Wild and Wonderful!

A picture of last night's schmancy vegan dessert, at Cafe Sunflower, for my slightly early birthday dinner (or J's very, very delayed birthday dinner, depending on how you see it.)

Headed to the airport now, for the first of a couple trips to WV this month, and got on the MARTA in the correct direction at that. Yay!

(as one reader, A2, knows, the last time I took MARTA to the airport, I got on the northbound train, and didn't realize it until, ahem, Doraville.)

Running, Eating, Playing

Last Saturday, J and I ran a 5k, J PR'd, then we treated ourselves to a big, delicious vegan brunch at Soul Vegetarian 2 (which notwithstanding the name is actually 100% vegan):

This is the tofu scramble and soysage.

And with the tofu scramble in the background, vegan pancakes, and the house classic BBQ Kalebone Twists, with mac and "cheese" and collard green sides.

Even better, it was a Scoutmob!

We then went to play in the streets at Atlanta Streets Alive, which was lovely and inspiring and calming and exciting. Yes, all of those at once.

Tomorrow I fly back to Wild and Wonderful. I'll miss J for much of the next 1.5 months, between WV, Peru, and upstate NY, but I'm also excited to be back in WV.

of Js and motorized ice chests

This photograph was taken by our friend J2*, who was on the phone with J when he saw it in Albuquerque:
Yes, friends and neighbors: that's a motorized ice chest. No, I don't know why he made it, how fast it goes, or where the guy puts his feet while (riding?) J2*, feel free to elaborate in the comments section if you have additional details!

*As I was starting to write this post, I found myself in the throes of a naming dilemma: I realized I have described two different people as J2 in previous blog posts. And I have already coined a J3 and a J4, so I can't just reassign further muddying the waters. As a matter of fact, I was out at a local filmmaker showing last night with J4 and someone who will now be coined J5 when J was on the abovementioned phone call with J2*. This shit is getting confusing!

The thing is, you'd have to know me reasonably well and at least know of my friends if not know them personally to be able to decipher who any given blog post references. And referencing people in the blog is mostly a shoutout to the person, not meant to identify them to the masses on the internetz. So any confusion, well... kinda doesn't really matter.

But dammit, what was it with naming kids names that start with J in the 1970s and 1980s? Actually, a little more internetting shows that J names were awfully prominent throughout most of the 20th century.

Thus, going forward, it's like this: J2(a) and J2(b), y'all are now joined in cosmic-cyberspace bondage. This is forever, since the internetz don't forget. Readers, you'll just have to sleuth it out in any given post, or email me for clarification. J2(a) and J2(b), deal with it. I actually think you'll like one another quite a bit. And I don't want to hear any fighting in the back seat if you don't, or I swear to god, you'll be walking home! (A shoutout there to mom. Or maybe it's more a shoutout to my brothers, since we actually had to walk home once.)

Another bicycling & fundraising appeal

Hey all. I'm writing this for both a blog post and email, so please pardon if it reads weird.

Basically, I'm asking you to donate some money to a good cause, and I'm really not good at asking people for money. (Odd, I know, for someone who spends so much time volunteering and working with nonprofits.)

On September 25, J and I will both be riding in the Wapiyapi Classic, a 50 mile bike ride starting in Aspen, Colorado. 100% of the proceeds from this ride will benefit Wapiyapi, a Colorado based 501(c)(3) non-profit. The mission of Wapiyapi is to offer a community of hope and support to children and their families affected by childhood cancer.

This ride is very personal to me, for the same reasons as I made a fundraising plea on this blog last year: there is a direct connection to our friend Gretchen Life. Gretchen was J's best friend in medical school, and J was the maid of honor at her wedding. She died in a boating accident in 2005, just before she was to finish her pediatrics residency in New Orleans and return to Colorado to become a pediatrician in Rifle. She was incredibly gifted with children and people, and it's no surprise that she was a longtime volunteer with Wapiyapi.

