Wordless Wednesday

A dress made of books.

Heading to Paris

I have seven days before I leave for France. Seven days and a few hours really. Things are crazy, and I’ve decided to give myself permission to take a break from blogging. I’m going to try to update from France, but I’m giving myself permission to not do anything for the next three weeks.

Project Runway Season 9!

Season Nine of Project Runway aired last night!  I don’t get cable so I’m so very excited about the show being available for streaming on the My Life website.  Go check out this season’s contestants.  The first episode is so awesome.  I think I feel some writing inspiration coming on!

Blogging Block?

I’m having problems coming up with topics to blog about or anything that’s interesting.  I feel bad for not blogging.  But I would feel worse if this became a constant stream of, “I don’t know what to say.”  I am keeping busy, but I’ll cover it on my Monday check-in post.  What’s crazy is that I often have so many ideas it’s silly.  And now I’m having problems coming up with topics.

I’ve actually been reading this last week, which is exciting.  June was a stressful month, July is exciting and stressful, but at least there’s the excitement of everything going on.

The France trip is so close.  We’re starting to plan things like sight seeing and hotels and all the little details of what we want to do and see.  It’s very exciting.  I’m beginning to wonder how much stuff I should take with me!

On Twitter I’ve been talking about buying a house.  It might just happen.  Nervous doesn’t begin to describe it.

So yes, I want to blog, but I’m having blog block.  What do you do for blog block?

Fourth of July Weekend Plans

I have none.  Well, I do, but they don’t involve going out and doing anything.  Some stuff is keeping me home-bound for the weekend and really – that’s okay!  I’m realizing that the France trip is coming up far too soon, if you follow me on Twitter you know I’m about to  buy a house and then there are all of the normal ins and outs of life as well.

So for this weekend I’ll be revising and working on a super secret new project.  And probably watching a lot of documentaries, because they’re my new TV of choice. Oh, I might read something or even get caught up on Dr Who!  That’s fairly exciting.

What are your plans?

Knowing when to step back.

We all have those weeks when things happen.  When there are so many highs and lows that leave us exhausted.  I’m thankful to all of the support I’ve received this week, from friends and family and everywhere.  There’s been so many things happening this week, a lot I don’t want to talk about because it’s very personal and impacts family.  My mother is good, but we’re still worried about her.

Right now, I want to say a big thank you to Suzan for letting me slide on our blogging series.  To my Savvy team for rolling on without me.  I mean, everyone has been super supportive and awesome this week.  For the rest of the week I’m going to be rather quiet on the blogosphere.  I’m behind on a lot of things and right now I need to pick up the slack and invest some time in some promising opportunities in my life.

Thank you for your support!

A Life Check In

I usually do writing check in’s on Mondays.  It’s rote, it’s what people expect of me but not today.  Honestly I forgot and now I don’t feel up to it.

This last weekend was a rollercoaster of highs and lows.  Good and bad.

If you follow me on twitter of Facebook chances are you know my mother was in the hospital.  She was out doing one of her brevets and the factors all aligned for her to be dehydrated and need to go to the hospital.  I got the phone call and had to drop everything and run out to Weatherford where she was.  It was a night spent sleeping on concrete floors, terrible chairs and waiting to hear how it was going to be.

So today, with everything going on I just want to take a step back and hug my mom and dad and be thankful for what I have and where my life is going.  I’m happy, my family is great and I’m in a good place.  It hasn’t always been like this, which makes me happy for what I have now.  Around the holidays a lot of the time we pause to be thankful for what we have and the people in our lives, but it’s not something that should be relegated to the holidays.  Today I’m thankful for everything.

What are you thankful for?

Weekly Check-In

Despite this being the last few days of the Savvy Boot Camp, it was a lazy week.  I read Kiss of Snow instead of sleeping, and slept instead of writing, and as soon as the clock rolled over to June 1st all responsibility to write like the wind was gone.  We still don’t know the results for who won the boot camp, but it was a close race to the end.  June is the month that I want to do revisions rather than writing, but I’m still writing.  I got off to a good start, but I’ll talk about that below.

I haven’t been talking about A Round of Words at all, and for that I fail.  I haven’t forgotten that I’m working on that challenge, but I haven’t been as mindful of updating my progress on it.  I solved that yesterday.

Blogging.

