Dr Doug Meyer, RIP

Today I blogged on FastCompany about Dr Doug Meyer, who jumped 17 floors to his death. Read post

Thanks to Doug's colleague Steve Chang, a great friend and Bike Friday customer, for providing insight into Doug's life. The last time I saw Doug was at Halloween in NY; such a low key and unassuming man, he stayed clear of my video. Steve, however, appears at the end. Halloween in NY movie clip

I've been busy tripping north to spread the low-hydrocarb gospel in Brisbane. Here's how I arrived in Brisbane, 14 hours in a folding hotel room. Check out the folding frenzy of the Countrylink sleeper cabin (Movie clip)

Before that I interviewed REMO, the purveyor of Stuff with a Story (Movie Clip) - astounding, given that I'd upset them by critiquiing their email campaign.

Finally, here's the kind of urban jungle we'd all welcome - hidden in a fold of suburban Paddington in Sydney:



Heading back to Sydney July 17, then to Eugene, Oregon, Aug 6.

Bobbi's Pole Studio: The new XBX of fitness

PHOTO GALLERY: Bobbi's Pole Studio End of Term recital

MOVIE CLIP: Poledancing - the perfect workout for the modern urban cyclista

In just a couple of years since my mother and daughter excursion into this femme fatale fitness fad, it seems poledancing has become the new 5BX - or rather X(XX?)BX of exercise for women of all ages, stages and sizes.

I landed back downunder to discover that the local PoleStars franchise, where I did my introductory course, was up for sale. However, an outfit called Bobbi's Pole Studio was going great guns, with reportedly 1000 students. When I asked Bobbi, an utterly magnificent speciman of the XX chromosome, why she was leading the pack, she replied, "I've been doing poledancing all my life."

Her studio, discreetly housed on the 4th floor of an old diva of a building, has zero street presence, perhaps to deter any riff raff. When you mount the stairs, you arrive on a floor bathed in pink lights and shiny fabrics and permanently erected spinning brass poles - and this is where Bobbi's differs from other poledance classes offered in gymnasiums. Not for Bobbi's the "I'm just doing this for exercise, really", sweatpants and tennis shoe shuffle, although you're more than welcome to be as unsexy as you want - there's probably a wig of hair curlers and a cigarette to droop from your lower lip in the costume department. The business was proudly born and bred of professional strippers and exotic dancers - a fact which, sight unseen, possibly deters and attracts applicants in equal numbers. When you actually summon up the courage to check it out, you could well be sold like 1000 others.

First, there are the pictures of the fittest specimans of the female form I'd laid eyes on since The Greatest Circus on Earth. The only difference between these women and those scantily clad pro trapeze artists, acrobats, gymnasts and belly dancers seems to be ... a pair of 6-inch heels and a pole that runs from floor to ceiling rather than east to west. Your first thought is, shit, I want to be fit like that.

Next, you meet the instructors. Candice, aka Miss Pole Dance Australia, is an acutely funny and intelligent Brit who captivates you from her first witty one-liner. You need to be supremely secure of mind and body to do this work, and it's no surprise the teachers exhibit an almost charismatic confidence. Your next thought is shit, I want to be gutsy like that.



Third, it's the perfect complement to road cycling. Cycling is a sport that does nothing for your upper body while your quads balloon like Charlene Atlas. This becomes shockingly obvious the first time you attempt to shin up the pole and end up sliding down in a crumpled heap like a pair of worn out knee high socks. Your final thought is, shit, I need to do this right now before I become a pear with twigs for arms.

Although I'm the owner of an imposing chrome dancepole (thanks to my 70-year-young mother, "ya can't play golf without golf clubs, and ya can't do poledancing without at pole"), it hasn't done me much good propping up the roof of my flat in Sydney when I'm on the road. A refresher course is a way to justify the 500 bucks I dropped on it in a pink lurex moment!

I signed up for the mini-term - a 4-week course for $120 - even though the receptionist, who even has her own exotic wear label 007 Heaven - was concerned I might find it too easy. Not at all - second to learning how to hang upside down like a limpet on the south face of Patagonia is simply learning how to perfect basic moves with a modicum of grace. It helps if you're already a dancer and can do the splits, but guess what - you can even learn that ...

"I couldn't do the splits when I first started," said Candice. "I just practiced three times a week and by the ninth month I had it." Wow! Push back that furniture right now and lemme at it!

The photo gallery shows the end of term recital, a stroke of marketing brilliance. Unlike PoleStars, where our class had its own "recital" of 6 classmates that basically no one turned up to, all levels converged on the studio to strut their stuff. This means that you get to see what you are eventually aiming for - nothing motivates like seeing a bunch of ordinary girls doing some amazing advanced moves.

The audience of guys (yes guys!) and dolls - family, friends and colleagues if you dare, are told to wait out in reception with bated breath while the classes warm up and do a run-through, before they are let in and sit on the stage in rows to watch and cheerlead.

There was even a barefoot guy in the class doing all the moves. I recall that Polestars didn't allow guys to do the class, or charged them a hefty fee. Why so fearful? The animal kingdom as been fluffing its feathers, plumping it's chest and strutting its stuff forever. We're just all animals. It's no big deal.

Very satisfying was seeing a couple of very large women doing the class dressed to kill. Truly inspiring.

And older women? There weren't any near the age of my mother (70) this time, and at 46, I'll bet I was one of the oldies. Had they ever had a "seniors class"?

"We tried to make a separate class for older students, thinking that was the thoughtful and respectful thing to do, but they were offended!" said Bobbi, "So now it's everyone in together - guys and gals." As it should be!

Afterwards, it was time for the audience to have a crack at the pole. Apparently men are very eager to throw themselves at it after seeing their paramours perform - a sort of competitive alpha male thing. Candice said they usually end up doubled over in agony unless they are shown how to make the correct um, approach.



Finally, two floors down I discovered a shop called Misty Rose - selling all kinds of costumery for pole and exotic dancing. I won't go into all the various looks but there was even an airline stewardess number with peaked cap and winged badge.

"Er, mile high club," said the assistant.

