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

coulrophobia 

noun: abnormal fear of clowns

The term for fear of clowns—coulrophobia—is of fairly recent invention, coined, perhaps, as enough grownups found they were not alone in lingering childhood queasiness over exposure to big people dressed like Bozo  –Richard Dodds

EMPTY

EMPTY

EMPTY

it is a tale told by an idiot

full of sound and fury

signifying nothing *

you’re talking a lot

but you’re not 

saying anything

when I have nothing to say

my lips are sealed 

say something once

why say it again **

back of the metro

ride on the greyhound

drunk on the Amtrak

please shut up

another rider

he was a talker

talking ‘bout TV

please shut up ***

EMPTY      * this

EMPTY    ** that

EMPTY  *** the other

All functions are relations

but not all relations are functions 

Archetypal enigmas

enigmatic archetypes

At which we call a rose

by any other name 

Lux Sit

bow down

dubs up

purple & gold

Heisman Trophy

planet B

Patsy Swayze

electric assist

bathtub bro

A is for Alistair. Fuckin A+

The more I know about electric assist cargo bikes the more I realize how much I don’t know and the more it all sounds like this 

Took the past couple weeks off of work and during one of those weeks Alistair rebuilt my work bike from the frame on up. All new wheels, gold rims, rear hub motor, new battery, new charger, new brakes, new really bad ass kick ass brakes, look at those rotors, new electrical doo-dads, controller, throttle, tweaks, adjustments, fixes and whatchamacallits as well as all the every-little-things that I don’t even know about, neatly secured with zipties. 

I’m living in a lugged steel downtube friction shifter world circa 1989 but riding around on a $12000 electric assist bathtub Monday through Friday. 

For 5.5 years I rode a Merce Cunningham* and it did the job. But now Alistair has built up the ultimate Patsy Swayze**

after only one day, it’s clearly a whole new ballgame. 

those in-the-know

know G&O lingo: 

*Merce Cunningham = eZee front hub motor

**Patsy Swayze = GMAC rear hub motor 

If you’re building up an electric assist bike of your own. Get the GMAC. 

I’ve been to the library more in the past week than I have in the past 3 years. I’ve also silkscreened more chainrings onto postcards in the past week than I ever have before. Most of my cranks are 130 bcd but these old LX cranks are 110. Chainring bolts and their bolt circle diameters have crawled into my subconscious mind and Flann O’Brien is getting in there too  

Had a dream that I was at the library, checking out a few more books. I started to unlock my bike and noticed the chainring dangling from the crank and the chain slack on the ground.  Everything else seemed to be there as I wondered why someone would take the time to steal 5 short-stack chainring bolts off a bike but leave everything else. Rolling into some dystopian state where chainring bolts became the catalytic converter of bike theft. 

Toggling in and out of dreamland I scrolled through ways to slow a chainring bolt thief. Variations on the theme of tamper proof security fasteners. There’s a tool for that. Numerous choices exist in the industrial fastener world. Several choices exist in the bike bolt world to protect your wheels, pedals, saddle and seatpost. But none of them are chainring bolts. 

What if thieves were not after your saddle or wheels or pedals? What if thieves just wanted the bolts that hold it all together? Especially the chainring bolts. 

seek and you will find

silkscreen sweetspots

between you & me

130 bcd

big ring  52T

Venn diagrams

multicolor

illustrations

disjointed sets

sans intersects

green cow knows 

magenta arrows

Hans Christian Andersen

Winona Ryder’s sweater

Cliff Mass’s blog

ONEWAY or another

one more round

one less care

eventually

inevitably

entropy

Just went to the store for some cat food and butter. No joke. Really. For real. It’s good to have goals. In the butter aisle     what did I see    but a line of tall cans calling out to me. Cannot say I’ve ever had my hands on a 19.2 ounce can. Until today, where we join your daily routine already in progress. 

