Midwest Rock Lobster

Critical Mass

2012-01-28T13:50:00.001-06:00

As I write this, I'm missing out on Critical Mess. But catching up on the blog thing means I get to share with you pics from last month, including the soon-to-Bermuda-triangulate Jenny.

Jenny returned to the Peace Corps and shuffled off to Liberia this month.

But Max got to ride Critical Mass for the first time!

I found this trailer at the thrift store across from my work awhile back, but we were missing a part to really hook it up right. Corinna had talked a lot aboutmaking Critical Mass a family affair, make Em ride and tow Mo as if it were nothing.

But after towing Max all over hell's half acre, and realizing that one MO is about three Maxes, she reconsidered. And that's saying something, the girl thinks nothing of hauling home 40 lb bags of dog food or cases of fruit by bike.

Saddle

2012-01-27T20:50:00.001-06:00

My Christmas present from Corinna was a beard trimmer. Said so right on the box.

Except this beard trimmer is really a leather saddle, a B-17 by Brooks.

These saddles are supposed to take a breaking in, but after getting the height/angle about right, I quit being aware the saddle was there. A good sign, since once it's broken in it's supposed to be the most comfortable, longest-lived saddle in the world.

Look at the Christmas!

2012-01-27T20:44:00.000-06:00

Played a lot of Monopoly at Christmas.

It was Scrabble at Thanksgiving, but after some of my relatives got a taste of how competitive someone who can make the Olympic Team can be, they wrote that game off.

But these games turned out to be great bonding experiences. especially when we got Mo into a game of Monopoly.

Why Don't I Blog?

2012-01-27T20:29:00.000-06:00

I remember back when I was still married to the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster, I'd see blog posts with titles along the lines of "Why I Blog."

I was new to the concept myself, so I read a lot of these in an effort to figure out what sort of freak show I had signed up for.

I signed up for it, though. Did I ever. It seemed, in a way, like technology had created a niche I had been born for.

Over 2500 posts later, I find myself past my daughter's mid-January birthday having not blogged stuff from before Christmas.

It's a dramatic shift. But life is full of dramatic adjustments these days.

I've accumulated a stockpile of photos I took out of the blog-it instinct, such as this one taken at church with my new phone. I never thought I wanted a smart phone. Corinna thought I'd be pissed off with the thing, in fact, but it promptly grafted itself to my consciousness.

Anyway, the answer to why I haven't gotten around to these things is I got sort of distracted by moving, the holidays, and so on. The process of moving two households into one, the one being the smaller house, has created an effect best described as Hoarder Palace. I have a lot of sorting out left to do.

But I miss this outlet for such things as Max visiting Santa.

Max is getting old, and we'll likely adopt another dog soon so he can help train his replacement. He gets cold easily in the winter, and besides being a love hound, he knows it's warmer in bed with someone. If you ask him to get off the bed, he'll jump down and immediately look up to see if he can be invited back.

He's not proud, he'll get in bed with anyone. He's in his golden years, what would you do?

For that matter, Max was the star of the show at my Mom's for Christmas. I was against bringing him, wasn't sure Mom would want him in the house. But not only was she down with it, my nephew was an instant fan.

He was adorable running after Max chattering, 'Bow wow bow wow bow wow!'

It was a fabulous Christmas all the way around. The way the custody arrangement works, every other year we each get the major holidays and this was the odd year for me. Meaning we did a full Christmas on Christmas Eve at my Mom's, a full Christmas on Boxing Day at my Dad's, and in between, my ex got to have a full Christmas on Christmas with the girls.

As I explained to a friend, divorce and remarriage has been pretty good to my kids.

I guess a Christmas present to me from my kids, when we got to my Mom's she'd made fried chicken at Em's request. You can take your Christmas ham and stuff it up your Christmas turkey's ass, the fried chicken was the bomb.

It was our first Christmas in Westheight. With all the chaos of moving and whatnot, I didn't get my outside lights up really, and it's almost February and the tree is still up, but as long as you understand the concept you can pass the class, right?

Oh, and me and Corinna got whistles from the girls.

All Lit Up

2012-01-10T21:27:00.001-06:00

The other night, I hadn't gotten to bike commute as much as I'd like and then we had some ridunculously unseasonable warm weather. So I caught part of the Brookside Ride on the way home from work and six or seven riders showed up with the Vegas Strip between their legs.

I want Christmas lights like this just for visibility, I'd ride with them year round.

Hamburguesas

2012-01-10T21:08:00.000-06:00

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburguesa

We had hamburguesas for dinner. They were hamburgers except we live in a neighborhood with an awful lot of Mexican immigrants and the attendant Spanglish signage. As far as I can tell, what separates hamburgers from hamburguesas is avocado if it's the take-out joint around the corner. The distinction is something less than semantic elsewhere.

The cheese melted over the patties was queso fresco, so maybe that's a distinction, too. The one pictured was light on avocado but included green bell pepper.

Homes Tour (Welcome to My New Neighborhood)

2012-01-04T21:30:00.000-06:00

Who are the people in your neighborhood? The people that you meet each day? Or so the children's song goes...

This is going to sound weird, but years ago, I thought I might live here. I was still married, in fact, to the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster, when I crashed on a couch after a homebrew competition in the Westheight neighborhood.

I remember at the time, I was reading 'Steal This Book' and it had a line about how smoking a cigar and hanging a picture of Che Guevera on the wall didn't make you a revolutionary.

My host opened the door with an enormous stogie clenched in his teeth and a framed portrait of Che behind him.

I was impressed with the neighborhood at the time, though. A lot like the Old Northeast of KCMO I used to inhabit, but with a wider mix of house sizes and styles. Some prairie school in the mix, and mansions (Senator Darby's house that could accommodate a Presidential motorcade without interruption in its garage) alongside three bedroom bungalows.

Imagine my surprise when I was riding home one evening to my new fiancé's house and ran into Chef Dan.

Or the day of the Westhight homes tour: he'd done an ice carving on the porch of the third house.

One of the charms of this particular homes tour, it's not all architectural monstrosities. The Darby house is the last one on the tour, and most are three bedroom affairs.

Tastefully done and historically preserved, but homes regular folks could live in. Including homes with some of the best forgotten ideas of modern architecture.

Including the most awesome basement/den in a ten mile area, though I have no pictures of it because it's owner posted a warning against all forms of electronics outside the hi-fi he keeps in an old GE oven.

It's a mutt neighborhood, I suppose. A few big houses, some smaller houses, prairie school mixed with neo-Romantic and whatnot.

But then, that's the charm of it.

And I flat out loved this one bedroom in the Senator Darby house. Not really pink, these walls were Pantone Magenta.

I think I want to paint our bedroom that color now. I said at the time that I didn't know how I could sleep in such a bright room, but the room's owner said when the lights were out it looked like a deep red and was very soothing.

Winter Choir Concert

2012-01-03T21:44:00.001-06:00

Em had a fantastic winter choir concert the night after the Jellybean Conspiracy.

Including a far-too-sexy-for-their-age 'Santa Baby' number. It was actually quite wonderful.

The Jellybean Conspiracy

2012-01-03T21:12:00.000-06:00

GEHS put on this play, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew that the production included a lot of 'special needs' kids, including my own daughter, and the advanced rep class.

It's a play that deals very directly and deftly with the real world, the stress, unexpected delights, impossible family crises, and societal issues you're in for if there is a kid in your family with Down syndrome, mental retardation, autism, or one of a bunch of other diagnosable, identifiable differences that take them off the regular citizen assembly line.

Because that's what school is designed to be: an assembly line generating industry-standard taxpayers who will, among other things, pay the property taxes that support the schools manufacturing the next generation of the same.

The historical tendency was to favor the norm above all. If someone deviated to the upper end of specific prized functions, that was next in line. Gifted ed programs cost a bit more money, sure, but you were producing the student equivalent of highly productive industrial equipment that makes bigger and better products possible.

The monkey wrench in this model is kids like my youngest daughter, who cost a lot more to educate, and who might not turn into a juggernaut of tax revenue.

Wow, that's a cynical view of education, isn't it? I'll have to think about whether I think it's entirely accurate, but it feels about right.

Anyway, real reforms to this machine have been made, going back several decades, and in my experience to mostly positive effect. Kids like Mo are included in so much more than they were when I was a kid, including this play.

One of the dividends this pays is I can see how differently the so-called 'typical' peers she has think of her, treat her, and interact with her compared with anyone in my age group.

I thought the play did a great job, too, of explaining to the outside world what it can be like within a family: I still have in a trunk the Winnie the Pooh bear I carried when I was a toddler. He only has one ear because I wore the other one off rubbing it on my cheek (and the remaining one is pretty worn, too). Mo's sister had a bear that was a big deal to her, but we don't have that keepsake because, many years ago, someone didn't pay enough attention to where the scissors were and they fell, along with Louis the Bear in to the wrong hands.

That's just one incident, but it's the kind of thing that wears on a family.

The flip side of that is just as important, and it's not neglected in the Jellybean Conspiracy. I was told in advance that Mo was loving the microphone, and it was true. The chorus line 'I'm proud to be a jellybean' that was said in unison by the cast, was repeated after a second's delay by Mo every time. Loud.

A friend of mine said, in the lobby, that she was stealing the show, but there was another girl I thought did even more so. Far from having stage fright, she recognized friend in the audience, broke character and signed a phone to her hear and said, 'Oh, hey! Call me!'

Oh, and the event was emceed by Brian Busby.

Totem / Moods

2012-01-02T20:54:00.000-06:00

Quite the long break from blogging for me. The dates don't tell the whole story, either: I took this picture almost a week before my last published post, so we're really talking almost a month off.

Things are not situated entirely, but I am ensconced in the comfort of my new man cave. The movie quote that comes to mind, "I got my Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi and I got my Black Jack gum here..."

Except in my case it's Boulevard Pale Ale, and upstairs is some queso fresco and leftover grilled chicken.

I shot this totem in the lobby waiting for Mo's play, the Jellybean Conspiracy, to start back on December 9.

They were also selling my daughter's art. They had some on display, but she's teamed up with a classmate, and she paints watercolor textures, and he cuts them out and mounts them. Then they pair them with announcement envelopes and sell them as stationery.

I bought five of these cards before I realized I was paying for art I could simply steal from my child.

Or commission simply by putting paints and paper on the table and letting her go at it. Which is what we've been doing the past couple of weeks. And she's been digging it, absolutely burning through the art supplies.

It's good stuff. I used a bunch of them as backgrounds for the family calendar this year and couldn't figure out why I didn't think to do so sooner.

Busy Busy Busy

2011-12-14T22:43:00.001-06:00

So much to blog about, so little time. Since I last had any 'me' time at the computer, I've commenced consolidating households with the Poet Laureate of Lobsterland in earnest, an ordeal greater than either of us realized. Combine that with her latest grant deadline getting moved up a week, contractors converging on her/our house to do thousands of dollars in damage...uh...err...I mean insulation and energy efficiencies, and I don't know what all. Oh, and we got new phones, smart phones. Not a big deal for me, but they had trouble porting Corinna's 180 contacts and she really needed them.

During this span, too, my oldest daughter had a choir concert and my youngest had a play, and these two events were separated by less than 24 hours.

Oh, and our main assistant in moving insists on using twine to secure even the heaviest loads. He makes a spider web of it, but no amount of hemming and hawing will make him consider a more substantial tie-down. In fairness, five loads including appliances, nothing escaped his pickup bed, but my nerves were shot by the time it was over.

Good thing he had moonshine. Or a commercial facsimile thereof, for us to drink from jelly jars.

I don't know why we didn't adopt a couple of new pets, start a new job and schedule an outpatient surgery to complete the week, lest we be bored.

I didn't even realize how out of sync everything had gotten until I finally got to ride home from work Monday and then back to work Tuesday morning. I went to log my miles in the spreadsheet I dorkishly keep, and said, "What? November 30 was the last time I rode? It's half way through December for crying out loud!"

I'd been off the bike so long that 42ºF and rainy didn't bother me, and normally that's weather that makes me crave a millstone.

So anyway, dear readers, if you're still checking in to Lobster Land and wondering what the hell happened, the answer isn't the nothing you've seen lately. And I'll cop to being a bit stressed out at times but it's all going to be worth it.

On my wet ride home tonight, I stumbled across an alleycat race being run by competitors who didn't know the word 'alleycat.' They thought they were on an urban adventure or scavenger hunt or something like that. They were dressed as roadies and their bikes were roadie bikes as far as I could tell (though cyclocross bikes look like roadie bikes to my eyes), but they all had serious lights.

The moving process seemed to stimulate Mo to ramp up her oral destruction of Legos. This is something she's done as long as I can remember, but this week she was building things out of Legos she'd previously gnawed on. The effect is basically a Lego structure as it might appear after the Joplin tornado.

Recovery Happens

2011-12-05T19:14:00.001-06:00

I took these pictures at S.I.D.E. when Corinna was dropping off her dog grooming gear. I remember the line in the movie Crazy People about 'I hate art therapy,' but maybe not.

