wolves...

I know what i have to do. Its easy. i give the advice all the time to people. Its lame that i can't follow my own advice. I need to Ride the bike more, piss and moan less, lose weight and emerge victorious.

today was a lesson in suffering. I leaned i can hack it. i probably COULD have done better, but in my experience, this is how it usually goes with me. I finish astoundingly low, that turns on the light, and i go out and smash. Im tired of being the whipped poodle, it's time i tapped into my inner wolf.

now, if i could only find an advice wolf....

police, everybody out.

Went for 2 rides today. One was a "mountain" bike ride. It was off-road alright, but, i wouldn't say it was very mountainous as i was almost shived by a local drinking in a gutter, and among the sites was a best buy. That's right, the first of 2 rides was the never un-famous, always infamous, fullerton loop. My heavens. I think it will be more fun if i:

1. Have some body to show me where in the hell im going
2. Ever do it again

It was an hour i will be kind and chalk up to recovery milage. It was more like harsh wake-up mileage after my red-mud encrusted trip to st. george, utah (pictures to come). Many fine things happened on said trip, including tibetan throat singing as well as selling my friend and all-around solid dude Pat a 29er hardtail. Being as he is from oc im sure there will be more prolific OC rides to come, as im not the type of dude to sell a sweet guy like Pat a bike, and not take him riding whenever i get a chance.

The second of the 2 rides was with some dude whos name i cant recall, and woody, who i have only ridden with casually on the death rattling Red Asphalt Ride. Woody is a sweet dude for sure, and he will be installing some s&s couplers on my lemond to turn 'er into a travel bike. SWEET! We went over to the airport and up around sunset. Like a dummy, i forgot my road shoes at work, so i rode that mother on my cross bike which was outfitted with platforms for cross-town trekking. You never really get how hard it is to pedal, especially out of the saddle without being fully attatched to said pedal. Made for a pretty good workout if you don't count the counter productivity to my pedal stroke.

Hair is getting long. Beard is getting strong. Clint Eastwood westerns are king.

Eff the man!

Not too long ago, we were promised change, by this guy...




Now, i don't fault the guy for running under that campaign moniker. Hell, i would say it won him the election. However, i think if we are honest with ourselves, nothing has really changed. Really.

I bitch and moan with the best of them. I have this little pissant blog to show for it. Big freaking deal. However, i'm not really in the hot-seat to be pushing buttons and pulling levers that are going to actuate any real global or societal change. Now, this might seem like a copout to some, and i would agree. Guilty. Keep reading though, stay with me.

"I hear a lot of talk by a lot of honkeys, sittin' on a lot of money sayin' they are the high society, I say THIS IS the High Society!!"

pretty tough to beat the MC5 as far as live music. Elvis admittedly got the ball rolling, but i would say that the MC5 was arena rock, before there was arena rock; MC5 was Punk, before punk was punk; MC5 was revolution before there was music was revolutionary. People did stuff and said stuff and changed stuff. okay okay, the beatles changed stuff, but mostly i would say within the musician's social circle. When the MC5 played at the 1968 DNC, there was a freaking RIOT. In 68. Shit got real.

I really think all those dudes were doing was rocking out though. I don't think they set out to make stuff happen, until stuff started happening, because of what they were already doing, which is the aforementioned rocking out.

I would like to change personally instead of pissing and moaning. If it changes stuff around me for the better, i think that is totally rad. I think i should start with me though.

More than anything this blog post serves as notice that i'm going to be turning down the complaining and turning up the doing. "Don't talk about it, be about it.", is an awesome phrase that if i was honest with myself, i don't think gets acted out on my behalf enough. So, there is going to be less opinionated bitching, and more reporting on when shit got real.

'cause its one thing to shout "fuck the man!" at the top of your lungs, and its another thing to punch the man in the stomach so hard he pukes all over his Bruno Magli's. You'll be seeing more of the latter on here from now on.

The definition of insanity...

Is repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different outcome. Or at least that's what i've heard.

Selling something on ebay is enough to piss off the good humor man. Here are some excepts...

potential buyer 1: "I am very interested in the bike, can you send other pics?"
me: "sure"
...
...
me: "did you get the pics?"
potential buyer 1: "oh yeah, but it doesn't have cross top levers so, im not interested..."
me: "ok, well, i can throw some cross tops in, installed, for free!"
Potential buyer 1: "oh, ok. I'll think about it"

WTF

Potential buyer 2: "I am very interested in the bike, can you send other pics?"
me: "ok, but are you really interested? I really don't want to go through the trouble of sending a bunch of pics, unless you are really considering buying, and just want to be reassured with some pics."
Potential buyer 2: "oh no, i am VERY interested"
me:"did you get the pics?"
Potential buyer 2: "is there any way i can get the stock saddle?"
me: "i dont know, i think i can get one, would you want the bike if i could find it?"
potential buyer 2: "oh, yeah!"
me: "then i can totally get it"
potential buyer 2: "How much does it weigh?"
me: "i have no idea. Its a single speed cross bike, man. Not much."
potential buyer2: "i'll think about it."