My first thought was 19.2? What the fuck? Who came up with that shit? Then I stuck the can into my tallcan coozie and as I drank it I gave it some thought. It’s the same footprint as the tallcan and the 12 oz can too. That's a huge cost savings right there. The rest is marketing mumbo-jumbo. Not ready to commit to a 24 oz roadmaster? Grab a stovepipe! It’s only 19.2 oz. And so on… add descriptive words to taste. 

My minimal online research confirmed this. Beer companies use this “stovepipe” size primarily for high ABV beers. Targeting the convenience store shopper with the one-beer-to-have-if-you’re-having-only-one. Pound it in the parking lot, at the bus stop or walking to the company picnic. Yes. When one’s not enough and six is too heavy…  …the stovepipe comes in handy. 

The good news is those guys down at DANK bags don’t need to format a stovepipe coozie. The tall can size does the trick. Close enough. Hiding in plain sight and—or not hiding anything. It’s a beer. I’m drinking it. Don’t we all have bigger fish to fry? 

as you can see the tallcan coozie leaves little to the imagination.  The roadmaster coozie offers complete coverage but it's a little slippery. Six of one. Half dozen the other. Don't overthink it. Drink it. 

postcards from workbench

postcards from homestretch

postcards from torque wrench

step 1: silkscreen random stuff onto upcycled recycled spincycled scraps of cardboard cardstock cardstuff

step 2: write some jibber jabber on the other side, address it to someone and stick a stamp for USPS

step 3: find a mailbox

in my zipcode step 3 has proven to be the most challenging 

idle hands are tools of the devil 

Patrick from PAUL's SE Lager via The Radavist 

Over the past 25 years there have been a few brief shining moments when I saw myself as a participant observer in some small corner of the bike world.  Delusional. This weekend with more free time than usual on my hands I’ve been looking at some bike stuff I normally wouldn’t look at. Wheel Fanatyk Ric was at the MADE show in PDX in August. He compiled a few links to other people’s coverage of the show.  On a fast-forward scroll through it I saw some amazing bikes, beautiful integrated stem & bar, 3-D printed this & that and some good looking stuff. 

But I don’t really care about most of it. Almost all of it. Scrolling through this stuff makes me realize I’m an outsider, a crusty commuter riding used bikes that don’t register on any consumer metrics. I’m not even an observer of all that stuff but I am aware of futile attempts to build a better mousetrap and the constant  reinventing of the wheel. I smiled when the bike shop dude spoke of hybrid bikes when all his customers asked for gravel bikes. And the square taper bottom bracket continues to hang on. 

When I got to the Radavist coverage of this bike, not a show bike, a PAUL employee’s bike. I smiled and took another look. A closer look.  This bike is where it’s at for me. Not made of shiny new unobtainium. Whatever works, works.  Especially when your scrappy cobbled-together components are PAUL.

Hurry Up & wait

dead leaves and the dirty ground

gas powered leaf blowers all around

and  Happy B-day to 87

I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve used a bottle opener in the past year. But yesterday I opened a beer with a PAUL bottle opener. Then I gathered up most of the bike bottle openers in my garage. I’d need two hands to count them all. 

Those guys down at DANK bags sent me that PAUL opener from the Made show in PDX. It’s a fine piece of metal. The kind of component that just feels good in your hand. Well made. 

Ten years earlier, the directors at Bike Works gifted all the employees engraved Park Tool bottle openers that include a pedal wrench, a 15mm socket and a “tire lever” that I wouldn’t put on any wheel unless it was an emergency. It’s clunky and heavy but it’s part of my tool kit for sentimental reasons. 

My one and only time in Vegas and Interbike I came home with a lot of bottle openers. If one ABUS key is good, then three must be better. Hunting and gathering. More like hoarding. 

At the POSEIDON table was a spread of little bikes in various colors. Cute but functional. Looks like a bike but opens beers. Several of them ended up in my pocket and I gave away a few when I got home. I still have that blue one hanging on the zipper of my weekend backpack.  

The GIANT cog shaped opener is from a RAGBRAI many years ago. 

