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.

this past week

Since it’s been a while, a quick recap.

Last weekend I spent a lot of time at Hell in South, the bike fest put on by the fixed gear kids here.  It was a lot of fun – I rode in two alley cats on that crazy bike that I have. Also rode in a velodrome for the first time.  That shit is pretty crazy, but fun.  And, considering that the velodrome we went to is 400m a lap it’s very tiring.  Then, there was a metal show that was pretty good – lots of hair and head banging and other theatrics – generally the expected.  But! one the way home I got poured on.  Sunday there was some more bike stuff, some hill races which I did not participate in and then homework and general week preparation.  Nowhere is open in Madrid on Sunday (almost nowhere that is).  This means two things. (1) Places that are open tend to be owned by people who are not from Spain and there is a lot of the “Yes, they’re open, but they shoudln’t be” attitude about it. (I’m not sure why it really would matter so much but…) And (2) I can’t do my normal grocery-shop-on-Sunday-afternoon thing.  But, slowly, slowly I’m learning.

Then I spent all week doing this. Some sort of nasty put out for the whole week.  I only missed one day to school/work, but only today have a really felt better.  I did everything – drank lakes of water, slept during all of my free time, went to the pharmacy where the woman rather perfunctorily gave me some giant white allergy pills.  They helped with the drainage and headaches, but turned me into a total zombie. (I was looking for a picture of a good zombie or sleepwalker to put here, and a ran into these zombie walks that they have places! People really go all out, here’s someone flickr about it – but I guess if you really love zombies there only one way to really prove it?)

So the worst fall out from being ill has been that yesterday morning I was trying to go out and buy a few groceries and somehow managed to loose my wallet within two blocks of my house. Yeah, I have no idea.  I mean I understand that these things happen, but seriously, within 2 blocks has to be some kind of record.  So I made these little signs (soundtrack: Pinhead Gunpowder!) and put them up just in case one of the large population of elderly folks that live around here or some other kind person happened to have gotten it.  All the cards are cancelled, blah blah, but it was quite distressing – the only thing I have now to prove who I am at all is my passport, which I really don’t like to carry around – obviously sometimes I loose things.

Sigh.

The good news is that I made some great bread yesterday and then Shelby and I made awesome pizza. My roommate, Xavi, like it so much he kept saying ‘Sweet Jesus baby’ in an effort describe his feelings (for some reason that order feels correct to him instead of Sweet Baby Jesus, I blame the Irish guy, my other roommate, Bryan for all of this).  So that was great – terrific pizza, decent 2 euro wine, a little delicious chocolate bar for dessert – what more could you want?

Then we stepped out for a bit to this short film fest at La Boca del Lobo, which was actually kind of a bust. Thing is we saw 4 or five of the three hundred or so shorts that will be projected over ten days.  But it was hot and there were no chairs so we left.

La Noche en Blanco

Every year for some number of years now Madrid has this big street party that lasts until 6 a.m.  There are a large variety of arts things that happen, concerts, and installations of all kinds at a whole bunch of venues around the center of the city.  It was last Saturday.  If you read the previous post, you already know, I was tired.  But the Noche en Blanco cannot be denied.  Plans were made to meet up at Shelby’s, which is a shared apartment with up to 10 people.  It seems little wild, but also really interesting.  Some people are there for one months, others for six or more and there are folks from everywhere.  So Shelby’s there.  He made some food, we drank some booze, some Brazilians, an Argentine and a Canadian showed up, there was much loudness and then Morgan and Oriana showed up.  More eating, drinking (booze, juice, coca-cola, lemon soda and coffee, in any combo or not) and then we set off, into the night.

Mostly we saw other people.  Tens of thousands of them.  We were trying to head towards the Puerto de Alcala to be illuminated by giant lights, but we were waylaid by a giant crowd waiting to see a tightrope walker.  It is pretty incredible to be on the main streets of Madrid in the middle of the night with so many people.  They shut the city down for this night.  It’s pretty amazing when it’s happening to see no traffic except of foot and bike and stroller and rollerblade, but then when you see those same spaces occupied by bazillions of cars its even wilder.  Then, the tightrope walked chickened out because of the wind and we 4 were scattered in the crowd.

 

We were eventually reunited, but in the end I went home only really having seen some inflated tubes stuck to the side of a building and some light up kisses projected on another.