thinking out loud

there and back again

2008-04-29T20:43:01Z

it was the single-day pinnacle of my existence as an athlete. it's definitely not the case that athleticism defines me, but it is a part of my identity, and what particularly excites me as much as anything is pushing myself to see where the limits are. since last summer, distance cycling has really been my sweetheart. since last summer, i have also not trained seriously. though my behavior does not appear to be pointed towards excelling at what i want to do, it turns out that i am still a glutton for punishment, and so i dove into my longest ever bike ride with my only real long training rides in the past 8 months being a couple 100k's and a 200k a couple weeks ago. i ride every day, but i rarely ride more than 15 miles in a go when i'm tooling around town, so it doesn't really count in the same way that an extended ass-to-saddle marriage does.

the three capes brevet was an oregon randonneurs event. this means, in effect, that it is unsupported. there was one rest stop with some snacks and a dose of encouragement about 23 miles in, but for the next 164 miles, we were on our own for food, directions, and mechanical assistance. which is not to say we couldn't stop at a convenience store, or borrow a wrench from an auto parts store, but that there are no sag wagons, rest stops, or anyone looking out for us except to show up at the end before 2am.

it was one of the 5 nicest days of this year (since 1 jan 2008), and for that i am very thankful. if it had been rainy, blustery, or freezing, i would probably not have finished. instead it was clear almost all day (it got hazy for about 20 minutes mid-morning), and though it started a little chilly, it warmed up pretty quickly and stayed warm until i was finished riding.

one of the problems with distance riding is the ol tortoise-and-hare situation. there are supermen who can hammer it for the entire duration of any ride, and then there are normal human beings like me who, between time off the bike, big hills, tired legs, and a sore ass, are disinclined to work at full capacity from start to finish (at which point one presumably topples over, thoroughly exhausted). one of the beauties of randonneuring is that it is specifically not a race, but rather a personal challenge, which gives one a little more time to enjoy the scenery, companionship, and local color/flavor of the towns passed through.

being a normal human being (well, for the sake of this account anyway), i've learned over the past few rides not to try to hang onto the lead pack, since i'll use up all my oomph quickly and then have to limp in. and i'd rather feel strong but not incredi-fast for the whole ride than zoomy+ for a couple hours and worn-out for a lot more hours. i know my limits are around 3 hours of hammering, so i try to adjust accordingly for >60 mile rides, and the latest strategy in turning off my keep-up-with-the-joneses-ness has been the late start. i accidentally started late on the last ride, because i arrived just in time to see the pack take off but i still needed to go potty, so another fellow in my situation (late-arriver-in-need-of-the-facilities) and i set out about 4 minutes late and had a really pleasant ride into the first checkpoint, around 36 miles. it set the pace for the rest of the ride, which was comfortable, non-traumatic, and really quite enjoyable, without being ridiculously slow and still leaving me in the first half of finishers.

so once again this time, i planned to start late, and got my wish due to a slow prep that left me ready to go with the pack...except i'd forgotten to fill my water bottles. so i dashed inside as everyone rode off, then strolled back out to discover a small group still gearing up to go...including my friend & fellow late-starter-from-last-time Mike, and a fellow Nate whom i'd ridden with a bit before, and who is one of the most prolific photographers on these rides, so maybe there'll be a few pictures of my butt climbing up a hill in his photostream...

the first checkpoint was 23 miles in, and though we'd started late & slow, we had a pretty good paceline going, and when my group had passed a lot of folks and started to slow down, i was on the wheel of a fellow who said "why don't we close the gap?" and pulled me up to the next group, with whom we danced up the first hill. since the checkpoint was a turnaround, i kept expecting to see the leaders coming back down the hill, but never did...we apparently put the burn on to such an extent that we caught them at the turnaround...leaving just as we arrived. oops. still, i felt good and it was chilly so the sweat wasn't pouring forth yet, so i deliberately took a longer break than i felt like i needed, stretched, ate, drank, and felt ready to do another fast 20 before i left.

mike caught me up about 5 miles into this next leg, and we cruised/powered up a moderate but steady incline for about 5 miles before setting a good pace the rest of the way into tillamook, home of squeaky cheese and also my first bike-powered sighting of us101, aka the pacific coast highway. i ended up out in front by a hundred or so yards and, being ravenous, pulled over at the first sign of an open cafe that was on our route. dunno what mike did, but he didn't follow me and i didn't see him again that day. the results seem to indicate that he finished, which pleases me, since this was also his longest ride ever. the cue sheet describing the route mentioned a grocery store we were going to pass in tillamook, but since i wanted greasy, i figured where better to go than a greasy spoon? this place (name already forgotten) fit the bill...practically empty, vinyl-covered barstools, both other customers smoking, oh, and there was a bar in the back of the building that had 5 people in it at 10am saturday morning. the bathroom was...interesting, and looked original to the 80-year-old structure. anyway, breakfast of eggs, hash browns, toast, OJ, and serious (not funny) sausage was exactly what the doctor ordered, and i wish i'd had seconds, since it was the last real food i was to eat all day. you might be thinking: "how on earth could he eat that and then ride his bike 126 more miles?" however, that's about what i eat before i head out usually, and i'd had to skip pre-breakfast since there was no place open before we left @ 6am...so i was just making up for lost...taste? however, i had already started out in the hole, nutritionally, which was dumb.

headed out strong after applying sunscreen for the first time since i left texas last october, and my tummy was full...and it continued to feel full for the rest of the ride. for the most part, i was drinking water/electrolyte replenishment stuff to the point of fullness, but it occurred to me after the ride that i basically never had to urinate all day, so despite drinking something like 12 (20oz) bottles of water and a couple of other randoms (OJ, chocolate milk, iced tea and soda), i was apparently underhydrated even though i didn't feel as though i was sweating very much. the weather may have had something to do with that--it wasn't really hot enough to make me drip, but i did notice extensive salty spots on my spandex as i stripped down after the ride.

up til tillamook, the terrain had been a little hilly but not too bad, and the wind had not bothered us at all. i set out, and rode, alone for the next 40 miles or so. and while i was playing leapfrog with a few folks so i didn't feel lonely, it was the hardest and most beautiful part of the ride, both of which i like my alone time for (the pretty and the huff-n-puffin). hardest, because there were two short but steep climbs...both less than 2 miles, an average of 750 feet apiece. pretty hard on not-so-fresh legs. the only saving grace was that it was freaking beautiful, since we were effectively on the coast, way above it, and both climbs featured nice views through the trees and overlooks at the top. i only stopped at the one, but it was just as scenic as i remember the PCH down between san fran and LA being when i drove it in '03. i can't say this is somewhere i'm gonna bike again, but i can say i'd like to...

whilst climbing, we were pretty well along the beach for about 40 miles...from tillamook down to pacific city, we varied between about 5' elevation and around 1000', but were rarely more than a few miles from the ocean. the views and the rare sound of crashing waves (audible only when there was a tailwind and i wasn't huffing up a huge steep or hurtling down the other side of it) were comforting and peaceful. made it out to the 93 mile checkpoint and stopped at the first convenience store which was across the street from a marina, for a signature on my route card and a snack...chocolate milk to the rescue!

it was only about 17 miles later that trouble started. i'd been caught up by a fellow named (i think?) Dan, with whom i rode for a bit and we took turns breaking the wind...until i realized i was flagging, and hung on to his wheel for a brief moment before wishing him well and peeling off to trudge along to the next intersection, where i planned to stop and rest for a minute. he waited for me and encouraged me to eat something--i was pretty obviously bonking, but i still felt full..mostly of chocolate milk and water, i came to realize, and so i forced down an apple and some clif shot blocks, and immediately perked back up, though dan had long since headed on without me. it was here that Jim pulled up, munched a bit, and proceeded to ride the entire rest of the ride with me.

thereafter, Jim and I rode for awhile with a few other folks, most notably Pat from-seattle-via-Ireland, stopped approximately every 10 miles for stretching and eating, and worked our way slow and steady, aiming for arrival before dark, which we seemed on target for. every time we stopped, i forced myself to eat something and i think that's what kept me from just toppling over.

we were tired and our crotches were sore, but that was to be expected. what was unexpected (to me) was my calves. always the most cramp-prone part of my body, they'd sent up some warning flashes and then for about 10 miles they started writhing! i felt like i was that dude in the animatrix, or maybe that guy in alien...anyway, there was definitely stuff wriggling around under the skin and some on-bike quick-rub of the wriggly areas only served to put off the writhing for a few minutes...and then they'd be back. both legs. not boding well...but we were less than 10 miles from the end, and the sun was trying to set, and so we were pressing on, hoping to beat the dark and cold and cars more likely to run us over.

