wrench in the gears

DoppelBacchanalia: The Sixth Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is Almost Upon Us......

2011-10-02T21:33:00.011-04:00

"The majority of wines, almost all spirits, and every one of the beers whose memory I have evoked here have today completely lost their tastes — first on the world market and then locally — with the progress of industry as well as the disappearance or economic re-education of the social classes that had long remained independent of large industrial production, and so too of the various regulations that now prohibit virtually anything that is not industrially produced. The bottles, so that they can still be sold, have faithfully retained their labels; this attention to detail provides the assurance that one can photograph them as they used to be, not drink them."
—Guy Debord, "Panegyric - Volume I" (1989)
"Suffering results from constraint. A portion of pure delight, no matter how tiny, will hold it at bay. To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection."
—Raoul Vaneigem, "The Revolution of Everyday Life"
"Sooner barbarity than boredom."
—Theophile Gautier

This then, is it. Again.

Fall returns. Leaves renounce their lofty perch and drift (dérive! dérive!) like wayward angels to the waiting earth. The air, cool and crisp and clean, beckons smoke from blackened chimneys. Autumn skies whisper elegies to summer evenings past. The moon is a melancholy mirror.

And the dirt in Pennsylvania, the very dirt to which we all return one day, is already like poison in the wound.*

Now is the season when the Bliss reigns supreme. Post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving, its timing is nothing if not divine. And this year is different. This year, the preternatural power of the Bliss to renounce the anhedral, stultifying grip of modern culture is two-fold. The late, great Terrence McKenna, in speaking of hallucinogens, said, "When in doubt, double the dose." Indeed. The Bliss, second to no substance in its herculean ability to transcend the ordinary, to burn the paper throne beneath the ego's bloated ass, to rouse the sinful spirit from the plastic puppet that dutifully bends to the might of the moneyed marionettes, the Bliss, the Bliss is racing toward you on a fat-tired tandem, and over its shoulder can be seen a diabolical double, a dastardly doppelgänger, a querulous Quilty to the hapless Humbert at the helm, leering and drooling and laughing maniacally. And hell-bent on destruction.

This, my friends, is going to be good. Stay tuned.

*With profound apologies to the Potentate of Parody, the Prince of Prose, Vladimir Nabokov.

Blissful Thinking...

2011-09-29T11:39:00.005-04:00

To the two faithful readers who come back to this blog once a quarter to see if I’ve galvanized myself into throwing pixels on the page once again, I say, "Thank you for your misplaced fidelity!” To those sloth-like embracers of pop technology who are pushed here via RSS feeds, I say, "Welcome back!" And to the handful who are led astray each week by less discriminating search engines to find themselves run aground on this oft-barren beach, I say, "Better luck next time."

All these introductory words to say that, yes, the Sixth Annual Bootlegger's Bliss will indeed go down this fall. Zealots of zymurgy, rejoice!

Here's the status and some fuzzy details: I am anxiously awaiting word on the availability of a particular venue that would allow us the proper luxury of a two-day event. The target date is the weekend of Satyrday, ~~November 5~~ October 29. Although it's a two-day event, I have taken pains to plan it in such a way as to allow those whose free time is limited the option of attending either one of the two days. If I the two-day venue logistics don't pan out, then it's back to a one-day event, which would be the aforementioned Satyrday (11/5). Partakers of Bliss's past can expect an email with details tomorrow evening.

If you haven't brewed, it's late, but you still have time, depending on the style. My apologies for the procrastination.

Quick Summary of Tentative Details

Date: Satyrday, October 29, 2011, through Stunday, October 30, 2011
Location: Awaiting Confirmation--if confirmed (likely), this will be a new and fantastic venue
Time: 11:00 a.m.

No Cameras Allowed...

2011-06-26T11:54:00.001-04:00

Shot with my iPhone. Vid coming soon...

Bikes, Beer, and "Bug"...

2011-06-23T15:28:00.007-04:00

Hello, and welcome back. Let's get right down to it...

This Saturday is going to be busy for me. First, I'm putting on a SSOFTeam ride that incorporates the White's Ferry Loop (80+ miles)--in reverse--with the 4th Annual NOVA Summer Brewfest (50+ breweries), a brilliant combination that is guaranteed to press all the buttons on the pleasure/pain master panel and thus to meet with approving nods from the spectral crown of the Marquis himself.

Before I launch into what's next on the agenda for that day (see far below), here are the details for the ride:

Leesburg Loop of Lusty Libations
(Sponsored by The Bicycle Escape and Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team)
Location:
First half - C&O Canal Trail from Georgetown to White’s Ferry (near mile marker 35 on the C&O)
Second half - W&OD Trail from Leesburg (near W&OD mile marker 33) to Arlington, then Custis Trail to Georgetown
Date: Saturday, June 25, 2011, at 8 am (wheels down at 8:15 am)
Ride Level: Intermediate (due to distance)
Cost/fees: $1 per cyclist for White’s Ferry; $22.50 (in advance) per cyclist for the NOVA Summer Brewfest
Description: Get your brew on! Come on out for a day stuffed full of the best things in life—bikes, beer, food, and friends. The first half of this loop takes us along the scenic, historic C&O Canal Trail from
Georgetown to White’s Ferry, where we’ll hop aboard the ferry ($1 per cyclist) and float our way across the pristine waters of the Potomac. Once on the Virginia side of the river, we’ll pedal a couple miles along the wide shoulder of Route 15 in rural Leesburg, where we’ll arrive at a vast, open field that is the venue for the 4th Annual Northern Virginia Brewfest. This ‘fest never disappoints! After supping sudsy samples, gorging on grub, and shaking off the miles, we’ll get back on the bikes for the second half of the loop.
From Leesburg, we’ll take the W&OD Trail into Northern Arlington, and then switch to the Custis Trail for the final leg into Georgetown.
Some (other) important information:
• This loop is approximately 80 MILES long. Adding in a couple hours at the brewfest means that this is, essentially, an all-day event, even though we will be back before sunset. No promising the spouse you'll be home--sober--in plenty of time to shower and make dinner, yeah? (S)he ain't buying that shit, not again.
• The pace will be moderate, with short breaks each way as necessary. Though not a fast-paced ride, this one isn’t for people with questionable endurance. That said, no one will be left behind.
• The terrain varies from crushed limestone hard pack (C&O Canal Trail) to smooth asphalt (W&OD and Custis Trails). A ‘cross bike or similar with size 32 tires or wider is recommended, though if you have a plump ass, by all means, use it and go with skinnier treads.
• PARKING is available in the public (free!) parking lot at Teddy Roosevelt Island, just off the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The parking lot is located on the Virginia side of the Potomac, near Key Bridge, and is accessible only from the northbound lanes of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Northbound traffic: the entrance to the parking lot is located just north of the Roosevelt Bridge. Southbound traffic: take Theodore Roosevelt Bridge to Constitution Ave. Take a right on 23rd St. and cross Memorial Bridge. Once on the bridge, bear right to return to the GW Parkway.
• The closest METRO STATION is Rosslyn, less than a mile away. Metro permits bikes, so this is a good option if you can't bike to the start. Once off the metro, simply head toward Georgetown (Key Bridge), take the Mount Vernon Trail a very short winding distance downhill after the bridge and when the trail levels, you’re in the parking lot.
• There is a FEE to attend the brewfest. Tickets online are $22.50. If you’re not sure you can attend the ride, I suggest buying your ticket at the gate and not in advance. Also, there is a FEE of $1 to ride the ferry across the Potomac.
• Drinking and biking can be dangerous. Drink and bike responsibly! The brewfest is a sampling event, not an all-day bender. Neither I nor The Bicycle Escape (nor any employees thereof) assumes liability for anyone participating in this ride and/or in the activities surrounding it. Participation in this ride and/or in the brewfest is entirely voluntary.
• The RAIN DATE for this event will be the very next day, Sunday, June, 26—tickets are good for either day, so if you buy a ticket in advance, no worries there. All other details remain the same.

Okay, that covers the ride and brewfest, for the most part. Now on to the second stage. Because I don't tolerate schedule conflicts very well, and because I have a predeliction for acting, then thinking, I'm tacking on another 10 to 15 miles roundtrip to attend the highly anticipated Dinosaur Jr. performance of "Bug" at the 9:30 Club in NW DC that night.

Now, the 9:30 Club has a pretty impressive line-up of beer on tap (see below). Add these to the stellar offerings I'm sure to encounter for most of the day, 4 ounces at a time, at Leesburg's version of Bacchanalia, and you can bet my liver is gonna be calling my brain all kinds of nasty names--some of which may confuse other parts of my body (think pelvic zone) who think they are being summoned--well into the early morning hours of Sunday.

DRAFT BEER:
ABITA CHRISTMAS ALE
ABITA TURBODOG
ANCHOR STEAM
ANCHOR LIBERTY
BASS ALE
BROOKLYN CHOCOLATE STOUT
BUD LIGHT
CLIPPER CITY BALTO MARZHON
CLIPPER CITY GOLD
DOGFISH HEAD 60 MINUTE
DOGFISH MIDAS TOUCH
DOGFISH RAISON D'ETRE
DOS EQUIS XX
GUINNESS STOUT
LEINENKUGEL SUNSET WHEAT
LINDEMANS FRAMBOISE
NEWCASTLE BROWN ALE
OLD RASPUTIN RUSSIAN STOUT
PILSNER URQUELL
RED HOOK E.S.B.
ROLLING ROCK
SAINT LOUIS KRIEK
SHOCK TOP WHEAT
SIERRA NEVADA PALE ALE
SMITHWICK'S
STARR HILL STOUT
WOLAVER'S INDIA PALE ALE
WOODCHUCK CIDER
YUENGLING LAGER

Like Greyhounds in the Slips...

2011-04-24T21:41:00.026-04:00

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the bar, heat lightning flashes in the near distance, just over the top edge of the curiously perdurable Inns of Virginia hotel across the street from Mad Fox Brewing Company, where I sit alone among what could only be optimistically and loosely called a crowd. Still, they are a persistent, noisy lot, and one can only hope that their livers, like mine, are exceedingly forgiving.

The Vaya is all but built. I have only to cable up the derailleurs (what an alien undertaking!) and wrap the Woodchipper in fine Cinelli cork, and it's all ready for a ride. It's about damn time, isn't it? Should be fully beta-tested before RamJam next weekend, where I can better experience how it shines as a randonneuring rig.

Slightly related, I recently picked up a new IRO Phoenix frameset (linked pix are not mine)—due for delivery sometime this coming week—in black for $199 online, to go with the workhorse high-flange hubset (pink is the new pink, which is to say it's the old black) I all but stole from IRO for $40 a while back. This because, well, dammit, I absolutely need another bike!

Switching topics again, in a blatant by-proxy effort to roam and experience, I've started reading Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey, by a gentleman with the unlikely name of William Least Heat-Moon. (The titular Q-word denotes “a noun, both singular and plural, referring to anything strange, incongruous or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious.”) The book is a lengthy travelogue of sorts, full of colorful accounts of small town Americana, from what I've gathered. Heat-Moon, accompanied by his wife, to whom he gives the curious appellation Q (quoz?), makes a journey by car in a series of short trips that trace the itinerary of the 1804 Hunter-Dunbar Expedition (the wha? Yeah, me too). This route takes him through the small towns and lesser trafficked backroads of Arkansas, Louisiana. Florida, Maine, New Mexico, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas, if the Publishers Weekly and Booklist are to be believed. Since I haven't read the book, I can't really comment from my own perspective, but it seems like Heat-Moon's search for the holy quoz is a gasoline-powered variation on the dérive so enthusiastically and refreshingly endorsed by the SI, may they drift about in peace.

I am probably making a small mistake here, both in sequence and in preference, as Blue Highways, Heat-Moon's first literary undertaking, and the first of his books I perused, preceded this book by 16 years and is more highly regarded by the vox populi willing to peck at the keyboard to share its opinion. Finally getting it right can be a blessing and a curse, because expectations set the bar high. Still, moderate success beats failure any day, and I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy this book. It was, admittedly, an impulse buy. That's often how I find the best reads.

Specifics about my promotion at work remain nebulous; again, it's realization is a certainty, only the start date and salary remain unknown. Yeah, I think I fucked up, you don't have to say it. I am still restless; more so than ever. But there's still much left to do in the readying, much that is mandatory (the rest must be left to fickle Fate—anything overplanned is, almost by definition, sterile and lifeless and poisonously predictable), and I'll use the time wisely. On another front, I somehow managed to pass a background check required to volunteer my questionable mechanical and social skills to support Phoenix Bikes, a nonprofit LBS located at Shirlington Village in South Arlington, and dedicated to providing "affordable bikes and bike repair service to our community." It's a once-a-week gig. I'll be meeting with one Kelly Auer next Tuesday to kick it all off. I met with her briefly last week, and was surprised to learn that she, through at least one of the extremely young mechanics toiling there, had heard of my clan, the Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team (SSOFT). According to Kelly, the young wrench had recounted a race (my guess is Big Bear) he witnessed, describing us as "a bunch of older guys who were kicking ass on the younger guys," or something to that effect.

Older.

Yeah, okay.

Punk.

So, suddenly, I'm a fucking self-appointed saint. Expect the end of days to follow shortly. I can only hope the staff at Phoenix don't judge me by my lack of head protection when I roll in on my commute home next week. Until then, I leave all 14 of you followers (the blog is dead...long live the blog!) with a salty salute. Happy life!

P.S., do I drink this beer the chick tending bar just bought me? I don't ignore the irony that answering such a question requires lofty contemplation among the warm, loving, effervescent company of yet another beer, but this one is free. Is there really a choice here? And beyond the brim of the pint glass, through the window, nestled up and away in the velvety plushness of approaching night, the lightning continues insistently its pyrotechnic posturing, mocking the continence of the clouds.

And no one notices.

We are but a flash. Burn brightly.

P.P.S., just because:

Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm,
And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood,
In bending o'er you, queen of every charm,
I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood.
The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm.
—Charles Baudelaire, from "The Balcony"

Here's to Now...

2011-04-10T20:30:00.053-04:00

This is the world
Why are you waiting?
Everyone's standing by hesitating
So many people halfway there
Between two points in the middle of nowhere
And all those things you thought you'd be
Did you know that it doesn't come free?
Have you seen yourself of late?
[...]
Can you hear the sound of?...
Machines all breaking down
The fuel is running out
Severed lines
Destroyed by too much time spent down
My head forced down
My hope forced down
Between my legs I've come unwound

All my preaching stems from fear
You're my concern, I hold you dear
You must break out of this old cage
Do it now, this is no longer safe
—Jawbreaker, "Down," Unfun

[...]
Yet when we meet we seem in silence to say,
Pretending serene forgetfulness of our youth,
"Do you remember but then why should you remember!
Do you remember a certain day,
Or evening rather, spring evening long ago,
We talked of death, and love, and time, and truth,
And said such wise things, things that amused us so
How foolish we were, who thought ourselves so wise!"
And then we laugh, with shadows in our eyes.
—Conrad Aiken, from "The Nocturne of Remembered Spring" (1917)

The good times ain't so bad, and even the bad times have their secret charm.

It is illusion, of course.

Aiken is dead, and having become an authority on the subject almost 38 years ago, speaks no more of it. He roams the aery halls of the House of Dust now, takes tea with The Tsetse, sups with the devil-bearded Rabbi Ben Ezra. His words, his poems, his opus vitae, as with any great writer, are only as immortal as the mind of man, which is to say they are increasingly volatile.

What is the past to a present hellbent on reinventing itself every minute? It is only valuable to the extent it can be plundered, rebranded, and put up for sale. And even now, even the present, isn't good enough, though its proximal horizons are as far as anyone is willing to look.

No rest for the wicked, hurling ever onward to the next big thing, the next upgrade, as long as it's right around the corner. Endless, limitless progress. The American way of life is not negotiable. Yeah. Let's pretend...

And Baudrillard, too, is belly-up. But there is good news: The facade he so dispassionately spoke of, like Borges' beloved map, is falling apart, and with it the neglected structure behind it. It's all makeup on a dying actor, a mix of Dorian Gray and Faust. But if you don't look too hard, if you keep it just on the edge of periphery, if you don't think, well then, it almost looks, almost feels, natural, doesn't it?

This is the calm before the chaos, the plush interlude between the faux idyll of the recent past and the implacable vengeance of a future that is learning how to sprint backwards to catch up with us. The "devil's due" is a concept little acknowledged by Homo Avarus. We get it, but we love to ignore it. Some other time, Old Nick, when your spikes sprout velvet and you're heart swells with sentiment. You see, we're a little short on funds just now, and, well, you understand, don't you?...

But Lady Nature is tired of the shakedown, the strong-arming, the sterile, myopic emptiness of a civilization driven by rampant self-interest, molded by market forces, and immersed in an artificial reality it loves to create and tweak and improve, one so accommodating (if you have the cash), so instantly accessible, so easy that it makes the real thing—with its archaic and intransigent insistence on presence of body and mind and its immunity from complete commodification—almost unbearable to most people. We contain the seeds of our own destruction, and we are sowing them like there's no tomorrow. And this is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nous finirez tous par crever du confort.

Sadly, and not without a hint of irony, adding to the abyss is looking more and more like the appropriate strategy. Partake rabidly, belly up to the bar, storm the trough, abbagnarisi la pizzu, embrace Jevon's paradox. It all accelerates a noveau retour a la normale (Sous les pavés, la plage!), one that likely will lack an articulate observer to study, assay, judge, rewrite, and "improve" upon it.

Oh well.

On a lighter, slightly less profound note, I got this bag of bones out on some dirt a couple weekends ago for the Swill d'Ville, an annual mountain bike ride on the trails surrounding UVA in Charlottesville, starting and ending at Mellow Mushroom. Absent minded fool that I am, I forgot that I had set up the Monkey with a road-sized gear (44:19) to use as a foul-weather fixed-gear commuter. So about a mile into the SdV, I notice my rear tire rubbing rudely on the chain-stays every time I lay into the pedals with mean intent. I take a moment to try to pull out whatever little bit of slack exists in the chain, with the hope of moving the tire back far enough to stop the rubbing, when another rider asks me a question. The conversation went something this:

Him (staring at my upended bike): Hey, man, what size ring you runnin' up front?

Me (distracted): It's a 32.

Him: No way that's a 32.

Me: Huh? (Takes a look.) Fuck!

So, I run what I brung, worked a little bit harder than everyone else, and did damn well, all things considered. I even managed to win the derby with a novel strategy composed of 9/10 avoidance and 1/10 luck.

Since then, I hit Rosaryville with a proper fixed gear (but, alas, sans helmet—oops!) with Baler and crew, rode to a flick with Bootch-wah and G-spot at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse, and did a 75-miler (out-n'-back) to support some SSOFTies and vicariously experience the mucky mayhem—thanks to a ton of rain—that was the Leesburg Baker's Dozen race this weekend.

The Vaya is creeping along toward completion and should be up and rolling before RamJam comes around at month's end. The shutdown (er, lapse in appropriations, hahaha) ain't happening, and with that nonevent is the nonevent of my forced vacation that I was really looking forward to. Damn, it never fails: if you want something too much, it never happens. On the flip side, this should open the gate on the new job, if I understand things clearly.

Should have gotten out when the getting was good.

Ah, well, here we are. And I am just winking dreary thoughts into a tiddle cup. The posts will take a turn toward the upbeat now that spring has arrived. I'm off tomorrow, and the weather is supposed to border on obsequious. Enjoy the week.

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
—Voltaire

One Fine Morning...

