Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Monday, May 9, 2016
A pretty woman in a leather coat
Passing by a lady dressed like her on a city sidewalk used to be such a common, quiet pleasure to see that would make my day a decade or so ago.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Thursday, May 5, 2016
Solex Lady
This is the beginning of one of my many story ideas for a recurring character of mine that I wrote about five years ago and never published. Like most everything else I have attempted to write it is incomplete, but I share it here because it is appropriate for the spring season.
Solex Lady
By Cuirbouilli
A Vélosolex was a motorized bicycle. A small motor was mounted above the front wheel and delivered power by means of a ceramic roller that spun against the tire. The French manufacturer Solex marketed them to the public after World War II and they became tremendously popular throughout Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. The Solex bicycle went out of production in 1988, but apparently the bikes had a cult following that persisted to the present day.
Chuck would call a Solex a moped. He would never consider it to be a serious means of transportation. If he took a tour through the countryside back home he would much rather do it in a car or at least on a motorcycle. People rode bicycles for exercise and mopeds were for kids who couldn’t afford enough gas for a car.
The idea of riding a motorized bicycle twenty miles just to look at flowers was not exactly his idea of a relaxing afternoon. But, then again, he wasn’t Dutch. Chuck was an American on a business trip in the Netherlands.
Chuck was a fifty-one year old engineer who worked for an electrical equipment company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Several of the parts that his company used were manufactured at one particular factory in the Netherlands city of Rotterdam. Chuck was head of his department and once or twice a year his company sent him to Rotterdam to help design new parts.
His company paid for courses to teach him the Dutch language when he first started going years ago. He actually learned more by simply talking to native speakers and over time he became fairly fluent. He discovered that most people in the Netherlands spoke passably good English as well, but they were impressed that he could speak their own language. That was part of the reason he was the only person his company ever sent over.
Chuck didn’t mind traveling, although the excitement of it faded a while ago. Often times he saw nothing but the airport, the factory, and his hotel room due to the limited time of his stay. On the other hand, there were only so many windmills, castles, and marketplaces to see, and honestly they all looked about the same to him anyhow.
His wife never went with him. They would have to pay for her airfare, she didn’t like to fly, and she had absolutely no interest in seeing Europe. Thus, most of the time he made the trip alone. The folks he dealt with were very accommodating and arranged transportation, dinner reservations, and provided entertainment if the schedule allowed. Sometimes he might argue that they were a bit too accommodating. Today’s excursion would be a good example.
The engineering department he was working with was going on a so-called “Free Your Mind Event” that Saturday afternoon. It was a team-building event that was mandatory for company employees, but also meant to be fun.
One of the engineers became sick with bronchitis and was unable to attend the booked event. Chuck was stuck in Rotterdam until Monday evening due to a technical problem in manufacturing and had nothing in particular planned other than maybe some local sightseeing. The other engineers encouraged him to come to the team-building event in their colleague’s place, assuring him that he would have a good time.
When he pointed out that he would make an odd number they told him that a couple other people would probably join the tour and even out the group. He reluctantly agreed to go along, although he actually had been looking forward to just relaxing in a cafe with a good book.
The excursion for the day was something called a Solex Tour; a leisurely ride through the countryside on antique motorized bicycles. It was the middle of April so the famous tulip gardens were in full bloom. The route they were taking was supposedly quite scenic.
The team-building aspect of the outing came once they reached their destination at a designated park. Refreshments would be served and everyone in the group was supposed to take part in some brief sporting activity. Then they continued on a route that led back to the starting point to return the bikes.
There were seven people in the group from the engineering department including Chuck; five men and two women. The manager, a friendly fellow named Hans, picked Chuck up at the hotel. They drove some distance outside of the city to a building that reminded Chuck of a police station.
Their group met in the parking lot.
Everyone except for Chuck took off their regular shoes and put on wooden klompen painted bright yellow with a matching design. The manager presented Chuck with a pair of similarly painted wooden shoes to signify that he was part of the team. Chuck thanked him for the shoes, but declined to wear them because they might aggravate his heel spurs. At least that was the excuse he gave them to be polite. In truth he wasn’t too sure about riding a bike in a pair of clunky wooden shoes.
