Friday, March 28, 2014
Eugene to Florence: Perm populaire, point-to-point, reversible
Eugene to Florence via Triangle Lake
RUSA permanent populaire #2318
Point-to-point, reversible, 120km (75mi). Approx 1800' climbing.
Map: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/4304442
Cue sheet: http://goo.gl/xbCNXt
Registration form: http://goo.gl/QJ5ips
Contact (perm owner): michal.young@gmail.com
This 120km (75mi) route takes you from Eugene, OR to Florence, on the Oregon coast, via Triangle Lake on Highway 36. It begins at 18th and Chambers in southwest Eugene and follows the Fern Ridge Path to its end at Greenhill and Royal, then out Royal, Fir Butte, and Clear Lake roads across the north edge of Fern Ridge Reservoir to Lawrence and onto Highway 36 (Siuslaw Highway). The highway is narrow but less traveled than Highway 126; I have felt fairly safe on it in fall and spring. There is a market at Low Pass, not too far along 36, but it is often closed when I pass early in the morning. You will have no cell phone coverage for most of the segment on 36, from approximately Low Pass until Swiss Home, so it may be a good idea to ride with a buddy.
You will cross the coast range. However, it is not a hard or long climb, topping out below 1100 feet. River views just after the summit are particularly scenic. That section of pavement is also rather rough, the more reason to slow down a bit and enjoy the view.
And what river is that? The map says Lake Creek. Pretty substantial for a creek.
The little town of Deadwood, at about 48 miles, is a control. Hot food offerings at the market are meager, but the market has a restroom, and the staff are friendly. I am partial to this market because they were helpful to me once when I was suffering from knee pain and unable to finish my ride.
Highway 36 merges into Highway 126 at Mapleton. Mapleton is not a control, but the coffee shop in the little strip mall on your left just after the junction is nice. It was tempting to end the route right there in Mapleton, which is a nice little town, but the point was to get to the coast ... so the last few miles are on Highway 126. The nicest thing I can say about that section is that the shoulder is wide enough to make you feel relatively safe despite the SUVs and motor homes. It is flat, but in summer you can count on a strong headwind. The scenery is nice if you can sit up enough to take it in. The river is wide and flat as it approaches the bay, and you might see osprey as well as coastal birds.
The closing control is in Florence. There are many choices, including grocery stores and cafes, once you reach the junction with Highway 101. I recommend turning south (left). After picking up a receipt to document finishing your route, you may consider riding about 5 miles south on Highway 101 to Honeyman State Park (open year round) for a shower, or even to camp in one of their $5 hiker-biker spots if you are suitably equipped.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Two Winter rides
as in, rides on my new Winter randonneuse. It has been ridden twice, and both were 200km permanent brevets. I'm still tuning it in.
February 1 I rode Eugene to Beaverton with Lynne and Graham, after picking up the bike two days before. It was quite literally the first ride of more than around the block. Ideally I would have taken a couple training rides with it first, but it would have been silly to leave the new bike home. The weather was lovely, the course is not too challenging, and it was nice to ride with Lynne and Ross. There were no really big climbs or descents, but several small hills. The bike felt capable in the climbs and steady in the descents. The gearing (compact double, 50-34/11-32) is excellent, a big improvement over the road triples on my other bikes, and the disc breaks feel great --- good modulation, and a lot less force required at the levers. There is considerable toe overlap due to the geometry and the really big fenders, which I noticed only when taking a very sharp turn on a slow climb.
I was sliding down the saddle toward the nose a lot, and had a lot of force on my hands against the bars with just a single layer of tape, so I took the bike in to Paul's where Alex H. brought the saddle back a bit and installed gel pads (Trek Isozone) under the tape. The feel of the Fizik tape is great, aside from lack of padding, so Alex reinstalled the original tape over the pads. Alex also mounted my Topeak Road Morph pump under the down-tube, using the mounts Eric provided for a third water bottle holder. In retrospect I wish I had asked Eric for a dedicated mount for the pump ... oh well. I'm not sure if I'll keep it under the top tube, because there is some contact between the front derailleur cable and the pump mount, although so far the action of the shifter still feels light.
Second ride, February 23, Alsea Loop, on my own. This is a route with considerably more climbing, and corresponding descents. The forecast said 10% chance of rain, but I must have been lucky because it rained lightly but steadily from about 2pm on.
