A wise woman once said, “there’s more than one way to get to Safeway.” My local store recently had Rainier 12-packs at $13.99 and Rainier 18-packs at $14.99. What’s a man to do? What would you do? What do you think I did?
At a very large family gathering on Thanksgiving in Grays Harbor County there was a hosted bar. When I made my way through the line I said, “I’d like a beer please” and the host said, “we have Coors Light and Rainier.” What’s a man to do? What would you do? What do you think I did? On my third trip to the bar, the host pointed at the cooler and said “dig in, just help yourself.” Of the 120 people in attendance I believe I was the only person drinking Rainier and I did my due diligence, chipping away at a couple cases of cans in the cooler. You know 3 little Rainiers is less than one big IPA.
Another other weekend I took Junior-Junior & friend to a UW Basketball game. After I set them up with concessions I got in the beer line for an over-overpriced tall can of IPA. When I got to the cashier she asked for ID, then not even looking at my date of birth, she eyed the ID photo then me then back to the ID and said, “the haircut’s not cutting it…” I said nothing and then she said “my husband started going bald when he was 19” Nearly two weeks later I’m still not exactly sure what’s up with the haircut, cutting it or not cutting it.
I met a non-dairy creamer Explicitly laid out like a fruitcake With a wet spot Bigger than a great lake Took me to the new church And baptized me with salt She told me, "liquor" I am a new man
Hot freaks
This one is on the house This one is better than ever
I walked into the house of miraculous recovery And stood before king everything And he asked me to join him in the red wing Took me to pie land Said, "I'm a thigh man" I will be eternally hateful
Hot freaks Hot freaks Hot freaks
This one is on the house This one is better than ever And this one is on the house This one is better than ever This one is on the house This one is better than ever
Over the past seven to ten days I was nonchalantly perusing these two books. The Dirt, Motley Crue’s autobiography and God is Dead, a Frank Vandenbroucke biography.
Here and there. Now and then. One or the other or both. With coffee or beer or both in one hand or the other. Then the Turkey Day holiday gave me some extra down time and VDB went on a breakaway where I plowed through the final 200 pages of Andy McGrath’s book.
The Motley Crue book is amusing and dumbfounding. Crazy tales of crazy things leaving me wondering how they survived it all.
The VDB book is not so amusing but sort of astounding. Crazy tales of crazy things leaving me wondering how Vandenbroucke survived it all as long as he did.
Andy McGrath did an amazing job on this book. Travelling all over the place and interviewing over 60 people to put it all together. Family, friends, teammates, managers, journalists, doctors, therapists, bartenders and people who knew Frank Vandenbroucke. Many of those people wondered why he was working so hard on another book about VDB when there were already several out there.
In the final ten years of his life VDB was in the news for his transgressions, doping, car accidents, legal troubles and marriage problems. Very little media coverage of bike racing success because there was little to speak of.
Early on in my reading both of these books I arrived upon an excessive-excess common theme. Then yesterday I read on page 219 of the VDB book where McGrath talks of overly hungry aggressive inconsiderate cycling journalists:
their often legitimate argument would be that they were also feeding a rampant public interest. People wanted to read all about it; nothing succeeds like excess.
inexplicable excessively excessive excess
A former teammate-friend of Vandenbroucke said in the book that only about ten people knew Frank, but thousands thought they knew the rock star VDB.
VDB refused to train or race with a cycling computer. He said all those numbers just got in the way. That made me smile. He was a real badass with amazing physical gifts and talents.
As a messenger I had a cycling computer for a few weeks. Then I chucked it. The numbers just pissed me off. Miles. Miles. Miles. And nothing to show for it, at least in a bottom line dollars per mile way.
As a mechanic at Bike Works I had a bucket full of cycling computers chucked in one at a time, one refurbished old bike with an old computer at a time. Some of them made it onto the “artwork” you see in these photos.
I highly recommend this book. Molly Foster has spoken for my copy, but when she’s done with it, maybe she’ll give it to you. Or you can buy your own on eBay.
I am not now, nor have I ever been much of a Mötley Crüe fan. I’ve learned more than I wanted to know about the members of the band from this book which I wasn’t looking for. It found me in the little free library and I almost chucked it back, but I couldn’t put it down.
Here and now I was looking for this VDB book and I bought it on eBay. But I will say that when Frank Vandenbroucke was kicking ass over in Europe in the late 90s, I wasn’t really paying attention to pro bike racing. I was a bike messenger and I thought I knew a lot about bicycles.
