a quality of life issue

Yesterday I delivered a shovel to Life Sciences which was a 5 minute jaunt but it reminded me of the guy that took the photo below, the guy that rides around town with a shovel and a rake, a hori hori and a pair of gloves. But the real highlight of the ride was Patsy Swayze. G&O has nicknames for the electric assist getups on the bikes they build. The fleet we’ve had features the Merce Cunningham which is based on the EZ front hub motor. And now we have two new bikes featuring the Patsy Swayze built around the GMAC rear hub motor from GRIN Technologies. This thing kicks ass. It’s powerful and ideal for hauling heavy cargo with the regenerative braking. Coasting down hill you’re actually pumping juice back into the battery and not burning through brake pads every two weeks.  It was designed by gear heads and bike geeks that actually get outside and ride. Not by a bunch of chuffers sitting at a conference room table discussing trends in the bike industry.  

one of these custom made caps not hats you've seen on instagram made its way into my zipcode and soon packs of them will be making their way across Iowa from west to east 

another installment in the sad Mad Fiber saga

The people who went down from above and up from below and down from above and up from below are the people who did not go up from below nor down from above nor up from below nor down from above. 

by Yi Sang 

Excuse me, do you know your way around campus or are you just a delivery guy? 

I'm not sure what you're going to ask me next but I already know that if I do know the answer I don't really want to tell you or talk to you or help you out. 

In dense urban areas bike messengers are rolling Thomas Guides full of local knowledge but they're also magnets for stupid questions from tourists and bros.  And when the questions are loaded with attitude and condescension it's best to just say "I don't know" 

I even made a silkscreen 13 years ago and printed it right on my bag.  I don't know

I do know that Tapatio will always remind me of Stevil, even when it's in individually wrapped single serving sized containers and that this is more than I ever wanted to know about Pantone 18-3737

Entitled millennials on their devices

Entitled millennials on their way to work, late

Entitled millennials on the elevator

Entitled millennials on the escalator

Entitled millennials on the light rail

Entitled millennials on the curb waiting for their uber

Entitled millennials on lime bikes

Entitled millennials on a different axis of rotation

stumbled upon this book at the library and I like it enough to suggest it to you if you're into writing and words and introspection and the petty details of everyday life and the ways that it all inspires bigger questions 

You can slowly feed it into a fax machine if you could find one that works but whatever comes out on the other end won’t pay the rent. 

You can transfer money instantly with PayPal but there’s no money in your account. 

You can download the app but Erica can’t handle a bag of cash. 

You can talk for hours about cryptocurrency but it’s all horseshit. 

You can call a bike messenger. 

sunny day idea

buy a bicycle

ride it once

just this once

pro hac vice

twenty years later

it's another donation

nonprofit bike shop

upright comfort hybrid

adjustable stem stuck

grip shift pieceofshit

blownout front suspension

stepthrough aluminum nightmare

An ode to Bike Works this is and all those other nonprofit bike shops out there asking for donations. I’m not a yourbikesucks shit talker unless you can’t keep it out of my face and your bike really does suck, then I will gladly point it out. I have pulled 10000 donated bikes out of dumpsters and rolled them, bike trailered them and driven them in trucks and vans back to base as well as walked them from the Ferdinand fence over to Hudson Street on repeat repeatedly so I feel like I earned the right to talk shit about adjustable stems and blown out front suspension of disbelief. An upright comfort hybrid doesn’t speak to me the way it did to its original owner. Seattle sits on an aquifer of cycling, which is great because the donations roll in. However, while the board of directors is bragging about bike donations the foot soldiers are out there diving into dumpsters full of tangled piles of rusty shitty bikes extracting them one by one and it kinda sucks sometimes.  I have a great deal of respect for those that continue to work in small nonprofit bike shops. 

There’s a brief stretch of time in June between the end of spring quarter and the start of summer quarter when 30,000 undergraduates disappear from the habitrails in and around the education factory and a fellow government worker refers to this as the most wonderful time of the year.

If you’ve looked at this page here once or twice over the past 12 years you probably know that I cannot string most-wonderful-time together in a sentence without visualizing Toni Braxton in a red turtleneck. If you’re having trouble seeing what I’m seeing this will help.

Found this rock near the Meany loading dock and it says I should post a photo on the Yakima Valley Rocks facebook page. But I don’t do facebook.

Plausible deniability grows on trees in Rainier Beach and the trees grow well down there on the edge of Skyway. Sally took this photo of a beautiful sunset in early June and I cropped a couple characters out of it but that’s another story and maybe you already saw it all on instagram. I know an attorney at Perkins Coie and she can comment further on the importance of hand position and a proper toe point but that’s yet another story. That’s me in the corner bracing for impact focusing on my beer in the  OH NO  5 - 0  mug that was presented to me earlier that evening. The mug was still in that same spot the next morning full of beer so perhaps I just set it down and walked away only to forget where I put my beer so let’s just say I have no recollection of the events in question and therefore I can neither confirm nor deny any allegations.

how the hell'd we get here?

how the hell did we get here?  

it's the same on the weekend as the rest of the days except the seamless transitions along the coffee-beer continuum occur at slightly different times as today is my Saturday but yesterday was my Friday

I stumbled upon an 18-8 stainless steel double wall vacuum sealed spill proof coffee cup designed in Montana (made in China) at a thriftstore for a small fraction of the MSRP and then when I stuck this sticker on it became a throwback that fits fine in the Profile Design cup holder holding hot things hotter and cold things colder longer just don't ask me about #vanlife fucking horseshit photos of coffee cups and french presses in the woods

same coozie different year. long story short the coozie came home after 10 years and countless cans of beer. 

same shirt different decade

I've had a cargo bike at home for 8 years and I've resisted the electric assist trend because I really like simplicity and also because I don't ride it very much at all in 2019. I'm very happy I did not choose an electric get-up back in 2011 because by now it would be so outdated I'd have to upgrade two or three more times to keep up with the technology if I was the kind of person that felt like they needed to keep up with trends and technology. My plan is to keep on keeping it simple going with the go slow grocery getter powered by a 1 x 8 drivetrain with pedals pushed by my feet. 

the future on the work cargo bike front looks like a GMAC rear hub motor from GRIN.   I can tell you more about it when I know more about it.  But I can tell you that the electric assist is an essential part of the job as a nonessential government worker

17 years ago this advertising insert was printed in an issue of kickstand

manufactured authenticity is still fake as fuck   

it's the same as it ever was but the prices don't seem so outlandish in 2019