I was fascinated by a pair of lucite 6" heels that truly appealed to my sense of kitsch - the platform contained a roiling blue liquid sea with three tiny rubber ducks bobbing up and down on the waves. And in the heel - a single bobbing rubber duck. I wondered if I could justify buying them and using them as doorstops or paperweights ... these shoes were also the choice of pacifier for Sierra, the owner's 10-month old cherub (see the video clip), who rolled about on the rug performing pole moves in perfect time to Justin Timberlake ...

More Gal on Poledancing multimedia

Test driving a traditional Chinese Massage

Picture of the moment: Speaking of bodily use-by dates (see below), this Will kit for Singles caught my eye - clever marketing, since it probably contains little more more than a Post-it note to pencil in the solitary name of the person you're leaving your stufforama to - that's right, Thou Thyself Thou! Highway robbery at $24.95 - how stupid do they think we singles are? OK, I admit I did turn it over and over and wonder exactly what it said inside ...


I paused in front of a Chinese Massage/Acupuncture clinic today, and decided to go for it.

I've been suffering from a bit of a stiff upper back, plus a disturbing recent development where my skull and neck make a loud "crunching" sound when I look down.

It's probably everything to do with my work and play - I ride a bicycle for a living, I spend too much time laptopping, and I'm going to be 50 in 5 years' time. Despite conscientious efforts to stretch and remain flexible, poledancing classes and separating my portable keyboard from the screen using impressive towers of phone books, the body is telling me yes, it does have a best-before date.

This massage clinic is in Double Bay, or rather, "Double Pay" as Sydneysiders smirk, so I braced myself for the worst. As I predicted, it wasn't cheap: $78 a massage, $46 for half an hour.

"Special for you to try" whispered a bespectacled, Chinese studenty type from Beijing who'd amputated the Ch's and ng's off his name and was left with "Tony" . "$30 special ... or $1 a minute."

Ah, to be Chinese is to bargain.

When he led me back to the massage rooms I broke out an involuntary chuckle: despite being located in one of the most hoity-toity suburbs in Sydney, this operation was pure, unadulterated Chinatown on a misplaced GPS coordinate.

How so?

Where most massage clinics try to cultivate a Zenlike ambience complete with incense, mood lighting, hemp-hued drapery and Wyndham Hill or plinkety plunkety sitars on the iPod, this clinic was just that - reminiscent of the makeshift clinics where you got your shots as a snotty tot.

Tony threw on a cassette which immediately filled the space with the incongruous sound of birds twittering against bad harp music. Flickering fluros overhead stripped the room of any kind of warmth or ambience. He slung the pocket door closed so I could strip down; a bunch of those wire coat hangers jangling cacophonously from a hook behind it.

A complete lack of carpet meant hearing a customer's clomping and scraping stilettos all the way from reception up the corridor and into the adjacent cubicle, defined by a thin paneled divider that fell several feet short of the ceiling.

My neighbor proceeded to bleat through a megaphone at length about herself and her day, uh-huh'd by her acupuncturist. When I asked my masseur a question, his unseen colleague answered me through the wall - in between stopping to repeatedly answer his ringing phone while needling his client. How bizarre!

Now and then Tony would exit to heat up a towel under a hot running tap, nuke it in the microwave then slap it on my neck.

"I give you 5 minute sample of reflexology, no charge, no charge," said Tony.

It wasn't bad, but needed more knuckle grease.

I mused about all this while lying there being pummeled in true Beijing sidewalk chair massage style. They say eating should be a calm affair, chew every mouthful well, don't talk. Yet Chinese restaurants are the noisiest of all, mouths shoveling food and shouting and slurping of oolong tea all at the same time. Why should a massage be any different?

At the end, I was actually quite satisfied with my experience.

There's something comforting and unpretentious about those 88 ways to know you're Chinese, and this clinic is surely the 89th.

tikiting around the traps

Pictured below: Can I get my former adland mentor Siimon out of his Aston Martin and onto a Bike Friday tikit? I know the bike will go in the boot! We'll see when I get back from Melbourne and Sydney ...

Pictured above right: Celebrating Melbourne's new "All bagged folders on trains, at all times" policy.

What do you do with a folding bike? Be conspicuous, like a good company gal.

Check the BF events calendar for dates of my Film Fest (7-10pm, May 13, 6 bond St Melbourne and May 15 Manning Clark IV Theater ANU, Canberra) where I'll be showing my handlebar movies. www.bikefriday.com/events
Call me at 0420 968 967 or email galfromdownunder@gmail.com

What am I doing downunder? 'Avaread.

Out of this world in Cowra

Now here's a sight for a jaded junketeer's eyes ...

A home made telescope (alright a pretty durn serious one) in deepest darkest Cowra, somewhere Downunder, afforded me this peeping-Tom's-eye view of the sexy, sultry, siren of all planets ... Mars. OK just testing you.

I got to see it on the Australian Bike Friday Club annual Gathering - read my multimedia report which includes a movie clip of me oohing and ahhing the beast.

I've seen 2001: multiple times, played Space Invaders, ogled the pictures in the "U" and "P" volumes of World Book Encyclopedia and those oversized Time Life tomes; seen endless "artists impressions" of the solar system on wall charts, books and of course, the web. As a teen I was mesmerized by a book in the library called "Black Holes, Quasers and the Universe", and would nip in there every other lunchtime to stand in the aisle, reading and re-reading the two pages on how an astronaut gets strung out like spaghetti at a black hole's event horizon. Who do horror flicks and the six-o'clock news carnage repulse and entrance us? Something about standing at the edge of the abyss no less ...

Saturn is always depicted like so - tilted and rising up over Titan or one of its many moons, its rings like a delicate frozen frisbee, a hula hoop paused mid-whoop around the girth of the sleeping giant. All that embedded textbook imagery doesn't prepare you for actually seeing it with your naked eye.

