“I was not yet sixteen when I understood a great deal, from having ridden bicycles for so long, about style, speed, grace, purpose, value, form, integrity, health, humor, music, breathing and finally and perhaps best of all the relationship between the beginning and the end.”
–William Saroyan
Published in 1952, Saroyan narrates this memoir as his 44 year old self, reflecting on his time as a bike messenger growing up in Fresno. By age 44 in Beverly Hills, he was well established in the writing world, a Pulitzer prize winner and a father. His young son wants a new bike, and not a little kid bike, a full-on adult bicycle.
In the six hours that have passed since I first started to learn more about his book: I found a few copies online that looked cheap but then with shipping from Belgium or New Zealand they were no-go no-no. I checked at Magnus Books, nope. I requested a copy from the extensive interlibrary loan network established through the UW Library conglomeration. Then I bought my very own copy on eBay from a bookstore in Bethesda, MD.
I haven’t read it yet. But if you’re reading these words right now, I strongly recommend this book to you.
An average normal run of the treadmill hamster wheel day on the electric ass bathtub is only 12 miles of actual riding.
That's 63,360 feet. That’s a lot of final-fifty-fucking-feeting, a lot of Amazon last-mile packaging and some good old fashioned old school paper inter-office envelope campus mail too. Racking up a few miles in the relatively small geographic area that is the scenic 700 acre campus and a few choice bits of the U District.
Ask me about 3946 W. Stevens Way and how many times I’ve been there today.
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning…
If I had a bell, I’d ring it in the morning…
If I had a strava-like heatmap of my habitrails it would be very similar day-to-day. Day after day. Day in. Day out. Groundhog Day. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Cyclical cycles circulating. Concentric circles radiating. Repetitious repetitions repeatedly repeating. Backtracking, roundtripping, reconnoitering, revisiting. Again. Playing it again. Groundhog-daying it again. Dialing in details too numerous to recount here and now. Clockwork like. Like clockwork. Lathering. Rinsing. Repeating. Repeatedly.
So it goes and goes and goes until finally it’s quitting time aka Big Time time. Waylaying an IPA. A waylaid waylay. A waylay waylaid. A stone's throw away from the train station and on into my way all the way home.
In 1972 James Wagenvoord published a book called Bikes and Riders. Early on in his book he talks about hanging out in Central Park watching Bob Salzman teach people to ride bikes. And then watching and photographing other people teaching their friends using Salzman's “can’t fail” method.
Some time in the late 90’s I poached Wagenvoord’s photo from page 24 to use as the cover of kickstand #8.
Fast forward 27 years to just last night when I screened yet another kickstand hoodie.
With super opaque white paint that’s as thick as a brick. It’s like squeezing cold toothpaste through a capillary. I took a pass and a half with the squeegee and smudged it. That extra half pass jacked it. Like an out of focus photo of a photo of a photo. It wasn’t what I was going for. But I’m going with it. Because I don’t have a choice.
An out of focus focus-group. A blurred photo of a 55 year old photo. It’s all coming together. That shot always made me think the guy in the middle is loaded and his friends are holding him up. But he’s not wasted. He’s just learning to ride a bike.
“What’s kickstand?” she asks
“It’s a quality of life issue” I say
because it’s easier than trying to explain to her what a zine is
is a Chicago song recorded in August of 1969 and it's popular with marching bands. I didn't know this until this morning around 17 or 18 minutes to 4 when I was googling 45 or 624 and google thought I needed a calculator or a calendar. But I needed to find out the name of that annoying SIX TWO FOUR song and I found it
This fibonacci sequence started the other other day with a brief conversation with 22 Heather about even numbers and odd numbers. Then another other day I presented her with a:
1 3 5 7 9 11
The digits cut from Amazon package tote tags in a classic example of In Situ Resource Utilization.
The next day 22 presented me with a:
2 4 6 8
Digits she crafted herself in a classic example of resourceful creativity…
Then this morning around 25 or 6 to 4
even numbers were dancing around in my mind and that annoying 624 song jumped into the picture
On Friday September 12, 1975 Pink Floyd released “Wish You Were Here”. I cannot say it was on my radar as I was finishing up my first full week of 1st grade in Ms. Wilson’s class at Audubon Elementary. However the song has now been in rotation for 50+ years on every classic rock radio station on earth.
