heat stroke

I managed to do two out of the three events that I was planning on for the weekend. I did the SCUL mission, which was kinda a dud, but enjoyable enough. Then, on Sunday, I went to the Lars Anderson Bike Show, which is chock full of stuff I couldn't care less about. It's mostsly collectable parts and fance expensive old bikes that I just can't work myself up for. Fortunately, there were plenty of cool folks to hang out with, and I got some white kids tires to stick on my SCUL bike that I've been working on. As I was leaving, there were a couple of boxes of free stuff that I was happy to sift through and I grabbed a bunch of random things which struck me as good material for some art, so it wasn't a complete bust. Which is good, because I seemed to have destroyed my body riding in all this heat. I knew it was bad when Mr. MP7, who's been pretty much ignoring me lately, kept coming up to my room to check on me to see if I needed anything. He even brought me a bag o' ice to cool me down. It's bad enough that I'm thinking of taking the T into MassBike today.

This week promises to be at least as busy as last week, and Tim, big guy at MassBike is off to do some campaigning for some politician in Pennsysvania or something, so I get to be in charge of the office for a bit. Oooooh!

bikes, bikes, and more bikes

Yeah, I'm busy these days. Finding a new roommate, planning two count 'em two working vacations for September, working on a bunch of amazing projects for MassBike, trying to avoid being grumpy with Mr. MP7, and reading Neil Gaiman's latest book, "American Gods" has been keeping me busy.

This site's apparently back in Google's search list. I hadn't gotten any hits from search engines in a very, very long time, but I seem to be getting them again. I just got one person from New Zealand looking for pictures of eye cataracts. Funny thing is, they actually hung around for a bit and browsed. (Do they know something I don't?)

So, speaking of my vacations, I'm going to be in Minnesota during the Minnesota State fair. My buddy Tim wants me to check out the rodeo, but I pointed out that they do some nasty S&M stuff to the poor bulls to get them to act the way they do, so no rodeo for me. But blooming onions, carny games, and fast spinny rides sound good to me. I wonder how far away the fair is from St Paul...

exorcise

I can't sleep. Too many demons running around in my brain tonight. I'll see if I can exorcise them here.

Rafi - I dated a guy (a boy really) once, a beautiful boy, who was a street musician from Isreal. He had gotten out of the manditory Isreali service by claiming that he was a heroin addict.

There really is no more to the story. It just seemed like that information wanted to be let out.

Nader - I watched Bill Moyer's "Now" show this evening , and my buddy Ralph was on. Seeing him makes me sad now. He just reminds me of how horrible a country the US is - a country that believes that might makes right, and that greediness is next to godliness. During the interview, Moyers read a whole slew of whiny, accusatory letters to Nader, which pretty much regurgitated the same old crap about third parties messing it up for the "good" old boys (the democrats, of course). These people are even more annoying than the republicans. These people are like the ten year old kid on the playground who gets beaten up by the 13 year old bully (who got held back a couple of years), and when the 10 year old stops crying he then turns around and kicks sand in the 5 year old's face, in order to save face in front of the girls. Anyway, at the very end of the interview, Moyers reads a letter praising Nader for his neverending quest to bring real fairness to our world. The letter also asked Nader how he is able to find the strength to keep fighting the inhuman giants, and Nader's response was so matter of fact that it made me cry: "because the alternative is worse." And it's true. That's why we continue to fight, even though we are up against the almost insurmountable enemy of human greed and ignorance, because there simply is no choice in the matter.

Mr. MP7 - Eh. I don't know whether this happens to other people, or if it's just a symptom of being me, but I tend to find these people who are, at first, incredibly interested in me, and lavish me with attention and warm fuzzies. But then, almost immediately, their little inner lightbulb goes off and Poof! all the good stuff disappears. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with what I'm doing. Mr. MP7 went from being the most flirtatious person I'd ever encountered (and a really cool buddy to have philosophical debates with), to being, well, cordial I guess is the best word for it. Is it a guy thing? You know, turn on the mojo first, ask questions later? Or what? I keep getting sucked into these people, and then being left with a kind of empty feeling in my lower intestine when they change their minds about me.

