dreaming in color

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I have been having a lot of dreams that mimic reality so closely that it feels like I'm not sleeping at all.
Last night it was all about colors. I'm trying to pick out colors for our new house. I'm not a beige sort of person when it comes to wall colors. I like colors that make me happy, colors that make me smile. I currently have an orange kitchen and a blue bathroom. And while the idea of picking out new colors is somewhat fun, I don't want my new house to look like someone on hallucinogenics painted it. The colors need to blend and work together.
I'm running into some problems though. Firstly, even though the house is ours, we haven't had our closing yet which means that we don't have keys. And, if you didn't know, when you are choosing a color, you have to see it in the room that it will be in. It's like putting on lipstick in the store and feeling fabulous and then walking outside and seeing your reflection in your rear view mirror and wondering what happened between the store and your car. Colors can look completely different depending on the lighting.
Secondly, the last time we moved, I didn't have three kids. Have you ever tried to walk through Home Depot and pick out paint colors, floor tiles, and granite with preschoolers and a baby? I don't recommend it. Jem was spinning Caia in circles in her stroller while Truett climbed up on step ladders that were conveniently left behind by staff. They climbed on lawn mowers and opened cabinet doors while Sam and I discussed which color of tile would show the least amount of dirt. (That's my criteria for everything in my kitchen - how well does it hide dirt.)
So now I'm having dreams of all the things that I'm stressing out about during the day. Last night was the colors and the night before it was that I had measured the width of our fridge incorrectly and all of our kitchen plans were now wrong. And while I toss and turn, Sam sleeps like a rock. Something is wrong with this picture and I'm starting to think that it might be me.

photo by: deadcenter  http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadcenter/2992228318/

beginning of the end

This is where my baby is supposed to be.

This is where I put her not even two minutes ago and, as you can see, she is not where I put her. Instead, she is half-way across the living room, playing with one of Jem's toy cars. It is all coming to an end. My peaceful (sort of) days are giving way to frantic moments of, "Where is Caia?" and "Don't leave that on the floor where your sister can reach it."
I have been dreading this day. I watched as a good friend went from a happy mother of three to a stressed-out, pulled-in-too-many-directions-at-once mother of three. And it happened when her littlest one became mobile. Suddenly she had to make sure that there wasn't anything small in his reach and she couldn't leave the room for a moment because he might not be there when she got back. I watched the change and knew that it was coming for me. I knew that my happy-go-lucky girl would start to rock back and forth and then wiggle her way across the floor and then start to protest when I held her for too long because there is so much to see and explore. And now it is here and I'm not ready. I'm not ready!

champion of falls

I had two more falls on the bike trip, one on day two and one on day three. When I say falls, I'm talking about flying off of the bike and landing on the ground. There were plenty of times when I had to jump off of my bike but those don't count as falls since I managed to land on my feet every time.
The day two fall came as I was coasting down a hill. There was a curved bridge at the bottom that spanned a mud bog. As I was nearing the bridge, I heard Dave yell out "Visually directed steering!" It was his way of reminding me that the bike usually went where I was looking. I yelled back to him, "I've got it," and then quickly realized that I did not, in fact, have it. My wheels hit the bridge and I knew that I was going into that mud. Looking back, I really have no idea how it happened. Chalk it up to the pure, evil genius of my bike or my own ineptitude. Whatever it was, I flew through the air and landed in the mud, rolling head over heels. The mud squished up around my neck, coating the back of my shirt. I came to rest in a seated position, completely unharmed but covered in mud. Dave called out, "That was great! But you need more height next time."
On day three, I achieved the proper height. I was out in front, riding on a fairly level, packed dirt road. No major spills had occurred and I was feeling pretty good. We only had about an hour of riding left and I was thinking that I might just make it through the day. Then, without warning, a huge gaping hole appeared in the ground right in front of me. I had enough time to notice the edges of rotted boards before my front tire plunged into the hole and I went sailing up and over the handle bars to land on my belly in the dirt. I remember thinking how nice it was to be laying down and how the sun felt warm on my back. Then I heard Dave tentatively say, "Whoa. Are you okay?" I did a mental scan and hopped back up once I knew that everything was fine. Dave and the rest of my group thanked me for finding the hole for them and named me as the champion of falls as they walked their bikes around the hole. I humbly accepted my new title and got back on my bike to ride the rest of the way home.  

photo by: stoast  http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoast/1590172490/

PS. Thanks for indulging me this week! I'll be back to my normal blog posts on Monday.

taking a tumble

The first day of our three-day trip started out fairly well. After several hours of riding we came across a gravel road. It was a nice change up from riding on narrow, dirt paths through sweet potato fields. We were able to ride next to one another and talk. I was really excited to ride with people but my excitement was short lived as I realized how jarring a gravel road can be. It also didn’t take me long to realize that it is harder to control a bike when you are riding it over loose pebbles and dirt as opposed to pavement. And of course, giving my biking prowess, it was no time at all before I began to lose control of my bike. Being the smart person that I am, I quickly deduced that falling on gravel would be very, very bad and decided instead to steer for the bushes on the side of the road. What I didn't realize is that the bushes were concealing a steep hill which I proceeded to tumble down. I landed about 10 feet down the hill with my bike on top of me. I wasn't hurt at all but I had inadvertently chosen to land in a bush that is covered with sticky seed pods. They stick to animals that pass by and the bush is carried to a new location. It must have thought it hit the jackpot when I whipped through there. It stuck pods everywhere. In my hair, on my sneakers, my shirt, my pants, my shoelaces.