Even at this button-size, flickering in and out of focus, Saturn had the group of us waiting patiently in a long line to gaze upon its daily toilet. The owner of the Darby's Falls Observatory used a laser pointer to join dots in the gulf of starry darkness overhead, but stimulus-overloaded as we humans tend to be, the dots that just became slightly bigger dots in the other scopes just didn't cut it. Saturn was the star. I'd say it's is rather like your favorite supermodel or object of desire - you can't help looking at her, watching every turn and every nervous tic.

Saturn - how can a tinny, noisy car possibly take the namesake of this antediluvian marvel?

At 45 I must rapidly be descending into the realm of extreme geekness - I am contemplating putting a poster of Saturn on my wall, in my heart-shaped locket, on my screensaver, inside the lid of my suitcase. She doesn't argue with me, judge me, offer conditional affection, smother or ignore me. She just lets me gaze upon her as long as I please, reminding me of the true size of my issues.

Yup, Saturn is my star.

The Gal will be doing her shtick in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra between May 1-30, 2008.
See http://www.galfromdownunder.com/where

DEDICATION: This post was inspired by Bike Friday customer Allen C at NASA who helped me uncombobulate my hard drive.

Will the real TurboTax please stand up?

I think I've been duped by a fake Turbotax site, so consider this a public service ... and not an ad for the grannies at H&R Block, really:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog-post/work-life-will-real-turbotax-please-stand
if you see someone called Lynette Chiang who doesn't look like me, driving a slew of kids in an SUV to the soccer field, it ain't me ...

Flat out like a lizard drinking!

... that means I've been busy as a botox kiosk in Beverley Hills. Doing what, you might ask? Take a look:

San Francisco/Berkeley

Hawaii

Arizona Desert Camp making like Charles Atlas as you can see at the right (Lon Haldeman took that shot)

And now I'm off to Australia for all of April and May '08, carousing with customers here.

My FastCompany blog slowed right down when they ported it over to a new system which didn't quite work at first. But now it's up and running as is my latest post (which says March 3 but it was actually March 15).

One thing I tried in Hawaii, was to get a Hawaii driver's license. I thought it would be the coolest thing to hip out and brandish when the weather drops below freezing in other parts of the country. I haven't needed a car, or to drive, for 15 years. But apart from the envy factor, something tells me it might be useful to have one, especially in an emergency, and not be a burden to others.

In a nutshell I passed the written but failed the road test. According to the dragon lady tester, I went a"little to fast" around corners and I indicated a "little less than 100 feet before an intersection".

It's not a big deal, except it was an ordeal involving a) badgering friends to let you drive them around for practice and b) hijacking a friend's morning or afternoon while they sit and wait for you to do your test - the licensed driver must accompany the student.

Talk about overtaxing friendships! Thank you to Geri Tolchin, my realtor friend, for going above and beyond - please go buy your next property from her so I can atone for my sins.

I googled 'failed hawaii driving test' to console myself and discovered that failing people is quite a sport over among the testers, with the women testers being particularly unforgiving.

"Especially in Hilo, where, despite looking like it's a backwater, it's really by the book, due to the Japanese influence," offered a friend who lives there.

Here's me thinking that doing the test in podunk Hilo would be a pushover!

So I'm back to being chauffered around if I have to, until I give it another shot.

Here's the highlight of that whole experience ... in the Hawaii Driver's Manual it says in essence:

Please respect cyclists. Remember that someone on a bike not only represents less pollution and burning of fossil fuel, it represents one more parking space for you at your destination.

Famous paintings on vacation

The latest addition to Wayne Takazono's 'Famous Paintings On Vacation' series. Buy a cool print of this original for $29 from the man himself, email wtakazono at hawaii dot rr dot com

Ah, my Hawaii sojourn is drawing to a close.

Before I jet off to Arizona for the annual Bike Friday Desert Camp I'm making a quick trip over to check on my postage-stamp-sized piece of Hawaii and dream about what I can do with it. I was thinking of investing in a condo of some sort (using coconuts and bike parts for currency) but this is one alternative to consider - build your own shack, rather than pay dearly for someone else's shack. Especially when the sun and rain are free and plentiful in Hawaii. No insulation needed, no heating or airconditioning if you build it right. Land has dropped down to around 10-15k a lot, but you don't buy there to make a killing. You buy because it's just one killer place to live. Take a look at my photos from '05-06. The lava is slow flowing, so you can outrun it if you happen to fall to the 50/700 year odds of it bubbling up underfoot. And a structure only has to last my lifetime. When I'm gone, I want no trace of me and my carbon footprint to remain. 

I read that the Hawaii government are offering tax rebates for people to convert to solar energy. Apparently only 30,000 people are doing it. With all the sun here it should be a requirement. I'm told that rebates bring the cost down to around $1500. And what about wave power? Put those surfers to work ...



My friend, the artist currently known as Wayne Takazono, has come up with another cool painting in his 'Famous Paintings on Vacation' series. Some will remember me talking about his 'American Gothic' interpretation last year, see below. Above is his latest 'Cherubs' execution. The caption? How about Dear Lord, where the @#$% is the surf? 

To the right is his Moana Lisa, although he doesn't like me referring to it like that. The original is in a North Shore gallery priced at $2500, but you can have an identical print for $29. That's Diamond head in the background, and she's wearing a sarong and sunglasses. 

It would be so easy to make this cheesy, but because Wayne is a master portrait artist, he knows how to do it with the right amount of restraint. 

I bought a couple of prints from him and my sister immediately hijacked them. Great gifts, and no, I'm not taking a commission, I'm just happy he's taking me to the airport and back because there's no cheap way to do it in Hawaii.

In other news, I've been blogging for FastCompany, attempting to write useful business related posts rather than the fanciful drivel you read here. Today I read that Saatchi & Saatchi's annual Big Idea prize ($100k) went to a drinking straw that purifies water. Tres brilliant. Except as I type this the toilet cistern is roaring away, the floating ball thing is clearly off center AGAIN. They can build a spaceship that goes to the moon, a stick of chewing gum that plays 50,000 songs, a straw that purifies water ... why has the humble toilet cistern never gotten past version 2 (version 1 being a hold in the ground covered with leaves).

I propose a contest to fix, once and for all, the plasticky, silly, annoying things in life that are still plasticky, silly and annoying.

