Sunset at Tempelhofer Feld under a tree along the perimeter road west of the north-east entrance. The blue sky was endlessly deep blue and the leaves a fractal hallucination for bare minutes as the sun went below the horizon.
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Mid-Autumn
Tag Archives: Diseases
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Tempelhofer Feld Storm Ignatz
Went for a walk yesterday afternoon, ended up at Tempelhofer Feld, ’cos of course, and got my insides blown clean by the incoming storm and listening to Kemistry & Storm’s 1996 Brighton Metalheadz set. Got soaked on the way home and bought a loaf of caraway bread which is the closest thing to Glick’s bagels in Balaclava I’ve had in a long time. Love me some proper weather.
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Very Big Sky at Tempelhofer Feld
’Cos I’m mad slow these days when it comes to blogging, this is from September 29th at the south-west end of the perimeter road where it joins onto the square-paved area I think was used for parking planes. I needed a sitdown (thx chronic fatigue or whatever’s been non-consensually buttfucking me for the last two months) and “Ooo! isn’t the sky big as!” Photo obviously doesn’t do it justice but, too big to see all at once, and, so big I feel like I’m falling up into it, is the kind of massiveness which is usually reserved for deserts and the outback.
And separately, yeah, I do have other things I would blog about besides endless photos out at Tempelhofer Feld, but I’m tired and quite a bit can’t be fucked.
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1er Paris–Roubaix Femmes
It’s autumn and that means cyclocross! Bashing around Belgian farmland in the rain and mud and sand and snow in generally shite, “Why the fuck would you?” conditions.
And!
Paris fucking Roubaix!
In autumn! Thanks, incredibly poorly managed and politicised pandemic response and incredibly selfish wankers.
Outside of cyclocross, it’s probably my favourite race? First equal with Strade Bianche Rosa, especially when it’s raining. Anything cobbles and / or hosed with mud is my safe space.
And this year, for the first time in the 118 races since 1896 when it was first run, there’s a women’s race! Fucking progress right there, eh! And it was raining buckets and blowing a gale and those 29km of cobbles were muddy and grotty and slippery and terrifying and the riders hurled themselves over them, crashed, got up, did it again. Best 3 hours on a Saturday arvo in a looooong time.
Yaaah, but. The ASO, who organised this, have had an equally long time to pull their white dude fingers out and make it happen. They didn’t. They run the biggest stage races in the world including Tour de France, Vuelta a España, as well as a heap of those hardcore one day races like Liège–Bastogne–Liège and La Flèche Wallonne. Their equivalent women’s races to those big tours are 1-day patronising yawns.
Could they come up with the same 91,000€ prize money for women’s winner as the men’s? How about 7,005€? What about smashing the 5-star cobbles of Trouée d’Arenberg? The women started just next door in Denian. Also nah. Superficially the ASO had valid reasons. Normally the men have done 100km of riding and a bunch of cobbles before barrelling at 60+km/h into the trench, which ‘sorts the peloton out a bit’. Obviously modifying the women’s course so they had some cobbles first was beyond everyone’s capabilities.
And then there’s the M-word. Paris-Roubaix is a Monument. That means it’s one of the five, 250+km 1-day races. It’s also one of the four Cobbled Classics, which are similar lengths plus, obviously, cobbles. The women’s Paris-Roubaix was a quick 115.6km, done and dusted (or jet-washed if you’re Sarah Roy) in 3 hours. None of that 6 hours in the saddle stuff for whatever the ASO thinks women riders are. It’s like back when teh menz thought that if women ran a marathon their uteruses would fall out or something.
And finally (not really but I wanna watch Legends of Tomorrow), there’s the live coverage. Or absence of the first 60km or so. Which is pretty typical. The EWS Enduro World Series this year reliably missed getting the women’s runs because “something something crew hadn’t set up something,” and that’s the top-level competition. There are more men’s races and more actual racing time shown with live or delayed coverage. The stories men tell about men racing are nuanced and full of drama and emotion and narrative arcs and character growth and are accompanied with equally dramatic images and video. Men simply care more about other men. And yes, those men, they are white.
Yah anyway, here’s Sarah Roy shredding on those cobbles.
