thanks giving.

I have a friend named John White. He's a Scotsman in his fifties now living in Wilkinsburg.

"Let's all go around the table, and tell everyone about the best thing that happened today," he says, unfailingly, every single time I see him. I see him often. He lives three blocks away from my best friend, Justin. He believes in this daily ritual so much that he has proposed a religion based on it. The Church of John White, held in an abandoned church, with weed and cheap beer and nostalgia, is an idea we revisit as often as our good days. It'll probably happen.

I am lucky enough to come up with something easily every day.

ugh

I know I haven't written awhile despite vowing to do so.

I'll start with this gem:

it sucks that ppl themselves have to make everything harder on the other person when things could be so simple and better

That's a Facebook update from a former classmate of mine at culinary school. Oof. As if the ITT Tech-style commercials weren't enough to make my loans an issue of major consternation in my life.

Speaking of which, I think I have a plan to be financially responsible. I opened a savings account today, and I'm going to attempt to dump at least 50 bucks in there per month. Aside from being there to help me out in case I take another Volkswagen to the face, it'll enable me to actually do something cool one of these days. In addition, I've been really putting more money into my student loans. I'm trying to pay off the small one (about six grand) within a year or two, to eliminate a pretty big monthly payment from my life. I'd then like to really throw a lot of money at the big loan (about 45 grand or so right now) so I won't in my forties by the time it goes away. The education I'm paying for is really the only thing preventing me from doing some cool shit with my life, at least financially speaking. My life, overall and despite financial troubles, is pretty cool.

I think, realistically, if I stay with this goofy medical company for another couple of years and make them pay me enough for what I'm doing for them (I'm making ten bucks an hour or so less than the guy previously doing my job, and doing way better), I could not only kill my loans and enable myself to do whatever I want--whether it's pro cooking again, working as a bike mechanic, whatever--I could also conceivably buy a house in Pittsburgh and quit paying rent. I love it here. The climate is perfect for me, the people are incredibly laid back, I'm in as far as the restaurant business goes, and it's a great city for not giving a shit about having a driver's license. I could get a sweet old house in Wilkinsburg, or anywhere in the East End for that matter, fix it up, have a huge enough garden to never buy produce again, and either live alone or invite my good friends to live with me and help with what will likely be a pretty timid mortgage, considering the market here.

My other recent financial achievement: health insurance. And I mean full, company-paid benefits. I finally signed up for the company's plan, and there's not a cent deducted from my paycheck. Medical, dental, vision, drug, life insurance, disability coverage, and I'm even reimbursed for the deductibles after I pay them. Not that I've even got any shit to take care of, but next time I'm impaled by a Swiss DT double-butted spoke, it'll definitely come in handy.

That's the news from Lake Wobegon; where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

another ride

Alright, it's time to start writing more. It's getting cold, and I spend enough time dicking around on the computer as is, so I might as well produce something worth reading when I'm ten years older than I am now.

Last Sunday I made the trip to Ohiopyle again, this time with a friend. We rode the full 80-85 miles this time rather than camping out near Connellsville, so it ends up being the longest I've ever been on a bike. It was a pretty intense test of endurance at times, mostly because we tend to ride at a fast pace (there was a pretty nasty headwind the entire time, so we drafted each other at 20 minute intervals or so). We also got drunk the whole way there. Here's a rough timeline:

1. Packed up, last minute maintenance on the bikes, new pedals for Shaver's fixie (his new clipless shoes were causing some numbness). Bought two big Stellas at D's in Regent Square, started heading towards McKeesport and the trailhead.

2. Dairy Queen in West Mifflin. Blizzards and burgers. Onwards across the McKeesport-Duquesne bridge.

3. We reached the trailhead, and five miles in I got a pretty rough flat. There had been a sizable hole in my rear tire that I had booted, but the tube finally pushed its way out. Patched the tube, put a new boot inside, pumped up and rode on. Drank Stella Artois while waiting for the glue to dry.

4. Slightly buzzed and about five miles outside of West Newton (roughly the halfway point). Shaver's rear tire literally explodes. We determine the tube was mounted incorrectly. The force of the impact was so much that threads were hanging out of the hole in the tire. With no tire boots left, I got out my knife to cut a square section out of my leather wallet and mounted a new tube underneath it. It held quite well until we got to the bike shop in West Newton.

5. Lunch at the old coke silos. PB&J and apples. Hip flask of vodka. Also time to smoke a little bit. Onward towards Connellsville and past my previous campsite.

