I didn’t write this, I emailed it at one point.

I bicycle along the East River bike path every morning before dawn. I often see the same homeless people just north of East River Park between the F.D.R. Drive and the river. Since it is usually dark, I never make any contact with them and I assume they are sleeping. They never say a word.

Between some vacation time and needing a break, I recently did not ride for a two-week period. On my first predawn ride after returning, I rode past a man wrapped on a blanket, slumped on a bench.

Just as I was about to pass him, a loud voice boomed out, “Hey man, where you been? I was worried about you.”

I said I had been on vacation, and he simply said, “O.K., glad you didn’t get hurt.”

The next morning I rode past the same person; he said nothing and has said nothing since.

Forest Markowitz

I headed out today around 1. Tuesday is a good day, no school, no work. I slept in, had a leisurely morning.

It looked like a spring day, 40s, some rain and some wind. I am not saying everyone would be out riding, it did look shitty. But it was definately spring shitty and not winter shitty. A small difference but still, a difference.

I wore shorts with knee warmers, a new purchase, my veloloco jersey under my woolie mammoth, my fatcyclist cap, over it all my showers pass protech super jacket. I know you might not care, but whatever.

Today was only the 3 or 4th day I have been on the bike all year. School is cutting drastically into my riding time, my sitting around time too.

Man I felt great, headed down along Lake Washington Blvd working into a wind that was making white caps on the lake wasnt that much fun. Often I forget why I ride, I think about miles, percentages, pounds and grams. Today was a day I remembered why I ride, about leaning into turns like these cuties.

I went out to Seward and did the little crit loop. On the way back I got the benefit of the wind I’d been bucking into. 23 happened without too much work, 26 if I pushed as hard as I had on the way out.

20 miles is no big ride. But it can still be a great ride.

A book I read had a character talking about finding the beauty in everyday life, and how unusual it was, Aristotle said something similar.

I found it today

if not we can do it again tomorrow

A rider was killed Wednesday morning in Ballard-

Kevin Black, a 39-year-old father of two who died after colliding with a van Wednesday on 24th Avenue Northwest in Ballard. Black, a molecular neurobiologist, was such an avid bicyclist that he pedaled from Seattle to California for his high school reunion.

There was a memorial ride for Kevin this morning, organized by his family and his team. It starting at the intersection of the accident and ending at Golden Gardens state park. Many came out on a typical February day in Seattle to pay their respects for a fallen rider.

I’d say two hundred riders were there, but I could be off by alot. Some fully kitted out in team gear, kids with their parents friends and family of Kevin. Old, young, high zoot whips (yes i said it) to beach cruisers- all cyclists. It seems that one of the countless decisions we all make during a ride or a commute was a miscalculation. Sometimes you can get away with those bad decisions, this time it didn’t happen for Kevin. Often we forget what we’re doing can be dangerous, we ride like were invulnerable, the only thing that can hurt us is the pain we inflict on ourselves.

I didn’t know Kevin. Seeing videos of him played on TVs at the community center with his daughters- at birthdays, on vacations, learning to ride their own bikes took Kevin from being a name and made him a face, a whole person, a great person who had lots of life left in him. His love of his daughters was evident as was his love of life and cycling.

Bikes loose in car-bike accidents, no matter whose fault it is bikes loose.

Be safe out there chickadees.

The family has asked that all donations go to Cascade Bike Club

read the full story here

love is hard to define, often you know what it is by proccess and not by definition.

5 pounds of home made fudge sure is love.

ulysses approves

The alarm is scheduled to go off at 8:15. I’m awaken by a flicker. The sun has risen but the I-5 bridge (over lake Union) blocks it briefly. Well temporarily blocks it, the slow  morning commute traffic on the bridge interrupts the light. A bus dims part of the light falling on the opposite wall, a car doesn’t occlude it at all, and suv does briefly, a large truck blocks the light. This is for 4 lanes of traffic, so the amount of light is completely random, it is beautiful, on and offs and dims play across a rectangle in gold. From here on the day is tough.

I’ve got the routine down, lightly put on a kettle, go shower and shave. Get out of the shower put some naan in the toaster and pour the now boiling water in the french press. Emerge dressed a few minutes later with toasted naan, ready for humus (man I turned into a hippie) and avocado, coffee ready to be plunged. I fill a thermos with the brown juice, drink the exactly one cup left in the press (I am good, even if I am a hippy) eat, drink coffee and some apple juice. I’m headed out the door as my 9:04 alarm goes off.

It is cold for Seattle, 30 degrees, there is frost on the lawn and the cars. I walk 4 blocks to the north side of the Montlake bridge. I arrive before Steve, but not Rachel. Ok, not their real names, but Ive seen them almost every morning and I have given them those names, Steve and I nod to each other. I hop on the 9:14 #49 bus to Capital Hill. I read “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” for grins, I like it, esp the last few graphs. By 9:30 and we’re at Seattle Central Community College, not where I am going, but close enough. I walk the last 4 blocks to Seattle U, jaywalking across Madison, it is hard to run with a full bag.

First class is Contemporary International Relations at 10. I’m early so I go over the reading, drink some coffee, the thermos makes it taste like rubber. We watch Part of a Frontline episode to give us some background on some readings about applied political theory in Iraq, paying 10k a quarter and I am watching a tv show in class?