Off to Australia March 23 for more downunder hard yakka like this.

"Using minimum material to build maximum structures, and recycling"

- Cal-Earth



I nearly fell off my chair.

In Hawaii, I was surfing, er, the internet that is, looking for ideas for my little piece of land on the Big Island.

I stumbled upon this man planning to build a 'SuperAdobe' house designed by the famed Cal Earth architect Nader Khalili - in the Nanawale Estates subdivision, right where my land is!

The only problem is, on closer investigation it appears the permits were rejected twice back in January 2007 - but the owner is going ahead anyway. I am feverishly hoping there's been an update. It makes sense, especially in Hawaii where the sun and rain are free, sustainability should be the default and yet, 92% of the state's energy consumption is fossil fuel based. If it was volcano-based it would be perfect, but Chevron et al don't seem to be sticking their long snakey hoses down that hole yet.

Cal-earth's statement "Using minimum material to build maximum structures, and recycling" - buried on their products page - resonated with me like nothing else, for a very, very long time.

Nader Khalili>> I think it's human rights. I think it should
be part of our constitution of this country that human shelter
is just a right, just like the human right for government, for
freedom, for food. Human right for shelter. - from this interview

More:

Saul Gonzalez>> The essence of Khalili's architecture is
simplicity itself. Make a hole and start packing the earth into
long tubular sandbags which you then begin stacking together,
attaching them with barbed wire. He calls the process Super
Adobe Construction.

Nader Khalili>> "That's one of the reasons I believe so much
homelessness exists in the world because half of the population
of the world is pushed aside."

Saul Gonzalez>> Tired of the competitive rat race, Khalili who
once designed skyscrapers walked away from a successful
architectural career more than twenty-five years ago. He says
philosophically his designs now are about rediscovering the
architectural wisdom of the past and erasing the border between
our built and un-built environments.

And here's the bit that most interested me ...

Saul Gonzalez>> Like a proud father, Khalili shows off the
features of one of his designs, a four hundred square foot home
built for about ten thousand dollars.

In days of old when men were bold, the tribe would settle somewhere and immediately set to work helping each other build shelter - then they got on with life. Fast forward to our modern day, and people enslave themselves for 65 years, 60-70 hours a week, to pay off that modern day thatch roof - and then continue to pay for the privilege in the form of property tax (USA system) and other costs.

It's insane. It's just shelter. I like the Hawaiian homelands philosophy - piece of land to live on that you lease for $1 a year, pass it down, but you can never sell it at a gouge-worthy price. If everyone had a little spot to live like that, perhaps there'd be less war.

These houses probably look to some like 'hippie houses'. They'll probably be lumped together with my friend Dan Price, the Man in the Hole and others who reject the Mc Mansion or bland box sold at exorbitant rates as 'cute fixer uppers' and 'dream dwellings' and even pretentious gentrifications.

I'm no hippie, I'm a failed hippie. But, just like I ride a strange bicycle because it works - you can take it wherever you go and ride it till you're 90 (you can get your leg over the damn thing) - these SuperAdobe houses simply provide everything a human being really needs in a shelter and nothing more. Because what more do you need in a house?

Hm, I hope there's a spot for the internet satellite dish.

And I just hope they adapt well to the termite and rain problem Hawaiian houses suffer ...

If not, I'm sure there are alternatives, if only these Building Code Nazis would see the light.

Giant sewer pipe condo, anyone?

My postage stamp size piece of land on Hawaii, site for a future house where I can invite all the Bike Friday customers and friends who've put me up in their homes over the years ... more Galfromdownunder in Hawaii

Galfromdownunder's VD, 2008

How does a bike lane warrior do on a Valentine's Day?

Certainly keep a nice, safe distance from any chance of catching a communicable something! The closest I got to anything "coupley" was to watch people in furry animal costumes engage in foreplay ...



As this year's day of "will you's?" and little square tables with a chair on either side, draws to a close at 11.45pm Blue Hawaii time, I offer a blow by blow account of how I spent it. So if you had an even less romantic day than me, read my itinerary and claim it as your own. Think of it as a companion volume to 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' or more likely, 'Independence Day'.

8am: I woke with eyes like two hyphens having spent the last two nights working til 3am on the Bike Friday quarterly newsletter. In the spirit of conquering oil addiction, I was directed to make it a new, 'low emissions' publication, with half the number of pages, which means it now takes double the effort to make it pithy.

9.30am: was supposed to meet Hawaii Bicycling League cyclists at 9.30am, but was hamstrung by a rear flat tire and a pump that refused to exhale. In fact, I saw a small gecko clinging to the sidewall and for a moment imagined it was sucking air out of the tire. Rust was already all over the chain after just a few days parked outside, with the crashing ocean a few blocks over. Do you ever wonder that if salt air can do this to hardened steel, what's it doing to our bodies - romantic beach scenes and turquoise horizon aside?

10.30am: Having missed the Breakfast Club, I turned my attention the local Mac Made Easy Apple reseller, where I fondled the MacBook Air. It resembles a giant slim cigarette case with edges that taper like a knife - you could slice a foccacia with it. Unfortunately, it doesn't have FireWire ports and I suspect it won't suffice for the heavy duty video editing I've been known to do. I'm sure I wore out my welcome by asking about anything and everything in the store, but hey, it's my Valentine's day and I'll buy if I want to.

11am: I stopped by a store that said 'YOGA' but the owner was actually trying to attract last minute Valentine's Day purchases from blind men, by stringing a couple of pink balloons from her SUV rack. I suggested she hoist a selection of Brazilian g-strings on a pole and let them flap in the breeze, but it fell on deaf ears - the customer is never right. She offers several classes including poledancing, discreetly named 'Fit for a Goddess.' The goddess angle is a popular one that seeks to make this 'activity' seem 'womanly' rather than 'sleazy'. I see no need - I've always touted poledancing as an incomparable upper body workout - you never realize how puny your arms are, 'til you try to do do the 'upside down' manoeuvre.

