Stuff & Yeah

A pretty cute commercial, whether you're a bike dork or not.

So stuff has been going okay. Work has picked up since my sups have "progressed" me, which basically means I'm cleared to take more types of calls than I was before. So instead of being able to read a couple pages between calls now I can take a couple breaths. This also means that instead of bright, shiny new users who are polite I'm taking calls from people who are upset that their shit is broken. It gives me lots of opportunities to practice patience, acceptance, and fake politeness.

I had a race last night after Critical Mass, put on by local biker and photo-grapher Wes. The $5 entry fee went to the SPCA and the racers went on a seven mile loop through Downtown Norfolk and Ghent in roughly the shape of Hello Kitty's head, which also adorns the spoke card. I was most excited for the pre-race track stand competition, which I did pretty well in. Top three got to start three minutes early, and after we could only use one hand the number dropped quickly and myself and two other guys got to take off ahead of the pack. Not that it did me any good, I still came in fifth place. I feel that I'm a decent enough rider, but I tend to get turned around or take circuitous routes when I'm on my own. As soon as I know the streets as well as my fellow racers I'll do a lot better.

My one self-consolation is that I beat out another rider in a dead sprint to the finish. It's one thing to finish an entire race before someone, but to be neck and neck at the end and pull ahead is a pretty cool feeling. He had a good burst of speed but couldn't keep the sprint up, which is really the hardest part. Another fun part was wrecking into Kurtz on the way to the bar and somehow unclipping from both pedals, hopping off the bike as it somersaulted under and away from me, and landing perfectly on one foot, hitting the ground running as it were.

Racing up Church Street was especially fun, cutting through traffic and running red lights (always with care) like I was a seventeen-inch wide ambulance. During races one finds oneself doing things one would curse at other cyclists for if it was any other day of the week, such as riding between lanes of traffic or between traffic and the curb and ignoring signs, lights, and one-way streets. But hey, it's a race. It's not any other day of the week. I'm a respectable enough rider the rest of the time, and even when I'm not I don't get in anyone's way. And I always make sure to at least have the outlines of an escape plan if shit goes south. Even if that plan involves possibly rolling across the hood of a parked car or taking my chances in oncoming traffic.

Kasey has been working two jobs, one at Panera and the other training at Starbucks. A new one is opening right outside of our tiny neighborhood and Kasey got hired there, which is fantastic. She loves working for Starbucks and she won't have to drive out to Virginia Beach and back every day, which is like a raise in itself. You could walk there in ten minutes or so. Monday is her last day as a double-jobber and I'm proud of her for staying at Panera so long, even after she got hired at Starbucks. Let's just say her soon-to-be previous employer wasn't exactly up to her standards.

Also, although 98% of you won't know what I'm talking about and the other 1.9% won't care, I now have a perfect town in Animal Crossing on my Nintendo DS. What is Animal Crossing? It's a game that's hard to explain and even harder to justify to your friends. You basically live in a little town with other non-player characters and do things like fish, catch bugs, plant trees and flowers, write letters, decorate your house (which you pay off your mortgage on to upgrade), etc. This game for me is epitome of Japanese game making: Simple, weird, adorable, and somehow addicting. Anyway, if you get the perfect balance of trees and flowers in half or more of your acres then your town is "perfect". I needed to pass some time, so I mapped out my entire town on a grid and got every acre to be prefect. If I can keep it so for two weeks I get a golden watering can. Why? To grow golden roses of course! Yeah, I know. But it took time and effort and I feel I've accomplished something.

With that confession of nerdiness, I'm outtie. Have a safe Labour Day (as they'd say across the water) and for those of you who follow my Twitters and such: I'm alive, I'm well and moving around, I just can't text for a bit. I'll check in when I can.

Bonzai!

- David

Steel & Momentum

By this time a couple of years ago, my dad was hearing the worst news of his entire life.

A lot of people feel real tragedy can't touch them. They haven't felt it and so don't really believe it's something that can happen. Death is something that happens on TV, to pets, and to old relatives. But people are fragile. Our soft bodies are easily damaged and our intricate systems can fail with a whisper.

