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 drop shadow this epic arrow and then visit the Dockside for a breakfast burrito and a beer, or three.   

 PS:  just a few hours later and Thai Bui has done up the Dockside arrows

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 reading again.

The Immortal Class: bike messengers and the cult of human power   by Travis Hugh Culley  2001

This guy got a book deal, got on Oprah, got a national book tour too. It’s worth reading. However “real” messengers working in Chicago - at the time THC claims to have been a messenger - will point out all the BS and ripped off stories he claimed as his own.

Bike Snob  by Eben Weiss  2010

I didn’t buy this book 16 years ago. I was very familiar with his website.  However, a couple weeks ago Junior-Junior pulled a pristine copy from the little free library. Good stuff.

Different Spokes for Different Folks  1973

This book (see photo above) was in Tina’s book collection since her childhood. It's a series of one-liners and comic illustrations. It’s also a reminder of what was socially acceptable in 1973 and what was considered humorous once upon a time.

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 no need to wallow in the WHAT-IFs?  All the SHOULDA-COULDA-WOULDAs are left behind, because they did. 

What’s with all the arrows bro?

Don’t you know which way to go?

And all those lower case gs?

Jeez Louise?

Jiffy corn muffin mix?

I heard those guys are dicks. 

what's your 20?

I'm at the PizzaHut

I'm at the TacoBell

I'm at the combination TacoBell PizzaHut 

are you sure you're not at the corner of

NE San Juan Road &

San Juan Road NE???

16oz Black Tea - Lemonade = $6.00 at coffee shop

BYO BTL = $0.25 

run the numbers

do the math

day in   day out

cost - benefit analysis

Two former messengers walk into a bar

The bartender says, “who’s Toto?”

sara g photo

The Participation Trophy Brewing Company doesn't actually make beer. 

But if they did, I'd buy it.

Freudian lisp

Freudian slip

Freudian lips

bilabial Freudian lisp

that’s no slip

that’s both lips

As you can see Freud’s lips are chapped. He’s been around the block a few times with a zip tie in his mouth securing him to my front hub. Before that he sat in a raised garden bed for a season or two.  I found a Freud bobble head doll in a free pile in the UW Psychology department in the middle of the covid years, and I’ve gotten my money's worth. 

Now Freud is looking up from under my saddle.

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

In 2012 Portland Design Works released the Dios Thronous saddle. The first of its kind, 100% injection molded EVA foam. The Crocs saddle. In black, green, white and “red”. But it’s not even close to red. It’s full-on pink.

I was completely unaware of this saddle, until there was a metric shitton of them at BikeWorks. PDW stopped making them. Bike shops couldn’t sell them.  They were kicked to the curb and donated. Bike Works could barely give them away. The word on the street was that they were too “sticky” and spongey and not cool.  OK for your bar bike but you wouldn't want to ride across Iowa on one of these. 

I got one at BikeWorks a few years ago and it sat in a milkcrate in the garage until last week when I slapped it on the Raleigh that Sally gifted me 16 years ago. 

All my bikes are “bar bikes” so this thing works for me. I like the size and the shape. The color matches the cute little stripes on the Port Townsend. I’m not sure yet about the sticky-sticky high-friction texture. But for my butt the bike-to-train-to-bike to work, it’ll work. 

Dios Thronous:

"the support of the heavens"

"the seat of Zeus"

Pink Croc-like throne

Id, ego, superego bro. You name it. 

oral, anal, phallic, genital…   …fixation. 

Plus or minus punctuation. 

Jimmy James' JAMMER bikes are BIG in Japan. And only getting BIGGER. 

you'll find a wide selection of high quality photos of the bike on the radavist

Hella Corndog photo

Hella 22 Heather photo

imagine Hella Catarina photo here

A few weeks ago I screened myself a Hella t-shirt and pulled off a few postcards too, residual byproduct side effects. 

Then I mailed them to Corndog, 22 Heather and Catarina. It took a few weeks for Heather’s to travel one mile, a few weeks++ for Corndog’s to get to Rip City 200 miles south, and I’m still hoping Catarina’s will surface in McKinleyville some day soon, 571 miles south of here.  

These postcards sat in some US Postal purgatory for a few weeks. I think they were stuck together and maybe stuck to other mail too and tossed aside until someone somewhere sorted them out and put them back on their way. My postcard to Perkins Coie took weeks and weeks to get to Molly. Ashurst Perkins Coie, that is, just a few miles south of here in downtown Seattle. 

