bilateral mandibular tori
August 9, 2022

This time it’s for real. The letters are not just microsoft paint’d on there They’re silk screened onto the wood next to the crow, who is spray painted. Junior and Junior Junior haven’t noticed yet. But they will. When they do, they’ll ask “why dad?”
Because it brings me joy. And it’s facing the garage so 99 out of 100 passers by will not even see it there on the south side of Little Free Library charter #100780

The medium via which literature travels is part of the meaning that occurs. A book beholds you, is very patient and really there with you on a hill or under a blanket or in the tub. The book itself is not trying to absorb and reflect and grab you.
–Jason Zuzga, FENCE
read a book
read a book
read a motherfuckin book
--Bomani Armah
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what day is it?
August 8, 2022

rainbow photo bro
birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, reunions, traffic back ups, lake washington shit shows, drunk pirates, environmental impact statements, canned beverages on ice, unlimited hydroplanes, dead baby bikes, blue angels, souvenir water bottles
I don't know
I wasn't there
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long story short
August 6, 2022

Visualize a room full of cocky PhDs, smug engineers and self-important designers with multiple decades of combined experience, gathering around a conference room table to take another whack at imitating something that has existed in nature since the beginning of time.
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1.5 degrees of Adam Smith
August 5, 2022

Toothaker photo
Found a moment today in my hectic schedule to meet Toothaker at Recycled Cycles for a coffee break when it occurred to me, that if you ride a bike, you can’t swing a stick at Recycled without hitting someone you used to know, someone you used to work with or someone you still work with.
Look over there (where?)
There, there's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told
We’re all within 1.5 degrees of Adam Smith, the guy that corrected me when I put out that dickstank featuring Justin Moe and Tyler Goldsmith, both PM legal vets.
Adam said, “it’s more like 2 degrees of PM Legal”
Please note J. Moe’s Recycled jersey.
same as it ever was ± 23 years

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the messenger brought me a letter
August 4, 2022
free parking
August 2, 2022
out of context
August 2, 2022

taken out of context
and
put back in
again
one more time
around
SPECIAL
Today Only!
entropy smoothies FREE!
(one per customer)
you’ll pay for it later
forget about it
cover up
built up
stacked up
pancake makeup
structural spackle
slathered on with a paddle
you might know
one of Shawn Kemp’s cousins
but we’re not talking Reign Man
we’re talking Rain Man
one minute to Wapner
get off his line
pedestrians perambulate
pedantic persnickety perfectionists
pettifogging petty little shits
he’s the one
telling you
how it is
I’m walking here!
same actor different movie
coo coo ca choo
Mrs Robinson
Is it safe?
Is it safe?

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today's my Friday
July 29, 2022
greater than the sum of its parts
July 28, 2022

Slapped this bike together six or seven years ago while working at a small nonprofit bike shop where I had my hands in a never ending stream of incoming bike donations. It was to be my next-next RAGBRAI bike.
The giant traveling circus known as RAGBRAI is making its way from West to East across Iowa as we speak. Last time I did it, in 2017, I shipped this bike out to Jimbo’s house. At the end of the ride I put the bike on Mr. Mader’s bus, unsure of when or if I’d see it again. Then I hopped in a car with Watson to get a ride to Chicago and then O’hare.
Jimbo used to let me leave my bike in his attic and it saved me tons of money on shipping a bike back and forth to Iowa. If I ever do RAGBRAI again, in the name of participant observation, it’ll be mostly observation. I’ll be on a barstool or under a tree in the shade with a beer. Maybe I’ll rent a skeet. Although I already have 4 bikes here, there are a few reasons I want that bike back.
A couple years ago I was planning to return to Iowa for a college reunion and I asked Jimbo if he could grab the bike from Mader’s garage and schlepp it back to Grinnell so I could ride it around town. Then I planned to drop it at Bikes 2 You and ship it back to Seattle. However, a little global pandemic set in and shut all that shit down until further notice.
Several weeks ago I emailed Jimbo and Chris Murray, two of the best logistics and supply chain experts I know, and asked them how I could get in touch with Mr. Mader so I could try to get that bike back to Seattle somehow. There was no response from Chris and Jimbo said “I thought you sold that bike” and I kind of lost hope.
AND THEN on Saturday, the eve of RAGBRAI Chris texted me “does this look familiar?”

He cooked up an elaborate rescue mission to extricate the bike from Iowa and get it back to Portland with the help of Mader and a woman named Andrea. I don’t really know the details yet, but I do know that PDX is a lot closer than a garage in the middle of Iowa. And I said “sweeeeet” thumbs up emoji.
A few days later Chris texted to ask if Colorado Chris could ride the bike and finish RAGBRAI because his bike had some serious mechanical issues. And I said “YES” hell yes.
He changed the tires, put on his clipless pedals and rode on across Iowa. Here’s Colorado Chris and the bike with RAGBRAI Director of Operations Matt Phippen.