I find that I stand to climb muchmore less on the Winter ... and when I do, I feel like I'm in too low a gear. Because the gears are spaced more closely? Because I'm taking advantage of the lower gears for climbing more? Hard to tell ... but as much as I enjoy occasionally hammering up a short hill in training, for long brevets it will be good to be able to stay seated more.
There is a gravel stretch on Alsea Loop. Some parts are washboard, some good packed gravel, and some are thicker loose gravel. I often take a slight detour, about a mile longer, to avoid it. I had planned that detour this time, but when I reached the turn, it occurred to me that I ought to give the gravel a try with my new bike and 28mm tires. It was a noticeable improvement over my Salsa with 25mm tires. In fact, it was fun, and the scenery on that gravel stretch is better than the paved detour. The bike will take 32mm tires, which would be my choice for a real gravel grinder route, but even the modest step up from 25 to 28 (and modest step down in tire pressures) made a big difference.
Even after the adjustments made by Alex, I'm still sliding a bit forward on the saddle, so I'm going to tilt the nose up a little more. I've still got a bit too much pressure on my hands and arms, although it's much better than the first ride. I can rest my forearms on the flats in placid sections, although the bars still aren't soft enough for that to be really comfortable. I can't ride no-hands yet. There is clearly a wobble when peddling no-hands at about 15mph. That's a bit disappointing, but the wobble is not as bad as on my Salsa. I felt some wobble once in a descent, when I caught a strong cross-wind coming down the west side of Highway 34 below Mary's Peak; otherwise it feels very sure-footed in descents.
The half-way point (or just a little past) is Alsea, on Highway 34, over the coast range west from Corvallis and Philomath. The staff at John Boy's Mercantile are friendly, and there are tables to sit and eat. Marginal cell coverage (I can usually text, but not talk), but there is free wi-fi in the store. And, as it is in rural Oregon, people are not shy about talking to strangers. A middle-aged woman and a young woman whom I took to be her daughter sat at the small table with me. They talked mostly with each other, but then asked me a bit about my ride. The younger woman asked where I rode from. When I answered "Eugene", she went silent, and the look on her face told me that this was not among the plausible answers. The older woman was not phased. She asked me about the route I took and whether there was much debris left on the road from the recent snow (which brought down lots of branches and quite a few trees). I am curious what the younger woman thought. Will her idea of the distances that one can ride a bicycle change? Will she just think I must be a weirdo, and that her mother ought to be a little more careful about chatting with strangers? Who knows.
Just after the half-way control at Alsea, I noticed a loud rattling in the back, getting louder. This turned out to be the back fender loosening from its mount to the seat-stay bridge. I considered just riding it home that way, but if the bolt came all the way out it might have been iffy. Reaching the bolt head required removing the rear wheel. That made me a little nervous, because I've never successfully removed and replaced a wheel with a disc brake before ... and I was particularly nervous because once I tried to help someone with hydraulic disc brakes change a tire, and didn't know how to open her brakes back up to get her wheel back on. But ... no problem, actually. I removed the wheel, tightened up the bolt, and put the wheel back on with no problems at all (which is actually just how Eric said it would work). Getting the wheel on straight was actually a lot easier with this bike, with its vertical dropouts, as versus the insane and evil horizontal dropouts on the back of my Salsa.
The rain continued. It varied from a very light drizzle to light rain, never a downpour, so I was able to switch from my coat to a a vest for the climb up South Fork. The cloud cover and rain made the spring scenery a little less fantastic. On the other hand, the traffic was almost non-existent. Alsea Falls was very full and loud.
A few times on the climb, when I turned sharply, I felt my toe against the front fender. I think I will learn to avoid that. It might even help my form to avoid weaving on climbs. There is a possibility I will go down before I completely master it. But those fenders! They really kept the water off my feet. I'll probably still add the Berthoud leather mud flap front and back, but I'm not even sure I really need it in front.