12 noon: Bale and Yum Yum are two local Asian eateries where you can get a decent Bi Bim Bap, Green Papaya Salad or strange colored tapioca puddings - relatively cheap. Yum Yum had BROWN RICE, unheard of at most Asian eateries. The hi-fiber message is finally getting through. Being a seven-eight's vegetarian, I wasn't going to eat the pile of beef that accompanied my Bi Bim Bap, but I succumbed. Shite happens ... and less regularly when you eat too much meat.

12.30pm: I went into Don Quixote, a bizarrely-renamed Japanese supermarket formerly called Daiei, for a humble pair of shoelaces. This store has to be seen to be believed. Anything that doesn't move but did in a former life is there on ice, along with quirky stuff like containers with lids in just about every size and shape imaginable. I imagine a small lidded container of the right size and shape is a hotter item than the iPhone in cramped-quarters Tokyo ...

1pm: I visited the Bike Shop, and hung out there for an indecent amount of time inspecting and fondling bike porn - carbon fiber water bottle cages ($59.99), titanium light-sensitive sunglasses ($139.99) and this year's ugly bike shoes ($85 up). I'll say it now - bike shoes are all ugly, over embellished to the point where they look like they're wearing you, not the other way round. I don't care how comfy and longwearing and Italian they are, someone with taste needs to rescue this whole category.

I did clump away with a pair of Specialized Body Geometry MTB shoes to try out a stiffer sole. I've been using more recreational shoes disdainfully referred to by hipper-than-thou bike shop brethren as 'spin class shoes'. The damage? $35, reduced from $85. Woo hoo.

3pm: Got a haircut from Supercuts, $17. I always go to this worldwide shearing shed for the masses. It's only hair!


5pm: The Kailua Farmer's Market in full swing in the Long's parking lot. Pre-dinner Valentine couples in stage 1 foreplay - nibbling at Cinnamon Compote Crisp, Shrimp plate and each other. One popular vendor is the Taro Delight man, Tom Purdy. He makes everything out of taro, that starchy vegetable that MUST be cooked long and hard or else your tongue gets permanently grafted to the roof of your mouth. His Lau Lau is a slab of Salmon over Taro wrapped in banana leaves. He makes poke, that Hawaiian raw fish dish, from Taro - not a nori'd Nemo in sight. Delish!

6pm: Race home to avoid the VD crush: endless restaurant windows packed with tables for two like Noah's Ark ...

So that's how I spent VD. I confess I also spent an obscene amount of time in the evening trawling www.cyberguys.com for retractable cables ... who on earth would want this gal as a Valentine?

Here's the strangest thing I saw today ....

Sheldon Brown: Ride In Peace

Yesterday, the Grand Wiki of bicycle bells, whistles and everything below the saddle passed away. My humble tribute to Sheldon Brown on the Bike Friday website. I never met the man, but we used his gear inch calculator every day ...





Where am I? Currently staying in a 1-coconut town called Ka'a'awa, which means "where the mountains meet the sea" - they sure do. There is a very large and majestic, mossy lump of planet breathing down my neck ...

See photos of my Hawaii loiterings with a laptop here

Aloha, but not in my backyard

Picketing against illegal picket fences ...

PHOTO GALLERY | MOVIE CLIP | GALFROMDOWNUNDER IN HAWAII

I've just attended my first rally in a long time - the placard waving, chanting and foot-stomping kind.

For bicycling? No, for beachcombing! Well actually, we're talking the full monty of ocean worshipping activities, like surfing, swimming, walking, sunbathing, beach-barbecuing, and kiddie favorites like jellyfish-poking and limpet harassing ...



The rally was organized by Beach Access Hawaii, Surfrider Foundation and other citizen advocacy groups, collectively incensed at the increasing gall of "rich landowners" who've been surreptitiously gating and blocking off beach access paths for quite some time - and no one is stopping them.

Often, the gates are torn down only to be put right back up again, with fake signs saying "Private Access" and "Trespassers will be stoned with coconuts" or words to that effect. Some even hire security guards to stop beachgoers in their tracks. Some aloha! After living in Costa Rica for two years, it bothered me that blow-ins would bring their guns and gates and sense of entitlement from the place they are fleeing and inflict them on their new 'home' - basically someone else's backyard. Then again, with Christopher Columbus as role model ...



Some landowners sneakily extend their walls to encroach on public paths. Once a property has changed hands many times, the access is lost forever, largely due to lack of enforcement and wishy-washy legislation. It takes a special kind of landowner to re-open or grant access, and one placard that read "Thank you Dr Flowers for Paiko's beach access" might have alluded to a good Samaritan landowner.

"There are only guidelines," says BAH co-founder Rich Figel, implying they're worth the shifting sand they're written in. A resident of Kailua, one of the most desireable beachside neighborhoods in all of the islands, Rich didn't think he had a problem until a neighbor's new construction meant he had to walk a long way to get to the next access point.

"We're looking for enforceable legislation. At the very minimum, we're just talking about being neighborly here," said Rich. He then handed me his sign and dashed off to liaise with the media, so I spent the day clutching it and waving it around and hopefully making myself useful.



Peter Cole, a big surfing name in Hawaii who is lucky to live on rasonably "have nots"-friendly Sunset Beach, was particularly critical of the aloha-less "rich and greedy" people, as he called them. "People have to understand that when they buy beachfront property, the beach is not theirs, it's public."

There's a phrase "rich people ruin everything." In fairness, the rich have what it takes to Martha Stewartize a dodgy neighborhood. But things go pear-shaped when a certain threshold is crossed, that is - when the average house price hits $700K.

The least aloha I have ever experienced was from the haoles on the island of Kauai, land of illicit granny flats, insane road rage and inflated housing prices. I had to spend two nights sleeping in a friend's car, and was saved from some serious Anahola campground peril only by some local Hawaiians. You won't catch me going back to Kauai in a hurry, I don't care how scenic it is.



Are resorts to blame too?

"Resorts are legally required to provide access as part of their permit, but the problem there is parking," said Rich. "They're restricting parking in their immediate area, making it something you have to pay for if you don't snag one of the free handful of spots." Paying for parking in their own backyards is not something locals are jazzed about.