The bike is nothing really crazy special, but I like it. It’s greater than the sum of its parts. It’s done one RAGBRAI and now it’s dusted off and working on RAGBRAI #2.
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what are you looking at?
July 26, 2022

if you're not sure
whether something is bullshit
it's bullshit
-Rolf Dobelli
One of the only resources you have control over is your focus, where you choose to direct your attention.
instagram, fashion trends, electric scooters, local news, interest rates, weather forecasts, the rat race, gravel bikes, trade deadlines, bullshit blogs about bullshit.
Like Sturgeon said 90% of it all, is crap.
what are you looking at?
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* you are here
July 26, 2022
hi poop
July 24, 2022


same shit different year
2008 2016 2024?
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what's that sound?
July 22, 2022

sitting down I feel like stopping
that’s the sound of tall cans popping
the economy, it’s not slowing
that disparity is growing
I cannot bust out cheesy rhyming couplets like this without evoking the psychedelic paddle boat trip through the tunnel where Willy Wonka loses his shit and the kids are trying to keep it together for an everlasting gobstopper…
There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing
Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a–blowing
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a–glowing
Is the grisly reaper mowing
Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing.
–Roald Dahl
Dahl wrote some crazy stuff that was not for kids. And some of his stuff for kids was not really for kids.
“the snozberries taste like snozberries”
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two great tastes that taste great together
July 21, 2022

“You got your chocolate in my peanut butter”
“You got peanut butter on my chocolate”
Way way back a week or so ago, I was aware of Rachel Kushner in a Flame Throwers way, as well as some of her short stories. and I was aware of William Eggleston in a Memphis tricycle way. But reading this New Yorker fiction was a peanut-butter-cup-combo for me.
I see an old picture frame and I want to paint it black. Tearing this page out of the New Yorker is as close as I’ll ever get to an Eggleston.
Kushner ties in the photo in more ways than one. She talks about the story too, bringing a few more layers to it.
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paint it black hole sun
July 20, 2022

"still life with tall can"
light - shadow - overspray
I see the girls walk by
dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
until my darkness goes
I see some plywood and I want to paint it black
I see a cute little plywood rectangle with a perfect donut hole perched just so in the College of Built Environment’s scrap pile
I see it fits neatly into my back pocket
I see that it would look better black
I see some overspray on the OSB as a commentary on negative space
I see the afternoon sun shining just so - so black hole sun
I see it all in the side of a tall can as I sit in a sawed-off lawn chair sweating the day away
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practicality isn't the whole thing
July 19, 2022

I care about these moldy old riding gloves. I smile at them flying through the breeze beside me because they have been there for so many years and are so old and so tired and so rotten there is something kind of humorous about them. They have become filled with oil and sweat and dirt and spattered bugs and now when I set them down on a table, even when they are not cold, they won’t stay flat. They’ve got a memory of their own. They cost only three dollars and have been restitched so many times it is getting impossible to repair them, yet I take a lot of time and pains to do it anyway because I can’t imagine any new pair taking their place. That is impractical, but practicality isn’t the whole thing with gloves or with anything else.
The machine itself receives some of the same feelings. With over 27,000 on it it’s getting to be something of a high-miler, an old-timer, although there are plenty of older ones running. But over the miles, and I think most cyclists will agree with this, you pick up certain feelings about an individual machine that are unique for that individual machine and no other. A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year brought it over for repair, and when I test rode it afterward it was hard to believe it had come from the same factory years ago. You could see that long ago it had settled into its own kind of feel and ride and sound, completely different from mine. No worse, but different.
I suppose you could call that a personality. Each machine has its own unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers and depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends. This one, despite the murderous treatment it got at the hands of those alleged mechanics, seems to have recovered and has been requiring fewer and fewer repairs as time goes on.
-Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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morning star
July 19, 2022
spring summer winter never
July 18, 2022

Ass are as thick as
a kid’s brown full love
kill off light
red clouds
dead heavy
blue-berryly
to my secret trunk
up a tree in flower
on fresh yard
only water path
for hot condition
weed pot stem
rain explode
like plant sprout
will shine
then protect yellow hole
are moss song ground
see soil stroll
color is thrive
vegetable this do green
rustle fall
work in shade
bug burst firm
him relax
spring summer winter never
out roll eat breathe
plot come from leave
morning night between
--Junior Junior 7/17/22

Yesterday Junior Junior sat down on a skateboard and wrote a little ditty on the fridge in magnetic words. He was deep in focus, really into it, until he wasn’t. Then he was all done and he read it to me.
I’ve edited a bit to get it closer to the way he said it and it took three or four tries to transcribe it all.
word
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thusness
July 13, 2022

we now join our regular route
already in progress
retrospective recollection
reflecting on the reflection
rose tinted photochromic lenses
the-good-old-days is so 2019
it fits neatly in the narrative
repeat after me
authenticity for real really
saw it on instagram
missed the wedding/graduation/funeral
watching it unfold through a camera lens
call it off the glass
call it what you will
nomenclature taxonomy
is a rose a rose?
I don’t know
you tell me




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what's it all about?
July 12, 2022

it’s not about the bike
you do the hokey pokey
you turn yourself around
that’s what it’s all about
whatever the question
the answer is
ask more questions
carrier—
leave
if no response
single-handedly
slowing the economy
one tall can at a time
take another look at the
environmental impact statement
the price of gas in Canada
over promising
under delivering
talk-the-talk talking
the story
you’re telling yourself
to deal with not dealing
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the cold beer zone.
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