2011-03-09T22:49:00.052-05:00

"Who gives a shit what the Holy Grail is? It's the quest that's what's important. The transformation is within yourself. That's what's important."
—Yvon Chouinard, explorer, environmentalist, climber, founder of Patagonia Inc., septuagenarian bad-ass

Time turns and then it flies
A waterfall of lullabies
A smiling girl with crying eyes
Forget her

Will we turn loose at last
The schools of thought from nets we've cast
And let our boats go sailing past
Untethered?
......
One fine morning
One fine morning
The machines...are gonna cut us down
One fine morning
One fine morning
The machines...are gonna cut us down
—Mason Jennings, "Machines", 180° South soundtrack

So, power in Wisconsin gets its way again (surprise!) and the Democrats can pretend they really tried and, well, just got fooled by those sneaky Republicans, darn it! And continue to perpetuate the myth of two opposing parties to undermine the reality of one class.

And on my birthday, no less. Eugene Debs must be redlining in the mother of all sepulchral spins right about now.

The wealthy in this country are our moai; we cut down everything, consume and waste, while they quietly build themselves up. And when they stumble, when the market fails them, we bail them out. They take and take as we line up to give it to them. In return, they offer us promises, rhetoric, and lies. And in the emptiness, we pretend to see hope. We close our eyes and drift off to sleep. Until one day, we wake to find there's nothing left on our little island. All of it gone. Plundered, pinched, pilfered by privilege.

Everything is not all right.

The only consolation is that it has to end sometime, has to fall victim to its own rampant avarice. The totems will again turn to stone—soulless, meaningless—and topple. As it should be. That's called poetic justice. Take and take and take from a pool with increasingly less and less and less to give up, and it won't be long before you're knotting your own noose in a rope donated by the downtrodden. Or, to quote a sign from the protest in Wisconsin, "Screw Us and We Multiply." Time to make like rabbits. The tide is turning.

I, for one, can't wait. Pop the popcorn and pour the beer. It's showtime!

Rant over. For now.

Okay, so the greater—some might say grandiose—idea behind this cross-country bicycle trip is to write a book about it, based on notes written along the way (yes, it’s been done before).

From the cozy comfort of my seat in the bar (as the spring limps in slowly on frost-numbed feet), beer in hand, I conjure an eclectic but cohesive mix of impressions and reflections, poetry, prose, art, philosophy, beauty, love, luck, loss, narcissism, nihilism, sublime success and unforeseen failure, euphoria and misery, surrounded by—and sometimes set against—cogent, by turns discursive, descriptions of token towns and rural roads and urban avenues and the impersonal interstates that link them all together, sprinkled liberally with local history and color, transportation issues, environmental politics, and the general bliss and bane of traveling by bicycle. And oh yeah, I'm committed to spending every one of my nights inside a tent, regardless of weather or weariness. And the idea of making it an out-and-back grows ridiculously stronger every day.

In the meantime, some more bad news: yesterday, my boss told me the new position is pretty much a done deal. The only thing in question is my start date. Seems the uncertainty about the potential (and purely symbolic) government shutdown looming on the outside edge of the periphery is putting on the stall, so I'm left in a sort of limbo until the script plays out. If I'm still hanging by the end of April, I'm throwing a leg over the saddle, thrusting two defiant middle fingers heavenward, and pedaling to the west. If things are resolved before then, I'm sitting tight and doing it all next spring with a little fatter wallet. Got a rider who is interested in accompanying me if it doesn't go down till next year, so that's kind of cool. The months between will measure his sincerity. Guess we'll see. Regardless, time rolls on, and so will I. But tonight, I've got blisters on almost everything I need right now. Enjoy...

Orange is the New Brown...

2011-03-06T01:10:00.016-05:00

"If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

—Charles Darwin

Damn. As if the improbability of my bike trip going down this year isn't bad enough, Salsa had to come out and twist the blade. The second generation Vaya is now available, and it's not only new, but arguably improved. First, the clever bastards have added a replaceable derailleur hanger. That's a "nice-to-have" (more so on a mountain bike), but obviously not lust worthy in and of itself. The real bite in the bully bag, to me, is that they changed the color from butt-coffee brown (okay, it's not that bad of a color) to opulent orange.

I love orange frames, never mind the fact that I've never owned one (which just makes this accidental near-perfidy that much more difficult to stomach). And damn, that appears to be a really fine shade. To add invective to injury, to make me rue my unruly impatience, they even improved on the graphics, with edgier down- and seat-tube logos and the substitution of a new chain-stay catchphrase, "Adventure by Bike," for the slightly less apt, "Ride & Smile" that adorns the rear quarter panels on both my Vaya and my Casseroll frames.

This is my luck. I think the Mayans might have been off a year in their eschatological estimations. Twenty-eleven just ain't cutting it thus far and seems poised with outstretched arms and open heart to embrace the apocryphal apocalypse and bring this hyperreal horror-show to its ineluctable end. But, of course, there's still plenty of time left in the year to turn things around, to salvage the sordid seconds that have already slipped past, to betray the banal, to ditch the diabolical diorama of everyday life, to make a prison-break in a blurred-legged beeline across the gallows grounds, to dart past the Dule trees (index finger tugging absently at a necktie already nixed), to ditch the Maxwell's demon who manipulates the script, casting doubt, causing questioning, pulling me back into the mold.

The days drag on, but this ever-present me is homeomorphic to the man on the bicycle pedaling ever toward the west. I am changing, becoming myself, almost him already.

No word on the new job yet. Got my fingers crossed in a counter direction. Soon the verdict. But right now, the bottle over the bike...

I claim proneness to exaggeration
But the truth lies in my frustration
The children of the night, they all pass me by
Have to drench myself in brandy
In sleep I'll hide
But however much I booze
There ain't no way out
There ain't no way out
I don't care what you say, boy
There ain't no way out
* * * * * *
And the night comes down like a cell door closing
Suddenly I realize that I'm writin' now more honestly
While sitting here all alone with a bottle and my head a-floating
Far away from the phone and the conscience
going on at me and on at me
And I don't care what you say
There ain't no way out
—The Who, "However Much I Booze", The Who By Numbers

Of Fate and Foible, Faustian Bargains...

2011-02-17T01:32:00.030-05:00

...and dreams deferred. Okay. Fuck. It appears I'm about to take a big bite out of a huge shit sandwich McFate has graciously and with loving care prepared for me, garnish and all. No easy way to put this so I'll just come out with it and say that my trip by bike across country this spring will very likely not happen.

Cue the shit storm.

It comes down to this: I've been offered a promotion at work to a job that, in addition to affording me more brass in pocket, is much more interesting than my present one, and has the sweet little bonus of occasional travel to such places of personal interest as Hawaii and California, among others. I can't turn it down.

But there is at least one roll of the dice that could save me: it all hinges on whether my employer scores the contract. But these dice are loaded, the pips leaded for boxcars, and that is almost certain to happen. And get this: if it pans out and I take it, it all goes down in April, the very month I'd planned to begin pedaling my sorry, self-disappointing ass across this nation.

Thus, this felon will likely do more time.

The flip side of accepting it? More cash to pad the coffers for next year. Yeah, that's right. I am going to do this cross-country voyage at the same time next year, come hell, high water, or Hyperborea. The contract would be guaranteed for a solid year, with a high probability of stretching into more. Be that latter bit as it may, my ass will be in that seat no more (and actually less) than 260 business days, regardless of what happens in the meantime, and will be on a saddle shortly thereafter. Another year also means more time to "train" (i.e., drink more beer), more time to "plan" (i.e., procrastinate), more time to make contacts out west (i.e., mooch with payback), and a little more time to spend with the people I love on this coast before embarking for the other. Plenty of solid plusses there.

The downside? No fucking bike trip across country this year. And no fucking bike trip across country this year. Lastly, no fucking bike trip across country this year.

No fucking bike trip across country this year. Are we clear on this?

Plusses and minuses, yeah. So how come bittersweet tastes like straight-up shit?

* * * * *

The boozy warmth of the Curieux slips in and envelopes me from within like an overcoat beneath my skin. It is the best part of the bargain, the beginning of the buzz, when anything seems possible, save the salvation of a self-replenishing bottle. Delusion and illusion give birth to epiphany and illumination. The walls are pliable, the bars chimeric, shimmering like waves of heat from summer asphalt. If only for the moment...

It takes more than it gives now. The muse, once manic and mirthful, has passed out in the corner, vomit-breathed, with mouth agape and eyes rolled back like blank slot reels into a head as empty as a broken bottle. He's finished, too, played out and paid out. No new ideas. He pissed it all away, squandered it on his own phony promise to himself of endless tomorrows and plenty of time. But time has run out, and truth bangs its bony knuckles upon the only door in the house. It's mostly regurgitation or flat-out effluvia now. Take your pick and don't complain and hurry home for the evening. Straight home to sleep it off. The dawn brings new lies. It's too late for talk, and anyway, when did talking ever do any good? Hemingway had it right. Best to keep it all on the inside and let the fingers finish their work.

The maenad stoops once again. She whispers into my ear with a slurred tongue, swaying on wine-weary legs, lying to me, until I almost believe her. But I see the lines in her face, filigrees, like flaws in a diamond, stealing her beauty with each passing day. The devil always gets his due, and the hour approaches. The best liars, the ones who believe their own bullshit, go down hardest in the darkness. And they always manage to act surprised. Know thyself, yes. But knowledge is only prelude.

* * * * *

So much of what we give our lives over to is only fiction, a contrivance we've created for the sake of what we mistake to be comfort, make-believe that transcends fantasy only with its very real consequences. We buy into it, returning everything we extract back to the machine one way or another. And it is all-consuming, this ritual. It steals time from—indeed, is the opposite of—Love. We know this. And still we get in line for it to battle one another for the best parking space, the pole position. Every day we place a bet against blackness, blind to the fix. I am lucky enough to be fortunate enough to have enough to complain about it all and, at least philosophically, reject a large part of it. A paradox with a punch. But it all rolls on until it doesn't. Until grit and rust and dross bring it to a standstill.

There's something to solipsism. The truth is out. I've likely fucked myself for another year to avoid being fucked by others.

It's 1:30 in the mourning, and I'm just drunk enough right now to go to bed.

Dreams die today
(Do you call this living really?)
Too much hassle, too much risk
(Inside the hole you're digging)
Dreams die today
(Do you call this living really?)
No more disappointments

Please remain seated
Your number's coming
Do not question these commands
Just walk the dog
Be a bump on a log
Watch TV until you're blind

Dreams die today...
—Jawbreaker, "Equalized", Etc.

forgetters, "Not A Track Bike"...

2011-02-09T22:21:00.003-05:00

Blake's got a new band. Lots of energy, I dig it. Live at The Barbary in Philadelphia, September 25, 2009.

Hope this one stays together a little longer than the last few, ha.

Subject to Change...

2011-02-06T20:06:00.020-05:00

We're too smart to watch TV
We're too dumb to make believe
this is all we want from life

And I'm too dumb to talk to you
You're so quick to listen to me
Saying nothing you don't know
Nothing you don't know

Walked out and I won't be rerouted
If I don't go outside today, I never will
Too old not to get excited
About rain and roads, Egyptian ruins, our first kiss
—Jawbreaker, "Jinx Removing", 24 Hour Revenge Therapy

I rode down to the tracks
Thinking that they might sing to me
But they just stared back
Broken, trainless, and black as night
Climbed out onto my roof
So I'd be a poet in the night
Beat the walls off my room
I saw the big room that is this life

This is my condition
—Jawbreaker, "Condition Oakland", 24 Hour Revenge Therapy

I own an SUV. I own a TV. Both sit idle, have languished unused now for quite some time, the difference being that the TV has the benefit of shelter from the elements and is thus in a better state of visual appeal. The truck, on the other hand, is on the fast track to eyesore status, having been peppered by pollen and pounded by precipitation in all forms while resting in the driveway. Amazing, what just a little neglect brings. We would do well to remember that when it comes to living, breathing, warmth-producing things.

But the truck and the TV? Done with them both, at least for the nonce. The truck disappears as a donation this year, not likely to be replaced anytime soon. The TV goes out the window and over the fence, figuratively speaking (Arlington County will recycle it, or at least go through all the appropriate visual motions to make me feel like they are recycling it. I have my doubts).

I am becoming boring, I fear. At least to all but the alcoholic, bibliophilic bicyclist. No talk of Mad Men or the Superbowl, no spur of the moment day-trips to lands too distant to be practicably reached by bicycle, none of that good stuff. But I am, I feel, the better for this, somehow. Certainly no worse. The TV (a pandora's box if ever there was one) can go straight to fucking hell, do not pass go, do not collect etc. Television, like radio (including most satellite stations), is, in so many words, shit, pure and simple. This is not revelation. Invasive, ubiquitous, vapid, unimaginative, addictive, insidious, selfish, imposing, wasteful, let it slip from memory, disappear, become to me no more than a fuzzy hircocervus (now there's an animal!). As for the automobile, I won't go cold turkey anytime soon. I am, right now, still that most contemptible of propriétaires immobiliers: a suburbanite. I make do as necessity dictates. And sometimes I defy it.

So, what does all this have to do with my all-too-quickly-approaching cross-country bike trip? Not a damn thing, really. But how much can I write about something that hasn't happened yet and is, at the moment, relatively unplanned? Well, this much, at least...presented for your perusal, my tentative itinerary, pinched from the Adventure Cycling Association web site:

Yorktown, VA, to Astoria, OR (4,262 mi.)

Yorktown, VA, to Christiansburg, VA (367.5 mi.)

Christiansburg, VA, to Berea, KY (381 mi.)

Berea, KY, to Murphysboro, IL (410.5 mi.)

Murphysboro, IL, to Girard, KS (411.5 mi.)

Girard, KS, to Alexander, KS (333.5 mi.)

Alexander, KS, to Pueblo, CO (292.5 mi.)

Pueblo, CO, to Rawlins, WY (390.5 mi.)

Rawlins, WY, to West Yellowstone, MT (349.5 mi.)

West Yellowstone, MT, to Missoula, MT (332 mi.)

Missoula, MT, to Baker City, OR (419 mi.)

Baker City, OR, to Coburg, OR (340 mi.)

Coburg, OR, to Astoria, OR (234.5 mi.)

Coming up next: a breakdown of the gear I'll carry. Oh, a thrill for ya!

I've been there and gone there
I've lived there and bummed there
I've spinned there, I gave there
I drank there and I slaved there

I've had enough of the way things have been done
Every man on a razor's edge
Someone has used us to kill with the same gun
We were killing each other by driving a wedge

My life's a mess I wait for you to pass
I stand here at the bar, I hold an empty glass
—Pete Townshend, "Empty Glass", Empty Glass

Two Wheels and a Will...

2011-02-03T17:22:00.015-05:00

"It would be strange if, while one too often obeys without a murmur a discipline that one does not understand and does not feel, we were not able to act according to a course of conduct that we ourselves have helped prescribe and keep rigidly consistent."
—Antonio Gramsci, La Città Futura, February 1917

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) “Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.” I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
—John Berryman, from The Dream Songs

It all boils down
to not hanging around
gotta keep moving in front of the
gravity, gravity, gravity, gravity
Fugazi, "Long Distance Runner", Red Medicine

The front wheel is built and I am now in the first delicate stages of truing the assembly. I went with Phil Wood disc mountain hubs^* because, in some small part, I have yet to learn the finer points of frugal economics, but mostly because they best fit the bill. Stout, robust, disc, 36-hole, black, bolt-on, field-maintenance friendly, and oh-so-easy on the eyes. I paired an Alex TD17 disc-specific rim with the hub, attaching it in a three-cross pattern using Phil's own black, double-butted (14/15) spokes, which should ensure a nice, tight fit between spoke head and hole (let's agree for now to ignore the obvious bawdy extrapolation of those last few words to other sine qua non couplings in life). Should prove to be a relatively bomb-proof wheelset.

So the anatomical shakedown goes like this (everything in black, where available):
Salsa Vaya frameset, 56 cm
Thomson setback seatpost
Thomson X4 stem, 120 mm, 10 degree rise
Selle Italia Max Flite Gel Flow Saddle
Salsa Lip Lock seatpost collar
Crank Brothers Eggbeater 3 pedals
Shimano 105 crankset, front and rear derailleur, 10-speed
Shimano Dura-ace chain, 10-speed
Shimano bar-end shifters, 8-speed (10-speed compatible)
Shimano 105 cassette, 10-speed
Shimano Tiagra/Sora brake levers
Avid BB7 road disc brake calipers
Salsa Woodchipper handlebar, 31.8 mm center diameter, 42 cm width
Cinelli cork bar tape, black
Chris King headset
Schwalbe Marathon Supreme tires, 700x35c
Alex TD17 rims, 700c, 36-hole
Font de Jante Velox rims strips, 22 mm
Phil Wood MTB disc hubset, 36-hole
Phil Wood double-butted spokes, 14/15, with brass nipples

For a minimum of two months (and up to five, potentially) beginning this spring, this bike is going to be my best friend and constant companion, assuming all goes well. This trip is long overdue. I am neither particularly young, nor materially wealthy, nor excessively fond of risk, be it financial or physical. What I am—right now—is weary of routine and wary of responsibility. And exceedingly selfish. These are the raw materials that forge my will to temporarily abandon what is my life and seek something else on the roads that criss-cross this country, balanced on two wheels that slice the scenery into still lifes and landscapes. From a physical, physiological standpoint, it isn't exactly epic, it's not an Odyssey, it isn't even mildly hardcore (how's that for an oxymoron?), though surely there will be trying moments. The difficulty comes in the initial commitment, the irrevocable decision to abandon (if only temporarily) so much of what so many consider necessities, without some guarantee in the end of a consolation prize. But to dip into cliche, it's that kind of risk that makes life interesting and worth living. No regrets. That's where life lies, raw and real and a little bit ragged. And immensely rewarding. Gravity kills.

I can't wait.

M-Y-T-H is
belief in a game
control that keeps us
in our box of fear
we never listen
voice inside
so drowned out
drowned you are
you are, you are
a furry(every) thing
and everything is you
me you, you me
it's all related
and what's a boy
to do?
Pearl Jam, "Faithful", Yield

^*At the time of this writing, Phil does not manufacture a disc touring hubset per se. The idea of using disc mountain hubs came from a Phil representative, who stated that were they to design disc touring hubs, these would essentially be identical to the disc mountain hubs.

Barn's Burnt Down --

2011-01-24T11:01:00.001-05:00

now
I can see the moon.
— Masahide

De Omnibus Dubitandum...

2011-01-16T21:33:00.017-05:00

"Radical doubt means to question; it does not necessarily mean to negate. It is easy to negate by simply positing the opposite of what exists; radical doubt is dialectical inasmuch as it comprehends the process of the unfolding of oppositions and aims at a new synthesis which negates and affirms. Radical doubt is a process; a process of liberation from idolatrous thinking; a widening of awareness, of imaginative, creative vision of our possibilities and option."
—Erich Fromm, Introduction to (Ivan) Illich's Celebration of Awareness

A heart that's full up like a landfill/a job that slowly kills you/bruises that won't heal/you look so tired and unhappy/bring down the government/they don't, they don't speak for us/I'll take the quiet life/a handshake of carbon monoxide/with no alarms and no surprises/no alarms and no surprises/no alarms and no surprises, silent, silent...
—Radiohead, "No Surprises," OK Computer

"Culture is not your friend."
—Terrence McKenna

"I suppose I was here because this was something I had to do; not just dream about it, but do it."
—Richard Proenneke, Alone in the Wilderness

In April of this year, I will embark alone on a two-wheeled odyssey across this nation in an effort to discover something more about myself and a land that is mine only by a brilliant accident of birth. It is a running away, an escape, a prison break undertaken when the last wisps of sunlight streak the evening sky as the day begins to die, when the shadows of countless buildings and trees and everything that is creep quietly across courtyards and county seats to dissolve in the dimness of a night that slips in with the slow subtleness of a sedative.

I am restless. I don't fit. I have difficulty accepting things as they are, even if they seem to be functioning perfectly well (at least for most people). I can think of no better reason not to do something than because it is always done that way. Tradition, to paraphrase the late, great Terrence McKenna, is not my friend.