every time i get a cramp, it's almost scripted. i feel it start, which hurts a little, and groan/moan/scream in anticipation of the upcoming pain. usually, cramps happen to me in bed, a-la charley horse, when i'm doing my morning yawn-stretch. i've mostly stopped yawn-stretching in avoidance :(. so usually, i reach down and rub the cramp as it's happening and reduce the duration of the pain/lockup and it seems to improve recovery time as well. that worked out for me well on a ride a month or so ago, when i cramped before i was clipped in, but it cost me a minute worth of gap on the peloton that i never managed to close, try though i did (and hard!) for at least 20 miles. i could see them when terrain was flat, but i never got any closer than a half mile.

i was riding behind Jim and another fellow whom we'd seen on and off when i felt my right calf cramp, hard. i was really angered by the cramp's arrival, and my "aaarghnoooo" was shouted loud enough to turn Jim around. later, he says "i thought you were objecting to the rider ahead not making a turn", and was turning around to assure me this was the right direction. but then he saw me coming to a stop and unclipping just in time for my leg to completely stop working. lesson learned? next time, unclip both feet...since i was unable to straighten the cramping leg to find the ground, and when my left calf also cramped about 2 seconds into my tornado of legpain, i wasn't even thinking straight enough to worry about unclipping, staying upright, or gravity in general. and so, one-cramped-leg unclipped, one cramping leg clipped in still, i toppled over unceremoniously in the street. i guess i'd managed to stop, since i didn't turn up scraped, but i was certainly still attached to my bike and unable to move my legs even if they hadn't been tanlged up in my ride. and it was starting to get dark. and the road we were on had a speed limit of 50mph. and there was a car coming up. and i was in the lane going its direction. none of that really occurred to me--my thought being more OWCALVESOW on a tightly repeating loop. but fortunately Jim had the presence of mind to turn on his ultrabright bike light and point his bike into the driver's windshield, which saved the day until Jim convinced me that i was capable of detaching myself from the bike and hobbling to the ditch at the side of the road.

we were only about 8 miles out, and there were still at least 5 hours until the course officially closed. i would have walked that last 8 if i'd had to, but it turned out that my legs were still ok for biking. i slammed all my remaining electrolyte juice and pills, and turned in a steadily-increasing-but-never-taxing pace all the way to the finish. we didn't quite beat sunset...but we made it in before i was unable to read my cue sheet in the failing light. i was happy for my head and tail lights and should have been wearing my reflective vest, but every second not pedalling was a little more crotch agony, so i played it slightly unsafe and cruised in barely legal (by the rules of the organization sponsoring the ride...of course i was all lawful with my lights as far as the cops were concerned =))

kdaisy721 was waiting for me at the finish with congratulatory hugs, muffins, and pampered me all night, forcing food and stretching upon me and no doubt vastly improving my recovery time. despite all my dilly-dallying (which i think was essential to finishing the ride in as good spirits as i did), i made decent time on the bike: 186 miles in just under 12 hours of riding. of course, there was 2:45 of not-riding in my total course time. and that's a-ok.

so. in the future, i shall eat and drink more, and more regularly, and from the start, and i shall probably not attempt over 300k until i've got some more long rides under my belt. which is a shame since there's a 600k in 2 weeks that i would have loved to do...

the luckiest...

2008-04-08T04:17:08Z

on saturday, i rode my bike 130 miles in about 9.5 hours. i added another 10 on with the ride to/from the start for my 2nd longest day in the saddle ever, after the Dease Lake Triple challenge that we pulled off last summer in rural northern british columbia. let's just say i was in far better shape last summer, but i made far better time this spring. same bike, same clothes, same weather (half dry, half-drizzly)...but better roads and less elevation gain made this a little less gruelling. that and knowing that i was going to sleep in my own bed that night, and that there were convenience stores with great frequency (ok, greater frequency...still 20 miles between, give or take). oh, and the 46 intrepid souls who set out on 200k with me at the crack of dawn. i spent about 5 miles drafting behind a pleasant recumbent, about 30 miles riding with a delightful fellow named mike, and the rest of the ride pretty well on my own, although i saw folks all day long, since it was an out and back course--the speed people passed me going the other way 10 miles from the turnaround, and i was seeing folks still coming for an hour and a half after i turned around myself. mostly, i was happy to feel great the next day, meaning i am probably going to do something nutty and try the 300k in two weeks, despite co-sponsoring a party that evening.

it was fortunate i had no troubles walking and that dark_knightly did me the tremendous favor of working out the knots in my lower back that evening, so's i could help kdaisy721 host a pretty fabulous sushi-housewarming party in the style of the old austin nuclear-sushi crowd. we had about 28 folks there, and a good time, and good food was had by all. we'll probably have more similar parties, since we like hosting, cooking, and eating, and we are well-provisioned for all 3. mmm. all-the-sushi-you-can-eat! all-the-sake-you-can-drink! yesplz.

also, new job goes well. plenty to do, reasonable autonomy, learning new things, helping people do their work. life is pretty good.

this post courtesy of 808's prompting. now, to go eat fishleftovers =)

happiness is...

2008-04-04T03:55:09Z

...a bikely lunch in the park, in the (quasi) sun, no jacket required, with teknotus and bonnie, eating a lunch delivered to my office via bike!

...the new job failing to suck in so many ways.

...getting home from work at 5:15, having a couple beers on my balcony overlooking the world, and yumming up the red beans, rice, and chorizo (amazingly, bartering josephs makes a decent chorizo that is neither devoid of meat nor flavor, nor costing a zillion dollares).

...pedalling fiercely some miles to the north to hear the keyboardist from the decemberists play on an organ built into a pub, and having a pint of my favorite and winning a couple of games of scrabble on my cellphone by a hundred and fiftyish points apiece.

...cruising home to a warm cat, livejournal, cold beer, whilst i finish unpacking my home in anticipation of a fabulous sunday sushi festival celebrating the warmiing of my home.

yeah, i'm living the life. if you're not, change your world today!

*mwah*

grab bags R us

2008-03-26T06:09:35Z

i've been neglecting you, my pretties, and for that i apologize. i especially apologize to all of you who haven't stopped updating, and promise i've read everything on the old friends list, even if i haven't always had time to reply. i've been a busy little beaver, out having fun and maybe not saving the world, but i'm sure about the having fun part. i took tonight off from my regularly scheduled fun because, quite frankly, i was on the verge of overdoing it, and while i'm all about over the top and overeating, overdoing is a bit...overdone.

so what i have arrayed below is some of the tastier morsels of the while since you read me last. enjoy, or don't--reader's choice!

first off, i think i forgot to mention that i saw the mountain goats, sound-unheard, a few weeks ago. they were really great live; highly recommended show-experience, even if you're not into them (i literally had no idea even what genre they were).

second off, i am free! i escaped nike with no more than minor cuts and bruises, and mostly, i think, i left a decent taste in their mouth. i was no overachiever in my final days, but neither did i entirely phone it in. i turned in my badge, cleaned off my computer and cleaned out my desk, and rode out of there forever. i think i'll keep at least one of the friends i made working there, and i'm just glad i left before i started to resent the people in addition to the work and the bureaucracy that made it craptastic.

third off, i found myself on a heated toilet seat that sports a bidet on monday morning. i've never experienced a heated toilet seat that wasn't warmed merely by the previous user's backside, nor have i ever actually seen a bidet (except, oddly, in an apartment building in boston wherein the units didn't have their own bathrooms...a communal bidet?). my new building is kind of fancy. i like my new job, and i had no trouble agreeing to try not to work more than 40 hours per week when the HR lady requested it of me. i think i can get along pretty well with these kids, and their technical problems don't seem too heinous.

fourth off, we are settling into the new homeplace. kdaisy721 and i have yet to peeve eachother beyond the typical peeving we did even when not living together. we're almost a month in. we still love the place. if you're in portland, me love you long time and wanna show you the place on sunday, 6 april. we'll make sushi. save the date, expect full-blown invite soonly.

on sunday, with help from dark_knightly, i attached bunny ears to my bike helmet and led a group of similarly (or better!) attired folks across town to a big bunny potluck. i drank some beer, made some friends, went to a hot tub and watched "who framed roger rabbit" while drinking champagne before i returned home, many moons later. it was suggested that i really tie one on so that i might set the bar low on my first day of work. my new friends are quality =)

fifth off, i'm looking for an old used squeezebox. not the accordion or the who song. the network music player. have one laying around i could buy off you? ebay is strangely lacking. i've mailed a few craigslist people in various cities, but i can't imagine that working out well "yeah. just mail it to me. it's light. i'm good for the money!"

sixthly, i made probably the most complex, and maybe most tasty meal of my cooking career, weekend before last. mole chicken. two chickens, actually. we cooked for 5 hours straight. it was epic, tasty, and made approximate a metric fuckton of food. i finally finished it tonight. i will be cooking more with this particular partner in crime who shares my opinions about cooking Right and With Love. as many of my friends do =). I'd post a recipe, but i just couldn't do it justice. it was originally a frida kahlo recipe. authentic but with some fudging and modification, despite a largely successful effort to be all authentic (lard, 4 kinds of chiles, at least 15 spices..)

seventhly: have you had a pillowfight lately? why not? i joined a flash mob in a brief fun frenzy this weekend. whee.