Culturally, we have this notion that mental illness, depression, and so on are one way streets. Knowing that people can and do recover from all manner of mental illness is therapeutic. Probably more useful, in fact, than all the drugs in the pharmacy.

And S.I.D.E. is one of the places people get that knowledge and other tools that make recovery attainable.

Recovery isn't inevitable, but if you want to draw a parallel to substance abuse and addiction recovery, how many junkies and alcoholics would ever recover if they weren't told it was possible?

Temperature of Environment Lowers

2011-12-04T10:02:00.006-06:00

Bill Poindexter put up a post about winter cycling, and this is the part cagers* have the hardest time understanding.

This time of year, I get to work and the screen on the Agfa complains about the cold in its badly translated way (I'm told it's Japanese translated to English by Belgians):

I remember leaving work one evening and a coworker saying, 'But it's starting to sprinkle!' It was also around 70ºF, perfectly comfortable weather for a wet ride.

Drop that temperature by 30ºF and comfort leaves the picture, of course. Below 50ºF and rainy is the one condition I really don't enjoy, though I have a rain suit and I do use it for those commutes. It's really only hard right when I'm starting off. Stop at QT for a refill, and I have to start again, stop at Michoacan for Mineragua and chicharrón con carne, start again.

Below freezing it quits being rain and that's fine with me. I sometimes uses chemical warmers in my boots, I have lobster claw mittens (from Mickey's Surplus—a homeless guy told me he wore ones just like it when he was in the Army doing cold weather training), a couple different balaclavas, etc.

I have TMS** anyway, but having to be prepared for changing weather had my panniers filled to capacity this time of year. A lot happens in the weather between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.

It's challenging, but no more extreme or ridiculous than going skiing, ice fishing, or any other winter sport. You notice something's not warm enough, you figure out a fix for that next time.

A commuter I know told me he actually finds it harder to be motivated to ride when the weather's nice, because anyone can ride when it's 80ºF. When it's only 8ºF on the other hand...

*I use the term lightly; I'm often behind the wheel of a car carting my daughters about—more 'car light' than 'car free.' 'Cager' is a term that some bike advocates discourage on the basis that it's alienating, but when I'm sitting in gridlock on I-435 between Antioch and I-35, the car is most assuredly a cage. Or a coffin, a straitjacket, a medieval torture device, take your pick. It is no place a human should be.

**Carrying Too Much Shit on your bike.

Best Name Ever (Wanna Start a Band?)

2011-12-02T19:51:00.002-06:00

I read a piece in the paper a couple of days ago about a captive breeding program for an endangered species of salamander. I probably wouldn't have finished the article, really, except I was fascinated by the size and name of the creature. It's called an Ozark Hellbender, and they get to be two feet long (they're the third largest salamander in the world).

Photo by Brian Gratwicke

I've never seen anything like it in the wild, which would stand to reason since I'm slightly outside their range, not that woodsy to begin with, and they're an endangered species. Apparently the soak up a lot of heavy metals and whatnot, making them a 'canary in the mine' for the watersheds they call home.

But it gets better. If I thought 'Hellbender' was a cool name, and thought, isn't there a band by that name? the Kansas City Scar article mentioned an alias they are also known by.

Wait for it...

SNOT OTTERS

I can't make this stuff up (they ooze even more slime when they're threatened). Is that a bad-ass name or what? I instantly wanted one of my own as a pet. And what a fantastic band name it would make!

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, one night only, the musical stylings of the Snot Otters!

Deck the Dog

2011-12-01T19:40:00.000-06:00

We were putting up Christmas decorations and somehow the dog got all jingle-belled.

Gobble

2011-11-30T19:36:00.000-06:00

Our Thanksgiving Day ride (who brought the falafel to the first Thanksgiving?), we had our actual family time.

It's the sort of thing I took for granted at one time in my life, but something about getting divorced changed that.

I really enjoy my family, and that means getting together to gorge ourselves on too much food at birthdays and holidays.

It's so much fun seeing my nephew develop. My own kids are so much older, I'd kind of forgotten this age, able to walk but not really hold a conversation, curious about everything, fearful of little as long as Mom or Dad is around.

Since it wasn't my rotation to have my own honyocks on the holiday proper, me and Corinna made a bike expedition out of Thursday, went to my Mom's on Friday and my Dad's on Saturday. By Saturday, my Dad and step-Mom reasoned people would be sick of turkey, so they did pizza.

And somehow we ended up playing Scrabble at both my Mom's and my Dad's houses. I thought Monopoly, but Scrabble seemed to win out.

I new Corinna was competitive by nature (you don't make it to the Olympics if you're type-B), but I didn't realize she was really good at Scrabble. Swept three games at Mom's and one two of four at my Dad's, finishing with 'Gendered' — straddling two triple word scores for 128 points on that word alone.

Should have known, since that very game started with 'Judo' as the opening word.

Of course, I was left holding some very awkward letters. I couldn't talk anyone into accepting Esperanto proper nouns or Inuit family names.

Thanksgiving Epic

2011-11-26T21:50:00.000-06:00

It wasn't my year to have my daughters on Turkey Day proper, and me and Corinna both were jonesing for an epic ride.

I often do thirty miles in a day on my commute, but this was the furthest I've done since Memorial Day, when I hit three states in as many days on an ill-fitting bike loaded with four panniers, and oversized sleeping bag and a CPAP.

It took forever to feel like we were out of town. We rode out State Avenue, which becomes US 24, but it's town for so far, there's almost no telling where the bedroom communities begin.

We stopped for a snack in Tonganoxie. In line at the convenience store, a woman said, 'I saw you out on the highway!'

'Really?' I said. 'Were you the one who honked and swerved out of your lane, onto the shoulder in a big pickup to try and scare me off into the ditch?'

'So you saw me too!' she exclaimed.

It was a joke, nobody did quite that. But riding out State Avenue, there's no doubt about how you're not in Brookside. I don't know if the car dealerships give a special discount to assholes on crew cab pickup trucks, but it's hard to account for these machines any other way. If you get buzzed, crowded, honked at or tailgated, it's almost always a grossly over-sized pickup.

But most of US 24 has a nice, wide shoulder and while some people (I suspect assholes driving crew cab trucks but I can't prove it) have confused this shoulder with a Ripple dumpster, spiking beer and liquor bottles in between the shattered headlights.

We had a pretty stiff headwind all the way to Lawrence, and I really hoped the wind would keep up. I felt like the wind owed me a debt, and I feared that with the sun going down before we returned, we'd get stiffed, becalmed or worse, face a headwind out of the north and east as some weather system moved in on the night.

Tonganoxie also provided an interesting rest stop from a graffiti standpoint. Looked to be the same marker, and about the same age of tag, but apparently someone marked the path in the park as the 'Path to Rightousness,' edited the sign warning that the path was not for nighttime use to be 'Not for Nighttime Masturbation Use' and put an upside down cross and 'Burn the Church' on an adopt-the-road sign.

It's the sort of tagging I would have done when I was thirteen or so. Especially if there was nothing on TV and I lived in a small town.

We crossed a creek called 'Stranger Creek,' but I didn't see any strangers in it. It also didn't seem unusual, certainly no stranger than any other creek in Kansas, so I'm not sure where the name came from.

Corinna had a flat by a farm called 'Chix n Stix' where she was barked at endlessly by a mostly friendly looking black lab who kept trying to sneak up behind her while she worked on her bike. I have issues with farm dogs, and two enormous German Shepherds had given me pause in Reno a few miles before this. They were off leash and ready to chase me, though I spotted them first and dismounted, keeping the bike between me and them and getting my pepper spray handy.

Wouldn't have been such an issue except it's the exact breed I saw maul a friend when I was maybe seven years old. They stayed about twenty feet from the road, and after I'd walked the bike past what they'd likely consider their property, I was able to mount up without inspiring them to chase.

The black lab, though, he thought it was game-on when Corinna saddled up. She hollered at him and spooked him back into his yard, whereupon he ran behind the tree line, pinned his ears back and ran balls-out to try and close on her at the other end of the property. I was right behind her, watching the chase, and could see that he wouldn't be able to catch up to either of us as we went downhill at upwards of 20 mph. I guess he had to go back to counting cars after that.

Once in Lawrence, we wanted to eat. I thought maybe Free State would be open, but it was Thanksgiving and most of downtown was closed. There was one really expensive looking joint, an ice cream parlor and the Aladdin Cafe, a Mediterranean joint I ate at back when I bought my Accord.

I ordered the Aladdin's Feast and Corinna got the seafood kabob, and we shared, so we got a wide sampling of the excellent food. Falafel, hummus, pita bread and dolmas for appetizers, then shrimp, salmon, beef, lamb, chicken and veggie kabobs on safron rice, followed by halva for dessert.

It's not exactly a cheap joint to eat at, but it is fantastic food for bar & grill prices.

On the way back, the wind repaid at least some of the debt. It wasn't as strong a wind, but it was a tail wind most of the time. And considering that the traffic there was on K-32 (the highway we returned on) was probably overfed, boozed-up people exhausted by their relatives, we didn't get buzzed by or honked at much. The car that startled me the most, actually, wasn't even a truck, it was a Honda Civic, and it appeared to me that he was in zombie mode. He didn't move over to crowd me, he was riding in a relatively straight line at a very high speed and I doubt he even noticed me on the shoulder.

It was really the perfect trip, gorgeous weather, the headwind/tailwind front-loaded, great food, interesting sights, fewer than average traffic and canine hazards, only sullied by one and a half flat tires (I had a slow leak on my rear tire coming home, but by the time I knew it, we were so close I just pumped it up with the hand pump and topped it off at a gas station to get home).

A bit over 78 miles round trip, probably perfect for me since it stretched me on endurance without breaking me. I didn't even want the teleport button once, confirming something I've thought for awhile: while I can do a century, 80 miles is about the limit of what is generally fun. Above that gets to be too much of a good thing.

Cranksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T20:10:00.001-06:00

Last year's Cranksgiving was my first alleycat race.

It's a great ride, draws some urban cyclists, some cool kids (basically defined as those who ride fixies without a helmet while smoking cigarettes on their way to a coffee shop), some commuters, and unlike any other alleycat I know of, some roadies.

It's a food bank drive for St. Peter's food bank, and it hauled in over a ton of food and other necessities.

One rider managed 469 pounds on a bike with a B.O.B. trailer.

And you see the coolest bikes. I saw this guy last year with is Christmas-lit trailer and I thought it was Brian Gallmeyer giving his Christmas lights a ride.

There's bikes like the Puglsey, with big cushy tires in case you're trying to ride across a scene from Frank Herbert's Dune. I rode this bike in front of the Broadway Cafe, sort of. Jones has SPD pedals, I ride in Brooks running shoes, so there was a definite power disconnect. But I had to look down and check: did he have a suspension fork? The tires are that spongy, it feels like you're on springs.

Surley actually came out with a successor, the Moonlander, with tires almost an inch bigger, in case anyone wants a bike with tires that double as pontoons.

And track bikes built to favor aerodynamics over reality, innocent of brakes. Brakes are for stopping, as one Cool Kid told me. But I'd never, before Cranksgiving 2011, seen anyone riding around with a tiny front wheel to put their head even further down. It was like a short wheelbase recumbent and a fixie had a love child.

If you're unfamiliar, the race consists of a list of ten grocery stores, and a bunch of things the food bank needs. The first one to get to all ten stores and back with an item from each store wins. Fastest male, fastest female, and then there are team categories. And heaviest load, which as I say was 469 lbs by one rider.

Last year Corinna and I did all ten stores but we weren't even in the hunt as far as time. And we got back to the finish line after the kegs were dead soldiers. Boulevard donated a couple of kegs, bless their hearts, and this year I got back in time to consume some complimentary Pale Ale.

Smart promotional thinking, really. Cyclists, as a group, seem to be foodies and booze hounds, and quality beer appeals to both these vices.

I might have had a few too many Boulevard Pales since they were free and I'd ridden hard and relatively long. I only hit two stores because I wanted to get back for the after party (I grabbed nine items at the second store, not to compete but to fulfill the mission for St. Peter's), but I'd ridden over ten miles to the start and had over ten to get home after.

The temperature had been so high when we left the house, I dumped far too much baggage. Rain suit? Not in the forecast. Lobster claw mittens, overkill. But I left myself with only one long-sleeved shirt, jersey gloves and no balaclava.

Mistake. The temperature dropped about thirty degrees in the hour it took me to get home, leaving me with no quarter. 68ºF is a world away from 38ºF.

Joel won the fastest overall, and hammed it up and made the sort of inappropriate jokes that endears him to us all.

I think the girl who won the fastest female, though, was stoker on a tandem captained by a guy, so there might be a smidge of controversy there. Depends on how much stock you put in a Y chromosome, I guess. Personally, the love of my life had to be certifiably female to compete in the Olympics (they do a test, true story), and she's faster than me hands down.

Like I say, you see lots of bikes. Even scooters that must have been ridden by preschoolers.

And it's a bunch of freaks, no matter how you slice it.

I just should have anticipated the possible weather scenarios better.

