Dalieda

This is another example of all the rad things I ride past everyday that I am slowly discovering.  A dalieda is a garden of specifically dahlias.  Which, is a thing I didn’t even know existed.  The place is very nice, actually the panorama from the Madrid is big post was taken from here as well.  The view is great because along the west side of the center of Madrid there is a big/cliff where it drops down to the Rio Manzanares (a wholly uninspiring river).  The nice part about this is that a lot of that drop is park and green space.  Unfortunately dahlia season is more or elss over, so of the few things left bloming this was by far the wildest. But think about spring…

yeah, it’s a candy store.  They are incredible here, marvelous little domains of sweets.  I especially like how everyone in this pciture is an adult.  The Spanish have this thing for marshmallows.  They exist here in many colors and shapes.  Also, chocolate seems to be one of the main food groups present at breakfast.

baby baby

I’m pro-anatomically correct dolls.  It sure beats the hell out of those Skipper dolls that had plastic underwear printed on them.  Somehow I also make a connection with how I always grew up hearing that Europeans were so much more comfortable with nudity.  I have this memory of my mom and grandma trying to keep us from seeing a copy of Harper’s Bazaar with with runway models in it because there were too many nipples (!).

Just next to these there was also for sale a (very expensive) doll that was made to look just like one of the Spanish royal family. Now that’s a little freaky…

madrid is big

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that I currently live in a city of about 5.5 million people.  Seriously.  It’s big.  I think usually I’m either looking at the ground (this essential because of the quantity of dogshit) or at the sky (it’s nice up there).

But, for a few days I hit the middle and noticed a few glimpses of how BIG this place is…

These pictures are driving me batshit.  I give up.

oh monday

modays are always the longest, but now i’m back home and snug.  everyone is all electric about the election – walking down the street you hear so many conversations about it.  everyone has an opinion and i don’t think i’ve ever had so many discussions about the us electoral system in my whole life.  it’s more than a little uncomfortable – somehow i’ve become some kind of spokesperson for the us (yeah, that’s weird) and grand explainer of How We Vote and Politics Today in the United States and also Where is Albequerque?.  bizarre.  but tomorrow it’s done.

completely unrelatedly, here is a pretty thing i found.  i think it’s a little cheesy in terms of the story, but it looks nice.

halloween

Halloween is relatively new here – in the last 15 years or so and that makes it kind of strange.  Mostly, people seems to paint their faces like their dead-ish.  Lots of red and black around the eyes and mouth.  And then their normal clothes – euro-club style with dead faces.  Actually kind of scary.  Then, at the dollar stores (which are called chinos, remember) the costume options include:
  So many weenies!!!!

And all this stuff was just out in the middle of the store, with CHILDREN wandering around!  But, for better or for worse, I didn’t actually see anyone wearing anything like that. (While they re pretty repulsive, I was curious about who would wear it).  Also, I think that it’s kind of a pre-made version of hte very popular dick-in-a-box costume from last year, but I guess you have to bring your own box.  I pretty sure at some point in Halloween night last year there were no less than 4 dicks in boxes in the bar.  Yuuchhh.

So, I decided that I wanted to be a robin for Halloween.  I had it all planned out, but what I needed was a sewing machine.  I asked around and couldn’t find one in time – all of the used ones on Segunda Mano (online classifieds) were minimum 150 euros – everything used in Spain is expensive.  So in the dollar stores I found this: 

and I thought, it’s a genius, how can I go wrong?? So I brought it home and figured out how to use it – it does have a foot pedal, but i doesn’t really work, mostly I just turn it on and off really spastically at the beginning and end of each seam.  So I was able to make a scaled down version of my bird costume.  This meant a cape and a beak.

This is me and the beak and a pal. I was, in the end, pretty pleased with how things had turned out.

hallo-gato

Halloween Alleycat.  I wasn’t going to ride, but caved to peer-pressure(!).  It was fun – we made a pentagon, as you can see on the map, or at this route-map (okay, so you can’t see the pentagram on the route map, but I was curious about the distance).  Here’s the material and the winners.  The clues are for a quiz that if you couldn’t answer you dropped a place, what’s the answer???? It’s super obvious, except that I always confuse him with Freddy Kreuger.

hawk (2)

Here’s another window-hawk and yours truly trying it on, per Shelby.

 

 

 

 

friday day

More rainasty.  Wandering about I found these, which are nice and actually several other pleasant statuary.  I’ve decided to make a page for that kind of thing too. 

I also ran into this gazebo, which is being used rather ingeniously.  I understand that sticking things in the roof of somewhere to keep them dry is normal, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen three entire mattress stored away like that before.  

Bicicritica

This month’s bicicritica (remember, that’s critical mass here) was themed ‘elegante’ to celebrate 4 years of critical mass and growth from 4 riders to over a thousand!! It was, however quit chilly and most people didn’t dress up much.  Shelby and I went together in suits from the free store, here we are in the elevator.Putting both bikes in the tiny elevator at the same time was Shelby’s brilliant idea, and although we all fit fine, we got busted by the buidling manager at the bottom.  Now, this is a man who lives to serve the building and so I got it.  And then again yesterday I got it really bad, in front of some of the other tenants.  It is apparently not enough to say that you understand not to do something again, it is necessary to receive a lecture about how 2 bikes is 2 many.  Good news is the other folks who passed by clearly thought he was going overboard as well.  Sigh.

So the critical mass was pretty fun – and, there are two notables, besides the dressed up folks, here they are:  

yup, this is where I’ve gotten to puppies and small children…

more interestingly, I’ve been playing with the video option on my digital camera lately and am in the process of making clips of biking around town and of this critical mass, so look for updates on that!

Oh yeah, and here’s me at my elegant best

…there was a party at this squat, Malaya, that is just opening their free bike workshop with awesome lentils and hummus (and beer – all the squats have bars and coffee!)  In the photo next to me is the lovely Vanesa.