Obstacle

The other day I was riding home from Galbraith Mt., down a greenway when I came across a gaggle of humans that had me absolutely perplexed. See Fig. 1 below for a technical illustration of what I saw:


Fig. 1

I'm not exagerating... the greenway was maybe 20 feet wide, and spread across the entire width was this lot: a wheelchaired old man, an old woman using a walker, an old woman using legs, and two old women walking two dogs on long leashes.
My overactive imagination started coming up with explanations immediately: maybe they mistook the Whatcom Falls Parking lot for the Old Country Buffet parking lot? Perhaps they were headed to a tea-bagger protest and got lost. Or, most likely, they had planned their excursion to coincide directly with my bike ride.

The problem with old people is that they can't hear anything. My cries of "ON YOUR LEFT" went unheeded completely. And as if coordinated by an evil math genius they were all exactly an equal distance apart so getting between them wasn't going to be easy. So I did what any sane person would in my situation, I picked up speed and aimed for a hole right between the walker and wheelchair. I figured they'd be slowest to respond anyway... and they were. As soon as I was about mid-way between them I slammed my rear brake and whipped the bike around Dog #2, regained composure quickly and bunny hopped the leash of Dog #1 and in so doing conjured up my best Mel Gibson voice and bellowed "FREEEEEEDOM!!!"

As I rode away I looked back to survey my battlefield. The lot looked mostly unaffected except for the wheel chaired woman who managed to half-heartedly raise and shake her fist at me in protest

Clarity

I piloted my Kierkegaardian ship into an iceberg last week and many people drowned. The chorus of voices in my head is now a little quieter since the herd has been thinned: the crash had this effect.. the weak couldn't make it and therefore died off. I got dark night of Soul-ed. Ironically, I didn't see it coming. guess ya never do, guess it would defeat the purpose if you did.

Anyhow, here is a video of the Ridge Trail from last week.

Nostalgic

A desire hit me tonight, a small tickle in the back of my head. I know this itch, and I know how to scratch it... the itch is called nostalgia; she and I are good friends. I've found in my life that the amount of time nostalgia spends visiting is directly correlated with how well things are going in day to day life. Things good? Nostalgia stays away. Things not so good? You get a knock on your door.

So yeah, the itch... Tonight I popped a dvd into the computer, "The Collective", the first bike movie I ever really loved. I associate this movie with the explosion of '04 when the Natemare, Sades and I really discovered the joy of two wheeled drugs, the sport and life that is biking. When I think back to this time the biggest feeling that comes up in my mind is the pleasurable anxiety I used to feel when I wasn't riding. I was working in an office at the time, while attending school, but my mind was never really invested in either of those two pursuits. All I wanted to do was ride my bike. Thats it. So simple, so honest. The Collective reminds me of this drive that still exists inside.



No matter what happens in this strange weird life I always know that there is a constant. The bike. I guess this is the essence of the good life... at least for some.

Ride Report: Feb. 13

Blogger sent out an email, and I was probably the only recipient. They said that 99.99% of all Blogger users host their posts on Google's servers. The rest of us (the .01%) FTP kilobytes to our own private web servers or webspace. This math is unacceptable to the Google so they are discontinuing FTP capabilities for Blogger at some indeterminate point in the future... I probably shouldn't have deleted the email. Oh well. This just means that we'll lose the Blogger interface and have to find another solution, or just go back to playing with HTML.

Anyways, the early spring continues, things are blooming and the temps haven't left the 50s for weeks... amazing really. I took a ride Saturday and while it was rainy, muddy and slow I filmed a few trails anyway:

Citizens United vs FEC

Politically speaking I don't know shit about crap, or was it 'shit from crap'? Anyways, either way, it takes something big to crack the gates of my ignoramous kingdom, something blatant and not subtle... This recent Supreme Court ruling to remove limits on campaign spending is, like, bad right? Some egg-head at the Univ. of Wisconsin calculated that,

"The nation's four largest banks would have to allocate a mere one-tenth of one percent of their assets--$6 billion--to counter a campaign in which the whole of the U.S. labor movement spent all of its assets."

I'm counting on all fingers and toes here and the math looks bad... How can labor interests compete in a system where the corporate financial institutions have more buying power in wet fart than the unions have in their entire coffers?
We already know that politicians do exactly what their donors ask, so what becomes of our 'democracy' when those campaign contributions limits are waved entirely...? Geez, you don't need a liberal or conservative talking head to tell you this is not so good.

The real losers here? The teary-eyed folks who voted for our Democrat leaders with hopes of Hope in their dreams and 'Yes we Can' bumper stickers on their Toyota Pious-es. They really thought their interests would be represented by this new, blue majority and what do they have to show?

Ride Report: Jan 23

The past week was warm behind the norm; temps sat in the mid-upper 50s and it didn't rain. My ride desire was off the charts, so I did night rides Monday, Wed, and Friday... the Wednesday ride was crazy, I rode to the top of the mountain, to Whoopsie Woodle and then all the way back down to the top of Ridge. The view from the top, of the mountains basked in moon light was just epic and it made me think that if I could write profound things then this view would give me the appropriate inspiration.

Saturday, today, was mission was to head up to 'Natural Selection', the trail Nate helped me finish once he moved to Bellingham and 'cam' it. The cam turned out pretty good considering the somewhat beaten state of the trail. I filmed a little tour before the ride, so I'll let the shaky camera work speak for itself:



Also, the helmet cam of Natural Selection with pieces of some other trails too:

Cheese attack!

A coworker handed me a piece of cheese today and said 'try this, its strong.' Without really thinking I tossed it into my mouth and bit down... immediatley my senses were overcome by a taste that can only be described as putrid. What I wanted to ask, but didn't, was how ugly was the Frenchman whose ass this piece of white hell was pulled from? Usually I will give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tastes; different strokes for different folks, but no human likes this cheese, its just not possible given our natural biology. Some may 'claim' to like this cheese, but only because they are being snobby and trying to prove some vague sense of superiority by eating something that literally tastes like ass. I don't like those kinds of people, they're the same thin-lipped types who claim to like The White Stripes' music. Don't do that people, a turd is a turd, just admit it ok?

I don't know the name of the cheese; just that its french, but based on the mouth-rape I just suffered I think we could make an argumented for justified war on the Surrender Monkeys. We'll bomb their vinyards and build breweries in the still smoldering ashes. We'll slaughter the cows that made the milk for this cheese and send the beef to McDonalds for use in Big Macs. Then, during an especially dark and cloudy night we'll secretly steal their fancy cigarettes and replace them with menthols! Take that Frenchies!