Cross-Cultural Relationships

Cross-cultural relationships are complicated to navigate. Once the novelty wears off, the differences can create a rift between partners. But the differences can also bring the couple closer by compelling them to communicate about things that are taken for granted by same-culture couples. In the process, the couple may discover that despite their different backgrounds, they actually have more in common with each other than with their own kind. Three months into their life together, I think that myGazelleand the Co-Habitant'sPashleyare accepting each other's differences and discovering their similarities in the nicest way possible.



ThePashley Roadsterhas the lower-set North Road handlebars characteristic of English bicycles, but in other ways it seems to have more in common with the Gazelle.They sharenot only the 28" wheel size, but also frame proportions, angles, relative weight, and handling. The Pashley Princess seemed to be a much smaller bicycle when it stood next to the Pashley Roadster than the Gazelle does. And I have already written about the mysterious differences in ride quality between the men's and lady's Pashleys. The Gazelleseems like a better-matched companion in terms of acceleration and hill-climbing. I would also say that the Pashley Roadster is more similar to the Dutch Gazelle than to the English Raleigh DL-1 Roadster. There is a certain heavy stateliness the Pashley and Gazelle share that the Raleigh DL-1 does not. Despite the rod brakes and the vintage vibe, the DL-1 is actually a lighter and sportier bike than either of these two.



What exactly in the design of the Pashley Roadstermakes it more similar to my Dutch bike than to my previous English one, I do not know. But these similarities have certainly been a positive factor in the Gazelle and Pahsley's relations.



The English gentleman and the Dutch lady... a case in point that cross-cultural relationships can work.

Happy Mother's Day!

Mom and Me - Summer of '49
If you'd like, please revisit my post from last year on Mothers and Grandmothers.

Myrtle Beach State Park~The Beach

So far we can tell there are many touristy things to do here. Things like mini-golf, entertainment shows, shopping and lots of places to eat. None of those things are the reason we came here though. We came here for this reason:



Or to be more specific, we came here for this reason:



We drove to the Myrtle Beach State Park to visit the beach. There is a great park complete with a full service campground and fishing pier here. You can see some of the park here:



I mostly wanted to focus on the surf and sand today. So the other parts will just have to wait. Don't tell Ava we came here without her. The beaches are pet friendly here, so I'm sure we will bring her before we leave the area.





Ahhhh....I can feel my shoulders relaxing already.



Living the life in South Carolina!

Two Fellows Home From Camp Taylor

Columbia City Post, Whitley County, Indiana
Saturday ~ December 29, 1917

Vic Phend and Earl Bordner are both home for short furloughs from Camp Zachary Taylor, Louisville, Ky. The former came Thursday evening. He is in the engineers and likes his work very much. He has grown heavier, weighing about one hundred and eighty pounds and he looks every inch a man now. Earl Bordner is in the medical detachment of the engineers and he, too, has benefited by his training. He is a half inch taller and is also heaver. He will be here until Tuesday, visiting with his father, R. J. Bordner, and others.

Grandpa (Rolland Victor Phend) enlisted in the Army on September 19, 1917 and went as a 'substitute' for someone else. He was 24 years old at the time and about six feet tall. He often commented that he thought he had gotten 'special' treatment because he was an enlistee rather than a draftee. He attained the rank of Sergeant and served in England and France as a member of the 309th Engineers. Though he never said anything about being in combat he was gassed while on a patrol and suffered for many years as a result. At one point the doctors said he wouldn't last six months. He fooled them all by living until the day before his 98th birthday! Mom says she remembers, when she was little, that he often slept sitting up in a chair because he couldn't breathe if he laid down. He received a very small disability pension. At one point when he was in his 80's, the government decided that he was no longer disabled and took away his meager pension. He contacted one of our senators (I don't know which one) and after some delay, his pension was restored.

Amazing Wadi Rum Desert Adventures: Introduction to Wadi Rum and the Visitor’s Centre

For starters, Wadi Rum is a government preserved and protected area located in the Aqaba province of Jordan. It is the largest WADI or VALLEY in the country, and this is where Prince Faisal Bin Hussein and T. E. Lawrence based their headquarters during the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans during the World War I.