Although I’m not a Pink Floyd fan, I believe there is a time and a place for this song:
HVC 1989
Hidden Valley Camp Granite Falls, WA
Session break late night camp fire. Scrappy counselor on guitar, others singing along with not all the lyrics in their proper place but it feels real, here & now, spot on authentic authenticity. The summer of 1989 at HVC was a great time and place for this song.
HRC 2026
Hans Rosling Center for Population Health
UW Seattle
Sitting in the great big great room at 8am with a coffee and a book when “wish you were here” comes on the Starbucks soundtrack downstairs. It’s the actual song but it feels fake-as-fuck, flat matte muted moot, like a false front, hollow insincerity, forced smile face. Last rainy Thursday morning in the HRC was not the time or the place for this song.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Thank you for calling Pee-Dub Industries. Your call is very important to us. All of our customer service representatives are assisting other customers, but we’ll be with you shortly. You are currently #669 in line…
March 23, 2026
Today I delivered 19 landline phones from a cluster of IT bros in The Tower to another cluster of IT bros in the 4545 building. Along my route seven of the phones squirmed loose from their file box. Jostling free in the electric ass bathtub, they asked if I could get a picture in the parking garage ::: March 23, 2026 ::: call it the one and only time I’ve delivered 19 landline phones ::: call it a calendar date to commemorate. So I got a photo and one more too and then I delivered three boxes full of phones.
I like to call them landlines. You won’t hear me saying “voice over IP” because I think that’s hokey horseshit. I was raised on a rotary phone hardwired to the wall in the kitchen, an actual landline 100% all the way.
Call me maybe
Call me crusty
Call me outmoded
Call me o u t d a t e d
Call me what you will
Call me on a landline
ask Craig Etheridge about the "new" push-to-talk technology (PTT) and how it compares to good old NEXTEL
Cockamamie means ridiculous, implausible, foolish, silly, stupid, pathetic. About 100 years ago temporary tattoos were all the rage in candy, gum packs and crackerjacks and kids struggled to pronounce the French word to describe the trend decalcomanie but cockamamie stuck around.
A few days ago Rae Armantrout brought the word out of storage when I read her poem “Uncanny Valleys” and now it's in my head.
Here's a snippet of it:
They say appearances can be deceiving.
They say essence is cockamamie.
They fall back
on function.
Function serves the gut;
the gut serves no one.
Try to use cockamamie in a sentence in the next seven to ten working days. Even if you don’t say it out loud.
Ask me about the blossoming cherry
give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses but don’t give me your cockamamie inquiries about where you could possibly park your cars on campus to look at the blossoming cherry trees.
Ask me about the cover of “INQUIRY”
INQUIRY magazine comes from The University of Texas at Arlington. A few copies of the current issue arrived at the mothership last week only to be chucked into the recycling bin because of their insufficient addresses. The cover photo of a flood-stage river in Texas got my attention with its textured tactile fancy pants printing. So I peeled a few off and saved them for something. That something turned into these ISRU postcards.
is the imaginary address I imagined for the MotherShip. Because it makes sense. It’s the building sitting between 616 NE Northlake Place and 814 NE Northlake Place. Except somebody decided to call the MotherShip 3900 7th Ave NE. Perhaps because I wasn’t invited to that planning committee meeting.
Unfortunately there’s a 707 NE Northlake Way that actually exists and my great idea would be an endless snafu of misdeliveries between the two 707s. Way and Place. Place and Way. That's a detail a bike messenger pays attention to.
Maybe I’ll reimagine a 700 NE Northlake Place… ..it has to be an even number. That's a detail this bike messenger overlooked
The USPS would write in big black greasy grease pencil NSN and return it to sender.
NO SUCH NUMBER
Which brings me to some numbers I’d like to run by you in the midst of March Madness.
The number of possible permutations to the 64-team NCAA playoff bracket is 9.22 quintillion.
That’s 9,223,372,036,854,775,808
If you filled out every possible bracket on a sheet of paper, that stack of paper would circle the earth 21 million times. Twenty one million fucking times. That’s a few reams of paper.