Be careful out on those roads. If you're sleepy, stay off the road. If you've had a few, don't drive. Get off the cell phone, put the food down, your coffee can wait. You're piloting an enormous amount of deadly steel and momentum. It deserves your full attention.

I wore my mala beads today. Today I'll watch The Fountain, and probably some Wes Anderson. If I had the money I'd get another ring around my wrist. I'll drink. I'll remind myself that nothing is born and that nothing really dies. I'll tell myself that he's still around, just in different forms. I'll try to pretend like I've really accepted death as a part of life. Last night we watched The Darjeeling Limited and as the actors played across the screen I wished I had two brothers still. I liked being one of three boys.

Hug someone today. And to make it not cheesy, when they're not looking, covertly hump them a little.

- David

God Damn Cyclists

And I mean that sincerely.

You know how certain people get about certain movies/music/books they really, really like? How if other people hate them, then they're just retarded retards anyway. And if other people like them, then they're poser douchebag dickheads? Yeah, that's how I am with cycling lately.

Before, my love of cycling was a lot more accepting in nature: "You ride bikes too?! Then you are my brother and can do no wrong." Now it's much more, "Fucking cyclists! Get the fuck off the sidewalk/road/face of the Earth!" This thought goes through my head even if I'm currently on a bike. Why this sudden change? I think it has a lot to do with the fact that I can't get my sorry ass to work without leaving my bike locked to a fence at some bus stop because rusty, mis/disused, hobo-ghetto bicycles are always filling up the racks. And the recent proliferation of inexperienced cyclists out on the road doing shit like riding down the wrong side of the road and nearly killing me, themselves, and my faith in man in the process.

Give me the cold days, the rainy days, the shitty weather days over a nice sunny day. At least then I don't have to worry about some pasty office worker in spandex on a beach cruiser fucking with my chi. Good weather brings out the Good Weather Riders, which have about as much experience on a bike in traffic as I do on a donkey under water. It's not that they're intrinsically stupid (actually, there's a good chance they are) it's mostly that they have no idea what the hell they are doing. Imagine me, David the blogger, deciding to try being a rodeo clown. I go out into the pit or whatever the hell it's called, and then wrap a blanket over my head and proceed to stumble about. I may get lucky and keep all my plasma inside my body, but more likely than not I'm going to get myself and somebody else hurt. That's what I see when a person who only bikes on "nice days" goes by: A rodeo clown with a blanket over their head, who doesn't even have the decency to wear those huge clown pants so I can be spared the intimate details of their saggy anatomy.

Now all Asshole Elitism aside, I do like people riding bikes. It makes me happy to see people happy as they pedal along, enjoying the breeze and the smooth exercise. But if you're going to do it, do it right. Know the rules of the road, right-of-way, and traffic laws, so that when you ignore them it can at least be a conscious decision and maybe done correctly enough to not cause any misfortune. As for my own part, I read and I read and I read until I figured I couldn't read anymore. Then I rode to work for two days and read a whole bunch more I discovered I didn't know. I'm still doing that to this day.

But don't be fooled, you can't learn how to navigate the dangerous and sexy Metal Stream of Traffic from blogs and books. It has to be done before you can know how to do it. Just like porkin'. You are going to fuck up and you are going to piss off motorists and other cyclists alike along the way. Hell, I'm sure I do it every time I saddle up. But as experience grows you fuck up less, and the fuck ups become more slight, and then before you know it you're only pissing motorists off on purpose. (Actually that's a lie, there's no way to not piss off motorists, on a bike or not.)

When it gets cold again I'm sure my tune will change. People find ways to get where they're going inside shiny happy vehicles when the temperature drops and forget all thought of biking. Even motorists are a bit more tolerant when it's twelve degrees outside or raining gallon-droplets on your head. Then I'll be all excited to see a fellow cyclist out on the road and my brotherly love will come flooding back until the seasons change yet again and a new flood of n00bs arrives.

But then again, I'm sure there's someone out there who views Y.T. in exactly the same light.

- David

PRIRATE BROADCAST

I was a bit punch-drunk when I made this. Just a warning for all the random crap.

- David

I'm Not Being Sarcastic When I Say...