There is no reason why 2011 is the year, but there is equally no reason why it shouldn't be. Perhaps it has taken this long for the ennui and uneventfulness of everyday life to finally penetrate my being like some parenteral poison, sickening me against myself and servility and same-old same-old; a personal and cultural curare, so to speak. Perhaps, in the end, I am only running away. Better to run now while the legs are strong, n'est ce pas?

Whatever the real reason, so be it. I'm thinking hard about an out and back. Guess I'll make that decision when my wheels stop turning—temporarily—in Astoria. Until then, I plan to blog the whole process as it unfolds, starting with the bike build and moving through the planning, until I arrive at the moment of departure, on the shore in the erstwhile tobacco shipping mecca of Yorktown, Virginia. Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

(Tangentially related: if you've never heard of Richard Proenneke, do yourself a wonderful favor and check out Alone in the Wilderness. Mr. Proenneke, as you'll soon discover, is one tough motherfucker.)

Half-hearted, Half-assed Half-terthought...

2010-12-19T16:53:00.013-05:00

Took the pic at left recently in Old Town, Alexandria (Virginia). Nice placement. Not the motorist's fault, this time. Seems the city saw fit to paint a sharrow in the parking zone, where it shines like an embattled beacon of hope beneath the belly of parked vehicles. North of this spot, they've painted a bike lane smack dab in the open car-door zone that stretches all of a couple blocks before terminating abruptly and mysteriously, leaving several more blocks with neither bike lane nor sharrow, until the abomination in the pic makes its less than majestic appearance. All of this on Union Street, a high-pedestrian area where the average vehicle speed is about 20 mph, and where there's an all-way stop sign at almost every intersection. Absolutely no reason at all to place any bike markers along this street, as doing so not only endangers cyclists who play by "the rules," but also underscores the widely held, misplaced belief that bikes aren't true vehicles and shouldn't mingle on the road with automobiles.

It's half-hearted, half-assed efforts like this half-terthought that really burn my ass, because someone somewhere who is clearly overpaid really, truly believes that (s)he reached out to cyclists in a meaningful way. Yep, clearly.

Well done, city planners!

Scorched Earth Scurry...

2010-11-29T14:09:00.000-05:00

Putting on a little SSOFTeam ride this Saturday. It’s a double-loop, fat-tire, fixed-gear ride over the rollickin’, rollin’, asphalt-smooth dirt trails at Rosaryville in Uppah Marrahburrah, Merylin. All are welcome. Here’s the official four-one-one:

Scorched Earth Scurry
Sponsored by The Bicycle Escape and Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team
Location: Rosaryville State Park, Upper Marlboro, MD. First parking lot on the right after the gate.
Date: Saturday, December 4. Meet at 9 am, wheels down and rolling at 9:15 am
Terrain: Mild. The loop is hardpack singletrack with plenty of whoop-de-doos. Short up- and downhills. Fixed gear and singlespeed friendly.
Ride level: Moderate to advanced, depending on the players.
Description: A 20-mile fixed-gear dirt ride. Fixed gear recommended, but all mountain/cross bikes are welcome. What better way to warm up the winter engine and prepare for the onslaught of cooler weather than going coast-less in the woods of (moderately) wild, (moderately) wonderful Upper Marlboro, MD? Come on out and pedal every inch of the 10-mile dirt loop in one direction, then hit it again going the other way to double your pedaling pleasure. This route is pure bliss, a veritable roller-coaster ride guaranteed to have you grinning from ear to ear without feeling like you had to suffer for it!

Beer, Bikes, Be-attitude...

2010-11-10T00:00:00.014-05:00

It is finished. The Fifth Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is over. I'll pause a moment to give you all time to grieve.

. . .

Now that all the wailing and gnashing of teeth has concluded, here's a bit of good news: there are a few souveniers floating around in cyberspace. For example, Arne of Log Posse fame was kind enough to capture a few minutes of the Ass-fault Derby™ and Tabletop Trials™ events, and kinder still to unleash them on an unsuspecting and largely somnambulant world. Submitted for your consideration, one expertly produced video of some of last Satyrday's sot-ridden shenanigans:

Bootleggers Bliss 2010 from arne fleisher on Vimeo.

We were forced to skip these two vital points of the Sacred Estoile (the other three being the ride, the homebrew, and the home-made food) last year, and it's good to see them return again, along with a new one: Jungle-gymnastics (see 2 pix near bottom).

Thanks, Arne!

Ass-fault Derby™...

(Above photo credits: Arne Fleisher)

Tabletop Trials™...

Jungle-gymnastics™...

Colossal thanks to everyone who came out to (again) make this such a fun and unforgettable event! Write-up (and more vids) coming soon, I hope. Until then, ¡Salud!

12 Hours and Counting...

2010-11-05T22:31:00.003-04:00

The Bliss is on like the eponymous video game gorilla. Everyone who can't make it, well, in every game, there has to be some losers, n'est ce pas?

Bliss turns five this year. Still just a baby, but what an appetite for all things hedonistic!

Time to rediscover my mountain bike. As for the bottle, let's just say I've got that down pat...

473.176473 milliliters...

2010-11-02T10:32:00.002-04:00

Born in the USA. Like the beer it will soon hold.

No Title Necessary...

2010-10-24T19:23:00.010-04:00

Bliss–en–scène...

2010-10-14T23:40:00.069-04:00

Don't worry, smile and dance
You just can't work life out
Don't let down moods entrance you
Take the wine and shout...
Pete Townshend
Empty Glass
Empty Glass

The venue for the 5th Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is a done deal. Email with full disclosure (see excerpt below, redacted to protect the guilty and modified slightly for higher entertainment value) has gone out to all the interested parties whose email addies are in my virtual possession.

If you didn't get an email and have the temerity to read this blog with great disinterest and a snide smirk on your chapped lips simply because there is nothing better to do in your pre-planned, ghost-scripted, over-before-it's-biologically-over life, well, get hold of someone who did get the email and show your ass up on the date of this ungodly (unGodly?) Feast of the Immaculate Flocculation, held annually in homage to the sacred yeast-beast, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (with a lesser tip-o'-the-Triregnum to sister Saccharomyces Uvarum), that rules the avenues of escape from this work-weary world.

Ah, the Bliss, that personally famous, uber-unique, beer-and-bike extravaganza where the best of two of the best demi-worlds come together with all the excitement, explosive transcendence, and general dissociative euphoria normally reserved for those moments when the corpuscles of Krause have entered the "phase of frenzy" (yeah, it's a sexual reference; look it up already). It's all about freeing yourself from the shackles of co-opting commerce and the increasingly surreal work-a-day world that steals the visceral and leaves in its place a claptrap chimera that withers under even the most fleeting of gazes. And really, who wants that?

Miss the Bliss and suddenly life seems a tad more tarnished than it did yesterday, a bit more boring, a trifle more tiresome, a dash more dreary. You've been warned...

Greetings, fellow Bootleggers,

You are receiving this email because either a) you have expressed exceptional taste by evincing an interest in attending the 5th Annual Bootlegger's Bliss, b) I like you and thought you might be interested in this vital metabolically-powered social event, or c) I simply screwed up and you're the random beneficiary, lucky you. Regardless, PLEASE READ WHAT FOLLOWS IN ITS ENTIRETY. Amid the clever gems of humor (key word) herein reside important flecks of information designed to help you make the most of your participation. Yes, it's a wee bit long, but I promise it won't make your brain hurt. Okay, here goes nothing...

As you know, this year's event takes place at (redacted) in (redacted). Here are the remaining details plus a few reminders so that everyone knows what to expect.

DATE: Satyrday, November 6th.

START TIME: 10:30 a.m. This relatively late start time is to accomodate those with children and the less responsbile sots who overdrank the night before.

VENUE: (Redacted) Please carpool if possible, cuz to 'pool is cool. For directions, plug the addy above into Google Maps, then use the attached map file of the (redacted) area once you arrive at the park proper to make your way to the specific site. Which brings us to...

SITE: (Redacted) This is a covered pavilion that accomodates up to 100 guests--plenty of room.

CONTACT NUMBER: (Redacted) That's me.

TRAIL DESCRIPTION: Length has not been determined yet, but I have my boy Baler on it even as you read this...good thing he works for cheap beer. At any rate, expect a ten- to twelve-mile loop with bailout options. A great mix of almost everything that makes mountain biking desirable: single- and double-track, climbs, descents, logs, roots, more logs, rocks, potential shallow stream crossings, the occasional wayward white cardboard box, broken bones. Single-speed friendly. Newbie friendly, because you can always walk your bike, yeah?

POST-RIDE ACTIVITES: Drinking homebrew, eating homemade food, socializing, engaging in a wheel-folding, bike-breaking ass-fault derby, and possibly trying your hand (the one not holding a beer) at some table-top trialsin' (or at least watching it all) Anything else is between you and the other consenting adult(s).

WHAT TO BRING:
1. Homebrew; a six-pack or equivalent (if you're the guest of a homebrewer, make sure your chaperone brings extra beer to compensate).

2. A homemade dish (food!) and the means to heat it if necessary – something warm and tasty and creative; enough to share (if you're a guest who is not bringing homebrew, here's your chance to shine). I'm pretty sure that electrical outlets will be available and operational--if you plan to use electricity, let me know and I will confirm for you.

3. A bike suitable for riding off-road that will deliver your ass safely to the post-ride potlatch picnic; preferably one you don't mind beating up a little in the post-feast derby...you know, something like a Jones Spaceframe. Single speeds and fixed gears rule, but unicycles absolutely fuckin' DOMINATE!

4. $(Redacted). This is a PER VEHICLE charge because it's late in the season.

5. A good attitude. Leave all your heavy angst behind, preferably at work. If it comes with you, lose it on the trail. Also, drink as much as you want, but please remember to stop early enough to sober up for the drive home or make appropriate arrangements up front to have someone sober do the driving at the end of the day. Killing someone you don't know and who you wouldn't normally (when sober) choose to kill, especially by running them down with several tons of steel, is a horrible thing. This is serious shit.

6. A criminal mentality. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this. If you don't understand what I mean here, be patient. It'll hit you like a thunderous peristaltic epiphany after a little post-Bliss reflection in the days that follow.

7. A camera to take pictures of me and all the mishaps and mysterious malfunctions.

8. Members of your direct family, including kids and pets. I'll try to keep the f-bombs to a minimum.

WHAT TO LEAVE AT HOME:
1. Commercially produced beer, however "micro" in origin. This is all about homebrew. I will personally urinate on the tires of anyone who dares bring commercial beer to the event. Repeatedly. And with pants in the fully dropped position. The Bliss is a DIY-themed potlatch; the Y in DIY stands for You, not Yuengling.

2. Commercially prepared food. The Bliss is a DIY-themed potlatch; the Y in DIY means You, not Yum! Brands, Inc.

RAIN DATE: Undetermined. If it rains in the days BEFORE the event, I'll make a decision and communicate it via email. If it rains the day OF the event, well, a little rain and we ride; a lot of rain and we eat, drink, and be merry, to include a deluge derby and thunder-tympani trials extravaganza.

DISCLAIMER 1: Mountain biking is inherently dangerous! Ride at your own risk. According to the Surgeon General, women should not drinkalcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. Also, consumption of alcoholic beverages your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause serious health problems, delusions of self-worth and self-image, pathetic pawing of others whom you feel attracted to but would otherwise leave unmolested when sober, Bukowski-like introspection, and& a host of other wonderfully lurid things that give small-minded people something to gossip about. Oh, and drinking and driving blows. Seriously.

DISCLAIMER 2: The Bliss is a DIY type of event. As such, it is subject to change based on a variety of conditions, including, but not limited to, foreseen and unforeseen circumstances, quixotic whims, quaint caprice, poor planning, the wrath of Lady Nature, explosive bouts of diarrhea, spontaneous and not so spontaneous priapism, hebephrenic episodes, the will of the (redacted) National Park Service or other intervening "authority," and the ever unfathomable mood of some ill-defined higher power who never seems to rise much above the collective disposition and personality traits of his/her/its followers and who may or may not decide to mess with us on the day in question, to name but a few. Thus, we may have to improvise. I like it that way.

That's it! Oh, except to remind you that the Bliss is a semi-underground event that should not be discussed with the kinds of people who might not be so happy with the whole concept. While in the past I have deliberately included an element of appropriation (because I'm cheap and because, frankly, stolen pie tastes better), this year I went and screwed up and made it all legit with the Park Authority. That's right, I sold out. The possibility that each of us might be hit with a (redacted) open container fine if discovered was the deciding factor; if it happened, it would dampen the spirit of the event. So, this year, we are legit. This was a tough decision on my part, believe me. That said, being legit does not mean bring on the fascists, so I'd still like to keep this on the down low all the same. Capiche?

Stay tuned to www.wrenchinthegears.blogspot.com for further details and updates, and because I need an audience of my peers to bolster my fading self-esteem.

Looking forward to seeing you there, drinking your beer, eating your food, and taco-ing your wheel.

A Vayable Alternative and Some Beta on the Bliss...

2010-10-03T19:36:00.013-04:00

So, life is good. My Salsa Vaya frameset is lolling languidly in the mitts of Morpheus, in a brown box in the belly of the best bike shop in the Washington Metropolitan Area, bar none, and dreaming of the day I give it legs and let it loose to roam. Soon, my darling...

In Boulder now, at Mountain Sun, enjoying one of their latest offerings, an imperial IPA called Hop Vivant. Tasty, hoppy, alcoholic, and the winner of the 2009 Alpha King Challenge (Pizza Port, a Cali brewery that can do absolutely no wrong when it comes to brewing IPAs, won the Challenge this year), it's held aloft before my beer-bleary eyes and prevented from puddling by a tiny 8-oz goblet that bangs the bill at $4.20 ("no happy hour"). Next up is Temperance (10-oz, goblet, $4.20), a Belgian-American IPA on the order of, I'm guessing (confirmed!), Flying Dog's surprisingly successful Raging Bitch. Boulder is a beer burg, and this fact, along with its proximity to a plethora of pulchritudinous peaks and its passion for pedal-powered transportation, makes it a very alluring destination when one finds oneself with too much time on the hands and just enough jack to pull it off. Highly recommended, if you can tolerate the hipsters and, worse, faux-hipsters (the chief distinguishing factor between the two being the latter's preference for freewheels and expensive—and hence inauthentic—urban clothing. Yeesh.). I've been sampling (sampling?...euphemism alert!) micros and plotting the peaks I plan to tackle in the coming week, weather permitting.

In the meantime, my Hop Cone-fusion Double IPA is in the primary, perking away and dreaming of the upcoming 5th Annual Bootlegger's Bliss. This beer-to-be derives its name from the fact that the hop additions I made to the wort were a random blend of Warrior, Amarillo, and Galena; the pellets pinched from their packets with neither thought nor concern about precise proportions beyond favoring the Warrior for the bittering stage. This mystery mixture, born of haste and helped along by the six beers I drank during a brewing process that concluded well after 1:00 a.m., Friday morning, was the inspiration for the "cone-fusion" part of the title. There, epic mystery solved.

Bliss-goers of the past should expect an email with details early next week. Until then.

Killa 'Zilla, The Bicycle Escape Comes Through, and Worse Than Detroit...

2010-09-27T17:07:00.027-04:00

Damn, well, Terrapin done went and got it right, again (though sometimes they do fall flat on their faces). Hopzilla, their latest bomber offering (a monstrously hopped double IPA), is described, in part, as "Side Project Volume 12," which is simply some nameless marketing nerd's way of suggesting there's a secretive element associated with the production of this ale and that you, Sir or Madam Consumer/Connoisseur, have profited from this black op endeavor because, against all odds and gods, YOU, in all your divine wisdom and appropriated good fortune, managed to stumble upon this fine ale and muster the good taste (BA overall rating of A-) and wallet mass (variously, $8-10) necessary to make a decision that not only displays your purchasing power to anyone within eyeshot, but bespeaks of your fine taste in all things bitter (110 IBUs) and alcoholic (10.8 % abv).

Okay, this thing is good. Very tasty, somewhat sweet as you near the checkered flag, with some strong citrus influence that hits the coke-holes as soon as you uncap it. Absent to my delight (and against my early expectations) is the all too typical harsh-ass, uber-bitter-for-the-sake-of-bitterness punch to the palate that comes with some heavy hop hitters produced by breweries that brew before they brainstorm. The result here is a highly hopped, highly hootched, highly drinkable (yeah, I know, just exactly WTF does that last term mean outside of enjoyable?) IPA that will likely get you there well before you're ready to brush your beavers for the night. Nothing wrong with that, right? So, swap a sawbuck for a bottle, cancel the church social, and treat your TAS2Rs ('cause it's all about the G-protein-coupled receptors) to a bitter beer bomb they won't soon forget. (But help me out here...I get the Godzilla-esque image on the left of the label, but what's with the army dude on the right waving a bottle of Hopzilla—complete with its own mise en abyme* label—as he successfully lines up the titular monster at point-blank range for some soon-to-be-released heavy artillery hell-shower from a Howitzer cannon? If you dig the brew, please don't slay the inspiration!)

Okay, on to more important matters. Chatted with Tom from Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team sponsor The Bicycle Escape earlier today and it seems that a Salsa Vaya frame in size 56 destined for yours truly is on the way to the shop even as I type this. Yee-ha! This will be the first physical step in a multi-stage process of abandoning the current weary work-a-day paradigm and embarking on something a little bit offbeat. Posts to follow. For now, a heartfelt thanks to Tom for helping me get things underway!

Finally, as Detroit goes, so goes the country (eventually)?...reclamation!

*The Droste effect, if you're Dutch.

Attenuating Circumstances...

2010-09-22T12:08:00.011-04:00

A minority of the handful of readers who occasionally visit this blog have begun to ask about this year's Bootlegger's Bliss.

I don't have a lot of details to share at this point, except that the Bliss will indeed take place and that I hope to make this year's event the best ever. Plans are underway and the date is tentatively set for Satyrday, November 6th.

Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more details...oh, and brew some beer, yeah?

In the meantime, a little background reading for the uninitiated and for those regular readers whose thirst for pretentious prose can never be sufficiently slaked:

— The Cycling Zymurgist Maniblissto —

The history of all hitherto existing cycling events is the history of competitive struggles. Not so with the Bliss.

The Bootlegger's Bliss is a social event, designed to bring together people who share (or are simply curious about) two seemingly disparate passions: homebrewing and mountain biking.

The Bliss is not a race. It does not suffer elitist competition. There are no medals, no podiums, no bragging rights, no prizes. No one's "in it to win it," as the dreadful cliché goes. No one trains for the Bliss. There are no "winners." Or—more precisely—everyone is a winner.

The Bliss is not a drinking contest. It does not suffer wanton drunkenness. It is a tasting, and if you don't know the difference between a tasting and a drinking contest, the Bliss is not for you.

The Bliss is about fun for fun's sake. It is the arrowhead forged in the smithy of the soul, honed in secret, dipped in curare, then trained on the heart of the ogre Boordumb. The lifeblood of the Bliss is participation. There are no spectators; everyone is equally a "criminal" and delights in it. Everyone rides, everyone tastes. Participants are encouraged to front their very best brew, in keeping with the concept of the potlatch, whereby prestige is gained not by amassing coveted property like some plutocratic piggy, but by giving it away.

Leave your money at home. The Bliss is not about commerce—quite the opposite, actually. Aside from the homebrew and homecooking you're asked to bring and share, the Bliss is a free event, generously and officially sponsored by Absolutely No One®. That's the point. From a philosophical perspective, the Bliss was conceived as a small step outside of commerce—a tick in the matted hide of mass-production—and as an appreciation of highly personal, highly potable craftwork against the backdrop of some sweet singletrack. It's a celebration of use value, that immeasurable quality that fills the soul with a sort of natural, ineffable satisfaction too seldom felt in the cold void, the funereal absence, the blanched banality that clings to exchange value like stench to carrion.