If you filled out every possible bracket at a rate of one per second it would take you 292 billion years. Our universe has only existed for 13.8 billion years.
Another perspective on the quantity of "one billion" At my manual labor electric ass bathtub mailman job it would take me 20,000 years to earn one billion dollars. And that’s before taxes.
A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy lifted from a 63 year old bike repair book transferred to a transparency then exposed to just the right bright light on photo emulsion onto the silkscreen so I could wash it out and smoosh paint through it onto a T-shirt or a hoodie or a onesie and then 27 years later a postcard or two to you and to you two too.
pilderwasser transparency history pulled from the past for potential pilderwasser futures…
When I have packages to deliver to Benjamin Hall, which I like to call “Hall Hall” but it's actually called The Benjamin Hall Interdisciplinary Research Building, I often walk them over. Taking the final fifty fucking feet on foot. No reason to saddle up the electric ass bathtub just to take it spitting distance from the Mother Ship, a bunny hop away, next door.
By the way, the 668 Neighbor-of-the-Beast building is still a mystery to me.
As you sit in your airconditioned delivery van and try to figure out how 616 NE Northlake Place relates to 3900 7th Ave NE. I’ll already be done with the delivery and walking back.
January 9th on my stroll over I couldn’t help but notice a discarded dental pick. Then two months later on March 10 I made a delivery and on my stroll back I noticed the same pick kicked to the parking strip, but it’s still there, still hanging on. Just like it will be for the next 10,000 years.
Everyday after work I slowly grind up the hill back to the train station to begin part two of the roundtrip that is my epic daily commute. Many of those days I’m waylaid for a pint at Big Time. Then I get back on my uphill line from 42nd to 43rd. I never take the Ave, sometimes I take Brooklyn, but I prefer to take the alley. It’s like a rite of passage, running the gamut, running the gauntlet, a garbage-strewn shitshow defining the U district. The seedy unsightly smelly underbelly behind the scenes with unappetizing dumpsters overflowing everywhere behind all the restaurants on the Ave and between a handful of pay-for-parking lots that will all be 15 story apartment buildings soon enough. My line adapts, overcomes and changes depending on the delivery trucks or the posse of Uber Eats-Grub Hub bros in their cars waiting and clogging up the South end.
The day before yesterday in the alley I had thoughts of pausing and leaning my bike on a dumpster for a photo depending on what just right light through yonder building breaks. Looking to sum up the U district in one digital snap shot. But as I rolled up to an ideal spot, there was a guy pissing by a dumpster. He was in no hurry and wasn’t trying to disguise it at all. So I kept rolling on to the station and waited for the elevator with my bike.
got on the elevator and pressed the PLATFORM button. The doors were almost closed when someone pushed the down button and paused the elevator. Two more passengers got on. One of them was the piss alley piss guy. The toe of his right shoe (his downhill foot) was still a little wet dappled with piss. I shook my head and said to myself “welcome to the U district”
Yesterday I was grinding up the alley until a delivery truck clogged up my line. So I took a left through the parking lots over to Brooklyn where I paused and took the symbolic photo above. As the ideal U district piss alley underbelly shot exists only in my mind.
this morning at the mothership I tossed this journal into the Math Department’s mail cubby. And that’s all happened before, but today I began to consider my own ill-posed problems and the inverse proportional relationships in my day-to-day
travelling salesman story problem paragraphs rolling out in real time Monday through Friday… …it’s the same on the weekends as the rest of the days
the talk being talked
occasionally
coincides
with the walk
being walked
when it does
the syzygy
appeals to me
alignment & authenticity
Polar opposites don't push away, it's the same on the weekends as the rest of the days and I know, I should go, but I'll probably stay and that's all you can do about some things
Early this morning as I was screening this shirt for Mr. Hella Corndog Classic himself, I was trying to recall what year it was when I busted out a batch of HC/DC shirts and that spiffy Hella Yellow Jersey for the race winner, Stacie Bain.
This was not the epic Monorail Kevin Cool Guy Hella cracked sternum Corndog Classic...
this was 2009 perhaps? Hella Hella
April 26 did fall on Sunday that year...
Soon this throwback will be on its way to Rip City.