lastly, courtesy mhat, the best interview question ever:

you open a terminal, running bash. you type in "telnet www.google.com" and hit enter. describe in great detail what happens. really. as much detail as you can.
i could probably write a novella. i'd only need the one question, as an interviewer or interveiwee, to see if this was really the right person for a unixy job. oh yes, my pretties.

more life and times

2008-03-08T22:04:42Z

boxes decrease at a very slow pace. i was much more into unpacking at the last place, before i developed a busy social life. also, i may have hit my limit for intense unpacking sessions per year back there, and it's only been 4 months.

despite a lingering cold i followed through on plans to take a 100k bike ride with the oregon randonneurs this morning and the weather *totally* cooperated. you may recall my last ride report when i did a same-length course with them back in november, and i am happy to report that today's pace was much closer to race pace, and it was gorgeous to boot. i probably would have managed to keep up with the lead group if not for my politeness in going back to pick up a fellow's jacket when he didn't see it fall out and i was just dropping back from a long pull at the front of the paceline. i spent the next 2 miles catching the group (and of course, i was beat, or i wouldn't have been dropping back from pulling), so that wasn't a big win in the sustainable energy expenditure department. still, i caught them at the control and managed to get signed, stuff a donut in my face and grab a cookie before they started setting out, so i hopped on my bike and was immediately cut off by someone just arriving and had to pull up short to avoid a crash (low speed, but still not something i'm into). in the process of so doing i lit up a huge cramp in my calf that kept me from starting for a minute or so. i chased the peloton all alone and kept them in sight, maybe 1/3mi ahead, for almost 15 miles before i was worn out and had to let them go. i guess there's not a lot of better reasons to end up doing worse in a race than one might because one is too nice. and hey, it's not a race, anyway...the beauty of randonneuring is that it's a tour, and is more about self-sufficiency and finishing than finishing fast. and since it failed to rain on us, i will still vote this an unequivocal success. it's a rare morning when i can arrive home after a 40-minute train ride and a 70-mile bike ride before noon. and it's a rare afternoon that won't see me napping after that =)

oh, if you use nike sportswear of any stripe and want me to pick some up for you, half price, the deadline for orders is thursday. i'll be going to the employee store on friday or monday and taking advantage of cheap prices. i'm not really in need of much from them that i use already, but i figure i might get a pair of those "nike free" running shoes to see how they feel, and i need some soccer cleats for playing ultimate frisbee this spring/summer. am happy to pick up some air jordans or livestrong stuff for you if you're wanting some. please make sure i have your phone number if you place an order so i can call about substitutions in case they don't have exactly what you want.

per the curiosity expessed re: my last post about the new job, here's something more to chew on. i got the job via the apparently standard-in-these-parts practice of going through a recruiter (post resume on monster and sit back and await the deluge of calls and emails, maybe a third of which are actually relevant due to location or usually job type..gee, that's not on my resume for a reason. i don't know it or i don't want to work with it!) who was trying to fill a pretty cushy permanent position. (ah, my days of contracting are hopefully over never to return! the salary was high but not getting paid for sick/holidays and carrying my own expensive-but-nearly-useless insurance are things i won't miss). the job is with a small local marketing agency with offices downtown and a totally unimpressive web presence, but the important things are as follows:

1) working with a couple of neat guys. we are the IT team. we can do whatever we want without a change control board or 6 months of planning meetings. we also get to clean up our own messes, which may not sound like a thing you'd miss, but i sure did.

2) working with open source software again. i had not realized how much i missed this until i found myself smiling about being a *linux* sysadmin running software i can actually look inside, patch, and modify. also, drupal, wordpress, python, etc. i'll be learning a lot here. maybe i'll finally give up perl, 10 years in. i hear python is the shit. i like what i've seen so far.

3) did i mention it's downtown? at least an hour less of commuting per day? ok! i'll have to make time to ride my bike, since i won't have that built-in distance to cover. but in practice, i've been choosing sleep over riding in the morning and my evenings are a crush of stuff that often leaves me riding the train home too. and days are getting longer, so i'll have more light in the evenings/mornings to ride in for the next 6 months anyway. yay! don't worry, i'm still riding all over town, but i don't go out to a bar 10 miles away from my house every night. just every other night.

4) oh, of course i'll actually get to sit near my team. so yay for that. i'm normally not bothered by being a loner, but at nike it was kinda killing me slowly to have no interaction with my crew. that and i was constantly left out of decisions that i had some useful input on, or worse, affected me, because they happened at someone's desk a hundred yards away from me.

what i'm "settling" for is the industry--i'm pretty anti-marketing. and some of the stuff they do is downright silly (infomercials). but the company seems pretty cool, and i'm assured that the people are great to work with. neat offices on the park, a block from the powell's bookstores. i'll get to go to breakfast on the bridges and bikey lunch easily since those are both "within range" of downtown, and i can make it to critical mass without leaving work early. and the compensation package, while lower in salary than nike was, is higher in net value once you take into account the killer insurance, 401k matching, and stuff. not even thinking about it yet but they do annual bonuses too, which i've never actually experienced. so i've got that going for me.

i almost bought a singlespeed/fixie on friday. i found one that looked decent, for cheaps, and i was one click away from getting a motobecane messenger in orange, until i read a little about their (lack of) quality control since being acquired by an oriental manufacturing conglomerate. so i gave it a miss and put the money in the bike account--i still want a cyclocross bike and putting money into that makes a lot more sense since it'll become my about-town and long-distance bike, and i'll keep the trek for actual zoom-zoom rides where i don't need to carry any cargo beyond a spare tube. so instead i wrote to peter white about finally getting a generator hub wheel made. i'll be using that wheel on my cyclocross bike, see? i want people to flash their brights at me on my bicycle because i'm ultrabright at night, and i'm tired of recharging batteries every couple of days for my decent-but-not-great headlight. algol_galaxia has this setup and so do many of the randonneurs, and it'll be a necessity to have really good lighting if i get in shape to do any of the longer races (300k+) which i am hoping to try some of this summer.

next weekend i run my first road race since the marathon last year. the one that left me crippled enough to get knee surgery. i'm taking it easy and it's only 8k (with a beer and bacon rest stop!), but we'll see if i enjoy it enough to start getting in shape for tri season. i haven't done a triathlon since 2006 and i think i miss them. not sure, though =) there's a pool i can use a block from my house (and there's nothing here like barton springs...more like town lake but less clean) so i could definitely train like a madman if i feel the urge. we shall see.

ok. i've about warmed up from the ride this morning (mmm, journalling in bed) and will take a power nap before doing some power unpacking. go team! have a beautiful weekend, friends!

news

2008-03-07T09:08:41Z

whew. my computer is finally functional in my new home. the rest of my life, save for the kitchen and my clothes, is still mostly in boxes. i feel like q-bert up in here.

i got a new job. i start in 2.5 weeks. i am joyful about this. it has much potential and will, at the very least, be far more exciting and technical.

more later.

not a wasted day...

2008-02-24T01:41:18Z

...but boy, i'll have trouble selling that one to anyone else.

mainly i've just been oddly lucky at scrabble, snuggled the cat, relived a little bit of my musical awakening at age 14 (i was a late bloomer) thanks to youtube and my all-encompassing 12,000 song playlist leading me down a twisty maze of hazily remembered (and i was entirely sober!) music festivals in the 90's. material issue, dramarama, the chameleons UK, pearl jam, live, and hell if i can remember all the lineups! somewhere in there were the soup dragons and lush, but that might have been lollapalooza. oh, the halcyon days. if anyone's google-fu is better than mine and can find (or if the 5 of you who were in dallas and into that sort of music at the time can remember!) the dallas, tx (fair park coloseum/starplex amphitheatre--it changed names somewhere in there) lineups for edgefest one, two, and three back in the early 90's, as sponsored by local D/FW radio station 94.5 the edge....well, my memory would thank you!

anyhow, oldschool videos, new heights of scrabble geekdom [my ranking is more inflated than ever...if i could play this well in person i'd be competing with the pros at tournaments. hah. before i got within 50 points of where i am now.i was challenged by the top-rated player online and almost beat him, followed by another guy in the top10 to whom i lost by 2 points], cat, a couple of episodes of the simpsons, and packing ever so slightly (ok, so i got the boxes out and thought "gee, i don't want to pack") counts for anything...yeah.

but tonight promises to be active as i get geared up to head out to a dance party at locations unknown with some bikey people, followed by brunch with a new friend tomorrow morning...

ahh, i am soaking in it. where it probably equals slack. a vacation from my vacation, yanno?

i have another half-finished post about san francisco that'll come your way...uh. someday. probably before my 2007-in-review post, anyway. whee.

my kingdom for a decent title

2008-02-20T18:56:27Z

am enjoying northern california.