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Tempelhofer Feld 🐑🐏🐑
From my Sunday wander, where I also saw the DVOR, a Kestrel or Hawk or something, which I’ve seen and heard a couple of times before, and this time followed me to my usual southern hangout area. Also might have found a spot where they did a murder, all feathers and bones in a little pile. And found the sheep! In the bird sanctuary. The birds are well stealthy hiding in the grass.
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Tempelhofer Feld DVOR ATC
Still managing to find parts of Tempelhofer Feld I haven’t wandered through. Right in the centre, the DVOR air-traffic control radio navigation station, looking well sci-fi.
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Tempelhofer Feld By Foot
Speaking of walking instead of riding, I walked my bike (on its autumn cyclocross tires and wheels with the very loud freehub) to Tempelhofer Feld yesterday, with snacks (flatbread with yoghourt harissa, duqqa, and parsley) and a book for some quality putting in the steps and lazing under a tree time.
I went to where Aisha and Arwa hang out (that’s a novel reference), south side under the trees and lucky me found a tree I could lean against. This photo’s from earlier in the week when I also went there and walked a blister into my left heel, but it captures the autumn mood when the sun’s lower and it’s the last days of heat and blue sky.
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Apparently I’m Gonna Start Running Again
Been thinking about it for a long while now. My biggest fear is I’ll get back into swimming, and start riding my bike without socks because triathlon.
I haven’t had running as a part of my training routine since Adelaide, and even that was mostly scuffing around the South Terrace parklands. But I think I enjoyed it? Anyway, not really dancing anymore and certainly not going to morning ballet class. The last time I went to one of those was mid-2018, and the last time I was in a dance studio was early-2019. So my bones are not getting the workout they need, and as much as I have superhero bones (and apparently I did not blog about my epic bone density), cycling is guaranteed to not do the job.
So, running? And off-road / trail / cross-country running ’cos my deep cyclocross love cannot abide anything else. All of which has to wait until this so far several weeks of chronic fatigue fucks the fuck off and I can do more than walking. The colour of these shoes though is way more mad hectic in real life.
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Ugh Do I Have To?
Twit wants me to know that 13 years ago, on September 12th, I signed up. Happy 13 dumpster fire years.
Well hazy on the details now, but I think I signed up because China banned Blogger / Blogspot / Google, all the China bloggers mass-migrated to Twitter and it was the only way to stay up with them. A couple of years later China banned Twit too.
I logged-on last night for the first time in a couple of years for actual timeline scrolling (OKCupid had shown me enough white cishet couples and TERFs for one night). I love the people who I actively follow, as in go to their profile, read and scroll, and love the communities around them.
But but but. The place fucks majorly with my mental and emotional stability — as do all social networks. It reminds me of addiction and compulsive habits and wakes those again in me. And it’s full, full of nazis and TERFs and fascists and racists and white supremacists and swarming bot networks run by the same. And the people who own and run it are functionally indistinguishable from that, their actions leading from hate crimes to genocide.
I wish there was something else. And more than that I wish all the people I love who use social networks would understand their culpability and find ways of creating and participating in online communities not bound to necrocapitalist corporations. I can’t see that happening though.
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Somewhere Between Krumme Laake and Dämeritzsee
Got my arse out the door and into Germanic nature today. First time in a long time. Balcony / kitchen riding on my trainer has been the default I’ve fallen into for the last few months. But I needed to actually ride and wear all that fancy gear I bought earlier in the year and do those fun things like get lost, are we there yet? and surprise! here’s a bridge where you need it.
Pink socks I wore for the first time and managed to smear my chainring all over. Lucky I was using dry lube (not the name of my sex tape) and it washed out. Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado kit. Riding outdoors with a cadence sensor makes me really wish I had a power meter (or maybe Crank Brothers would make power meter pedals?). One banana for 3 hours was cutting it fine. Two bidons was actually about right but both should have been electrolyte.
The riding though. Funny how being bolted in place on an indoor trainer makes you forget how to do things like ride on sand and roots. I’ve got weirdly strong from all the indoor trainer riding and weirdly weak in holding a good riding position. Cars are still scary, even though German drivers are generally pretty considerate — if you also make like a car and be very literal in describing what you’re about to do. Forests are the shit. East of Berlin is fucking beautiful. Lakes are also the shit. The houses out there make me yearn for living in an actual house surrounded by trees and stuff. Getting whistled at by the boyz in their whips on Sonnenallee is … cheers lads, good to know I’m home.