On the way home, I spotted a bonfire at the Switzer Community Garden and wanted to stop in to socialize. But I was pretty whipped, buzzing with free Boulevard Pale and I'd left far too much warm gear at home to make room for groceries.

Besides the precipitous temperature drop, the wind that had gusted out of the south in the morning was bearing down ferociously out of the northwest, so I had headwind going both ways.

Trecker Bars

2011-11-23T19:25:00.000-06:00

I was checkout these out before Cranksgiving. I've thought mainly of bullhorn bars or mustache bars to build out my Long Haul Trucker, but one bike store keeps pushing these at me.

I'm not sure, but seeing them on a bike with bar end shifters, maybe.

Loaded for Bear

2011-11-23T19:07:00.000-06:00

On our way to Cranksgiving, Corinna took her dog grooming gear to donate to a peer support center that hooks people up with service animals. It was easily over a hundred pounds of stuff.

The load wasn't stable because of the dryer making it top-heavy, and about a mile from home it shifted and slipped and we had to adjust things. She was going to put the dryer on her front rack, which would have worked, but it was easier just to put it on my back rack to get it the rest of the way there.

It was a heavy dryer, too: going down a hill I realized it felt pretty fast and looked down to see I was doing 33 mph on a hill I might normally hit about 25 on. Lots more weight without much more drag.

Love in Kansas City

2011-11-21T07:24:00.000-06:00

Spotted this at the top of Beardsley. It's a canvas, mounted with fairly hefty brackets to a light pole.

Annie Get Your Gun

2011-11-19T20:15:00.044-06:00

They wouldn't allow photography during Em's musical. Annie Get Your Gun, not my favorite material. Irving Berlin tunes are fine in the hands of Bill Evans or Sonny Rollins, but in their native habitat they don't do much for me. The production was good, the choice of material turned me off.

Em impressed me by how animated she was. She settled for a chorus part again, but she was way into it. I thought of an interview I heard where John Reilly, the character actor, talked about how his first lead roll wasn't really a switch because he approaches all his rolls as if they were the lead. Nobody thinks they are the supporting cast for someone else, everyone is the lead in their own life story.

And Old Fashioned Wedding was great with the counterpoint. Two strong vocals, simultaneous and conflicting, with emphasis shifting from one to the other. Very impressive.

The material is valid as a document of where society was at the end of World War II. But I'd be fine with abandoning it.

Sweeney Todd is supposedly edgy, but at least it's not blatantly bigoted. Imagine my surprise when Em told me they'd cut parts of Annie Get Your Gun out because they were offensive.

More offensive than the Indians destroying the upholstery to harvest springs as bracelets and hanging their laundry on the train's emergency brake? More offensive than a woman being unable to attract a suitable mate if she's good at something besides swooning and/or spreading her legs? The whole story is based on stereotypes about gender and race, and that's the expurgated version.

I don't mean to suggest I didn't enjoy the musical, it was well done. And Mo was enthralled, so that was a plus.

I hope next year they do Rent, Hairspray, or Spamalot or something that's offensive in less offensive ways. Maybe with a little luck, we can bait the Phelps' clan in from Topeka for an old fashioned protest.

Album Art

2011-11-19T08:04:00.000-06:00

I grew up on LPs. Saved my first lawn mowing money for Kansas' Point of Know Return, Rush's Exit Stage Left and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

Part of the enjoyment of the record was the album art. Ozzy's The Blizzard of Oz, I bought that without even having heard Crazy Train. I just knew Ozzy from Black Sabbath and the album cover flirted with exactly the sort of sacrilege I craved when I was eleven. It was Randy Rhoads' guitar playing that made the record the centerpiece of a new religion for me — he took the heavy riffs you might hear on a Black Sabbath record and made them sit up and beg, roll over, speak Spanish and walk like an Egyptian.

But it was the jacket that got my money.

I used to spend the entire time my records played absorbed in the album covers. Frampton Comes Alive, Steppenwolf Live, that ridiculous egg on K-Tel's Southern Fried Rock. For that matter, the hottest porn in my house when I hit puberty was Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream and Other Delights (that and the J.C. Penny catalog's lingerie section).

Maybe it's partly how I became a graphic designer by trade, I've always been fascinated by the package. Even notebooks, steno pads, I was totally geeked out by the stationery section at the drug store when I was eight.

So we were in the thrift store the other day and I meandered into the albums expecting to find real temptation. Should I part with a quarter for this piece of art?

What I found was shockingly un-tempting.

Yes, some of the LP covers of years past were awesome. The other day, I was listening to an interview with Toni Iomi, plugging his memoir, and I thought about how I could be suckered into buying a Black Sabbath boxed set. I would buy such a thing. Then I realized that my daughters' generation wouldn't even know what someone meant by 'boxed set.' They think of music in terms of downloading a tune, not buying a record with a dozen of them even if you only want the one track.

Even CDs are on the way out, which means they miss out on even the album art at a humiliating reduction to less than five inches wide.

Looking at the album covers in the bin I realized my nostalgia has a lot of survivor bias. For every great album cover there were a hundred shitty ones. Guys at RCA and Atlantic and whatnot didn't know if they were shot, fucked, powder-burnt or snake-bit, but they needed a picture on the cover of another godawful record. Wives and girlfriends may have been drafted for models. Uncles with 35 mm cameras and nephews aspiring to careers in the graphic arts collaborated to generate some of this garbage, I'm pretty sure.

Jim Nabors, aka Gomer Pyle, can't even have his teeth cleaned by an airbrush in this throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks world of 33 RPM record production. Surprise, surprise, surprise anyone would want to hear him sing in the first place, let alone see his freakish mug in such vivid detail.

I almost bought the Kate Smith album because I felt it was the most of something: a middle-aged woman in a fashion refugee costume singing songs of the 'now generation.' The copyright date was 1969, the year I was born, but there was never a year when Kate Smith was part of any 'now' generation. At least not in a dress like that.

Maryville

2011-11-18T19:42:00.000-06:00

I drove with Corinna to her event in Maryville. She'd have ridden there, but she had events in KC the day before and the day after, and Maryville is an honest day's ride. About 111 miles by a bicycle-able route.

We could have ridden to Maryville on Thursday, or back from Maryville, but not both.

We stopped to try and get some magic hour shots near there, and spotted a fantastic wind farm in the distance. Also stopped at a good thrift store near St. Joe, too, where I found a good pair of work pants and a really nice silk shirt.

The poetry event was great. Once we figured out how to turn off the TV in the student union, anyway.

Last winter, in Columbia, I judged* and there was a problem with poets not understanding the criteria they were being judged on.

This time, the poets were pretty much all on topic, or at least found ways to construe their poetry as being germane and relevant.

I was struck, and I guess it shouldn't surprise me, at how young college students have gotten. When I was in high school, I felt like I was an adult, and college students, they were even older and more mature than I thought I was.

Now these students all remind me of my own daughters. Three years isn't that much of an age gap. Don't get me wrong, it would be huge if we're talking some nineteen year old guy dating my sixteen year old daughter—that's an age gap that could prove fatal to a dude.

But anyway, the kids were great fun.

As was the Asia Project, an act booked to the same venue a couple hours after Corinna's event. She wanted to stick around for it and it sounded about as appealing as picking butt hairs to me, but I'm in love so I gave it a shot.

The part that impressed me more than anything, actually was Asia's response to a cell phone going off during his performance.

As if it were written into the poem, he looked at the offender and said, 'I hope it's Jesus.' Then he continued with his regularly scheduled program without missing a beat or a breath.

*Not unlike beer judging, a poetry judge has to evaluate the poet less on personal tastes and more on the target defined for the competition. And being a BJCP beer judge for around fifteen years, I entered the world of poetry open mics with more judicial experience than John Roberts had when he was made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Dance

2011-11-17T19:41:00.001-06:00

Mo is hit and miss at dance, but this time she was hitting. Doing the stuff the others were, seeming to enjoy herself.

Warmth

2011-11-16T19:40:00.000-06:00

Not that long ago, I wouldn't ride alone in the dark. Hadn't even thought of riding in the city, or for that matter, considered my bicycle as practical transportation for even the shortest errand.

How long ago were these rules in place? A year ago, this would have been inconceivable to me. My friend Heather in Chicago, I thought she was shot out of a cannon because she rode to work (downtown, on the Loop, about as urban as it gets) all the way down to 25ºF.

I have good gear. Lobster claw mittens, a rain suit, balaclavas, etc. The coldest temperature I've ever ridden in was 2ºF, and that's plenty cold. But the suckiest weather to ride in?

Dark, 42ºF, raining and a stiff northwest wind. That is a big bowl of shit no matter your gear. Psychologically, it helped that I had Corinna's car at my disposal. When I got off work, knowing the weather was like this, I could have easily hopped in the millstone and driven home. Driven back to work the next morning when the weather wasn't much better, too.

I had two close calls on the way home, one a UPS truck that passed me very closely (I assume he didn't see my seven flashing lights, professional drivers are usually the least of a cyclist's worries), another a car turning in to a UPS facility on James Street in the West Bottoms. I'm guessing that one saw my lights but didn't realize I'd have to slam on the brakes to avoid being a hood ornament.

Anyway, with all my lights and helmet mohawk and all that, I felt like a drowned Mardi Gras float when I finally got home.

I hung my gear up to dry and went upstairs to the best warm-up meal ever. Corinna had made Dump & Stir burritos with pico de gallo with the last peppers and tomatoes from the garden (along with tomatillos, cilantro, etc. from Bonito Michoacan). The pico de gallo was the hottest I've ever had (our garden had almost no mild peppers this year), which was kind of nice as I defrosted.

And best of all, she'd bought some Guatemalan cream on the way out. We usually get Mexican crema from the butcher counter, but when she remembered, she was already at the checkout. The Guatemalan stuff is more expensive, no doubt because it has to ship refrigerated from the equator, but it's fantastic. The nutrition label reads like straight butter, and the first three ingredients are heavy cream, cream cheese and sour cream. It's salty, too, probably helps it travel well.

I doubt my burritos would have been as good if I'd hopped in the millstone and driven home.

Bias: You Can't Smell Your Own

2011-11-14T15:41:00.001-06:00

I have yet to meet a liberal who actually sees liberal media bias. I can't even convince friends of mine who work in liberally biased mainstream media jobs that the problem exists. Casually passing by a radio this morning, I heard NPR's Cokie Roberts illustrate the phenomena perfectly. This is a direct quote from Cokie's analysis of Congressional political strategy:

So, you know, Republicans who might have wanted to keep the economy bad to skewer the Democrats are now worried it could affect them and it could affect some of their key constituents, and they're not so sanguine about just letting it get worse. And Democrats who wanted to just, sort of, demagogue against Republicans on Medicare cuts are worried it might all backfire.

I'll give you that her cynicism extends to the Democrats in this statement, so I'm sure in her view this is balanced. I'm sure politicians from either side would indeed allow people to suffer a prolonged recession to advance their own narrow interests, but the statement relies on these assumptions:

1) That the Democrats have policies that would improve the economy quickly.

2) The Republicans know that if only they enacted these Democrat-advanced policies, the economy would improve.

Maybe if there were an editor or even a mailroom employee at NPR who was politically to the right of Al Gore...

25th

2011-11-13T04:14:00.000-06:00

Heartland was celebrating its 25th anniversary last week. I didn't get the 'x' in the 'beautiful' until I was downloading the pics of my camera. It's the ironing board they used as a lectern at the first services the church held in a basement back then.

I guess the ironing board Heartland's answer to the Hewlett-Packard garage. Anyway, I thought the giant numbers were cool. Wonder what they're doing with them after they're done. They could make interesting yard art.

Partying @ Boulevard

2011-11-12T14:06:00.000-06:00

Corinna took me to Kansas City's Got Talent at the Boulevard Brewery. It was a corporate talent show, and really I wasn't expecting much talent to be on show, but I figured the food and beer would be good.

The talent show was actually quite good. Some of the companies participating were big enough to have company talent shows to decide who would represent them here.

The facility itself is amazing. Boulevard was already a Kansas City institution, but when they built what Stephen Pauels calls the 'big ass brewhouse,' they also built to large banquet facilities with taps and full kitchens. There was a deck we could walk out on to see the city, and you can see down into the brewery.

And on the deck, you can smell the boiling wort from the latest batch going in the coppers below.

I wasn't disappointed in the food or the beer. Houlihan's catered it, a variety of finger-food comestibles. I would have thought that mini-Chicago dogs and sliders, by nature, would lead to a bit of portion control. But I think I ate more than I would have because it didn't seem like pigging out to have just one or two more...

I'd been out on the bike all day, and it was a very blustery day, so that probably contributed to my overindulgence.

And of course there were taps of Boulevard's fine products. I might or might not have lacked portion control on that stuff, too. I certainly didn't feel intoxicated when we left, but it was one sluggish ride home.

Patch Party

2011-11-11T13:48:00.002-06:00

I usually try to ride with at least three spare tubes. But I'd been falling behind on patching tubes, meaning every time I was getting flats, I was having to buy a tube or two to make sure I was covered.

Corinna, too. She hadn't realized how low she was getting on tubes for her mountain bike until we came off a levy and she'd picked up punctures in both tires and had only one spare tube in her pack.

