For real really, it was exactly 24 hours in Portland sandwiched between two epic Amtrak rides along the I-5 corridor. Down & Back. Ye olde trainy trains.
Junior-Junior asked if he could see the Golden State Warriors play someday and that day was Friday. We got to see Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green playing Damian Lillard and Donovan Clingan from section 308 in the Moda Center.
I saw a rainbow. I saw Powell’s Books for the first time in a long long time. I saw a food-truck burrito unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I ate it. I saw the Pearl District inside and out wandering around and around like a clueless tourist.
I did not see any inflatable frogs, ICE Agents or National Guard troops.
I did see Three-Nine and have a beer or three with him. That was cool. Very cool. Please take a moment to locate the Messquerade Hoody nearest you. Keep in mind, it may be behind you.
There are a lot of photos on this site. But this is one of my favorites. It’s been regurgitated here several times.
I think the original photo is 2007 or 08 or 09. But when I stumbled upon the paper copy of the digital copy from the 2011 iteration, I made a postcard for the messengers at SMC and dropped it in their LSB DNA drop box this morning.
The jaywalker yelling “LAWBREAKER” also inspired me to wear my SMC lawbreaker jawbreaker morton salt girt t-shirt today.
What will Wednesday bring? It will bring it all full circle. Regurgitated rumination loopity-loop loopy cyclical cycles cycling via bicycle.
orange you glad I didn’t say the grass is greener?
nothing says greener grass like an orange T-shirt. Nothing reminds a person to ask questions like a helium filled alien bovine invasion.
Is the grass always greener?
Are those really cows?
What day is it?
How did I get here?
Is that the best you can do?
“We do it that way because that’s the way it’s always been done.”
That’s horseshit.
Dig Deeper.
There’s no “I” in team.
There’s no “I” in go-fuck-yourself.
When I pulled a copy of this little chapbook from the archives to hand off to 22 Heather, I was inspired to add a few alien bovines to my new orange t-shirt.
I think I have about 56 black t-shirts and 3 orange ones.
This photo caught my attention in one of the dusty 3-ring binders full of this site on paper. I cut & pasted it onto some cardboard and it’s now on its way to Toothaker in the form of a neo-retro black & white postcard.
That seatpost was the only Campy thing in my life. The duct taped nose on the Flite saddle was a recurring theme on many of my bikes.
I spent a lot of time staring off into space, pondering unanswerable questions. I guess I’m still doing that. But back then I was “standing by” on the coffee-beer continuum, heavily weighted to the beer side, hiding in plain sight, with 5th & Seneca tall cans, sitting on the walls outside 1200 5th, where my Bianchi was leaning in this photo. You can still call it the IBM Building if you want to. Designed by Yamasaki and kitty-corner from the Rainier Tower, another Yamasaki building.
That OG DANK toptube pad was later stolen off of Bluish’s bike outside the Elysian while she was working.
As an ant is an acid tank and a kid in dank ick can stink
Kickstand is an act and a stand.
It can sin, sic a cad at staid kin
As ticks sink in skins.
Kickstand can scan ants in sand, skin cats, stain a saint
nick, kid, kick, stack, and sack a sick and sad anti-antics din
As it aids kids. It isn’t AIDS and can’t stand
tan Dan and Candi’s tics in a skit in skin.
As I sat and stank, I said
Kick it, kids. Dan, dick Candi!
And Candi said,
It ain’t in, it’s an act: a knick-knack, tic-tac, sin-din in a tin can
An act can’t stick its dick in.
In Kickstand, I said, it can.
###
I have no recollection of how Doug Nufer got these words to me. Perhaps he handed it to me at the Elysian. Or he handed it to a bike messenger and they handed it to me downtown. Maybe he sent a fax to WA Legal... ...Anyway either way, it was printed in kickstand #9 in 1999. printed on actual paper. Photocopied, folded, stapled and hand delivered via bicycle. I'm sure I got a copy to Doug at the wine shop.