Soulmate - You know, I'm not a big believer in the idea of a soulmate - one person in the whole world who truly completes you - its just too wishy washy for the Vulcan blood in me. But I do know that out of all the people I've met, there's been only one who was really someone who made me a better person, and who really understood me and all that traditional soulmate crap. But, alas, he didn't want me. I scared him off like I do with 'em all. What's interesting, though, is that I don't even know if he knows how important he was (and still is) to my life. It's not like I spend any great amount of time thinking about him or anything, in fact he was the very first guy who I wasn't obsessive about (well, after he broke up with me, I had a bit of an episode of Ms. Sinade O'connor's classic syndrome of wanting-what-I-haven't-got). Actually, he's not even much a part of my normal life anymore and I only rarely think about him, but I have also yet to meet anyone else like him. And as I get older, I become incresingly convinced that I never will. I know that there are lots of really great people out there, and I haven't given up hope yet. But, hey, I'm starting to peak I think, and it's only downhill from here :)

Goodwill - Having said all that, I've discovered a rather amusing little added attraction to one of my favorite shopping experiences. One of the fine young gentlemen who works at my local Goodwill thrift shop seems to have a bit of a crush on me or something. Its sweet. But dangerous. I almost bought a box full of Barbie dolls the other day. Barbies! Eeek. (Well, I was planning on doing something evil to them, but still. Barbies!)

Ok, the demons seem to have quieted down a bit, as have the neighbors (who were having a party that I ended up avoiding for no good reason). So I'll give the sleeping thing another try. Sweet dreams everyone.

picktures

And here are the Critical Mass photos. Please excuse the infinitesimal thumnails, just click on 'em to get a normal sized image. If you want any of these for any reason (bribery, perhaps?) let me know, and I can get you a decent TIF.

Also, here's a picture of my roommates and their buddies lounging around our living room.

be the media

Here is the Globe article.

just sittin' here, melting

So I had all these big plans for last weekend. But I bailed. No SCUL ride to Rhode Island for me. Instead I hung around and did absolutely nothing except for a little walk with the roommies to do some grocery shopping. Oh, and we played a card game, called Munchkin, that is supposed to be a parody of role playing games. Its obnoxiously complicated, but the characters were very cute and often hysterically funny (for example, Mr. MP7 was cursed with "a Chicken on Your Head").

I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately, and when I went to the doctor to see about my weird ankle, the nurse told me that I had a fever of 100.something degrees. The doc said that my ankle was fine - "sometimes these bumps on bones just happen, it may go away in a few months or you may have it forever" - but I'm still suspicious. And the fever has dropped to a more low grade one, but I still feel like crap. My guess is that the fever is a result of the infection that's been raviging the hole-where-a-tooth-used-to-be. I'm hoping it'll all sort itself out soon. I'm really not up for another traumatic event at the oral surgeon's...

A funny coincident keeps happening to Mr. MP7 and me, we keep bumping into a couple of my friends at the supermarket. It's happened three times in a month now. When we remarked on it, Mr. MP7 said that it was because he was everywhere, like a god, but without all the other powers and stuff. We declared that he was "omnipresent, but omni-impotent". He and I both thought that it was very funny. Also, at the supermarket, we discovered the latest trend in shopping technology - the electronic cashier. Sometime last week our supermarket ripped out a couple of the 12-items-or-less lanes and replaced them with these human-free monstrosities which are supposed to allow you to do self serve checkout. You scan your own groceries, and then stick in some cash (like you would at a vending machine) or a credit card, and Voila! you're done. Sounds fine, except that almost every single customer had a problem with the machines which required a human employee to come fix, and at least once it took a good 5 minutes with not one, but three, employees to figure out the problem (the machine wasn't giving a 2-for-1 discount).

Oh, and this past Sunday's Boston Globe had the Critical Mass article in it. It was pretty good, though it had a few glaring factual errors. No pictures of me, though they did mention a person with a black veil and someone who was handing out flyers about the dangers of riding in the door zone (me and me). I'll try to get a link up for the article today (and I'll get my pictures from teh ride scanned and up, too).

Finally, I found out last week that, even after Ms Laird's horrible tragedy in Cambridge, Somerville is still planning on striping a bike lane in the door zone on the full length of major throughway. I had no idea! Apparently, the bike committee knew about this from before I was involved, but weren't aware of the dangers of this design. I'm a little surprised at that, but I'm much more shocked that the committee (aside from my one dissenting vote) decided to do nothing to stop this dangerous stupidity, and, in fact, they are sending a letter to thank Traffic and Parking for accomodating bicyclists! It just boggles my mind.

shoulderless roads are the devil's work

Or is that MDC?

So yeah, Critical Mass (I know that was four days ago, sue me) was quite an event this month. We had the media, we had mourning, we had asshole cops on motorcycles, we had fun, and we had a ten foot by ten foot trailer with a four person rock band on it being pulled by two extremely in-shape cyclists on a tandem. We even injured one of our own (she got squeezed between a parked car and the trailer) and had her sent off the the hospital. Pictures will be forthcoming (though getting a good picture of a ten by ten trailer with a rock band and a tandem is surprisingly difficult). Oddly, there are no articles in any of the newspapers which sent reporters/photographers. Weird.

