pilderwasser

I don't know where I'm going...

...but I sure know where I've been.

If you missed RAGBRAI this year, or even if you didn’t and just want to relive the experience, a good place to start would be this song or try this song too. Then try both at the same time. Place the speakers on a friends bike, turn the volume up too high and have them ride by you a few times so you can experience a the Doppler Effect. Repeat as needed. Then take a nip of this

I need to take a moment to thank Jimbo for everything including the care of our team bus in Grinnell during the “off season” and especially for the storage of my bike. For 357 days my RB-1 sat idle in Jim’s basement. When I arrived in Grinnell the day before RAGBRAI, I retrieved it, scraped the mold off the saddle and handlebars, put air in the tires, lubed the chain and rode it across Iowa without any mechanical issues at all. At the end of the ride I put the old Bridgestone back in Jim’s basement for another 51 weeks of safe keeping. This storage has already saved me $400 dollars in would-be shipping costs to and from Seattle and lots of potential damage from UPS or DHL drivers. Thanks Jim.

You know it was a good vacation when you return to work and can’t remember where anything is. Client names sound funny. Addresses are meaningless and time deadlines seem pointless. The dispatcher said “noon deadline” and I just laughed. I hadn’t really looked at a clock for almost two weeks. (airport clocks don’t count) My responsibilities consisted of putting my clothes on and riding my bike to the next town. The coffee beer continuum was out the window, off the hook, off the chain, in the RAGBRAI zone.

Now I am expected to be certain places on time and play by the rules. Strapped to a Nextel once again.

this is Ian

this is Ian's bike

Ian is one of the memorable characters from RAGBRAI this year. He bought a Schwinn cruiser at a thrift store for $30 and rode it across Iowa. But he didn’t just ride it, he rode the shit out of it. He’s one of the strongest riders I’ve ever seen. If he was on a road bike he could have completed the route twice with the amount of power he put into the pedals of that cruiser.

Ian spent the nights wherever he ended up, because he carried all his own gear, which consisted of a jacket, a sleeping pad and a seemingly endless supply of Yerba Mate and hot water.

Ian has an amazing outlook on life and it was mpossible not to laugh when you spoke with him. We encountered him daily along the route and made him an honorary member of the collective. As you can see he’s sporting a pilderwasser sticker on his thermos.

In this pass-through town Ian appeared with a stack of ham, some cream cheese and a jar of pickles. He made pickle rolls for everyone, including second servings for a couple local kids. When the pickles ran out he topped off the jar of juice with a bottle of rum and passed it around.

Ride on Ian.

Just got home from an epic journey. The bike ride across Iowa was great. The airline travel to and from Iowa sucked. After a 9 hour layover in DFW the first thing I did upon arrival back in Seattle this morning was call in “jacked up” and take another day off work. Then as soon as I got home I hung up a 10’ x 3’ Michelob Ultra RAGBRAI banner in my apartment. A member of the pilderwasser collective liberated it from a beer garden somewhere last week. It’s off-gassing like a cheap shower curtain but it sure looks good.

There’s no I in team. There’s one I in pilderwasser.
Pillow officer. Pillow biter. Pussy whistle. Pisser water.

Whatever. it’s a collective.

My bed, no my bad, no it’s my bed.
I haven’t slept in my own bed since July 17.
489 miles on a bike across Iowa.
489 cans of cheap beer consumed.
I’m exhausted.
Who knew??

I brought home about 100 photos from the Iowa adventures and perhaps 33 of them are worth sharing here. And I plan to share them on a new RAGBRAI photo page then a slide show and maybe I’ll regurgitate a few anecdotes too. When Dan sets up a remote server, we can link to a fiesta of 3000 photos from many people over the past 4 years. Stay tuned

Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa RAGBRAI

a little bit of this

a bit of that

Call it a vacation if that makes you feel better. I call it a busman’s holiday. Leaving my bike messenger job to spend a week riding a bike across Iowa. But it’s not just a bike ride. It’s a party. It’s a circus of 15,000 cyclists. It’s a road trip on bikes from the Missouri River to the Mississippi. It’s an annual convention, meeting up with old friends, friends I haven’t seen since the last time I was in Iowa. Once again I encourage all of you to experience RAGBRAI if you ever get a chance to take a week off in late July. There is nothing on earth quite like it.

