with March 27 falling on a Saturday how can you not envision three hundred and twenty seven words about a meandering bike ride with Professor Dave from 20/20 Cycle to Bill’s Off Broadway and all the beers in between?
Round about ten years ago Peter let me ride his Serotta for about 90 seconds as we were both headed toward the bridge after work at the Mad Fiber widget factory. We stopped and traded bikes back there behind Benjamin Hall hall which is spitting distance from where I work today literally everyday. Back then I just rode past it twice a day. Please note how fitting it is in retrospect to see a Serotta rolling on Mad Fiber wheels, as both companies were bought up by the same investment assholes aka Divine Cycling and immediately ploughed into the ground.
On a positive note… Junior was born ten years ago today. it only feels like 30 years ago walking to the hospital with my old lady in labor leaking amniotic fluid in cutoff sweats and a backpack. are you fucking kidding me? nobody walks to the hospital at 11:30pm to have a baby. But she did. we did. I was there. I saw it.
I was a stressed out former bike messenger trapped in the body of a liberal arts major about to be a dad and overthinking everything head down goggles on two pairs of gloves stacked and sweating respirator huffing acetone grinding out carbon fiber and aerosolized aerospace industry adhesives with a dremel tool one hand built wheel at a time it coulda shoulda woulda been helicopter parts or even better toilet flaps for a 747 but they were cool bike wheels. Totally tubular. I quit before there were clinchers in production and UCI approval never arrived.
My only regret from that brief stint is not snagging a wheel or two from the discard pile. I never envisioned riding them on my bar bike or any of my bikes as sew-ups are rather labor intensive and carbon fiber rubs me the wrong way in all kinds of ways. But I wish I had a front wheel for another Duchamp sculpture to spin here at hq. When I see Mad Fiber wheels wash up at Bike Works or on eBayit makes me smile or maybe it’s a smirk.
Junior and Junior Junior helped me reenact something I visualized but never actually happened. Sort of a dramatization of an almost could have been. For about six years I’ve thought about how much easier it would be to wash out silkscreens if we had a deep slop sink. Or how cool it would be to fill a 5 gallon bucket and clean the kegerator with an actual utility sink seven feet away.
Fast forward to a week or so ago when a neighbor down the road got rid of their old utility sink kicking it to the curb with a free sign. I had visions of rolling down the hill with the cargo bike and rolling home with a free new used utility sink. But my old lady beat me to it. She tossed it in the car yesterday and brought it home.
“I heard those guys are dicks” quoting 69, who could use it in any number of ways referring to messengers, civilians even Point 83ers. I most often use the phrase when I encounter armored cars parked wherever the fuck they want. I used it today at 47th & University where an armored car was fucking shit up. Both under my breath and out loud I talk to myself on the bike and crack up like that crazy lady at the bus stop. I used the phrase a few times yesterday as well referring to my coworkers for various reasons that someone sometime can tell you about.
PS: I made it into that little youtube with Flapjack BoBo Treebeard a few years back only because one of my coworkers refused to wear his rain jacket on a sunny day.
in like a lion out like a lambswool sweater in the wash six sizes too small. six of one half-dozen the other even money or as Steve would say “a horse apiece”: call it a wash. the baby and the bathwater too it all comes out in the wash. washed up. washed out. bow down to washing bro. her alibi doesn’t wash. Alki by and by. Lux Sit on this at U-dub they say “let there be light” by George: 1861 - 2021. Stevil said the non drive side shows off the frame but it’s all about the font trademarked & licensed and that purple is Pantone PMS 2218 C and so on and on.
Junior has been creating creations from old CDs (say “see deez”) with paint, string, yarn, fishing line whatever it takes. While digging for more raw materials to repurpose she found a load of Microsoft Office Suite2000 discs and a CDR (say “see dee arr”) from Andy Voight featuring photos from CMWC 2003 as you can see she figured out how to look at the photos with a DVD player (say “dee vee dee” player)
She also found CDRs with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos from Chris Murray featuring RAGBRAIs 2005 2006 2007 & 2008. Someday I’ll scroll through those start to finish with a six pack and some classic rock but first I’ll rub some sunscreen in my eyes and wait in line for a breakfast burrito.
One day a little while back I went to the post office and waited in line to mail a tyvek envelope to a friend and near the conclusion of the transaction I asked for some stamps saying do you have any rock stars or politicians? I got George Bush he said. Which one? I asked. The dead one, he said they don’t make stamps of people that are still alive oh and I have JFK too. I’ll take the JFKs I said.
Today I’m sending a postcard to my mom with a JFK forever stamp. That’s 55 cents for first class letter postage. I believe there are postcard stamps too that cost a bit less but I no longer mess with those because I like to send big fat postcards made out of 12 pack packaging or repurposed scraps sillkscreened with cows or chainrings.
On December 29 2020 I mailed a large postcard to Alistair. He received it on March 2 2021. It only had to travel from the 98195 to the 98115 and it got close to him but not quite to him for more than 60 days.
As a post apocalyptic electric assist mailman I get a little behind the scenes look at the delivery process and realize the sequence of events that must fall into place for a scrap of paper to make its way from one person to another. It’s an epic journey with multiple opportunities for human error, stupidity, laziness, dyslexia, oversight, understaffing, sticky fingers, spilled milk, spilled chocolate milk and good old bad luck. It’s amazing anything arrives at all. And that’s on a good day. I won’t even comment on the current USPS situations you’re reading about in the news.
A side note in the realm of plausible deniability as those in the know know: chocolate milk is a euphemism for another beverage that is popular with bicycle delivery people and I’d like to remind all y’all that when you click on some plastic shit to buy on line… some sad sack sucker like me will be schlepping it those final fifty fucking feet to your door. It’s not magic and it’s not all on line and not everyone is able to work from home.
Philately is right up my alley. I’m not a collector just an observer. There’s a guy on my route that pays his bills with checks written on paper inserted into envelopes with stamps that he hopes and wishes will travel via USPS all the way to their destination. I smile and do my part on the first leg of the letter’s long journey. Today that’s rather unusual because as you know there’s an app for that and that and that too. This guy isn’t just old school he’s way way old school and I like that. In 1985 the price of a first class stamp went up to 22 cents and that Joe Jackson song was a throwback jam and this guy must have been sitting on some serious stamps. As you can see he gets to 55 cents one way or another but he takes the long way. Sometimes he brings in a glue stick or scotch tape for extra support and some adhesion. All this speaks to me as a potential Pearl Jam song titled “elderly professor emeritus sitting in his office in the chemical engineering department of a large state university” I’m humming along to it as we speak.