WTF

Potential buyer 3: "would you consider dropping the shipping price if it was only to austin texas?"
me: "i'll level with you man, if you want the bike, i will ship it for free"
potential buyer 3: "i'll think about it"

WTF?!?!?!?!

they say a picture is worth a thousand words...

so if i had one photo to sum up my life in a photo essay, it would be this...

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picture yourself running out of gas...

on a flat section of highway. Momentum's on your side, but it is petering out little by little. You've got a quarter mile 'til the next exit where there is a gas station. You go from 40mph to 30. 30 to 20. 20 to 15. It's at this point you start to make that little scooting motion to nudge the car forward in an attempt to close the last couple of feet.

I've found myself making this ridiculous motion several times on the bicycle. In my humble opinion, this is probably indicative of a piss-poor pedal stroke, and one would be far better off just standing.

Having said that, i shaved a full 7.5 minutes off my best time to the top of Zanja, which i will still not notate on here, because if i make my guess, i have to shave another 7 to start kicking ass and taking names this year.

...but 7.5 is a start.

tuesdays with stubbeh

today went for a ride on my bicycle as i do most tuesdays. After being on the road for a grand total of 4 minutes, i noticed a gentleman buzzed by me fairly closely, as we were about 200 yards from a red light. No biggy, i decided to approach his car and pass it slowly to look inside see if it was somebody i knew, or something like that. It was nobody i had ever seen, so i went by about my business. After the light had turned green, i went up the road about another 2 hundred yards into a part of town that had apparently had trash day (although i don't think so as we're 2 blocks from my house where trash day is friday) and i had to avoid a trash can that was on the side of the road. The same gentleman (in a tan mercedes, early 90's) decided to again come extremely close to me, closer even than the first time, and honk his horn. I should also mention that this is a 2 lane road. Thinking i was dealing with a coward who might be intelligent and flee as opposed to a balsy dumbass who might stop, i gave him a single digit, and called him a name i can't recall.

that balsy dumbass stopped! Now let me just say this is every cyclists DREAM to have some fatass in a mercedes enter into a conflict with him over contention for the road. I. Was. Stoked. Let me also say that conflict can be a mixed bag with me. Sometimes i let stuff go, super easy, sometimes i lose my temper like a powder keg, but more often than not, i am fairly diplomatic. It really depends on the person on the other side of the debate. Never was this so poignantly portrayed than today.

I roll up, and notice that there is a red sports car that parked, not too far behind who probably witnessed the whole sordid event. Immediately the man driving looked like he regretted stopping. Looking straight forward. Eyes dead ahead. I go, "So what the hell man?" and he says (and this is the golden ticket), "watch where you're riding that thing. I could have hit you!" Now, you cant possibly understand the nuances of the speech patterns by what i've written, but let me assure you the manner in which he spoke these words was not, "you were taking up a lane when you shouldn't, because of that i nearly hit you." It was more like, "in the index of choices i had regarding this situation, among them was purposefully hit you with my car." THAT ws the kind of "could" he used.

*snap*

When i get violent, sometimes things get blurry, so i don't remember all of this 100 percent. The following is what i do remember. "OK man, well, lucky for you you get another shot, so go ahead and get out, but just so you know i'm gonna knock your fucking teeth out of your head and break both of your arms, so good luck collecting your teeth." Like i said, its a little blurry. I do remember saying something about the vehicle code, and him saying something to the effect of, "you ought to look it up...blah blah blah". then after i said something i literally cannot recall, he rolled his window up (it was only open a crack, thank god), and drove away. Remember that dude in the red sports car? he drove off too and when he passed me gave me a thumbs up. I had forgotten clean about him. He could have been one of dudes buddies and laid me out with a tire iron or something. That made me feel a little better, but thanks to some asshole i had to spend the rest of my ride on an adrenaline dump. Man i was pissed. Still am. Not knock his teeth out pissed, but still...

anyways here's a post ride pic of me and stubbs.



on to pantera bread to break bread with man, myth, and brother of legend: stafford heppenstall. I wonder if anybody on team redlands will get that joke.