Judging by the twitter conversations and the comments left on Suzan’s blog and here I would say that the Let’s Talk About Sex series is off to a good start.  We discussed underwear and what that says about your characters.  Suzan took the girly side and I discussed all things buff and hunky.  This week we’re talking about heat levels and language particular to the romance genre.  While a lot of people already know this stuff, not everyone does and it’s good to talk about it.  We’re also having a blast while we’re at it, so that’s all that really matters.

Revising.

I started revisions on Rescue Me – again.  These were pretty light, going over what one of my critique partners suggested.  A lot of it was grammar, and of that commas.  I have comma issues.  I conquer the apostrophe and now the comma and I are at odds!

I’m really happy with Rescue Me.  I have it up over at Book Country for review if anyone is a member there and feels like giving me some feedback.  I plan to submit it next month after I take my submission package class and hammer out the submission details.  I’m less confident about those, but that’s the reson behind taking the classes!

This weekend I broke open Decoy.  I’m almost halfway through it and hoping to be done with this first pass in a few days.  It’s kind of ugly at this point and there’s a lot of red, but I’m hoping that in the end it will pay off and it will rock.  I’m crossing my fingers that I finish this draft Tuesday or Wednesday and then the super picky stuff starts.

Plotting.

Um, I’m kind of stalled out on plotting.  I’m worried that letting an idea stew this much is a bad idea.  I get bored of the shiny and move on to something else.  I still like the idea and I want to write it but it’s not a driving desire of want any more.  I’m afraid that this is bad.  Very bad.

I replotted my superhero story I was supposed to write during Boot Camp.  It’s a whole new idea and more naughty than the original, but again I waited too long to write it.  So I’m going to write the naughty one and just go for it.  If it flops in the draft process it flops and I’ll move on.

I plan on doing more reading this month to get myself in a place to write certain things.  We’ll see how this goes!!!

Writing.

Yeah, so since it’s June I’ve slacked on writing….

Project: Booty-Call Bust
Genre: romance
Type: novella
Progress: I had an idea for this while watching Deadliest Warrior, of all things.  The story is actually at a very interesting part, so it shouldn’t be hard to jump back in and hopefully hammer it out soon.  My problem is that I’ve been distracted by being lazy.  And revising.  I’m going to attempt to write 1-2K a day on this a day this week in tandem to doing revisions.  It’s not a lot, I know, but I want to keep the ball rolling and finish this sucker.

What I read.

• Kiss of Snow by Nalini Singh

Randonneurs: there’s a story in that.

I wasn’t going to write this recap for my writing blog because it’s 100% personal, 0% writing related but there was so much interest in it expressed over twitter from all my updates that I decided, what the heck?

To recap, last week I worked as support crew for the Texas Rando Stampede, a 1200K bicycle ride that started in Waxahachie, Texas and looped through the hill country around San Antonio, Texas and then down to Houston, Texas and the piney woods and finally back to Waxahachie, Texas.  It’s a long ride, and considering our weather it was crazy epic.  But before I get to that, let me explain this society of randonneurs. 

A randonneur is a long distance cyclist by definition.  It originated in France, which is also host to the longest running randonneur event, PBP (I’ll be going there in the fall to attend!).  Randonneurs go on what’s called a  randonnée or brevet, which is French for an organised long distance, non-competitive cycling event.  That’s the general idea, I could go on at length to explain what I understand and still not get all of it down.

And yeah, this isn’t a competitive hobby.

Cyclists on Day 4 headed through the piney woods of Texas.

Looking at randonneuring from the outside, having no interest in cycling myself, but supporting it because of my mom – is a very strange experience.  I mean, you have men and women running around in spandex, their asses stuck up in the air, and putting themselves through really uncomfortable elements to just say they did it.  And yes, I know that some of you are googling or picturing a cyclist in their little bike shorts and I know what you’re thinking!  Yes, sometimes it’s very hard to ignore them.  Those shorts, unless they’re solid black, are dangerous when wet and you suddenly learn things you never wanted to know about strangers.  But you know what?  After about 24 hours they’re all carbon copies of one another and who cares?

At one stop one of the guys had crossed the gas station parking lot to throw something away.  A car pulls up, and slowly passes him.  A person leans out and says, “Nice shorts man,” and drives away.  This person pulled through for the one purpose of complimenting the shorts.  Yeah.  Let your 12-year-old brains giggle all they want now.

Now, lets talk about Texas Rando Stampede, or TSR as I’ll call it for the sake of this blog and brevity.  This is a 1200K ride, not a race, and since this is a PBP year everyone is getting ready and training for it by doing 1200K rides.  The organizers from what I understand expected maybe 40 riders to attend, we had 60!  There was a ton of prep work done to get ready for this event, and going in I was excited.