the skiing in tahoe (not taos, as i may have told you because i am geographically challenged) was decent if not great. the snow was all...melty, since the temperature ranged from a little above freezing to "if i'm gonna keep skiing i'll need to remove most of my clothing" which you'll be happy to hear we did on several occasions. i went shirtless-but-unzipped jacket for several hours at the end of the second day, which was initially a joke but actually turned out to be remarkably comfortable and besides which generated catcalls and at least once got us to the front of a long queue more quickly at a traffic-jammed lift near the end of the day. it made for some interesting injuries as i fell a couple times though--got a nice raspberry on my side (already healed) and managed to scrape my arm through my jacket somehow. nothing life threatening. the better story was the last run of the last day, during which i convinced ariberman_blog to join me in stripping down to our boxers on top of the mountain. we had our customary mountaintop toast and then sedately glided down, tummies and calves exposed, taking some moguls, some snowballs, and a photo op with an incredulous lady. it's pretty invigorating to be flapping in the cool breeze, and then turn it into a performance in front of a crowd of hundreds (a few kids even followed us in hopes that they could laugh when we fell...and the most vocal fell himself, instead)--and let's just say our cheeks were warm and smiles were had all around. catcalls, witty comments, puzzled looks, and good times. ari and i were in fact feeling so warm and happy that we hoofed it back to the car in our boots-and-boxers finery and laughed it up as we had some celebratory post-skiing tailgate beers.

i've never skied in warm weather before and it was kind of nice not to have cold feet and to be able to ski in minimal clothing and sunglasses instead of bundled and goggled, but the snow just doesn't compare to what we work with in portland, or what i learned on in colorado. our skiing was a different style, as the groomed-ice in the morning is fast, but scary, since there's a big penalty for falling--you'll slide forever and your gear may keep going without you--we saw some skis and poles yardsaled over at least a hundred feet more than once (including by the guy who accidentally went backwards off a doubleblack mogul run and rolled down the entire thing--only to stand up at the bottom and pump his fist--he beat his crew down by a large time gap =)(

the slush in the afternoon was, as kdaisy721 says, "forgiving", but otherwise not a lot of fun, since it made you pick up your feet to turn and felt like skiing on carpet--slow and soft. we picked our runs to minimize the hassle and the company and beautiful blue skies far more than made up for any suboptimal snowness.

got back into the city after a nearly interminable foray through cali mystery traffic and had some pizza and beer with cowquat which was a real treat, since i haven't seen him in forever. he promises he won't sprain both ankles just before our trip next year. i plan to hold him to it. we'll probably head back to tahoe since it's convenient for me and ari (the only 6-time attendees of the festivities, and so we get to make the rules) and the place we stayed was wonderful and *free*! it's been my cheapest ski trip ever despite having to leave my skis at home due to A Situation with wet paint between me and my skitravelbox.

yesterday i borrowed a mountain bike (yeah, with the shocks and the 2" knobby tires) and biked across the golden gate bridge into town to check out the museum of modern art and then went for drinks at google's first hit for "bicycle bar san francisco" which was kind of a wash except for the time i got to spend chatting by phone with meredith_mccraw and chicafantasma, always a pleasure. after the time was done killed, i met up with breakupgrrl and we had dinner, drinks, more drinks, dessert, and great chats about past, present, and the happy changes we've made in our lives--we both left a lot of comfort behind in austin and are rising to the challenge of making our new towns fit the new us and it's good. i miss all my austin people a LOT but i'm not sure i miss austin all that much--it was the people that did it for me. the network was nice, the mood was good...but the people are what can't be replaced by another place.

biking home through town (on the fortunately well-marked bike routes) and over the golden gate, i saw 0 other bikers. there are a lot of bikes around town and i saw people riding during the day, even though it was kind of portland-style wet and gloomy, but at night, the streets and bike lanes were empty. this in contrast to p-ville where without fail, i see other bikers, be it at 4am, 6am, or rush hour. the golden gate in particular is weird--the bike lane changes sides based on time of day and at night you have to get buzzed across--pedestrians not allowed, bikers yes, after a delay which i was told (by the gentleman who was thankfully hanging out at a nearby bus stop preparing to sleep for the night, and demonstrated the buzzer system which i hadn't noticed when i stopped short at the LOCKED bike route at 11:40pm) was so that they could "see me" and my bike to buzz me in. i couldn't spot any hidden cameras but the delay seemed organic on both ends of the bridge. weird scene. i guess there are a lot of jumpers and discouraging them is key.

i had my camera along and the view from the bridge is usually spectacular, sometimes because of and sometimes in spite of the weather. it was no different last night--i love the look of a city from afar, all blinking lights and none of the sound and fury that you feel being in the middle of an urban zone. it looks like an impressionist painting through strong sunglasses to me, and i love just sitting and feeling the wind and watching the city blink--headlights, police flashers, stoplights, and those tall blinky red ones that keep the planes out of penthouses. those are my favorites...maybe because they remind me of one of my favorite austin landmarks (ok, so i still like austin even if i'm falling out of love) which is the radio towers in the west hills. my 19th summer on this planet, i spent nearly every evening watching them come alive as the sun set between them and the night came out, blitzed in a lawn chair on the roof of my apartment building, bullshitting and just sitting with friends new and old. funny how a nature lover (favorite scene: majestic view from a mountaintop. got TONS of that at tahoe! even a nightscape including trans-lake 20 mile view, the moon was so bright!) like me can get so much out of a manscape like blinkenlights. but hey, life is good.

100 yards down the bridge, the fog set in and swirled around the streetlights and kept me company back into sausalito. no cars hounded me as i zoomed down the hills and into the warm bed of home and slept until after my gracious hosts abandoned ship, and now i write this and consider what to do with another two days in SF. it will probably not be epic, but it'll probably be great. suggestions welcome!

*mwah*!

stream of consciousness: do what you feel.

2008-02-14T08:55:11Z

over the past few days, i've seen bike-lane-guy on a recumbent, and on a unicycle juggling. people take their art/culture collision seriously here. strangely, i have yet to find tiebiker (my icon for this post) up here, but i suspect he's around. there are so many things around that i have yet to discover. this fills me with hope and joy.

i got the sweetest velotines card (ok, me and 3,000 other portlanders) from my friend aaron, and i'd like to share it with you:

http://www.yourbodypower.org/velotines.htm

it pleases me so much that biking is not just cool, not just functional, but culture here. it turns out, this is what i was looking for. speaking of nontraditional valentines, this be your one-stop shop for anti-valentines day sentiment, courtesy of ndrtoon. quite a class act there =)

tonight i headed down to a perlmongers meeting and was graced with a rehash of damian conway's best perl practices around a table with about 30 other perl afficionados. having read the book, i was maybe less into it than i might have been. but it was neat to meet some geekfolk and i'll probably go back when the topic sounds more engaging. pulling up to the place, finding no less than 20 bikes locked up outside this warehouse made me feel like i was in the right place, regardless. also, i had the opportunity to describe BMC's Remedy software as follows:
"my least favorite technology of the week is BMC's Remedy. it doesn't sing or dance, it just offers me a limp bouquet of excrement...", which gave me far more joy than using said software ever has, despite the fact that it's what makes my job have any action--i'm lightning-fast on the trigger with owning tickets that come in and taking the opportunity to actually help people, even if it's just in the form of filing another ticket for them with people they don't know exist. i feel like i actually get to do some work in non-glacial timespans. yes, i am still valiantly hunting for a new job!

speaking of new jobs, i turned one down this morning. i interviewed yesterday, and the interview went merely ok (imho). the guy who was drilling me had a ton of specific questions about stuff i didn't really know about: exim, split-view bind, serious routing, and telco circuits. i was totally honest about what i knew and what i didn't and i guess i was "close enough", and in their price range. i was offered the job within an hour of finishing the interview (crazy!) however, they aren't in my *travel* range. i tested the commute out there this morning before deciding, and it took a freaking hour to get there. their office is about 4 miles from the train, on a stop about 10 minutes further than where i head to now. basically, i'm just not interested in spending that much time travelling every day. sure, it's my time, and i love reading and riding my bike, but being committed to an effective 10-hour workday is just not my scene. i want *less* commute, not more! summer will be beautiful with its plenty-of-time-to-ride-both-ways long days, but we're not there yet, and while i don't *mind* being wet while i ride...i'd rather not. yanno? and the job didn't sound a lot better than nike. different, to be sure, more exciting, but really scruffy, and i bring enough scruffy with me--i need some neat already waiting for me. seeking some sort of balance...

tomorrow i leave to go skiing with ariberman_blog and cowquat and friends. i am so jazzed! it is my sincere plan to seek out breakupgrrl and tankgirl76 and see what havoc i can wreak on the town for the few days i'm there after we're done skiing. cos, if i'm gonna fly somewhere, i want to make it *count*, not just dip my toe in the water. so we go to taos for a few days and then i bum around san fran for a few days before returning to the grind and (eek!) moving in with kdaisy721. speaking of, girl is suffering the plague i just got over and could use your wellwishes. since approximately 0 of you know her. but she deserves the double-mad-props for (unbeknownst to her) convincing me to ride home today. i left the office and it started raining and i was feeling pretty meh...and then i realized i had no good reason not to stay on that bike until i reached my home, and then i felt like a million bucks. minus a few percent interest in sweat =)

even lance loves it here and has respect for the culture, see? you know you want to follow me out here, austinites:

http://bikeportland.org/2008/02/13/lance-wants-his-hometown-to-evolve-into-a-place-like-portland/

i made some pretty killer thai green curry last night (and reorganized my recipes page this morning.) i maintain that it is because i cook with love (btw, thanks for turning me onto that concept, shaynabelle) that everything i make ends up tasting so good. i had a ton of basil leftover so i turned it into pesto which i'll have to use when i get back. of course, there was just a *bit* too much to fit into my chosen container, so i spread what was leftover onto some toast. holy wow, i'll be having intense dreams tonight. strong stuff to put down before bed. but intense and tasty like i like it =)

and now, orbital makes me feel like the world is an even more perfect place. find your joy, do what you feel, and be not half-assed, my friends.

