Ride in Style

This is Vic...he is a pro cyclist who came along on our Tu Nidito Ride for a Child training ride today.  We covered 25 miles in early morning Tucson fresh air.  We took an easy pace, so even I could keep up on my brother's 20-year old mountain bike.  Vic kept me company for part of the ride and gave some good training tips, as did Jimmy-the ride leader (who grew up with and rides with Lance Armstrong) and Jimmy's dad Johnny who kept my training partner Valisa and I company.

Tu Nidito served us bagels and drinks after the ride and gave us a tour of their lovely facilities.  The rooms are painted in bright colors - jungle scenes, or dreamscapes.  Great spaces for kids and teens who need to grieve, laugh, paint or blow-up in the Volcano room! (padded walls, punching bags).  I am even more impressed with Tu Nidito and so glad to being Riding for A Child in El Tour de Tucson.

Here is the website to donate to the child I am riding for "Landin' and other kids at Tu Nidito who are seriously ill or grieving a seriously ill parent or sibling.   http://tunidito.kintera.org/rideforachild/engel

Training wheels

9 miles today, training on my brother's old red mountain bike.  I wanted to post about 20 pictures from the bright-colored farmer's market, the fountains, tile, the old men playing steel guitar.  I could smell the fresh red peppers tied together drying in the sun.  I wandered through the farm-grown melons and tomatoes, the local honey and found green peppers, fresh then torches lit and oila! roasted!

I wandered to a quieter corner, the french bakery - everyone hugged the french woman who baked the pastries and breads, after tasting them, I wanted to hug her too.

The evening is cool, I have a red sweatshirt on and the white lights remind me of the strings of lights above Clarendon street in Oxford, I would sit on the curb eating ice cream, and the arches of light made it taste better, as did the students and profs riding by on bicycles, flying school colors on the scarves around their necks in the autumn air.

Red in the Studio

The cloudscapes today were....beyond description.  The air was cool and I passed people sitting on porches and curbs, kids getting a haircut outside.  It wasn't a study kind of day, it was a day to be in your eyes, not your head.  The perfect day to visit a lovely artist in her studio and see a tree slowly unfurl across the canvas.

That is my cup of tea (or not)

I am a tea fanatic, truth be told, was one before I lived in England.

I wanted to order peppermint tea in Spain on a visit there. My server had no idea what I was talking about. We discussed in both Spanish and English what I wanted and still, no luck. Finally the server said "do you mean peppermint infusion?".

So the source of our misunderstanding was the precise terminology, you see only the drink made from the leaves of the plant camellia sinensis (the tea plant to you and I) is actually tea, everything else is an infusion.

Sheesh, glad we cleared that up.

Through the window

Outside that window it's getting cooler, below 80 at night, in the mid-90's during the day.

I am a fan of looking out of windows, some of my favorites are train, plane, boat and beach house windows.

Ah, the beach, sometimes the desert feels like an underwater landscape -the cactus are corals.

In a sailboat on rough sea, though, I would rather be at the tiller, splashed with sea and rain water. One time when I was little, we were caught on some rough water and I went down and hid in the bow of the boat, and was afraid of the sounds I heard. It was cold and windy and wet on deck, so not a bad idea at that time. Now, I want to know how to sail that boat, I want to know when to run with the wind and when to tack.

These are my people

I took this picture in an antique shop a few months ago, but it fits with today. Here are a few of the reasons why:

for some reason various people have been discussing past and future Halloween costumes,

my housemates' friend brought her dogs to play with their dog here at la casa de nosotros,

Shabbat dinner with my peeps makes me feel a little like that little dog,

and the best line from watching last night's outdoor movie in downtown Tucson, the original Grapes of Wrath in glorious black and white, is of course Mama's line "We are the people"...

Point of View

Sometimes you stand in one place, but the perspective changes. When I looked through this 'viewfinder' I could see houses on the hills that I had thought were barren. Earlier this weekend, I was surprised to find the Catalina's as green as Ireland (but with different foliage).

Over the past few weeks I feel my perspective shifting in every way, microscopic to telescopic, climbing on a cliff or hiking down a ravine, insider and outsider, anatomy and psychology, histology and patient interviews.

When you look at the stars you feel small and time is large, while studying ants and butterflies just makes our lives seem impossibly long and our bodies enormous. Medicine is both of those views at once...and I am also the stars and the ant and the butterfly.