...that people can be pretty awesome.

I know I bitch a lot on this blog. I bet if I categorized my posts they would fall into either "Bitching", "Bicycles", "Bitching with Bicycles", or "Random". I don't know what it is but the last two days I've been waking up on the bluebird side of the bed and this morning I feel like giving a big mushy e-hug to the people I think are awesome folk.

Firstly (and most recently) my friend Sam. Today he woke up early and drove me into work just because he's a good guy. After we were on the road he told me he'd gone to bed after 3:30 this morning, and he was at my house at 6:15, exactly when I'd asked him to. Also last night he bought us pizza and let Kasey and I relax on his couch while we watched a movie and I had a few beers. Sam is barely twenty-one and he just finished his first week as Store Manager of a Starbucks out in Suffolk. He's the man. Besides always offering to help and being a ton of fun to hang out with, Sam is just awesome. And so cute! Cheers to Sam.

Kasey's dad is also awesome. He's put more time and resources into Kasey's car this year than some people would put into their own children. He works more than any rational person should but still makes time for us no matter how tired he must feel. He always has pop and some kind of sweets for us to eat when we go over to his house and watch sports or Nascar. He's one of the genuinely nicest guys I know. He loves his daughter and takes care of her, which I'm really rather partial too. Cheers Kenny!

Speaking of great Heights (ha!) Kasey is pretty wonderful. I imagine that it's not always pixie sticks and slip-n-slides living with Y.T. What with the math retardation and constant leg humping and all. I do talk a lot of crap about things she is only mildly interested in simply because it's me doing the talking, which actually is very sweet when you know how Kasey is. She worries about me consuming meat and meat by-products whenever we go somewhere new to eat, and worries I'm eating enough in general. (Although between you, me, and the firewall (oh I'm so witty) I probably could cut back on the munching a bit.) We may be opposites in a lot of ways, but the parts of us that come together are pretty fantastic (and wet!) and we get each other. Plus, she has a great caboose. Cheers Kasey!

My friend Kurtz is a cool guy. I gave a shout out to him in my recent Commuting Anniversary post but I'll say a bit more here. Besides being a dedicated spandex-free cyclist he's intelligent, darkly funny, and honest almost to a fault. Last night Kasey described him to a friend as being anti-establishment. I'd never thought about it before but in a way that's totally true. The man is well-learned in the art of sarcasm and conversations with him are never dull or short on laughs. He likes the same movies I like, and in my way of thinking that's almost like being in the same cult or something. Despite his rough and tumble exterior he cares a lot about his friends. He's also the only man I've ever seen steal a cross and get up in the middle of a movie to pop next door for a drink (it was the Rocky Horror Picture Show but still, it was sweet.) Kurtz, cheers!

I'm going to combine two peeps here cuz in my mind they're always penetrating each other anyway. My brothers from anothers mothers Aero and Nano are my oldest friends and comrades. While I've met Aero only once in real life I'm set to be one of his groomsmen in his upcoming wedding, which is pretty damn cool. I put both of these guys down in the one-thousand page application for my security clearance under the section of "People Who Have Known You The Longest That Are Not Your Family And Still Like You, Somewhat". Aero and I have our own kind of language when we talk online, which is a mix of Spanish, 13 year-old girl AOL speak, l33t, and other shit we made up. While our opinions on movies does differ wildly at times, I feel we respect each other's film savvy enough to bow heads and shake hands and agree to leave the dueling pistols in the box. Now this may sound weird, but if either Nano or myself had been lucky enough to be born a lady we would totally be that couple people hate but secretly envy. Nano and I have one of those strange friendships that somehow bloomed almost instantly into something deep and lasting even though while I lived in Phoenix we hardly saw each other and don't talk much now. Cheers Nano and Aero!