It was “reprinted” here ten years later. Now re-re-reprinted 26 years later. I’ve gained another whole new appreciation for it, as an interesting and humorous poem constrained by the letters found in the word kickstand. I also have a lot of respect for Mr. Doug Nufer who is a badass writeras well as a cyclist, former messenger, poet, MC and wine expert.
I created a postcard of the 2009 post and slapped a couple stamps on it to mail to Doug Nufer at the wine shop. Full circle so to speak. More like crazy loopty-loops.
Around 2012 there were rumblings of pulling the plug on this site. Shutting it down. I was a washed up messenger with a very young daughter. I was huffing acetone and carbon dust at Mad Fiber aimlessly regurgitating glory days in a phantom nostalgia syndrome daze. (I'm probably still doing the same old glory daze shit. But at least there's no acetone or carbon fiber slivers and my daughter is much older)
Somewhere back in there, someone I know gifted me three huge three-ring binders of heavy weight paper printed single sided with this here website. No joke. It was intended to make me feel better. Give me something to look back on. To refer to when this site was gonzo.
But it kind of creeped me out. Made me sad. Made me chuckle. A 15 inch stack of paper. Literal reams and reams of paper trying to commemorate this tiny slice of the internet. (How many reams would it take to print all this shit through 10/19/25?)
I put those three fat binders high on a shelf to collect dust. Until yesterday when I cracked one open. And saw it in a whole new light. That’s one reason I’ve been partying like it’s 2009 here and now.
It’s a treasure trove of postcard fodder. An all-you-can-eat buffet of memories with bottomless spicy bloody marys. Chronological archival quality all right there in black & white. It does not invoke the same feelings as scrolling back on the internet. The dusty paper 3-hole punched brings out some old legal messenger courthouse researcher in me. I have already created several one-of-a-kind postcards, including this Doug Nufer antic ink doozy.
Someday soon you too might see one in your mailbox, hand delivered via USPS.
I finally got this book in my hands. Got my hands on this book. Resisting the urge to drop $30 at my local independent bookstore when it came out in July, I put my name on the hold list at the library. Now here we are in October and I’m actually reading it.
We’ve discussed it before when the reviews in the NY Times and the New Yorker were great reading in and of themselves.
I’m about 47% into the book and recommending it to you again. The author is not your average Cliff Claven slouch. He’s a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He’s my age. He has kids. He lost his very high-paying “consumer strategist” job when covid made it go away and he took a mail carrier job because he needed health insurance. It happens to be in Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech.
In no way do I claim to be a full-on USPS mailman. I’m an electric ass Mr. McFeeley on a large college campus. But the amount of mail I sort and deliver gives me a taste for things this guy is describing. And he describes those things very well.
I won’t ruin the book for you. You can read it yourself.
You could call it an inch & a half. But it’s kind of a big deal in this context. 720mm to 680mm is rolling into a different timezone. It was rather labor intensive with the half-ass hacksaw I had hanging around. However the cost benefit analysis is coming up Milhouse after just a brief spin around the block. It now feels like my bike. Sincerely for real. Really.
What did you do today?
is it a dickstank day?
is it a kickstand day?
either way. anyway. both ways.
Two sides of the same coin. The same sign, two sided. The arrows point the same way. It’s a double edge sword bro. Cuts both ways. The good with the bad. Cost-benefit. Pros. Cons. Flip a coin. Take your pick. dickstank. kickstand.
Over the summer this sign pointed the way to some kids’ computer camp on campus. Then the summer ended and the kids went back to school. But the sign lingered on in a parking strip for weeks and weeks. Until I scooped it up and offered it a second chance. A new home. A better life. Taken out of context and put back in. In my garage.
The font on those stickers would not be my first choice. But they’re what I had sitting around. Dollar Store bro.
Sticker fonts bring to mind the font of choice on the classic covers of kickstand. Those letters were stickers I had sitting around at the time, in the late 90’s. But I actually found them at a yard sale in Bellingham several years before that. No joke. In situ resource utilization. Or is it hoarding?