The group went inside the building to register. A dozen black bicycles were parked inside a brick courtyard. The vintage bikes were well-maintained. They had a swan-neck frame with flat handlebars and metal wheel guards. Aside from the small old-fashioned engines mounted above the front wheels, they kind of reminded Chuck of girls bicycles when he was a kid back in the 1960s.
He was well aware that the distinction between masculine and feminine was often less rigid to Europeans than it was for Americans, but he soon learned why the Solex bikes did not have a horizontal crossbar.
It was sunny, and about 52 degrees Fahrenheit and Chuck had worn a heavy windbreaker in anticipation of chilly weather. He was not thrilled when he was informed that he would have to swap jackets for the ride. There was a ritual costume for riding a Solex. To get the full nostalgic effect everyone who took the tour had to don a long leather coat and an old fashioned motorcycle helmet.
Upon entering the building their group was ushered into a large room that resembled a warehouse. Four dozen brown and black leather coats hung on a long line of racks along one wall. Most of them looked like old military coats and were quite weathered.
Chuck found a helmet that fit his head and picked a dark brown, double-breasted leather trench coat with three rows of buttons. Any luster the coat possessed had weathered away years ago. He was too self conscious to wear a shiny black leather coat.
He pulled on his coat and belted it, catching a whiff of deodorizing spray. He joined the rest of his group in the courtyard who tried to encourage him that the the tour would be fun.
Chuck was already aware of the bike-riding culture was extremely pervasive in the Netherlands. Fashionable women in Dutch cities commonly rode bicycles to and from work in full-length leather coats, skirts, and heels. It was something rather foreign to his conservative American experience.
There was one more couple on the schedule who had not arrived yet. The guide said they would be have to leave without them if they did not show up in the next five or ten minutes to keep the group on schedule.
At that very moment he heard the sound of a woman’s heels clicking on the flagstones outside the gate.
“Maybe that’s them now,” the guide said.
A striking young couple walked into the courtyard. One glance at their outfits made it obvious that they were there for the tour. The man and woman were both wearing long double-breasted black leather trench coats. The dark-haired man carried two helmets by the straps in his right hand. The lovely blonde who clung to his left arm tugged him enthusiastically as she spotted the group.
Continued at http://lctdadrms.blogspot.com/p/solex-lady.html
Continued at http://lctdadrms.blogspot.com/p/solex-lady.html
Pleasure, Knowledge and Love
Pleasure, Knowledge, and Love
By Cuirbouilli
Anthony thought the Uffizi was amazing. Every room contained a world-famous painting or sculpture. He saw artwork there he recalled seeing in books since childhood. The Madonna and Child with Angels by Filippo Lippi, The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, and The Venus of Urbino by Titian were among his favorites that he got to behold in all their glory. To view such masterpieces with his very eyes was almost surreal to him.
His brain was still buzzing from the experience as he sat down on the stone wall inside the Loggia dei Lanzi. Propping his feet up on the slab, he leaned back on one arm and watched the people lined up outside the Uffizi across the street. It was the off-season for tourism and there were still long lines of people waiting to get inside the museum.
He took a long drink from the lukewarm bottle of Coca Cola he pulled out of his jacket pocket. It wasn’t much warmer than when he bought it.
Anthony was twenty-seven years old. He was an American college student. It was spring break in April in 2007 and he was taking a ten-day tour of Italy. He had already spent three days in Venice. This was his second of three days in Florence and he was headed to Rome after that.
Anthony’s Great-Grandmother Agnes died the year before and left him twenty-thousand dollars in her will. He decided to use some of the money to pay for a trip to Italy to celebrate his upcoming college graduation. What better place was there for an aspiring art student to gain inspiration than to view the greatest works in the world?
Anthony was going to graduate that June with a bachelor's degree in graphic design. Maybe it was more accurate to say that if he didn’t graduate his Mom and Dad were going to kill him. After eight years of helping him pay his college tuition and rent Anthony’s parents were seriously pressuring him to finish a degree and finally get a job.
Anthony had to admit, he was getting tired of being an eternal student. He just had trouble deciding what to do for a career. He was talented at drawing. When he graduated high school he thought he wanted to be an architect. He was too right-brain dominant though. After three years he realized that he would be miserable drafting buildings for the rest of his life, not to mention that he hated physics and calculus.
Then his longtime girlfriend Amy broke up with him when she got her journalism degree and moved away. He really liked Amy, but she was too anxious to get married. He wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment at the young age of twenty-three.