We drove from Amman, Jordan's capital city all the way down to Petra and then Wadi Rum. Wadi Rum is about 60 kilometres from Aqaba. Map courtesy from Lonely Planet.

Because Wadi Rum is a preserved place and an important attraction, entry is regulated, and of course, commercialised to serve a vital purpose. Unlike its neighbouring Arabic countries, Jordan doesn’t have extraordinary resources to depend on such as oil, but fortunately it is rich in history. Tourism is a major industry in the country and is a big income generator for its economy. Locals are quite aware that their country benefits from tourism so they treat their visitors very well. Tourist police are everywhere in the country.

Entrance to Wadi Rum is 5 JOD per person and I believe this is a per day fee. The tickets are bought at the Visitor’s Centre. In the Visitor’s Centre you will find all information that you would need with regards to various desert adventure tours: 4x4 jeep tours, camel tours and many other types of fun and active activities. The tours and activities can of course be customised according to duration and what you prefer.

The Visitor’s Centre is a good place as well to scour for accommodations in Wadi Rum. There are a handful Bed & Breakfast types of accommodations (they are very basic) in Wadi Rum village run by enterprising Bedouin families, and of course for the adventurers who want to experience Bedouin culture at the core, there are Bedouin-style desert camps with ultra-basic facilities available in the heart of Wadi Rum. I believe there are options to camp in the desert on your own as well.

The Visitor's Centre, a few kilometers outside of Wadi Rum. The foto on the big poster is the King of Jordan, King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein.

The Bedouin brother of our guide.

4x4 Jeeps for rent for Wadi Rum Desert adventure tours.

Next, our Wadi Rum lunch.

Snowy Road

The Seat Cluster: a Starburst of Lugwork

One of my favourite parts of a bicycle frame's anatomy is what's called the "seat cluster" - the joint where the seat tube, the top tube, and the rear stays of the bicycle meet. If done nicely, the seat cluster can look like a beautiful starburst of lugwork, and that is what I love about it. On the picture above is the very classic seat cluster on the Waja trackbike I rode in Vienna earlier this summer.

A similarly classic seat cluster on the Rivendell Sam Hillborne.

[image via Franklyn W]

And another example from an Ebisu bicycle. You can see how the individuality of the cut of the lugwork interacts with the colour of the paint to create subtle variations in form and shade. The stay caps (those narrow diagonal pieces that taper to meet the main lug) can be rounded or pointy, flat or concave, stubby or elongated.



[image viacycleczar]

They can even wrap all the way around the main seat lug, like on this Toei bicycle, so that the pointy tips meet. This is called a "wrap around seat cluster" design.





The stay caps also make for a good surface to embellish with an engraving of the manufacturer's name, like on this vintage Trek 610.



[image via Dancing Weapon]

Or with hand-painted flourishes, like on this Bob Jackson.



[image via Royal H.]

They can also be carved, if so desired, like on this early Royal H. frame.



[image via ribalrid]

While I prefer classic seat clusters, there are also many designs that deviate into all sorts of creative directions. On this Bates B.A.R. bicycle, the seat stay caps look like sharpened pencils and meet the main lug at the bottom.



[image via somervillain]

On this vintage Trek 560, the seat cluster is one big lug, and the seat stays are held by lugged sockets at the back.



[image via Kevin Saunders]

And then there are seat clusters where the stays connect to the tube directly, below the lug, like on this Formigli frame. (My understanding is that both this and the method used by Trek above is done to create tighter clearances?)



[image via Royal H.]

A similar approach to "fastback stays" by Royal H., with the seat stays attached at the rear.



When it comes to lugwork, there is no shortage of details to get obsessed about, and the topic can provide hours of impassioned discussion to those who feel strongly about one design over another. Crazy? Maybe so, but also beautiful... like the seat cluster on my Royal H. frame that will (hopefully very soon now) emerge as a fully built bicycle.

Nathan and Daryl in the Tournament

After watching these two play this last week, I knew that they would do well.

I would not have wanted to be playing against them.

They played tough, fierce games against the competition.

They ended up in the championship game. They won their bracket. Woohoo! WTG, guys!