So we were way overdue to have a patch party. I think we patched tubes for about an hour, not sure how many tubes that yielded. But you figure a patch costs around a quarter (and is way easier to put on in the basement than out on the side of the road), and a new tube costs around five bucks. So we saved ourselves probably $50 or $60 passing a pleasant hour at home on a cold and rainy night.

Pepperoni Sandwich

2011-11-10T13:37:00.000-06:00

Mo talked me into this. At Wal-Mart, they had these enormous pepperoni sandwiches on bagels about a foot in diameter.

I'm sure I could have bought bread of a less eccentric shape and filled it with pepperoni and cheese for less, but Mo asked like four times and the more I tried to tell her why we shouldn't get the pepperoni sandwich, the more I wanted to try it.

Ripple Up

2011-11-09T16:18:00.000-06:00

I love throwing bottles in the Ripple dumpster. It's such fun to shatter glass.

Apparently I'm not the only one. This barely had any bottles in it the last time I made a recycling run, maybe two weeks ago. It's pretty much full up now.

Captain Jack

2011-11-08T13:25:00.000-06:00

Ran into Jack Sparrow. Or a reasonable fascimile, with braided beard, has the walk down and everything.

Turns out, he shops at Wal-Mart. Actually, I guess he was there to promote the Subway franchise inside the Wal-Mart.

They sell rum at Subway?

Germexican

2011-11-07T13:19:00.000-06:00

This started with a German recipe Corinna's mother makes. But then Corinna started throwing in tomatoes from our garden, queso fresco and noodles from Bonito Michoacan, and it kind of morphed into a delicious Germexican type thing.

Some more of the late tomatoes were in the tomato and onion salad, and the few sweet potatoes the garden yielded were roasted with some of the last beets.

The pink/orange stuff is a cactus salad with carrots and raisins in it. Quite a spread, especially considering how much of it came from our garden this late in the year.

Utopia?

2011-11-06T20:14:00.000-06:00

I'm skeptical of all utopias, and this video definitely reeks of utopia. At the same time, without getting into arguments about peak oil and global warming (if those are legit concerns, that's a pair of high-voltage kickers you may ignore at your peril), just imagine 10% of the people contributing to gridlock in cars on our freeways deciding to get on a bike instead.

Cycling For Everyone from Dutch Cycling Embassy on Vimeo.

Ten percent. That's a number that can be reached if the cyclists in question refuse to ride when the mercury is above 95ºF or below 40ºF. Also rain, they can beg off for rain days.

I begged off for a rain day Wednesday. A tire on my fiancé's car went flat and while she had a full sized spare (if anything could ultimately prove we're soul mates, it's that), I had to get the three-week-old tire that went limp to the garage we bought it from and still pick up my kids on Friday.

The Bad Kind of Taco

2011-11-05T20:44:00.001-05:00

Edward moved Daisy free of charge, so I can't complain too much. But somehow during transit, her back wheel got tacoed but good.

Her wheels were basically junk off discarded Wal-Mart bikes at this point, and given her design she will eventually need hand-built tandem/touring wheels with at least 40 double-butted spokes on double rims with stout hubs.

A neighbor a couple years back left a wheelset from a Wal-Mart special on my doorstep as if it were a favor, and I only let them collect dust for a year or so before I got rid of them. Could use that back wheel now, as it'd be better than nothing.

Double Decker

2011-11-05T08:55:00.000-05:00

Quite a piece of engineering. It appears to have some sort of hydraulic system for raising the lower deck, but I'm not sure I see how it works.

Día de Muertos

2011-11-04T20:24:00.000-05:00

The Day of the Dead.

Beautiful evening to ride around the West Bottoms. We stopped at a park that tells the story of a ferry full of escaped slaves that sunk near here. I gather most of those on board escaped slavery either by getting to Quindaro or dying.

I had heard that Quindaro was where escaped slaves washed up, and I pictured a regular thing, folks jumping in the river to say 'take this job and shove it' with a raft or a barrel to hold onto, as opposed to it being just one big group of shipwreck survivors.

Scars

2011-11-04T09:24:00.000-05:00

I take my camera everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. I didn't realize how beat to hell it was looking until I was going through the graffiti shots and found this one I took with my spare.

Fluff

2011-11-03T13:31:00.011-05:00

It was time for a new helmet, being I'd had an impact in my old one. I'm skeptical of claims that helmets need replaced every few years because the Styrofoam degrades. As far as I can tell, the stuff won't even biodegrade. But having a crack and compression from a crash, I can buy that this would affect future performance.

Meanwhile, the helmet mohawk Corinna gave me was showing the effects of a 4,000 miles of all-season riding. It was faded and dirty looking. It wasn't even dirt, it was just the sun-faded tulle clinging to the last remnants of pink dye.

Corinna bought some bright pink tulle with a denser weave and used that to make herself a new one a couple months back, and I'd been debating about it. I liked our fluffs matching, as they once did, but I don't dig the denser tulle that much and in any case, I was thinking a change of color would be nice.

I got a yard of purple at Wal-Mart and some nylon thread that resememles twine in thickness, along with a big, pink plastic needle and improvised my way to a purple mohawk.

It seems a bit taller than the old one, and it's attached somewhat differently (better, I hope). I bet some of that tall will work its way down with riding. I might try doing a multi-color next time, almost did this time.

The Helmet Worked

2011-11-02T09:01:00.002-05:00

Crossing railroad tracks like this, you want to be as perpendicular to the tracks as possible. Which is tricky where the rails divide, presenting multiple angles to try and cross.

If you screw up and hit it too obliquely, two rails maybe two inches apart will grab your front tire and try to guide it. Some sand between those rails is really bad news, because when you try to correct your front wheel, the sand acts like so many little ball bearings, and your front wheel will be out from under you before you can realize that popping sound was your helmet cracking on the asphalt.

At least that's been my experience.

I know so many riders who don't use helmets, and I know bicycle helmets aren't as protective as motorcycle crash helmets, but you never get fucked up worse for having one on. This is exactly the kind of accident a bike helmet is for.

I wasn't going fast, there wasn't a car in sight. I doubt it would have killed me or anything like that, but who needs an unbuffered blow to the temple like that?

Luckily I didn't break my collarbone. First thing I thought, this was exactly the kind of crash Roj had when he broke his clavicle. I got off with a bit of road rash, a bit of a lump on the thigh where I must have landed on a piece of gravel, and some whiplash.

Reload

2011-11-01T23:25:00.004-05:00

I had a flat the other evening going home, and Corinna thought I was silly to unload the bike to change it. But for eight miles, give or take, I'd been battling a 100% back 0% front weight distribution owing to the fact that I was carrying a half a case of paper in copies in addition to the usual TMS.

I could have laid it down on the panniers, but the way a half case of paper was strapped on there, I figured it would slide out of the straps and I'd have to redo it all anyway.

Then, about a week later, I was making a Wal-Mart run and realized that eight two-liters far outweighed the saddlebags and moved the panniers up before strapping down the bottles. Leads to a much more balanced ride.

I've had that front rack for five months now, and I'd only ever used it when I had four panniers on the bike for touring.

Halloween

2011-11-01T01:54:00.000-05:00

I don't feel like I really 'did' Halloween this year. I put on my purple yolk to hand out candy, and Mo put on her pirate costume from last year over her regular clothes and asked to go trick-or-treating.

We'd been over this. I got a lot of dirty looks the last few years, Mo being as big as she is. But I really like taking her, and you see a few high schoolers out doing it. But it really is, and should be, a holiday for little kids, and a freshman in high school who can share clothes with her mother doesn't qualify, I'm afraid.

It was basically a matter of drawing the line somewhere, arbitrary I suppose. Maybe I should have taken her one last time, the last time Halloween will be in this neighborhood for us.

I loaded up on candy to give out, knowing the weather would be perfect (I don't buy early anymore, a few years ago it sleeted on Halloween and I was stuck with several pounds of Mary Janes, a candy I don't even like). Big bag of Reeses cups, big bag of Kit-Kats, and a truly colossal bag of the low-caste stuff, suckers, jawbreakers, bubblegum and whatnot. I think the total was over 300 pieces, and I gave at most two out to each kid until the very end, when it got to be ten minutes or more between and the kids got to be at least as ridiculously old as Mo is to be out pestering strangers for candy.

By then there were just a few handfuls of the garbage candy left, and I let those old-enough-to-drive kids have it all so I could turn out the light and focus on the Chiefs game.

Em had play practice and wasn't allowed to dress up for that, Mo and me barely dressed up, no jack o'lanterns were carved, but it didn't turn out to be such a rubbish Halloween. Taking Mo around on the begathon the past few years, I've mostly missed out on handing out, especially to the kids who are young enough to be super-cute. I had a unicorn, a mermaid, and a cowgirl who couldn't have been older than three. I also had three or four Ironmen (and almost as many Spidermen), a Bubba Starling, a hobo, a pair of Bavarian Barbarians and a pair of dice. It was great fun, especially quizzing the less obvious kids.

What's your costume? I asked one kid. A college student?

"I'm a character from The Hunger Games."

Okay, Mo's big sister is reading that, so you're too old. That's why you got a rock.

Levy Tag Safari

2011-10-30T21:37:00.011-05:00

I've been on this levy before. Corinna had billed it as 'bike and hike,' and I didn't realize that meant carrying my fully loaded bike (I had my CPAP on the rack in addition to my usual TMS) over rocks and under bridges.

There is so much great tag art in this town. I remember one time, I was setting up a shot to light paint, Scribe's Billy Goat, aka 'ReSoundFields,' and Corinna commented that I couldn't shoot all the tags in town.

I think I said something like, 'Watch me.' And as luck has it, I got what may be my favorite photo of over 90,000 I've taken these past five years.

The levy didn't stress me out this time. It was daytime, plus I knew what I was in for.

In fact, it was my idea to go there. I wanted, in particular, to try to shoot Shakey, Mpulse and Femme by daylight. I should have made it a morning trip, these tags are on walls on the west side of the Kansas River, and late afternoon in October meant the sun was going down behind my subjects.

I didn't really get Shakey. If that's what that tag even says, I'm not sure. It's so big, I'm pretty sure it can be seen from space. How big? I guess it's bigger than Mpulse and Femme combined, since I could get those two in frame and couldn't get more than a third of Shakey at once.

Here's Corinna with part of the 'H' in this massive tag:

Of course there are tags on top of tags, and some tags are clever but they can't all be.

Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

2011-10-30T01:00:00.003-05:00

After visiting the 99%ers, I tried to get some good night shots of the Liberty Memorial. I'm rarely there at night with enough time to try it, and it was a beautiful evening.

My camera really isn't the man for the job, but I managed some. I was mildly worried that the security guard was going to try and run us off, but apparently the monument doesn't really close so much as they try to keep close enough tabs on you to make sure you're not tagging up or copulating.

I don't remember ever seeing graffiti at the Liberty Memorial, but I do remember when it had the reputation of being the cruisiest gay pickup spot in a thousand miles.

I got a cool shot of Corinna with shadows that suggest angel wings.

Occupied?

2011-10-29T19:22:00.005-05:00

We stopped off to see the Occupy KC crew on the way home. I'm frustrated with what I see on this front in many ways, but I'm glad to see them there.

I'm not convinced it qualifies as an occupation, it's more of a party from what I can see.* Which makes it a huge improvement over the Tea Party, another ideological mishmash of folks who mean well, get some things right, and offer almost nothing I can buy as a solution. The Tea Party, though, seems short on partying.

At least these folks know how to have fun camping in the park, and that's something. I know I anger my liberal friends with my cynicism about the 'occupation,' but as with all my Tea Party friends, the likeliest outcome I see is they'll be useful idiots for the powers that be. Your choice: be a tool of the Rupert Murdochs of the world, or carry water for George Soros and Warren Buffet.

Either way, 99% of us are going to get it up the tailpipe.

The labeling of fascism as 'capitalism' by this group is probably one of the biggest problems I have embracing it fully. Nothing resembling free market capitalism has existed in my lifetime, and they do get it right that business and government are in collusion and that this is a shitty way to do things, but calls to 'tax the rich' and 'end corporate greed' don't even show a grasp of the situation.

Which is to say this group reminds me a whole lot of me circa 1991. I'm still a Libertarian, but back then I thought the LP could actually save America. After being exposed to the inner workings of the local party, including running for Jackson County Legislature (I came in third place in a two person race after the Republican, who never campaigned, moved out of the district weeks before the election), I realized that with a few exceptions, Libertarians can't get elected and worse, once elected they can't really get the things they say done.

I still consistently vote Libertarian, there's no reason to cast a vote for the Republican and Democratic marketing machines of the ruling fascist establishment. But I don't kid myself about what that vote accomplishes. Less than Poujadism, and that didn't accomplish a whole lot.

Unlike OccupyKC, the Libertarian Party has a complete, more or less coherent platform, enjoys wide ballot access and still can't organize a one-float parade.

*I'm speaking of the Kansas City edition of this protest. This isn't Oakland.