South Fork becomes Alpine Road at the summit. The descent on Alpine is steep and curly. I would have been quite nervous coming down on my Salsa, with caliper rim brakes, because of the sensation of putting the brakes on and waiting for them to wipe the rim well enough to slow me. A primary reason for a disc brake randonneuse was to have more confidence on wet descents. A lot of recent articles have praised hydraulic disc brakes in this regard, but I had hopes that my older tech mechanical discs would also do the job. They did. There is some reduction in braking power compared to when they are dry, but they are far far better than any rim brake I have used, including road calipers, cantilevers, and v-brakes. I could descend much faster because I had confidence that my brakes were not going to abandon me at a critical moment. I still took the descent slower than I would in summer, because I also had to consider the wet pavement and debris, but nothing like the cautious creeping I would have done on my Salsa. It was fun.
Having an Acorn Boxy Bag in front makes even more difference than I anticipated, compared to the Topeak handlebar bag on my Salsa. I can open it up toss in my glove liners, or cap, or even my rain coat, rather than opening up the trunk bag. It makes quick changes of layers much easier, which means I make the change rather than just putting up with the discomfort of wearing the wrong set of layers.
And the light ... Luxos U. Lovely. It kept charging my GPS all day, only dropping power at food stops and once or twice on slow climbs in the dark. When night really fell, it cast a lovely wide and deep beam. The E3 on my Supernova was already a pretty great light, but the Luxos is such a different experience. It's a field of light, instead of a beam. I've heard similar descriptions of the new Edelux. The new generation of lights is a big step forward. The wired Pixeo tail-light also seems plenty bright.
Overall: Very good experience with the new bike. I'll continue to fiddle with saddle position and angle, and I might end up adding even more padding to the bars. (Swapping in a carbon bar with the big flat area is not an option because of the custom "7" style stem.) I'll keep looking for a better place to mount the pump, without resorting to zip-ties. I might take a tumble before I get completely used to the toe overlap, but if so it will be at very low speed. The bike has a good balance of sportiness and efficiency. I'm looking forward to longer rides.
February 1 I rode Eugene to Beaverton with Lynne and Graham, after picking up the bike two days before. It was quite literally the first ride of more than around the block. Ideally I would have taken a couple training rides with it first, but it would have been silly to leave the new bike home. The weather was lovely, the course is not too challenging, and it was nice to ride with Lynne and Ross. There were no really big climbs or descents, but several small hills. The bike felt capable in the climbs and steady in the descents. The gearing (compact double, 50-34/11-32) is excellent, a big improvement over the road triples on my other bikes, and the disc breaks feel great --- good modulation, and a lot less force required at the levers. There is considerable toe overlap due to the geometry and the really big fenders, which I noticed only when taking a very sharp turn on a slow climb.
I was sliding down the saddle toward the nose a lot, and had a lot of force on my hands against the bars with just a single layer of tape, so I took the bike in to Paul's where Alex H. brought the saddle back a bit and installed gel pads (Trek Isozone) under the tape. The feel of the Fizik tape is great, aside from lack of padding, so Alex reinstalled the original tape over the pads. Alex also mounted my Topeak Road Morph pump under the down-tube, using the mounts Eric provided for a third water bottle holder. In retrospect I wish I had asked Eric for a dedicated mount for the pump ... oh well. I'm not sure if I'll keep it under the top tube, because there is some contact between the front derailleur cable and the pump mount, although so far the action of the shifter still feels light.
Second ride, February 23, Alsea Loop, on my own. This is a route with considerably more climbing, and corresponding descents. The forecast said 10% chance of rain, but I must have been lucky because it rained lightly but steadily from about 2pm on.
I find that I stand to climb much
There is a gravel stretch on Alsea Loop. Some parts are washboard, some good packed gravel, and some are thicker loose gravel. I often take a slight detour, about a mile longer, to avoid it. I had planned that detour this time, but when I reached the turn, it occurred to me that I ought to give the gravel a try with my new bike and 28mm tires. It was a noticeable improvement over my Salsa with 25mm tires. In fact, it was fun, and the scenery on that gravel stretch is better than the paved detour. The bike will take 32mm tires, which would be my choice for a real gravel grinder route, but even the modest step up from 25 to 28 (and modest step down in tire pressures) made a big difference.
Even after the adjustments made by Alex, I'm still sliding a bit forward on the saddle, so I'm going to tilt the nose up a little more. I've still got a bit too much pressure on my hands and arms, although it's much better than the first ride. I can rest my forearms on the flats in placid sections, although the bars still aren't soft enough for that to be really comfortable. I can't ride no-hands yet. There is clearly a wobble when peddling no-hands at about 15mph. That's a bit disappointing, but the wobble is not as bad as on my Salsa. I felt some wobble once in a descent, when I caught a strong cross-wind coming down the west side of Highway 34 below Mary's Peak; otherwise it feels very sure-footed in descents.
