These are from a previous post in which photos of already questionable quality were resized. Some of the originals are lost, but I hope I can find at least a few. Hodge was a character who thought he was a lion to my antelope.
This is the first time since 2019 that Lessons and Carols, a Christmas Eve tradition at Rockefeller Chapel, has been held in person. I remember in 2020 and 2021, it was streamed. This year it was both in person and streamed. I attended, but within a few days had developed my first bout with COVID-19. I held out almost three years.
Rockefeller is always an experience. The snow was a great touch.
I love that the children don’t have to make or buy costumes to be farmyard animals. These days they can wear pajamas. My favorite was the Holstein cow (possibly an anachronism).
In my younger days (1980s through 1990s, which, sadly, don’t seem that long ago), I’d collect certain things, like Renaissance music CDs and bookmarks. I also collected postcard books from 57th Street Books and other bookstores. After all these years, I’m finally returning to sending postcards, some yellowing, to friends and family.
The Sierra Club books were among the first I bought. Just looking at them reminds me how the photos took me away from what was then a tedious life. Sadly, I don’t see postcard books on the Sierra Club’s website, and now that I think about it I’m not sure when I last saw a postcard book in a store. I suppose I’m one of the few left who sends postcards.
Normally I’d have taken a couple of Amtrak trains to Pennsylvania for Christmas, but 2020 isn’t normal so here I am in Chicago. Normally if I were in Chicago I’d attend Lessons and Carols for Christmas Eve at Rockefeller Chapel on the University of Chicago campus. But it’s 2020, so here we are. I lit my own candle.
I picked up my bike yesterday from GoodSpeed Cycles in Homewood. They did a great job with what they had (the wheels and tires available relatively quickly).
My baby, ready to come home from the bike hospitalI preferred the Bontrager tires I had, but these offer less resistanceOn the Metra Electric lineTucked in for the night, with both wheels lockedOut for a first ride
J. took my bike to GoodSpeed Cycles in Homewood, where I met him after taking Metra for the first time in months. You’re supposed to wear a mask on the train. Most people did. Some, however, sported them on their chins. I’ve never known chins to spew droplets, but there are many things I’ve never known.
I’m getting new but different wheels and new but different tires, WTB ThickSlicks without tread. This will be . . . different. I also asked for new pedals since I knocked off a reflector a while ago. The woman at GoodSpeed is throwing in a new magnet for the speedometer. She didn’t see any problem with fixing the bike. It’ll take up to a couple of weeks to get the parts in (shortages thanks to COVID-19, which is why I’m getting new but different wheels — they’re what’s available). This is setting me back more than half the original cost of the bike, but it’s not optional for me.
Like me, the woman at GoodSpeed isn’t shocked by the theft of the wheels but by the idea the thief replaced them (with bad ones). I’m still gobsmacked by that. As an aside, the imposter front wheel is bent. No wonder someone needed new wheels.
What’s left of my baby
As an aside, I found what I am sure are my wheels and tires on a bike in the Flamingo’s bike room, but that may be a story for another day.
Beginning with my paternal grandparents, we move on to my parents, my dad’s family, and my brother — characters, each and every one. Arranged roughly in chronological order.
Cast of characters:
Nicholas Peter Schirf and wife Anna Marie Shank, married c. 1910
Children Mildred, Ralph (my dad), Marietta, and Thelma, plus a possible appearance by Harold
Thelma’s husband John Conner and granddaughter Erin
Daisy (my mother), Virgil (my brother), and yours truly
Possibly a few unidentified family members and/or third parties
My ride in its happy place at Perennial Garden, pre-desecration
On the afternoon of a day that will be one for the history books (if there are any), I went out to fill my bike’s tires for the first time since my last ride in the autumn. Out to the building’s locked bike room, that is.
I unlocked the bike and moved it off the rack. When I started to fill the back tire, the gauge shot to 80, although usually it takes muscle, effort, and time to get it to the target of 60. Something didn’t feel right. It was similar to the scene in Star Trek‘s “That Which Survives” in which Scott says, “Mr. Spock, the ship feels wrong . . . it’s something I can’t quite put into words.”
I couldn’t spin the front tire to find the valve. When I found it by feel (most of the lights in the bike room aren’t working), it was missing the cap. The tire was flat, which was odd — my tires lose air over the winter, but they never go flat.
It was then I noticed the tires didn’t match.
And the wheels didn’t look like I remembered. The spokes were missing shine in a lot of places, and there was writing I didn’t recognize. I peeled back the front tire to find “Ritchey” underneath.
It hit me. Someone had stolen my wheels. While my bike was locked to the rack. They’d gone to the trouble of replacing them with old MTB wheels and mismatched tires. While my bike was locked to the rack. Someone with access to the building and the key to the bike room.
Unreal.
My beautiful heavy-duty wheels and fat Bontrager tires (to support my fat weight) — the ones that had carried me at least 400 to 500 miles. Gone. Forever.
I depend on my bike for transportation and mental health. I could have cried.
I did cry, later, when I double checked photos to make sure I wasn’t somehow mistaken.
It feels . . . wrong.
Later I went out to check both bike rooms, curious to see if my wheels had appeared on any of the other bikes. No, although they could have been out in use at the time I checked. I don’t know if I’ll have the heart to look again.
With the front wheel locked, I can’t walk it over to the Metra station to take to the bike shop in Homewood. Accessibility was part of the reason I’d chosen that shop. I’d have to ask J. for his help. If I didn’t know him, I don’t know what I’d do.
The bike shop’s site said they are open, but an appointment is required. I assumed this is to manage the number of people there and “social distancing” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I thought I’d take an afternoon off later this week.
The woman who answered shot that down before I mentioned it. She volunteered that the next available appointment was June 18. JUNE 18. Nearly three weeks away. Three weeks of glorious spring weather away.
I made an appointment for the afternoon of June 19. I already know that if the bike can be fixed, I won’t be able to get the same wheels and tires. Sigh.
“If the bike can be fixed” is a question. I don’t know where damage was done or how much. I asked her if they have a comparable model to replace it. She came back with, “Possibly, but you may not be able to get one for quite a while. There’s a global bike shortage.”
Global. Bike. Shortage.
Later I looked it up.
In March, nationwide sales of bicycles, equipment and repair services nearly doubled compared with the same period last year, according to the N.P.D. Group, a market research company. Sales of commuter and fitness bikes in the same month increased 66 percent, leisure bikes jumped 121 percent, children’s bikes went up 59 percent and electric bikes rose 85 percent.
By the end of April, many stores and distributors had sold out of low-end consumer bikes. Now, the United States is facing a severe bicycle shortage as global supply chains, disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak, scramble to meet the surge in demand.
Marietta Schirf was my dad’s youngest sister. He said he didn’t know how she snuck into the Armed Forces because he was sure she didn’t meet the minimum height requirement.
At a 1980s July 4th concert on Capitol Hill, E. G. Marshall officiating, veterans by branch were asked to stand up. When the turn came for the Air Force, she stood and whooped, to the surprise of our neighbors on the grass. I asked why Air Force, and she answered she’d been in the Army Air Corps. That’s the first I’d heard that.
Aunt Marietta died in the mid-90s. How she would have appreciated the resources of the internet. She once took me to the Library of Congress to look up articles on sugalite.
I will have to look up Front and Center. On the internet.