I wrote about Gretchen at much more length in that post, and I'd encourage you to go read it, since just writing this is making me cry. Actually, I'll paste in some of the backstory at the bottom of this post.

J and I will be riding this year with Gretchen's father, who I rode the Children's Hospital Courage Classic with last year.

On to the ask: each ride participant is required to fundraise a minimum of $200, and we are also encouraged to exceed that amount. ($800 covers the cost for one child affected by cancer to go to summer camp for a week.) Any amount you can give, even $5 or $10, is helpful, and 100% tax deductible. Please check out http://goo.gl/jnaaU to donate, and be sure you fill in my name at the top of the page where it says “Find a fundraiser to support:” (Either my full first name or nickname will find my personal page.) Anything is immensely appreciated!

An aside: I'll probably get notified when you donate, even if you select the “hide donation amount” and “anonymous” donation options. A had the irritating experience of trying to make it anonymous with the Courage Classic, and I still got an e-mail saying something like “A________ donated!”

More information about the ride and organization can be found at: www.wapiyapiclassic.org

THANK YOU!

p.s. Here is some of that prior post, explaining a little more about Gretchen:

...to honor her life, and her commitment to pediatric medicine, which she was natural at: she had an immense amount of love, compassion, dedication. She was genuinely one of the kindest people I have ever known.

Gretchen's death was, in a strange way, sort of caused by Hurricane Katrina ([for] which I flew to New Orleans to assist with protests, rebuilding, and resistance work around, and to stay at Gretchen and Frank's house, only to show up on the doorstep and find out they had drowned two days before.) This drowning was a little different than the ones we heard so much news coverage of: Gretchen and Frank went out in a boat that Frank had built on Lake Pontchartrain shortly after the hurricane, it capsized in high winds, and they held on for hours: long enough to shred their lifejackets from the friction of the boat bobbing up and down. Before the hurricane, a boat floating out on Lake Pontchartain within a half mile of the Pontchartrain Causeway would have been cause for alarm. Not so after the hurricane, when debris was still floating throughout the lake, thoughout New Orleans. So for J and I, and perhaps for Gretchen and Frank's families, the official death toll from Katrina should be 1,838.

101 miles

Rode an out and back century today on the Silver Comet with my friends K and M. Great ride, great people, great times. At K's urging, we started right near the crack of dawn, just after 7am. We rode out to just past 50 miles,
turned around, and had a lovely lunch at a Silver Comet legend, Frankie's.

Shortly after departing from lunch, the skies opened up. Fortunately we had already done our triumphant bikestand at the Brushy Mountain Tunnel:
(faces obscured to protect the innocent and the guilty.)


Good, good, good times.

Busy busy busy busy: Brief notes from recent travels

photo by Cheshire Tongkat

Just back from a truly amazing, and challenging, and inspirational, and difficult, and extraordinary experience in West Virginia: Appalachia Rising: March on Blair Mountain. I had the privilege and honor and delight of working with some of the most amazing organizers and participants imaginable, and we overcame some pretty extraordinary obstacles. Five days of marching on narrow busy roads through two of the most pro-coal counties on earth to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining, culminating in ~775 people marching on Blair Mountain, and around 148 of those walking up to the historic battlefield, one scene of the largest armed labor uprising in modern American history: the Battle of Blair Mountain. Yeah, run-on sentence, what?

Drove back yesterday through some of the worst driving weather I've ever dealt with: it was basically nonstop driving wind, thunder, and lightning from the VA/TN border, all the way back to Atlanta via Knoxville.

Now unpacking, and putting stuff together to ride a century tomorrow with a friend.

Need to book travel to Afghanistan, for which the departure will be very shortly after returning from Peru, in early August. Like maybe the next day.

Lots and lots and lots of pictures to come, I promise. Now I have this burning desire to shower, shave, eat breakfast, listen to public radio, and drink good coffee.