_fool @ 2008-02-06T16:33:00

2008-02-07T01:01:35Z

i may have the plague, but at least being unemployed for 6 months last year paid off in the tax return department. no, wait, i gave the government a 0-interest loan of how much money for how long? sigh.

plague not withstanding (ok, it withstood, and made me bike really slow and breathe through my scarf lest i break down into a cacophony of cophs) ignite portland was pretty neat last night. totally not what i expected since it seemed like a techy geek thing but was instead a life-geek thing (there were a couple of life-hacker type presentations, but mostly it was a totally random spate of stuff from sushi to rockets to biodiesel) and of course it was full of interesting people. thanks largely to teknotus, i was introduced to a few bikely characters, several techies, and most strangely the inventor of the wiki and extreme programming. i mean, it wasn't odd to meet someone who's changed the world so much as it was weird that the talk was of zombies and offal rather than things tech.
funny thing, actually, ivo's post about geek fallacies which was the last thing i thought about before leaving for the event totally played into that conversation. ah, synchronicity, you are everywhere in my life. and it is good.

hopefully this plaguey-ness will blow over before the weekend. i have two easy nights tonight and tomorrow (sure, i was too sick to work, but i'm not too sick to play!) before a weekend full of big biking. no bike move this weekend, but i have about 20 miles between home base and the start of the midnight mystery ride, which will of course involve more biking and then a ride to wherever i will lay my head. and sunday is a local tradition, the worst day of the year ride, which will hopefully not have weather to match its name. also, hopefully my lungs will be happier so's i can actually keep up with some people during the 40-mile jaunt (there's a shorter option if i'm feeling totally craptastic. don't worry, i'm not going to kill myself...)

some good news is that my tax return is plenty to cover my smidgen of remaining moving debt, refill my cash-living-buffer to 6-month levels, and cover the costs of my fine vacation to san francisco next week. i'm going to see ariberman_blog and catch some snow down in taos. the time off of work will be recharging and the new-work prospects are in high gear--interviews in the making, resumes flying, and connections gelling--i am feeling pretty positive this week.

some other good news is that with my 6 months of unemployment, i made little enough money to qualify for that stupid $600 check that the man is also supposed to be ~~ruining the country financially with~~ stimulating the economy with, and i shall indeed go forth and stimulate! i was going to be all responsible but since responsibilities are covered, it's time to go out and get myself a cyclocross bike. it's coming up on commute-to-work-everyday-bothways season and i really want something a little more sprightly but still sturdy and cargo-worthy (which, sad to say, my sexy red texas4000 bike is not so much. i mean, it's sturdy enough, but it really wants some wider tires for these slippery streets. you can't even get ice tires on it (which i have purchased, because i'm nuts like that), and a rack would be kind of sad, since it's currently half the weight of my tank and i don't want to beef it up anymore.) i will of course wait until the money is in hand, because i'm practical like that, but it makes me happy to know that my stable shall be growing. it will probably disturb kdaisy9600 that i am planning to further grow my bike stable before i grow my ski stable, but hey, i have priorities.

that's what's happening in the land of _fool for today, kids. i'm off to do some laundry, feed myself, and finish reading the alchemist, which was thrust upon me in a chance in encounter and which informs my current situation to a large degree, so far. i can only imagine how strikingly relevant it will be by the end. you should seek out or anyway find something strikingly relevant to your life--it's pretty invigorating. as life should be. IMNSHO.

_fool @ 2008-02-02T03:21:00

2008-02-02T11:23:41Z

ok, there's something to be said for making the best guacamole in the world, homemade chips, homemade pitas and mediterranean salad with the most fabulous bluejayway, co-enjoying public transit on the way to a party with nobody i knew, dancing to madonna, playing (and kicking some ass at) some drinking games whose rules i never fully comprehended (but i know i was winning!), meeting a fellow t4k kid, and then spending about 3 hours naked in a hot tub while the cold rain came down, getting chased out the door by a girl who wanted my phone number, and finally riding 5 miles home safely to a warm cat, warm bed, Tortoise-the-band, and sleep. yeah. that's the shit.

why can't every night be like this? oh yeah, because i'm not actually 22 anymore. bad excuse.

in the whole wide world...

2008-01-30T06:35:01Z

i am uniquely poised to take the world title in naked distance non-recumbent bicycle racing.

i just hit a new high ranking to demonstrate my online-speed-scrabble-with-mandatory-dictionary-following, though there are provably hundreds of people better at it than myself, it is a good bet that all or most of them have put serious time into studying wordlists (unlike me) or have eidetic memories (also unlike me). it made me happy enough to post this. now i have further to fall...

i may be the most outspoken-even-when-sober straight, non-porn-acting male advocate of male genital waxing north america has spawned in my generation.

and i am, on this planet, the most perfect person at being me.

what crazy, silly, strange, and definitely rare skillsets, domains, talents, or otherwise are you master of & willing to admit?

the morning after

2008-01-26T19:15:46Z

had a delightful, 80's-riffic, very, evening with twilite_embrace yesterday. we made some killer lasagna, burned some bread, watched heathers, petted the cat, and got about 3/4 intoxicated. it's a point of intoxication i like (really, i guess anything past halfway is pretty fun, until you hit around 1.01x and from there it's all downhill. or that's how it works for me anyway. wow. it's been over 6 months since i got drunk enough to puke. go me!)

anyway, after she went home, my inebriation plus laziness led me quickly into a dreamy sleep and as fortune would have it, i remained em-boxerated instead of completely naked, and thank goodness since i was woken by a knock at the door and went "mmmrfle" and walked over and opened it without really thinking...and there was a very cute little girl standing there in the hallway offering me her remote control. the exchange went something like this:

"whaa?"
"you should take this."
"why are you giving it to me?"
"we...don't have a radio anymore."
"hmm, i think you should still keep that."
girl backs away slowly and closes door. i exchange looks with pixel.

at this point i think to look down and am happy to report that mr. happy was not peeking out the happy slot in les boxeres.

i have answered the door naked before and scared off some guy who i think wanted to mow my lawn. which was fine. i was hoping it was someone soliciting for god, but soliciting at all and BEFORE I'M AWAKE is really a peeve. i had never considered the fact that i might end up traumatizing little girls. even ones who wake me up at 8:45 deserve better than that.

now wakened, cat demands feeding and my tummy is grumbling a bit too so i hit the kitchen floor still in my boxers and realize an apron is in order before i start frying anything. silk boxers are not proof against bacon grease burns.

but i'm struck by the myriad lasagnamaking leftovers in the fridge so i go a little bit different direction, and finally give in after about 12 years of wondering: howcome spaghetti sauce isn't a general purpose condiment?! so i made italian breakfast tacos: sausage, green pepper, garlic all fried up, eggs with italian seasoning, over ricotta in a tortilla with some shaved red onion. and i tried the following toppings:

1) some kind of garlic-herby marinara
2) alfredo
3) nothing

i am happy to report that the marinara won hands down. alfredo was a distant third, although it is in general my favorite pasta sauce and i typically use my own recipe. i am also happy to report that i might actually manage to use up the rest of that ricotta, which is someting i've probably never managed before after buying a full container. i really need to start basing my recipes around the package sizes of food, since it is a perpetual problem--what *do* you do with a half-cup of alfredo sauce, if you're already set on lasagna leftovers for the week? i ain't cooking more pasta for Some Time--i get pretty easily pasta'd out. so by the time i get back to it, it's taken up space in my fridge for so long it's grown a colony of taint and then i get to throw it away. argh. i need to live in a whole foods world, where i can go in with a cup and get a cup of X, Y, and Z, and 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary (which the lasagna recipe called for, but for which i was not interested in paying $1.99...apparently the stuff *doesn't* grow on trees around here. i'll be planting some at the new place since it is fucking indestructible which puts it at the "challenging" level for my green thumb abilities instead of just about everything else in the world which rates "impossible")

also, i dreamed about missingwatch and chicafantasma. it was a night of hug-filled dreams also containing burning couches and gwynn learning to drive a stick-shift so we could drive around the block because, after all, we needed waffles!

anyway. felt random & felt like sharing, so you get this mishmash. sorry there's no foodporn (i'm always too hungry to even think about taking a picture by the time it's ready), or erotica (dreams last night were not sexy despite a glut of sexy ladies), or even nudity (actually i think that you probably agree that much is for the best, considering my unexpected audience), but at least there's recipes =)

hope.

