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

About 20 years ago, I bought some golf pants at Value Village and cut them off into shorts. I gave the cutoff scraps to those guys down at DANK bags and they made me a roadmaster coozie and a top tube pad. I’d like to think I paid them in beer. I rocked them all at once, at least once for this photo at 1215 4th in 2007. 

The shorts are long gone, the coozie was given to someone somewhere sometime somehow. But the toptube pad is still rolling. 

September 16 is international take your 20 year old toptube pad to work day. So that’s what I did.  

This toptube pad came out of hiding this weekend when I took a truckload of old bike parts and accessories to BikeWorks. A metric shitton. One man’s junk is a BikeWorks Warehouse employee’s headache. 

I can see clearly now the junk is gone

I can can see all used bike parts in my way

There’s floor space in the garage that I haven’t seen for years and years. Room to move. 

We’ve talked of Thai Bui before, he’s a prolific Palo Alto artist and a penpal of mine too. He works in various mediums and his In Situ Resource Utilization is well honed.  His art card postcards are amazing. And his street arrows really speak to me. 

If I stumbled upon an arrow like this, I’d stop and take a picture. Then I’d lay on the ground next to it and wait for someone to walk by and then I’d ask them to take my picture. (human added to show scale) Thai added himself to this double arrow photo and it helps the viewer appreciate the size of it all. 

Steve Young 39 Hella Corndog Cory enjoys Thursday happy hours at the Dockside down in Rip City. He’s shared several photos over the years of the beautiful 3-headed arrow just around the corner from Dockside. You can almost smell the cloves as he steps outside for a smoke.  As you can see the cloud of cloves in the first photo and the second photo too.

Yesterday I shared some of Corndog’s photos with Thai Bui and told him if he’s ever in Portland he should...

that's not AI

that's PDW

Portland Design Works

Pink Crocs Saddle

you must have me confused 

with someone who gives a shit

what comes around 

goes around

I’ll tell you why

dig

keep asking questions 

and if you can’t 

find the answers 

in the lyrics of

a Ratt song 

from 1984

perhaps    you’re barking

up the wrong tree

dig deeper

'round and 'round

we'll all find a way 

just give it time

a map within a map 

within a map

YOU ARE HERE

an ATG recycling bin

3920 Okanogan Lane NE

I pulled a few 

old old school weather maps

like it’s 1959

cyclically cycling

full circle

circular

dot-a-lot

postcard 

production

black & white

and read all over campus

I wouldn’t drop this with USPS

but I would hand deliver it 

via electric ass bathtub

up & down

‘round & ‘round

Last week Tina visited the Mothership with a stack of books to give to former coworkers. As she downsizes her epic library and monumental record collection. 

When she reached into her satchel, the first 5 books she presented to me were: been-there, done-that, own-that, read-that, reading that…  …until finally she got to  the Different Spokes book from 1973, a book I’d never seen before. I’m now the proud owner of that book as well as all the other ones in this list. Pass it on. 

Tina gifted the other 5 to Alistair and Russell. 

Bike Cult: the ultimate guide to human-powered vehicles   by David B. Perry  1995

09 Dave gifted me this book in 1995. It’s been collecting dust for 30 years and this reminds me that it deserves a fresh look in 2026.

Bicycle Messenger  by Kyle Shepard  1999

140 pages of beautiful black & white photography. A heaping helping of SF messengers and CMWC 1996.  A keeper.

The Rider by Tim Krabbe  1978 

published in Dutch, later translated to English. 150 pages of first-person suffering a 150k amateur road race in Fictional France. It’s all in his mind. A true classic that is worth...

I recently got a new-to-me used Poprad that had a carbon fiber seatpost. So I ditched it and replaced it with a no-frills gently used 27.2 black post from Recycled Cycles. 

And then, yesterday, as I was cleaning the garage and creating a donation pile for BikeWorks, I uncovered 3 black 27.2 seatposts that are cooler than the one I just bought at Recycled. 

So it goes. 

Times three. 

Three times.

The other other day I was on a southbound train and my Lemond was hanging on a bike hook. A couple that was headed to SeaTac (to fly back to Reno) was standing near my bike, which caught their attention and I caught a few snippets of their conversation when the husband was talking about Greg Lemond and how he won the Tour, “a couple times”

Approaching my stop I stood up to grab my bike and I said “you guys know Greg Lemond?” they said, “No. But we met him at a function/fundraiser/auction/event in Reno years ago" 

“Right on” I said “I know his nephew Nick. He’s a real estate agent in Reno but he used to be a messenger here in town” And I showed them a picture of Blades. I would have shown them this Monorail beer & cigarette shot, but I ran out of time. 

Nick Blades is also an artist. Check out his stuff

Steve Young DANK BAGS Hella Corndog sent me this shot of Gigo at the Westside XXV in PDX. This photo speaks volumes. So many memories cyclically cycling full circle speaking to me. I shared it with Molly, who won that DANK bag in the Polka Dot Rocker in 2007. She rocked it for years then passed it on to Gigo.  Gigo and Fido are still rocking it. I shared it with Gigo and he shared his infatuation with polka dots. Rock on. 

as if

if only

what if

as if I was

if only I did

what if I am…

…working on a vehicle that goes back in time. Not forward. Only backward. Backward only like a neoretro time travel vehicle. To the untrained eye it appears to be a well-used Riese & Müller cargo bike. On the handlebar I’ve mounted three old Avocet cycling computers: PINK and YELLOW and BLUE. The retro cycling time traveler straddles the bike, enters the month, day and year into the corresponding computers, then rides around the corner, where they’ll enter a wormhole in the spacetime continuum and instantly arrive at the chosen date in their past life. 

The wormhole will be on hold for exactly 24 hours, allowing the retrocyclist to relive old memories or try new approaches and fully explore their phantom nostalgia. But only for 24 hours. Then they’ll be returned to their so-called “real life” reality. Where only a blink-of-the-eye went by. 

Any decisions made or actions taken in the wormhole will have no effect on the timeline, events and people in “real life”. However the retrocyclist will gain a new perspective on their past, leaving...