Fast Boy

brand new for wednesday!, originally uploaded by fast boy.

I have only met Ezra once or twice, so I can not call him a friend really, but he is decent guy, nice frame builder and a great picture taker. He is amidst rounds of chemo right now and I am rooting for him to have a speedy recovery. It is scary to think that this guy is one of my peers.

Get better Ezra and live to take more pictures while restoring a little confidence in the people in your world.

The much threatened commute...

I had been talking/threatening to start commuting by bike for some time. For a variety of reasons (some silly reason admittedly and some non silly reasons as well...but most mostly silly) I had been putting it off. Not that commuting is any sort of major accomplishment, I set today to be D-day for my commuting. I had not really planned it all out other than making sure I had a decent lock and a bike that I felt ok about locking up.

The new rig and the most excellent bars: highly comfortable.

Notes:
-It was a little hot: not too bad really.
-Next time I will avoid mid town and cut through the park: it may be more mileage but will increase my chances for a longer lifer through less stress and avoiding the crazy drivers.
-I got a little dirty (more on that below)
-Commuter bike is a great ride and may now be my most favorite bike in the quiver. The new bars totally rock and may end up on a mountain bike in the near future. lots of leverage and make for great turning. Bigger bike tires are slower but comfy. The gearing is a little tall for my likes: A little more spin instead of pushing would be more my speed.
-Stopped to smell the flowers (literally)

This was the park I stooped at to smell the flowers. Brand spanking new for the elite of the west village. This may be the crown jewel in the park departments parks in terms of cleanliness. It reminded me of a new age, holistic, macro biotic retreat with the "clean" appearance of the park.

So off I set this AM in search of freedom from the hell known as the subway. I was not sure about how long it was going to take as I meant to do a dry run last weekend, but since I was on a self imposed hiatus I never got around to it. I made the mistake of going through midtown at rush hour instead of cutting through the park and getting to the west side. But after dealing with stupid drivers from jersey and stand still traffic I made it safely to the west side highway. Since I ended up getting down town a little quicker than I had anticipated I decided to stop in a park to catch my breath, take a picture or two and then continue on my way. Not a bad way to get some serenity before work.

Dirty: There is nothing dirtier than shit. Dirt is clean comparatively. And Dog shit is really dirty. Although I am not sure how it got there, mid ride I noticed some suspect brown stuff on my white tee shirt. Not much bigger than a bugger but smelly enough for me to realize right away what this unknown attempted stow away of a turd was. I was totally grossed out and while I am not sure how it got there, and never having had this problem before, I immediately jumped into reactionary mode and cleaned myself with a napkin I had in my pocket. I tried to not let it bring the quality of my ride down, but it did to an extent and from that moment I swore at all dog owners for not curbing their dogs (Dog owners please note: To curb your dog means to bring your dog to the curb so it can defecate in the street rather than on the sidewalk.) properly and really clean up after their mutts.

Anyway, that was my commute. And although I got shit on, it was far better than having to deal with the trains. I can not tell you how awful the green subway lines are after 5pm till around 6.15pm. A little shit was well worth the sanity of some bike time.

Shut 'er down

Shut 'er down- At least that is what the body said to me this Saturday. I seriously have put myself into the ground in the last few weeks. Not enough rest and too much intensity. Oh Well, live and learn.

Saturday I slept in to 9.30, did some bike maintenance, watched some Tour, went to my regular bike shop to drop my commuter off, went to Sid's bikes on 34 to drop a hydro brake and mailed some stuff of at the post office. Other than that I was totally lazy. I seriously needed the day off from riding as the 1 mile ride to Sid's left me in pain and the ride home was not much better.

Took Sunday off as well and I either slept, painted or ate fruit all day. How nice. Took the commuter bike out for a quick errand and had my first lock up experience in some time.

I have the Dark Horse 40 coming up and I want to come into it with light legs. Hopefully I can rest up and throw a few rides in to sharpen up before this weekend.



Economic BS bike boy style: 11 months of inventory vs the historical average of 2-3 months. Housing prices need to go down big time. Credit tighter than ever: ask three of your friends to call their credit card companies for a bump up in a line of credit: they wont get it. LD told me last fall, and I did not doubt him, that the credit situation will get worse and that I should get as many cc's as possible. The news that people don't want to hear, the politicians wont want to say out loud, and the story the news wont cover: home prices need to come down by 15-30 percent on average from where they are now. Prices need to come down so people can buy them again: they have to be fire sale cheap. Even now as prices have come down we have 11 months inventory. The candidates who are out thumping for votes, saying everyone can have the right to a home: Obama wants legislation that says everyone who bought their home, will have their home protected by the US government. That makes the constitutes who are in dire straights and probably should not have bought a house happy, but for the rest of us it means higher taxes. It also spells out a new chapter in American history with the socialization/commuinzation of the country...sounds drastic. But think about it for a minute: we were greedy and now there is a bill to pay and we do not want to pay it...We should look at the lessons of Japan. The major difference is that Japan had a savings rate, while our country does not. Just some thoughts here on a Monday morning.