"Free beach access is what makes Hawaii so special," said one demonstrator.

Now to be fair, you can appreciate a beachfront homeowner's beef - noise, litter and traffic jams are extras he or she didn't eagerly pay $1m+ for. But them's the breaks.

It reminds about an article on Curbed.com where someone bought a bargain brownstone in Harlem NY, and wanted to banish the noise and delinquency at this doorstep. Hello, said several commentors, you bought a cheapie in NYC, wake up and smell the crack! I'm even more amazed at people who buy near long-established bread and chocolate factories and expect the delicious stench to cease and desist. Have they not heard of "I got here first?" Oh that's right, Christopher Columbus ...

But here's the bottom line: blocking access doesn't make the problem go away - it just shifts the offending mess down the road. Continue that around the island and you come full circle.

Back to the rally. I was offered a place on the jolly crusading trolley car by friend and author Cynthia De Rosier (The Surfer Spirit), a big time surfer gal.

The crusade was preceded by speeches at the Honolulu's State Capitol building, a unique and imposing edifice modeled on a volcano and flanked by columns suggestive of towering coconut palms.



Notables included Senator Gary Hooser, resplendent in a Hawaiian shirt under a navy blue suit. Hey, if you have to do an office job and wear a great bag of fruit, make sure it's in Hawaii! Hooser says he introduced "Bill 2835" that insists permitting agencies breathe down the necks of developers. He told us that the access issue is not limited to golden sand and turquoise water - in the interior of the island, landowners blocking off access to established hiking areas and hinterland. What is wrong with people? Don't they know you can't take it with you?

After rousing speeches by other representatives of the various action groups, we boarded the trolley car and, waving placards and the Hawaiian equivalent of palm fronds, set off on a noisy, chanting and bell ringing route through Honolulu to Hawaii and back via Diamond Head.

Bystanders looked bewildered, but quickly smiled and waved the 'shaka' symbol after reading our big signs. Some probably thought we were a bunch of out-of work-surfer bums campaigning for the next smokeable thing since hemp, but they seemed few and far between.

At various key points along the route, demonstrators had gathered in the light rain with their placards and the trolley car met them to maintain the polite rage.

An open top Ferrari roared by and I entertained an uncharitable thought that it spends its nights curled up in an air conditioned garage with a wrongfully gated beach access, flanked by two concrete roaring lion gargoyles ...


Pictured right: A t-shirt I stumbled upon, appropriately, in Hawaii


In my unsolicited opinion, a big part of the problem is the insane auto-centricity on Oahu. I swear if you were loitering in the Ala Moana Blvd area you'd think you were in downtown LA, not on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the ocean, lit up and chugging along on a gargantuan bonfire of fossil fuel. The place needs a decent mass transit system like San Francisco's BART. Ten years ago a train was mooted here, but locals say the 'island mentality' of Hawaii gets nothing done fast, until it's too late and horribly expensive.

I hear an above-ground light rail has been re-proposed, but that like the monorail in Sydney, it doesn't go anywhere you want it to - and a ground-based solution would be preferable. Talking to Lean Shaman of the San Francisco Bike Coalition, I learned that bike lanes and a well-designed light rail system can actually bring order and calm to traffic, rather than rob the road of essential driving real estate. "I've received letters from motorists thanking us for bike lanes, telling me it's so much easier to drive there now," she said.

You can read the full details of the rally at this Beach Access Hawaii's blog entry and check out my loiterings here: Galfromdownunder in Hawaii

My life is a motion blur ...

Wow! Since leaving NYC I've been on the go and bleating on everyone else's blog (Bike Friday's and FastCompany) but my own! I've been in doing the Bike Friday shuffle in San Francisco, Sacramento, and now Hawaii. I'm off to the annual Bike Friday Arizona Desert Camp in March, then to Australia for the Australian Bike Friday Club gathering.

Here's a motion blur update ...



Riding with the Honolulu Tradewinds Bike Club out to Waimanalo and back - fast furious! Sorry I couldn't manage a more scenic backdrop than this "unremarkable lump of rock" ...




Chance encouter in Kapiolani park with daughter of the Bragg's Liquid Aminos empire and author of 'The Triathlon Endurance Training Book', Patricia Bragg. Dressed in pink, she seemed enamored with my hot-rod pink Pocket Rocket Pro Petite ...



Gazillion dollar view from this Lanakai beach shack, where I was invited to a birthday party.



The Hawaii Bicycling League Annual Membership Dinner - lau lau and poke on the buffet, The Handsomest Man in Cuba and the tikit for dessert. This was the second year in a row that I was guest speaker for this club - conveniently during the North American winter!



John Climaldi, HBL Events Director, totes the tikit and its suitcase to my talk. He's just joined the fold, purchasing a 10 year old pre-loved Pocket Rocket.





Tikiting outside Arnie Schwarzenegger's office at the Capitol building in Sacramento. You can go right inside and snap pictures of his long suffering secretary at her desk.




Little Person Dan Okenfuss has a big job as senior staffer to Member Ted Liew





Bike Friday Club of Sacramento ride out from new tikit agent Carmichael Cycles





Leah Shaman, Executive Director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, thinks that while the new Warm Planet Bikes Valet Station is a great idea, if everyone had a folding bikes things might be even better!





Meeting Rob Van der Plas of Cycle Publishing, who wrote a blurb for the front page of The Hansomest Man in Cuba.





BF Club of San Francisco ride 'Chilly Hilly' ride from new Bike Friday dealer VeloSport, Berkeley.



Berkeley is an extremely cycle-civilized, with well designated 'bicycle boulevardes' - drivers stop to let you cross, even on busy streets. The bicycle boulevard street signs are colored purple.





I even sat in on a Law lecture at UC Davis. I always wanted to be a lawyer. Love them torts ...






BF Club of Palo Alto co-leader David Muffly and BF Club of SF co-leader Jym Dyer commune at Warm Planet's Bicycle Valet grand opening. I demonstrated the tikit and showed the Round*Up Fast Fold Showdown video.





