jody passed today. completely unexpectedly. out of nowhere. he went to the bridge.
he was the most chillest of chill cats. jody came to us from the shelter and fit right in right away. he put up with two kids and a dog hassling him. and now here and now we're all missing him and mourning him.
platform pedals. I prefer the molded pegs as opposed to the replaceable metal peg option for $10 more. Because these little plastic jobs are more than enough and those sharp metal studs tear the shit out of your shoes as well as your shins when you’re trying to Sheena Easton onto the train in the morning and you need to scramble for an available bike hook. If I wore orthopedic shoes all day or big work boots those metal studs would do the trick but I don’t so they won’t be on my bikes.
A little while back I refurbished a friend’s bike and reached into the magic milkcrate for a pair of platform pedals and there weren’t any. So I had to pluck a pair off one of my personal bikes and that set off a ripple in the used bike part continuum that I haven’t seen or felt for nearly 10 years. I used to be positioned well in a spot above Seattle’s underground aquifer of used bikes and bike part donations and I could just reach in for another heaping helping when the need arose. But I’m no longer in that position and I recently bought some brand new pedals at full retail price to put on my bike.
I’ve been pushing issi thumps at work on the electric assist bathtub for 14 months or so and I believe one sign of a good pedal is you no longer notice them. They seamlessly melt from your consciousness and become part of the big picture as one of the only points on the bike your body actually touches. Pedals make a difference and I really like these pedals.
icky thump
who'd a thunk? The White Stripes sixth and final studio album. I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating, I’m a Jack White fan. White Stripes, Raconteurs, Dead Weather, Jack White 220/221 whatever it takes. The fact that both these photos I poached this morning are black & white and read allover is no coincidence it just happened that way for reasons that may or may not reveal themselves later.
Felt a wave of nausea but it turned out to be a Fast Friday flashback on a Wednesday. Not that I’ve ever ridden a fixed gear more than a few laps around Marymoor or 150 feet on the fixed side of a flip-flop hub and nothing close to freestyle as in fixed. I do however ride single speeds all the time. Maybe that’s why my feelings were mistaken for nausea. I paused to take a photo of this bike not because I wanted to talk shit in some bike snob way but because of the Profile Design bottle cages tucked behind the saddle in an aero tri way aka there is some shit to talk but I’ll just leave it at the $229 MSRP. As I stood near the bike the owner stuck her head out the window and yelled "hey, what’s going on?" but not in a 4 Non Blondes way more in a what the fuck are you doing by my bike way. So I crossed the street and tried to explain my president emeritus status in the PDCHC with coffee or beer or water and why I took a photo but it was all kind of lost on her. She explained how she found the bike the day before on craigslist and was genuinely enthused about it which was really cool to see and made me smile. Sincerely for real. I said right on it’s so 2006. But she didn’t know what to make of that because she was probably in 3rd grade back then.
When you’re done thinking about the rear brake tucked beneath the chainstays please take a moment to take in the bigger big picture on this bike I refurbished at Bike Works in January of 2013 when I took a couple photos and posted this the first time. Then read down into the comments on that old post for another other chapter in the life of this bike.
The platform this site sits on is like an old shed with no foundation and a dirt floor so there’s no reason to sweep up and kick up a whole lot of shit. However it does allow me to see recent comments. When I saw the Prairie Breaker ones yesterday I had to dig deep to find the original post and it took me more than a minute to realize this guy wasn’t asking me if I want to sell my Shogun. He’s asking the guy that bought it at Bike Works in 2013. There’s 0.00% chance that the guy in Ballard would see his offer buried 7.67 years back in the archives. But now it’s a bit closer to the surface.
Put this up so many times in the last 14 years it’s approaching Wilson’s roasted chestnut Four Seasons Sonics cheerleader shot. Please take a moment to observe international messenger appreciation day as well as 87’s date of birth. Ten Nine Day.
The fax machine was supposed to kill off those guys 40 years ago. But a few hung on and those in the know know they’re still hanging on and I’m not talking Jimmy Johns or uber eats or fucking rad power bike Caviar bros. I’m talking bike messengers still rolling in cities around the world.
Like Tom Bice would say “You’re the one telling them how it is” then he’d smirk and roll his eyes so he’d actually be saying, you’re getting screwed. We want to think we’re in control in the driver’s seat in charge of something. As if we have a say in things. Maybe that’s true sometimes but it’s all in your mind. We all know some assholes that think it’s true for them all the time. It’s taking those assholes a bit longer to catch on.
Do me a favor and don’t do me any favors. If I want the light on I’ll turn it on and if I want it off I’ll turn it off. A big clunky toggle switch is great and the satisfying click accompanied by immediate results works for me. I can flip it with my elbow or coffee cup or beer can or whatever’s in my other hand. If I want to save energy I’ll turn the fucking light off. I don’t need six or eight choices with a timer or a thermostat or a bluetooth speaker. Just a light switch thank you. Goddamn kids get off my lawn.