The half-way point (or just a little past) is Alsea, on Highway 34, over the coast range west from Corvallis and Philomath. The staff at John Boy's Mercantile are friendly, and there are tables to sit and eat. Marginal cell coverage (I can usually text, but not talk), but there is free wi-fi in the store. And, as it is in rural Oregon, people are not shy about talking to strangers. A middle-aged woman and a young woman whom I took to be her daughter sat at the small table with me. They talked mostly with each other, but then asked me a bit about my ride. The younger woman asked where I rode from. When I answered "Eugene", she went silent, and the look on her face told me that this was not among the plausible answers. The older woman was not phased. She asked me about the route I took and whether there was much debris left on the road from the recent snow (which brought down lots of branches and quite a few trees). I am curious what the younger woman thought. Will her idea of the distances that one can ride a bicycle change? Will she just think I must be a weirdo, and that her mother ought to be a little more careful about chatting with strangers? Who knows.
Just after the half-way control at Alsea, I noticed a loud rattling in the back, getting louder. This turned out to be the back fender loosening from its mount to the seat-stay bridge. I considered just riding it home that way, but if the bolt came all the way out it might have been iffy. Reaching the bolt head required removing the rear wheel. That made me a little nervous, because I've never successfully removed and replaced a wheel with a disc brake before ... and I was particularly nervous because once I tried to help someone with hydraulic disc brakes change a tire, and didn't know how to open her brakes back up to get her wheel back on. But ... no problem, actually. I removed the wheel, tightened up the bolt, and put the wheel back on with no problems at all (which is actually just how Eric said it would work). Getting the wheel on straight was actually a lot easier with this bike, with its vertical dropouts, as versus the insane and evil horizontal dropouts on the back of my Salsa.
The rain continued. It varied from a very light drizzle to light rain, never a downpour, so I was able to switch from my coat to a a vest for the climb up South Fork. The cloud cover and rain made the spring scenery a little less fantastic. On the other hand, the traffic was almost non-existent. Alsea Falls was very full and loud.
A few times on the climb, when I turned sharply, I felt my toe against the front fender. I think I will learn to avoid that. It might even help my form to avoid weaving on climbs. There is a possibility I will go down before I completely master it. But those fenders! They really kept the water off my feet. I'll probably still add the Berthoud leather mud flap front and back, but I'm not even sure I really need it in front.
South Fork becomes Alpine Road at the summit. The descent on Alpine is steep and curly. I would have been quite nervous coming down on my Salsa, with caliper rim brakes, because of the sensation of putting the brakes on and waiting for them to wipe the rim well enough to slow me. A primary reason for a disc brake randonneuse was to have more confidence on wet descents. A lot of recent articles have praised hydraulic disc brakes in this regard, but I had hopes that my older tech mechanical discs would also do the job. They did. There is some reduction in braking power compared to when they are dry, but they are far far better than any rim brake I have used, including road calipers, cantilevers, and v-brakes. I could descend much faster because I had confidence that my brakes were not going to abandon me at a critical moment. I still took the descent slower than I would in summer, because I also had to consider the wet pavement and debris, but nothing like the cautious creeping I would have done on my Salsa. It was fun.
Having an Acorn Boxy Bag in front makes even more difference than I anticipated, compared to the Topeak handlebar bag on my Salsa. I can open it up toss in my glove liners, or cap, or even my rain coat, rather than opening up the trunk bag. It makes quick changes of layers much easier, which means I make the change rather than just putting up with the discomfort of wearing the wrong set of layers.
And the light ... Luxos U. Lovely. It kept charging my GPS all day, only dropping power at food stops and once or twice on slow climbs in the dark. When night really fell, it cast a lovely wide and deep beam. The E3 on my Supernova was already a pretty great light, but the Luxos is such a different experience. It's a field of light, instead of a beam. I've heard similar descriptions of the new Edelux. The new generation of lights is a big step forward. The wired Pixeo tail-light also seems plenty bright.