Why we need a folding bike like the tikit - a 50 mpg Honda Insight rubs bumpers with a Hummer, but neither is the answer to the global oil problem




Can't resist returning to some Hawaii shots - hard at work here with BF Club of Hawaii member Lt Col Jim Gibson in Haliewa.



What's not to love about Hawaii?

Dancing down the long and potholed road

Right: Terrence Carey allows you to hallucinate that you're Catherine Zeta-Jones in "Chicago" for an hour in his 'Adrenalize' class

One frustrating aspect of my life as a road warrior is the lack of continuity for things that require it – like classes.

Sure, there's the odd drop-in yoga class, and a single guitar lesson might teach you enough of 'Stairway to Heaven' to get you banned from every guitar shop in town. Sure, you can loiter around a Trader Joe's cooking demo and fantasize you're at an Iron Chef bootcamp. But for what I love to dabble in – dance - you generally need continuity.

Most exercise classes are humdrum, and most modern dance classes are too complicated, especially if you're not a regular. I want a quick fix that makes this knock-kneed novice feel I'm training for both a big bike race and an MTV clip or Catherine Zeta Jones' role in "Chicago" at the same time. And all in 1 hour.

I stumbled (trying to make pas de deux) across this class while on a guest pass at the otherwise unaffordable Chelsea Piers Fitness Center. (Will someone good-looking please persuade this massive complex to offer itinerant New York workers 1-3 month memberships?)

The class, called 'Adrenalize', claimed to combine modern stage dance in a standalone, fitness class format.

This sounded like my holy grail!

Now the hybrid dance/exercise class is nothing new. Just like fusion music, fusion cuisine and fusion fashion, fusion dance offerings, started for me with Jazzercise and Jazznastics back in the 70's to N.I.A. (Neuromuscular Integrative Action), Zumba, Afro-Funk, Afro-Latin Funk, Afro-Latin-Swahili Funk etc around now, all claiming to offer superior benefits to the unsexy old XBX developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Think YoSumo – a combination of Hatha Yoga and Sumo Wrestling.

These fusions get too precious and fussy for my liking, and often require equipment. What if you get stuck on a desert island without your exercise ball or foam blocks?

'Adrenalize' sounded conceptually cleaner. Modern dance moves, with enough repetition and pattern to make it a solid workout, and maybe one you could remember when you got home.

The teacher, Terrence Carey, is a magnificent specimen of the human race. Like one of those towering black chorus dancers you fixate on in favor of the simpering white princess in the spotlight, he's a dancer by trade and innovator.

"I spent years studying with many of the dance world's greatest luminaries - Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell, Ann Reinking, Chet Walker, Nicole Fosse - and learning about exercise, including kinesiology, Pilates and gyrotonic," he said.

"After touring nationally with Dreamgirls, I wanted to design a movement experience that would make me sweat and be creatively satisfying."

Well! If a professional dancer is still looking for that magic combination, you know there's something amiss in the world of fitness classes.

We started out doing simple arm movements that immediately transported you out of a neighborhood gym and onto a Broadway stage, slow but expressive and purposeful. That's something absent in exercise classes – artistic expression. We were soon leaping across the floor at all points of the compass. I found out later that I'd been air-rubbing shoulders with several seasoned Broadway veterans, a great testament to Terrence's new baby.

"Quite often with the traditional "cardio-dance class" if you're not familiar with the steps and/or the instructor's style, it can be challenging to fully participate," he said. That's putting it nicely – I have painful memories of standing haplessly in a room with bright young things leaping like gazelles around me.

It’s also silent. No "… and 4 and 5 and 6 and …" to make you hallucinate you're at boot camp rather than dream you're in Dreamgirls …

"Adrenalize is experienced and instructed without the utterance of any words. All the directions and corrections are suggested physically as the experience unfolds. Music is selected which will sustain and maintain energy while revitalizing and rejuvenating "the flow".

And that's another thing. Gyms and aerobics classes always seem to play such awful music. With all the excellent Intelligent Dance Music, deep house and electronica around, you'd think that they'd raid their CD collections Just Play Some. It's part of the reason I hate gyms and exercise classes. I can only speculate that they buy it from factories to avoid royalty issues.

I like what Terrence has done – packaged two simple elements together – dance like a pro, exercise like at boot camp, into 1 swift, non-intimidating hour. Now all he needs is to find a permanent place that will let him offer it to the public - between the fanciful fusions and the big traditionals like yoga, ballet, and pumping iron. The choices are truly paralyzing.

Contact Terrence Carey at tcarey82@hotmail.com to see when and where he's offering his next class

Why do I like dance?

I prefer dance over most physical pursuits. It requires no special equipment but your body; it works every tendon and muscle thoroughly and symmetrically, creating neither tennis arm nor golf swing shoulder nor a cyclists' sunken chest but massive legs. There are no height or weight issues as in basketball or gridiron; you are competing only with gravity, thin air and your own physical and mental opponents. Unlike running, the gait is varied needs no iPod to keep you from getting bored brainless – dance keeps your brain on its toes.

Dance allows you to divorce the gym, an evil product of modern overworked life, invented when people stopped shoveling dirt and started shuffling paper.

What about weight training for bone density, I hear you ask?

Just park a mile away and carry your groceries back to the car, better still, carry them all the way home. Wear a backpack around the house full of books. Get a mini trampoline - the most underrated piece of exercise equipment invented, and found discarded and cobwebbed in the corners of many garages.

There are social benefits of dance: with practice you can out-cool total strangers on a dance floor with your moves. Sorry guys, with the rise of gay liberation it's no longer attractive to strongarm your beer saying "I don't dance". It never was.

But dance is difficult. Once, I could watch the teacher demonstrate a new sequence of ballet steps, and I could dance it right away. I was shocked when it took me 20 goes to get a hip hop sequence half right and I forgot it the moment I walked out the door…

Having Borat moment

I had my own "nightmare before Christmas."

In living the life as a professional nomad – a very pleasant term for a homeless person with a laptop and a nice change of clothes - I apparently stumbled over the border of decorum, and fortunately a friend stopped me in my tracks.

Let me explain.