The weekend was very quiet. (Well, except for the SCUL ride, which was gravity filled, with a gummy penis filled party at the end.) I followed Mr. MP7 around and had some Indian food and visited with the scruffiest looking sheep I've ever seen (maybe it was because they lived in Waltham...). My ankle, which I twisted on a malfunctioning sidewalk a few weeks ago, seems to have some sort of serious problem. My best guess is a chipped bone which has set crooked. It doesn't really hurt, but looks really wrong and feels icky. I had to spend half an hour on the phone to get an appointment, but was impressed that my little subsidized community health center has a podiatry department.

As if that wasn't enough, the hole where one of my teeth use to be is hurting. Did I mention that I hate my body? When are those cybergenic replacement bodies going to be ready?

Don't you hate it when your whole outlook on life is tied directly to one person's relationship with you? I do.

Someone told me the other day that I was beautiful and it made me cry.

RIP Dana Laird

Tonight's Critical Mass ride will be a memorial ride in Dana Laird's name. As I mentioned before, she was the woman who was killed when a careless SUV driver opened his door into her and pushed her under the wheel of a passing bus on Mass Ave in Cambridge, MA. This CM ride should be quite an event. The media has been invited, there will be mourners in black, the couch will have a New Orleans style funeral jazz band, and who knows what else will show up. I, myself, am properly dressed for mourning - with a veil and everything - and I have "don't get doored"/"don't door someone" flyers to hand out with info on the back about Ms. Laird's tragedy.

thunderbumpers

Yay! I just made it home before the downpour started. I had a nice ride out to Bedford, just 'cause I felt like it and I was already near the bike path in Arlington. I took a course in grantwriting this morning at some employment and training place. it was really very well done, and I learned a bunch of stuff. Yay for free social programs!

On my way home from my ride, I had to yell at some asshole who nearly hit me and told me to get off the f'n road. I asked him why, but to no avail. (He probably doesn't test well, I should have known.) Then he called me a "stupid cunt" at which point I reminded him that it was he, not me, who was spending a good $5000 a year to drive his vehicle, and that my vehicle was clearly much cooler than his big ass Chevy. After I left the jerk (to waste some more of his cold hard cash at a gas station), it occured to me that I should try to use the patriotic thing next time another oblivious individual pulls something dimwitted like that. Maybe something along the lines of this:

Dimwit: Get outta the road!

Me: Ahhhh, I see. You're one of those un-patriotic-Americans. Well, I'm sorry you don't like this country, maybe you should leave.

Dimwit (with stunned look on his face): ???

Confusion is always a good tactic, I say.

I'll leave you today with a not so terrible picture of me, along with Tim and Tom, from last week's bike trip to Maine. Look at how hip I am!

tailgunner

I really wasn't going to go on the SCUL bike ride last night, but I wanted to see the video from last week, so I figured that I'd just say hi, watch the video, and then go home and sleep. But I ended up discovering a perfect ship for me! So not only did I ride, but I really enjoyed it, and even did the important job of tailgunning (sweep). Sadly, my walkie talkie was being flakey, so I didn't get to be all cool with the radio. But now I really want to get a pair of the things. I'm such a geek. My MP7 buddy says he'll pick some up for me at Costco, cause they're really cheap there.

Speaking of geeks. I was wearing my "geek" (on the front) "/geek" (on the back) shirt up in Maine at the bike rally, and some elderly gentleman asked me what a geek was. I actually had a hard time explaining it!

Finally, I've been noticing several recent appearences of Jethro Tull. Is it a comeback? I hope not. Not because I don't like the band - cause I love 'em - but because revivals almost always suck. And that would just be depressing to have one of my escapism bands from my childhood be turned into some lame pop band for the kiddies. (For heaven's sake kids, leave the classics to us old folks!)

banana powered vehicle

I managed to pull myself out of my moping this afternoon and get myself, my bike, and my hastily assembled banana costume down to the Art Beat parade in Davis Square. It rained a bit the whole time, but there was a great turnout, and I had fun. The theme this year was "food for thought". My neighbors Joel and Lynn had a canoe and the life cycle of compost (complete with bin, real compost, and even a tomato plant), respectively, being towed behind their bikes. Yay!

fermented cat?

