Happy Monday

Every Monday I post photos of guys smiling.

This

It was an unbelievable 78 degrees yesterday, and my two new roomies and I went down to the river for a ride.

 Kansas vs South Carolina. Joel & Will on the Esplanade.

You can tell a lot from their pictures. Joel, left, is a folk singer from Kansas. He loves this girl’s bike and wears oversized eye glasses and snug check shirts. He couldn’t be more Midwest… or more Portland.

Will, right, is a recent college grad from South Carolina with a vintage hand-made road bike in mint condition. Everything he is wearing, with the possible exception of his bandana, was chosen for its label. Seriously.

Joel peeled off early to go to a show; musicians have to network constantly. Will and I continued along the river, heads spinning around at all the cute guys out in the sun. Since it was all new to Will, we stopped whenever he wanted to look at the view, and he marvelled frequently at how amazing the path system is and at Portland for building it. “I hate to say, ‘wow, Oregon’ but….”

 Teen fixie rats nest their bikes and play along the Springwater Corridor

As we sat on a bluff with a view of the city, late afternoon sun blazing in our eyes, soft warm air drying our sweat, I said, “This is why people stay here. Just think, three days ago, everybody in town was thinking about moving, but now… this.”

Kombucha Creature

One of my new housemates, Wilbur, is quite a character, and he has the kind of ethusiasm that only a 23 year-old could. Everything is turned up to eleven. For example, he loves wine; so not only did he learn everything he could about it, he also became a somellier. And he moved to Oregon with the hope of someday becoming a wine maker.

When he gets excited about something, he really gets excited. So when he decided that he wanted to make kombucha, a sour, slightly fermented, vinegary drink cultured in black tea, I knew it was going to happen. I’ve been wanting to brew some up for years, but it’s kind of gross; and that put me off. Wilbur, however, was determined that we should try. Like, now.

Not at all surprisingly for this Earthy fucking town, one of the first guys he met in Portland brews kombucha and offered to give him a “mother” — the “symbiotic colony of bacteria & yeast” –which looks and feels just like a spongy pile of discolored sandwich meat. It’s kind of gross. Even people who love the drink refer to the “mother” not-so-lovingly as the “slug,” “snot,” and the “kombucha creature.”

 Big jar of black tea with the kombucha creature growing inside

So this past Sunday, Will & I brewed and sweetened some tea, thawed the large disk of frozen “mother,” and put it all in a big jar with a cloth over the top. Now all we can do is wait. It’ll take a couple of weeks to get going, but Will still visits the jar in the pantry, looking hopefully for changes. It’s as though he expects one day to find it has given birth to a litter of puppies. His enthusiasm is infectious though; he’s gotten me doing the very same thing.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m excited. Kombucha is basically spoiled tea with a giant glob of snot floating around in it. Nothing about it sounds appealing, yet people really love the stuff. It’s “good for you,” but no one seems to know how or why. Still, like cycling and infrequent bathing, it’s just what you do in Portland. So here I am, giving it a shot.

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Check out these basic kombucha making directions at Instructables.

And there are more elaborate instructions here.

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700 Channels

Been busy for a while now. Been sick too. I caught something that was going around, and it’s taken me a whole month to get over it. Cough cough cough for weeks.

In mid-March, I visited my parents in the less-sylvan-by-the-minute Chestnut Mountain, Georgia, which luckily coincided with the worst of my illness, affording me the perfect opportunity to sleep sixteen hours a day and flip incessantly through 700 or so channels of Dish Network. For ten days I did essentially nothing, which is the only way to enjoy suburban Atlanta, really.

I took my laptop, but didn’t have the strenght to work. I took trail running shoes, but couldn’t run. I keep an old Centurion Accordo touring bike in Georgia, but I couldn’t ride. Luckily, I also couldn’t eat; so despite my sloth, I still lost a few pounds.

 People in their cars: Light traffic on I-85 near Midtown Atlanta.

It was a very isolating trip. Atlanta is very isolating anyway. Always is. Everyone stays in their office buldings, in their cars, in their houses watching 700 channels. My parents too. A visit consists mainly of us sitting in the same room without speaking, but watching the same freakishly oversized flat screen TV. If I get bored, I go to the guest room and watch another big TV all by myself. Really, I just floated between televisions the whole time.

  Human-free Zone: Tarmac at the world’s busiest airport in Atlanta

Leaving town, I hadn’t had a conversation with anyone for the entire trip — not my parents, no one in a store, no one in a restaurant, no one in a coffee shop, no one on the train, no one anywhere. No one spoke to each other. People didn’t speak to each other. They looked out of windows at the parking lot, at the highway, or at the airport tarmac.

 Thank you for visiting Atlanta! Now go away.

On the plane, a goodlooking guy sat next to me. His elbows brushed mine for hours; his hip bumped against me repeatedly, but we never even looked at each other. Never said a word. Pretended the other didn’t exist.

… which is pretty much how I spent the first 33 years of my life.