Free 'Superba' to a Woman in Need

Talk about the kindness of strangers... Even as I announce this I find it hard to believe, but here goes:A reader ofLovely Bicyclewishes to donate a Bella Ciao "Superba" to a woman who cannot afford a nice bike. The bicycle has already been pre-ordered and paid for, and it will be available as soon as the Superba bicycles arrive in May.The idea was the donor's, not mine, and I was as surprised as you probably are by the offer! Please read on for the details:



Criteria

The recipient will be a woman, who is actively interested in owning this particular bike, and is in a situation of financial hardship. The recipient must be located in the USA or Canada. To learn more about the bicycle, please see here and here. This bicycle will fit persons 5'5"- 5'10" and note that it has a coasterbrake.



Entry Instructions

If you would like to be considered, please email me privately to "filigreevelo-at-yahoo" with the subject line "Free Superba" and tell me why you are the appropriate recipient. Please also include your height. The emails I receive must be from the women who want this bicycle for themselves and not from their spouses, relatives or friends. Deadline for submitting an entry is May 1, .



Additional Information

I want to make it clear that this give-away is not sponsored by the manufacturer. The donor is an individual with no bike industry connection who is simply a reader of Lovely Bicycle. The donor wishes to remain anonymous and does not wish to take part in the selection process; that has been delegated to me. Entry emails will be read only by me and your information will be kept strictly confidential. The recipient's full name and mailing address will be disclosed to Harris Cyclery (in order to ship the bike), but not to the donor. One thing I ask, is that the recipient emails me a picture of themselves with the bike after receiving it, along with some feedback.



I will be collecting entries from now until May 1st. It will then probably take me a week or so to choose the recipient, and the bicycles will hopefully arrive shortly thereafter. If you have any questions about this give-away, please feel free to ask in the comments. And thank you to the person whose kind gesture makes this possible. It's hard to know what to say and I will do my best to select the recipient fairly.

Yodelin ..

It has been a while. I probably should do a year end recap, or a goals for the coming year before doing a new post for a new year. But that is not how it is going to be.



In a stroke of luck I had some time off. (we were slow at work) And Dan was in between jobs. So I lobbied to get out. Unfortunately, the weather didn't really cooperate and we weren't going to riding 12" of fresh. Bummer.



The forecast was somewhat miserable with sun and above freezing temps for the day prior to us getting out. No measurable snowfall in the previous few days either. This made us fall to the old standby of Yodelin.We both figured that a northern exposure, and trees would have protected what precious snow there might be. And as always, Yodelin never seems to disappoint.













We arrived in the parking lot to a light snow falling. The road in was horrible, an icy packed luge run with a dusting of new snow on it for the minimum in friction coefficient. As we went up, the snow fell harder and the snow underfoot was deeper. We started getting positive vibes. Up near the ridge, the snow was deep, and there was no readily detectable crust. We skinned through the cut and up into the trees to our transition point.







The first run was good. A little choppy and boney in sections where people recently laid tracks. We continued to the second road and really enjoyed the less tracked lower portion. So we skinned up again. Our track from the first run had a fair amount of new snow in it, making it appear a day old. This time we went further on the ridge to get out of tracked snow and had a nicer upper portion consisting of 4-8" of loose snow. (I hesitate to call it powder. But it was not concrete.) We once again continued past the first road and had a really good run through the trees to the final road where both Dan and I fell coming through the ditch by the road. At this point and elevation we were receiving some heavy wet snow and decided to call it a day as we knew the snow wasn't getting any better. We skinned back to the lift hut and transitioned back to ride the road out.

Mt. Maude Aurora

Grand Portage is sitting beneath a thick blanket of clouds right now, but I am optimistic that the clouds will part later this evening and we will get a glimpse of the Auroras that they say MAY be happening tonight. I definitely need an Aurora fix... the last really good ones I was able to photograph were in mid-July. I've seen a few since then, but they weren't anything to write home about. They also occurred during a full moon so they were difficult to see and even more difficult to photograph. Keeping my fingers crossed for a good opportunity tonight! In the meantime, today I was going through some more Aurora shots from last year and found several that I hadn't worked up yet. Here's one from the night of September 10, .