The kickstand font tumble-jumble made its way onto a run or two of arrow stickers. It also made its way into a tattoo on my nondriveside leg. And somewhere along the way someone, perhaps Tyler Goldsmith, took a kickstand sticker and cut & pasted it into a dickstank sticker. The idea stuck and I did a run or two of dickstank stickers too. And then kickstand #11 was dickstank.
Rolling the wrong way on Okanogan Lane all day — day in day out but today someone rolled up behind me and grabbed my hoodie. My brain rolled through all the what-the-fuck possibilities of who it could be — wishfull thinking — excluding all the fucked up whack job U-district shit show oh shits… …it was Matt Messenger and we had a little chat as I final fifty fucking feet flipped another AMAZON package. This photo is SIX years old but it’s the same shit different year bro dawg.
As the temperature drops into the 40s I’ve pulled some layers out of storage. This hoodie I’ve had for years got called up recently. It’s an Outdoor Research full-zip fleece hoodie. Broken-in in a scruffy crusty commuter kind of way. Just like all my clothes.
On Saturday I added some arrows to both elbows. 24 hours later the paint was still wet. I used a super-opaque white that’s as thick as a brick. So thick it’s tough to squeegee through the silkscreen. But it’s opaque. Its opacity is without question. It’s opaqueness beyond compare. However it takes forever and a day to dry.
I wanted to accelerate the drying process and wear that thing to work, because I wouldn’t want your job on a day like this.
I don’t have a hair dryer. But I do have a heat gun. Hair dryers blow about 140 °F. Heat guns can blow up to 1200 °F. What could go wrong? It’s like being thirsty and trying to take a sip of water from a pressure washer.
I wafted the heat gun over the arrows in a couple different sessions. The second time on the left elbow I lingered a bit too long and melted a hole right through it. Like a party in off-campus housing circa 1973. There were ashtrays everywhere but your drunk roommates still burned cigarette holes in all the furniture.
100% polyester fleece hoodies melt like Velveeta under a heatgun. That little hole is now a souvenir
***
Imperfection is perfection. Hand made in Rainier Beach.
When I woke up this morning the arrows were still a little sticky. Polyester does not absorb paint like cotton does.
That hoodie will take me to work. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe someday.
An amalgamation of positive attributes in an amorphous setting neither here nor there but oh so all the way there all in my mind
satirical yet deeply moving
a poignant and ironic commentary on life
a raw and naked acceptance of the messy, often painful nature of life
A few weeks back I stumbled upon the Iowa alumni magazine featuring a Kurt Vonnegut portrait on the cover. After reading the article inside about the painting and learning more about the artist and Vonnegut as well, I decided I needed to read “Slaughterhouse-Five”. Then the very next day I found a copy in the little free library.
Ruminating on the book upon completion, I had a vague recollection of a past show at the Henry Art Gallery titled “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” At the time of the show back in 2022-23, I had no clue it was a Vonnegut line.
But in September of 2025 it all came together when I asked Margarita at the Henry if she could retrieve the poster for that show from the archives. It turns out she is the “poster person” at the Henry and was the perfect person to ask. A couple days later she handed me this poster. Now it’s on my door hanging very near that Iowa magazine that’s nestled within an 8” x 10” mat & frame that I found at surplus. Thank you very much.
Action Figure Freud: "What’s up Bobby Bobble Head? You get to go for a ride with that well placed zip tie. Round and Round. While I’m stuck in this little free fucking library with two screws, phillips and star-drive too. No Freudian slips here. Horseshit. Lips. Lisp. Slip. Slips. Lippy. Slippy. Tippy. Tipsy. Tips."
Bobble Head Freud: "Be careful what you wish for bro. Chill out. Have another cigar. Bend your elbow. Turn your head. Bend your other elbow."