Pub & Pedal

2011-10-29T18:09:00.062-05:00

We missed the actual race, but got in on some of the action. It was an alleycat race starting from the old Osco drug on Main and ending at Buzzard Beach in Westport. As the 'Pub & Pedal' name implies, it had a boozey theme, with a manifest sending cyclists to bars all over town.

Really all over town, including a biker (as in motorcycle) bar out in the middle of KCK. Would have been fun to do: I'm not very fast, but I'm getting to know good routes for getting between some of these places, and routing is winning in alleycats.

We were coming from the Water Fire show on the Plaza, so it was just a hop up the hill. We'd already had enough being jammed in with a crowd of people, though, and the after-party was a crowded one. Lots of sexy Oktoberfest costumes, and not just on Brian Gallmeyer, either.

I told Jones, the organizer of this event, about my idea for Race to the Bottom, a cocktail themed alleycat where everyone buys ingredients for a cocktail (all eligible drinks would have an identical number of ingredients), but each ingredient has to come from a different municipality or zip code or something like that. Then, at the finish line, we have a contest to see who makes the best margarita, side car, etc. You have prizes for the race itself, then the cocktail contest, everyone wins.

When the organizer of race that ends with an hour of free beer looks at you like you're out of your mind to organize such an alcoholocaust...

I guess I have some kinks to iron out in this idea, because I can see his point.

We didn't stay for the free beer, though. If I'm going to be confined in chaos and noise, I want to be confined with these people: it's good to see a bar parking lot packed with pedal-powered vehicles, plus someone bought the homeless guy in the alley a plate of bratwurst from the post-race buffet.

Elemental

2011-10-28T11:45:00.002-05:00

I guess they do this every year, but it was news to me. They float a bunch of braziers on Flush Creek and light them up at dusk. It's really cool, even if it was insanely crowded.

It was a hard event to photograph, but I tried.

It was an easy event to reach by bicycle, though. They had some of the streets on the Plaza blocked off to car traffic and the rest were bumper to bumper.

There were kids sliding down the grassy slopes around the creek, and Corinna joined them in it. It was like sledding except without the props and snow.

Quixotic was performing, but by the time we figured out where and when, we'd both had our fill and it would be a 45 minute wait for the performance. So we headed up to Westport.

You know it's a mob when you'll go to Westport on a Saturday night to escape the crowd.

After Glow

2011-10-27T16:27:00.001-05:00

After the Joe Lovano concert, we rode by the new Kauffman Center, which was letting out from the Tom Sawyer ballet.

We rode up the wrong way on the valet drive, got some good shots of the place and the city, and tried to video Corinna's Tallgrass poem with her sitting in some tall grass. It's an installation (the grass, not the poem), supposedly the native stuff. But between it being dark (we used our the Niteriders on our helmets for stage lights) and the incessant racket of cars, we might as well have tried to shoot the poem in a tent on the field in a NASCAR race.

I learned a lesson about hauling beer. I was uncharacteristically sans panniers that evening, and I tried to lash a sixer of the beer that made Milt Famey* walk us onto the rack. Going down the Twelfth Street bridge, my ankles got chilly and wet as one can leaked its goodness out; a second can blew before we were out of the haunted house district in the West Bottoms.

Someone who bore a striking resemblance to the love of my life tried to tell me not to lash the beers down on their sides. I could have listened, but that's a dangerous precedent to set.

This guy was playing with flaming nunchucks (or whatever you'd call them) in front of one of the haunted houses.

You know what they say, right? Play with fire, you end up on my blog. Okay, maybe they don't say that, but they will, someday. You'll see.

*Really old, really long joke, sorry about that if you took the time to Google it.

Mush!

2011-10-26T17:01:00.000-05:00

This is why I always have my camera with me. You never know when you'll be parking a car and see someone driving sled-dogs up the street without a snowflake in 400 miles.

Joe Lovano & Esperanza Spalding (Us Five)

2011-10-25T21:25:00.000-05:00

I managed to get tickets to see Joe Lovano and Us Five at the Gem. According to the Kansas City Scar's review, all eyes were on Esperanza, and I can understand why he said that.

When I saw her at the Folly a couple of years ago, I got in the autograph line and proposed to her. She said no, she was married to her bass (and I realized that this particular question didn't come up all the time), and I said, 'Well, then, an autograph?'

But she was the headliner that evening. She played, she sang, she worked the room. If charisma were breasts, she would have been Morganna the Kissing Bandit.

The Us Five set was maybe not quite as accessible to someone exposed to jazz primarily through the band at Blue Room poetry slams. When I realized Joe was announcing the band because it was the end of the show, I was like, Not already! But it was 9:35, and the band had been on stage for around ninety minutes.

A fast ninety minutes, but a mix of straight ahead and free jazz that wouldn't probably be the gateway drug for someone who spent the years I spent in jazz band and music theory classes on the judo mat. She said she enjoyed it, but she also said, 'I thought you said she sang.'

She does when she's the headliner. This show actually showcased her virtuosity on the bass a bit better.

Anyway, a great show, and just so I'm not claiming to be too sophisticated about jazz, it was ten minutes in before I realized there were two drum sets on the stage. Not a drum kit and a Latin percussionist, two regular drum sets. I haven't seen that, I don't think, since Frank Zappa played the Uptown in 1984.

They're great musicians, though, they never step on each other's toes, trading off between color commentary and play-by-play duties.

And yeah, we rode there. In case you wondered. The Gem doesn't have much in the way of a bicycle rack, not even a Hersey Meter I could see, but we locked up to Flossie the Guard Cow.

It's Like it's August in October

2011-10-25T16:50:00.001-05:00

I finally had my first (and likely last) BLTs for 2011. In October.

I did find a deal on bacon: the Burgers' Smokehouse bacon that I like because it's not injected with brine sells five pound packages of odds & ends for a little less than half what their center-cut bacon costs. It doesn't have as many full-length slices, and it's probably got a bit less meat to it, so more of it cooks away, but still, a deal.

Pink Pizza

2011-10-24T16:45:00.000-05:00

Being as it's October and all, I made the pizza dough pink this time. Grilled chicken with Alfredo sauce was one pie, the other being the same idea but with hot Italian sausage instead of chicken.

I didn't raise any money for research or anything else that might actually be helpful in the quest to save the ta-tas. Which always sounds like a frivolously fun cause unless, say, you have a friend who's roughly your age, even a couple years younger, fighting for her life.

'Tis the Season

2011-10-23T20:38:00.000-05:00

So I was riding past the Edge of Hell the other evening. I love the way that sounds, by the way.

Anyway, I stopped to take a picture of this zombie they had working out front. When he realized I was trying to shoot him, he stepped up, into the light, and reached into his pocket to produce a rat.

A real, live rat. He then proceeded to put the rat in his mouth and let it dangle.

So I asked him, does the rat ever bite back?

"Yeah," he said. "But that's okay, I like it."

Gotta love Halloween.

Worlds of Fun

2011-10-22T23:28:00.090-05:00

This is one of my favorite things to do with my kids, but I hadn't been since August of 2008.

At the time, I thought about maybe a season passport for the following year. Instead of one big, long marathon day, make it something we hit once a month or a little more than that. If all the out-of-pocket for the day was parking and we took a picnic (they have an area for that, in fact) it'd be doable.

My only reservation was, really, if we went too often it'd quit seeming special. Like I say, that was August of 2008, and the recession hadn't really hit me—yet.

I have nothing to complain about in the past three years, not compared to a lot of people I know. I didn't get laid off, though I had my hours cut by 20% for seven or eight months, meaning my income was about what it'd be on unemployment except that I still had health insurance. Season passports to Worlds of Fun weren't on the menu, though.

2010 was a better year economically, but the Ghost of Refinances Past was rattling the chains loudly around my house and my personal financial situation was more and more a Christian Scientist suffering appendicitis: did I want an ineffective cure or an unpalatable one?

But that's not really what I came to talk to you about, as Arlo Guthrie would say. I came to talk about what a great day I had with my daughters and fiancé getting a major fix of thrill rides.

I'd been planning this trip sooner, actually. I had $85 in an envelope earmarked for it in the center console of my car when it Bermuda triangulated. The cash was easier to replace, of course, than the car. And while I still haven't got my transportation situation ironed out, my inner child made an executive decision.

Worlds of Fun would be open two more weekends that I had my kids, and that would be it for this year. And the weather last weekend was stellar; no guarantee about the last weekend of the month. And I've skipped every carnival ride opportunity all year: JoCo Fair, Santa-Cali-Gon, Old Shawnee Days, etc.

You can often buy unlimited ride wristbands at those affairs for $20 or so, and we love carnival rides (I think things like the Zipper seem all the more thrilling for being maintained on the road by alcoholics and drug addicts), but $60 for ride wristbands is about half way to a day at Worlds of Fun and nowhere near the value.

The deal I got was the same I got back in '08. You book in advance for a specific date, no refunds, but it's ten bucks cheaper than the regular gate and includes a very good, all-you-can-eat buffet meal in mid-afternoon. Which, if you price grub out there, makes it more like a $20 discount, maybe a little better than that even.

The weather was absolutely perfect. If you've seen Defending Your Life, it was Judgment City weather.

I think the first ride we got in line for was the Detonator. Em won't ride it, for some reason, but it's Corinna's favorite and I'd have to say it's probably my favorite if you exclude roller coasters.

If you've never ridden this one, you strap in to a seat on a 180 foot tall tower. You do zero-to-45mph in roughly a second up, get weightless for a split second, then kind of bounce back down. Four and a half G's, it's a very astronautical experience.

I thought the Mamba was my favorite coaster: so fast and smooth. And I always think I'm going to get decapitated in the turn, even though I know those supports are probably ten feet out of reach. I try, but I can't take that turn without ducking.

I kept seeing these Rastafarian bananas. Several sizes, some bigger than me. I wondered how much they cost, but it turns out their price isn't fixed: you have to win them. Meaning you can get one for a buck or spend $150 failing to get a softball to land in a dairy canister and never get one.

I admit, I ponied up six dollars in an effort to win one, though with the four of us and Corinna's bike in her Corolla, I'm not sure how we'd have gotten him home. I'm pretty sure tying a six foot banana with dread locks to the fender of your car will get you pulled over on the interstate.

We'd arrived at 11:00 a.m. and thought it seemed like a busy day. The ride lines weren't exactly epic, but there was a wait.

Then, as it got into the evening hours, somebody unleashed a sort of teenaged humanitarian crisis on the park. I gather it was a record attendance, and it was back to back, belly to belly.

Very cool in all this mayhem to recognize a familiar face. I knew Gretchen was going to be out there with her family the same day, and I'd wondered if I'd see them. But it's a big park, lots of people. At one point, I thought I saw her daughter waiting in line at a concession stand next to me, but I've only met the kid once and that was a couple of years ago.

The Amazon waiting in line while I waited to refill Snoopy (they got me on an $11 souvenir cup because refills are a buck) was far too tall to be Gretchen's kid. I don't know why I thought that, Gretchen is tall by Gen X standards, as is her husband.

It was her daughter, of course, and when I saw the whole family together, she took a pic of us with my camera.

I wished I could introduce Corinna but she and Em were waiting two and a half hours for one of the haunted house attractions.

I'd never been out to Worlds of Fun for their Halloween themed stuff, but it's pretty cool. Not exactly scary, the chainsaw guy you can hear a quarter mile off and you know they wouldn't let him have a saw with teeth in it.

The smoke machines were going full bore, and they have all sorts of lights up, it really becomes a spooky-poo wonderland of sorts.

Actually, I'd never been in the dark. Ridden roller coasters in the dark. I think me and Mo waited around 80 minutes for the Prowler, but that is one freakish ride in the dark. I think it only goes about 50 mph, much slower than the Mamba's 75 mph, but the way it shifts directions and twists, and the racket of the wood, makes it an intense ride.

As I felt my brain pushing against my skull, I realized that as much as they might like to market roller coasters and thrill rides as the most extreme yet, they really can't push them much farther without inflicting traumatic brain injury on the average rider.

That goes double for the Timberwolf in the dark. That's a violent ride anyway, and in the dark you can't see where you're at in the park as well. I thought it was almost over, then realized we were at the half-way speed check.

At one point, earlier in the day, Em had gotten cranky and I told her that we wouldn't have our money's worth until everyone was exhausted and hating each other. "I'm about there," she said. And I replied, "But the rest of us are still fine, so we're not done yet."

Believe it or not, that actually worked, and she got back into the groove all the way into the dark. But by the time she and Corinna were done with the haunted house, Mo was on strike. We'd gotten in line for the Mamba yet again, and she'd been grabbing at her feet and ankles and saying 'ouch' a lot in line for the Prowler. And trying to sit on the middle bar of the railings.

After maybe a minute in the Mamba line that reached all the way down to what is supposed to be an open area unrelated to the ride, she bolted from the line and sat on a park bench a few feet away.

A twelve hour shift is a long shift, even if you're playing and riding roller coasters.

The amazing thing was, besides the epic crowds in the park, as we left, nearly midnight in the car, there was a stream of cars a mile long still trying to get into the park. A park that would be closed by the time the ones at the end could get parked and pay the gate.