I hauled myself back up the hill with my bike. My roommate was standing there doubled-over with laughter. She did help me pick off some of the seed pods though and I hopped back on the instrument of death and continued to ride.

Later that day, Dave told us that a great fall has three components.
1) distance
2) height
3) witnesses

I had really only achieved number three that day. I did roll for a good distance but for everyone else it just looked like I dropped off the edge of the map. But fear not. Day two brought distance and witnesses and day three is when I brought it all together and was crowned the champion of falls.


photo by: jake stangel  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakestangel/2111628644/

we're off

The morning of our bike trip finally arrived. I will admit that I had gone to bed the night before telling God that it would be okay if He wanted me to have another malaria flare up. Alas, when I woke up at 3:40 a.m. I knew that the only thing wrong with me was a really bad case of nerves. I laid in bed for several hours waiting for everyone else to wake up and tried to give myself a pep talk. But I felt like Homer Simpson whose brain and body are so often on completely different wave lengths.

I managed to choke down two biscuits at breakfast. I was encouraged to eat more to help keep my strength up but I just couldn’t do it. I also couldn’t manage to keep from crying. I tried telling people that I was just super excited to get going and that they were tears of anticipation but apparently no one had really ever heard of tears of anticipation before and they weren’t buying it.

After breakfast, we lined up for our group picture and then took the bikes on a final test run around the yard. And as I live and breathe, a miracle occurred. As Tim was riding bike #2 around the yard, the chain broke. Hallelujah! Suddenly the skies parted and the angels sang and I was transported to a beautiful place filled with lollipops and rainbows. And then, simply by uttering, “Well, good thing we have an extra bike,” Dave brought me crashing back to reality. An extra bike? When did we get an extra bike? And there I was, sitting astride bike #8, a bike that I didn’t even know existed. This was worse than before! Obviously bike #2 was an evil thing. It had thrown me off countless times. It had pushed me off of a bridge and dumped me into patches of grass.  But at least I had some idea of how bike #2 operated. This bike #8 was a whole new animal.

As we pedaled out of the yard I realized that my brakes weren’t working. Could it be possible? Two miracles in one day? I called out to Dave that the brakes didn’t work on this new bike. He stopped and pulled out his small tool kit. He knelt by my bike, did something to something, and then declared that it would be fine to ride. I tried to argue that it was obvious I wasn’t meant to go on this trip but he just smiled and ordered me to the front of the group.  

And so our three-day bike trip began.

photo by: ranwar  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ranwar/5418007857/

spanning the gap

Due to my lack of skill, I was given extra practice sessions on the bike with our leader and another student. I did begin to improve and on my best day only had to jump off of my bike five times. On the last day of practice, Dave thought I should try out the "bridge trail."

There are two basic types of bridges in this part of Indonesia; the stick bridge and the plank bridge. The stick bridge, being very true to its name, is constructed by placing a long stick or branch across the space you want to traverse. Let me be clear that I’m not talking about a huge branch from an Oak tree. I’m talking about a branch from a sapling, something that is about 3 inches in diameter, with knobs and bends. I had already proven that I had difficulty simply walking over this type of bridge and now I was expected to carry a bike over it. Thankfully, stick bridges were used to span fairly small gaps, something several feet wide for instance, so in most cases I would simply hike my bike up onto my shoulder and leap over the space.

The plank bridges were used to span wider distances and consisted of two planks laid across the gap at the opposite ends, planks laid crosswise over those two planks to cover the gap, and then two more planks laid atop the original two. So in this case there was a fairly large structure which someone could walk or ride a bike over. However, the danger with plank bridges is that most of the planks have long since rotted away. The middle was almost always gone and only the four planks laid across the bridge still stood. So as we came upon a bridge during our ride, we would have to quickly assess the state of the bridge and make sure that we pedaled over the right part.

I can honestly say that I did fairly well on this ride, until the very last bridge. Somehow, my bike ended up on the bridge and I ended up in the ditch. The sad part is that I wasn't even riding at the time. I had gotten off to walk my bike across. That was when I started to suspect that my bike was, in fact, trying to kill me.

(sorry for the lack of a picture but I don't have a scanner and taking a picture of a picture with my phone and then emailing it to myself didn't work out so well)

memories

Last week, I wrote a post about a short bike ride. And I made the following statement: I had some bad experiences with bike riding when I spent a semester abroad in Indonesia. I actually didn't get back on to a bike for six years. But that is a different story. This week, I'd like to take a break from my normal blog topics of motherhood, family, and trying to keep it all together. Instead, I thought it would be fun to share some of those bad experiences. As background, let me say that I spent the spring semester of my junior year of college studying abroad in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Part of my time there was spent prepping for and taking a three-day bike trek through the wilds of Indonesia. It went poorly from day one...

