My first 911 call

I have now made my first (and I hope only) call to 911.

I was walking back to my car from work on Tuesday, when I was accosted by a homeless woman, waving her hands at me and asking me to please help this sick lady (in very broken English). She wanted me to use my cell phone and call 911. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, or where the woman was, and was reluctant (as I imagine anyone would be) to make a 911 call without knowing more about the situation. I tried to get more information from her, and just then a guy came riding up on a bike who spoke a little more English. Since they seemed to have a clear idea of what the issue was, I finally dialed 911 and handed them my cell phone to see if they could explain directly to the operator. But they wound up getting stuck in the recorded-messages part of 911 and giving up. They thanked me, and handed back my phone, looking disappointed.

I was walking on back to my truck thinking mostly about how I was already late to pick up Mike, but I just couldn't shake the incident from my mind. I thought about it some more, and decided to make one more try. I drove my truck up to where the woman who'd accosted me was still hanging about hoping for help, and asked her where the lady was, who needed help. (I thought maybe, even if we couldn't get an ambulance, I might be able to take her to help in my truck.) She took me over the train tracks and into an empty lot under the freeway (I was briefly worried that I was being set up to be mugged), where, in a surprisingly cozy little shelter made of concrete blocks and cardboard, I found an older woman lying down, with another woman holding her hand.

I asked what was wrong, and thankfully the sick woman spoke English. She'd been throwing up blood, and fainted about fifteen minutes ago--she needed to get to a hospital. I was just backing out of the shelter and thinking about my options, when my phone rang. I answered, and a voice said, "Did you just call 911?" It was the 911 operator, ringing me back! So I explained the situation to her, she asked a couple of questions, then said she'd call the paramedics. I went over to the corner I'd directed them to, waited a couple of minutes, and then flagged the ambulance down as the paramedics drove up. Took them over to where the sick woman was, and that was that.

I wish I knew more about her story--what had happened to her, what her life was like, what was wrong, how it all turned out. I wish I'd had time to stick around and find out more, and maybe talk to her friends a bit--but I was already late meeting Mike, and perhaps it's just as well that I didn't. My curiosity shouldn't stand in the way of someone getting needed medical attention. Still, I wish I could have found out more.

So there's my first (and I hope only) 911 call. I hope she got the hospital and got the treatment she needed!

Looks like cross-stitch, for now...

Tonight I was sitting around bored, feeling not too motivated to finish cleaning the apartment or do any of the myriad small chores that need to be done, and trying to figure out what to do next. I wound up pulling out an old, old project from about five years ago, Teresa Wentzler's Peacock Tapestry and starting work on it again, after about a two year hiatus.

A little background: the Peacock Tapestry is a HUGE cross-stitching project, 280 x 180 stitches, full of blended colors, quarter stitches, and other difficult bits. I estimate I've put in about 200 hours on it already and have about 200 hours left to go. I tackled it when I was young and considerably more optimistic than I currently am (nowadays I just take on small projects like writing books and riding AIDS Lifecycle ;-) ), and got halfway done before going on to other things. Cross-stitch doesn't really hold my interest well, requiring (with apologies to cross-stitch lovers) the creativity of a gnat. It's essentially paint by numbers, with the designer telling you exactly what colors to use and where to put them; there's some technique involved, but as a whole it's pretty mindless.

I adapted the Peacock Tapestry a bit to put my stamp on it, mostly by swapping out the cotton embroidery floss specified for a more luxurious silk, which practically glows against the linen background. (The difference, alas, is not obvious in the scanned image.) But it still requires more technique and attention than creativity.

Which is exactly what I want right now. I want my creative energies focused on the book, not on mastering some new technique or experimenting with dyes or (generally) creating anything else. But I also love working with my hands, usually on some kind of fiber arts. So I think cross-stitch will fill the void quite nicely, at least for now.

Now, about the book. I'm going back to work on it. I think now that I've resolved my emotional issues around AIDS Lifecycle, it should go considerably quicker. I still need to get my tapes back from my transcriptionist (I ran out of money to pay him) so I can finish transcribing them myself, but I have a lot of good material to work with right now, so I think I can get quite a bit done even without those tapes. I plan to start sometime next week, or perhaps on my birthday (which comes up on Thursday). I think that would be an auspicious day to start.

SF Pride Parade

Made dinner tonight!

Mike and I (well, mostly me) cooked dinner tonight, and it was yummy. We had:

• pan-fried steak with morel mushroom sauce
• sauteed morel mushrooms
• stir-fried haricots verts (baby green beans) with garlic
• fresh white corn, microwaved
• whole wheat bread from the farmer's market.