I believe my fondness for Dot-a-Lot dimensional craft paint is the reason my postcards have glommed onto each other. And perhaps I need to scale back on the use of it with USPS items. 

However, I hand-delivered a card to the Medicinal Herb Garden Guy Keith via the Life Sciences Building at UW and it took nearly 3 weeks to get into his hands. Dot-a-Lot or not… 

Hella Hella Hella

I went to Portland for 67 hours to visit Corn Dog and the MADE show. Now I’m in recovery mode, aka: robot boy zombie electric ass mailman. I got some photos I plan to put in a slide show. But I’m in a bit of a technology pickle. So it might take a while. I started a MADE PDX slideshow on the slideshow page. And eventually I'll get the photos up there. 

"Toto represents Dorothy’s deep connection to home, her grounded reality and the voice of truth." 

Thank you for calling Pee-Dub Industries. Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly. The estimated wait time is currently 77 hours. 

Rare Buffalo leather San Marco Rolls saddle. Light brown with gold highlights. This is a vintage rare saddle. Perfect finishing touch to your 90's restoration project. Or you can buy it and flip it on eBay for $200. They don't make these anymore. The only thing wrong with it is the rivet head that popped off on the rear ROLLS panel, as you can see in the photo.

This saddle is gently used but over all, it's in good condition.  

that was my craigslist ad

A couple days later, one response, no bullshit, no stupid questions, she showed up early-on-time, on a bike, and paid cash. 

sometimes craigslist is cool

I got this saddle years ago at Bike Works and Steve Maluk frowned upon my "employee 5-finger discount" because he knew this was not just any old saddle. I put it on my purple Bianchi for stint. Then I gave it to Steve Young for a bit and he rode it for a moment. Then I took it back from him because the other Steve said it was so valuable. And then it just sat in a milkcrate full of saddles in the garage for 12 years. Until today. When it SOLD

the proceeds will be poured directly back into the local economy and beers with Steve Young down in Rip City

Up on upon its first test ride I had the rear brake only laced up to Ye Olde School Suntour cantilever lever. It felt like nothingness. It felt like a rainsoaked super saturated nerf ball on a trampoline. It felt like a stress dream where you’re trying too hard to look like you’re not trying too hard. 

It did not inspire confidence. 

Then I slapped on some XT levers and the brakes felt better. I rode it around the block a few times trying to burn off all the BikeWorks greasy grease on the rotors. It started to feel a little bit better. 

And then I thought of Steve Maluk scolding me for building up a bike with canti levers on V-brakes. It works. But it’s half-ass. And we don’t sell half-ass bikes here. Those were not his words but they’re my summation of the situation. Lesson learned. 

On these XT levers you can switch the cable pull from canti to V-brake. Quick as a wink.  If you’re cable actuating disc brakes you want to be in V-brake mode and pull more cable. Not until today did I realize I was test riding in cantilever mode. When I switched them over, the fine red bicycle finally felt rideable. 

take your bike to work day #1

take your bike to Big Time time 

“Note the fine red bicycle leaning on the sunny side of the outhouse.”

-Paul Fattaruso

Bicycle  page 63

The Poprad’s maiden voyage was just down the street to shoot hoops with Junior-Junior. 

With only the rear brake strung up, it was a slow roll. The microSHIFT shifters shift just like shifters should shift. This fine red bicycle still needs work, and a new fork. But it’s coming along.  

This cold brains Cannondale sat outside of Fisheries all week, unlocked. 

unlocked…

cold brains, unmoved

untouched, unglued

alone at last

no thoughts, no mind

to rot behind

a trail of disasters

“Cold Brains”

Beck  1998

Perhaps it’s been there more than a week, but I do that fishery route every third week, so I’m not sure. The fact that U-district bike thieves have bigger fish to fry in 2026, makes me chuckle. 

Cannondales make good cheater bars. If this bike rolled into BikeWorks during my tenure, I’d tag it:  “AS IS ONLY”  I would not touch it with any tools. But if it was damaged, I’d strip any usable parts and hack-saw the downtube into an oversized cheater bar. This cold-brains Cannondale would fall on the cheater bar spectrum somewhere between the Gary Fisher and the Klein. 

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. But don’t give me your blown out HeadShok.  What would Pig Boy do? (WWPBD) Note the superfluous seat post clamp on the saddle.