2008-01-26T03:08:32Z

i came home yesterday to the rotten news that my favorite politician, Dennis Kucinich, had announced plans to withdraw from the presidential race. He is one of only two politicians on the national scene whom i actually respect--Lloyd Doggett being the other. In part that's because I'm not very politically aware and there are no doubt other good people who I just don't pay enough attention to be fully aware of--chicafantasma points out John Conyers and there are certainly other progressives out there...but frankly, I care less and less about national politics as it shapes up to be another cycle of "nobody i want running the place, a lot of people i don't want running the place; laws being passed which i'll continue to ignore when i disagree, hoping my combination of encryption and openness is enough to keep me out of jail".

i know i should care, but it seems pretty hopeless sometimes to look at it from the point of view of "things i feel like the country should do actually happening". my views are not majority views; i'm stuck over in a corner with gandhi and chicafantasma at the end of the bell curve and i'm happy there--not happy with the market share, but i believe what i believe and i've never been in the majority in many of my opinions anyway...so hey, nothing new really except an increasing need to insulate myself from awareness of what's being done (not) in my name.

of course, i really need to start following chicafantasma's example and donating money and effort to transnational causes like amnesty international which *do* work towards the enactment of my views, and of course, the even better causes like creating public health and curbing starvation in third world countries---oh, there are plenty of good causes in the world. and i have nothing but myself to give. something which makes little difference on a national political scene, but which can hopefully change the lives of some people whom the system has fucked if applied intelligently.

so i'm pledging $200/mo to causes great and small. amnesty gets this month's piece of the pie. i'll probably plow a couple months into the texas 4000 for the goodness they've done in my life and continue to do in others'. but i need more causes. there are infinite causes. share with me the story of your pet cause. inform me. because my research-fu is weak and while i'm giving up on national politics for this while, i'm plowing that energy into personal connections. i was going to go off on local politics being a surrogate for me, but i am fortunate to live in one of the few utopias for people like me in this country--oregon is incredibly into sustainable energy and bikeability, two issues on which i see variability being possible politically, so i'm happy with how things are hanging here. so what i'm focus on instead is personal connections--yeah, i'll take a cue from the g-man and "be the change i want to see in the world", on an interpersonal basis. it's not political, it's personal. and that's where you come in, and your ideas too. help me find an outlet--even when i don't have time for causes, because i make time for people and fun overmuch maybe, i still have resources.

and that's what brings me hope.

you probably don't care

2008-01-24T09:03:00Z

the decemberists put on a really great show. the band energy was on par with they might be giants, who hold most-energetic standing in my book. and energy is often what engages me and makes a show fun. i was yawning at the start but i was grinning madly and bouncing along with the crowd at the end. in fact, i can't imagine a better use for the sprung floor at the crystal ballroom than the end of the sea shanty (belly of a whale) song--the refrain is played faster and faster and faster and absolutely everyone was bouncing in time with it and the floor was compressing and expanding by at least 2 inches every bounce for a good minute and a half. yay, bouncy!

as well, the band was very audience-engaging, this time even topping TMBG with the stopping songs to give audience direction, putting on a play, crowdsurfing (lead singer, who practically kicked us in the face as he entered the crowd. no harm, no foul.) and inviting approximately 80 people up on stage to finish the last song with them.

surprisingly good and energetic--i'll definitely go see them again, though i was ambivalent about seeing them in the first place.

some thanks are in order: annamaul93 for turning me on to them. artnchicken for waking me up to the fact that they were coming to town and finding the early-purchase tickets. meghan, who's lj-less, for accompanying me. portland for being their hometown and perhaps bringing out a superior following. kdaisy721 for not-quite-killing the ol legs during our run, considering i went and stood for 4.5 hours immediately thereafter.

if i enjoyed their music as much as TMBG, i could see them being a favorite band. unfortunately, they're good-to-verygood but not amazing to my ear. c'est la vie.

now for z.

_fool @ 2008-01-21T00:38:00

2008-01-21T08:41:56Z

nugget pointed me at this gem of modern quasifiction, and i've spent the evening reading it and enjoying the gestalt of that as coupled with its musical suggestions (simon and garfunkel and the pixies are what i latched onto, but there are plenty of suggestions therein for your varied tastes. like abba, cobain, and many stars of the 80's and 90's) and some furious IM'ing. i don't mean that i was furious, but that the IM'ing was at least rapidfire & passionate if not life-changing. hi, twilite_embrace!

from the linked story:

I read an article once that claimed if you added up all the time you’ve spent waiting and bored over the years it would amount to roughly one fourth of your life.

stop waiting. go do it. life is happening right now, with or without you. it's true that it's far better to regret something you have done than something you haven't done.

so what are you waiting for? gravity doesn't hurt.

_fool @ 2008-01-17T18:23:00

2008-01-18T02:26:13Z

i had a strange revelation today as i biked to lunch. one of the things that sucks about this job is that we can't do anything without intense rollback, backout, undo plans, nor can we do anything without thinking about it long and hard (ie, meetings, change control committees, cost considerations, etc).

one of the things that's sucked about my personal work over the past years is unwillingness to break stuff by upgrades that replace the old with the new. ofttimes, i'll build, install, test, evaluate, and decide superior a new/different piece of software, but leave the old one in place for fear of destroying something that works for everyone else with something that works only for me.

i just need better plans to undo, and i think my bravery could be much enhanced. as much as planning is Not My Thing, i think it will enable me to Do My Thing Better. so it shall be allowed and welcomed. though this job is still beyond redemption...

as well, i am fearsome of burning bridges in my personal life. "well, i'm not sure which bike i want...this one's kinda neat but so is this one. and then there's the money issue. maybe i just won't buy a bike." i don't like that critical point past which there is no return; there is often no undo in life. but there are many things undone. and while things undone are kinda painless, they're kinda joyless, too.

funny how you can hear the thing you need to hear from a source you weren't according any respect.

it seems to be a thing.

2008-01-17T07:19:17Z

last night some plans fell through and i blew the other ones off, and kdaisy721 & i revised my resume about 80 times instead. this is fortuitous, since i have an interview friday to which i shall take the updated version (they got an in-progress version that was super inferior) and i got to submit the new version for another job this morning. neither of them seem much better in the "for a great cause" department but the work can't be as bad (and i now know to ask!). and one is downtown! losing the 30-minute commute would be pretty nifty.

that's not all that's going well, though! a recently met bikely friend had some great advice for me in terms of networking at the local .edu and tonight i followed his advice and was duly rewarded. met some nifty people who are very linuxy who are doing open source rocketry/satellite...ry. while there were many interesting people there and there are many interesting projects under the umbrella, to me the big win was the interface with parts of the PSU community. i randomly got a tour of the machine rooms from a fellow who went to school there, and same fellow pointed me towards another person to talk to about employ who might be able to point me elsewhere as needed. so, yay! a good time followed by good info.

the building we met in is down on their campus, which is maybe 2.5 miles from my place. the streetcar runs from basically there to my home, and i saw it as i left. i thought "i could use a little biking" (since i skipped yoga this morning, sore from yesterday's meeting with the pavement) and dodged the train on the way north. i suddenly found myself accidentally (i choose streets at random when in the south part of downtown, since i don't yet know the best bike routes down there) in front of voodoo doughnuts, so of course i stopped for a little bacon-maple goodness. ahhh, bacon, how you always satisfy, even when cold and frosted. then i was suddenly in north downtown and i can choose my route, so i chose to zoom past ground kontrol, the classic arcade, since i was pretty near it already. i stopped in and tripled the tempest high score and the tron high score on $.50 total and swooped back out of there and into home base.

a night well spent, a train well dodged, and hope.

yay.

bonus second post -- i want to date the female version of myself

2008-01-16T07:02:58Z

so, bluejayway suggested an interesting experiment: list 50 qualities you want in a significant other and rank them by importance. it took a while to come up with 50 non-negative qualities (ie, i didn't want to fill it with "not stinky, not into dogs, not a jerk" type stuff), but i think i found 50 that i like, and want.
i was basically incapable of rating them. maybe that's really the point of the experiment? it will certainly take more than the hour it took me to come up with the 50 in the first place!

aeryn42 suggested another thought exercise: name 5 things that make you a good significant other.

while coming up with my 50, i realized, they kind of describe me, or anyway my perception of myself. except for the physical stuff. and i can't deny that i'd like to be a little shorter, less furry, and wguke i don't really want to *be* a girl, or have the scrumptious boobs, i do miss my long hair. however, i don't miss the hassle of dealing with said long hair =)

i don't know what this says about me--i guess, pretty much, that i want to date myself? interestingly, kdaisy721 specifically does *not* want to date herself. it definitely says that chicafantasma was a pretty fucking excellent match, which dovetails with me missing her quite a bit. i think actually the way that goes is that chicafantasma was good in so many of these ways and now i'll be measuring everyone new up to that standard she set. just as i do with all the other girls i dated--some informed more (shaynabelle, i'm looking at you), and some less (algol_galaxia had a few traits that really worked and some that were the negatives which i listed the opposite of as desires).

i can say, happily, that i have no relationships i regret, and that i never dated anyone without a lot of redeeming qualities. and i've been lucky in that way, and boy, it's getting harder and harder to be lucky as i get older and more aware of what i want. which is what's below. some of it is obviously less important--looks are so much more about "in my fantasies" than "ways i judge people i meet" but if i were picking someone out of a lineup and i couldn't talk to them, the traits i list are what i'd choose. some of it is more--i don't see myself dating someone who isn't caring. but then, i'm notoriously bad at predicting the future.

i guess some of these are generic, maybe. i can't imagine people wanting to date someone non-cooperative. but i know i have weird tastes in some ways. what've you got that diverges? converges? dealmakers/breakers? things i haven't even thought of? i expect a "loves skydiving" from decibel45 and a few other very personal corner cases, but what's huge and important to you? do you even think in those terms? might you start?