I'm quite proud of the morel sauce, as I made it up more or less on the spot and it came out very tasty--chop morels fine, mince an onion, saute together, add concentrated brown stock and a dash of red wine, simmer until nicely reduced. Came out tasting intensely of morel, a mushroom of which I am very fond. (The key to the sauce, in my opinion, is the brown stock--a good batch of it will add body to almost anything.)

But the entire meal was quite tasty, owing largely to fresh ingredients. I'm a big fan of the farmer's markets, and like to go around to every vendor, tasting at every booth, until I find the vendor who I feel has the best ____ in town. Then I buy only from that vendor.

I can be pretty fanatical about it--for five or six years I drove from Palo Alto/Menlo Park to San Francisco (a 75-mile round trip) because my favorite peach vendor stopped coming to Mountain View, and he has SUCH wonderful peaches that it was worth the drive. I may drive down to Mountain View from San Francisco this year for seedless muscat grapes, wonderfully fruity in an era where grapes have been reduced to so much sugar. I love good food, and I practically roll in it whenever I have a chance. So it is with great pleasure that I see the summer fruits coming in: cherries, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, white corn, and so on. It's going to be a very tasty summer.

Off to bed now--I've been neglecting poor Mike while I write this, and we need to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. Tomorrow is the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, which is probably the biggest thing to happen in the city all year 'round, and I am riding in it!! I'll be part of the AIDS Lifecycle contingent, which is usually the second contingent in the parade (after Dykes on Bikes, which has led the parade from time immemorial). I have pulled my best rainbow tutu out of the closet for the occasion. :-)

(Mike says it's amusing that my rainbow tutu is "coming out of the closet" on Gay Pride Day. LOL!)

So if you're watching the Pride Parade on TV, watch for me!

First ride post-AIDS Lifecycle

Today I got on my bike for my first ride after AIDS Lifecycle. I had planned to tackle Page Mill Road (a long, very hilly climb), but after looking at the clock and consulting with Mike, I decided to do a shorter ride instead. (We wanted to cook dinner together, and if I went up Page Mill I wouldn't be back until pretty late.) So I went down Foothill Boulevard to Stevens Creek to Mt. Eden Road to Pierce and back--mostly flat, but with a few tough hills.

It was weird being back in the saddle after two weeks out of it, and even stranger to be out riding with no particular end goal. It was surprisingly hard to motivate myself to do anything--eventually I decided that dammit, I was going to ride the Death Ride next year, I was going to prep myself for that by tackling some of the toughest hills I can find. I'll lose some form over the winter (that can't be helped), but at least I'll have had the experience of going up those hills, and the knowledge that I can do it.

After I decided that, I had a lot less trouble with motivation. I am, as they euphemistically say, "goal-minded"--meaning that, if I don't have a goal in mind, preferably a stretch goal, it's hard to get me out of bed. Given a goal, I'll push hard to achieve it, but I find it hard to just do stuff, like go out and ride, without an end-point in mind. So there we have it: I'm doing the Markleeville Death Ride.

I've started trying to lose weight. I don't know how successful I'll be if I'm still going out to eat with Mike a couple times a week, but I don't want to give up our dinners together, so I might try dieting the other days and just losing weight less slowly. I'll also have to be religious about getting to the gym on days when I'm not riding--I want to build muscle mass and burn some more calories. I want to lose ten pounds of fat to prep me for this winter, when I want to turn away from dieting and start putting on serious muscle in my lower body (which you can't do while dieting).

The current plan of attack for the Death Ride goes like this:

Summer: Lose weight, practice climbing hills. Hire a cycling coach to teach me ascending and descending skills.

Fall: Lose more weight, start building muscle. Hire a personal trainer (once a week or once every two weeks, so it doesn't get too expensive) to help me put on leg muscle and develop my core. Work on interval training to build cardio fitness.

Winter: Build muscle. Start building a cardio base again to start training rides in spring. Hire cycling coach to start me training for the Death Ride.

Spring: Work on training for AIDS Lifecycle and for the Death Ride. Ride lots of hills. Lose more weight if need be.

It's a somewhat ambitious plan, but I think it'll be enough to keep me motivated for exercise.

Right knee, left knee...

So, my orthopedic surgeon (from my reconstructive knee surgery) got in touch with me a few weeks ago about a followup study, and I happily agreed. Mostly I just wanted to get a professional evaluation of my knee, now that it's been three years.

Result: the PCL in my left knee is a bit looser than the PCL in my right knee, which is only to be expected (apparently it always loosens up a bit post-surgery). Annoyingly, my left knee is STILL not as strong or as dextrous as my right knee--in the one-legged hop test, my right leg could still hop about 15% further than my left leg, meaning that, three years post-surgery, I STILL haven't quite fully recovered.

The good news, of course, is that it's recovered well enough that I can do pretty much anything I want to with it, including the AIDS Ride.