The RHINO opener is kinda cool but I can't say I've ever used it and for some reason I took two. Hoarding. The UNIOR opener looks like a tool that hangs from a mechanic’s belt loop keychain. The official Park Tool BO-2 fits right in among all the Park Tools on the pegboard but it doesn’t bring me much joy. Blah blah blah. 

I feel like bottle openers are good marketing but they’re never around when you need one or there are two too many to choose from. 

reading Bret's comment about Surly discontinuing the CrossCheck led me to the Surly site which of course led me to the Jethro Tule: a bottle opener that every single speeder needs.  CrossCheck fades out, Preamble and Straggler fade in. 

lowercase g

boy on phone

memento mori

not necessarily 

in that order

repeat 

as often

as necessary

got this book in my hands, just two days after it was unleashed on the world because Fantagraphics is only a few zip codes away.  I’m not saying you should buy it. I’m just saying, you should buy it. Read through it. Then read it again ten more times slowly. Or skip around. Pick a page. Flip and stop. Learning something new each and every time. 

The New York Times review was pretty piss poor. Basically describing the entire plot and spoiling it for everyone while saying nothing at all about the artwork. Horseshit. Like hiring a retired basketball player to call football games. What are you talking about?

The NewYorker review was great, in depth, lots of discussion of the artwork with all the historical references. All the while saving the plot and story for you, the reader. Read it. 

PIPPA GARNER, TONGUE-TEXTING

PENCIL ON PAPER    9 X 11.5 IN

Can't say I knew much of anything about the artist Pippa Garner, until today when I delivered this catalog from UCLA to the Henry Art Gallery. I texted this photo to family and friends but I didn't use my tongue. 

I am learning more about Pippa Garner as we speak...

I like bikes. But it takes a bit, a little something, to get my attention. Working at a nonprofit bike shop and sorting endless piles of donated bikes built up my immune system to disregard  most bike stuff. This cute little red stem got my attention. As short as a stem can be and still be a stem. Then the ad hoc slap dash Sun Bum mud guard made me smile. Wedged parsimoniously between the seat stays, its effectiveness largely psychosomatic. If perception is reality, it’s the thought that counts. 

Shit like that gets my attention. Like the experimental nuclear physicist that rides a hoopty bike to the lab with gerry-rigged homemade mudguards fashioned from a FedEx box. Or the oceanography undergraduate with the expensive shiny new gravel bike “secured” outside with a beefy Abus lock looped only through the quick-release front wheel. Or the famous atmospheric science professor weather blogger that rides in to work with his hose-clamped milk crate.  

the crow, sitting on the Surly, talking shit…

…hose-clamped 

milk crate 

douche bags

expecting respect 

from 

bungee-corded 

pickle bucket

Dexter Ave warriors

It’s only day 3 but this is my pick for photo of the month. 28 days later we can talk about it in retrospect.  

this AT photo speaks to me on several levels… 

With a pristine patch of concrete and a brand new paint pen go ahead and express yourself. But is that the best you can do? I’m not angry, I just feel like you could do better. In any case, you did make me chuckle and take a photo too. 

Operating under the assumption that the graffiti on a college campus is usually done by college students and college students often tell dick jokes. 

I’d stick with the tongue-twister tradition if it had to be a dick joke:

How much wood

could a woodchuck suck

if a woodchuck 

could suck 

wood

1001 mile stare

out the window

watching rain

raining down

gauging the intensity

by the puddle surface 

concentric circles

radiating ripples

2003 at 1001 4th Ave

2023 at 1001 Boat Street

same shit 

different year

is it raining? 

The sound of dry pavement

The smell of freedom

The quality of life

The probability

The odds to evens

The over-under

The pundits

The experts

The stuffed shirts

The price per pound

The alcohol by volume

The return on investment

The consumer loyalty

The brand recognition

The same old shit

The good old daze

The could've beens

The hopes to be

The feel of hand-tooled leather

The People magazine

The highschool yearbook

The cost-benefit analysis

The shipping & handling

The final 50 fucking feet

The weather forecast

The bus schedule

The Seahawks schedule

The intangibles

The gut feelings

The tea leaves

You are 

What you 

Stare at all day