Author Archives: Steve Tilford

Willow

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I buried our cat Willow last night. I buried her under her favorite tree that she used to climb onto the roof of the house. It is by the back door which is constantly used by Bromont and the rest of the gang. She won’t be bored for sure.

Pets dying are a part of life of a pet “owner”. I don’t really believe that humans own their pets. I think they cohabitant and are each other’s companions. But, this was different. There is a pretty high chance that I ran her over with my car in the driveway. I’m not positive, but there isn’t any other explanation.

The weird thing about that is she is a quick cat. A ex-feral cat. Not a lay around, let people walk around me cat.

We came upon Willow, or more appropriately, she came upon us about 10 years ago. There was this large kitten, small cat living in a wood pile in our back yard. I didn’t really see her much, but there were a lot of sightings. Trudi eventually started leaving food out on the back porch. I told her that if she left food, it was going to come inside.

So a couple nights later I set up a trap. It was actually like on TV, a plastic laundry basket, held up with a stick with a string tied to it, going to the window. I put some food out, turned on the back porch light and waited. Nothing. For maybe 3 hours until after midnight.

The next morning I woke up and Kris has left a note on the kitchen counter. There is blood everywhere. The note says that he caught the cat, it’s in the back bathroom and it bites.

Bill comes over to ride around 10 and he wants to see the cat. So, we go and open the bathroom door. It looks like the Tasmanian devil has gone through it. She is on top of the top curtain rod looking like a rabid bat. We shut the door and went riding.

Kris wakes up just a bit later. He goes down to the bathroom, looks in and thinks I’ve taken her to the pound. So, he cleans up the bathroom and proceeds to take a shower. While he’s showering, he looks up and sees the cat up on the curtain by the ceiling.

So Kris goes out to the garage, nude, and gets some welding gloves and goes back into the bathroom and grabs her. Then he takes her to the kitchen sink and gives her a flea bath. There is nothing that calms young cats down like getting the really wet. I’m not kidding here. They become super docile.

Anyway, the cat lived in the back bedroom for a couple months. Then, late at night it started prowling around. After a few months, it walked around the house in the light. Eventually, it lost its fear and lived among us.

The only time I come close to religion is when a pet dies. I make up a Indian-like scenario where the animal’s spirit gets to hang in its favorite places and stays around.

I try to think about what could have gone differently during the day to change the time sequence and thus the one in a million chance that our paths crossed. Just about anything for me.

A exhaust manifold stud that was striped took an extra two hours of attention. I would have been riding, but for that bolt. Looking for a socket for just that much longer. Listening to the engine longer before I started driving. And her list would probably be longer. A moth that didn’t fly by. The squirrel found its acorn and ran up the tree 15 seconds before she came around the corner. Just about anything once again.

Life can end so abruptly. I honestly don’t think my life is any more valuable than Willow’s. I just don’t. And I value my life, to a certain extent, so I must value her life.

It took a while to cut through the tree roots and get below the layer of clay. She was in a fleece pillow case. Burying pets, it seems so wrong scooping in the first shovel full of dirt. I think I project myself there, or something like that, but it just seems is so horrible.

Anyway, it is now close to 2 am. I just got back from riding my MTB around Washburn University. It is cathartic. At least for me. It helps to sort and maybe even purge some of the stronger emotions. I’ve always had that to fall back upon. I’m lucky.

Night Riding

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Riding around the university after midnight last night got me reminiscing about how much I used to ride and even train at night. When I was in high school, I worked at the local bike shop, Gran Sport. The shop started in the early 70’s, when the European bike boom first got rolling. Before then, you pretty much had a choice of a Schwinn or a Schwinn.

Anyway, by the time I was working at the shop, I was already into racing. I liked to ride with my friend, Ed Bauman, who pretty much managed the shop. The shop closed around 6, but we were never out of there before 7:30. It was one of those shops that people just kept hanging around way past closing hours. Customers and employees.

After daylight saving times ended, it got dark at 5:30. So by the time we were riding it would be pretty much pitch dark. We’d just ride around town a lot of the time. We used to do these time trials over at the university, a criterium on sidewalks around the bell tower. We would time our laps and do them all night. I think that is one of the reasons I learned how to corner well early on.

But sometimes, maybe twice a week, we would train out in the country. No lights. It was never more than 30 miles. The weird thing about it, at least it seems weird now, is that no one in an automobile would bother us the least. No honking, no yelling. On top of no lights, we never stopped for a stop sign or stop light. And no one cared. I guess it was the era where everyone rolled stop signs on bikes, I don’t know, but it never crossed my mind to stop.

We’d see police pretty often. Sometimes when we were done we’d stop at Dunkin Donuts and see police there. It’s true. Anyway, the most, maybe, a cop would say would be something like, “You know it is a lot safer riding with lights at night.” And there was a law, I’m pretty sure, that said you have to have a light on your bike riding at night. I think the police were a lot more lenient back then. It wasn’t like they were always out to get a hold of your license, looking for outstanding warrants. It was a time of common sense, even though riding out on the county roads at 9 or 10, without lights, doesn’t fit that category.

Riding around yesterday, I didn’t have any lights. Our roads are so horrible, it is dangerous riding around without being able to see that well. It is amazing how easy it is to forget how great the roads used to be compared to now. They just got incrementally worse, year after year until they are like they are now. Potholes most of the year and cracks running parallel to your wheel everywhere. You have to be pretty heads up at night to not have an issue here in Topeka.

I think that is a funny thing about life. When change is slow, you don’t notice it as well. I was watching some of the presidential debate last night and they were talking about the price of gas when Obama took office less than 4 years ago. They both used the number $1.86. It caught me by surprise. It seems way too low. I swear I can’t remember that at all. Gas less than $2 only 4 years ago? Strange.

Anyway, now, we have a huge selection of lights that are awesome. I don’t really own any, but I know they are out there. I don’t even have a blinky light. I’m not too worried about getting smashed by a car when it is dark out. There are too many other things to worry about.

Both Friday and Saturday nights in Tulsa, the races are at 9 or 10 pm, under the lights. I like racing late, when it is dark. Everything seems to come at you faster, making your decision making process that much more important. I will enjoy that aspect of the weekend, but the rest might just be a suffer-fest and for sure a reality check.

I went over to the cyclocross practice tonight and did the first real efforts I’ve done in over a month. We started out with 10 starts of about 200 meters. That hurt me. But, after that we did a short loop, with a hill and a set of barriers in it. It was less than 2 minutes long and I only made 2 before I pulled the plug. I had that asthma like feeling in my lungs, along with that taste that goes with it. I was still coughing a couple hours later. That wasn’t a good sign and not good for my mind. I know it’s early, but I already feel behind. Funny how that is.

These are the lights from when I first started. A leg light, which everyone owned, but they never worked, and a Wonder Light. The Wonder Light had a plastice bar mount that clamped onto the handlebars. I found these in the basement. Didn’t seem to locate the bar mount, but I know it’s there somewhere.