Astoria or Bust...

2010-08-30T15:00:00.024-04:00

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
—Marcel Proust

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”
—Ernest Hemingway

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
—Henry Miller

Okay, so the idea is this (and I'm only sharing now because I need you to keep me honest and resolute; I need your complicity—don't fail me, yeah?), though I haven't worked out all the details yet: life is tasting a bit stale of late (Old Rasputin notwithstanding), one comparatively minor symptom of which is the dearth of blog posts recently. I feel an almost overwhelming need to really shake shit up a bit, know what I mean? I got the wanderlust, and I got it bad; it's in my blood and bones and brains, and it would surely show up on a piss test if I were to submit.

So, next spring, I plan to ride across this beautiful country, right to left, self-supported, and most likely solo. And most likely on this, though I have scarcely a component in hand at the time of this post.

While the idea is only beginning to bud, my trip will start on the east coast in alliterative Bethany Beach, Delaware, and link up with the legendary Trans-America (TA) Trail to trundle through the midriff of the motherland, coming to a halt in Astoria, Oregon. Coast-to-coast. C2C. Sea-to-sea. Mari usque ad mare.

(An aside: Had I the ballsiness and brainlessness and sufficiently robust bilateral Vastus lateralis to pull it off, I'd do it fixed and call it the "Coast-to-Coast No-coast" ride. But a decent name does not a success guarantee, and I am, in the end, very much a realist, despite the dreamer tendencies. Yeah, I'm going back to gears, but only for this one.)

I'll be dropping more details here as they develop, but right now I'll leave you with a bit of what else I have in mind. I plan to take along my laptop and publish updates to this blog in situ, to be assembled and codified along with additional material (which I'm gathering even as I write this) upon my return into an as yet untitled book, à la Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (though that book serves merely as inspiration—what I have in mind will not be derivative). Think of it as a necessarily modified dérive on two-wheels, with all the attendant pomp and pretense and poetry and (possibly prosaic) prose. An ambitious undertaking, I admit, but one that is both immensely appealing and highly therapeutic to me at a time when appeal and therapy are, well, appealing.

That's it for now. I've dealt myself the dream cards and tipped my hand. Stay tuned.

Dino J du Jour...

2010-08-28T21:50:00.004-04:00

Yeah...

Read Me...

2010-08-24T00:22:00.015-04:00

It barks at no-one else but me,
like it's seen a ghost.
I guess it's seen the sparks a-flowin',
no-one else would know.

Hey man, slow down, slow down.
Idiot, slow down, slow down.

Sometimes I get overcharged.
That's when you see sparks.
They ask me where the hell I'm going,
at a 1000 feet per second.

Hey man, slow down, slow down.
Idiot, slow down, slow down.

Hey man, slow down, slow down.
Idiot, slow down, slow down.
—Radiohead, The Tourist

What follows is a piece by the indomitable Ivan Illich on the subject of motorized transportation (excerpted from Toward a History of Needs, first published in 1978).

Gone too soon, this man who understood and cared enough to share.

Read on...you are not alone.

THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF TRAFFIC

People move well on their feet. This primitive means of getting around will, on closer analysis, appear quite effective when compared with the lot of people in modern cities or on industrialized farms. It will appear particularly attractive once it has been understood that modern Americans walk, on the average, as many miles as their ancestors—most of them through tunnels, corridors, parking lots, and stores.

People on their feet are more or less equal. People solely dependent on their feet move on the spur of the moment, at three to four miles per hour, in any direction and to any place from which they are not legally or physically barred. An improvement on this native degree of mobility by new transport technology should be expected to safeguard these values and to add some new ones, such as greater range, time economies, comfort, or more opportunities for the disabled. So far this is not what has happened. Instead, the growth of the transportation industry has everywhere had the reverse effect. From the moment its machines could put more than a certain horsepower behind any one passenger, this industry has reduced equality, restricted mobility to a system of industrially defined routes, and created time scarcity of unprecedented severity. As the speed of their vehicles crosses a threshold, citizens become transportation consumers...

More energy fed into the transportation system means that more people move faster over a greater range in the course of every day. Everybody's daily radius expands at the expense of being able to drop in on an acquaintance or walk through the park on the way to work. Extremes of privilege are created at the cost of universal enslavement. The few mount their magic carpets to travel between distant points that their ephemeral presence renders both scarce and seductive, while the many are compelled to trip farther and faster and to spend more time preparing for and recovering from their trips.

The captive tripper and the reckless traveler become equally dependent on transport. Neither can do without it. Occasional spurts to Acapulco or to a party congress dupe the ordinary passenger into believing that he has made it into the shrunk world of the powerfully rushed. The occasional chance to spend a few hours strapped into a high-powered seat makes him an accomplice in the distortion of human space, and prompts him to consent to the design of his country's geography around vehicles rather than around people.

The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 percent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 percent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of lifetime for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.

SPEED-STUNNED IMAGINATION

Past a certain threshold of energy consumption, the transportation industry dictates the configuration of social space. Motorways expand, driving wedges between neighbors and removing fields beyond the distance a farmer can walk. Ambulances take clinics beyond the few miles a sick child can be carried. The doctor will no longer come to the house, because vehicles have made the hospital into the right place to be sick. Once heavy trucks reach a village high in the Andes, part of the local market disappears. Later, when the high school arrives at the plaza along with the paved highway, more and more of the young people move to the city, until not one family is left which does not long for a reunion with someone hundreds of miles away, down on the coast.

The product of the transportation industry is the habitual passenger. He has been boosted out of the world in which people still move on their own, and he has lost the sense that he stands at the center of his world. The habitual passenger is conscious of the exasperating time scarcity that results from daily recourse to the cars, trains, buses, subways, and elevators that force him to cover an average of twenty miles each day, frequently criss-crossing his path within a radius of less than five miles. He has been lifted off his feet. No matter if he goes by subway or jet plane, he feels slower and poorer than someone else and resents the shortcuts taken by the privileged few who can escape the frustrations of traffic. If he is cramped by the timetable of his commuter train, he dreams of a car. If he drives, exhausted by the rush hour, he envies the speed capitalist who drives against the traffic. The habitual passenger is caught at the wrong end of growing inequality, time scarcity, and personal impotence, but he can see no way out of this bind except to demand more of the same: more traffic by transport. He stands in wait for technical changes in the design of vehicles, roads, and schedules; or else he expects a revolution to produce mass rapid transport under public control. In neither case does he calculate the price of being hauled into a better future. He forgets that he is the one who will pay the bill, either in fares or in taxes. He overlooks the hidden costs of replacing private cars with equally rapid public transport.

The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role. To "gather" for him means to be brought together by vehicles. He takes freedom of movement to be the same as one's claim on propulsion. He has lost faith in the political power of the feet and of the tongue. As a result, what he wants is not more liberty as a citizen but better service as a client. He does not insist on his freedom to move and to speak to people but on his claim to be shipped and to be informed by media. He wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it. It is vital that he come to see that the acceleration he demands is self-defeating, and that it must result in a further decline of equity, leisure, and autonomy.

DEGREES OF SELF-POWERED MOBILITY

A century ago, the ball-bearing was invented. It reduced the coefficient of friction by a factor of a thousand. By applying a well-calibrated ball-bearing between two Neolithic millstones, a man could now grind in a day what took his ancestors a week. The ball-bearing also made possible the bicycle, allowing the wheel -- probably the last of the great Neolithic inventions -- finally to become useful for self-powered mobility.

Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.

The ball-bearing signaled a true crisis, a true political choice. It created an option between more freedom in equity and more speed. The bearing is an equally fundamental ingredient of two new types of locomotion, respectively symbolized by the bicycle and the car. The bicycle lifted man's auto-mobility into a new order, beyond which progress is theoretically not possible. In contrast, the accelerating individual capsule enabled societies to engage in a ritual of progressively paralyzing speed.

Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.

The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred.

Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim.

Forget Cartridge Bearings...

2010-07-29T23:07:00.001-04:00

...clearly, bushings rule:

Full monty available here. Find the time; it's worth it.

Tip o' the hat to Butch for turning me on to this vid.

Bai-ku #1...

2010-07-13T09:01:00.002-04:00

In an effort to write something on a daily basis, and so get back into the swing of pounding out posts, I give you the first of a series of meager offerings composed on the bike during my daily commute. Not much, but hey, it's free, yeah?

between Jersey walls
spoke card echoes as it spins
chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk

Beer Buzz...

2010-07-01T10:36:00.010-04:00

My boy DmofoT (Happy Birthday, man!) and his buddy Mike on brewing your own. Hoplo Escobar...damn, that's a fine name!

Interview from David Todd on Vimeo.

Still Digesting Some Thoughts...

2010-06-28T11:45:00.002-04:00

In the meantime, to those of you bold individuals who came out for the various rides to the 3rd Annual Northern Virginia Brewfest in Leesburg, Virginia, on Saturday, I say, "Salud!" It was a great time.

To those who missed it, well, your loss. Better luck next year.

Write-up in the works.

(Pic courtesy of Mic.)

Leesburg Loop of Lusty Libations...

2010-06-25T09:40:00.020-04:00

Okay, in an effort to fulfill my burgeoning backlog of Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team obligations, and because I like bikes and beer and boozers, I've got a little ride all set up this Saturday for anyone out there with similar interests who doesn't mind acting on short notice.

First, allow me to bore you with a little background.

About this time last year, I did a solo ride along the C&O Canal towpath, with the idea of doing the White's Ferry Loop in reverse. From Arlington, I rode into Georgetown to pick up the towpath, then headed west. Once at White's Ferry (near mile marker 35), I crossed the Potomac to the Virginia side to make my way into Leesburg. Afer disembarking, I wended my way up the duodenum-shaped access road to get on Route 655 (White's Ferry Road).

About a mile away, at the first intersection, I noticed something a bit out of the ordinary. Southbound traffic on Route 15 was backed up for miles and moving oh so slowly. When the light changed, I took advantage of the gridlock to weave between idling behemoths and find my spot on the road’s margin.

Rolling down 15, I saw up ahead that a couple of constables had pulled their cruisers over onto the shoulder and fired up the cherries. My first thought was that an accident had occurred, but as I approached, I realized that was not the case. Cars were turning off the highway and onto a gravel road on my right that led off into a massive field. Looking in that direction, I saw in the distance the tell-tale pavilions and throngs of people and parked cars that signaled a major outdoorsy event. So I slowed and asked Eddie and Lou if a wine festival was underway. One of the two clones shook his head and simply said, "Beerfest."

Needless to say, that was all I had to hear.

I paid my way in and lost a few hours at the 2nd (2nd?) Annual Northern Virginia Brewfest sampling microbrews and downing dogs. Unlike most events like this, it seemed there were enough vendors that the lines were only two or three drunkards deep at any one time. At any rate, lots of great breweries represented that day, and I expect this year's event to be no different.

Okay, on with the ride description:

The first half of this loop will take us all along the scenic C&O Canal Trail from Georgetown to White’s Ferry. We’ll hop aboard the ferry ($1 per person) and float our way across the pristine waters of the Potomac, then pedal a mile to Route 15 in Leesburg. From there, we'll take the shoulder a quarter mile south to attend the 3rd Annual Northern Virginia Brewfest, held on the grounds of Morven Park. After supping sudsy samples and gorging ourselves with grub, we’ll jump back on the bikes for the second half of the loop. From Leesburg, we’ll take the W&OD Trail into Northern Arlington, then switch to the Custis Trail for the final leg into Georgetown.

Some important information:

This loop is approximately 80-miles long. Adding in a couple hours at the brewfest means that this is, essentially, an all-day ride, even though we will be back before sunset.
The pace will be moderate, with short breaks each way as necessary. Though not a fast-paced ride, this one isn’t for people with questionable endurance. That said, no one will be left behind.
The terrain varies from crushed limestone hardpack (C&O Canal Trail) to smooth asphalt (W&OD and Custis Trails). A ‘cross bike or similar with size 32 tires or wider is recommended.
Parking is available in the public (free) parking lot at Teddy Roosevelt Island, just off the George Washington Memorial Parkway. If you are traveling NORTH on the GW Parkway, the lot is just past the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge on your left. If you are traveling SOUTH on the GW parkway, take the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge to Constitution Ave, then take a right on 23rd St. and cross Memorial Bridge. Once on the bridge, bear right to return to the parkway heading north. The closest METRO STATION is Rosslyn, less than a mile away, so this is a good option.
There is a fee to attend the brewfest. The fee will be approximately $25. I suggest buying your ticket at the gate and not in advance, in case you can’t make the ride.
Obligatory disclaimer: Drinking and biking can be dangerous. Drink and bike responsibly! The brewfest is a sampling event, not an all-day bender. Neither I nor The Bicycle Escape (nor any employees thereof) assumes liability for anyone participating in this ride and/or in the activities surrounding it. Participation in this ride and/or in the brewfest is entirely voluntary.
Time permitting, we may grab dinner in Georgetown; plenty of great options.
The rain date for this event will be the very next day, Sunday, June, 27. All other details remain the same.

Vaya con el Diablo...

2010-05-26T15:49:00.012-04:00

Pictured at left, my next bike, a Salsa Vaya (pic shamelessly pilfered from the Salsa blog), though my build will be a bit different.

Working with Tom at The Bicycle Escape to bring it all in, then building it up slowly on my own, so when it all falls to pieces under my ass in the thrombotic heart of some corn-fed midwestern burg, I'll have no one to blame but myself and baby Jesus (co-pilot).

Right.

Here's a potential list of parts—I invite comments/suggestions on the selection, so let me have it if you're feeling passionate and can put a string of words together in an intelligible sequence:

Frame: Salsa Vaya, 56 cm
Headset: Chris King, Black
Derailleur, front: Shimano XT, Top Pull, 3-Speed
Derailleur, rear: Shimano XT, Long Cage, Black
Shifters: Shimano Bar End
Crankset: Shimano XT, Black, 175mm
Chainring: 48/36/26T
Cassette: Shimano XT, 9-Speed, 11-34T
Chain: Shimano CN-HG93, 9-Speed
Pedals: Crank Bros. Eggbeater 3//
Hub, front: Shimano XT, 32H, 6-Bolt, Black
Hub, rear: Shimano XT, 32H, 6-Bolt, Black
Quick Release: Shimano XT, Black
Spokes: DT Swiss Comp 2.0/1.8 mm (double-butted), Silver, w/ Brass Nipples
Rims: WTB SpeedDisc XC 700c, 32H, Black
Handlebar: Salsa Woodchipper, 46 cm length
Stem: Thomson X2, 1-1/8 x +/-10° x 100 x 31.8, Black
Brakes, front and rear: Avid BB7 Mountain, 160 mm rotor, 6-bolt
Brake levers: Tektro RL-520, Black
Saddle: Selle Italia SLK Gel Flow
Seatpost: Thomson Elite Setback, 27.2 mm diam, 330 mm length, Black
Seatpost Clamp: Salsa Lip-Lock, Black
Tires: Schwalbe Marathon Supreme, 700x35

I went with a more rugged parts mix borrowed heavily from the Salsa Fargo specs, 'cuz rugged rules. That, and I want to avoid parts-compatibility issues, since I know basically nothing about geared bikes anymore.

More to follow on just what the hell I plan on doing with what must be my 7th or 8th bicycle.

Paradigm Shift...

2010-04-14T23:54:00.008-04:00

I get the words, and then I get to thinkin'
I don't wanna think, I wanna feel
How do I feel?
Well fuckin' how do I...?
—Pearl Jam, "Hail, Hail"

This is the darkening down of my mind
We could be making it, oiling like crime
We could be making it, staking last dimes
If you want to sieze the sound, you don't need a reservation
The torch is passed, it's yours to return
Lay at their feet now, use it to burn
For marketing the use of the word "generation"
A false alliance of money persuading
Forcing silence, sucking sound
Forced into this conversation
Now if you want to sieze the sound, you don't need a reservation
So open, so young, so target, I can smell your heart
You're a target, I can smell your heart
You're a target, you're a target, you're a target
—Fugazi, "Target"

We watched the tragedy unfold
We did as we were told
We bought and sold
It was the greatest show on earth
But now it's over
We oohed and aahed
We drove our racing cars
We ate our last few jars of caviar
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed lookout
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah
And when they found our shadows
Grouped 'round the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data in their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left:
This species has amused itself to death
—Roger Waters, "Amused to Death"

You go on and on and on and on and just keep doing what you've been doing, in some form or another, for years and years and years, playing out the scenario, that tired old meme (now there's a four-letter word for you), the legacy of your father and his father and his father, playing it out over and over again like some degenerate slot junkie, hoping the luck holds, programmed and praying for it, staying with it as if you didn't have a choice, waiting for the payout, the bells and whistles and flashing lights (oh my!), conditioned until it almost feels natural, not daring to question it, even feeling up to speaking positively of it, to justifying it 'cause you're too juiced into it all to step back and take a fresh look, because you've poured everything you have into it as if the weight of your undying, unflinching, unquestioning support, your belief, the sum of your sweat and hope and fear and sacrifice, might just be enough to tip the scales toward legitimacy, toward validation, toward redemption. Everything you ever availed yourself of to "get ahead" makes damn sure you stick with the system and follow its rules until the denouement—good or bad or just plain average—unfolds.

But time ain't on your side; it has its own system.

The years and years and years slip silently into decades, huge hunks of time spent—no, wasted—just spinning wheels, coasting onward, or reaching proudly and confidently for the brass ring, moving right along according to schedule, into some vague future that may or may not unfold as you expect it, unwilling to put everything on black, to roll the dice, to spin the wheel, to let McFate have his way, win or lose or break-the-fuck even, as they say at my church.

And then one day, if you're lucky, you wake up in that same old bed but with a new head, a new mind, a new perspective that rejects all the horseshit you've been letting in, the slick, sticky stuff that oozes in through your ears and eyes and makes you soft where the matter is grey, makes you buy into it all, accept it, become it, promote it, fight for it, "live" and die for it. Something clicks some sunny day when you're pedaling home, maybe, and suddenly you begin to reject it all for what it is and isn't. You decide to lift the curtain and have an ugly look at a beautiful world that is quickly disappearing, that's being covered up with the artificial and the superficial and the virtual, that's being supplanted with plastic, every goddamn day, to understand that this, this artifice, isn't the real world, but only a construct, a house of cards, a fiction, but with very real consequences, held up by belief, by faith, by self-interest and a handful of bad lures. While everyone stands by and salutes like good little citizens, hands on sclerotic hearts...

What is gained? What is lost?

A different route. Yeah. Time to make or break, baby.

Fool in the Rain...

2010-04-08T23:15:00.009-04:00

The best thing about riding in a thunderstorm is, you get used to the deluge really quickly, since it's only a matter of minutes before you're as soaked and soggy as a swamp rat. No false hope that you might escape it, that if you only pedal harder and faster, you might outrun it. Tlaloc is pissed and he's decided to extend the metaphor. It's on and it's heavy and it's laden with mean intent and it's looking to displace some aggression. And it's instantaneous. No pussy(foot)ing around. Between streetlights (one red and the next green), the sky flips from Jekyll to Hyde and the clouds empty their contents down upon your pitiful pelt like so many incontinent bladders. Soon runnels loaded with street grit escape the orbit of the front wheel to splash against your shoes with viscious precision even as the rear wheel's cockscomb paints a skunk stripe down the crack of your ass. Drenched is drenched, baby, there are no degrees. It's like being a little bit pregnant...no such thing. You're wet and you're damn well going to stay wet for the remainder of your ride and for a good bit of time after you get home and there's nothing you can do about it except embrace it and maybe even celebrate it because, hateful as it may be, being wet and cold and damn near invisible to cars on the road is still preferable to a cold, dank hole in the ground for eternity and a day.