Overall: Very good experience with the new bike. I'll continue to fiddle with saddle position and angle, and I might end up adding even more padding to the bars. (Swapping in a carbon bar with the big flat area is not an option because of the custom "7" style stem.) I'll keep looking for a better place to mount the pump, without resorting to zip-ties. I might take a tumble before I get completely used to the toe overlap, but if so it will be at very low speed. The bike has a good balance of sportiness and efficiency. I'm looking forward to longer rides.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Coffeeneuring 2013 in Eugene
I had ambitions to do more, and in particular to declare my home a coffee shop for a day (with a good story or cycling advice as the price of a cup), but in the end I am satisfied with having finished the coffeeneuring challenge successfully, boosting ever so slightly Oregon's standing as a nexus of bicycles and coffee.
My adventures are as follows:
- October 5: Mocha at Wandering Goat with Patrick Deegan and his daughters. This was a wonderful start, and I wish I had been able to turn more of my coffeeneuring outings into meet-ups with delightful people. Approximately 5 miles round trip.
- October 12: Mocha and pastry at Hideaway Bakery, with Cyndi. Bonus visit to preparations for 2013 Eugene Cargo Bike Fair and Disaster Relief Trial on the way home. Approximately 5 miles round trip.
- October 13: Hot chocolate at Allann Brothers on Hilyard. Combined with a scenic loop up McBeth and down Fox Hollow, for a total of about 15 miles.
- October 19: Caffe Latte at Vero Espresso House, with Cyndi. Combined with shopping at Smith Family Bookstore (before) and Arriving by Bike (after), for a total of about 9 miles.
- October 20: Coffee at Linda's Cafe and Deli, Lorane, OR. This was my only longish coffeeneuring expedition: Wolf Creek loop counter-clockwise. Little stores and restaurants in itty-bitty towns are such a treasure and a resource to those of who ramble. It's a great pleasure to be greeted as a regular at a place like that, some distance from home. About 70 miles.
- October 26: PC (Market of Choice) at dawn, before setting out on a permanent brevet with Lynne and Lesli. Straight espresso. Just barely over the 2 mile minimum.
- October 27: Hot chocolate at Morning Glory Cafe, by the Amtrak station, to see Lynne off to Portland. About 10 miles round trip.
- November 3: Extra credit coffeeneur (#8 of 7), a semi-successful attempt to bike in shapes. The cup, carefully designed on a map before departure, is more-or-less recognizable. The saucer, improvised at the last minute based on my mental geography of the river bike path, is a travesty. Straight espresso at Full City Coffee on the way back home. About 15 miles.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Coffeeneuring extra credit: #8 of 7
I've seen a couple suggestions to ride a coffee-cup shaped route. It's not as easy as it sounds, because street systems tend to be on a grid with few suitable lines to form the bowl of a cup or a handle. Coburg/Cal Young/Willagillespie/Country Club was the closest thing I could find to a cup shape in the Eugene area, with a somewhat clumsy handle looping around Monroe Middle School. That much I mapped out in advance, but I forgot to consider one-way streets, which caused me some problem where I tried to complete the bottom of the bowl.
On the way to the start of the cup, it occurred to me that I should be able to draw in a saucer with the river path. This I did not see on a map before I got there, and I should not be surprised that my mental picture of the geometry is way different from where the path actually goes. That stretch along the river was supposed to be the saucer ... obviously that part didn't work.
The only coffee along the cup itself was a Starbucks. I'm not too snobbish to acknowledge that Starbucks makes reliably pretty good coffee, and has had an overall very positive influence on coffee in the U.S. But this is Eugene, and we can do a lot better, so I stopped at Full City (Pearl Street) on the way back.
Full City is more-or-less the original really good coffee in Eugene. More-or-less because the proprietor was roaster at Coffee Corner when Coffee Corner was the best coffee in town, 30 years or so ago. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe I bought my first batches of green beans from him when I was living in Indiana. Fully City has a high standard for quality, from the roasting and freshness to the pulls. They make a few choices differently than I would ... some of their roasts are a bit darker than I prefer, and the practice of serving the shot separate from the steamed milk in a caffe latte seems to me an unnecessary exposure of the coffee to air. No latte art here; the focus is on flavor. I had a shot. It was good.
Coffeeneuring data: 3 November 2013, Full City Coffee Roasters on Pearl Street, "caffe normale" (straight espresso), about 15 miles total.