Miles, fried and rest

Last night after finishing up a hard work out in the park (31.5 miles consisting of a bunch of 3 minutes on at full tilt, followed by four minutes of recovery and a couple of recovery laps) I realized I have logged 500 road miles in the last three weeks alone, plus however many miles mountainbiking (don't keep track of that other than number of hours). This could be why my legs feel fried and at any incline I start going backwards. I have been hoping that I would ride through it but no matter what and when, every time I hoist my legs over the top tube my legs are aching. Overtrained, under rested? Probably.

I have three races comming up that I have targetd: Dark Horse 40 on August 3rd is the first one and need to recover big time before. 40 miles offroad on techy fast singletrack will hard enough, but would be brutal with lactic acid filled legs I have now. Time for some easy miles maybe.

Feeling Fried...


Mmmm...fried fish.

Motivation

whatever gets you through the ride.

Saturday Excess

Rode on Saturday for more hours than I have fingers on my right hand with Mosquitto and LD. It was hot. I drank more liquids then I thought possible and still wanted more. Nothing like summer heat to drain you to the bone. I drank Gatorade through out the day, did not eat anything, got a little shaky at the end of it all, but overall fun. Rode home in damp cargo shorts and got the worst bike seat rash I have had since 4 years ago when I made the stupid move of swimming in my bike shorts before geting on the train to go home after riding up to bear mountain in the hudson river.

Multimedia message

Bear mtn stop at taco bell. Mmm

Julie A faltering at the worlds and kids shredding

Out of Order: Chapter Three- Party People

(Note: I wrote a whole bunch of junk in the last couple of days and could not cut and and paste and edit quick enough to have one coherent post. The editors here at MegaBottleRide have time shares in the Hamptons and have shirked their responsibilities in favor of sun and fornication. So thus, in a weak attempt to post something, I have serialized the events of weekend. I wish I was a good enough writer to condense all events into one coherent bouillon cube of verse that would read like water (flow) and would entertain like Chaucer. But alas, I am forced to work with the tools I have. And so instead of quick rapier witted prose, I shall provide blunt dull witted bs. The MBR is nothing without the team of editors, and writers.)

Like some sort of drama filled suspense flick in which the protagonist must find his way to his own personal thesis/redemption/sanctuary the next series of posts are out of order. Numerical for purposes of logic and yet completely illogical.

The official Sanctioned photo of the party

The party started at 6 but being fashionable has always been my modus operandi, so I arrived late (Total lie: I was napping like a baby because I was tired after riding, lifting heavy objects at the LD Mothership, lifting heaving objects at the liqueur store and from a crap nights sleep the prior night.) with a card for the birthday girl, K Girl, and a small box of chocolate from the Conran shop. I am pretty sure that the K-Girl does not eat chocolate because of her figure (she actually might not eat anything as her figure has no excess to speak of) so I am not sure why I brought it. I assume all chicks eat and like chocolate.

Rain had come and gone, so the plans of having the party on LD's roof remained intact.

I was greeted by the M-girl (K-girl's younger sister) not long after I walked out on the roof. She was quite the young hostess making sure I knew were the beverages were, and pointed to the birthday girl: "K-Girl, the birthday girl is over there." Oddly, it was said in a tone as if I did not know LD's super special friend (GF, partner, significant other etc) by her given name. It is not as if I have not heard LD mention her name before. Or the alternate interpretation is that the tone meant to convey I was completely special ed (retarded...not PC). Being that I was a friend of LD I assumed the later and moved on to say hello to the b-day girl.


K-girl was in a tank top showing her formidable guns which obviously had been honed through the countless hours of martial arts: her small frame, weighing roughly the half the weight of one of LD's lighter weight downhill bikes, has been trained as a stone cold killer and I now understand LD's reluctance to awaken the Fists of Fury (Bruce Lee Reference for all you non Kung Fu types).


Obviously, and thankfully for my own safety, K-girls mind was on the festivities and not kicking this little Frenchies ass . After wishing her a happy birthday we chitty chatted about nothing in particular with another young lady (she must have been a dancer as her girth would indicate either danceuse or famine stricken Ethiopian) whose name I did not catch. I decided at that point that I would hold off on the suggestion of the birthday spankings. I remembered enjoying them thoroughly, but recently I have come to the realization that not everyone has the same tastes in pleasure. Her loss.

From there I spotted the Grand Master of the ceremonies in full party host mode. LD was walking around greeting and eating. It was nice to see that his heightened sense of urgency for the success of the party has subdued since the afternoon when I saw him last(think Defcon 9 in order to get a sense of what it was like cutting through traffic with the party supplies earlier in the day).