The worst thing about riding in a thunderstorm is, it's over so quickly that there was never any need to get used to the drenching. About the time you come to accept your woeful lot, to embrace it (because you're the grateful type with a true appreciation for the concept of relativity), it's over. Nothing left but little streams racing down your cheeks from your wet 'n wild 'do and a load of ballast rolling around pell-mell in some heretofore unperceived pocket between the sole of each foot and its shoe as you pedal on.

Yeah, got caught out in it this evening. Hit up Bread and Brew in NW DC with a friend after work for a plate and a pint and ended up hopping on the saddle just as the storm started up. A real masher, this one, with heavy winds and rain that felt more like bell sinkers than water droplets. It's moments like these that make you appreciate the nice days and a waterproof pack.

I'm back on the blog, at least for now. Been in a funk for a while, but I think it's turning back around now. I'm in the initial planning stages of doing something epic on the bike early next year. Details to follow as they unfold. Should be a good summer and fall. Stay posted.

Beer Necessities...

2009-11-12T14:56:00.002-05:00

Email invitation is out and in your inbox, if you made the list. If you didn't and should have, you know how to reach me.

The 4th Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is on!

Get Your Freak On...

2009-10-09T09:32:00.013-04:00

UPDATE: Rained out and rescheduled! Details here. (Thanks to riderx for the scoop.)
Rob of Leesburg Baker's Dozen and Plum Grove Cylery fame has delivered a new brainchild, the t-shirt (and possibly patch) design for which appears above, courtesy of yours truly (proof pic appears below). If you're looking for something different, check out Speed Freaks, a two-day stage race that promises an excellent blend of everything you can imagine, including time trial, short track, and marathon/enduro stages over mixed terrain. Register before October 14th and save $15 off the price of admission. Plus, I have it on good authority that this guy will show up, camera in hand, to immortalize lucky participants in a panoptic pool of permanent pixels. Be there!

Back to the artwork. I rushed this piece—mea culpa—and it shows, but I still think it's a good product. Had a little trouble with Illustrator though, no surprise there. Seems it doesn't like tracing colored jpegs, and it registers its distaste by applying random distortion (note the wavering lines of the downtube in the image) to the drawing. Then again, I'm sure my utter lack of skills with that most versatile of software programs is most likely to blame. I like to think that I'm just retro, that pen and ink, like steel, are real. But really, I need to make the time to learn more. Especially given that Rob has asked me to do the artwork for future races, now that he's started up a little business called "Go Time Racing."

All right, back to the grind. Single Speed World Championship '09 report on the horizon. Thanks for sticking with me (odd...disappear for a while and you pick up 7 new followers...what's the message there?). Until then.

What Italy Wants...

2009-09-20T12:44:00.007-04:00

...Italy don't necessarily get.

The 2010 Single Speed World Championship will be held in New Zealand, due in large part to the inability of Italy to rally to beat NZ in the post-race basketball game held on the grounds of the Ska Brewing Company in Durango. This despite the best efforts of our own Jon Baler to tip the scales. In a bold move laced with controversy, a slightly intoxicated Baler (center of pic, in socks) stepped in midway through the game to substitute for a player on the Green, White, and Red team . Details and a race report to follow.

Into Thin Air...

2009-09-12T17:47:00.022-04:00

If you want to destroy my sweater
Pull this thread as I walk away
—Weezer, "Sweater Song" *

Downtown Denver is dreary and oddly desolate today. Sixty-something degrees, with a slight breeze that recalls November in DC. Rain threatens, clouds loiter. And when it comes, a pathetic drizzle, people sprout from the pavement like mushrooms. Odd.

I wake early in the rented room 10 stories above Champa Street with a slight headache and a timid malaise that isn't sure if it wants to rule the day or not. Getting out of bed is a coup. Below, outside, cyclists glide by silently in their own little hard-earned lane, safe and secure while the white lines last. Along neighboring 16th Street, horse-drawn carriages compete with human-powered pedicabs. LoDo and the ripples around it belong to cyclists, no doubt there. I feel at home.

Last night was a modest tour of the town, tour-de-force style, on foot. Great Divide is a small and unassuming red-brick building, industrial, with a functional bar area that believes in drink but not food, with plenty of locals lounging inside and out. No Hercules, no Hades, no DPA; all of it kicked. Not much left from which to choose. Two new 100-barrel fermenters couldn't forestall the unexpected shortage. Success has its downside...you would do well to remember that. Settled on the Tripel, which left me wanting (alas, Russian River and Allagash are pretty much the only two American breweries that can consistently make an enjoyable Belgian, as far as I'm concerned)—I knew better, but a man has to drink, doesn't he? Marco's Coal-fired Pizzeria has very good pizza and a disappointing beer selection, but the sultry charm and built-for-speed chassis of our waitress made up the difference. Monica. Who would have guessed? Hades, like the Tripel, needs some work, but it went down, all the same, and no better offerings meant a lower bill in the end. See the good in the bad, right?

Today, we hit Wynkoop Brewing Company on 18th Street, where a very dry but nonetheless interesting oak-aged barleywine started me off. That drained, I moved on to a Silverback Porter, whose disappointing sour taste (where's the coffee nuance?) put an early lid on things. Followed that joint up with a trip to the Falling Rock Tap House on Blake Street—"No Crap on Tap" and they mean it. Reminiscent of Charm City's Max's on Broadway. Pliney the Elder, Damnation, Modus Hoperandi (what a name!), Hopsickle, name your passion, it's all there. Willie G's Oyster Bar is calling to me now, and I won't keep it waiting much longer. Breckenridge Brewing Company figures into tonight's plan, and that should wrap it all up nicely.

SSWC09 is a week away, and I'm about as prepared for it as I am for La Ruta de los Conquistadores. Want proof? Okay, this should do: the Monkey is still in fixed mode—been that way for more than three months—and unless I can find a well-stocked bike shop between now and next Saturday, I'll be riding the course with an even greater disadvantage than my meager talent normally fronts. But apathy settled in weeks ago, and I don't know how to kick it. Whatever; I'll handle it as it comes, when it comes.

What else, what else? Oh, I'm the artist for a new stage race from the guy who brought you the Leesburg Baker's Dozen and Snotcycle races. Okay, I'm supposed to be the artist. Trying to finish up my design this weekend. Rob, have patience; I won't let you down.

Lastly, those looking for a conclusion to my report on Big Bear, well, keep hope alive. I mean, why not? It's free.

*One of the songs playing in Marco's Pizzeria. Great Divide featured a Pavement track, "Shady Lane." Ah, nostalgia.

Pedal Every Inch: The 24-Hours of Big Bear, 2009 (Act 1 of 3)...

2009-06-24T21:24:00.077-04:00

Don't push, it'll come.
Everything is gonna be alright, be alright.
Steady now, don't fall apart.
Keep yourself upright.
—Jawbreaker, "Rich," from the B-sides compilation CD, Etc.

There's a moment, lying on my side in the tent just after lap one, when it all comes home to roost. Stretched out, just trying to relax a bit (no hope of falling into the arms of Morpheus), I move my legs up habitually toward my midsection, assuming the classic fetal position.

That's when the cramps set in.

Without warning, the searing pain pierces my adductors like molten talons. And with the pain comes the equally searing truth, burning bright like Blake's tiger. I think—as I pound with both fists at the opposing contractions—without the least tinge of humor, the agony forcing a sort of instant honesty that no amount of alcohol could forestall, an epiphany: Fuck, I'm too old for this shit! It's over, can't even fake it anymore...

The body, you see, never, ever lies.

And this realization, this simple truth, brings on a despair that is alien and wholly unwelcome, not just under the current circumstances. Last year, this shit—this bodily betrayal—didn't happen until after lap 2. And now here it is, early, an ugly, unwelcome bellwether.

Amidst the pummeling, the pain succumbs, recedes. I search frantically around the tent for the bottle of Endurolytes, find it, pop the cap, and gobble a handful of the little white pills like a speed freak in need of a fast fix. I chase them with a couple mouthfuls of water and check the time: "The Kid" will be pulling in within 30 minutes.

Jesus, time undergoes all kinds of distortion during a 24-hour race. Fuck you, you smug physicists, with your glib, facile explanations of how moments pass, running your fingers absently through your graying beards as you speak with the utmost confidence about how seconds become minutes become hours become days become etc., ad infinitum, all of it along an immutable continuum, a nice, tidy, simple, linear progression, following an utterly unsympathetic and wholly indifferent plan set down from some nebulous beginning. That's fine for your models, for your in-class lectures, for simplicity's sake. But outside, amid reality, in the field, I call bullshit. I know. I have experiential data. Are you fucking kidding me?

Out on the lap—in situ, if you will—time is immeasurable. Yes, there's a dubious sense of how you're doing, at least during your later laps, when you have a sample or two under your belt. But you've got it all wrong, you silly tool, and it doesn't matter whether you think you're moving faster or slower. And it's not all simply a matter of subjectivity or even relativity (yeah, Einstein rode a bike...so what?...he never raced...and he looked pretty goofy doing it), whatever those are. Don't be so dismissive. It's malleable, this thing we call Time. It lives. It bends and flexes and stretches and contracts and twists and accelerates and slows and inverts and folds and squirms and button-hooks and corrects to the cues from an ever-changing alien script. Take your eye off the second hand—even for an instant—and Time misbehaves. It's easily as fucked up as sister Fate. And like Fate, it'll eventually do us all in. The two conspire.

The only constant here is that I'm getting slower. And older.

My first lap seems (note this word) to fly by. I'm riding in the 4th slot, by choice, by design. Though I falter very early on, at a steep rock slab greased with mud the consistency and color of baby shit, and get pissed at myself for a stupid error, I begin to settle in as the lap begins to play out.

The fixed gear offers a clear traction advantage, instantly feeding unmediated data up my spine and into my mind, letting me correct on the fly. DT's sage advice about riding fixed off-road and avoiding pedal strikes drifts back unbidden to instruct me time and again, as it did last year: Sometimes it's better just to ride over it, instead of around it. This simple but counterintuitive strategy aids me time and again as I approach tight sections where pedal strikes mean a yard sale.

I swap places with other riders again and again, passing gearies on the climbs, only to cede precious ground back to them on the downhills. The 32:18 I'm running on the Monkey is spinny when the trail points south, and I can only pedal so fast over the rocky, muddy terrain with my ass mostly planted in the saddle. It's all a bit frustrating, but on balance, I come out ahead of what I assume are ordinarily better riders, owing to the mostly upward direction of the first half of the course and the sick traction I'm getting from my tires [a Kenda (team sponsor) Nevegal at the stern, a Panaracer Rampage at the stem], both recklessly under-inflated.

As I said, the first lap seems to pass quickly. Before I know it, I'm into the pine grove around mile 6, arguably the most pleasing—esthetically and physically—part of the course. Here, beautiful conifers laid out in a majestic grid pattern crowd out the sunlight as they rub shoulders and try to outreach one another. Years of accumulated needles have left the trail below them like a sponge, and the softness and concomitant damping quality provide great relief to my nether parts. I take comfort in the knowledge that I'm now about halfway through the lap.

Then it's on to the rocky downhill, the "forearm fryer," as I like to call it, the only real question mark on the whole course. Oddly, it seems neither as long nor as brutal as it did last year, but then again, who the fuck knows? I'm all hopped up on adrenaline and not a reliable witness. At the bottom, after an interminable session of skip-jacking (if you ride fixed off-road, you'll understand the neologism) my way down, it all spills into a stream bed that is equally rocky, though much less steep. I realize immediately that I managed to make it down the hell-hill without using my front brake. Bizarre.

I move on, no mishaps, and find my way eventually to the endless climb that starts somewhere (a guess) around mile 10. I ride most of it, sparing myself, however, the humiliation and pain that would come with taking on most of the ridiculous rock gardens (forests?) that add muddy ichor to injury, and, lo and behold, it seems to go by supernaturally fast. Before I know it, I'm past it and slaloming through the rooty, rocky final stretch to the narrow bridge that signals the end of the lap. I rocket up the bridge ramp with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, sucking in cubic yards of air at the start to let out a long "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...:" that ends with a predictable "...HAW!"—a clarion call to Baler that I'm coming in—at the crest where the bridge proper begins, carrying me over the dirt road below where the first-lappers began their LeMans style start hours earlier. I skid my way down the ramp on the other side, then it's into the left-spiraling turn that brings me into the start/finish booth. I dig around for the baton, hand it over, slap down my badge on the sensor, and feel a huge wave of relief rush over me. I pull a 1:44. Baler heads off for his second lap, his expression and demeanor betray nothing.

I'm done for now. Lap 1 is in the hopper. And this old man needs a beer. Cue the curtain on Act 1.

Pedal Every Inch: The 24 Hours of Big Bear, 2009 (Part 1)...

2009-06-18T21:01:00.054-04:00

Introducing THE PRINCIPALS, listed in order of their appearance in the race...

BALER: First 24-hour race. A SSOFTie. Tall and uncharacteristically lean. Not quite a Clydesdale. Blonde (a true hun). Clean shaven. Hands like a goddamn grizzly's, sans the fur. Stoic. A closed book. Forgiving. Unlike most people his size, doesn't tire easily on the long haul. Strong. Competitive. Consistent. Something of the college kid lingers about him, a nebulous boyish quality that makes one lowball his age. Wears bike-theme t-shirts when not on the bike. Unassuming. Strong bike ethic. At some fateful point in his life, a bike grew out of his ass all at once and never fell off. It's how he gets around. Period. Generally has decent taste in beer, but the puerile lure of fraternity days gone-by still calls to him, like a siren song, leading him back to founder on the cheap stuff. A shame. Drinks enough. New to the team. Riding a Q Ball (fixed).

JOE: Team Captain. The Single Speed Outlaw. Tall (though not Baler tall) and unbelievably lean. Short, dark hair. Trademark sideburns and soul patch. Born on the bike. Impossibly strong, every way you parse it. Rides dirt ten days a week. Thrives on a steady diet of unprocessed rock. Utterly relentless. Dependable. Talented. Tough. Highly competitive. For him, winning is a fait accompli. A true mash-ochist. An aging punk. Old skool. A legend. Rode SS exclusively before that sibilant abbreviation even made the lexicon. Never disappoints. Ever. Leaves nothing in the tank when it's over, needle past empty and spinning 'round to start again. Not given to hyperbole. Habit of wearing bike socks when not on the bike. Unparalleled taste in beer. Drinks his share. Caffeine fiend. A team veteran. Riding a Q Ball (fixed).

THE KID: aka Dan Atkins. Honorary SSOFTie. Tall enough and ridiculously lean. All bone and sinew. Long, wavy mane. Clean face. Chin slightly cleft. Leonine features. Taciturn. Polite to a fault. Swears like a comatose mormon. Twenty years old. Let me say that again: twenty years old. Excepting his bike skills, he could be my son by several years. No, no shit. (Okay, I started a little early, but still...) Given to hanging around old fucks at races. A legend in the making. Strong. Talented. Fearless. Competitive. A glutton for punishment (is it punishment if you enjoy it?). Reliable. Consistent. Really, really white-skinned. A not-so-secret weapon. Has been known to associate with a geared bicycle now and then, though we forgive him for this. Is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Drinks good beer when it's offered (hey, he's still a kid). Doesn't drink enough. A team veteran. Riding a Karate Monkey (fixed).

ME: The old fuck. The least skilled. The least strong. A SSOFTie. A little more balls than talent, but just a little. Slow, steady. Dependable. Given to faking it. No finesse. Sarcastic. Often says the wrong thing. Means well. Built upside down for biking. Exhibits a high degree of natural vascularity (from mom's side). Longish hair. Facial scruff. Blue eyes. Square jaw. Light brown hair. Skinny wrists and cartoonish, ape-sized arms. No ass. Big nose. Good teeth. Bad posture. An aging punk-wannabe. A mix of cabbage & potatoes and bratwurst & sauerkraut, with a viscous drop of the same apocryphal indigenous-Indian blood every white male American claims to have slogging through his veins. Drinks too much fire water, though nothing distilled. Given to wearing beer-theme shirts when not on the bike. Knows better. Rides too much road. Doesn't ride enough dirt. Signs on for shit that's over his head. Says "fuck" too fucking much. A Caffeine fiend. A team veteran. Riding a Karate Monkey (fixed).

Next up, THE PLAY, in three acts.

A Thousand Words...

2009-06-14T22:04:00.002-04:00

Another thousand to follow. But first, some much-needed sleep.

Ursa Magna and Diluvian Depression...

2009-06-09T20:48:00.059-04:00

"Why do I keep fuckin' up?"
—Neil Young, "Fuckin' Up"

Okay, so if you're local to the DC area, you have a pretty damn good idea of what the weather is doing this very moment, what it did yesterday, what it's going to do tomorrow, and what it will do for the remainder of the week and possibly the remainder of the month. The word—the epithet, to be precise—for Spring this year is "rain," as in precipitation, spelled N-O-D-I-R-T-R-I-D-E-S-F-O-R-Y-O-U, or, more succinctly and poetically, F-U-C-K-M-E. And yes, all caps.

Look, I bike to work every day, come what may, been doing it now for almost three years, proud of it—righteous even. I pedal through it all, pat me on the back, everything a bored child could imagine, rainsleetsnowhailicesmogfoghellfirebrimstonetreacleabsinthe and a pint and a pinch more. You name it, if it falls from the sky or leaks from a car's ass, I'm out in it, on the fixie, rolling through it, wearing it wherever it sticks, sucking it in, every work day, not one missed, dedicated, committed, resigned. You get the picture.

But when the odds run this way, when the bad streak stretches, when things begin to look deliberate, when coincidence and fate join forces and begin to take on the shape of evil, willful intent, well, even the Metrobuses—daily scourges of the inner-city cyclist—begin to look cozy and inviting. It's enough to drive one utterly batshit, this interminable water torture. I'm not going to break, but goddammit, I am going to bitch and moan my share. Someone or thing somewhere needs to get its hands on Tlaloc and give him a swift kick in the ass. And then another (this time like you mean it).

Enough already. The joke is wearing thin, and with it my patience. Have we a deal, oh most inscrutable Lady Nature? Huh?

Bah!

Okay, down to the point. In four short, rain-ridden days, it's on...the Twenty-four Hours of Big Bear. Last year it rained just before the event, and this year looks like—surprise!—a repeater. Let me take a moment to celebrate this good fortune:

yay.

Word is that the team coordinators have been working to reroute early sections of the course to avoid the numerous tar-pit-like mud bogs that blistered the trail last year and sucked at one's tires like a two-bit strumpet angling for early retirement. I applaud their laudable efforts and wish them luck. Well, whatever luck is left after I wish it on myself. I'm riding it fixed again this year. The Outlaw approached me at a MORE party several months back and mentioned it. Having already put down my share of beer at the time, and with a freshly uncapped cold one in my hand still breathing a vapor trail, I smiled and said "hell yeah." It was an exchange eerily reminiscent of the one last year that started this team. And again I find myself at this time in less than stellar form. I think I've ridden dirt three times this year—laziness and la lluvia sharing equal blame. Last year, upon finishing the race, both RickyD and I said "never again" to racing it fixed. Rick stuck to his guns.

Damn. I gotta stop drinking. Ah well, whatever transpires, it'll be blog food, if nothing else. And Pan knows I need that.

All of which brings me around to tonight. The rain outside my window is all punched out now and sits slumped in the corner of the ragged ring that is the metro area, gathering strength for Round 12. It's going to come out swinging in the morning, about the time I throw a leg over the top tube. I'll be ready for it, the fucker. But for now, I'm in the process of busting down the single style of the Monkey and building it up fixed, a nice Founder's Red's Rye PA standing nearby as silent witness, beads of condensation forming on the pint glass like tears of sympathy as I pull the rotor on the rear wheel and replace it with a brand new TomiCOG. It's going to take more than a newly designed team jersey to get me through this.