The distance was 1200 kilometers, or for those of us who are math challenged – 769 miles.  MILES!!

The Fearless Leader

The event kicked off on Tuesday, May 10th.  Riders were flying and driving in, we had registration, I was selling jerseys, and it was really a high excitement time.  A lot of the cyclists went out to eat on Tuesday night but I stayed at the hotel and wrote because I knew that the writing time would be few and far between over the next few days.  I ended up not getting as much sleep as I wanted to.  I’m too accustomed to going to bed around midnight to force myself to sleep at like, 9pm.

Wednesday morning was the start of the ride.  I got up around 3am with my mom and got her ready.  There was some concern about rain later in the day but energy was high and people were excited.  Now, getting a cyclist ready for a ride like this is a juggling act.  You’re always asking questions, like: Do we need to oil your chain?  Are your bottles full of ice/water/whatever? Do you have food? Is your drop bag ready?  Have you put on sun screen?  Breakfast – have you eaten?

My mother is on the right.

With my mom eating is always a struggle.  I literally stand over her and tell her to stop talking and eat.  She’s social so she’ll be too busy talking to remember to put food in her mouth.  There were several times when I told people to stop talking to her so she would eat.  This earns a lot of laughs.  As crew for this kind of event my one and only goal is to get cyclists on their bikes and keep them going.  Literally whatever it takes is allowed, so in the case of my mother it’s telling her to eat and sometimes putting food in her hand for her.  The other cyclists didn’t take offense at this, they just laughed.  I think a few were jealous.  I mean, not many of the cyclists came with support people on hand to help out, much less remind them to eat.

The cyclists pushed out at 5am Wednesday the 11th in one huge group.  This is the only time all 60 riders are going together in one big pack.  Since it’s not a race the start isn’t a push, push, push moment.  Yes, it’s exciting, but the goal is to go the distance, not be the first or the fastest.  That’s not to say that there were some people who had that goal, but they are the minority in this kind of event.  Randonneuring is not a racing event, and that is not the mindset that most people have.

I didn’t see my mother until much later in the night.  I caught about two more hours of sleep in Waxahachie and then drove with all haste down to Marble Falls, Texas which was the next overnight control stop.  The way these brevets go is that there is a course you must stay on.  Riders are given a cue sheet and along the route to each over night control are other control stops where they must get their cards signed or buy something from a gas station and use that receipt to prove that they stopped at that point on the route.  If you look at the map on the left the control stops are marked by letters. 

A is Waxahachie, B is a small town called Valley Mills, C is Lampasas, D is Jonestown, and E is the overnight control in Marble Falls.

I got to Marble Falls around noon and met up with the other volunteers.  There were a few familiar faces and new people.  We got the rooms prepared, which means making sure the AC is on, the microwave and ice box works, and when the trailer arrived with the drop bags we put a few of them in the rooms that were assigned.  Those were people with requested roommates or people who paid for a room they didn’t have to share.  The unassigned rooms were ready but without bags.

Cyclist coming into Marble Falls.

And then we began the waiting game.  We watched the weather, worried about rain we saw heading our way.  We got a call that the rider in the lead, who was a racer, hit a dog and fell.  His wife was running support for him so she came in and raided our First Aid supplies and went back out to take care of him, so we sat down and waited for the next cyclists to roll in.

The racer was the first to come in, and we had a rider an hour for the next two hours, but the bulk of them were still hanging back trying to let the rain and hail pass them by.  I know that a lot of the riders waited out the worst of the storm in Lampasas.

Yup, I'm writing.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the volunteers got the food ready, we wrung our hands and watched the skies – and I wrote.  No, seriously. I wrote actual words.  Impressive, huh?

Riders started really coming in some time after 11pm in the rain.  This was a flurry of activity.  On the support side we would watch for a rider. As soon as they pulled up someone was asking them if they could take their bike and get it out of the rain.  Riders were coming into the room we’d set up as the control room.  We were drying them off with spare towels, offering them food, getting cards signed, assigning rooms and carrying bags and bikes to their room.  It wasn’t a flawless process, but it worked out really well.

My mom got in a few minutes before midnight.  I took off about half an hour to take care of her and get her stuff together and make sure she ate and went to bed.