Medical advice: do more quad exercises to strengthen the left quad. *sigh*

Well, at least the knee works, I'm not limping, and I can do just about anything except jump up and down on the leg. So I don't have TOO much to complain about.

A cool beading site

I'm not normally into beads, but these look fantastic.

Chicken-slaughtering

So, Mike and I went chicken-slaughtering today. One of his friends from National Novel Writing Month raises chickens (one breed for eggs, one for meat) and today was the day to convert six cockerels (young roosters) into plump, tasty chicken.

We drove up to her house, which is in the backwoods near Hwy 9, wearing old clothes and carrying a change of clothing--Mike had warned me that chicken-butchering can be messy. We watched a short video on how to kill and dress a chicken, then trooped out back to where Mike's friend had her hutch. Inside were seven or eight beautiful white and black spotted chickens, and some very large white chickens. The black and white spotted chickens were all laying hens; the white chickens were from a meat breed.

We caught two of the white meat chickens, picked them up by the legs (chickens become docile when held upside-down by the legs), and brought them to the back of the house, where a killing-stump had been set up.

A killing-stump is actually quite easy to make. Drive two nails into a log 1.5 inches apart. One takes the chicken, catches the head between the nails, and whacks the neck HARD with a hatchet. If you do it hard enough, the head severs off cleanly (meaning the chicken doesn't suffer long), a gout of blood erupts from the neck, and the headless body starts thrashing EVERYWHERE. It's really important to shove it into a bucket quickly, so it doesn't get loose and bruise the flesh. Also to keep blood from spattering everywhere.

After the blood drained out, L. (Mike's friend) dipped the bird into a vat of 160 degree water with a little dishwashing detergent thrown in. The hot water quickly penetrated the feathers, and after ten or fifteen seconds they began to loosen. The soggy bird went onto a table, and two of us went to work plucking it.

Chickens have a LOT of feathers!! The big wing feathers came off quickly, as did the large body feathers, but there were a lot of small feather-nubs that needed to be pulled out individually. L. helped us speed the process by showing us how, if you pull the skin tight and then scrape with a butter knife against the grain of the feathers, the tiny new feathers come straight up out of the skin. Still, it was a LOT of plucking.

After the plucking came time to eviscerate the bird, and this is what I wound up doing (mostly). One cuts open the neck cavity, snips out the windpipe, and loosens the craw (which is a loose pouch sitting to the right of the windpipe). Then one snips open the bird at the bottom, in the spot where all the supermarket chickens are snipped open, reaches in, and pulls out the intestines, gizzard, and other internal organs. (Yes, I wore gloves!) The craw, if cut loose properly, should come loose and pull down through the neck cavity to come out with the intestines.

Then one separates out the chicken gizzard, liver, and heart (the giblets). The gizzard, which is what the chicken uses to grind up its food, is a very tough, muscular pouch that contains the chicken's last meal, as well as sand and gravel that it uses to grind up the meal (chickens don't have teeth, so they just peck up food and leave it to the gizzard to grind it). It needs to be snipped open, emptied, and the yellow lining removed before it's fit to eat. The liver needs the bile sac removed--very carefully, or the bitter green bile will spoil everything--and the heart just needs the fat trimmed away. I saved the giblets carefully, because Mike likes them--sauteed and eaten on toast.

After that one snips away around the anal area and removes the entire innards, including the intestines. Flip the bird over, remove the oil gland sitting on the fat flap, remove the feet at the knees, and voila! one clean, dressed chicken. It took four or five of us about two hours to convert six chickens from live, flapping birds to refrigerator-ready chicken.

I had thought the entire process would be gross and disgusting, but it wasn't, really. I wasn't too thrilled about the killing process (I declined to whack any chicken heads off), but the rest of it was fascinating, and (if wearing gloves) not really that messy. It was remarkable how quickly it went from live bird to food for the table. A small taste of farm life, I guess.

Put up my ALC5 blog!

I haven't yet linked it in to my homepage, but here's my AIDS Lifecycle 5 blog, complete with photos from the Ride. Enjoy!

Tien

Back, and a great, big, enormous thank you!

Hi all,

I'm back from my epic journey to LA, and am busily working on my AIDS Lifecycle 5 blog and photo section. It was FANTABULOUS! I rode every day in a different outfit, got lots of compliments on my clothes, and had a fantastic time.

I owe someone a great, big, enormous thank you, and I don't know who it is. On Day 6, going into Ventura, I was having back pain and saddle-soreness and generally having a hard time. We rode on 101 that day, on the shoulder, and as I was riding along I *thought* I saw "GO TIEN!" in chalk, in the middle of the shoulder. I was zipping by at about 17 mph, though, so I wasn't sure if I'd seen it or it was just a hallucination.