This shot from 87 arrived with no words, no story, no nothing. It makes me think of a cookie sheet of stale Christmas cookies that nobody wanted in December and they’re still sitting around in the break room at work well into January festering and bringing up bad feelings or family history or some deep dark crusty shit no one wants to talk about. Bar ends were all the rage and everybody had to have them until they realized they didn’t and then they didn’t need their brake lever extensions or their 140mm stems.
Those in the know know that 87 can ride the shit out of a bike. Bar end brake lever extenders will always remind me of him rolling out a nose wheelie half way down the block feathering the front brake oh so gently until he arrived at the bike rack at 2101 or 1201 or wherever he happened to be locking up. He was riding an ABC work bike and had anodized brake lever extensions that matched his bar ends of course. I like to think that they were purple but 87 will correct me.
This shot from 37 came with a brief background note:
Ground found this little snap on 3/8" beauty by group health on capitol hill in 98 (I think) one of my all time favorites because it is small, so you can't really over torque the shit out of a 4mm Allen with it, it is quick to drive because of its size, it's a quality tool, and it has the previous owners name engraved on the side....
This cute little wrench makes me think of a lucky charm you keep in your pocket like a smooth river stone or a blown glass amulet. Doctor 37 is a surgeon and knows a thing or two about swinging tools around and the fact that he’s using a ground-score wrench 22 years later says something. Talk about palpable quality.
"A busman's holiday is free time a person spends in an activity that's much like what he does for a living"
Yesterday I took a little holiday. When I say holiday I mean I cashed in one hour of accrued vacation time and went home early and for a portion of that hour I took Junior Junior on a little cargo bike ride. When I say little I mean we spent as much time inflating the tires as we did on the bike.
It was a true busman’s holiday. I spent most of the day schlepping cases of hand sanitizer and amazon packages the final fifty fucking feet as well as actual USPS mail and interoffice envelopes. Then I spent a little free time schlepping the kid down the block and back.
Cargo bikes are heavy and Junior Junior just keeps getting bigger. On this brief little jaunt I found my left thumb reaching out for the throttle for a little boost from the electric assist I've grown accustomed to on the work bike but it's not there at home.
I wouldn’t ride the bike further than 50 feet with a 12oz can in the cup holder unless it was secured by a DANK coozie. This was just a matter of snapping a photo to pinpoint my position along the continuum to jot it down as I posted up to pound a beer under the overpass before boarding the next southbound train. As president emeritus of the PDCHC I will remind you that the Profile Design cup holder is ideal for roadmasters and tallboys in coozies as well as coffee in various containers. It will even hold water bottles if that’s what you’re into. I like coffee. I like beer. I don’t usually like the two at the same time. But I am a big fan of Bale Breaker and their beers. Stout isn’t usually my cup of tea but this can of dormancy was presented to me by someone in the know you see you may find yourself somewhere along the coffee-beer continuum and you may say to yourself this beer blurs the lines by including coffee am I transitioning seamlessly or just repeating repeatedly.
I’m looking forward to looking back on this shit. 2020 the year of the rat. throw in the wrench you know a towel in the gears. One morning last week rolling into work I spotted this wrench on the road and stopped to circle back and pick it up. Not that I really need another adjustable wrench but I’m not one to pass up any ground scores. I’m wearing some of these as we speak only because I found them on the road.
The 10” Milwaukee Adjustable Wrench now has a spot on the wall between baby bear, brother bear and papa bear. Probably won’t get much use swapping out the CO2 tank on the kegerator every 14 months or so. The quality of this wrench is palpable and it shines a light on brother bear’s low quality sandwiched between an actual Crescent Wrench and a Milwaukee. But brother bear isn’t going anywhere, he’s earned his spot on the wall.
The grass is always greener except when you’re at Boise State or Eastern Washington.
The grass is greener on the other side of the fence except on the north side of the house where the neighbor pours out slabs of cement to smother out every living thing and make it easier for her to sweep up obsessively compulsively constantly. are you fucking kidding me?
The grass is greener in March than it is in August.
The grass is greener at Augusta because they paint it that way.
The grass is greener in Seattle than it is in Spokane unless you’re talking about the cost of living then it’s the other way around.
The grass is greener in the haze of phantom nostalgia syndrome.
Recently Junior gave me some sheets of business cards pre-perforated to feed into an inkjet printer. I silkscreened on them and wrote some notes on the back then broke them up into pieces and mailed them out to people around the country. Steve put in the time and dedication to reassemble his elaborate 10-piece puzzle and took this photo as proof.