The canon and the value of allusion
Two articles have got me thinking about the value (and cost) of a consensus literary canon. Yesterday it was a Slate article, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Arcade Fire." Today it was a Chasing Mailboxes post "Coffeeneuring is Truth, Truth Coffeeneuring". I imagine more people "get" the latter (Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn) than the former (Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird), and one could get something out of both articles without catching the allusions, but reading is a richer experience when we catch these inside jokes of reference.
I suspect few of my current students would catch the Keats reference, and I would be surprised if one in ten caught the Stevens reference ... which is a shame, because the whole form of the Slate review is a bit of a play on the form of the poem, with a switch-up from straight numbering of the perspectives to a repeated "one two three four" rhyming with the dance theme in the review. The Keats theme is less woven into the coffeeneuring blog post, but there is an implicit comment there, echoing Keats, about the relation of aesthetic appreciation to practical pursuits. Allusion makes writing denser and more rewarding.
But I miss lots of allusions, and not just in the parts of the canon that I am unfamiliar with. A week ago, a friend who was brought up with traditional Old Testament tales told a story about her work involving building more bricks without more straw. I had some idea that straw was involved in making bricks, but my spotty religious education did not include unreasonable demands on Jewish slaves in Egypt. And I miss a lot of contemporary allusions. I know now that a British telephone box might be a disguised tardis, and that a tardis is not (as I once assumed) a malicious space creature, but I will never fully appreciate a conversation heavy with references to Dr. Who. I know that Breaking Bad is about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth, but that's as far as my familiarity goes. Is my recognition of 19th and 20th century poetry adequate recompense for being completely oblivious to references to Duck Dynasty or Homeland or The Wire?
To some extent allusions are "in" jokes that we use to distinguish those from our own group, with its shared values and experience, from others. If you make a reference to Monty Python, and I get it, then we know we have that in common. It builds a bond. I was pretty thrilled when I first read extensive references to Chuangzi in LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven, because I had read a fair bit of Chaungzi and because I knew that not many readers of The Lathe of Heaven likely had ... the thrill of getting an in joke is partly knowing that a lot of other people don't. I enjoyed the Wallace Stevens allusion in a Slate review partly for the same reason. It's fun knowing that only a fraction of the readers of that article will be in on the joke.
Which brings us to the cost of a consensus canon. The traditional canon in western education, as others have complained, is a bunch of dead white European men. Chuangzi isn't there. The Bible is there, but the Koran isn't. Keats is there, but Li Bai (Li Po) isn't. I probably can't name a lot of the key texts that have been omitted, because of course my own education was largely built around the traditional western canon. The in jokes that I learned to recognize and appreciate are in jokes told by people who belong to the club of those who share my educational background, and who happen to include the majority of those who have money and power in our society. The in jokes of people brought up in other cultures, or in other subcultures in America, do not necessarily have less intrinsic value than the in jokes I recognize, but they are less useful as entree into the dominant culture.
I'm not saying that knowing Duck Dynasty is equivalent to knowing Keats. I can't make a direct comparison, since I'm familiar with only one of them, but I wouldn't trade my 19th century poets as a group for reality TV. (I might trade Keats for Monte Python and Wordsworth for early Saturday Night Live, if I had to ... neither the dead poets nor contemporary TV are uniform in quality.)
So there is a cost to having a consensus canon: It is necessarily a narrow selection that omits a great deal worth knowing, and it will unavoidably be slanted toward work most relevant to those with power and resources. It marks an in-group, and excludes many out-groups. But there is likewise a cost to not having a canon, or having many, mostly disjoint canons. Our discourse is plainer and poorer if we can't paint on the rich textured background of our shared reading.
I don't have a prescription for addressing this quandary. I know plenty of others have thought about it and argued about it, for decades. It's on my mind partly because I am not part of the community that typically argues about it. I teach computer science, not literature. Still, when I introduce aliasing of variables in my intro class, I really want my students to recognize and get a little thrill when I borrow an explanation:
I suspect few of my current students would catch the Keats reference, and I would be surprised if one in ten caught the Stevens reference ... which is a shame, because the whole form of the Slate review is a bit of a play on the form of the poem, with a switch-up from straight numbering of the perspectives to a repeated "one two three four" rhyming with the dance theme in the review. The Keats theme is less woven into the coffeeneuring blog post, but there is an implicit comment there, echoing Keats, about the relation of aesthetic appreciation to practical pursuits. Allusion makes writing denser and more rewarding.
