (part 1). She hung out with the Transcendentalists, edited the Dial, worked as a foreign correspondent, etc etc etc. She was ultra-brilliant, outspoken, stubborn and wild in an era when women were encouraged not to be any of those things (1810-1850, specifically). She had a kid with an Italian lover ten years younger, and they all died in a shipwreck when she was 40.

(She also had a fraught, complicated thing with Ralph Waldo Emerson, my boyfriend, but I forgive her because I was not born yet.)

(Plus I think she was the great-aunt of Buckminster Fuller, which is pretty cool.)

Are there any decent movies about the Transcendentalists? I can't think of any. Let's pretend somebody's making one and fan-cast it!

Anyway. Margaret Fuller. Check her out.

Meanwhile, I've been plugging away at the eternal book project, about which I currently have nothing good to say, other than that it exists and has finally stopped shrinking. (For a while all I did was cross out the bad parts. That was discouraging.) Yesterday I cleaned the whole apartment just to avoid it. I would've done yardwork too but my weedeater blew up (again).

"I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it’s disheartening, you don’t want to go on. That’s what I think is hard—the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done. This is all you could manage?" 

-- James Salter, in this interview with the Paris Review. 

Yep. Heard that.

Even so. Sure beats working! : )

crossed wires

If I ever say the word "turnip" to you, please know that what I mean is "parsnip." I will never mean turnip. I don't know that I've ever even had a turnip; I think they're like big ugly radishes, but I'm not sure. Parsnips, though, I love, especially roasted. "Parsnip" is also a much cuter word. But somehow those wires are crossed in my head, and after years of trying to get them uncrossed, I've decided to just go ahead and accept this quirk.

I meant to post something here yesterday but I couldn't lift my arms. It was Day 1 of Week 5 of a re-do of P90X, which means things like one-arm pushups and weighted circles and not being able to lift your arms. (Today was plyometrics, aka "jump around until you barf or pee your pants.") I slacked off quite a bit last week, too, which made for an extra-pleasant couple of mornings. Fun!

(It is fun, actually, as long as I've remembered to eat real food and not just beer.)

Alert readers will recall that this glob started years ago as an ungainly blend of travel report and preoccupation with absurd yet mundane ways to die. I guess it's still both of those things, most of the time. Aging is the ultimate champion in that latter category, after all. And I'm still traveling. Just last week I went clear over to the other side of Portland, hanging out for several days in a neighborhood I like to call Sandwich Heaven. (I was cat-sitting.) Here, within a couple of blocks, you can get four or five of the greatest sandwiches in all of Portland. I thought Lardo made my favorite one (Korean pork shoulder, OMG), but then my friend Sean sent me to the People's Pig and now it's the winner. Smoked Fried Chicken. King of Sandwich Heaven. So you can see why I need to work out.

Anyway. I know I've been lame about updating this thing, although probably no more than usual. I've been working on revisions of a not-really-secret project. Also I had to fix my motorcycle, because the weather is insane right now -- definitely not a fake spring, after all. So that took some time. Among other improvements, I now have new throttle cables, and for the first time in history the throttle actually snaps closed like it's supposed to, plus it no longer makes that awful grinding sound, like my knees when I go down stairs.

Here's how the cables looked before: bad! All squinchy, and rusty to boot:

The whole deal is much cleaner now, and with any luck I've put everything back on in the right place and not upside-down or in such a way that it will later explode. Fingers crossed! So far it seems to be working just fine, but I'm no expert.

Until next time!

sprung

Well hey, would ya look at that. Oregon is Genesis. Who knew? 

I may have been wrong about this spring -- it might not be a trick, after all. It seems real! I won't hold my breath. But at least the season of Awful Holidays for Single People is over. I like being single, but not at parties from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day. No, thank you.

This year I spent about half of Valentine's Day in the garage digging into my sludge-encrusted, criminally neglected motorcycle, and the other half sipping red wine and watching romantic French movies. Both were pretty fun. I like messing around in the garage if I'm not in a hurry and it's not freezing cold. The poor bike is filthy down to the guts; some evil blackish brown stuff had oozed out of the bottom of one of the carbs, which I imagine isn't a great sign. But I have a theory (!) and will test it soon, maybe tomorrow -- today's portion of the project went faster than expected, although still glacial by normal human standards. I have zero natural instinct for mechanics, so I try to work very deliberately and follow all the instructions, hoping not to blow myself up or accidentally put everything back on upside down. There tends to be a lot of darting into the house to look at pictures on the internet, etc. But it's a good time.

