what was that? is that all there is? who is this? this is it.

pilderwasser unlimited T-shirts  pilder what? kickstand P know knew spew snap shots autoBIKEography RAGBRAI  slide shows phot-o-rama stationary-a-gogo 1/2 x 3/32 links

shimmed out with a Milwaukee's Best Ice can

August 29, 2018

Are you my Uber?

August 21, 2018

Did you hear the one about the bike messenger

 

wearing layers when it’s cooler outside and as the day or activity warmed up he’d shed a layer or two then add one as needed.

 

Layer upon layer of black. He’d step into an elevator dressed in black and take off two layers before the mezzanine  exiting still all in black. Like a birthday party clown trick. He kept taking off layers and no matter how you sliced it he was dressed in black.



Did you hear the one about the former bike messenger

 

Now a crusty commuter he still dresses in layers some of them black rolling into work and at work he’s sporting branded apparel approved by the trademarks and licensing office some of it black rolling around on an electric assist cargo bike provided by the large government-run organization. On cooler rainy days he may have up to 4 layers on and he can still do the birthday party clown trick shedding one or two and they keep coming up with that W on the left breast.  



Did you hear the one about the Uber driver

 

That stopped in the middle of a 4-way stop intersection effectively blocking all traffic without a hint of a warning to unload passengers from 3 doors

 

It was a disgusting example of where we are today

 

and then

 

A conservatively dressed older woman on an E-Lime bike bombed through the gridlock at full speed downhill slicing in and out of it all like a seasoned pro messenger. She completely owned it. And that made me smile and feel a just a little bit better about where we are.





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don't sweat the horseshit

August 15, 2018

the disparity

between talk talked and walk walked

 

has always

bothered me

 

the news headlines spoon fed me

could be an entire Joy Williams story

 

but in the context of fiction it’d be ok

to feel slightly off in a different way

 

whoever packed the plastic family

gave me two grandpas and no grandma

 

packed not by weight not by volume

but by the number of family members

 

 


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between two slices of bread

August 13, 2018

my old lady says potato salad sandwiches are not normal

I guess I would agree but they do come in handy 


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long stretches of boredom punctuated by periods of extreme boredom

August 3, 2018

boredom is a hallmark holiday

somewhere along renewal or decay

equidistant between Rainier and MLK


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I used to work in Chicago

August 1, 2018

Steve G photo 

Playing a little rugby at the finest liberal arts school in the country I sang that song with beer in hand while earning an anthropology degree to be put to use immediately in the food service industry then later used as a bike messenger later still at a small carbon fiber wheel manufacturer housed in an old Wallingford bakery heavily influenced by the aerospace industry followed soon after by a small nonprofit community bike shop in an old house in Columbia City.

 

I used to work in Chicago in an old department store.

I used to work at Mad Fiber   I don’t work there anymore.

I used to work at Bike Works I don't work there anymore. 

 

Yesterday Steve sent me this visual of a recent donation at Bike Works maybe you saw it on instagram like 18 hours ago but it brings back memories of sitting on a stool in a windowless room with semiadequate ventilation hunched over a Mad Fiber wheel that looked exactly like the last wheel and exactly like the next wheel grinding away with a dremel tool in hand wearing two pairs of gloves goggles ear protection and a respirator huffing acetone and carbon dust for 8 hours a day.

There's a very good chance that I bonded those spokes to those hub shells and or ground out the valve hole and cleaned up the over flowing super duper super glue and then wiped it all down with a shop rag drenched in acetone. 


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