Even though he's a punk and moved away I'm still going to mention Jeff. Jeff, I know I owe you an e-mail! It's coming, I just have to steal some Internets first. Jeff was the bridge between my solo cycling and the poor sods I currently bug on the Portsmouth side of the river. Without him I wouldn't have joined up with the Saturday riders (which I haven't done in months, but I will again soon) or gotten my clipless pedals as soon or as cheap. Which may not sound like a lot to you, but it is to me. Those two things helped cement cycling as a Big Thing in my life. Always upbeat and mindful of doing right, Jeff makes Jesus proud. And I'm not being patronizing or sarcastic in the least. If all Christians were like Jeff the world would be much better off. Always entertaining and fun to be around, P-Town misses him! Cheers Jeff!

I'd also like to say cheers to my bike Jenny for helping me get so totally buff that if I squat to tie my shoe my pants and underwears rip like I was Lou Farrigno from the waste down. Also for getting me around on the cheap and allowing my body to partake of it's natural biological processes. She's never broken down on me and even though she gets left out in the rain, locked to fences in questionable areas, and manhandled by a clumsy, sweaty guy she still looks good. Cheers Jenny!

If I left you out, you're still probably awesome. Unless you're a dick. And if so, eat it.

- David

Ketchup

Macaframa from MACAFRAMA on Vimeo

I love Macaframa. At the beginning of the above video I figured some kind of bunny hop action would happen, but I should have known it wouldn't be that simple. I'm totally gonna try this now (and eat shit in the process.)

Speaking of surprises on bicycles, I had a few good ones this week. I dunno if it's the weather or what, but people are being assholes again. For a while there I wasn't getting honked at, yelled at, gestured at, nothing. When I first started cycling I got yelled at weekly for about a month or two. This could very well be due to the fact that I was just starting out and I wasn't doing shit correctly or smoothly. But also, it was this time last year that I started, so maybe it is the weather.

At any rate, yesterday I was slowly partaking of the sidewalk to get around a mess on Granby (which is a narrow two-way street in downtown Norfolk) caused by a power company truck blocking one lane and a city bus trying to get around it while on-comming traffic tried to decide if it was going to stop and let it or not. I was rolling along at about jogging speed or slower and I came upon your typical teen/twenties guy: Backwards fitted baseball cap, long shorts, and t-shirt by some bad that probably sucks. I was preparing a line to go around him when he turned his head, saw me, and moved over well before I was near him. I appreciated it and said "Thanks!" as I rolled by, but before the word was even out of my mouth he says something like, "...the fuck where you're going." Ooookay. I'm already gone by the time I register what people have said to me so I just ride on. Maybe I startled him and he was trying to compensate.

On Wednesday when I decided to take on the hill I've been avoiding lately, I had the pleasure of getting gassed by a pickup truck spraying mosquito poison. It had a sign on the back that warned people to stay back 100 feet and here I am, out in the world, not surrounded by my own little bubble of AC and filtered air, getting sprayed. The scariest thing somehow was that the cloud of whatever it was coming out of the back of that thing tasted slightly minty. Luckily after a few blocks the truck turned down a side street. Then the hill came. I was all jazzed to stand up and get some good burn going and had just started to do so when I noticed a cyclist in the bike lane ahead of me. A second or two later I realize he's coming down the hill.

One of the things I hate more than anything are cyclists who don't know what the fuck they're doing riding on the wrong side of the road. I'm not even going to wait and play that game where we hesitate and then both move into each other's path again. I start looking over my shoulder to see when the SUVs and rice rockets in the lane directly next to me will be gone so I can get over. Finally an SUV from Idaho gets over for me and I'm able to get out of the path of the angry black man barreling down on me.

Now, in my mind I'm going, "Fucker, you're on the wrong side of the road!" but we're going too fast and I don't like to be a dick unless it's part of some role playing me and my girl are currently enjoying, so I don't say anything. However as we get close he raises his fist and yells in my face "Get the fuck over!" Right. This doesn't even bother me like the kid on the sidewalk sorta does because obviously I did get over and I'm 100% in the right here. Which is really what people care about above all else. In a world run by rules I dictate, he would have said "Thanks for getting over!" because he had no where to go but into direct traffic or somehow hop up over the tall curb and onto the sidewalk.