6. Connellsville. Feeling a little bit beat, we decided it was an excellent idea to drink four pitchers of beer at a townie bar. It was. Getting dark on the last 17 mile stretch. Moving fast now.

7. Quick break at a road intersecting the trail. Trail cop pulls up and says he shouldn't let us ride in the dark. We convince him we're good and start the ascension to Ohiopyle, headlights on. It's nearly pitch black outside except for the moonlight. It's a pretty steep hill for several miles but we really don't notice. I have a mild hallucination and skid to a stop in the road after thinking I'm about to run into a giant pile of rocks. Despite this, we're having a lot of fun crushing the trail in the dark with no other cyclists out. The noise of crickets is deafening.

8. Ohiopyle. Time to sit around the campfire, delirious, and eat some bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches.

Not a bad deal. We basically ate, drank, and bullshitted (bullshat?) the rest of the weekend, though we were able to get on the river for a short hour with our friend Carl, the river guide.

What else have I been doing? I'm currently sanding down an old mixte frame to paint it white and make a dedicated snow bike out of it. I've got a real 700c fork on my main ride now, and the studded tires most likely won't fit--not to mention I'd rather salt up a bike I don't care about too much this winter. I also saw a pretty wonderful bluegrass show a couple of weekends ago at one of my new favorite bars, Howlers. It caused me, directly, to stomp on the ground and yell a lot. I'm also still working on playing my banjo.

Looking forward to wearing scarves...

beets, bikes, and banjoes

Summer's here, and for the first time ever in the four years I've been up in the 'Burgh, I'm actually able to enjoy it the way you ought to. I've got huge muscles, ridiculous tan lines, thick callouses on my feet, and everything I do has something to do with a bike ride, a cookout or a get-together with friends. I went up to Ohiopyle with the gang from Legume a few weekends ago and did some kayaking on the rapids for the first time ever, and it was a complete blast. One of the servers is a river guide up there, so we had a free campsite on the hill behind the outfitter.

We definitely had some good eats and drinks, and I managed to avoid flipping my boat over at all. I think I could get into paddling. Also, pictures were taken--people have been asking what I look like with a recently shaved head and blonde hair, so here we go. I would've just put some up from my camera, but I still can't get the damn thing to sync up. I think the USB hub on my laptop is just about shot.

Here's me at before the trip, staring longingly at a big plate of bacon.

And, uh, here's what I look like from behind. That's really all I've got.

So that's it. I now have a social life. It's a big deal. More later, I need to eat succotash.

one big barbecue

Hello! It's time for a life summary.

I am still slowly adjusting to life at the office, though it's not as soulless as some people tell me their office jobs are. I've now been doing my former boss's job for a full two months or so (they fired him and moved me up) and it was actually rather stressful at first, but it's cooling off a little bit in terms of need to come in on weekends and to be on call in the evening (in part due to my re-engineering of the systems in place, I would hope). In case I haven't mentioned it before, I'm basically in charge of managing raw data and charts for about 30 sleep studies a night for a large outpatient center in Pittsburgh called Lifeline. I work with interpreting doctors and respiratory therapists a lot. Oh, and I'm the only person in the office who has a fucking clue about computers, so I'm largely involved in IT work as well. We do have IT people, but they're a consulting group based in Philly, so getting stupid shit like broken printers and toasted hard drives fixed takes days and days if people don't just walk back to my office. True story: someone didn't know how to use the "Save As" option in Microsoft Word the other day when working on a document; she instead printed it out and scanned the piece of paper into the directory she wanted it to be in. WHAT THE FUCK

They did give me a Blackberry as a work phone. I have no clue how to use it, but I do like to walk around staring intensely at it, saying "Look at me, I'm Barack Obama!". Also, I sort of have a job title now instead of fifteen different jobs--the owner of a big outpatient center in Boston was visiting the other day and called me this while touring our office: Lab Coordinator. I like that. Would look good on a business card. It also looks and sounds better than "only man in the entire company". And, if I ever discover that I'm into boys I can call myself the Fab Coordinator. Or maybe I'll do that regardless.

Otherwise:

I'm cooking a lot at home. Tonight I seared a big piece of tuna, and made a cold salad with beets, potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. I made a vinaigrette out of jalapenos, chervil and balsamic with my boat motor. Good stuff. Good with a Budweiser. Cooking a lot with friends as well: there was a ridiculous Memorial Day barbecue last month that involved around six racks of spareribs, two chickens, four pork tenderloins, countless cases of beer and a shit lot of coleslaw.