I get hunger attacks – the kind of sugar low that some small, highly strung women complain of. Sometimes I don't honor the call of the calorie. I suffered dehydration while crossing the Yucatan in Mexico in 2004, not so much because of lack of water, but lack of sufficient calories to balance my electrolyes. It's called "not looking after yourself."


Hey I gotta eat!

I arrived at the Berkeley Bowl Market right on closing time, Dec 24. I locked my bike, bolted past the doorman and made a bee-line for the brown rice sushi-to-go just inside the door.

The doorman yells, "Miss! Miss! We're closed!" so loudly and emphatically I imagined burley men in blue overalls hoisting me by armpits out into the parking lot. I was forced to retreat, sushi-less. No matter that there were still lines of people waiting for the cash register …

Understandably, he along with everyone else in the service industry had run out of ho ho ho by 6pm and just wanted to get the hell out of there. I unlocked my bike, watching him refuse others as they arrived, furiously entertaining dead-end thoughts like, did he reject me because I'm Asian? Because I ride a bike? Is he gonna let that blonde in? and other nonsense as one does, when sleighted.

I wove my way back to my cat-sit, feeling that gnawing in my stomach as I became progressively weak for having eaten nothing more than a Cliff Bar, an organic apple and a mocha on soy that day.

My friends had invited me to their exquisite row house in San Francisco to attend a late night event and stay the night. I was already running late, and called them to say I had to make food. Don't worry, we have plenty of food here, she said, eggs and vegetables ... but never wanting to impose, I started to prepare a soup with every thing I could find in the cupboard and fridge.

By the time I'd cooked it my hunger had vanished and moved into phase three. That is, the hunger is gone, but lack of judgement creeps in, and I eat a few spoonfuls and bolt for the train.

I had to make several phone calls to my friends to handhold me through the mass transit system, missing a critical N-Judah train. In fact, I watched the doors close just after realizing it was the right train. Normally, I would have leapt through the closing doors, letting my hefty backpack muscle me through like a personal bouncer, just like I did in New York when I realized that 14th Street and Union Square are two names for the same stop.

But when calorie deprived, reactions are either too slow or too hasty, never just right. If I was given food or drink at that moment I'd end up with it dribbling down my face or biting my tongue. (I can already see single male readers making a mental note to never invite me on a date at a Zagat top 10!)

I finally made it to my friends' house, after stumbling along several cold and empty streets with my cellphone plastered to my ear.

I presented her with a t-shirt that I'd found in NY which bore a unique and serendipitous message that only she and I would appreciate.

I soon wish I hadn’t – I forgot that she is emphatically and morally opposed to products made in China, where sweatshop and slave labor are the default. In searching intently for the manufacturer label she didn't notice the unique logo until I sheepishly pointed it out - after she found found the "Made in China" tag.

The t-shirt lay discarded on the sofa and I thought of asking for a pair of scissors so we could shred it and fling it into the fire, and toast our disdain for exploitation.

As we chatted an it approached 11pm I could feel myself fading. I suddenly said, "this sounds bad but … do you have any food, or can I go get something? I'm about to expire."

We chatted some more but I eventually started hearing only every third word and had to repeat my request. I was waved to the kitchen where her housemate was already heating up the leftovers.

Later, mid-conversation, my friend suddenly went very quiet, and told me she was horrified at my behavior. She told me that after all the hospitality they'd offered – directions on how to get here, a sofa for the night, an offer of food, I had the audacity to fade out while she was speaking and abruptly ask for something to eat. Was I aware about how rude that was?

Tick. Tock. Said the clock.

It took a bit of processing to track back over the evening's conversation and try to see how I had offended.

Clearly, I not only misjudged my comfort level with friends, I allowed myself to slip-slide under the curve of simple social decorum.

I have often thought about this.

Being a professional nomad, I flirt with, but never getting entrenched in, any one fixed environment – the office or the family home – thus, I get out of practice with the interpersonal politics involved.

Just like a homeless person who will abruptly ask you for money, be OK with a no, yet ask for more if you say yes, or abuse you if you don't give enough, I have pared my life down to that of action and reaction, of saying what I mean and meaning what I say, a survival mode that functions only if you descend to the very bottom of the food chain.

As uncomfortable as I felt, It was a blessing. Everyone needs a reality check – by someone tough enough to risk the friendship.

Next time you are taken aback by a friend or colleague telling you something straight to your face, feel the hurt but think beyond it.

Oh, and make sure you eat first.


My FastCompany rant about trashing the Christmas card tradition

What am I doing lately? Doing the Bike Friday Dealer shuffle ...

NY Noodling: The BODIES Exhibition

An invitation to quit smoking already with blackened shrunken lungs to motivate - results in a bin full of EMPTY cigarette cartons

I wasn't going to rush out and see this exhibition, given the $26 entry and good-sized Technicolor shots of the exhibits on bus shelters and bus sides. And then there was all this talk of Chinese prisoners being exhumed without asking their permission first ...

But a surgeon friend, Dr Dave, said it was "excellent - wish we'd had it at med school" and his colleague Dr Steve even offered to accompany me and provide a laparoscopic commentary, so how could I refuse?

The exhibition starts out modestly with a display of fairly unremarkable skeletons - we've all seen those at high school anatomy classes. Except in this case, they have these ridiculous smiles on their faces, eyeballs, and are freeze-framed playing football, doing hi-fives and striking other very PG-rated poses.

Unfortunately, what sounded like a no-holds-barred bar mitzvah was in full swing upstairs, which ruined the potentially meditative ambience.

"Don't worry, it gets quieter as you get further in," said a guide, tasked with stopping people from shooting pictures, fainting, pointing and saying "is that what you look like down there, mom?"

We ventured into the entrails of the exhibition, a series of interlocking chambers that get darker and spookier.

"Very well executed models, like being in Med school again," said Dr Steve, who added that the imaginary smell of formalin was once again assailing his nostrils.

"I swear, for a year as an intern you just couldn't get that smell out of your clothes, your hair, everything."

The highlight of the show - that everyone talks about second to the lack of permission offered by the dead prisoners - are where a polymer has been inje