Harvest

2011-10-22T06:53:00.001-05:00

About a week before Corinna harvested a bushel of green tomatoes ahead of first frost, I managed to glean a few goodies from the garden. A disappointing year for some crops, especially tomatoes, but what we had was worth it.

Genius Bicycle Light

2011-10-21T06:48:00.001-05:00

You can get some very bright LED flashlights for dirt cheap these days. I admired this guy's ingenuity, taking a cheapie flashlight, some tape, zip ties and a hose clamp. About a tenth the cost of even the famously inexpensive-but-bright Magic Shine.

I met the owner, he came out with his groceries while I was still loading mine on the bike. He's not a sport rider, just someone who decided he didn't want to spend a buck firing up his car to go three blocks to the Wal-Mart or five blocks to his job.

I've Been Plagiarized

2011-10-21T00:30:00.000-05:00

I spotted this headline today.

Without getting diatriabolical about people getting disability checks for bullshit disabilities, I just want to say that 'Disability Industrial Complex' is mine. I coined that. Senator Coburn used it without my permission, which I will sell for enough money to finish building out that Surly Long Haul Trucker and replace my stolen car with a used Scion xB.

Hayride in Exurbia

2011-10-20T21:25:00.017-05:00

Actually, I'm not sure the place qualifies as exurban: it's pretty much rural.

I've known a lot of people with the same dream, live 'in the country.' They may have a job on College Boulevard or even downtown, but they'll have mailing addresses in Paola, Kansas and Adrian, Missouri. Which isn't to say they actually live in those towns, they live on hobby farms or in a split-level plunked in the middle of a twenty acre lawn.

Then they commute. It was a revelation to Corinna the first morning she rode in a car with me on my morning commute. Here I was, getting on the interstate from the furthest southwest corner of Johnson County to head into the city for work, and there was all this traffic coming in from further south.

"Where do they come from?" she asked, half-astonished. I say half, because she knew the answer to that. Even lived that life briefly a few years ago.

The answer is they come from places like the one we went to the third annual hayride hosted by the woman who really got the special needs ministry at Heartland going.

I can see the appeal of living in such a place. It's beautiful. If I worked from home and didn't need to access the city apart from the occasional grocery run, I...could no way ever live out here.

Letting alone the fact that I hate riding on gravel roads, and living in the country would definitely lock me into that, I've felt far too isolated from cultural institutions, night life and entertainment living in Gardner, let alone way out in Miami County.

The only reason I moved to Gardner in the first place was I had a job there, and the job looked like a keeper. It was a great job for ten years, and nine of those years I enjoyed a commute so short I feel silly in hindsight for not cycling it more than a half dozen times. 2.4 miles, you can't even get sweaty on a hot day in that kind of distance. I could drive a jalopy and not care if the air conditioner or heater worked.

Or I could have gone it one better and gone car free.

Nothing against Gardner, it's a great place to raise kids. Phenomenal school district, low crime (when my friend in Chicago had her bike stolen from a fifth story stairwell I joked to her that I probably couldn't get my bike stolen from my driveway), and maybe the highest greasy spoon per capita count in 500 miles. As my friend (and mayor) puts it, 'a great place to live but I wouldn't want to visit there.'

I guess I'm kind of looking at the coin from the other side. While I enjoy visiting exurbia, and totally see why the people who sign up to drive 100 miles per day enlist in the gridlock marines, I wouldn't want to live that way. Too much time in the car, too much fretting over gas prices, and far too much wearing cars out.

Barrels

2011-10-20T14:39:00.000-05:00

In front of the Firehouse Gallery, which is housed in a former firehouse, appropriately enough. While I was shooting this, I noticed firefighters smoking in front of the new firehouse just up the street.

The new firehouse may have more garage space or whatever, but it sure lacks the character of the old one.

Helmet

2011-10-20T06:35:00.000-05:00

Mo used to wear this helmet quite a bit. The arrowhead logo is long since worn off the side—it was mine when I was a kid.

It turns out it still fits. Sort of.

Lasagnapalooza

2011-10-17T22:23:00.002-05:00

Corinna invited a few folks over for dinner and made an Olympic-sized lasagna.

I always try to cook for leftovers, and this has typically meant I fill both my casserole dishes when I cook something like this. It never occurred to me to use my turkey roaster as a casserole dish.

Speed Table

2011-10-16T22:13:00.005-05:00

I'd never heard of speed tables, just spotted this sign on the way home the other evening. It turns out it's like a long, flat speed hump, one that keeps the traffic from getting too crazy without stripping your muffler off if you're flying a long at 7 miles per hour.

I can think of thirty streets or so that could really benefit from these, including my street in Gardner.

A House Divided

2011-10-16T20:36:00.005-05:00

I made a t-shirt and sweatshirt for a customer who was more than willing to pay a setup charge for a below-minimum order.

It seems he has two kids at college, but they aren't at the same one. Their two schools were, however, about to butt heads in a football match.

They Can Relate?

2011-10-15T22:01:00.005-05:00

This is either really awful or really great. I can't tell which.

Stuffed Punkins

2011-10-15T21:50:00.001-05:00

I love stuffed pumpkin.

Last time I made it, according to my above linked post, was about two days before I met the girl of my dreams. A couple of years ago there was a shortage of pie pumpkins, which is the kind you stuff, so I have my radar up by late September now. They're dirt cheap and plentiful again this year, and I decided I like this dish too much to make them one at a time. I did two, I might do three next time, I think three will fit in the oven.

About the same amount of work, and a lot more lunches left over.

I've started mixing up the stuffing recipe, too. Here's what's essential: sautéed onions, garlic, croutons, cheese, savory herbs, and fruit.

Gruyère is fantastic, but sharp cheddar will do and it's a fifth the price. Some bleu cheese in the mix is good to get some sour and salty notes. Craisins, figs or dates, even plain old raisins, will provide sweet bits.

Nuts of some kind are a good idea. And I advise a free hand with the butter, allow at least half a stick per punkin, use it for the onion/garlic sautée.

You can reintroduce the roasted seeds from cleaning the pumpkin seeds out, but I really like the roasted seeds by themselves.

Stuff the squash as tight as possible, then pour in a cup of chicken stock to each. You'll have to be patient, if you've done your due diligence at cramming the stuffing in, it'll take a few minutes to get a cup of stock absorbed.

Cap and bake for 90 minutes at 350º, uncap, top with more cheese, and bake another half hour.

Ripple

2011-10-14T21:38:00.023-05:00

I've recently started recycling my glass bottles. They park this dumpster at the Price Chopper. I'm not going to get into the 'green' arguments for recycling here, because to me there's a better reason to take your bottles to the Ripple dumpster:

It's fun to throw them in and hear glass breaking. True story.

Homecoming

2011-10-14T21:31:00.003-05:00

Em went to Homecoming in this dress with glittery Converse court shoes.

Step off, boys: You'll never measure up.

The New Normal

2011-10-14T09:38:00.004-05:00

So I spotted this car on the way to work. I was ahead of schedule enough to stop and take a few shots.

Someone in the coffee shop tipped the owner off that someone was checking out his ride and he emerged offering to take my picture by it, in it, whatever I wanted. He all but offered to let me take it for a spin.

"What is it?" I asked.

"What are you?" he asked. "I see you come by here every morning and I wonder what is up with that helmet and all these lights and whatnot."

The car was a Morris Minor, a '63, so I guess part of the British Invasion in a way.

He asked me how far I ride. Really, he asked all the usual questions, and I gave the usual answers.

As in:

Q:Why the mohawk?

A:It doesn't matter if drivers are happy to see me, so long as they do see me.

He also observed that it was dangerous, riding a bike to work. And I said, as usual, that sitting around waiting to have a heart attack is risky too.

Then he said, "You are normal!"

This was delivered as if he were the arbiter of this designation. I was afraid I was a freak, but some dude tooling around in a '63 British economy car says I fit right in... I'm pretty sure he meant it as a compliment, but I think it's the first time I've been accused of this. Ever.

Occupants

2011-10-13T21:25:00.036-05:00

I thought stopping by IOU/USA to see the Occupy Wall Street's local branch do their thing would be fun.

Not as fun as I'd thought. Fewer people than I expected, maybe 30 or 40. They spent most of the hour or so I hung out arguing about whether to move and, if so, where to.

Some wanted to camp out some place where pedestrians would see them and have to interact. Like Wall Street.

But this is Kansas City, and unless they're going to occupy the parking lot at a mall, they're going to be disappointed in the foot traffic. 99.9% of Kansas Citians don't walk anywhere except to and from their cars.

People would put up their hands to speak, but as soon as a recognized speaker started up, the interruptions were immediate, followed by interruptions to the interruptions along the lines of, 'Is this respectful? Is this what we're doing?'

Followed by even more earnest threats to quit, that, 'If this is what we're going to do, I'm out of here.'

It was frustrating to me on many levels, well beyond the fact that the only thing more annoying than someone running a meeting by Robert's Rules of Order is a meeting that desperately needs Robert's Rules or nothing can even be said. I've been as obnoxiously earnest as anyone in the park, and I've wanted to end the Fed since the 1980s. I just don't see this protest being effective. It's all emotion and no solution.

I don't mean to trash these protesters, some of them may not get the fundamentals of economics, but it's not like they'd learn that shit in school or in the mainstream press. They're out there for a good reason: many of them don't have the jobs their college degrees were supposed to secure because they had the bad fortune to graduate during the Second Great Depression which they did little to cause and are powerless to cure.

Everyone is hurting except, it seems, the handful of folks most responsible for it. Some of these elites complain about their lot, but be serious. It's lonely at the top, but there's plenty to eat and the lights stay on.

Protesting 'corporate greed' is like marching to end hurricanes or earthquakes. Corporations don't exist for some hippie-dippy set of ideals, they exist to make money and they should. Given a clear profit-based mission they generally only fuck up a little bit and almost always have to put at least a few knotty logs on the community wood pile in the process.

The Federal Reserve, fiat currency, central banking, and 'stimulus' spending, on the other hand, is worth protesting. A bunch of kids hanging out in a park is not really an occupation and doesn't require anyone to take them seriously.

Listen up: a system built on robbing Peter to pay Paul is not going to fold up because you hold up a sign that states the obvious about Paul's failings. And Paul is going to get his PR people way out ahead of you to make sure everyone knows that Peter wouldn't even have something to steal if it weren't for Paul.

Boobies and Blood

2011-10-13T01:17:00.001-05:00

They dyed the J.C. Nichols fountain pink for breast cancer awareness in October.

But in a story I heard of the Arab Spring heading into fall, a Syrian protester talked about spiking their fountains with red dye to symbolize the bloodshed.

The effect is rather pink in the fountainy parts of the fountains, in Damascus as in Kansas City:

Motivation

2011-10-12T21:41:00.004-05:00

The school is long sense closed but the grounds of this middle school building by my work serves as a practice field for the neighborhood's youth sport. Lacross, soccer, football, it's the same group of boys from what I can tell, they just change equipment with the seasons.

For football, they've brought these enormous yellow barrels out. I wondered what they used them for, and asked an adult through the fence the other day.

"What, do you take the kids who aren't cutting it and put them in barrels?"

"Yep," came the answer. "And then we put them out on the highway against a bridge support to make sure the other kids know they have to run fast and hit hard."

The Bridge at Night

2011-10-11T21:47:00.004-05:00

In-Korruptible

2011-10-10T22:48:00.011-05:00

My favorite West Bottoms watering hole has apparently gone dry. Okay, I only went there twice, once to hear Melissa do her hippie shake and once out of curiosity.

The curiosity visit, I'd ridden past it so many times on my commute. Corinna was out of town, I figured for the hell of it I'd stop off and have a pint.

It was a bunch of kids. The bartender/manager included. They were sweet kids, treated me like a genuine folk hero because they'd seen me ride by with the tulle helmet mohawk. When a new batch of them arrived and the bartender girl asked to see their IDs, I realized, Holy shit, all these people are over 21!

I realize the corollary to my perception of them being younger than they are was their perception of me as much older than I am.

Anyway, the crazy old man on the bike has been riding by an apparently defunct bar lately. It never did seem to be very busy, so I guess that's to be expected. Even the lettering is gone from the windows, there have been speaker cabinets and furniture left out by the curb.

Korruption, once an apparent bellwether of the West Bottoms Renaissance, has shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the choir invisible.

West Bottoms Rennaissance

2011-10-08T11:30:00.019-05:00

I stopped off to take a few pics on the ride home the other day.

Baby Shoes

2011-10-07T22:04:00.000-05:00

Hanging in the West Bottoms.

Talent Show

2011-10-06T23:26:00.086-05:00

I guess it's the same song except usually I'm complaining that I can't get a shot of Em on stage. I still couldn't, not like I'd want to, because they hide her in the back rows on accusations of height.

I have a compulsion to shoot even when my camera isn't the right gun for the job.

Lighting and distance considered, I did much better than average, photo-op-wise.

One kid sang "Don't Stop Believing." I guess Journey has gone full circle. It would have been laughably passé when I was in high school (back when the plains were black with buffalo and I had visions of Reagan drafting me to kill commies in central America). So while I feel incredibly un-cool saying so, what a great song.