I'm riding my bike as much as humanly possible but haven't been able to get far out of the city again due to work. Still riding the Schwinn (Alice). Haven't done much work on her in quite awhile aside from tires and tubes. Still using a BMX chain from about a year ago, it's the longest I've ever had one last. It goes without saying that the KMC Z is not meant for 4000+ total milage, but it seems to be working out well for me.

Seeing a girl now who's on a Pittsburgh roller derby team. She likes climbing on things and riding her red Schwinn bicycle. This is kind of a big deal for me.

Bought a banjo. Learning frailing style.

Shaved my head about a month ago. Now I've got a good half inch of blonde hair back and a pretty decent start to a beard. It's mostly just because I'm having trouble letting go of hockey season (I like getting drunk, eating nachos and yelling at the TV, I recently discovered), but it also doesn't look too bad somehow, and it keeps me from looking really young while my hair's short. I'll make a picture happen soon but my camera and computer aren't talking to each other for some reason right now.

Ride report: Ohiopyle tour

I must say, there are few times I've been happier to have a shower. I just returned from my three-day bicycle tour from Pittsburgh to Ohiopyle State Park, which utilized the Great Allegheny Passage trail, for the most part. Total mileage: 160, possibly more as I really had to take the long way coming back from the trailhead in McKeesport to my home. Here's the proof:

Leaving the office, doing a final check on the bike. Any cyclists reading this will think I'm insane for doing this trip on a track bike geared 42/14, but the fact is, I like using reliable equipment, and I didn't have to turn a wrench on this thing the entire three days I was away from home. Didn't even put any more air in the tires. Only damage is that the chain is completely full of mashed up gnats accumulated while riding.

Not even out of Pittsburgh yet, I took a detour to get to Eighth Ave. in West Mifflin and stumbled upon this abandoned warehouse by the railroad. Found this crazy big machine inside.

Hopping the tracks, carrying the bike between a few old rusty cars to get to the Waterfront.

This "Red Waterfall" was about twenty miles into the trail. Apparently the water flowing over the rock is extremely high in iron and sulfuric acid and does horrible things to the landscape. It's one of many byproducts of a hundred years of coal mining in the area.

And here's the same phenomenon in an entire stream, flowing right into the Youghiogeny river. It was pretty eye-opening to see that although the city of Pittsburgh has really cleaned itself up over the past twenty or thirty years, the Midwest is still scarred from the reckless industry of the 20th century.


Another coal mining disaster, "gob piles". Apparently this is what you get when you burn coke (fuel made from coal).


Some kind of big coke storage silo here, it was a landmark on the trail. I picked up five or six big chunks to keep my fire nice and hot and went on my way.

What I look like when I'm alone in the woods. I'd just arrived at my campsite after a good day of riding.

Nice view of the Yough from my campsite, which is called Roundbottom, and was built by Boy Scout troops. The current was pretty wild due to recent rain--this river has some very intense rapids as it gets closer to Ohiopyle.


My lovely campfire from my first evening, which was mostly driftwood (and pieces of hot-burning coke!). I met a guy at this campsite named Serj who was fired from his job as a messenger in Pittsburgh and was now homeless and tramping his way around Pennsylvania. I felt bad for him; he didn't have a bike, and you don't get very far in a day at an average of three miles per hour. He said he'd sold his ride in West Newton for money to eat, and that after he used up his EBT card he didn't know what he was going to do. I guess times really are tough for some people, though I remember thinking if the shit hit the fan for me, the Allegheny Mountains would probably be the last place I'd go.


First thing I saw in the morning after thawing out my feet and leaving camp was this heavily spraypainted old railroad bridge. The sun was barely up and it was still pretty cold. I had my balaclava on and was periodically pulling the bottom part down to eat summer sausage and cold wheat bread.


Of course, when I see a bridge and don't know where it goes, I have to walk across. This ended up being a little scary with the rusty holes in the walkway, but it was fun.


The long haul. I like this shot, it really reminds me of how long that ride in the morning felt. I had a headache, probably from not hydrating well enough, or maybe from drinking too much of the water out of the hand pump (it smelled like rust, but I didn't have a headache the next morning, so maybe I got used to it). I also chose a poor campsite the first night, and was feeling the effects. It was too close to the river and the ground was still a little damp from when the water was higher, not to mention a train went by on the far bank every hour. The temporary solution to the cold ended up being to sleep next to the fire, and throw a log on every time a freight train blew by and woke me up. Honestly though, I had far worse nights in the boy scouts. At least in Pennsylvania you don't have to worry about fire ants, rattlesnakes, scorpions, etc. You just have to check your body for ticks.