He greeted me and asked what I thought of the party thus far: exquisite party for a celebration honoring K-girls 26th year on earth is what I thought. I told him it was "cool" and that roof top was way nice.

From there I was introduced (can't seem to remember by whom though...certainly no booze had passed my lips at that point, but after the tough day of labor chez Papa LDL, I had significantly impaired my ability to recall names) to two boys. Their names were European in origin (Andres and Edgar), but being full tilt American-o in demeanor (less formal) we settled on Eddy and Andy quickly. Great boys who seemed close as brothers, who immediately seemed preoccupied with what pleasures I might enjoy: to paraphrase quite accurately "What young lady is your fancy, so we can help you get her?"

This was then followed up by: "maybe it is young boy that meets your fancy?" As they said this, their eyes widened in the hope that we would have this in common. To their disappointment I told them ladies were only on the menu for me.

They immediately picked out a young lady who I had met earlier and upped the ante by saying she had spent time in France after hearing I was of French descent. Not that this is the litmus test for what moves this half escargot-half cheese burger. I politely told Eddy and Andy that I would appreciate an intro (with frankly no intention of it: South American girls scare me and I am enjoying a life of semi solitude). We talked a little more and at that point I wondered over to meet Mosquito Mike and his young lass.

Mosquito Mike had met his new young friend via face book. I have never done any sort of social networking, let alone spent any sort of time on face book, so the prospect of meeting a muse via the Internet seemed astonishing and curious. Pleasant, soft spoken, pretty and shy sums up Mike's special little friend. And although my very first inclination in meeting her was to ask her if her Mommy knew she was out, it turns out she was quite bright and made for great arm candy for the mosquito.

The wild card was also there. Rare to see the wild card, but even rarer to see him so talkative. Quite possible 100 words let his mouth in the span of 10 minutes. This confirmed my opinion of the wild card: great guy. Just totally stupid for not riding his bike more so we can hang out on a more frequent basis.

Not long after, LD unveiled his gift to his tiny piece of sugar: an all black 26" wheel Brooklyn Machine Works. Possibly the nicest Brooklyn I have seen. Understated and classy, it deserved a place in a boutiques window rather under my ogling eyes. Sleek and sexy were what came to mind as my fingers slowly wandered up and down her lines. Sweaty from the heat of the moment: "Nice bike" I said quietly aloud to myself.

Certainly everyone at the party immediately arrived at the conclusion that "once you go black, you never go back." Black bikes are sexy.

Soon after I headed home: I made the rounds to bid my adieu to the old and the new. Eddy and Andy planted the double kiss good bye on my cheeks (tres Euro boys), Mosquito was following in short order as his little one was on the cusp of missing her bed time, and LD promised he could wake at the crack of dawn for a ride.

I left in search of a burger....

Burrito boys new logo

France Land!, originally uploaded by willfrischkorn.

Willy F of the burrito team posted a super secret picture of the Garmin logo (not!!...how can it be secret when the trucks are already rolling around france plastered with the new logos...duh) on his flickr site.

Saw it here first!

The Fragile.

In the last few days it is has become more apparent to me how truly fragile we are as people: our skin really does not serve as much protection from the world and our minds, while capable of anything, seem prone to break downs when our inner sanctum of sanity is somehow breached by the tiniest and biggest personal developments.

Saturday, on the west side highway I saw the body of a dead motorcyclist on the road. The police were there to direct traffic but no ambulance had arrived. He was covered in a sheet, his helmet lay 20 yards down the road meaning it had not been secured to his head and his bike was upright against the wall by the road but visibly damaged. I have seen some gruesome accidents/incidents in all my years growing up in NYC, but for some reason the image of the body covered in a white sheet seems tattooed to my brain. LD commented that the deceased family was going to find out on this beautiful Saturday and how awful they would feel. I felt awful, so i am sure their pain would be far worse.

On Sunday, as I came back across the bridge from doing a 40 mile road ride, I saw a girl sitting at the entrance to where the bikes go up the ramp for the GW bridge on the phone. She was crying. I did not stop to see if she was ok as I assumed it was some sort of an affair of the heart. Now I wonder why I did not stop to see if she was ok. For nothing else than to show compassion maybe...The world seems to be getting smaller by the hour and yet we still seem to keep our distance from one another. For whatever reason I wish I had stopped for a second just to ask "hey, are you ok?" I am sure she would have said yes and waved me away, but at least some one would have stopped to check in with her instead of just staying on his/her little "mouse trail" (Joe Strummer reference) .

Anyway, I am just rambling in a stream of consciousness and need to get back to being productive.

Will write a proper post on visiting the LD MotherShip connection and roof top par-tay's when I get some time.

I hope everyone is staying cool in this heat.

BTW: the Fragile is my favorite Nine Inch Nails album. It is big, 2 discs worth of music, that are not radio friendly but very mind friendly.