But I miss lots of allusions, and not just in the parts of the canon that I am unfamiliar with. A week ago, a friend who was brought up with traditional Old Testament tales told a story about her work involving building more bricks without more straw. I had some idea that straw was involved in making bricks, but my spotty religious education did not include unreasonable demands on Jewish slaves in Egypt. And I miss a lot of contemporary allusions. I know now that a British telephone box might be a disguised tardis, and that a tardis is not (as I once assumed) a malicious space creature, but I will never fully appreciate a conversation heavy with references to Dr. Who. I know that Breaking Bad is about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth, but that's as far as my familiarity goes. Is my recognition of 19th and 20th century poetry adequate recompense for being completely oblivious to references to Duck Dynasty or Homeland or The Wire?
To some extent allusions are "in" jokes that we use to distinguish those from our own group, with its shared values and experience, from others. If you make a reference to Monty Python, and I get it, then we know we have that in common. It builds a bond. I was pretty thrilled when I first read extensive references to Chuangzi in LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven, because I had read a fair bit of Chaungzi and because I knew that not many readers of The Lathe of Heaven likely had ... the thrill of getting an in joke is partly knowing that a lot of other people don't. I enjoyed the Wallace Stevens allusion in a Slate review partly for the same reason. It's fun knowing that only a fraction of the readers of that article will be in on the joke.
Which brings us to the cost of a consensus canon. The traditional canon in western education, as others have complained, is a bunch of dead white European men. Chuangzi isn't there. The Bible is there, but the Koran isn't. Keats is there, but Li Bai (Li Po) isn't. I probably can't name a lot of the key texts that have been omitted, because of course my own education was largely built around the traditional western canon. The in jokes that I learned to recognize and appreciate are in jokes told by people who belong to the club of those who share my educational background, and who happen to include the majority of those who have money and power in our society. The in jokes of people brought up in other cultures, or in other subcultures in America, do not necessarily have less intrinsic value than the in jokes I recognize, but they are less useful as entree into the dominant culture.
I'm not saying that knowing Duck Dynasty is equivalent to knowing Keats. I can't make a direct comparison, since I'm familiar with only one of them, but I wouldn't trade my 19th century poets as a group for reality TV. (I might trade Keats for Monte Python and Wordsworth for early Saturday Night Live, if I had to ... neither the dead poets nor contemporary TV are uniform in quality.)
So there is a cost to having a consensus canon: It is necessarily a narrow selection that omits a great deal worth knowing, and it will unavoidably be slanted toward work most relevant to those with power and resources. It marks an in-group, and excludes many out-groups. But there is likewise a cost to not having a canon, or having many, mostly disjoint canons. Our discourse is plainer and poorer if we can't paint on the rich textured background of our shared reading.
I don't have a prescription for addressing this quandary. I know plenty of others have thought about it and argued about it, for decades. It's on my mind partly because I am not part of the community that typically argues about it. I teach computer science, not literature. Still, when I introduce aliasing of variables in my intro class, I really want my students to recognize and get a little thrill when I borrow an explanation:
| O! be some other name: | |
| What’s in a name? that which we call a rose | |
| By any other name would smell as sweet; |
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Coffeeneuring #7: Seeing Lynne off at Amtrak
Lynne and I have spent a lot of time together on bicycles. I met her a few years back, on a 200k in territory familiar to her and unknown to me. I was having trouble finding the cues, and asked if I could tag along with Lynne and her friend Cecil, and they graciously said yes. The next time I rode in the Portland area, Lynne was looking for someone to ride with, and I was happy to ride with her. We're approximately compatible in riding speed, around the same age, and find plenty to talk about. And on long distance rides, there is a lot of time to talk, and then to not talk, and then to talk again.
Now, when I travel north to ride, often I stay at Lynne's home, and Lynne sometimes visits us in Eugene to ride here. Friday she took Amtrak to Eugene. Saturday along with our friend Lesli we rode my Alsea Loop 400km permanent. Her train home was Sunday morning, and (of course, this being Eugene) there is cafe just across the parking lot from the station. So: Coffeeneuring.