Alcohol. Throughout my life I've always had a very suspicious feeling about alcohol. Its just never seemed like a good thing. Having had a pretty messed up childhood due to a mom and stepfather who treated alcolol as self medication for whatever ailed them certainly created a solid base of dislike for the drug. But above that experience, I think that I have too much appreciation for my mind to want to subject it to a substance that turns the brain all sloshy.

I do understand the benefits of one of the side effects of alcohol - relaxation - but I'm just not sure that its worth the effort. The other effects of the drug seem to be overwhelingly negative. Why would I want to make myself lose motor control, be more vulnerable to suggestion, and generally function less than optimally, all added to the possibility of getting a crippling addiction? Sure, sounds great, sign me up!

So, when I have friends who are particularly fond of the stuff, I find myself at a loss. I want to trust that people know their limits and that they can take care of themselves, but I'm afraid that they're screwing themselves up. And lately, I've been around a whole lot of friends who have a bit of a drinking hobby. Hmmmmm.

fame

I came into work today and was told that I was now famous. Apparently, after years of trying, I managed to get a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe. Sadly, and somewhat inexplicably, they didn't see fit to put my letter online. So, no link for you. The letter was about a proposed piece of state legislation that the Segway company is dragging around the country, in a bizarre attempt to ban the vehicle from roads, while making it legal to ride the thing around on the sidewalk.

Also this morning I had my first meeting with the VIPs about the police bicycle edication program that I've been working on. It went incredibly well, and the participants were very supportive and excited to be getting closer to having a real curriculum (a DOT person, someone from the Governor's Highway Safety Bureau, a couple of transportation planners, and a bunch of cops).

Its continually shocking to me to be working with a non-profit, environmentally friendly, somewhat radical cause and have the general public and even politicians honestly be interested, positive, and gasp! helpful.

What's next? Linux going mainstream?

back in civilization

Well, whether the city folks are any more civilized than the country folk is debatable, but there are certainly more people here in the city.

Maine was lovely. The weather was gorgeous, the company was great, and the biking was very nice. I didn't do as many rides as I would have likes, as logistics got in the way a few times, but I did have a lot of fun. I got a chance to kayak down the Androscoggin River, which was fantastic, but shockingly shallow in many parts. I got to go on a stargazing ride to the top of one of the local mini-mountains (the area I was in was right next to the Appalacians). And I twice visited a lovely waterfall/tidal pool area called Screw Auger Falls (I just like saying the name...). I actually drove the car more than I rode, at least milage-wise, which made my guilt muscle twinge, but I figured that it was only a moderate slip in the grand scheme of my transportation policy. (I also made a point of letting the Maine Bike Coalition folks know that they should do their best in the future to locate the bike rally near public trasportation.)

Now that I'm back, I'm horribly busy and a bit on the grumpy side (mostly caused by a lack of attention by certain males of the species). But I'll probably be too busy to notice my grumpiness in a few hours, when I get cracking on activism stuff. Actually, I already wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe about some horrible proposed legislation forcing a specific kind of vehicle (the Segway) off of public roads and onto the sidewalks, setting up a terribly discriminatory and dangerous precedent for vehicular law.

Oh, and I thought of another nickname for the new roommie - one that I think he likes better than Fairy Godfather - the "MP7". It's a reference to some insanely deadly weapon given to "peacekeeping" forces in the military that is featured as a centerfold in this month's Wired magazine. The guy is obsessed with weapons, but is essentially a very nonviolent man. Ironic, to say the least. Kinda like me, with my love for technology being completely out of line with my desire for life of Thoreau-like simplicity. What can I say, irony is my pal.

watch out for those spider webs in the morning

The Fairy Godfather woke me up early this morning and made me drag my sleepy ass into the kitchen, because he wanted to show me a spider web that connected one side of the room to the opposite side of the room via a chair in the middle. The web stretched a good 10 feet at least. The tiny little thing must have been damn busy while we were sleeping. And we had to go and have breakfast and destroy it's hard work.

It's off to Maine for the Maine Bike Rally. Sadly, we won't be camping (I love camping and never get to do it), but it should be lots of fun anyway. I'm sure I'll be unbelieveably exhausted by Sunday. And next weekend is the Art Beat festival. Wheee!

lane striping

Tonight I happened to sneak my way into the Cambridge Bicycle Committee's monthly meeting (ok, it wasn't the slightest bit sneaky, but it sounded better than saying I walked right in, didn't it?). I thought it might be interesting to hear what they had to say about the death of the cyclist who was riding perfectly "correctly" in their badly designed bike lane. I don't have any particular animosity for the people who recommended the dangerous lanes, but I am bewildered at their insistance that having a bike lane is always better than not, even if it is clearly causing danger.