Today Dave (our adventure leader) took us back to a little shed off to the side of the property; a building that I hadn’t even really noticed before. We walked into the dim interior looking around curiously. Bikes; eight or nine bikes of various sizes and ages lined up or hanging from the ceiling like giant metal spiders. He asked the guys to wheel them all out onto the grass and then he split us into pairs according to our size and then each pair was given a bike. Marci and I received bike number 2 and two aesthetically pleasing helmets.[1]

I have to confess that riding a bike has never been my forte. I actually didn’t learn until I was seven. My parents had sent me to Ohio for a few weeks over the summer to stay with my grandparents. Grandma had suggested that I ride one of the old bikes over to my cousin’s house to play. This was back when you could actually let your kids ride their bikes a few miles through the countryside without worrying that they would never come home.  I told her that I couldn’t ride and suggested that she drive me over in the car. Yeah, Grandma wasn't having that. So I spent the next several hours sitting on a bike while my grandmother pushed me. There was crying and yelling but I did eventually master the art of riding a bike and rode constantly when I got back home. However, I was that kid who would dismount and walk my bike up and over curbs. When the sidewalk came to an end, so did my ride. This might have changed but when I was nine we moved out of our neighborhood to a place with no sidewalks or alleys, just windy country roads, unleashed dogs and cars that drove way too fast. So by the time bike #2 was in my hands it had been a good ten years since I had been on a bike that didn’t have a large fan in place of the front wheel.

It’s been said that riding a bike is something that you never forget, a skill that stays with you. I found that to be true. I was a little wobbly at first but pretty soon had no trouble getting the bike from point A to point B. The challenge was that Dave had placed obstacles in between point A and point B, rocks and large logs. Our job was to weave in and out of the rocks and then ramp our bike over the logs. Dave was attempting to simulate things that we might come across on our trail ride. I don’t even know how many times I hit that log. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried to lift my front wheel, I never managed to get it high enough. These were skills that I had never bothered to learn because, frankly, there weren’t a lot of logs laying across the sidewalk in the neighborhood, and they always had those nice places where the sidewalk dipped right down to the level of the pavement and you could just coast on through.

I failed at every single task given to me. I could not weave through the rocks. I could not jump over the log. I could not coast down a grass covered hill and pedal furiously back up the other side.  And I could not convince myself to keep trying. My helmet came off, I handed my bike over to my partner and I refused to stand up and try again.  I knew that my limit of humiliation and failure had been reached. There was much attempting to persuade me to continue to try but it was all in vain. Attempting to learn new skills in front of people, failing, and not caring at all has never been one of my strong points. I knew that continuing on would just lead to more and more frustration. So I took my juvenile and crappy attitude and sat down in the grass to watch the rest of my classmates fail and succeed.

We rode our bikes again for the next PE class, but this time we left our little compound and hit the open road. I had given myself a pep-talk, telling myself that it was okay to make mistakes and that it is the best way to learn. I was feeling much better. I told myself that I wasn’t going to worry about looking stupid in front of people. I had already made an ass of myself so it couldn’t get much worse. I was ready to feel frustrated and stupid but determined that it wouldn’t stop me. What I wasn’t prepared for was fear. But suddenly, as my bike just took off on seemingly flat yet haphazardly paved asphalt, there it was. When you are a kid and the road starts to disappear under your wheels all you think about is the speed and the wind in your face. When you are twenty and haven’t been on a bike in years, all you think about is how much that asphalt is going to hurt when it smacks you in the face. So by the time we reached our turn-off point to start trail riding, I was in quite a state. I couldn’t wait to get off of the road and onto hard-packed dirt. Yes, it would still hurt to fall but at least my face wouldn’t come off. But the entrance to our trail was not what I expected. It was a hill with rivets and valleys and rocks; a large dirt hill that we needed to ride down. I watched all of my teammates go before me and I made a quick decision that riding down that hill would be one of the worst choices I could make. If I was going to have use of my limbs for the rest of the ride then I would need to walk down the hill. So I got off of my bike and began to walk down the hill while the rest of my team watched me from the bottom. Nothing like having an audience to your cowardice. Dave encouraged me to get on my bike and ride but I refused.

When I finally made it to the bottom, Dave asked me to ride in front. So now every mistake I made, every time I slowed down, every time I fell off, reverberated back through the entire group. Only when the rain started did Dave finally let me fall back and allow the rest of team to continue on without me.

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[1] There is no such thing as an aesthetically pleasing bicycle helmet. They are dorky and uncool. The only people who can possibly wear them and look halfway decent are the guys in the Tour de France because if you are male and wearing spandex then no one is looking at your head.

photo by: sabellachan  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabellachan/216587690/