I’m going way way out on a limb here claiming to be the only person on earth that’s reading these two books at the same time. A chapter here. A chapter there. Bouncing back & forth. Connecting dots between the two. Noting common themes: sex, drugs and bicycles. Plenty of drugs. Drugs, drugs, drugs and alcohol too. EPO and heroin. Cocaine and EPO. Growth hormones, steroids, testosterone, amphetamines, morphine, clenbuterol, alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. Sleeping pills and alcohol. Excessively excessive excess. Self destruction. Eyebrows and hairstyles. Hair spray. Pyrotechnics. Car accidents.
Pointing to inexplicable parallels.
Talking in time lines:
1978
VDB was 4 years old and out on a bike ride when he was hit by a car. The collision left permanent damage to his knee after multiple surgeries.
Mötley Crüe was three years away from becoming a band in Hollywood.
I was in Mrs Grier’s 3rd grade at Audubon Elementary School and riding a Blue Schwinn Stingray.
1994
VDB was a pro at age 19 with Lotto turning heads winning big races
Mötley Crüe released their sixth album and Tommy Lee was somewhere between Heather Locklear and Pamela Anderson.
I was working at Whatcom Pathology Lab in Bellingham. A car courier driving all over Whatcom County, schlepping lab reports, pap smears, urine samples, blood, various biohazards and body parts. I was riding a GT Continuum on 700d wheels. That's a 587 BSD. No joke.
2001
VDB was into a stretch of disappointment. Unable to match the phenomenal success he achieved in the late 90s, he bounced between teams and had various setbacks, legal problems, drug problems, marital problems and suicide attempts.
Mötley Crüe released their autobiography The Dirt which would then become a 2019 Netflix rockumentary.
I was between legal messenger jobs, working for a remodeling contractor. I thought you said you’d never forget.
it’s hard to put a finger on but I know it when I see it
If I really did pull the plug on this site in 2012 and all I had to look back on was a few 3-ring binders full of paper print outs, it wouldn’t be the same. The photos of photos cut & pasted onto cardboard and dropped in the mail are inspiring me to go back and find the photos in the archives and hold them up side by side, back to back, end to end, top to bottom. Seeing things in a new way. Retrospect. Nostalgia. A crusty old man complaining about the price of coffee…
This photo is just about almost exactly 18 years old. That’s my cat Brad. He passed away 15 years ago. I sold that RB-2 to Brian O’niell shortly after that and he promptly stacked it up and destroyed the frame. But that top tube pad is still rolling, evoking fond memories of Mama’s Mexican Kitchen in a cheap festive tablecloth Belltown yesteryear kind of way. I’m not sure of the story of how those guys at DANK bags got their hands on this material. But it always reminds me of Mama’s and an Elvis burrito in the Elvis room with plenty of beer to wash it all down.
I wasn’t setting out to build a Nick Blades postcard triptych. It just worked out that way. A pattern emerging from the phantom nostalgia static.
Made one last week. And two more today. Then the triptych spoke to me, saying “one plus one plus one is three” and “take a picture it’ll last longer” A photo of a photo of a photo is a postcard somewhere in there.
Then I looked up Mr Nick Blades. As you may or may not know: baby’s in Reno with the vitamin D. In my nostalgia daze I forget that not everyone knows Nick Blades. And not everyone knows that Nick is Greg Lemond's nephew.
I’m going to mail the framed flip-off photo to Blades himself.
The Colonnades Blades & bike chatting up Buttercup will be mailed to Mr Wheel Fanatyk Ric Hjertberg. Because Ric knows Greg Lemond and it’s a small world afterall. It’s a small small world. Sincerely for real. Really.
The Blades seated at Monorail will be mailed to Ali because that’s 25 stage-left standing by near his Merckx eating noodles with chopsticks.
Yesterday I read in the NY Times about David Szalay’s book Flesh winning the Booker Prize. Then I checked the local library where I would be #397 in line if I wanted to put it on hold. And then I visited my local bookstore, bought myself a book and jumped on the Booker Prize bandwagon. Dumping some money into the local economy on something besides coffee and beer... ...books.
The University Bookstore is the largest and oldest independent bookstore in the state of Washington. Founded in 1900. The bookstore side of the operation is now run by Barnes & Noble. But the good news is it actually looks like a real bookstore again. Two full floors of books, fully racked, fully stocked, fully stacked.
read a book,
read a book,
read a Booker winning book
Today I was admiring this VDB graphic by Snake Hawk via Drunk Cyclist from 2009. It appealed to me then and still speaks to me now, inspiring me to reflect on VDB’s career and read a bit more about him. Which led me to this book. This time I didn’t even check the library. I went straight to eBay and bought a used one for $7.50
One of these kids is doing his own thing but 4 out of 5 of the recipients for today’s batch of phantom nostalgia syndrome postcards worked at ABC for at least a portion of their messenger careers:
Matt Face
Toothaker
Justin Littell
Jeffrey L. Kidder
Five out of twelve of the humans found in these old photos also worked at ABC. 5 of the 12 were Sonics Cheerleaders. The Venn diagram gets a bit more complicated. All four of the ABC cards were notarized. Not with some half-ass rubber stamp, but with my first-tour notary full-on fully embossed crimped crimps crimping gold seals just right in and for the State of Washington residing in Seattle almost exactly 23 years expired.