NOW SEEDS

Irritating weather. It's not winter anymore but it isn't spring yet, either. All the plants are confused, trying to bloom but sure to get the smackdown any minute now.

(Or maybe not? Maybe this spring is real? Yeah, yeah. That old trick. I know better but I fall for it every year.)

Just in case, I put a couple of seeds in little pots in the kitchen window yesterday. So far nothing.

Sigh.

(Little-known fact: Toad yelling at the garden used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid.)

I really need to spend some time in the garage and get my bike running, but it's pretty cold in there still.

Anyway. Here is Kelly Link reading an excerpt from her new book of stories. (I'm not obsessed! I just...I just really like her, okay?) I reviewed the collection but am annoyed with myself for not having made the review a little prettier before I sent it in. (The word "fact" appears at least three times in the first dang paragraph. Three!) I pick up these habits sometimes, little verbal tics, we all do it, and they creep in without my noticing, and then they turn invisible. And they stay invisible until a day or two later, at which point they practically glow in the dark but usually by then it's too late. Oh well. Can't overthink it. The stories are fantastic; all her stories are. And she's working on a novel now, too, I hear. Oh, and she did a Q&A for the Powell's blog*, which I haven't read yet but am about to (I just remembered to look for it). Holly Black is in there too -- I read her YA novel The Coldest Girl in Coldtown this week -- good fun vampire teen adventure love story.

Been seriously exploiting the Multnomah County Library lately. :)

In other news, I'm planning some springtime travel in the Rockies, for work. So get ready! More on that later.

* Update! The Q&A on the Powell's blog is awesome, as expected. I was especially happy to see this bit in Kelly's answer to a question about her writing routine, since as we know I am fascinated by all such talk:

I don't have a routine, and in fact I spend far more time avoiding writing than I spend writing. I can give you my routine for not getting started writing. It involves waking up and checking Twitter or Tumblr. Then I make coffee and do dishes. I brush my daughter's hair. After she's gone to school, I check Twitter again. Maybe I do some laundry. I do a lot of laundry. I make lists of all of the things that I need to do that don't involve writing. I check Twitter again. Often it's time for lunch, or more coffee by the time I've accomplished all of this. At some point I realize that time has passed and I am no longer in any danger of getting any writing done. A strange feeling of relief comes over me. I start to think about dinner. 

P.S. I have totally gorged on every season so far of The Vampire Diaries and it is entirely her fault but -- that show is Not Terrible. (Also Rebekah from the Originals is my spirit animal and Klaus is like a more affordable Tom Hardy.)

animal house

Each year, in the deepest darkest depths of winter when everything seems sort of gloomy and pointless (to me), I am rescued, wrecked and revived by my motorcycle club's annual retreat. This is when we load up on beer and liquor and fireworks and food and head out of town for a few days to plan the year and just hang out with each other, free of all rules and responsibilities so long as we don't directly endanger the security deposit on whatever house we've rented for the weekend. First there's a chaotic meeting, and then sometimes there's a semi-structured "cross-training" activity (ski bikes, trust falls, ax throwing, logging races). Other times we just kinda fart around and drink beer until something fun happens, which it always does. This year was sort of a mix of the two. I learned a lot (what happens when you put a light bulb in the microwave? how many bananas fit in a blender? do crawdads eat cat food?), lit a couple of fuses and had a damned good time. There's no better way to burn off a cold gray mood than by standing around a fire pit with 18 of my favorite fellas. They're fun!

Bring it on, 2015.

p.s. I didn't get a tattoo (regret!) and all pics are stolen from my bros.

xmas

I love this holiday because it celebrates two of my very favorite things: driving in traffic and shopping for stuff. Hoho. Some of my funniest xmases were spent with John Graham ages ago. One year we were both so broke that I wrapped up a library book as his gift, which he had to return when it was due two weeks later. Another time we were so thoroughly in denial that we neglected to buy any groceries until it was too late and the stores were all closed; dinner that night was a bbq chicken breast (shared) and some minute rice. Luckily he always had a giant bottle of Clan MacGregor hanging around.

"At home Moominmamma had dug out the verandah with a shovel and laid out life-belts, aspirin, Moominpappa's old gun, and some warm compresses. One had to be prepared."

-- from "The Fir Tree," a story by Tove Jansson, in which a stressed-out Hemulen wakes the Moomin family from their winter hibernation to warn them that "Christmas is coming!"

Anyway. Tonight will be fun! I'm going to the Hull house in Salem to hang out with Zach and his adorable family. And tomorrow I'll crawl back under the covers and resume my happy hibernation. :)