Night begins on Mt. Maude

A 60 second exposure of fast-moving clouds at dusk taken on September 2, .

St Patrick's Day Weekend Fun

My schedule has changed so I now have one weekend day off each week. That has been a wonderful thing and it worked out very well this past weekend where we had lots of things scheduled. Saturday night Rich and Donna invited us over for dinner. Tom and Karen joined us. Karen brought the shamrock above.



I thought I had pictures of the food, but somehow I don't. We had chicken kabobs, potato salad, another salad that was a slaw salad, potato skins and dessert and Margaritas. Everything was delicious!! Along with the great food, we had fun getting to know each other better. I loved hearing more stories about how each of us met and became engaged. We had a great time!



Sunday Nathan and I slept in and then took one of those Sunday drives and this is one of the things we saw:





It's hard to see exactly what it is from my pictures but it was a truck with a seat like they have on the airboat rides on the back. Too funny!



After our Sunday drive, we stopped and picked up pizza and headed to Rene and Mira's rig where Bob and Vicki joined us. They added Ceaser salad, drinks and strawberry shortcake to make it another great dinner.



We went to see some of their Alaska trip pictures. We always love spending time with both of the couples and to get them together is a double treat. Their pictures were incredible and the scenery they captured was amazing.



We left in the middle of this to go and see Mike Thomas perform here at the park. I have been to one of his shows before and really enjoyed it. This was Nathan's first time seeing him perform. He enjoyed it too.



We then went back to see the rest of the pictures and chat for some time afterwards. Weekends like this are perfection for me! Loved all that we did and hope to have more time with our pickleball friends before they all head out.

Sunset Over SLO

Sunset Over SLO, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

Yesterday's sunset from the top of Poly Mountain in San Luis Obispo, California. There were actually a few clouds, which made things a bit more interesting than usual.

The plant in the foreground is "out lord's candle", Yucca whipplei. The yuccas grow in abundance on the mountain, and the sharp leaves can be a pain for hikers' legs.

Do you still remember Pythagoras?

Or let me rephrase that—Do you still remember struggling with the Pythagorean Theorem in high school? I do. It took me ages to understand the whole mathematical equation because I simply did not want to understand it.



Reminiscing school







Pythagoras statue at my back. Pythagoras was born in Samos Island, Greece.



Mathematics was not my strongest subject in school. Actually, I hated school. I never excelled in my elementary and high school years because I disliked studying. I only get excited when it’s the first week of school because everything is new—new bag, new shoes, new uniform (I went to a private girl’s school and we have to wear silly uniforms), new notebooks, new pencils, pen, everything is new. I was obviously the quintessential mediocre student who sat through class uninterested and was just buying time. But if there was a subject about ‘will’ or ‘ambition’ then I would have probably scored perfect. I was a little girl who could not wait to grow up and enter the real world. Luckily I was able to finish school without having to go through dichotomising my brains.



My mother wanted me to bring home the medals (hated the pressure as well, so obviously this made me all the more uninterested in school) but it took college for me to finally do it. Because I was, finally, interested in what I was studying. Some people say that I was a late bloomer. I disagree. The reality is simple. I was simply interested in what I was doing, in what I was studying.



Thus, when the interest is there, the results will follow.











Anyway, back to Pythagoras...



He is the father of mathematics. He was also a geometrician, astronomer and philosopher. For Pythagoras, everything is based on numbers, measure and harmony. The fishing village called Pythagorion is named after him, after all, he was born in Samos Island, Greece.



Philosophers, astronomers, engineers, inventors and scholars, many of them come from Greece.



At Pythagorion marina is a statue of the great mathematician, an ode to Pythagoras.



Trivia: Did you know that Pythagoras died at the age of 110 in the south of Italy? Born circa 580bC – died 490bC. He was told to be a very handsome man.



The fishing village of Pythagorion











The village is now very touristy, it even has its own marina for yachts and a beach as well in the town centre, but I found out, and this was after a little stroll along the marina where I came across a few Samian fishermen busy preparing for the next catch.... that fishing is fortunately still a source of livelihood here. I will post more about this encounter on another time.



More of Pythagorion village soon!