Not all surprises were bad however, as I randomly ran into someone I knew while we were both on bikes. This may happen to a lot of you cyclists out there, but for me, it never does. I guess I'm always going a specific somewhere instead of "hanging out" and that lowers the probability of a chance encounter. As I waited for traffic I saw a guy named Wes go by, who's pretty much responsible for Critical Mass here, and decided to chase him. I caught up with him after a few lights and had to yell to get his attention as he was listening to music. We chatted a bit navigating through Downtown and then parted ways as he was on his way to work. It was weird to see him on a bike that wasn't his tandem or attached to a trailer with his kid in it.

On my way home a guy on the sidewalk asked me how much my bike weighed while I waited for a light. He asked if I was a messenger (I did not have my bag, so there) and I of course said no. But man, that would be pretty awesome, if for no other reason than I love riding bikes, it's fun to be outside, and sitting on my ass all day in front of a computer is getting old. Maybe one day. I wouldn't turn it down.

- David

Salsa

To my handsome, sexy, benevolent, virile, and intelligent loyal readers this post will probably feel more like my normal writing then the recent stuff I've put out. Why? Because once again it is spurred by boredom at work.

It's Sunday and I'm seven hours into a ten hour shift. Today marks the start of my pemenant schedule of Sundays through Wednesdays, 7:00 AM to 5:30 PM. (As an aside, for someone who takes pride in being a grammar and spelling Nazi I have no idea how times should be correctly written out and am too lazy to check. Everytime I write out a time I think of that.) In seven hours I have taken three calls and my Average Talk Time is six minutes, fourty-two seconds. It's fantastic. I have all this time to read away from televisions, chores, dogs, and girlfriends who need some attention from Y.T.

The downside is I'm a bit sleepy. My new book The Tao is Silent has kept me awake and entertained thusfar, but getting up around 5:30 catches up with a person. I'm over one hundred and seventy-two pages in and just now read the back cover to find that the author is a mathematical logician! I don't even know what that is but I would never have guessed someone with "mathematical" and "logician" in their title would be able to write with such humor and spontenaity. Which is how I like my learnin', especially about philosophies of which I currently subscribe.

Walking around today trying to find cream and sugar for my office coffee I spotted a strategically placed co-worker napping. Strategically placed both in location and position as he was away from the bulk of traffic and slumped just out of sight behind his quarter-cubicle partition. Attempting in my own subtle way to practice Taoism in my daily life I decided to take a nap too. The Head Resting on Hand technique did nothing for me as my apparently unbalanced head kept falling off my arm everytime I passed a certain point of unconciousness. I opted instead for the Laid Back school, resting my head on the back of the chair.

Success! After waking up a few times to find my mouth hanging open and stifling the rising fear of drooling I even managed to have a little dream in which someone was debating me about marshmellows. I awoke fifteen minutes later or so, refreshed and energized, just in time for two tech leads to walk by looking for magnetic letters to stick up on a whiteboard. To you this may seem deplorable, unprofessional, and irresponsible but to me it makes perfect, natural, sense: I'm sleepy, the beeping phone would wake me up if there was a call, and if you could get away with it at work you'd do it too. Plus, all last week was a shit storm of varying degrees so I'm owed a slow day. Or at least I'm prepared to take full advantage of one.

Kasey's car is busted, still. Turns out it was the alternator or something. Her dad is currently in possession of the White Talon, a tow truck having picked it up yesterday afternoon in literally ten seconds. I have never seen anything so efficient involving one vehicle, let alone two. I hope that guy get some kind of recognition for being able to back that truck up, lowering the crucifix-like tow arm in the process, hooking the front tires, and lifting it up all with perfect precision. A bowling trophe with an abandoned car on top instead, perhaps.

One of the fun things that happens to me a lot in life is that things work out nicely all by themselves. For instance buses don't run Sundays but one of the guys I went through training with is on nearly my exact schedule, so I car-pooled in today. I'm now working Sundays and out of the blue Kasey gets offered to switch schedules for one that would includes Sundays for her, too. This type of thing happens so frequently, it seems Kasey is even to the point where it's no longer remarkable.

Okay, I'm off to locate some sugar for my instant grits while I take the last break of the day. Or maybe I'll try some more of this napping thing in the Quiet Room, which is really just a restroom with a lockable door and a plastic chair.

Happy Sunday.

- David