Another performance was by a teacher who remembers the disco era. She described it as being two camps: rock & roll on one side, which people liked to listen to, and disco on the other, which they liked to go dancing to—this to introduce a country song. She sounded a lot like I probably do when I talk about the late 1980s, except she was talking about the late 1970s. I guess when it comes to nostalgia, we can't smell our own bullshit.

The overall caliber of the performances was pretty high, even allowing for the occasional karaoke bit. I'm not a fan of singing to a recorded background as a talent show entry. Nothing against the singing, but I think it robs the performer of a lot of the interpretive canvas. The kid with the Journey song on the piano owned his song in a way I don't think a karaoke singer can.

I did dig that the choral pieces had quite a bit of choreography to them. The choirs I remember from high school were so dull they could have been classified by the FDA as a Schedule I narcotic.

The show included the jazz band, too, and here I did get nostalgic. I lost some of my hearing sitting directly in front of a drum kit with a cymbal by each ear, but gawd I loves big band music. I like being the guitar player in the big band even better than I like listening to the band—well, I have Joe Henderson's big band album going on the hi-fi right now, I don't know if I like playing in a mediocre big band better than listening to a world class one.

The flashback effect of seeing this band was made the more vivid for the bassist in this band being, basically, a redheaded version of the bassist from my alma mater's jazz band (and the band that was never going to be called Foolkiller).

One of the neatest performances was a girl who sang with a buy playing a djembe as accompaniment.

Kind of surreal, the plaid shirt and African drum.

And I admit to getting some decent shots though desperate zoom measures of Em. She made herself up for the occasion and the impression was, basically, one of the girls from Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love video.

The stand-out performance, I thought, was this folkie type kid who came out and said he wanted to do something impressive since it was his senior year, but realized he should do something simple and powerful instead. I've lost the name of the piece, so I can't Google it to find out if it was a cover or if he wrote the piece, but I remember thinking If this is his simple piece, I wonder what the complex shit he plays is like.

I tried to get some shots of this girl with the batons, because I've never seen a twirler with such a well developed routine, but she moved far too fast. It was set to Walk This Way and at one point she was juggling/twirling three batons.

The show lasted over two hours with an intermission. Mo got a bit fussy when we went back in after the snack. She reasonably thought the show was over, and to settle her down I had to show her the program and count out that there were only eleven more pieces and then we could go home.

Old 356

2011-10-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

I took this, at first glance, to be an old version of the Porsche Boxter. Close. Same company, but this was their initial offering, the 356. Speedster, not Boxter.

Dance, Mo, Dance

2011-10-02T11:07:00.000-05:00

The artist formerly known as Frau Lobster signed Mo up for a dance class. It's Sunday afternoon, so I'm the one taking her most weeks. I should have done a better job of prepping her but I'd almost forgotten it entirely and just barely got her to her first class.

She was digging it. As I spied through the door, she did more following along than I'd expected. Which isn't to say she was in lock step the whole way through. She'd start out doing what the others were and then decide it was a logical transition to laying on the floor or charming herself in the big mirror.

The biggest surprise, to me, was when they were sitting in a circle and went around introducing themselves. I figured she'd bite her nails and give them the silent treatment, but she said her name, clear as a bell, when it was her turn. No elaboration, just her name, but still, it was a social queue I didn't think she'd get.

\

But then, she doesn't do for me what she does for, say, her teachers at school. The other day I heard she recited all fifty state capitols, but when I asked her to do it she'd only say, "Social studies." When I asked if she meant she could only do that in social studies class, she said, "Yes!"

It'd be a good thing if I could get her to uncompartmentalize some of the stuff she learns at school and apply it to the larger world. Isn't that what we have schools for?

Oh Yeah

2011-10-01T04:18:00.002-05:00

Time was I'd blog about pretty much anything. Everything. I guess I still will, but since entangling my life with Corinna's, I don't post every chicken casserole variation. Or, it turns out, even every Blue Room gig my girlfriend performs.

Back in July, I thought she had won the open mic. She had definitely shown them something they hadn't seen, including dragging me up on stage in a thrift store doctor's costume. She wrote the poem, but she lifted the title from me: The Disability Industrial Complex.

It's a real thing, the triumvirate of pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and government that take sane, healthy people in moments of crisis and make them into profitable cripples.

It was a fun gig, I threw Mike & Ike candies symbolizing pills into the crowd and used a flat iron to simulate ECT.

I just forgot, at the time, to blog it, what with stopping at Town Topic after for dinner and getting up at 4:45 the next morning to bike to work.

But the best part was Kenny on Corinna's bike. I'm not sure how it started, but he wanted to ride her bike, which was parked in a hallway of the jazz museum by mine. Hell, at his age, who would want to spend the whole evening hanging out at a poetry event?

The Next Level

2011-09-30T21:36:00.001-05:00

Robert the Psychic told me I should stop by, he'd taken the neolithic cathedral to 'the next level.'

Sure enough, deep in the Dork Forest, there's now a wizard on a stone casting spells from beneath a vault of enormous bones.

They're cow bones. Real cow bones.

I guess the demon skulls are 'real,' too, insofar as your hand won't pass through them, they're not holograms.

Robert said his brother gave him the cow bones, which caused me to form a new mental picture. I visited Robert when he was waking his deceased mother, so I guess I knew he didn't spring to life whole from the ether or get deposited at a Greyhound station by a flying saucer.

He's moved his guard birds up to the roof because the Kansas City Scar delivery kept knocking them over.

And he's bought some sort of weathervane, though it doesn't turn in the wind so he says he's not sure what it really is.

Cucicide

2011-09-29T10:33:00.003-05:00

The Great Tomatocide of 2011 was caused by hot, salty compost. Lost a combined total of about fifty plants due to the compost still being very active and hot and having an unusually high salt content (that latter fact got us a refund for the four yards).

But the cucumbers we planted for our fall garden in what had been the premature graves of a half dozen tomato plants were doing great, spreading out on the SRM film left behind from the earlier transplants. I just treated each hole in the film as a mound and put a few seeds in each.

Then, seemingly overnight, they just died. To all appearances they were scalded to death or something.

These bugs, I take it, carry some sort of Mad Cucumber Disease or something like that.
Organic gardening is all good and well, but I think next year I'm going to do some judicious spraying.

Surprise, Roj!

2011-09-28T22:24:00.011-05:00

I made a card for Roger's 40th birthday with a grim reaper. Not really that original, but it's a great graphic. Used it once before on a birthday card, in fact.

But I got a great shot of the scoring process, what keeps the back of the card from cracking when it's folded.

Anyway, the whole idea was a surprise party planned by his sister. But she was worried he'd sniff it out because, she says, he can read her mind.

She hadn't realized it was the second day of Bike MS that she'd picked. But the whole plan came together to tell him it was a Bike MS after-party for the Dread Pirates team.

Then Day Two of Bike MS got canceled for weather, so then Julie's worst fear was he'd just go home.

The dude never saw it coming. His parents were in masks (it was a costume party), and when he recognized some friends he chalked it up to a coincidence that they were at the same park.

The Lesson

2011-09-27T13:00:00.021-05:00

I learned a lesson when my car was stolen. The Club: it's not all that hard to defeat, and if a real thief wants your car, it is forfeit Club and all, but at least you won't be the softest target on the street.

Painful lesson, even if you are driving around in a 13 year old car with 225,000 miles.

I don't know if the person who learned the lesson about locking frame to wheel on Southwest Boulevard lost a nice bike or not. Lots of people leave very expensive bikes unattended in Kansas City with nothing more than a kickstand holding them in place, so normally I'd say this person's lock job would have been adequate.

The way having my Honda locked was adequate for probably 1800 nights preceding the night it Bermuda Triangulated on me.

But even if it wasn't a nice bike, even if it was a piece of shit, it was somebody's bike and even if it made for some cool street photography, I'm sorry they had to learn it this way. At minimum, both wheels and frame need to be locked to something permanent or heavier than one person can lift.

Another Shot of IOU USA

2011-09-26T21:45:00.018-05:00

From the Scout.

Dancing in the Street

2011-09-26T01:17:00.001-05:00

We were just out for a walk in the neighborhood one fine September evening and heard music. There was a block party going on, great Mexican snacks to be had, people dancing to a band, the works.

I inquired what the occasion was, and it turns out it was El Grito de la Independencia. The Mexican equivalent of the Fourth of July, though apparently fireworks don't figure in to it so much.

Yeah, I know. I thought Cinco de Mayo was their Independence Day, too.

Then, at the butcher counter, when I asked for some chicharrón de cerdo, bistek suave and queso fresco, stating a preference for El Mexicano brand rather than FUD* for the latter, the butcher asked me if I was married to a Mexican. He wasn't the regular butcher, or he'd know exactly who my significant other is, but I was surprised by the question.

Nope, I said. This is just the best fresh, cheap food in walking distance from my fiance's house.

He then told me he had another customer who was married to a Mexican, but knew no Spanish. To make this customer even more interesting, the butcher told me the wife barely has any English. They must have the most spectacularly entertaining fights.

*True story: FUD is an acronym for Fino, Unico y Delicioso, Spanish for "Refined, Unique & Delicious." I don't know if El Mexicano is any less 'refined' but it tastes and crumbles better.

Less Than Epic

2011-09-25T22:53:00.001-05:00

I was going to try and ride a century for my birthday. Past couple of years, I did a mile for every year, but I wanted to do more than a 42 miler. I had to skip Bike MS this year and I hadn't had a truly long ride since Memorial Day weekend, when I did 108 fully loaded to Big Lake.

I also had a pretty serious list of errands I needed to run if I was taking the day off work, and between sleeping in (which was a glorious birthday gift to myself, thank me very much) and stopping to attend to business I only managed 64 miles.

Gallmeyer came with, and that slowed things down a bit, too, as he had errands to run as well. And Brian doesn't live in time anyway: he'd have gleefully finished 100+ miles with me, but we'd have finished in the middle of the night and I had to work the next day.

And he's good company. I probably could have made the century riding solo, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun.

To my surprise, Brian led me on some trails I hadn't ridden, one I didn't even realize was there. I've ridden the street parallel to it many times, never realized there was also a trail running up Tomahawk Creek Parkway. Since it was the middle of a weekday, there weren't a bunch of pedestrians choking it up, so we made great time what with not having to stop at intersections.

He also showed me a good east/west route through southern Johnson County I didn't know.

Art Car

2011-09-24T07:57:00.002-05:00

So I was taking pictures of this car when the car's owner showed up.

I'd heard about this car, especially back when I put the coffee mug on the roof of the original childsupportmobile.

The thing about having a mug on the roof, it was new to the people who noticed it, but after awhile, I was like, 'Uh, yeah, that. Glued on, thanks for your concern.' To the guys who jumped out at stoplights. To the highway patrol officers who pulled me over to rescue a mug they could have figured wouldn't hang on at 70 mph.

Earnie, the owner of this car, doesn't get pulled over by folks who think he mistakenly forgot he had a village on his roof.

He's also very modest about his vehicle, an 80s vintage Honda. "There's art cars everywhere," he said, as if you saw one of these for every shiny new Prius or F-150.

Ernie is from Staten Island, and he is also very religious. His faith is the main inspiration for the art on his car, and it's the part he's most eager to explain. He spent quit a bit of time on how he carved up a 'God Bless America' bumper sticker because he thought it was backwards: America has a duty, in Ernie's view, to bless God.

He's not shy, too, about his views on the economy. I take it Ernie got the short end of the big Economic Downturn and isn't entirely enjoying our high-budget sequel to the Great Depression.

And you can call it a great recession or a double-dip recession, but I think historians will call this America's second Great Depression. Or if we're in really bad luck, our second Long Recession. Not our second overall, because the one everyone thinks of as the big one wasn't our first by a long shot. See 1807, 1815, 1873...

And maybe Ernie is wise to focus much more on the divine, those market externalities that make the car you drive or the paycheck you earn seem trivial no matter how much you earn or how well you've expressed yourself artistically with your car.

What a Choice

2011-09-23T19:56:00.000-05:00

What a depressing restaurant. This is their whole menu as far as I can tell. I guess they don't offer IRS audits or terminal illnesses.

IOU USA WWI

2011-09-21T20:11:00.000-05:00

For Labor Day, we went to the Liberty Memorial, to the World War I Museum after Bike 4 the Brain.

I hadn't been in years, but as cool as the museum was, I was more excited about the installation just south of the Memorial, IOU USA.

It's stationed, appropriately enough, right by the Federal Reserve building. I heard a bit on NPR today (9/21/11) about the Fed and how back in Volker's day they got threatening notes written on 2x4's sent by builders pissed off at Volker's policies.

It was then explained that this was part of why today, Bernanke holds press conferences to spin what he's doing in a positive light.

This was all presented with an underlying bias that the Fed is doing what is best for us all and the lack of transparency of the 1970s made people paranoid.

But transparency only goes so far. If I pick your pocket, or burglarize your home while you're away, is it worse than if I steal your shit right before your eyes?