5-10" shorter than me.
cute
boobalicious
fairly clean
medium-to-longhaired
not so bodyhairy
female

funny
witty
accepting
comforting
educated

happy mostly
mellow
sometimes emotionally variable (ie not monotonically happy)
slightly shy
immodest about body

liberal
logical
somewhat skeptical
concerned/caring
looks at the world with wonder/excitement
somewhat pragmatic
experienced
skilled in some areas
very literate
into real communication
understanding & understandable
occasionally surprising
creative
occasionally challenging
comfortable
bikely
into intoxication to a reasonable but not excessive degree
catloving
slightly kinky
monogamous & faithful
appreciative of oral sex
modest about abilities

playful
foodie
expressive
weird
non-jealous
cooperative
indelicate
willing
interested
conscientious
friendly

giving thanks

2008-01-16T01:48:15Z

another from the annals of biking, as i sent it to the shift list this morning:

thanks to my yoga class this morning, which warmed my body and spirit all the way through, in preparation for the adventures to come.

thanks to mother nature, for providing me a commute-time free of sky-born precipitation, as well as an absolutely gorgeous sunrise at the zoo, and an intricate frostscape for my entire ride.

thanks to the lone biker who passed me on the way into wash park with a cheery good morning, whose tire tracks i followed all the way out to the nike campus. his tracks, and then mine, were the only ones heading our direction nearly all the way west to 154th street, even at 8:30am. without him at first, while my back wheel was spinning in place on the hill up into the park; and without the tracks later, to remind me someone else had been there...i would not have finished this commute en-bike.

thanks to traffic for being nonexistent through the wintery wonderland up near the zoo, and thanks to the trees for keeping the ground mostly warm enough that the road wasn't quite frozen over.

thanks to the asshat driver i gave a sarcastic thumbs-up to for being the third car through an all-way stop sign i was patiently waiting to turn left at, arm extended. my reaction to your action taught me humility and attention, as i immediately wiped out making that left turn, being focused on annoyance instead of ice on the road.

thanks to Fortuna/Tyche, goddess of luck, for having my warning
wipe-out be at 0mph, away from rushing traffic, and cushioned by the pannier full of a fluffy lunch and change of clothes. amazingly, the yogurt container survived unscathed!

thanks to my helmet for smacking the pavement in stead of my head.

and thanks to the rest of my colleagues for being even later to work than i was, despite my slowest commute ever due to extreme caution which served me well through the frost-icy streets of the 'tron--no more mishaps even on the curvy downhills.

and thanks to you folks, who inspire me to do things i never thought i would =)

a pedal-powered life and times

2008-01-15T07:06:29Z

on saturday night, i became a statistic: someone swiped the (cheapish) blinkenlight off my handlebars as my bike was parked outside a bar. so, no more leaving lights on the beast while i go inside. fortunately, i'd taken my mucho expensivo light inside, so i could still get home safely. and i had my backup tinyblinky on the fork and they hadn't bothered that one. so it wasn't so tragic, just kind of irritating.

there's this great mailing list here in p-ville called "shift" (https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/shift) whereon i've met many friends in bike-fun and otherfun--frinstance i was at the bar with a guy i met on the list and who participated in the bike move, and whom i chatted with at length at about 2am in a culvert on a butte high above portland while around me caroused 40 or so midnight mystery riders, also found courtesy of the list. and sometime last week, the distraction du jour was discussing your first bike, which a lot of people, including me, turned into their bike history. so here, for your digestion or ignoring, is how i got to where i got, by using two wheels, two pedals, and a little faith.

i was 4 1/2. my best friend lived across the street, and was 2 years older. whatever he did, i did too. when he started biking, i wanted to too! i got a bike with training wheels and was ridiculed immediately by his (older) friends. so i convinced my dad to take them off and teach me to ride. i don't remember what happened, exactly, but it did not work. i failed to learn to ride. maybe i wobbled, maybe i fell, maybe i was just too scared--i don't remember.
i do remember being excluded from the roving neighborhood gang for a few weeks while they were mobile and i was not.

hearing of my plight, another christopher's mother from down the
street brought the bike her son (who was remarkably similar to me in age, stature, etc in addition to name) had learned on. it was some sort of precursor to the minibike (this is 1980). it was a bike a 4-year old could stand over, while seated. it was red, and it was functional--cute only because of its size. since i could stand up at will, without jumping off, fear evaporated, and i tooled around the block a few hundred times before my dad saw me and said "well, i think you're ready to get back on the big bike" and sure enough, no problem.

i surprised the heck out of the gang by riding around the neighborhood til i found them, and skidded to a stop right in their midst (ahh, i miss coaster brakes on a bike...need to get a fixie =))

i had a BMX-y bike at around age 10 that taught me the fine art of going up and down curbs, and one day, accidentally, downstairs. turned out, i like that, and i still take the stairs sometimes during my urban adventure riding. it was stolen out of the closed garage and taught me a healthy respect for locking up my beauty.

when i was 15, i had a pretty grisly bike wreck. no functional
brakes, big hill, big curve, no helmet, and all i know is that i am lucky to be alive and have a metal plate in my arm and scars on my back. that bike was never repaired, and i was way too freaked out to ride again until age 25, when, living in boulder, i skated all over town (rollerbladed, that is). since i am a total klutz on skates, a friend pointed out that maybe i should try biking, and since i skated in a helmet anyway, i swapped out for his mountain bike and spent the day traversing every inch of bike trail in boulder. my only real memory besides "boy, skating sure has given me some good leg muscles" was realizing "huh, you really don't forget how to do this!" just as a grandma gardening in her front yard flashed me a huge smile and the peace sign as i pedalled by. i'd fallen back in love. for christmas that year, my parents got me a specialized hybrid (now with over 10,000 miles on it, ~8 triathlons and 2 centuries), and i still ride it all over town, calling it affectionately "the tank"--weighing in at 40 pounds, unladen. these days i've got another bike which i also love, and which i grew somewhat attached to during the summer of 4,500 miles across the continent, but that one was where i came into riding as a passion.

now i've ditched the car and am happier, more often. and while i may not be saving the planet, at least i'm not actively destroying it. despite another bad wreck this summer which left we with amazingly little nerve damage and a huge scar on my *other* arm...after my first hospital visit in 16 years, i am unfazed and still happily pedalling.

home again!

2008-01-13T17:02:28Z

so, as alluded to in my last post, for those few who weren't scared off by the bacon cookie picture, my big news of the week is that i'm moving! i'm moving, quite literally, 1/10th of a mile, 1 block east of my current place, into an extremely fancy duplex with kdaisy721. if you've heard me talk about her lately, i refer to her as my "once and future roommate" (which is driving me to reread the once and future king, too).

anyhow, we're both paying a lot for our respective decent places, and that money put together nets us a hyoooge half-a-house (the upper half) that has been totally restored to its 1908 glory but with some modern touches like grounded electricity that comes from more than one outlet per room, modern appliances, a garbage disposal, and dimmer switches on antique lighting.

i grew up in an old house--built, hmm, sometime before the great depression (you could see on our street where the depression hit because the houses went from cavernous two stories to simple one stories). i never got as jazzed about the wood floors and plaster walls as the next guy, but this place has been restored really beautifully--all the fancy woodwork is stained a nice, deep rich color, and the period windows have storm windows behind them.

other winning features include a fireplace, not one but TWO balconies, a backyard with a peach tree (cobbler ahoy!), being quite literally across the street, now, from trader joe's, 4 bars, a fondue restaurant, and the 24-hour indy coffee shop. oh, and enough storage to literally hold two cars (but it's in the form of a basement, not a garage).