Small Copper

A Small Copper under attack

The Bicycle, and on Building (and Protecting) Your World

For myself and a number of my acquaintances, the desire to get a bicycle corresponded with experiencing what I can only describe as an early midlife crisis. Early, because it hit us some time in our late 20s. And crisis, because it was marked by a devastating discrepancy between what we were achieving in our lives at the time (impressive things, by society's standards) and the absolute lack of personal fulfilment derived from those achievements. Somehow, we were living in a way that did not make us happy, spending money on things we did not enjoy, and advancing along career paths we no longer believed in - yet saw no way of escaping after having dedicated huge portions of our no-longer-that-young lives to the education that led to those careers.



How does the bicycle tie into this?... I cannot yet verbalise it as eloquently as I would like, but I know for certain that it does. Maybe disentangling myself from one aspect of societal expectations and life's inertia made me realise that it was generally possible. Prior to getting a bicycle, I had made some radical changes in my life, and have continued to make others since. Those changes have made me considerably worse off financially, but the quality of my life improved. And most importantly, I feel that I have re-claimed my intellect and creativity, which I now understand was necessary for my sense of personal integrity.



When I ride a bicycle, I experience a heightened awareness of the extent to which we are the architects of our own worlds. Things don't just happen to us, as we like to think when feeling helpless about our situations. Whether we realise it or not, we orchestrate our daily experiences through a complex web of choices and decisions we make - which includes the choice to be passive and let our circumstances, or other people around us, shape our world for us. To live the life we want to live, we must actively build and protect it - not violently or smugly, but committedly and persistently, even if others don't understand us or criticise our choices. For me, this is an important parallel between cycling and life in general.

Bikes and Swedish Cinema: Choose Your Favourite Contest Submissions!

The deadline for the Pilen give-away contest was last night, and the entries are in! To recap, readers who fit the height criteria (this is a large bike) were invited to submitan image that depicts a person and a bicycle, and evokes some aspect of Swedish film. The winner will receive the beautiful Pilen Lyxthat I am test riding for the distributor, BoxCycles. I received 30 eligible submissions, and most of the pictures were so thoughtfully done, that it seemed only fair to feature them all.



To select the winner, I will first choose five finalists based solely on the pictures. Then I will have a closer look at those entries, read their submissions carefully, and possibly contact them via email with some questions.

If you are up for it, I would love to have your input regarding which images belong among the finalists. I have some tentative favourites in mind, but if popular opinion differs from mine I will reconsider. There are too many entries here to turn this into a poll, but please feel free to let me know in the comments which images appeal to you. Here they all are, numbered 1 through 30:

1. entry fromJenny

2. entry from Marisa

3. entry from Amy

4. entry fromKitty

5. entry from Amanda

6. entry from Lauren

7. entry fromJulie

8. entry fromDavid

9. entry fromCris

10. entry fromMaddie

11. entry from Stephanie

12. entry fromKara

13. entry fromMike White

14. entry fromLouisa and Bojana

15. entry from Anders

16. entry fromJanice

17. entry fromDavid and Kate

18. entry fromMarcella

19. entry from Paris

20. entry fromOlivia

21. entry fromBrooks and Marya

22. entry from Trevor and Melissa

23. entry fromTraci

24. entry fromKate

25. entry from Kimon and Rhonda Haramis

26. entry fromGretchen

27. entry from Audra

28. entry fromFieldofBluebells

29. entry fromCate Fitz

30. entry fromRiding Pretty

Thank you again for taking the time to create and submit these pictures. Regardless of who wins, this is a visual treat and I hope they were fun to make. Thank you also to BoxCycles for donating the beautiful Pilen! I hope to announce the winner next week.

Hot Time to Climb

For the first time this season the freezing level is rising above 14,500 feet. This means earlier starts for summit attempts. Get up and out of high camp so you're back before the mid-afternoon heat. The high pressure should be around all weekend and into the early part of next week. Groups of excited climbers were out enjoying their first tan of the season Saturday morning. Here is a photo of the sun rising over the Cowlitz. Notice the sun cups starting to form in the bottom of the photo. If you look closely you can see Camp Muir to the left of the climber's head lamp (Photo by Brian Scheele). Come take advantage of this great early summer weather.