When I finally got to Connellsville at ten or eleven that morning, I needed a cup of coffee worse than I can remember. I went to a diner called Valley Dairy and ordered a 6000 calorie country breakfast, and told a woman named Darlene to keep the java coming. I felt a little bit better about life with every ounce of sausage gravy. Oh, and I bought sunscreen. Spending twelve hours a day in a hot dungeon for the last three years of my life has made me forget the effects of the sun on human skin, and by the end of the first day's ride, done in a gray wifebeater (shown above), I was nearly charred.

Aside from the servers at the diner, by the way, people here were fucking assholes. Despite what you might infer from seeing a beautiful, modern street like the one above with a segregated bike lane, I got more GTFOTRs in this town than in the past three months in the 'Burgh put together. I'm never going back there unless it's to have another nine dollar, nine pound breakfast on the way to D.C., or maybe if I have to visit the sleep lab my company has there.


Ramps. For those of you that don't know, they're just wild leeks that grow in Pennsylvania, and maybe the entire region too, I don't know. In any case, for some reason these fuckers are so popular (still!) with trendy chefs that during their peak season, you can't walk into a restaurant that serves anything nicer than grilled stickies without seeing them everywhere on the menu. Don't get me wrong, I like them too, and I'm all about eating things that actually grow out of the earth instead of a test tube in a Monsanto laboratory. It's just that I'm over it, and why would you pay so much for something that basically grows everywhere? Chefs will pay so-called "foragers" an arm and a leg for a bag of these. I saw another varieties of wild leek here too, and millions of wild onions, but you don't see them catching on.


And whaddayaknow, it's a fucking deciduous forest of them! I'm not lying, every one of those green things is a ramp, and I know a ramp when I see one. Look at this! THERE IS A NATIONAL RAMP ASSOCIATION. I really should have brought a giant sack, or maybe a refridgerated truck, I could probably pay off my student loans with that many ramps.


At the waterfall in Ohiopyle. You have to have written permission from the park to jump off that thing in a kayak. I didn't really do too much here except hike around the Ferncliff peninsula and have a few PBRs at the bar next to the outfitter. I'm in pretty good shape, but I'm really not one of those Lance Armstrongy guys that believes if you put good things in your body, it will be good to you.

Okay, I do believe that. But if I ride my bike forty miles in one day, I deserve a beer, dehydrating or not, case closed.


After spending a good part of the day at Ohiopyle, I headed back on the trail and stopped at the grocery in Connellsville to buy dinner. I got a rib steak and a can of beans, and cooked both on my campfire:

This was the best steak I have ever eaten in my entire life. Yes, that's my messenger bag; I used the waterproof Cordura flap as a plate in lieu of a heavy mess kit, and ate with my hands. I put the can of beans on the fire, stirred it with a stick, and pretty much drank it.

That's the end of the photos from my trip. I slept a lot better last night, having chose a different campsite, and took off at about ten in the morning after dousing my fire with the same rusty sulfur-water I'd been drinking most of the trip. I took a fast pace on the trail, stopping only in West Newton to win ten bucks on a scratch-off card, and actually got back to Pittsburgh in some crazy record time, about two, but didn't get home to Wilkinsburg until around 4:30 due to a misguided detour I tried to take through Sandcastle, a water park that's currently closed. I wanted to take pictures of that ordeal (an empty lazy river is a very surreal thing), but I was trespassing and needed to keep an eye out for the man. When I realized the entrance to Sandcastle was a complete dead end, I turned around and hopped all the necessary fences a second time, and went through Greenfield, one of the hilliest neighborhoods in the city.

there it is!

http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/RecoveryBill01-15-09.pdf

All one bazillion dollars of it. I don't think it's bad, but I wish they would spend some time on the damn thing. Oh, and Bush's package did more for cyclists than this one does!

Also, I broke my handlebars yesterday. Cracked and bent off right at the left side of the stem. Looking for another set of old drops to saw down, if anyone's got a 25.4mm clamp diameter set for sale, let me know.

just because we elected a black president doesn't make us enlightened.

"this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries and profit from their reconstruction in order to survive - and that's not a system that changes every four years, it's a system that we have to break down, generation after generation after generation after generation after generation... Wake up."

-SGT Stanley Griggs
from Iraq

One of many problems that hasn't been solved by electing a handsome, charismatic president is the continued occupation of Iraq.