The messenger lifestyle is ideal training for enjoying RAGBRAI to the fullest. Consistently consuming large quantities of beer and inconsistently consuming large quantities of food. A lot of people can ride a bike. Not a lot of people can hop back on their bike after consuming a Bimbo’s Burrito and two pitchers of Rainier and keep it together or hold it down. Who can eat the Zum Zum special in 7 minutes? The messenger can.

When the calendar turns June into July, it’s time to really focus and get serious. Listening to Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits a few times a week seems to help as does applying chapstick SPF 15 or higher. As you taper down your training in the final days before the big week, interval training your alcohol consumption will payoff in beer gardens all across the state of Iowa.

I’ll be back in about 10 days.

until then…
No Bluetooth. No Blackberry. No blogging. No bullshit.
But there will be plenty of beer bagels bananas bicycles and beautiful women on bicycles drinking beer.

Cheers

Sincerely

for real

 and  you say he's just a friend

Cool Guy Park

March 12, 2008

April 24, 2008

July 12, 2008

it is what you think it is

stop here on red 

this must be the place

this time it's for real

 Sponsors include:

Counterbalance Bicycles
Mobius Cycles
20/20 cycles
DANK Bags
pilderwasser

around 11:50am southbound 5th Avenue near Pike Street.

Busses pull over to pick people up. That’s what busses do. Bike messengers go around stopped busses. That’s what bike messengers do.

A bus stopped in the right lane and I went around it, still in my lane, cruising in the 2 or 3 foot gap. No big deal. Happens all the time. But I guess it made the guy in the center lane nervous so he honked at me. I put out my left hand palm-up wondering what he was honking at. Then he pulled up next to me and yelled “the rules of the road apply to you too.” and I said “that’s right Bro” as I knocked on the passenger door of his large SUV three times with enthusiasm. Because I didn’t break any rules and I was in a hurry to file at the courthouse by noon.

When I touched his vehicle he got a little more fired up and shadowed me up 5th to about Seneca when he yelled “you see these lights?” and I just kept riding because I didn’t see any lights, riding only two feet from the side of his car I didn‘t notice much except that he might pin me into the next bus that‘s was stopped ahead.

Then he really starts yelling “Hey! Hey! You see this? PULL OVER” and he flashes his badge. I saw his badge and then I noticed his moustache. Then I finally stopped and got off my bike at 5th & Madison mostly worried about not making my noon filings. I didn’t say a word, just looked at the ground and feigned the respect that this law enforcement official seeks in his daily work life.

But officer unmarked SUV never got out of the car. He just yelled at me some more about rules of the road and then drove away. That was no SPD officer, I guess he was some sort of bullshit Federal Cop or maybe he was a Podunk detective from Chehalis that had never seen a bike messenger ride in traffic. The unmarked Seattle SUVs are obviously cop cars with all the do-dads and accessories. It was just a silver SUV with an angry moustache behind the wheel.

I made...

Predictable, reliable, accessible, comfortable
like a chicken Caesar salad
It’s better not to get too comfortable, overconfident or cocky. Continually playing the home field advantage, retracing the old habit trails. Playing big fish in the same old pond where everybody knows your name. You’re a badass back home but we’re not in Kansas anymore. Just like going out for a ride and getting a beer in a bar in Enumclaw or Cle Elum can be an eye opener, taking a digger once in a while can be good for you. It doesn’t have to be a full-on agony-of-defeat smash up. Even a slow motion keel over on the sidewalk does the trick. Or a drunken fall on top of a friends bike right in the doorway of your favorite bar will humble you for a while. A wake-up call from gravity is a good thing. A gentle reminder of who’s really in charge here. A little road rash souvenir to take back and show your friends.


Learned helplessness
Government worker syndrome
Cruising on auto pilot
Remember there’s always a manual override option
Use it
You don’t have to read the instruction manual but
Figure it out

Yes
Self contained. Self sufficient. Independent.
Like bike touring across the country with two panniers
As opposed to
a fully-supported ride from one bed & breakfast to another

when you can down a shot and bite into a pickled spear of asparagus
You smelled it here first

3 sweaters on 3 speeds

When you look good you feel good
nothing looks better than a hand-knit sweater
On a bicycle

This is a pie plate for the Bike Snob If you lived around here Mr. Bike Snob, I’d bring you this whole Huffy. The bike shop guy is crazy, so he wouldn’t sell me the pie plate or even the rear wheel he’d try to sell me the whole bike for $400.