I meant to sleep that night, I really did, but with the bad weather and riders still out on the road in the driving rain I just couldn’t.  I stayed up all night anxiously watching for bike lights.  The last rider literally came in at 7am.  The kicker?  Riders started leaving Marble Falls at 2:30am.  My mother left at 5am.  This is serious business!  I think I went to sleep for about two hours at about 7am after the last rider came in. 

The weather on Day 2 was terrible.  The riders went from Marble Falls, Texas down to Sealy, Texas.  It was the longest day of the ride, well over 200 miles I think and it rained almost the entire time.  I know I drove four hours in the driving rain.  It was scary as hell on my side, I have no idea what it was like to be on a bike in that stuff. 

According to my mom it wasn’t so bad.  As it turns out I was driving along with the worst of the weather.  Yeah, go me!

I later found out that one of our cyclists was run off the road out of Marble Falls by a motorist and threatened with a gun.  When she approached a house looking for help the residents yelled at her for being a cyclist out on the road.  I feel so bad for this rider!  These people’s reactions to a cyclist simply out for a ride is unacceptable.  Sure, sometimes you get stuck behind one you can’t pass safely and it’s annoying, but it’s not worth threatening their lives over.  I can go on and on and on about how unacceptable this is but I’ll refrain.  Deep breath, and moving on…

Oiling the chain in preperation for a rainy day.

I hit Sealy, which isn’t a place I was supposed to be working.  I took advantage of the fact they didn’t need me to catch another hour of sleep and was up to do the Savvy Boot Camp challenge.  Guys, I wrote like 4,000 words that night!  I really turned on the steam and wrote my little heart out until a little before midnight.  I knew it would be another two hours before my mom came in and I would really benefit from another hour of sleep.  Literally a few minutes before I shuffled off my mother calls to say that the control stop in La Grange, a 24 hour Wataburger and the designated dinner stop for most of the riders, was closed.  CLOSED!  That’s bad.

Another gentleman and myself scrambled.  We grabbed bags of bread, peanut butter and jelly and drove like bats out of hell to get to La Grange.  We got there around 12:30am and hung out there until near 2am feeding and hydrating the cyclists until they had all come through the control stop.  The poor riders were wet and exhausted.  Thankfully the rain had stopped but they were wet and it was dark and cold.  People were cannibalizing their arm warmers and pulling them onto their legs.  I wiped one rider down with paper towels to try to get them dry enough.

I know that we went back to the hotel and my mother was there.  I think, and she’s told me, that I helped get her stuff ready for the next day but all I remember was passing out.  I think I at least put on pajama pants, but I crashed hard for about two or three hours until her group was getting up to leave for Day 3.

This was another of those mornings where I stood over my mom and almost physically put food into her mouth for her.  The previous two days were wearing on her and I wanted to make sure she had every possible opportunity to have things ready for her.  Heck I chased her down on her bike and shoved a biscuit-bacon sandwich at her.  Though this day was going to be much shorter, only 150ish miles, it was also going to be sunny and in the 90′s.

For our Texas riders this wasn’t too bad.  They hadn’t ridden in the heat this year much, but heat is something they can handle and it was only a high of 94.  It was the out-of-state riders from places like Washington and New Jersey we were worried about.  This leg of the trip went through rural, almost nonexistent towns that are barely surviving and often don’t have more than one little general store in ‘town’.

I did not sleep after the riders took off.  I waited around for a little, uploading pictures to Facebook and checking in on things.  I saw a few other riders off and then headed to the next overnight control in Crockett.  A cyclist rode in my car with me.  His bike broke the night before.  It was heartbreaking, but at least no one was hurt in the incident.  We got to Crockett and got him settled and then I got to spend some time with my Grandmother who was helping out with this stop.  I hung out there for maybe two hours and then we ran into another of those little problems.

About 25 miles away from Crockett at the only real stop between Huntsville and the overnight, was in Weldon, Texas.  It was nothing more than a little red general store – and it closed at 5pm.  I loaded up bags of ice, gallons of water and snacks and drove out to this little store in the middle of nowhere and set up shop to wait for cyclists to come through.  I iced them down, gave them water, fed them and sent them on their way.  There were several cyclists that I was worried about overheating, but thankfully we had no heat related illnesses or anything.

Hanging out in Weldon, meeting the locals.

Weldon was a cute little place – in the daylight.  But I was stuck out there until around 1:30 or 2am and in the dark it could have been the set of the next greatest slasher flick.  Thankfully one of the Dallas cyclists doing support came out and hung out with me for those last hours and together we waited and watched and cheered our riders on.  I took as many pictures of people at this stop as I could.  All in all this was a lot of fun, but I was glad when the last cyclists went through and I could wave goodbye and shuttle off to Crockett where I crawled in bed with my mother.