The Federal Reserve system, really all central banks that impose a fiat currency on an economy, is the sort of thing that, if regular folks understand what they're doing, they'll line up outside the central bank with pitchforks and torches ready to hang some central banking assholes. Don't believe me? Ask anyone in Greece, or for that matter, the Eurozone.

I fear I'm being diatriabolical, but money is a marker of value — any effort to manipulate its value outside the market is fraudulent and, as a policy, doomed.

Anyway, hopefully our present crisis won't lead us to a world war or something idiotic like that. It seems far flung, I know, but the Memorial's refresher course on the causes of The Great War reminds me that a little stupid goes a long, long ways.

Complacently assuming another world war is impossible is like assuming that after 1929, they figured out what caused bubbles and made some rules so shit like that couldn't happen again in 2007. Which was exactly what my Daddy told me when I was growing up, that those speculators buying stocks on margins thinner than runway models taught us all a lesson and it'd never happen again.

It occurred to me, all the people who compare Obama to Jimmy Carter* as if that was the worst possible President to mimic, what if he's another Woodrow Wilson instead?

I'm not sure what my kids got out of the museum, or for that matter, the IOU USA installation. By the time we got to it, they were cranky and wanted to go home. When I was their age, it was common knowledge that at any moment the bomb could drop. And the guys in charge of one side apparently drank vodka at their desks of a morning.

As far as a little stupid going a long ways, I've wondered lately about the whole climate change question. I've never drunk that particular Monkey Wrench Gang flavored Kool-Aid, but there were folks in the mid-19th century who knew buffalo were about to go extinct who still saddled up to hunt the last few head. Are their modern equivalents driving crew cab pickups and SUVs to the Whole Foods to get a quart of organic milk?

*Jimmy Carter is my favorite ex-President. I'm not a fan of any modern president while in office, but at least Jimmy has made himself useful in retirement.

Light Painting

2011-09-20T16:02:00.000-05:00

I bought some sparklers back on the Fourth of July to try this. It's trickier than I thought, me and Brian made about a dozen attempts at angel wings to find that sometimes the sparklers sputter out or the shutter closes when you've got one wing and a halo.

Or that you didn't step far enough back after hitting the timer on the camera, so half the angel is out of frame.

It turns out, too, that the angel wings, to work, involve a bit of risk and a lot of trust. The person shows up a bit if the sparkler is directly beside and to the front of you, which means the painter gets the fire awfully close in your peripheral vision.

And it means a few hot cinders might, say, fall in your hair or on your shirt. These were wood-stemmed sparklers which the chick at the fireworks stand told me would be safer for this, but I wonder if the old-fashioned wire based ones mightn't be for close-but-not-touching.

If you don't have a partner in crime, you can still make people, bicycles, a ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch...

Birthday

2011-09-19T22:01:00.001-05:00

So the usual deal in my fam is to celebrate birthdays at restaurants.

Which is cool. As much as I love to cook, I'm enough of a foodie to make a bit of a fetish out of the perfect birthday meal out. Stroud's, Jack's Stack, Hibachi, Hereford House, I can vividly remember excellent meals and good times with those I love at these places on the anniversary of my birthday.

I was struggling to pick a venue this year, though, because the place I was most interested in was an all-you-can-eat Sushi joint me and Corinna discovered, and awesome as it is, a significant portion of my relations look at a sushi joint as an attempted poisoning. I know, everyplace that serves sashimi around here also serves teriyaki to placate relatives and coworkers, but from what I can tell these also-rans are seldom first-rate.

Plus, since my car was stolen, I've been bogarting Corinna's ride on weekends and the nights I have my daughters. Which meant that to joint my fiesta, she'd have to break off from a grant she was finishing to pedal out to a restaurant in JoCo. She'd no doubt enjoy the ride itself, but when I suggested this to her, she pointed out that she could whip up some food for a fraction of a restaurant tab and we could have a party with as many friends as we wanted to invite.

I'm not sure it saved her any time on the grant; she rode to the River Market to get a shark (okay, a significant portion of a shark), shrimp, fruit and whatnot, then took the time to get all that stuff cooked, cut, prepped, etc. But she clearly had fun with all that.

The only downside to this plan was it came together very late, meaning the friends in question had less than 24 hours notice that the party was on at all. Plenty of 'regret' column entries from that, to be sure.

She got me a pinata, something I've never had. I have a dim memory of attending a birthday party with a pinata in Baldwin, which would mean I was four or younger. It wasn't my birthday party, and as I recall I was far too slow on the uptake to get much candy when the thing burst.

We tried to involve as many neighborhood kids as possible, but I think the house with the most invitees wouldn't let their honyocks come participate for religious reasons. I don't know the details of why these kids couldn't come take a few swings at a paper maché Barbie, but as far as I'm concerned any religion that denies children such innocent, social fun is a cult for shitheads.

We asked people to bring strange and unusual foods. Kind of a thing with me and Corinna, we're the ones who'll buy the bizarre, based-on-a-dare soda at the Asian market just to try it. Just ask the kids who finally got the booty from my pinata, which was filled 90% with candy (sugared ginger, for instance) labeled in oriental glyphs.

Partly owing the the short-notice factor, very little strange and unusual food showed up past the shark. A surprise guest (I invited her but since I hadn't seen her in twelve years, surprise) brought chips and dip, apologizing that it was 'junk.' I looked at our spread of seafood and veggies and realized that if this table needed anything besides the bizarre, it was probably junk food.

Another guest brought a cornbread which was very much to style except for being drizzled in a cocktail of food colorings.

When it came to smacking Barbie upside her plastic blond head, there were only a couple of kids on hand. But apparently Barbie inspires adult women, because the hardest, loudest blows the girl took where from a couple of women my age.

Jill had to be cajoled into taking up arms against Barbie, but once she did, she made startling noises and damaging blows. When Corinna took a turn, I heard Warren suck air, and I looked over to him and said, "She went to the Olympics in Judo. Wicked strong."

When it finally burst open, the kids greedily gathered up ten pounds of candy and then formed up into a little Board of Trade to swap what they each thought inedible for what each other thought was irresistible.

And Brian got climb trees as if he were born to it. Which, I'm certain, he was.

On the Fence

2011-09-18T21:32:00.001-05:00

Spotted near my daughters' school.

Dessert Concert

2011-09-18T07:14:00.028-05:00

Em's choral concert had a dessert theme, everyone brings a bunch of sugary, fatty calories, pays five bucks to get in and after the show we all get to pig out on sweets.

Of course, I did my best to shoot my daughter. I shot the shit out of my camera, but the times she was on stage, she was perfectly positioned to where I could get absolutely no shot at all.

I got some great shots of other people's kids, even emailed some to a kid who was perfectly positioned during her solo spot. Usually the stage lights wash people out, but she was, in relation to the lights and my camera, in the sweet spot and I got some good ones just playing with my camera.

Kind of same with the guy who sang an Elton John song I'd never heard.

There were numbers from the fall musical coming up, Annie Get Your Gun. Which I was kind of dreading, it's a musical I didn't think I liked. But maybe it's starting to grow on me.

Cobbles

2011-09-17T21:49:00.002-05:00

My favorite surface to ride on ever:

NOT!

Sew I Fixed It

2011-09-16T09:00:00.002-05:00

I lost part of the chest strap for my Camelbak, and it seemed a humanitarian crisis until Corinna walked me through fixing it. I got to add a reflector (the parachute buckle I bought at the fabric store had one embedded in it) and I had fun playing with a lighter to seal up the ends of the nylon strap.

An earlier edition of me would have probably bought a new Camelbak, especially when he saw a neato Hi-Viz green one at Mickey's the other day, but that neon pack was fifty bucks and the total at Joanne was less than four bucks.

Rice & Beans

2011-09-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

I think a lot of folks equate expense with quality when it comes to food, and sometimes that's true I guess.

This was an absolutely fantastic dinner and the most expensive thing on the plate was the cheese. Brown rice with pintos, some Swiss chard from the garden and queso fresco from Bonito Michoacan.

De NADA

2011-09-15T09:40:00.002-05:00

I went to the NADA conference a couple months back, and it made an impression on me.

But my friend Edward, it really made an impression on him. As in he has become an apprentice practitioner of this sub-discipline of acupuncture.

He lives near Joplin, near enough to have pictures of his Town Car when it got lanced by a pole and thrown a quarter mile onto its roof with him in it.

The pole would have gone though his chest roughly between his sternum and throat if he wasn't being tossed like a rag doll at the time. It's one of the creepier things I've ever seen, so naturally I joked about it, saying, "I don't know what you're whining about. That happened to me three times last week."

He was seeing all these shell-shocked Joplintonians (or whatever you'd call them), and I don't know if he'd already started studying the NADA protocol before this or what, but next thing he was needling total strangers just to try and give them some peace.

Did I see God when he needled me? No, but then I didn't shut up either. Not my strong suit, especially when I'm among friends. I can tell you it didn't hurt, and if a trypanophobe like me can take it, anyone can. The NADA protocol is about detoxification, so maybe the Boulevard in my hand was counterproductive.

I suggested this to Edward, but he pointed out its adherents claim it works on heroin junkies who have no intention of quitting. Corinna had a little harder time with it than I did, which was surprising since she's tough as nails and I'm a total pussy.

Her ear managed to throw one of the needles (which Edward said meant she didn't need that one).

But Gallmeyer, he was already on the top of some Tibetan mountain before the needles were out of their bag. He's about the most in-the-moment person I've ever known and I've even accused him of secretly being the 15th Dalai Lama, but he went some other place when the needles went in.

After, we all signed Edward's form. He has to get a quota of freebie ears before he can start charging for NADA. And yeah, I know what that means in Spanish, but even if I didn't see God, I still think there's something to it.

Gate

2011-09-14T09:14:00.001-05:00

I got a lucky shot of a train through one of the gates on the secret bridge under I-70.

Bike 4 the Brain

2011-09-13T21:50:00.002-05:00

Memorial Day was a beautiful day to ride around town on a bike. It was also Bike 4 the Brain, or as my friend and sometimes riding companion refers to it, 'Bike for Brains.'

Full disclosure, the love of my life and delight of my heart is on the board for this thing, but even if she wasn't, it's where I'd want to be.

The morning was so cool, actually, I kind of wished I'd brought a light long-sleeved t-shirt for my arms as I left my Mom's (she was watching my daughters) house for the starting line.

The start was so much like a Critical Mass ride (except sanctioned, with law enforcement providing traffic direction instead of harassment), I found myself calling out, 'Happy Monday!' to delayed motorists.

I saw a bunch of friends from my JoCo group ride days, some I've done a better job of staying in touch with. Jill made it, I saw Caroline the calendar girl and at least two guys I won't name who will never, ever, quit pining for her.

It was the kind of day where you could ride hard without overheating or take it easy and not get chilly. It was bright. It was Ferris Bueller's Day Off on a recognized national holiday where you don't even have to sweat getting caught by Ed Rooney.

It was good to get to ride for awhile with Jill. I used to see her pretty much every Monday night on the Trek Recovery Ride. I lured her downtown the other day, but not to the actual Pons Asinorum of my urban cycling romance.

Thanks to stellar route planning, I got to show Jill quite a bit of what I've been trying to tell her about the past few months. KCK's status as the red-headed stepchild of the metro area is ill founded. It can look forbidding to cyclists if you look at it from a car, but there are excellent cycling routes to get across tracks, highways and rivers.

And those routes put you in touch with some of the finest Mexican food you'll find north of the border at prices that make you wonder which side of the border you're on.

Plus, there's the Bike-Pedestrian bridge under I-70, part of the route, which is where I plan to wed Corinna next May.

I didn't get to do the whole thing. I would have ridden the 75 mile route, one of the great things about B4B is it gives more choices of route length than any other charity ride I know, but I didn't have time. I had to get back to my Mom's by noon and the long route spit me out right where I needed to be with ten minutes to spare.

In the process I got to see some corners of the city I had missed. And got to see a part of town I lived in for five years and felt lucky to escape from. I think maybe I missed out on the good stuff: I know people who lived there before me who liked it (and sold me on it), and the people who live there now are reaping the benefits of gentrification. It seems to me if you were going to pick years that would be lousy for home ownership in the area, I picked a trifecta.

Speaking of trifectas, There was a tandem-tandem riding the route. Dad, as far as I could tell, was doing the real work. When I suggested that his stokers weren't pulling their weight as we climbed 34th Street, he shrugged and said, 'That just means I get a better workout.'

The route was well-marked, the scenery was amazing, and I doubt anyone didn't see a part of town they would have otherwise missed. Maybe those who took the absolute shortest routes, but having those ten and twenty mile options is important, too, because more than a few people who showed up for this, that was all they could see themselves doing. If you only post long routes, how are you going to recruit new members into the cult?

As I rode down Cliff Drive, where I used to go on bike rides with my brother, a woman rode up behind me and nervously told me I was the leader. I pointed out that there really wasn't any way she could make a wrong turn, they don't have to tag the route every quarter mile when there's only one way to go.

And it was genius making Cliff Drive closed to cars and trucks, it cuts way down on the dumping that used to characterize that stretch of road.