Anyway, I got to make a suggestion for a different approach to bike facility design, one that I came up with for Somerville. It was not only well recieved, but someone else had independently come upon the idea as well. We're very likely to try my idea on a road or two in Somerville, and now maybe Cambridge will try it out too. It could mean a transportation revolution! Or not. If this design ever gets applied to an actual roadway I'll show ya all pictures!

question

What is the male version of "nymphet"?

full

I gotta say, I'm pretty happy with things these days. I've got a fantastic job/volunteer thing going at MassBike and other places, have great roommates, and I'm having lots of fun. The school-based bicycle safety program that I've been working on is promising to be amazing. I'm having an absolute ball with my new Fairy Godfather (I'm still working on a nickname for him, as he isn't entirely thrilled with that one, but I kinda like it). And riding with SCUL and Critical Mass is keeping me heathy and weird. Now all I need is a nice guy, who is willing to put up with the likes of me, to flesh out my life (pun intended!).

Last weekend's SCUL ride was one of the best ever. We rode out to a pond in the Fells (somewhere near Medford, MA, I think) and went skinny dipping. I've never been really thrilled about getting naked in front of anyone (being fat in this "thin is in" society does that to people, especially women), but I just went for it and had a blast. The water was absolutely perfect, and I rode the very comfy, good looking chopper known as "Greed".

On a down note, a local woman, who was riding in the bike lane on Mass Ave in Cambridge, was killed when a thoughtless SUV driver hit her with his door causing her to fall under a bus that was passing by insanely closely. Several factors contributed to the tragedy, including an ignorant and careless automobile driver who illegally opened his door without checking for traffic, a really poorly designed roadway which squeezes way too many "lanes" of traffic into a very small space, and a bicyclist who didn't know enough road safety to avoid the dangerous bike lane and it's accompanying "door zone". (See a picture of the crime scene here.) I visited the roadside memorial that sprung up, and took a moment to mourn the woman's needless passing. I also stuck a "share the road with bicyclists" pamphlet to the tree, in case it might be able raise a tiny bit of awareness.

I am the Steve Buscemi character

We rented Ghost World (the film, not the comic book) since I was babbling on about it anyway. I'm Seymore, not Enid, just to clarify.

On the fourth, I had, for the first time ever, been invited to three different events. I attended none (missing the giant penis piniata that was alledgedly painted with the stars and stripes of old glory), but had a lot of fun anyway. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to catch up on my complete lack of sleep this past week.

In another few days a bunch of MassBike folks, including myself, will be heading off to Maine for their bike extravaganza. In preparation, I picked up some nearly slick tires which should help me zoom along a bit faster on the long rides, I also got some sports food goo to power me up on said rides, I lost around 8 pounds, and finally I managed to lightly twist my ankle while walking all around Somerville and Cambridge yesterday doing errands with the new roommie. I'm not sure if I'm going to want to ride in SCUL tonight on this ankle, especially since there's a possibiliy that we're going to be riding out to Walden Pond.

The new roommie (I know, he needs a name, but I'd like to come up with some sort of nickname for him rather than using his real name, for a few reasons. I'm thinking about "Fairy Godfather"...) likes to do housework. He bought two sixpacks of Coke and poured them into the tub, saying that it was the most corrosive thing you can get in the supermarket. It didn't really do all that much, but it certainly didn't take much effort, either. If he'd let it soak for a couple of days, it might have really made a difference. Or not. Right now, the guy is doing my dishes. Sometimes I feel like I should be paying him for services rendered...

celluloid laundrybasket

Why am I up and writing here at 4 in the morning? Because my life has very recently become some sort of independent movie. This movie includes all the requisite oddball characters who seem to float in and out of the plot, having philosophical conversations and getting involved in really non-traditional relationships with oneanother. This particular film that is my life has elements of a Richard Linklater piece ("See that tree? See those leaves shining in the light? That's why you're alive." he said when I told him that I didn't have the ego to believe that I needed to be alive.) My movie also has some bits straight out of Daniel Clowes' Chost World ("I'm not sure if I should show you my comics or not." I said, completely unaware of how surreal it was in the context of lounging on a bed with someone who you probably shouldn't be lounging on a bed with). He's only been here for four days and I've already lost nearly five pounds. It's the first time in a long time that I've had someone who I feel completely comfortable discussing philosophy with. As a first impression, I've decided that he's a fairy godmother and the devil's advocate all rolled into one (maybe that's why he's so large...).

I think I said something about this new roommate being someone who's going to be very interesting to live with. His response was "You don't know the half of it." And I'm absolutely positive that he's right.