I slept around three hours – and you know the kicker?  My mother and her roommate never woke me up. I’m a notoriously light sleeper, and they got up and got ready and left and never once bothered me.  Now, I did wake up and come to 100% and panicked because they weren’t there and I didn’t know what time it was.  But it was okay!

Day 4 was the most fun on my end of things.  It was the shortest day for the cyclists, at around 140 miles.  The day was a little chilly, but sunny and beautiful.  The course went through the piney woods area and back into the rolling plains and it was gorgeous!

Another cyclist had opted before the ride starts to only do 1000K of the 1200K, so her ride was finished in Crockett.  The funny part was that before the ride her and my mother had talked that she would ride back to Waxahachie with me, and they knew that I would need to be told, they just forgot to tell me until the morning of.  It all worked out perfectly.  We both had time to clean up and get in the car and decided that rather than take the most direct route back to Waxahachie we would follow the route the cyclists had taken.  I hadn’t been able to do this yet, so all I’d seen of the cyclists was them getting off and on their bikes.  I never actually got to see them riding!

Mom and me.

So my cyclist and I took off driving this ride.  We would see cyclists ahead of us, slow down and wait until we could see a long distance ahead of us that no cars were coming and then pull up beside them and chat with them.  Since we were neutral sag we could offer water at any time people needed it.  There are a lot of rules here, I’m not totally clear on them, but offering water was okay.  I got to see my mom peddling her guts out, we saw beautiful countryside and took lots of pictures.

When we got back to Waxahachie there was a whole Texas themed set up with a flag and people with pop guns waiting to welcome cyclists back.  It was exciting and a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.  My mom pulled in around 9pm, exhausted but happy that she made it.  And you know what?  I was too!

The Herd.

Of the 60 riders supposed to start, there were 3 no shows.  Two people DNF’d (Did Not Finish) due to circumstances out of their hands.  Ten people DNF’d due to weather, exhaustion, etc.  And forty-five riders finished the ride exhausted, battered, and glad it was over.  We had anticipated a cool summer ride, hoped it wouldn’t be too hot, but Texas made it really hard on everyone with unexpected torrential rain, wind gusts and hail.

From a writer’s point of view, it’s amazing to see what kinds of things a person will willingly put themselves through for very little.  Many times we write things or read things and think, ‘No one would willingly do that.’  Well you know what?  Maybe they would.  Randonneuring is a glimpse of what kind of hell people will put themselves through for nothing more than the sadistic fun of it.  In this one trip there were so many slice of life stories to tell.  The guy threatening our cyclist.  The people who know nothing of what’s going on and stop to offer aid to riders stuck in the rain.  Police who take it on themselves to offer an escort through towns.  Riders taking naps in ditches so they can go the next few miles strong.

I haven’t written a cycling story yet, and maybe I never will, but I have some ideas.  This is a great group of people, and I’m looking forward to going to Paris with a lot of them and seeing the rest at The Texas Time Trials later this year.

Just a note, if you’re one of the cyclists reading this, no I don’t mention names.  I don’t on this blog, but thanks to each of you for making this a memorable trip.  Let’s just not do it again for a few weeks, okay?

Dreams.

So I understand that right now I’m really sleep deprived and prone to having some really odd dreams, but last night’s was both super cool and super freaky.  I’m not 100% sure how the dream started, but I do know I was in a Tim Burton inspired modern world, that felt a lot like Repo! the Genetic Rock Opera, minus all the pleather and spandex and angsty gothic kids.

In my dream I was going to get my left arm tattooed with the half sleeve idea I’ve settled on.  I’ve also settled in my head that i want the same artist who did my right arm to do the left.  Both because the tattoo, the style, the colors, it all rocks, and because I have this thing about symmatry and finding someone you trust.

Well in the dreamscape I go to this shop, with a few other people who inevitably fade into the background and this Asian lady who looks a lot like our old catering lady, Alice, takes over the tattooing process.  Except… Jennifer, who did my back and other tattoos is there, Chance is there, and I’m getting tattooed by an Asian lady that’s making me nervous.

On top of this there were some weird pillow like monsters that kept attacking and hand to be taken care of, but over all I was really excited about the tattoo.  Maybe it’s a sign? I’d like to think so.