Around about 15 years ago Sally Claus sent me this Raleigh Port Townsend. Shipped it directly, did he, to Mad Fiber as a Christmas present early. When Sally was Raleigh. Raleigh was Sally.
It’s been kicking around here ever since. The only OE thing left is the headset. Multiple handlebar combinatorial configurations continue on with this bull-moose Still Cruisin' bar made by Nitto and brought to you and me too by SimWorks. As you know, the dream of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s & 90’s is alive in Portland. Rip City. PDX.
This handlebar recently rolled into my garage and today I installed it with some SunTour levers, cables & housing and OURI grips.
Somewhere in that there nip & tuck session a strategically placed zip tie went between bobblehead Sigmund’s lips and on around the front hub. It will allow intentional Freudian slips. Clockwise and or counterclockwise too, depending on your point of view.
Why?
You might ask.
Why not?
I might say.
This bar is 720mm of steel reminding me to chill out, shut up and enjoy the ride. Thanks Sally. Thanks Nitto. Thanks SimWorks.
you can read all about the Still Cruisin' bar here
This bike will be getting more and more rides as more and more rain rains and it rides me to more and more trains.
I wasn’t exactly sure why these tepid milquetoast haikus bothered me so much. Then the big boss told me they were AI generated.
The robot was only concerned with staying within the parameters, counting syllables with beige safe word choices. A complete lack of feeling or emotion. Vapid. No sounds or smells or anything that occurs in nature. Less authenticity than the nacho cheese pump at 7-11.
There’s a growth unfolding in the back of my throat, maybe it's a haiku...
this is a haiku I would be proud to stick on the side of my electric ass bathtub
They say denial is the first stage. But I find myself flying through stages six, seven, eight and on into nine, still trying to play my denial card. All along the way the cashiers say, “I’m sorry sir, your denial card has been denied”
You may have noticed I’m doing a lot of looking back these days. Perhaps it’s because the here & now is so so fucked. A total shit show. So so fucked.
I’m looking back at times I can manufacture and manipulate in my head, adjusting the hue, to create a picture, however contrived, that’s a bit more comforting than current events. It’s my own special phantom nostalgia syndrome. It makes sense because I made it make sense.
Like Kurt Vonnegut said
EVERYTHING
WAS
BEAUTIFUL
AND
NOTHING
HURT
I can’t even begin to talk about the FUCKED UP shit that fills the so-called news these days. Maybe it’s because I took some Tylenol and now I’m autistic.
Moving forward
Looking back
Retrospect
Watching Matt Messenger sell weed to each and every attorney in need right there in their very own law firm mailroom
Buying acid from Pip in the mailroom of a large law firm at 1420.
Buying fat sacks of mushrooms from Ortega right there in the open air of Pioneer Square.
Tripping balls
Reading the headlines in the NY Times
Buying a new oven mitt
Retreating into the past in a cycle of denial fueled by strong beer and Wilson Phillips lyrics
Don't you know, things can change Things'll go your way If you hold... on for one more day Can you hold... on for one more day? Things'll go your way (oh, things'll go your way) Hold on for one more day
the 9/22/25 issue is a great one featuring TC Boyle, Rachel Kushner and much much more including this cartoon which actually made me laugh out loud. That LOL thing is a very rare thing for me in 2025.
If you've ever heard me string together the words HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND in the form of a question, you know it's sarcastic. It's a joke. It's horseshit. Because I don't care about your weekend. If I did, I'd ask. But I do not. I don't. I will not. I won't.
I never learned to play the idle chit-chat game, to pretend to care about things I don't care at all about. Inane conversation about nothing. Perhaps if I could pretend to hold that ability I'd have a high-paying office job and I could stand around in the break room and babble on about my big plans for the weekend.
h o r s e shit
however, if you actually had a nephew and he got into Tufts, I would stop what I was doing and look you in the eye and encourage you to finish your story.
There are Tufts Jumbos all around us but most of us are unaware. While I was still lauging at Chast's cartoon I sent it to Catarina because she's a Jumbo.