Full report when it's all said and done. In the meantime, I'm going to keep telling myself this is going to be fun...

Farewell to a King...

2009-05-23T22:04:00.019-04:00

Got in a short, fun ride today with my buddy Gary and some guy named Chris at the Avalon area of Patapsco State Park (more about which soon). Afterwards, while gently throwing down a Harpoon Leviathan Imperial IPA—surprisingly good and sporting one of the best labels out there—in the parking lot of CCBC, I happened to look down and notice something odd about G-spot's front wheel: I could very clearly see the elbows of two adjacent and opposing spokes which, while still crossed, were free of their erstwhile snug little homes on the flange and just sort of floating in space.

Hmm. Not good.

Yeah, flange failure. A relatively rare (I have to believe) occurrence with three-cross lacing on a hub that hasn't seen that many miles. And at the same time, a true testament to the strength and reliability of such a build (Gary rode on it over technical terrain, rucksack on his back hanging heavy with photog paraphernalia, to finish the ride, and never noticed the damage), especially in light of the continuing trend toward lower spoke-counts and fewer (or no) crossings, all in the name of progress and profit.

Back to King it goes for warranty replacement. Like Gary needs another excuse not to ride...

Take a Tab for Albert...

2009-04-29T09:48:00.009-04:00

…that is, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s the birthday* of centenarian, scientist, bicycle enthusiast, and accidental founder of lysergic acid diethylamide, Mr. Albert Hoffman.

From Wiki,

“While re-synthesizing LSD, he accidentally absorbed a small quantity through his fingertips and serendipitously discovered its powerful effects before his bicycle ride home.”

Apparently, to paraphrase another alleged taker of physiologically active substances, it really isn’t about the bike…

As Mr. Blum so delicately pointed out just now, it's actually the anniversary of the death of Mr. Hoffman. Ah, well, birth, death, whatever...it's all along the same continuum. My bad, nevertheless. A tip o' the bottle to you, Mr. Blum, for putting me right.

Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinum...

2009-04-12T14:54:00.006-04:00

Soon, the Light and the Force...

...and everything after.

And then, the telling of it all.

Oh, shit...

Reggae on the Ride Home...

2009-04-09T22:53:00.007-04:00

DC locals Soja lined up for a publicity photoshoot on the side of the Mount Vernon Trail this afternoon with the Washington Monument as the backdrop. Snagged a handful of pics as they mock-rocked (no juice) a little reggae for the photog.

Beautiful day on the bike!

Because It's Just That Damn Good...

2009-04-03T23:20:00.013-04:00

(Cross-posted from Bikecentric, verbatim plus. Terrence McKenna is sorely missed. Three and a half minutes—about the length of an average pop song, for you ADD types out there—of scintillating, extemporaneous lucidity. Beautiful.)

Culture Is Not Your Friend: Terence McKenna—writer, social critic, psychonaut, and ethnobotanist—on the evils of culture, consumer mania, squirrely religions, meme processors, gnostic demons, and cannibalistic demiurges, among other things, none of which includes bicycles.

"What'll it be? Alienated cynical intellectual or slack-jawed half-wit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high?"

Dirt Dharma...

2009-04-02T11:31:00.038-04:00

First, apologies to those who cave in to ennui every now and then and visit this site for a little distraction. With the less than wonderful weather we’ve been experiencing lately, I haven’t been doing much riding beyond the daily commute. There’s simply not much exciting happening out there on the road, which is good, I suppose. Consequently, my head’s been empty and the blog's been idle. Excuses, excuses.

Did manage to get the Voodoo Wazoo more or less built up (borrowing a seatpost and saddle from the Casseroll) and pedaled it to work and back a couple times for a test spin. Feels light and responsive, but the Origin 8 Gary bar will take some getting used to. It feels wide and seems to throw off my balance a bit in the leans, as the bike gives the impression it wants to suddenly keel over toward the inside on turns. More saddle time will tell. Also, riding single speed on the road just isn’t fun when you're used to fixed, especially with comparatively low gearing. Need to get this thing (hell, any thing) out on some dirt. Pics soon.

The other, more important thing is this: a one of a kind opportunity this weekend to build a new, substantially long section of trail in the FREDERICK WATERSHED area.

Here’s the deal. MORE and PATC, in cooperation with the City of Frederick, have plans to replace an execrable (read: shitty) one-mile stretch of what could—if you’re blessed with the sort of imagination usually reserved for seasoned ayahuasqueros and other travelers to numinous realms— be called “trail” with a sweet, shiny, sexy swath of pristine singletrack.

And they need your help. Really.

It all goes down this Sunday, April 5¹. Face it, the weather around these parts leading up to the weekend is going to suck like a two-bit toothless whore, as far as dirt riding is concerned. I mean, here we are at Thursday, and it’s raining right now. Friday is looking worse. Perfect preconditions for a weekend dig. So, here’s your chance to stock up on karma kredits and do a little quality lane-scaping in one of the best places to ride off-road within an hour of Chocolate City.

This ain’t no average opportunity, ladies and gents. Unlike some previous trail work events in the ‘Shed, which amounted to patching up random spots—necessary, to be sure, but little more than cosmeses in comparison²—this project means a new ribbon of trail, all of it blessed with the city’s imprimatur! Since local government officials have seen fit to trust in our judgment and to understand our primal need to get it on with Lady Nature, it's critical that we front as many people as possible to underscore our determination to build durable trails in the 'Shed area. If you plan to attend, please sign up here—it only takes a second.

Oh, and, uh, rumor has it there's a good possibility that food and beer will be supplied, gratis.

Here's the 411:

Contacts/Watershed liaisons:
David Kegley - email
Phil VanWerkhoven - email

Things to bring:
Gloves, water, snacks, sturdy shoes. If you've got tools, we might need extras such as shovels, picks, loppers, McCleods (if you don't know what these are, show up and learn), rakes.

Date and Time:
April 5th, 9:00 AM - arrive a bit early and listen to the safety sermon that starts promptly at 9. Afterwards we'll carpool to the work site, since there is limited parking where we will work.

The Meeting Spot:
Sand Flats gravel parking lot. Gambrill Park Rd, approximately 3 miles north of Hamburg Rd. Directions with map are here.

Photo credits: First pic - J. Divinagracia; the others: me.

1. If you can't make it on Sunday 'cause you've got a cold date with a church pew, or for some other less-than-legitimate reason, a smaller crew will be going out on Saturday, April 4th, to prep the site for the work on Sunday. You're welcome to attend both days, if you've got the balls and want to show 'em (that's a figurative phrase; it is by no means an invite to brandish your bully bag). Please RSVP using one of the email addies listed above to give 'em an idea as to how many people will show on Saturday.

2. Not to discount all the great effort put into past projects which, though not contiguous, have certainly improved the riding experience.

Bedlam in Bedford...

2009-03-05T20:34:00.021-05:00

"We have to create culture. Don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, your giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y...this is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player—you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."
—Terence McKenna, Writer, Social Critic , Psychonaut, and Ethnobotanist

Yeah.

That's right.

It's on, baby.

Two words: 1) Spring, and 2) Bliss.

The snow is receding around these parts, and 70+ degree temps are in the line-up for the next couple of days. The euphoria of warmer weather will soon come on strong, hitting the unprepared with all the power of a Brompton cocktail. So, what better way to forestall...er, herald the coming spring weather than with a little trip northeast to partake in a gathering that combines mountain biking, homebrew, and beautiful scenery—along with the synesthesia that arises from this potent mixture—into one tidy little package of hepatotoxic chaos? Hmm...let me think...

...damn, um...

...hang on...

...all right, I got nothing.

Seems DmofoT—co-creator with yours truly of the original, beloved Bootlegger's Bliss event—has roused himself from a deep, ursine hibernation just long enough to dig down through a thick blanket of New England snow to the hard permafrost beneath to discover—lo and behold!—some wonderful dirt trails worthy of this supernal piss-drunk pedalfest. So get your brew on, pool your funds in preparation for the petrol fill-ups, and start thinking good thoughts about bikes and beer and Bedford.

The magical date? Satyrday, April 25th.

Location? A nebulous little term that goes like this: Boston's Metro West area (read: Bedford, Massachusetts, and surrounds).

I'll announce more detailed information here soon, as will the Fatboy himself. In the meantime, those of you in the Bedford area may want to read this for some background data. Stay tuned.

Photo credits in order of appearance: Me, D. Ross, J. Divinagracia

Grand Wazoo...

2009-02-19T20:34:00.010-05:00

Voodoo Wazoo Cross...EVO carbon-fiber cross fork, sliding dropouts, "Bottle Blue" color. I'm now an official Vodouisant.

Nothing like snagging a cross frameset at the conclusion of cross season. Ah, well, gives me almost a year to learn some basic skills. That just may be enough time. Until then, there'll be plenty of other opportunities for me to test this baby out. And by "test this baby out," I mean "break my bully bag on the top tube." Stay tuned.

Bon dieu (Bondyè?), this thing is a real beauty.

Time is Tight...

2009-02-14T22:00:00.001-05:00

Twelve hours till take-off...let the good times roll...

The Future Is Unridden...

2009-02-04T22:28:00.022-05:00

...but not for long.

Joe Strummer of The Clash fame: hand-drawn (colored in Photoshop) take-off on the Shepherd Fairey "Obama Hope" image. Still needs a bit of work.

From an original photograph (or film still) owned by IFC Entertainment, LLC. If you haven't seen The Future Is Unwritten, well, you should see it.

Artistic efforts fueled by sardines, pizza, and a mix of Bell's Hopslam IPA and Sierra Nevada's surprisingly tasty Torpedo Extra IPA. Sadly, oysters on the H.S. were somehow left out of the mix...and it shows. Ah, well...

Along the Riverside Route...

2009-02-02T11:50:00.009-05:00

The Jefferson Memorial, looking a bit otherworldly in the gloaming. What was the word Lovecraft loved to use so often...eldritch? Yeah, maybe.

I took this pic on the commute home from work last week. It had been raining earlier in the day, and the residual cumulous clouds took on a tinge of purple-pink under influence of a fading sunset. A layer of ice-coated snow clung stubbornly to the ground all around, resolute beneath the afternoon's steady pummeling of raindrops, making my balancing act in bike shoes on the slippery parapet a bit dicey as I steadied the camera.

It's easy to forget how fortunate I am to have such views every day on my ride to and from work...

Goin' Postal...

2009-01-22T10:21:00.013-05:00

Upon the chitinous spire of a snail glides my registration form, clinging tightly to the undulating mollusk as it makes the interminable journey westward to Durango, Colorado, where I hope the fine folks throwing the 2009 Single Speed World Championship shindig will deem it acceptable and see fit to welcome me into the fold. Guess we'll see.

Oh, by the way, if you haven't already sent in your registration form, please be aware that the envelope has to be postmarked no later than Friday, January 23—that's tomorrow—or it makes it no further than the waste basket. Good luck if you haven't already made the list!

Oh, and yes, I completed the required personal information before I mailed it. And included the check. Score one for me.

Update: I'm in!

Casseroll to Go...

2009-01-16T10:32:00.021-05:00

Got a call a couple weeks ago from Revolution Cycles in Clarendon. Seems Salsa Cycles¹ decided to step up to the plate and deliver on my frame warranty issue. So, I dropped by the shop last Monday on my commute home from work to pick up the frameset, trying hard not to focus too much on the fact that I’d have to get the Casseroll frame and fork home—a distance of five miles, some in heavy traffic—via bike with no obvious means to secure them but the Osprey Daylite pack on my back. Yeah, I'm the king of proper planning.

But, never underestimate the funtionality of sturdy compression straps and a single wisp of plastic commonly known as a zip-tie². The guys in the shop—all fine folks, by the way—had looks of mild skepticism on their faces as I grappled with the frame, trying out different positions in the hopes of finding the sweet spot that offered adequate security and clearance. I secured one compression strap around the top tube and the other up high around the seat tube, then fed the zip-tie through a pack grommet and around the seat tube near the bottom braket. Three points of contact. To keep the whole works from flopping around like a drunken flounder, I pulled the pack bungie lace over the end of the seat tube and around the bottom bracket cluster. The fork went inside the pack, with the steerer tube jutting out 10 inches like a periscope. I used a mini 'biner ("not intended for climbing use") that hangs on my pack to keep the zipper heads tight against the fork, weaving it through the zipper pulls so that the pack wouldn't gape under load.

All set with the packing, I gave my thanks, paid for the shipping and handling, then bid farewell, deftly negotiating my way through the twin doors of the shop to avoid banging my new set of "wings".

Out on the bike on Clarendon Boulevard, things went smoothly. When you're riding on a busy street during rush hour with what amounts to outriggers extending from either side of your torso, well, people give you room (the ones paying attention, anyway). Got home safely and examined the frame and fork. Beautiful. Same color, but with a newly designed decal package that is either more or less fancy than the original, depending on your tastes. The predominant decal color is the same, a maroon that nicely compliments the ginger-beer paint. Gone, however, is the white background that showcased the framemaker's name. Some filigree work has been added around the down tube and the words "Ride & Smile" now appear on the inside of each chainstay. Flip the frame over, and the catchphrase "IF IT AIN'T MOTO, IT'S WORTHLESS" flows across the down tube near the bottom bracket shell. Overall, a nice, classy-looking esthetic, as elegant as the original. Oh, and a bonus: Salsa included a black Lip-lock seatpost collar with the frame and all the water bottle cage bolts...nice.

Have to say I'm excited to have this hot little dish on the menu again. Nothing left but to garnish it with some quality components.

1. Kudos time. Big thanks to the warranty department at Salsa for ruling in my favor on a decision that could have gone either way. It's not clear how the crack originated, though a small dent appeared along the fissure near the underside of the down tube, suggesting perhaps that a stone or other solid object made contact with mean intent. Regardless, the Salsa folks deemed it ambiguous enough to front me the new frame and fork. I'm a happy customer, not just because I dig the Casseroll's ride and handling, but because of this level of customer service.

2. I once transported a Kona Unit (sans fork) from Ashburn, VA, to Vienna, VA, this very same way.

Last Man Wading...

2009-01-11T00:07:00.009-05:00

Polar Bear Plunge 2009 from Butch Ramsey on Vimeo.

I ended up with $462—just $38 shy of my goal of $500*. Not bad, given the short notice, but then again, some people I figured I could count on bowed out. Oh well, live and learn.

Huge thanks to everyone who did contribute, and special thanks to Butch and family for also coming out and braving the elements to offer support and capture some of the action!

Youtube video here.

Video and pic by Butch Ramsey.

*Thanks to the help of some last minute contributors, I've just met my goal. Of course, contributions can still be made here. All contributions are tax-deductible.

Polar Plunge Plea...

2009-01-07T10:00:00.018-05:00

This Saturday, January 10, I've agreed to dip my bully bag into the icy waters of the Chesapeake Bay to help raise money to combat global warming by way of a little thing called the Polar Bear Plunge. That's right, I signed a contract in my own caffiene-thinned, alcohol-infused, hemoglobin-starved blood to offer up my aging bag of bones and all its delicate bits to the harsh, indifferent winter elements, just to make a handful of salmon-snatching polar bears happy.

Okay, it isn't all about the bears. There's also the 1.5 million species that currently call this planet home, nearly all of whom lack the necessary physiological mechanisms to make their opinion known explicitly (hell, most of them lack a backbone, and I don't mean that metaphorically).

So, for me, it's Lorax time, so to speak. All of this to say that if you're feeling a little generous, or if you simply need to atone for a little evil you've indulged in lately or plan to undertake soon, here's your opportunity to help make a difference at my physical expense. Simply click this link and follow the simple instructions.

I'm asking for a minimum contribution of $15, a little more than the cost of a sixer of good beer. But hey, I'm easy, so I appreciate any amount...which is an indirect way of saying more is always better.

All contributors will receive a personalized email of appreciation from yours truly. Thanks in advance for your help!

[Oh, and for you slackers who need additional incentive to dig out the plastic, everyone who contributes will receive a special, laminated, as-yet-uncreated-but-fully-conceived spokecard that's sure to be a classic. Yes, you're going to love it. And no, it's not the Obama Chocolate Stout item (I said "as-yet-uncreated", didn't I?)—that was Butch's doing.]

So, what does the pic above have to do with this post? Not a damn thing...it's my blog, let me play! That said, rumor has it that a certain semi-pro photog will make an appearance on Saturday to capture all the beautiful agony.

Ivan the Functional: A Review of Chrome's Midsize Roll-top Backpack...

2008-12-23T15:50:00.102-05:00

Ah, Ivan, if you were a beer, you'd be a Russian Imperial Stout, something akin to Old Rasputin, I'd like to imagine. Robust, a bit heavy, highly satisfying, the one to have when you can have only one. Alas, you are only a pack, which means the closest you'll come to beer is hauling the damn stuff around every now and then. There are worse things in life, comrade, but let's leave that for another post. This one is a product review, so on with it.

A midsize (1680 cu. in.) roll-top offering from San Francisco's Chrome Bags,¹ Ivan is a fully waterproof, made-in-the-States backpack whose main compartment is sealed by pinching opposing sides of the pack together and, as the style suggests, rolling the bundle downward, before securing it via a hook-and-loop closure flap. The end result is that your booty (and I'm not talking ass here) remains dry, regardless of what Lady Nature throws your way. Here's the breakdown as I see it...

CAPACITY: The main compartment is cavernous. Plenty of room for two six-packs or a bevy of bombers, along with some grub to soak it all up and an extra jacket or other cycling article you feel naked without, plus a laptop (pic below left shows a load of two sixers and an 18" Powerbook in a protective sheath, with room for a sub, some fries, and a backup bomber, not pictured). To give a better visual, four one-gallon milk jugs will easily fit in the main compartment, with a little room to spare.

The shape is rectangular, so the key here is to stack upward, not outward, being mindful to leave enough room near the top to get a full (180°) roll going, particularly if it's raining—no roll in a downpour means that bounty of purloined panties you liberated from the local laundromat (ya sick bastard!) is gonna get wet and heavy and begin to feel like the owners are wearing them by the time you get home, without the benefits the actual presence of these ladies might confer.

Owing to its slim design (depth), Ivan has a surprisingly low profile when you're hunched over, down in the drops, even when it's packed to the gills. Over-the-shoulder ass glances aren't a problem, as the pack sits low on the back, adding to stability while you ponder the callipygean aesthetic of passing pedestrians.

Overall usable dimensions² come out to be around 21"x14"x6"—a good size for the solo grocery shopper who doesn't mind a return trip later in the week when the last bottle hits the bottom of the recycle bin.

FEATURES: Ivan boasts five compartments in all, including an LP-cover sized outer pocket and smaller cargo twins (u-lock size) that can be accessed without opening the main compartment. And then there's Chrome's infamous "kilo-keeper,"³ a concealed contraband compartment whose clandestine configuration was conceived to confound cagey constables on all continents who might otherwise confiscate your coveted cocaine cache⁴. Well, I like to think that's why it's there. The aforementioned LP-cover sized pocket has a seam-sealed zipper closure hidden beneath a storm flap, so that latest issue of Juxtapoz or Bizarre (my audience, such as it is, is nothing if not eclectic) you're hauling around stays tinderbox dry.

Waterproof all over is Ivan. Really waterproof all over. The waterproofing agent is of the truck-tarp variety, overlaid everywhere with a formidable layer of Cordura. Seams are "high frequency RF welded." Bottom line: relax—your crap is DRY. Forget about it and concentrate instead on the SUVs, buses, and cabs looking to squeeze you out of your skin at the next intersection.