the third bedroom will be the office/guest room, so now i am really leaning on the world to come visit--before, my living room was always open to you, but now, there's a room of your own. and dinner parties shall happen far more frequently, since, well, we now actually have room to host 20 people (huge dining room, bigger than my current living room, plus, of course, a similarly large living room with the similarly large balcony off of that! zoiks!)

and of course, there's the way that kdaisy721 and i get along pretty darn well, but this place actually has noise insulation so we won't be waking eachother up (me on the weekdays with the yoga, her on the weekends with the still-getting-up-superearly-because-she's-nuts-that-way). there will be much cooking, a smiling face to come home to, and company for our cats (in the form of eachother's cats!)

i'm pretty thrilled and am only sad that we have to wait until march first to move in. i also feel a little silly and/or like i'm really blending in--Kristy put all the effort into finding the place, and totally was "that girl" who pounced on the place the second it hit craigslist, and we'd signed a lease less than 20 hours later as the first viewers of said place. i mean, i suffered through a lot of no-callbacks on places here and so have some new transplants to town that i hung out with on friday night, and it's because the market is ridiculous in town, at least. but hey, we're set for the next year at least =)

i know i've never taken pictures of my current place. but i almost don't even want to now (my camera is maybe going to come live with me before i move out, it's still trying to decide if it wants to stay in texas any longer or not), since the new place is way more fabulous and will be way better decorated, i think--i still haven't arted this place up to any great degree despite large plans.

ah, and my list of needed appliances & kitchen gadgets has just been practically wiped out, since kdaisy721 is gadget queen. and she has a network printer.

life is good.

baconriffic, bacontastic, &c

2008-01-13T02:26:51Z

i've been cooking an inordinate amount lately. this is good! i am mostly thrilled with everything about this:
-increased tastiness
-recipes added to ye olde repertoire
-fabulous leftovers for lunch, dinner, and occasionally breakfast
-increased company (i never cook just for myself)
-my home smells consistently tasty

all brilliant, except my grocery store bill, anyway =) but then i do buy the good stuff, and i never beat myself up about spending money on home-cooked food or home-drunk beer--it's the restaurant and bar bills that make me say "well, that was hardly economical". truth be told it's likely that even making stuff like pie crust from scratch, i'm doing better than i would be out at a restaurant: i make more than one serving for less than the cost of multiple servings. however i then also *eat* more than one serving (i tend to go light on the side dishes when i'm cooking an elaborate main dish), so it doesn't go as far. wow, i just dedicated a paragraph to the thing i'm less than thrilled about, while the 5 things i love got a tiny bullet list. whiny much?

anyhow, the real point of this update is that bacon is good. i know i've had this conversation with several of you (at least meredith_mccraw and shaynabelle), but i am hard pressed to come up with a foodstuff which could not be improved by the addition of bacon, butter, or garlic. sour cream is a close 4th. i believe these are my favorite food additives, and though i wouldn't necessarily want to be stuck on a desert island with only them, i would necessarily like to be stuck in a battle with the iron chef with them. apparently, other people have been having this conversation as well and the result is this:

bacon chocolate chip cookies!

girl says to boy: what wouldn't be better with bacon?
boy says: cookies, eww!
girl says: game on.

so kdaisy721 and i set about frying up a huge mess of bacon, mixing it into cookie dough, and then baking that stuff up. we mostly followed the recipe i linked above, because in baking i am not a cowboy (actually, i don't really bake much--i think this is the first time i've baked a dessert in a non-pie format), and damn if they weren't good. also, my house still smells like bacon--it took me nearly 2 hours to cook a pound of bacon, which turns out to equal a little over a cup of bacon bits.

in keeping with the meaty theme, if you've never seen a casa de carne, house of meat...well, now's your chance:

http://ziza.es/2008/01/07/Casita_de_carne_27_fotos.html

PS: i gots some much more posty goodness saved up which i will get to as time permits, so never fear, you shall hear more about such news items as my life as a cyclist, my new home, and 2007 in review. yes, soon, my pretties!

community

2008-01-07T04:32:19Z

saturday's theme was community. it ran hot and cold, and filled my day.

my favorite event came first. a bunch of locals have a tradition called move by bike, wherein the bike community comes together and quite literally moves someone's belongings from one home to another by bicycle. screw trucks, community, fun, and people power totally saved the day. i met some really neat folks, had a lot more fun than moving usually is, and the weird thing is, it totally worked! we transported an entire household via trailer, pannier, basket, and messenger bag (a few of the trailers did the lion's share of the large item work, but everyone moved some useful stuff, even me with just my panniers. i strapped stuff together in such a way that i couldn't actually sit on my seat, so i stood most of the time and occasionally sat on the top tube in front of the seat for photo ops and a change of pace. it was a short move, but it was in the drizzle and i don't think we managed to destroy any of the movee's possessions. in case you're interested in witnessing a bit of this, one intrepid mover took some pictures and posted them here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/reber221/MaskedParadeBikeMove

now i'm almost looking forward to moving =)

after that i dashed off to my initial use of flexcar. i had a very specific mission--i wanted a tiny-footprint table so i could feel a tiny bit more adult when i have people over for dinner (happening more and more often these days, yay! i'm cooking probably more than i ever have before. it pleases me that my house smells like a different food almost every day and it's rarely frozen pizza, my old staple =)). anyway, i'd heard that ikea had such a table and indeed it was true and despite my morning success of lugging-by-bike, and the location of ikea *directly on* a major bike thoroughfare and public transit line, i figured a car might come in handy for carrying the table and anything else ikea had to offer, so i hopped into a nearby flexcar (there are about 10 within a 5-block radius of my house) and tooled over. the carshare was the only real part of the afternoon community session that i enjoyed, although it enabled a couple that really pretty well bummed me out:

a community of drivers

and

a community of consumers.

driving wasn't actually bad, but navigating was a pain since i haven't seen portland from the highways and ikea is pretty far away. i managed not to break more than 3 traffic laws and found ikea with only about a 7 mile detour. i actually drove right to it, but it's located on a highway...from which you can't get to the store. i finally stumbled upon a route and was immediately immersed in a ridiculous parking situation (i parked about 2 blocks from the store, in front of some other store) and followed that up with the consumer craziness...

i'd never been to ikea before, and while the net result of a fabulous table that doesn't take up my entire kitchen nook and a bunch of other kitchen/home stuff i'd been needing was totally worthwhile, it was...weird...to be a sheep in a HUGE flock that got herded through the showroom. next time, i'll skip the showroom and just go straight to the "marketplace" where you can actually pick things to buy and aren't quite so encourage to follow the yellow brick road and examine every object as used in 500 different settings...

i don't think ikea actually has a bad design (and, random design award of the year, their shopping carts KICK ASS--they move freely in both dimensions and it was probably the best functioning cart i've used in years in terms of smoothness and not wanting to turn left constantly!) but it was a little much for the vaguely anticonsumer me. anyway, i got what i needed and escaped, and meghan came over to help me build the table (fortunately! i *could* have done it by myself, but i would have given up in frustration before i finished and the directions did say i'd be frowny if i didn't have a second...so yay) and then we cooked, ate, and watched kiss kiss bang bang, ate pumpkin bread pudding, and then i drifted off to sleep, til i woke to ski the sunday away.

kristy, john and i found the good trees. yay team =)

evens & ends

2008-01-03T07:15:35Z

i got up at 5:30 this morning to go to a yoga class. i'm gonna do it again tomorrow. the style is odd--heated, and a lot of core strengthening. i don't like it as much as some other yoga i've done, but it is in the right place at the right time and has one side of the equation i like about a workout--intensity and much sweat (room heated to 105 degrees), and my core strength (the focus of the class) is an area which is deeply in need of attention, so it's kind of synchronistic. i don't know if this practice will be sustainable, or if i'll keep doing it at this studio, but i so enjoy the smooth calm-but-energetic morning that wakening to strength and centering creates. i used to get similar rewards from training in tukong at a similary ungodly hour. not so much from the pre-dawn jogs or bike rides, though. i think intention and focus has something to do with it.

good thing i got my yog on this morning, since my boss (for 3 more days) sought me out to tell me they'd hired someone else into the permanent position they'd opened for me. someone jumped ship from another team and had tons of directly relevant experience with our software, content providers, etc. i took it cheerfully--at least they *told* me what was going on, which is rare in the world of employment seeking and even rarer among my team members. i choose to take this as a positive sign that i can quit anytime i want with minimal notice as soon as a better opportunity presents itself; going full-time would have made me want to stick around and soak in the benefits for longer, and would have made me feel slightly bad about leaving in case something comes up sooner rather than later. my eyes are open, and my heart is untroubled.

my "2007 in review" post is held up pending more energy to review my year. to be fair, it is halfway done. however, i have an incredibly detailed hour-by-hour calendar thanks to my palmpilot, and i'm reviewing livejournal too to see where my mind was. so, i beg off of the timeliness factor on grounds of the amount of research remaining. yeah. it's late with a plausible excuse, just like me.