Again I made coffee at home with breakfast. I can't quite grasp the idea of skipping my morning coffee so that I can have more coffee at a bar. But no problem, other hot drinks count for coffeeneuring. I took my commuting bike, and of course Lynne took her randonneuse, and we worked our way down the hill into Eugene. I chose the route poorly, but it's just not that hard or far from anywhere to anywhere in Eugene, so soon enough we were at the station and at the Morning Glory Cafe next door.
Cyndi had an errand to run, so she drove down and joined us.
Lynne had chai, I had hot chocolate, Cyndi had caffe latte, and we had enough time to enjoy our drinks and chat a little before it was time to walk Lynne's bike over to the luggage car for loading. Then Lynne found her train car and we said our goodbyes. Cyndi went off to her errands and I rode in to school for a recruiting event.
Coffeeneuring data: Sunday, October 27; about 10 miles round trip; hot chocolate.
Now, when I travel north to ride, often I stay at Lynne's home, and Lynne sometimes visits us in Eugene to ride here. Friday she took Amtrak to Eugene. Saturday along with our friend Lesli we rode my Alsea Loop 400km permanent. Her train home was Sunday morning, and (of course, this being Eugene) there is cafe just across the parking lot from the station. So: Coffeeneuring.
Again I made coffee at home with breakfast. I can't quite grasp the idea of skipping my morning coffee so that I can have more coffee at a bar. But no problem, other hot drinks count for coffeeneuring. I took my commuting bike, and of course Lynne took her randonneuse, and we worked our way down the hill into Eugene. I chose the route poorly, but it's just not that hard or far from anywhere to anywhere in Eugene, so soon enough we were at the station and at the Morning Glory Cafe next door.
Cyndi had an errand to run, so she drove down and joined us.
Lynne had chai, I had hot chocolate, Cyndi had caffe latte, and we had enough time to enjoy our drinks and chat a little before it was time to walk Lynne's bike over to the luggage car for loading. Then Lynne found her train car and we said our goodbyes. Cyndi went off to her errands and I rode in to school for a recruiting event.
Coffeeneuring data: Sunday, October 27; about 10 miles round trip; hot chocolate.
Coffeeneuring #6: PC at dawn
The planned event for Saturday was a 200km group permanent with my PDX-area rando friend Lynne, who took Amtrak down Friday night and stayed with us, and my Eugene-area rando friend Lesli. The starting point was a supermarket known variously as "PC" or "Market of Choice." Originally it was "Price Chopper," but gradually it moved into a higher-end, more organic/local/enthusiast market niche, for which the old name was unsuitable. So for a while it was "PC Market of Choice", on its way to being "Market of Choice". It's still "PC" to many long-term Eugeneans, but signage and bags all say "Market of Choice", and increasingly that is what everyone calls it.
Market of Choice has a coffee bar. Not an embedded Starbucks, but its own coffee bar. And when we reached the start point, Lynne noted that we had ridden (just barely) more than two miles from my home. While stopping for coffee on a brevet does not count as coffeeneuring, one may coffeeneur on the same day as a brevet. The randos of my acquaintance have universally interpreted the rules as counting the ride to the ride as a separate event, on which one may coffeeneur. So we declared a coffeeneuring opportunity, and went in.
I had drunk two double caffe lattes at home before we set out, so I ordered hot chocolate. Lynne had single caffe lattes with breakfast, which may have left her capacity for one more, and I think Lesli also ordered coffee. It was dark when we entered PC, and daylight when we emerged.
Coffeeneuring data: 26 October 2013, 2.somesmallnumber miles, hot chocolate
Market of Choice has a coffee bar. Not an embedded Starbucks, but its own coffee bar. And when we reached the start point, Lynne noted that we had ridden (just barely) more than two miles from my home. While stopping for coffee on a brevet does not count as coffeeneuring, one may coffeeneur on the same day as a brevet. The randos of my acquaintance have universally interpreted the rules as counting the ride to the ride as a separate event, on which one may coffeeneur. So we declared a coffeeneuring opportunity, and went in.
I had drunk two double caffe lattes at home before we set out, so I ordered hot chocolate. Lynne had single caffe lattes with breakfast, which may have left her capacity for one more, and I think Lesli also ordered coffee. It was dark when we entered PC, and daylight when we emerged.
Coffeeneuring data: 26 October 2013, 2.somesmallnumber miles, hot chocolate
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