Two shoulder-straps, a chest strap, and a waist strap (all adjustable) keep everything on your back where you intend it to be. Unlike some messenger bags, Ivan won't do orbits around your midsection as you spin out on a long, steep downhill. On the back, a daisy chain of three loops runs straight up between the twin cargo pockets like a spine, offering a home for a blinkie or two (though its usefulness is severely limited when the cargo twins are stuffed). Rounding out the utilitarian features are a haul loop near the shoulder yoke and two large, steel D-rings—one mounted near the top of each shoulder strap—so you can dangle your keys (or whatever) hipster-style within easy reach without removing the pack to dig for them.

DURABILITY: Bombproof. Seriously.

Hardware on the twin pockets and shoulder straps is stainless steel, and a beefy nylon waist buckle stabilizes the load nicely around your midriff. The chest strap also comes together via a nylon buckle.

As mentioned above, the whole works is wrapped in a tough layer of Cordura, meaning the pack should hold up well in those unfortunate situations where skin typically doesn't.

COMFORT: The shoulder straps are fairly wide and nicely padded; in fact, I've hauled some heavy stuff around in my Ivan and I've never noticed any discomfort in those areas. The pad between back and pack is just thick and wide enough to keep beer bottles and other hard objects from playing your spine and ribs like a xylophone as you pedal, and it's channeled like a set of chiseled abs to allow a little air flow during the hot summer months.

WEIGHT: As you might suspect, steel hardware, comfortable padding, and waterproof, rugged, double-layer construction mean Ivan is a bit of a pig when it comes to the scales. Mine weighed in at just under 4 lbs. But on the streets and rolling, the fit and feel of the pack render this factor largely irrelevant. You simply don't notice its comparative heftiness because Ivan cradles your body snugly like a nubile new lover. The load neither shifts nor digs into your shoulders. And all the things that amp up the weight a bit make Ivan one tough Cossack.

OVERSIGHTS: Just three, all of them minor, two of them related. First, the smallest pockets are the twin cargo pockets. These v-shaped spaces measure roughly 12"x8" (width measured at the vertical center) each, so small things get lost in them without effort. A nice zippered pouch inside one or both would be ideal. Second, no key lanyard. Anywhere. If there's no small pocket to stash keys, a key lanyard in one of the outside pockets makes sense. Lastly, the cinch webbing on each shoulder strap is overly long for my torso, leaving about 12 inches to flap in the breeze—just a slight annoyance, really, which I mitigate by tucking the loose ends inside the waist belt. Those with freakishly long torsos may not have a problem in this regard.

The verdict? Ivan is a champ, no question. I love this pack, and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a comfortable, durable, stable, waterproof bag that will carry everyday loads (and then some) for years to come, and who seeks to avoid the douche-chills that may come with wearing a messenger bag and delivering nothing⁵ (then again, I ride a fixed gear and I've never set foot in a velodrome, so there you have it).

1. Full disclosure: Chrome is an official sponsor of the Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team (SSOFT), of which I am a member. This influenced neither my opinion nor my review of this product.
2. Usable dimensions account for space lost when the top is rolled closed.
3. My nickname for this pocket, not Chrome's. But I'm sure they wish they'd thought of it. This same secret pocket is a feature on other Chrome bags.
4. This sentence is a pretentious example of a wonderful literary technique—generally reserved for poetry—known as alliteration.
5. The opinions expressed on this blog are not necessarily those of Chrome Bags. No, really.

Utopia Deferred...1

2008-12-22T14:54:00.022-05:00

Okay, so, after dragging my ass for a couple weeks, my Salsa Casseroll frame and fork are on their less-than-merry little way back to Bloomington, Minneapolis, without benefit of Santa’s sled. Dropped off the spavined frame on a Sunday two weeks ago at Revolution Cycles² in Clarendon, only to get a call the following Monday morning asking for an invoice as proof of purchase. Dug up the invoice, delivered it later that week, then got another call later saying the fork was required. Sunday morning, I removed the crown race from the fork, tossed the fork into my Chrome Ivan, and pedaled over to Revolution to reunite torso and forelimbs one last time.

I’m hopeful for a full replacement, but this may be empty optimism. It appears there’s a very small indentation on the down tube that is bisected by the crack, which may or may not have been the genesis of the fissure. It’s so small and smooth that I’m inclined to believe it’s a crimp caused by the folding in of the tube edges against one another as the tube failed for whatever reason. That, or a very small, very soft stone leaped up somewhere sometime and left a very powerful impression. I’ve had the frame for about a year, but I didn’t ride it much until the Cross-check dropout broke sometime back in May. The Casseroll has maybe five months of daily riding on it. I’d put the mileage figure at just over 2K, with all of it on asphalt, save a lone 25 mile jaunt on the C&O Canal Trail. A curb-drop every now and then was the closest I came to ever riding that bike hard and I don't believe it saw even a single winter ride...bizarre.

So the frame and fork are on holiday travel, and I’m left to wonder what the outcome will be. It's all in Salsa's hands, now. If the decision goes in my favor, I’ll be singing their praises to anyone who will listen. If it goes against me, I’ll be looking for a frame and fork from another manufacturer. Regardless, I’ll report the outcome on this very blog. Stay tuned...

1. With apolgies to the late French social theorist Jean Baudrillard.
2. The fine blokes at Revolution Cycles in Clarendon have been nothing short of fantastic during this process. Thanks, gents!

Winter Bliss...

2008-12-19T23:35:00.004-05:00

Just when you thought you'd heard the last of the Bootlegger's Bliss bluster for the year, out come plans for a Winter Bliss, courtesy of one DmofoT.

That's right, while it's just a blurry phantom—that is to say, a fleeting chimera darting drunkenly from axon to dendrite—right this minute in the mind of one willing Nor'eastern, homebrewing, mountain biking, Northern Virginia ex-pat, there is a very real possibility that the damn thing may actually go down. Oh, and by winter, we mean late spring, maybe April?

Keep an eye on this blog and on Fatboy Deluxe over the next few weeks for details. We're talking Massachusetts as the milieu for the mayhem. By the sword we seek peace, my Orwellian ass!

Southwestern* Superterraneans...

2008-12-03T21:42:00.051-05:00

8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
19. Accept loss forever
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
—Jack Kerouac, from a list of 30 "essential" rules of good prose found in his book Belief and Technique for Modern Prose

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.
—Jorge Louis Borges

Crunch of pine needles and clickclack of broken stone bits and shush-shush of dry leaves up the mountain, up up, turning the pedals slowly, slowly, winding a make-believe clock (mortality), standing leaning arching pushing turning them over and over and over and me as empty inside and duty-dumb as ol' Sisyphus, pulling on the bars and pushing on the pedals where he (cunning king of Corinth or Ephyra really, deceiver of Death and piper-payer) put shoulder to stone with no end in sight, always the turning, turning, turn this wheel to turn that wheel (the one back there) to turn these wheels two wheels like the boulder rolling turning endlessly and up the mountain go I slowly, heart a big ol' triphammer hammering away at sternum inside pounding on the bony door. Thanksgiving over and gone and the mountain keeps giving breathes its cold breath and me breathing mine warmer with every turn painful because of lack of this all year, this riding on dirt, the climbing and everything and trying not to think about it. And me with one speed only, the only one with it choosing hell when there's a choice.

John makes the spot first, the spot of rest where everything dies back a little and the march ends for a little while too (trail runs up straight ahead and also to the right and down another trail) with me the next one to stop. Lean my bike and breathe and breathe more and pull out the camera—click-flash, rob it all in little bits—the magic green-ness of everything around us defiant against the season and also against the brown dead (tho really still living) trail under our feet. The trail a mix of snow now, but mostly shale and pine needles and leaves shows us the way up, the long way that winds back on itself almost (almost Ouroboros) again and again and again to disappear above, to stop and rest too, at the top. Jeff then John (other) and Tim come up behind us, catch us standing around, breathing aloud like us to say (unnecessary) that we are the same, five of us, same lungs breathin' and heart poundin' and miles and miles of irondark blood flowing like the dark trail against the pull of all the world, same right now, near the top of this Allegheny mountain, silent hulk alone but not ever lonely.

We don't wait around long, but move on up, up again then straight for a stretch then winding and up again, repeat repeat and all the while no time for beauty of majestic outdoors, just pedaling onward, up, eyes just seeing seeing what the trail wants them to see. Words gasps for air, just hot breath shudders in cool air until the top, the peak, comes into view. A little more then we rest again and I cover myself with a jacket against the coming cold. This spot is the tipping point threshold between all that beautiful thatside pain and the coming joythrill of thisside heading down, head up, easy and unforced and free, hugging the holy contours buried beneath the leaves. Speed is all, pulling it under control then letting it play then reigning it in again (at switchbacks) then letting it go on the straightaways and it's the fearthrill that takes over now, the dizzying letting go that is everything the reason we came.

STONY RUN to MIDDLE MOUNTAIN to SALT STUMP then PINE TREE and MIDDLE HOLLOW to LAUREL VIEW to BLUE SUCK FALLS and the end and the bits before the end a bouncing blur of tree trunks and silent mountainside whizzing by, abyss now on the left now on the right and back again left, and everywhere leaves fill the trail the ribbon hidden and the tires just being tires rolling under worldly fiat, white knuckles (mine) on the bar white as flecks of snow flying by, and on down to the park road and already I smell the beer I swear right through the glass bottles waiting on ice in the cars, waiting, waiting. But instead bypass the parking lot nowhere near it and head out for the second part, up BEARDS GAP to BRUSHY HOLLOW and down again down WILLOW CREEK and then back to the park road and rolling along asphalt black as the coming night and then the lot, the beer at last the beer, ah yes.

*Virginia, that is. Douthat State Park, to be specific.

Aitch Eff Tee!...

2008-11-27T09:15:00.004-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all youse biking alcohooligans out there. Heading down Douthat way to eat and imbibe and get in a little post-turkey-day ride with some Pedalshop boys. Oh, and to drink some beer...Clay Pipe's Pursuit of Happiness Winter Warmer is on the list, along with a little Celebration Ale from Sierra Nevada. Mmm...yeah...

Hope the days are good to you, too.

In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See...1

2008-11-20T23:27:00.016-05:00

Excessive flashpoints, beyond all reach/Solitary demands for all I'd like to keep/Let's take a ride out, see what we can find/A valueless collection of hopes and past desires.
—Joy Division, "Twenty-four Hours"

[In which a relatively uneventful, digitally undocumented² (but nonetheless fun) ride is amplified and embellished and passed through the filters of La Chouffe's N'Ice Chouffe³—and an increasingly small bit of gray matter—to spill freely onto the screen in all its hyperbolic, overblown, pixellated glory, for your crepuscular titillation, as you sip your morning coffee and wonder why you continue to work where you work. Yeah, that's right, it's all about you. Reader, bruder⁴, let's get on with it.]

I’m early, so I duck out of the cold and into Pizzeria Paradiso to see what’s on tap. Outside, my bike, the newly reanimated Cross-check, a.k.a. the Kab Killer, dangles from its u-shaped yoke near a wobbly bus sign pole, whose countless scars and nicks suggest its secret real value. Nearby, Jesse’s aging fixie leans against a lone sapling, absently awaiting the barkeep’s emergence sometime after closing.

Inside, the bar area is empty, save for a busser huddling around a salad plate, stabbing impatiently at the green leaves with his fork like a gaucho knife-fighter, his back to the door. The morbid majesty of “Decades” trickles into my ears as I grab a beer menu and take a seat at the bar. In five minutes, the lure of quality half-price drafts and the icy fingers of a merciless wind will begin to pull people in off the street like a vacuum. I'm early, yes, and maybe just early enough to sneak in a quick one before Anna arrives.

I stow the Shuffle and order an Old Rasputin, a perennial favorite whose complex nature seems to intensify even as it flows from the tap, as if the keg were an alchemist’s cauldron. Beyond the warm wood hues of the restaurant, M Street is awash in the stop-and-go, red- and white-light bustle of rush-hour traffic, as a single goblet is set down before me. The temperature outside hovers in the low 30s, with a windchill of approximately who-the-hell-knows. Regardless, I’m overdressed. Through the windows, shoppers, freshly liberated from sterile cubicles and stuffy clothing, stroll by, clogging the sidewalks of the spectacular nonstop paean to rampant empty consumerism (SNPREC, for short) that is Georgetown. Damn. Still, the beer is good.

I sip the rich elixir between walks to the window to check for Anna. She’s unfamiliar with the place, and I’m not sure whether she expects me to be out front. We didn't work out the details, but she knows me well enough: cold air outside, warmth and beer inside: no confusion, really. The stout is disappearing too quickly. Presently, I see her crest the hill amid hulking car bodies, then dart across when the traffic light smiles on her.

In case you don't know her, let me begin by saying that Anna is one tough chick, though her appearance gives you no such clue. As proof of this assertion, and by way of introduction to this long-winded post, I offer Example A: Anna moved recently, from DC, where she still works, to Frederick, MD. Without going into too many details, Anna occasionally commutes by bike.

Yeah. Something like 50 miles one way. And, hey, it's winter time...dark...cold.

Did I mention that Anna is tough? Want more proof? Okay here ya go, Example B, arguably the most damning bit of evidence: her initials are AK. As in Automat Kalashnikov. Russian a little rusty, comrade? I'll pause while you Google it. There, then, it's settled, n'est ce pas? Okay, let's plod on...

On this very night, I plan to accompany Anna for about 15 miles as she heads westward into the advancing night on the C&O Canal Trail. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: I get a nice ride out of the deal, Anna gets a little more security, and we both get some company that we may or may not care for by ride's end. It's that last element of uncertainty that, for me, makes it all so appealing. I meet her at the door, and she comes in, trailing a gust of cold air.

While she scans the beer menu, Anna relates the whole u-lock ordeal and, after sampling what's left of my beer, decides to have the same one herself. I pay for mine, and we head downstairs to the Birriera, to take advantage of happy-hour pricing.

Beer flows (too little, truth be told), and it's suddenly time to head out. We settle up with Jesse, then make our way up and out into the chill to saddle up. Anna discovers that one of her lights has decided to go on strike. It's a big beast of a thing, a veritable dinosaur as lights go, with a long, cylindrical battery on which is printed the word Nightstick—an apt title, since truncheon is the only role it can hope to muster this blustery evening. Anna posits that if we ride by my light alone on the way out, she should have enough juice in the battery of her second light (another brontosaur) to get her home.

With my light set on stun (a stroke-triggering strobe)⁵, we head down an alley off M, dismount, hike down some stairs, then roll on to the arguable start of the C&O Canal Trail⁶.

We pedal along the still, dark water, awash in ambient city-light for the moment. There are joggers and cyclists on the trail, not unusual given the proximity to the district. We talk, Anna and I, about everything. The structure and safety and brightness of the city soon give way to the inky stillness of more rural surroundings, and I switch the light from strobe to low. With the conversation, meters turn quickly into miles. I like Anna, she's got a good sense of humor and—let's just get it out here—she can pretty much kick my ass on a mountain bike. It's okay, I'm comfortable with it, since the alternative would mean a helluva lot of work this old man ain't willing to put in, with no guarantee of anything. I'm pretty sure I could take her ass in a dojo, though, just for the record. I'm good with my fists.

Time and miles pass, and the moon hangs high in an ebony sky. We encounter a few odd folks out in the middle of nowhere, including a spooky old guy wearing a black hoodie and riding a cruiser bike, sans light (and scythe), who either waves uncertainly at us or tries unsuccessfully to shield his eyes from my light. Random dog walker and drifter emerge now and again from the blackness ahead as we move along the crushed limestone and packed earth of the trail.

Mile marker 15 comes and goes, and I feel good, so I continue to ride with Anna. We talk and ride, ride and talk, and somewhere just shy of mile marker 18, I stop to say goodbye. I apologize for my actions—I feel like shit cutting out—but Anna is having nothing of it. She's got what she needs to get home, and there's nothing else to it. I promise to go farther next time, but it's meaningless tonight, as the cold and darkness impose. But she's a tough chick.

So I turn around, pedaling a little before pausing to look back, thinking again that I should have pushed on a bit more. In the distance, a feeble cone of orange light rapidly recedes, is swallowed up by the darkness. In seconds. I set off again.

Some ten miles out of Georgetown, I stop and eat an apple, a Pink Lady, something I offered to split with Anna during the ride (bring on the Garden of Eden jokes), but a Pop Tart she'd eaten earlier was enough (I told you she was tough). The apple is delicious and satisfying and all that I need to stoke the fire. I pedal on, and it isn't long before I'm close to Georgetown. To my left, beyond the silent canal, looms the eponymous Canal Road, lit up like a Las Vegas landing strip. In a matter of minutes, I hit the little dirt uphill that leads to the bridge over the canal, then dismount to take the stairs up to the cobblestone alley. From there, I pedal a block or two westward and circle around to M Street and the entrance to Paradiso. I've got some unfinished business inside: a pizza to kill and two pints that beckon. It's a good night, and when the moon finally puts me to bed, I've racked up 55 miles for the day. Not bad.

[Here, now, the present: the bottle is empty, the glass is dry. Good night. And good morning. Thanks for reading.]

1. From Theordore Roethke's poem, "In a Dark Eye". Goddamn, I love poetry—life, love, distilled.
2. The lone shot above, taken with a cellphone camera, fuzzily depicts the inimitable Brasserie Dupont's brewed beatitude, Avec Les Bons Voeux ("With Good Wishes"), with a bit of the Birrieria behind it. Taken after the ride, when I decided to return to Paradiso to fuel up.
3. Thyme and curaçao peel? Who the fuck knew? When it comes to making beer, the Belgians can't be touched.
4. Baudelaire, by way of Nabokov (Lolita)—see the former's prefatory poem Au Lecteur, from the most excellent collection Les Fleurs du Mal.
5. I love this light, a NiteRider Minewt X2. Lightweight, powerful, long-lasting, reliable, useful, and not too pricey. Not much else to ask for.
6. Key Bridge, where we started, is actually Mile 1 of the C&O Canal Trail. The true (and truly elusive) starting point, Mile 0, is a little east of Key Bridge, near the Thomson Boat Center.

Hope Rolls On...

2008-11-05T07:16:00.009-05:00

So refreshing.

Sometimes the system works, my friends.

(Photo credit: B. Ramsey)

The (Single)tracking Satyr*...

2008-10-29T22:05:00.013-04:00

Beta testing this year's Bootlegger's Bliss homebrew delivery vessel with a superbly crafted Celebration Ale from Sierra Nevada (pic doesn't begin to do it justice). Silenus would surely be proud.

Here's how it stacks up:

Beer-tight
USA made
Purpose-built
Unique
Limited edition
Dishwasher safe
BPA/BPH/Lead-free
Reusable
Recyclable

One day, I swear, these posts will be about biking.

*With apologies to Sophocles.

Last Call...

2008-10-28T13:47:00.017-04:00

...has come and gone. Registration (for lack of a better word) for the 3rd Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is now closed. The final email with all details is cycling through cyberspace even as I type. If you're one of the lucky 35 or so respondents, check your inbox.

What to do if you missed your opportunity to attend? Well, a short length of stout rope, commonly available at your local big box hardware store, might be an option, if you’re good with nooses and have access to an exposed ceiling joist. Handguns are readily available, though in this case a whole box of ammo is a waste—I recommend a full-blued finish, no point in springing for Parkerizing or chrome-plating for a single use. Then there’s the always economical, largely effortless, and practically foolproof gas-stove tête-à-tête. For a host of other clever and not so clever exit strategies, I direct you to Mr. Wataru Tsurumi’s yugaitosho offering, The Complete Manual of Suicide. For inspiration, try Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.

Or, you could simply suffer along quietly until next year, when the 4th Annual Bootlegger’s Bliss rolls around on drunken wheels. Your choice. Have a nice day.

Oh, and the pint glasses are in. ~~check back here this evening for~~ Here is a sneak peek...

The supply of these babies is limited; distribution will be made in the order of original RSVP for the event. However, all who bring homebrew will receive a glass.