Not to mention, those of you who read the news will know that Obama signed off on unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan without any sort of agreement with the country's government.

It's been a week since his inauguration, and his signature killed 17 people. We certainly gave him a lot of power.

Is everybody really going to stand by and talk about Aretha Franklin's goofy hat while we pump another trillion dollars into a failed economy without coming up with solutions to make it work in the long term?

Know What You Owe

I don't remember if I mentioned it here, but awhile back I learned that I should never have owed about $375 to Dominion gas due to a bill that wildly overestimated the amount of gas I actually used during the months of November and December. I told a lot of people about it and realized a lot of people aren't aware that the gas companies usually estimate the amount you use, and you can only prevent that by reading your own meter and submitting the number.

$375 is a shitton of money, and frankly, I think it should be illegal to estimate my gas usage based on what some asshole used in the same apartment a year or more ago. Companies like Dominion need to get with the program and either get their personnel to read the meter every month, or do what electric companies have been doing for some time, and install digital meters that can be read from a distance, or even from an office location--the technology certainly exists. And if they're not going to do this, they need to be a little more transparent about the way they bill you. It's true that most likely, an actual reading would've be taken from my meter eventually and my account would've been credited as such. But that's no reason to lend a month's rent at 0% interest to the gas company in the middle of winter.

Feel free to distribute this to anyone you know who pays for gas heat, hot water, cooking, etc., and especially ask them to send their stories to the email address provided. If it's the economy is making us broke, the last thing we need is to be overcharged for having a warm home. I have this flyer in Word format and PDF also if you need it.

major improvements

Today, I replaced the fork on my bike with a much lighter, less heavy-duty Tange Cr-Mo fork that came off a mid-eighties Schwinn frame I just bought (for 20 bucks, bottom bracket and headset included too!):
Here's the old fork, a nice chrome piece also manufactured by Tange, but unfortunately made for 27 inch wheels.

And the finished product, in artistic black and white:

The biggest reason I did all this today is shown below. My brakes (and I know, the cable's frayed and there aren't even any washers on the pads, a big no-no, but it's a fixie, give me a break) work fine, at least as much as I need them to, with the old chrome fork. But if I'm not careful and let one of the arms on the caliper get loose, there's not a lot of clearance between the pads and the tire sidewall. I flatted a few weeks ago this way going down a hill. Coming to a safe stop on a 20% incline after that isn't a pleasant experience, but neither is patching a tube and putting electrical tape around a ripped tire for the ride home in ten degree weather.

You can tell from the photo that mounting those brakes on the right fork really gave me plenty of room to make good contact with the rim. I should've either done something like this or ordered long-reach brakes a long time ago, because the stopping power is incredible, even on my non-machined rims--enough to endo if I'm not careful. There are plenty of other benefits too, since I saved a significant amount of weight, made my frame clearances and wheelbase a lot tighter for more responsive handling, and now have eyelets on the front for when I choose to mount my full fenders.

Lesson learned: it's worth having the right tools for the job.

cold

Every winter, I coat the inside of my steel frame with an aerosol compound called Frame Saver. It's some kind of petroleum distillate that hardens into a gummy layer when exposed to the air, and it greatly protects against the road salt that is used in great excess in this city. Most of the time it's just overkill--the amount of salt they sling on the concrete from huge trucks--at least for my traction needs on the road. I've only broken out the studded tires a few times so far this winter, and really just because it's fun on occasion.

It's hard to keep momentum when there are carbide spikes sticking out of your wheels though, and exerting yourself really takes its toll on your energy reserves when starts to get below around 20 degrees--you're burning a hell of a lot of calories in the winter just to keep the blood in your fingers liquid. It's gonna be in the single digits this week, probably below zero for a day or two, and the snow is finally dry and powdery, not a frozen sheet that thaws to a disgusting saltwater slush in the daytime. I get excited thinking about moving to a city that has a real winter someday, with less freezing rain. But in any case, I have my narrow tires on with a little less pressure in the tubes than usual, and that does just fine. I'm also using my nicer set, a pair of Serfas Seca RS 23s that run about forty bucks apiece and are worth it for the flat protection, rolling resistance, and traction, instead of the rather flimsy ten-dollar hutchinsons.

Pictures to start happening again soon, the weather's about to get pretty intense and I'd like to get some photos of it. I found my cable, just need to buy some batteries, as my headlight's been eating them up. Really need to get a rechargable headlight.