Then I thought I saw "BIKE ON TRAVELING TIGRESS", and I was *sure* I was hallucinating. A bit later I saw "GO AIDS RIDERS!" and I figured they were just general messages of support.

And then I saw, squarely in the middle of the shoulder, "GO TIEN!" Well, it just totally made my day. Someone was cheering me, personally, on! I stopped feeling the back and butt pain and started following those little signs like bread crumbs of encouragement. It got me to lunch and back out on the road again with renewed enthusiasm.

So, whoever took the time to go out and do that, THANK YOU!!! You TOTALLY made my day. It was one of the high points of my entire ride.

Tien

This is it....!

Just got back from registration--I have my wristbands and my gear bag/tent markers, and I'm ready to go! I am now officially Rider #1918 of AIDS Lifecycle 5. (And to prove it, I have a giant "1918" across the top bar of my bike, and a big "1918" sticker on my helmet.) I even got a fleece vest for raising over $3500!

I am strangely calm. All the months of training, all the weeks of frantic sewing, all the days of frenzied packing are over, and tomorrow morning we leave. I have done all my advance planning and it tells me we are finished. So this afternoon is leisure time, no frantic urgency to it. It seems so odd to have free time after the last several weeks of sewing every minute, especially since tomorrow will be so busy.

But there we are. I'm done, I've packed everything (including a Golding ring spindle, some silk, 3 small balls of angora yarn, and knitting needles--just in case I get disabled for a day), every possible happenstance is prepared for, and now it's just a question of waiting.

Once again, you can follow our progress from San Francisco to LA by going to http://experience.aidslifecycle.org, which contains photos and blogs of the event--and there will definitely be photos of me! And you can leave me messages of support there, too. (I will read them!)

I keep having to suppress the silly urge to start singing,

585 miles left to LA,
585 miles to go,
Pedal down, spin it around,
584 miles left to LA!

On to LA!

Tien

peacock tutu

Well, here’s one of my outfits (perhaps the most fabulous one!). To see the others, you’ll have to watch on http://experience.aidslifecycle.org. (Or wait until after the Ride, when I’ll put up another Web page with my photos. :-) )

I’m slowly winding down from sewing night and day. Tonight I go for a very light spin on the trainer—very low zone 1 work, basically a “bike stroll” to keep my legs moving. I also need to get a new camera battery—I discovered, to my dismay, that three of my four camera batteries are dead as a doornail. Can’t have that happening on the Ride!

Very little else to say…tomorrow is Orientation Day, I get to drop off my bike, watch the safety video, and…get my wristbands!!

(You have to wear a pair of wristbands on the ride—one ID’s you and gives the main ride number to call in case you get into an accident, the other identifies you as having watched the safety video (you can’t ride without it). I wear mine with pride.)

Impatient

I am now DONE with all the costuming…signed, sealed, delivered and packed away into a big plastic Rubbermaid tote to fit into the world’s largest duffel bag. It all fits….barely. Now I’m engaged in packing, packing, packing…a laundry list of small and large items that might prove useful for the Ride. And quivering in anticipation. I’m ready for the ride, I want to GET THERE!!

But relax, it’s still T minus 3 days to AIDS Lifecycle 5. Even spending tonight and tomorrow morning with Mike (whom I am trying very hard NOT to neglect amidst the maelstrom), that gives me Friday evening and part of Saturday to do last-minute shopping. So I will be set for the Ride.

I must remember to eat. I’ve been so busy working on costumes that I’ve barely spared a moment to eat…I got on the scale today and discovered that I’ve lost 1-2 lbs! (I stop eating under stress.) Normally I would be ecstatic, but when losing weight, you don’t just lose fat, you lose muscle as well…and I can’t afford to lose ANY muscle! So I am consciously working on eating more over the next few days, even though I’m not finding myself especially hungry.

I’m a real ball of nervous energy right now…I’m just hoping I can settle myself down before the Ride. I need to catch up on sleep, for example, and eat well on Saturday, so I’ll be ready for the Ride.

But the costumes are done…I finished the orange top last night and decided to make a blue tutu to go with it, so now I have an orange top, blue tutu, and blue trim/flowers on the orange top. It matches quite nicely, and looks, well, as fetching as orange and turquoise are going to look on anyone. I plan to wear it on Day One, as I like to “fly the colors” on the first day. (AIDS Lifecycle’s logo colors are orange and blue – see http://www.aidslifecycle.org .)

I forgot to mention earlier—if you’re interested in following the Ride along, there will be photos and travelogues each day at http://experience.aidslifecycle.org/ . I’ll remind you about it again as we get closer to the Ride. Do follow the photos, I’m pretty sure there will be at least a few photos of me during the Ride. You can also send me messages of support, which I’ll read each evening in camp.