Somewhat disillusioned about his future, he spent another three years dabbling half-hearted in art classes while working a part-time job and partying with friends. His parents were patient, but urged him increasingly to pick a major and finish his schooling.
He started to feel like a loser when most of his old college friends moved on to the working world, got married, and started having kids.
In the past two years he focused on graphic design and he had nearly completed the course work. He wasn’t sure what he would do with his degree, but he had to start somewhere. He understood that he would have to suffer through some low-paying entry level positions before he landed something good.
Another motivating factor for Anthony to get on with his life was his present situation with women.
He dated a bit over the past couple years since Amy left. The dating scene was no longer meeting his expectations like it used to, though, and he was becoming increasingly frustrated.
Girls told Anthony he was cute for as long as he could remember. He had deep brown eyes, a boyish grin, and his wavy, dark hair fell into place naturally if he raked his hand through it. He stood six-feet tall with broad shoulders and was blessed with a lean, muscular build through no effort of his own. He groomed an easy-going attitude and never had much trouble getting girls to go out with him. He even got laid pretty regularly, so he really didn’t have much to complain about until now.
His present difficulty with women was meeting one that he was genuinely attracted to.
Something he discovered in recent years was that smart, confident women appealed to him way more than the brainless party chicks he was used to being around. A poised, well-dressed, intelligent girl turned him on like crazy. Unfortunately most of the girls he met acted stupid, dressed sloppy, or degraded themselves with crude behavior to cover up low self-esteem.
He joked somewhat bitterly that he was looking for Natalie Portman and kept coming up with Tara Reid.
Of course he knew he might be aiming too high. A slacker student with no career prospects on the horizon probably couldn't expect some hot socialite to fall in love with him.
He wasn’t going to give up trying though. Even if he didn’t succeed there was always the thrill of the chase.
He took another drink of his flat soda and looked around the building he was in.
The Loggia dei Lanzi was a famous open-air sculpture gallery. According to the tour guide the structure was built in the fourteenth century and was originally used for public gatherings before the Medicis filled it with art.
The statues displayed within the Loggia depicted figures from classical mythology. Some dated all the way back to antiquity. The others were created during the renaissance or sometime in the centuries after.
Three wide arches resting on four massive stone columns formed the front edifice of the Loggia, facing the square known as the Piazza della Signoria. The gallery interior was spacious beneath a high vaulted ceiling. A low stone wall traced along the perimeter and functioned as a place for people to sit and admire the sculptures or merely take in the atmosphere of the ancient city.
Anthony sat in the back left corner where he had a good view of his spectacular surroundings. There were three other people seated along the same section of wall as him and about twenty-five people in the gallery altogether. Even in the off-season for tourism, Florence was a bustling place.
The Uffizi was to his right. The gallery continued the entire length of the street and wrapped around to form the back wall of the Loggia behind him.
The stark, crenellated medieval fortress known as the Palazzo Vecchio towered high above the square before him. He pondered on how ruthless the Medici family must have been to rule Florence from such a formidable place.
The striking nineteenth century sculpture titled The Rape of Polyxena loomed over him on the left. Mighty Achilles was immortalized in white marble as he carried the Trojan princess away while threatening to strike her pleading mother, Queen Hecuba, with his sword.
Anthony had already gazed at the statue for some minutes. The bare-breasted female figures were very natural and beautiful to him. The portrayal of female beauty varied over the centuries depending on artistic style, but he would argue that what a man recognized as “a pretty girl” probably looked the same now as she did five-hundred years ago.
The sound of women’s heels clicking on the stone pavement nearby drew his attention downward from the sculpture.
He expected to see some local Italian women enjoying a smoke together.
He blinked his eyes to do a double take.
Three of the most gorgeous women he had ever seen entered the gallery! They paused for only a moment.
His heart skipped a beat as they turned to walk in his direction!
All three women were jaw-droppingly beautiful! Not only that, but they were each buttoned up in long, sleek black leather coats, one identical to the other with tall pointed collars flipped up around their necks!
Continued at http://lctdadrms.blogspot.com/p/pleasure-knowledge-and-love-by.html
Continued at http://lctdadrms.blogspot.com/p/pleasure-knowledge-and-love-by.html
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