Go figure.
ABC Legal was not my intended theme this morning, however the pattern emerged from the static.
Much like Nathan Blum describes themes in his writing:
“To say that these patterns are “unintentional” seems wrong; a better word might be “emergent.” And emerge they did. When I read back, it appears that I could not for the life of me keep them down.”
Pulling a printed-on-paper photo from the archives inspired me to dig up the digital original as well as create a new digital copy of the printed paper copy. A photo of a photo of a photo of a photo. Full circle 3.5 times around clockwise plus or minus 18 years.
We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files
At UW Surplus last week I got a pack of Pushkin Portrait Postcards. Only one brick short of a load: fifteen out of sixteen original oversized postcards printed in the USSR in 1987, for 50 cents. Are you fucking kidding me? What a deal. I can’t say I knew anything about Pushkin last week. Now a week later I can say I know a very little small miniscule amount. But these cards are inspiring me to learn more about this Russian dude. I encourage you to read the wiki page description of how he died. I won’t spoil the story for you.
And a few days ago this Proust book jumped into my hands out of the little free library. I’m only 17% into it so far but it’s a great one. I recommend it to you. Sort of a self-help book. A tool to gain appreciation for everyday life as well as everyday books you’re reading. It beats the hell out of slogging through all 4,215 pages of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
I don't pay much attention to cars. But this van parked across from Recycled Cycles got my attention, calling out to the Matchbox Car collector kid in me
My doctoral thesis research continues. Ongoing over the past 35 years, consistently inconsistent, sporadically sporadic. Here & there. Now & then. Once in a while clues can be found in the archives of this here site. But most of the time I’ll make a mental note of it, then forget about it. Write it down on a scrap of paper only to wad up my gum and chuck it. Once in a while I get the feeling I’m forgetting something. Then I remember. I forgot something. But I can’t remember what it was. Repeat as needed.
The working title is “Same Shit Different Day”
If anyone ever asked, I’d describe it as an interdisciplinary potpourri mishmash blend of anthropology, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, human centered design, statistics, poetry, historic nonfiction, mathematics, geography, art history, utility cycling, physics, chemistry, dark coffee and craft beer.
The gist of it is: I’m compiling data in an attempt to quantify the number of variables that must fall into place for me to see the same things each day at nearly the exact same times.
The same asshole driver, the same bike commuter, the same dude on the train with the e-scooter, the same coffee shop customer with the foo-foo drink order, the same regular on the corner stool at the bar with his guide dog watching me stroll in like clockwork at 3:33.
It’s the traveling salesman problem playing out in real time, one more time, time after time. Day after day. Groundhog Day.
wonderful
wonderful
wonderful
gold star for robot boy
To quantify the unquantifiable ::: aye, there’s the rub. Decimal places. Percentage points. Probabilities. Put that in a pie chart and smoke it. Boil it down into a clean Venn diagram. Blow it up to poster-size and present it in the conference room to the dissertation committee. Oh and by the way, that committee, they were never there to begin with and if they were, they’ve long since moved on, retired or passed away.
The Jaguars’ Cam Little kicked an NFL-record 68 yard field goal yesterday. It’d be a lot cooler if it was six-seven.
He also hit one from 70 in preseason, but the rules say those don’t count.
Justin Tucker held the previous record of 66 when his kick barely doinked over the crossbar back in 2021. Little’s kick yesterday looked good from 70+.
Tom Dempsey kicked a 63 yarder in 1970. It was equaled six times over the following 40 years but unsurpassed until 2013 when Matt Prater hit a 64 yarder. I believe the records will be stacking up faster than ever.
The 68 record may be broken this season. The NFL recently lightened up their restrictions on kicking balls. So each individual placekicker and punter can doctor up their own balls, break them in and juice them up and do what they want to them. Even if it’s all psychosomatic, the placebo effect is measurable. Put that on a postcard and mail it from 69 yards out.
This batch of phantom nostalgia postcards really got my goat in a good way this fall-back Sunday morning. Before the glue was dry the silkscreen was applied. Now I’m watching paint dry atop the glue. When the smoke clears, I’ll slap a stamp on one and mail it to you and you two too.