Long Division...

2008-10-23T20:42:00.031-04:00

I'm not your villain,
not your adversary,
I'm not your reason
to crack and divide.
tt's long division,
crack and divide.
—Fugazi, "Long Division"

Sometimes a creaking bottom bracket isn't a creaking bottom bracket.

You begin to understand this, to believe it, yesterday, on the morning commute, when a faint creaking sound suddenly interrupts the gap between songs on the Shuffle, in the interlude between, say, "Heart and Soul" and "Twenty-Four Hours". It happens when you stand and deliver, particularly on climbs. At first, you dismiss it as simply a rogue pack buckle banging idly against a seat stay. You ride on, hard, fast, passing other riders and staying past them, dropping curbs to advantage. The creaking continues.

A little over halfway to work, the sound is persistent enough that you pull over to inspect the cranks and chainring. Everything checks out fine. You hop back on the bike and pursue the rider who passed you while you were stopped. The sound continues and you dismiss it as the meaningless moaning of friction, the settling in of unsettled parts, feckless frottage between formerly friendly surfaces. In other words, a creaking bottom bracket.

You arrive at work and the work day passes.

The next morning, same damn scenario, all the way up until about a mile into the ride home, when you've had enough. You execute a couple of low trackstand hops just to see if everything will hold together under moderate force, to approach an unknown threshold—dammit, if something's going to give, it's going to give under your terms. The post-hop creaking is louder, worse. Something has changed. You look down at the bike between your legs and notice a dagger of missing paint crossing the down tube some six inches below its junction with the head tube. Uh oh.

Sometimes a creaking bottom bracket isn't a creaking bottom bracket.

Sometimes a creaking bottom bracket is a crack running more than half way around your down tube. And sometimes the creak isn't a creak, but a death knell. And this death knell tells you your beloved bike has gone the way of all things.*

You decide to ride it out and keep on eye on it as you do. What choice do you have? You ride gently, gingerly, as delicately as you can when the bike is a fixed gear and the juju against further damage, against a new set of sparkling, synthetic teeth—the luxury of coasting—isn't an option. The frame holds up, but the protests continue.

Halfway home, in the gloaming of a chilly fall evening, just after the deck-bridge, with its uneven planks over which your tires resound like the thumping of a rickety old roller-coaster, you stop to look closely at the damage, to analyze the entropy (the whole ordeal a quiet reminder of your own mortality; a crack is developing somewhere in you right this minute. Yessiree, old boy, keep playing, but know that I'm here, following the script. And though we all know what happens in the dark denouement, only I know how it happens). Lo and behold, the adolescent crack has grown into a full-blown adult. The bit of good steel between fissure ends is retreating, succumbing. A half-inch margin of safety is all that's left before all bets are off.

You walk it out, past Key Bridge and the artificial glow that floats like a halo over Georgetown, up the hill along Route 29 through Rosslyn. Riders pass, as silent as their shadows, red taillights pulsing like alien semaphores. One asks if you are okay, and the bitterness subsides, just a little, just enough. The march is slow, and the damn bike creaks at every fissure in the sidewalk. It's terminal now, this crack, as if it were ever anything else, and its slow, circular creep is nothing less than a fatal metastasis, irreversible, the triumph of evil over good.

You stop at Whole Foods to grab dinner and some compensatory beer, a Russian Imperial Stout (one of which you're enjoying right now). Ten minutes later, limping along Wilson Boulevard, you give in, capitulate, crack, like the frame of the bike you pull along beside you. Into the back of a cab van goes the spavined Salsa, and less than three miles and seven dollars later you're home.

You've got a Bianchi, a nice full-on Italian job—a geared bike (said with a sneer)—all set to go. You've got a Cross-check and the pieces to make it mobile laying about. You'll get to work tomorrow on two wheels, no worries. The streak will continue.

Sometimes too many bikes is just enough.

*I plan to contact Salsa about getting a replacement frame under warranty. This frame is less than a year old and I've ridden it for about half that time; I haven't abused it by any stretch of the imagination, though I have been commuting on it every day for several months. I'll post here about my experiences, for what it's worth. Damn! I'm bummed. I really like this frame!

The Devil's in the Details...

2008-10-20T23:46:00.014-04:00

(Small slice of a cycling satyr, official mascot of the 3rd Annual Bootlegger's Bliss.)

Tried to run the proposed Bliss course on Sunday, but a hub issue on Donna’s bike meant I took my ride around the toolbox in the parking lot. Meanwhile, the rest of the group, lead by Julie, took off on a partial loop, with the idea they’d meet us again later at a trail junction before continuing the ride. I got the frozen wheel turning again and we rode to the meeting spot to wait for the group and rejoin the ride. Unfortunately, the group was running a little late, and the two of us, thinking that we had somehow missed them, headed down again to the parking lot. We then had the severe misfortune to encounter Sir David Blum, who was waiting out his wife’s ride with the group and keeping an eye on his twin sons. Dave had beer. We had beer. We swapped beers. The prospects of riding quickly gave way to the warming glow of alcohol as the morning chill fled the arms of the rising sun. Misfortune, indeed.

No matter. Riders with impeccable trail judging credentials gave me a full report and this, along with a map Julie was kind enough to offer me, means I’ll be checking out the proposed loop next weekend, along with some other riders, one of whom composed most of the route. It's all coming together nicely.

The Bliss is a runaway half-barrel, loaded down with a roiling elixir of equal parts homebrew, adrenaline, magic, and mayhem, careening down a rocky slope at breakneck speed, giving and asking no quarter of anything in its path as it rolls on to the hop-bitter end. As Pete Townsend put it, there’s no damn thing stops this poem. The Bliss is go!

That’s it for now, except for one important thing: try as the Bliss does to dispense with overt commercial transactions in favor of barter or simple exchange (indeed, this is the whole raison d'etre of the event), the Maryland National Park Service sees no value in aboriginal market practices. Thus, attendees should arrive with three dollars cash in hand to pay the park entry fee.*

*A mere three dollars for a full day of Bliss? I call that a bargain.

Lipstick on a Blind Pig*

2008-10-04T00:35:00.037-04:00

Okay, (almost) all hyperbole aside, the 3rd Annual Bootlegger's Bliss is shaping up to be the most successful to date. With 30+ confirmations, another year of brewing expertise under the belts of many attendees, and a brand new venue (rumor has it you can see Russia from the peak of one hill), this one is poised to really set the bar.

Speaking of which, I just sent out an email announcing the venue to all the wise folks who arr-ess-vee-peed to confirm their attendance. Anyone responding at this time to express an interest will roll the dice. And McFate can be a heartless pit-boss.

A little more information: in addition to the ride, the lunch, and the tasting, there will be a trialsy segment and a go-for-broke(n) derby or two (both voluntary). Got a nice, high-end wheelset? Just take out a second mortgage amidst an eroding and ever-more speculative economy (because, good sheep that you are, you've been led to believe that the "free" market¹ is free) to purchase a beautiful new Ti frame?² Leave it all at home or risk crying in your beer and wallowing out your wallet when it's all said and done. The Bliss cares not for sniveling, self-made trifles and pitiful property attachments; its skin and blood and bones are born of strife and resistance and rebellion. Against these things, these beautiful, meaningful things, what chance have you and your petty, narcissistic concerns?

We'll find out the answer to this and many more important questions on Satyrday, November 1^st. Until then, happy homebrewing.

Photo credits: first - B. Ramsey; third - M. Kegley

*From Wikipedia, 'cause some other unpaid individual already did the grunt work (with a little choice editing by yours truly, 'cause it needed it):

A blind pig, also known as a blind tiger, originated in the United States in the 1800s, when blue laws restricted the sale of alcoholic beverages. A saloonkeeper would charge customers to see an attraction (such as an animal), and provide a "complimentary" alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.

It was during the years of prohibition that blind pigs were most common in the U.S.

The blind pig is a classic example of black-market economics, and with the end of prohibition in 1933, most blind pigs had to either become legitimate establishments or close shop. Common current examples of the blind pig (or transgressions of a similar spirit) include the after-hours club, the keg party, and, of course, the ingenious and increasingly infamous modern-day, semi-underground potlatch known as the Bootlegger's Bliss.

A blind pig differed from a speakeasy primarily in that it was essentially a "drinking only" establishment, whereas a speakeasy frequently offered music, dancing and a wide selection of food, too.

1. For a profound, witty, and insightful analysis of the free market and market populism, check out One Market, Under God, by Thomas Frank.

2. Jealousy is indeed a green-eyed monster.

Any Old Porter in a Storm...

2008-09-27T16:36:00.038-04:00

As I type these words, the beginnings of my Profligate Porter are aboil, dreaming restlessly of the second infusion of hops, not five minutes away. The steady bass staccato of raindrops exploding on the tarp overhead mingles with the hornet hum of speeding traffic on nearby I-66 and the rush of gas from the turkey-cooker jets at my feet to produce a soundtrack of sorts: thump-varoom-hiss, thump-varoom-hiss...syncopated randomonium. Sitting on a table next to my chair, just within reach, is a Victory Golden Monkey tripel ale, sweating silently. It's midday, Saturday, and it's no day to be riding. Not around here, anyway. Fine with me; this is the day to brew.

The barleywine I originally had in mind was, as I feared, a pipedream of sorts, as it would require a longer time in secondary and too much time aging in the bottle to be properly drinkable come Bliss time. So I went with a robust, fairly high gravity porter. The original name was going to be Procrastination Porter, in light of my circumstances and lifelong behavioral leanings. But that name left something to be desired in the machismo department, so I went with Profligate Porter. (Excuse me while I toss in some Centennial hop pellets. Ah, nothing like the smell of alpha-acid vapors escaping like outlaw spirits from a roiling pot of wort to lift one's mood on an otherwise dreary fall day. No, really.) Fifteen minutes from now, the Irish Moss will make its way into the mix, and after that, some Tettnanger hops to boost the aroma.

Damn, every year it's the same—I scramble to brew beer for my own event,¹ pressing my luck against time. One day I'll get organized, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. At least the drawing should be ready with plenty of time. "Should" being the operative word there.

Ah, well, here's the ingredients for my Profligate Porter, all five gallons of which are now sitting quietly in the primary and awaiting the feast of the yeast, likely commencing sometime in the midnight hour. (Yeah, I took a break between keystrokes to finish up.)

Profligate Porter

Golden Light Dried Malt Extract - 3 lbs
Two Row Pale Malt (crushed) - 16 oz
Crystal Malt (crushed) - 12 oz
Belgian Chocolate Malt (crushed) - 12 oz
Light Liquid Malt Extract - 4 lbs
Nugget hops (bittering) - 1 oz
Centennial hops (flavoring) - 1 oz
Tettnanger hops (aroma) - 1 oz
Tettnanger hops (dry-hop) - 1 oz
Safale S-04 dried ale yeast - 11.5 g (1 packet)
Irish moss - 1 tsp

OG - 1.078 (taken @ 70°F and adjusted)

By the way, if you're planning on attending the Bootlegger's Bliss on November 1st, be sure to shoot me an email (address revealed in this post) asap. In return, I'll reply sometime next week to let you know where it's being held. Fair enough, right?

Late edit: Just checked, and I've got some bubblin' in the airlock, five hours after pitching the yeast. It lives!

1. To be fair, the idea for the Bootlegger's Bliss first coalesced in a pub during a conversation with DmofoT a few years ago. He shares equal blame or credit for the genesis of this event, and, what's more, he's a much better brewer than me, the bastard! Unfortunately (for me), he packed up and left town for Massachusetts a couple years back and, well, it's hard to help from that far away

Cap and Trade - 3rd Annual Bootlegger's Bliss (Update)...

2008-09-24T09:37:00.023-04:00

"Live without dead time."
—graffiti, Paris, May 1968

Five weeks and counting down...

Looks like some folks have been busy at the brew kettle lately. Nice. My turn comes this Saturday, when I plan to bring together the necessary elements and ingredients to produce what I trust will become a nice barleywine. That's the plan right now, but I may change my mind after a visit to myLHBS this evening to wrangle supplies. (If you dwell in the DC-metro area, Derek of myLHBS is the man to see for all your brewing needs, including help with recipes and techniques.)

Okay, here’s where things stand on the Bootlegger's Bliss, layed out in order of importance.

First, registration. If you're coming to this little shindig, please do me the courtesy of telling me so now in an email:

BBpotlatch AT gmail DOT com¹

I'll reply back next week with all the details I'd rather not make public. Just a caveat: those who don't respond but plan on showing up risk missing out on a nice bit of largesse to be bestowed (limited basis) on the day of the event. You don't have to get all effusive with the prose in your email, but if you want to mention the style of beer and the type of food you plan to bring, along with who will accompany you, well, that's always welcome dope.

Next up, I’ve got two possible venues from which to choose, both in Maryland and both within an hour of DC. One is last year’s locale, a good one, to be sure, since it was fun for novice and vet alike, and an appropriated pavilion near the action was like a gift from Agathodaemon himself. The other potential venue is a well-known riding mecca, vast and sprawling in comparison, for which I’ve enlisted the help of one Jon Baler in isolating a nice 10- to 12-mile loop. Though the weather this weekend doesn't look promising, I hope to get out on Sunday and scout the route at venue option 2, then make a decision before Monday rolls around.

Lastly, the new Bliss artwork is underway. I’ve got several ideas, one of which is much further along in the execution than the others, but all are fair game at this point. Hope to have an inked, scanned image ready by Sunday evening. If successful, I’ll post a detail of it here. If unsuccessful, blame the beer.

That’s it for now. Happy brewing!

Photo credits: Pic 1, DC Tony; Pic 2, Alexafur; Pic 3, RickyD. Bottom pic is of Derek from myLHBS.

1. In case it isn't immediately clear, when drafting the email, please replace the "AT" with an at sign, and the "DOT" with a dot like the one at the end of this sentence. Capisci?

Autosuggestion...

2008-09-21T23:09:00.019-04:00

...leave it at home.

Tomorrow—the first day of fall—is Car-free Day in DC.

Seriously, it's one day...balls up a wee bit and leave that shit at home. The weather couldn't be better, Lady Nature will love you for it—as will your lagging metabolism—and who knows? You might just meet someone special out there on two wheels and experience a seedy assignation in the shifting shadows of a city park, as an early-autumn sun—sole witness to your unseemly behavior—slowly sinks unseen behind rooftops in the dusky distance. One can hope, right?

One thing's for sure, it ain't gonna happen with your ass planted firmly in a car seat, encased in glass like a piece of ancient pottery or a pinned specimen.

Now there's something to think about, yes?

Do something different. Be revolutionary. Be free.

Ride your bike.

Brews Cruise...

2008-09-15T21:11:00.028-04:00

"Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us."
—Guy Debord

Get your brew on. The Third Annual Bootlegger's Bliss will be launched upon an unsuspecting and largely uncaring world on SATYRDAY, NOVEMBER 1st. Information on registration and other event details will be posted soon.

In the meantime, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with this mid-Atlantic rolla-puh-brewza, I've resurrected below the official Maniblissto from a past post. For a broader understanding of the Bliss, go here.

The history of all hitherto existing cycling events is the history of competitive struggles. Not so with the Bliss.

The Bootlegger's Bliss is a social event, designed to bring together people who share (or are simply curious about) two seemingly disparate passions: homebrewing and mountain biking.

The Bliss is not a race. It does not suffer elitist competition. There are no medals, no podiums, no bragging rights, no prizes. No one's "in it to win it," as the dreadful cliché goes. No one trains for the Bliss. There are no "winners." Or—more precisely—everyone is a winner.

The Bliss is not a drinking contest. It does not suffer wanton drunkenness. It is a tasting, and if you don't know the difference between a tasting and a drinking contest, the Bliss is not for you.

The Bliss is about fun for fun's sake. It is the arrowhead forged in the smithy of the soul, honed in secret, dipped in curare, then trained on the heart of the ogre Boordumb. The lifeblood of the Bliss is participation. There are no spectators; everyone is equally a "criminal" and delights in it. Everyone rides, everyone tastes. Participants are encouraged to front their very best brew, in keeping with the concept of the potlatch, whereby prestige is gained not by amassing coveted property like some plutocratic piggy, but by giving it away.

Leave your money at home. The Bliss is not about commerce—quite the opposite, actually. Aside from the homebrew and homecooking you're asked to bring and share, the Bliss is a free event, generously and officially sponsored by Absolutely No One®. That's the point. From a philosophical perspective, the Bliss was conceived as a small step outside of commerce—a tick in the matted hide of mass-production—and as an appreciation of highly personal craftwork against the backdrop of some sweet singletrack. It's a celebration of use value, that immeasurable quality that fills the soul with a sort of natural, ineffable satisfaction too seldom felt in the cold void, the funereal absence, the blanched banality that clings to exchange value like stench to carrion.

As Raoul Vaneigem put it, "We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom."

— 23 September 2007 —
On a marginally related noted, who the hell knew? Sweet home, my ass.

Oh, and from the makers of Hedonism comes Hoptimus Prime. This double IPA from PA's Legacy Brewing Company is strong, sturdy, and deeply satisfying. A heavy lupulin payload (as the name suggests) produces a strong, grapefruit-rind bitterness through which the malt sweetness barely musters a trickle. If my buds don't decieve me, there's more than a smattering of Simcoe in the mix. Try you some.

On to the Great Gig in the Sky...

2008-09-15T12:56:00.005-04:00

Pink Floyd's Richard Wright dies at 65...

Damn.

Fillet-brazed Phoenix...

2008-09-03T22:13:00.020-04:00

...and a bow to some Belgians.

Picked up my frame a week ago from Tom. Damn, he did one helluva nice job setting up my Cross-check with new dropouts and rack spools. The quality and craftsmanship this guy brings to his work are unrivaled. Have a look at the pix and you'll see what I mean—the added bits appear to have grown right out of the frame. Top-notch, period. Tom seems to be the type of builder who treats each frame—be it a custom build or a repair job—as if it belonged to him, and the expertise and attention to detail shine through in the finished work. Can't wait to rebuild the Beast and get it back in the line-up.

After settling up with Tom, I managed to work in a short ride down to Fell's Point, along with biking demi-legend and semi-local man about town, David Blum, who met me at Palermo's shop near Baltimore.

Once there, we hit a food joint whose grill was down ("WTF?" you ask...yeah, me, too), but which managed to keep a steady stream of locally-famous Resurrection Ale flowing into our glasses. We chatted a while with a drunk and demented drifter, a Texas ex-pat, who sat down at our table to smoke, drawing us deeper and deeper into his personal padded cell with every adjective he uttered, before presenting us with a rambling handwritten manifesto of sorts that he swore was "it". Sadly, it wasn't. We wished him luck, settled up, then pedaled over historic cobblestones [injured shoulder and wrist telling me in painful (re)morse code¹ that it's not quite time] to a quiet little placed called Max's. Those of you cursed with a grotesquely overdeveloped (i.e., highly compensatory; more Athena than Priapus, get it?) cerebrum will be quick to imagine what took place within this hallowed establishment. For the rest of you, here it is, plain and simple: beer flowed, bullshit followed; both of the highest order.

Good times, Dave, thanks.

Speaking of life, beer, the escape from the former via the latter, and bikes, don't forget to mark your social calendar for the Third Annual Bootlegger's Bliss event, tentatively scheduled for Satyrday, November 1st, of this very same year. New artwork, new pint glasses, same old sots. More details to follow soon. Get brewing!

(This post unknowingly inspired by the fine folks of Brewery Het Anker, makers of Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor, the boldly bitter, bottle-fermented, beatific Belgian blond ale pot-de-fer that fired the neurons on a crooked trajectory from axon to dendrite to more or less get this post written. I salute you, oh faux friars from a faraway land...keep up the good work.)

1. (* - *) (* * -) (* * *) (- * -) and (* * * *) (* *) (* * -), to be exact (American Morse Code).