Class is out at 11:25. I have half an hour to kill till my next class, 2 rooms away, Macro Econ. I enter as the previous class gets out, drink some more coffee, read some blog posts on my laptop and review the chapter. Rishi is a one off, during the break we talk about the recent episode of Battlestar Galactica. “if it looks like a duck, goes quack like a duck, it must be a duck” is really funny in a thick Indian accent. ‘Quack’ becomes ‘quewk’ ‘duck’ transforms into ‘dook’ I had to stiffle a laugh. Coffee runs dry. 1:25 and it is two down.

Women of the Hebrew Bible is the last class of the day, I have 5 minutes to walk to the Nursing building. twenty-two students in class, two dudes and Kyle is not here. We take too much time recapping and going over group work from two sessions ago, the proffessor is getting sloppy, we’re behind. My groups tertiary source is a midrash that is only one page and the referenced Bible verses are short. I present  it quickly, others, not so much. Bing 3:30, class is done. I pack up and leave campus.

It is still cold, no more than 38, and there is a wind off the Sound. Walking down Madison I see a phrase that will get all dudes, hook, line and sinker ‘Big Macs, 2 for $3′ I don’t even like Big Macs overly much. But I get two. It is like a shoe sale for my sisters.

I get all pretty and am on the floor by 4:15, night looks light, but heavier than it has been. It is a decent night, one of my servers decides to be the closer, so I am there an hour longer, but it is an easy hour, we get two singles, a duce of Germans and a three top. I have a chocolate sundae. I am walking out the door at 11 pm, not bad actually. Staying was financially worth it, I had a good night. I was dragging for the last hour or so, had some bad nights drinking cofee after 9,  so I just embrace being tired. I Walk with a tuition payment or a quarter of rent. I hook a ride from a cocktailer who lives on the way. Through the door at 11:30. It is cold, no one was home all day.

I grab a quick bite, see some emails, offers for talks and updates to handouts for papers. Write some drivel down.

I will repeat with variation on wednesday and friday.

Seattle gets the dank in the winter, wet, i the 40s and sometimes breezy. Overall the season is gray in color and gray in feeling. The kind of gray where you only know vaguely where the sun is in the sky. This usually lasts from November till February. Imagine my surprise when I we had some of this on a Sunday in January.

View from Magnollia of downtown Seattle, with the old man (rainier), which is a 75 mile drive away

I grabbed my nice bike off the rack, dusted it off, yes literally,  inflated the tubless tires that had gone soft (it has been a while) and went for a ride. I rode in shorts in January! I Rode with winter gloves my new fatcyclist.com hat and thick, long wool socks, but still, shorts man. The ride wasn’t far, it wasn’t fast, but it was fun. One of those rides that is more about how much you love to ride your bike than anything else. I turned the pedals at my own pace, having it feel good to be riding in something other than drizzle and to work. I  stopped at Golden Garden State Park and climbed the Ballard Hill.

ah camera phones…

So the fatcyclist.com hat. Looks great, here I am tongue out, rocking my new fatcylict jersey to boot

It is a good little hat. Consider it a step between a light cap and a full thermal hat. My one gripe with it concerns the bill. If you go over 32mph the bill, which is wool like the rest of the lid looses shape and presses against you forehead, and for me at least, impaired vision in the drops. I’ll give it another go, might look into some sort of reinforcement, but thus far this is not the experience I was looking from with this hat.

great day though, thought I would share.

so ive taken a picture of my desk a few times over the years, i went and plucked them out of iphoto. in sequence

2004. windows – xp2000+ ~300 gig  of hard drive,tv connected via s video, with a 19 inch sony trinitron monitor.

later 2004. oh man, lots going on here. g3 ibook, g4 powerbook. and the last windows computer id own. xp 2500+ dvd burner, 9600xt video card, and i was the first person i knew with a gig of ram. first use of external hard drive.

still 2004, maybe o5. same pc, same powerbook, but a 23 inch apple cinema display. the powerbook didnt really have the juice to run it, but oh it tried. at this point i was using macs again as my primary machine. check out the fan controller on the pc case, oh yeah, i could go TURBO.

samish, but here the pc was using the 15 inch lcd and the mac was using the 23, dogmatic switch here.

2006. here i am in the attic, sold the pc, sold the powerbook and the cinema screen, bought a plane ticket to europe and a macbook pro. same altec lansing speakers and microsoft mouse from the begining .

things stayed the same for a while, i was really happy with my macbook pro, it ran what i needed, played some games in windows via bootcamp.

2008. then i saw another g4 powerbook on craigslist, man i loved that computer, so i bought it for cheap.

then i got the upgrade bug, i had a portable laptop so the bigger laptop was desk bound, and it was getting slow for somethings i wanted to do. so via the wonderous craigslist i found someone looking to sell a 24 inch imac an get a macbook pro, so i proposed a trade. i think we both came out winners and right now my desk looks like this-

there are some klipsch speakers in there now as the altec lansings  got scratchy. the blueotooth logitech crapped out so i got a revolution (i love this mouse) theres an ipnone in there now, a big ole lacie hard drive, a usb hub, i really like the setup.

i got a kick out of looking at the dock icons changing, staying the same, coming back.

thursday night ruchi and i went to the banff mountain film festival world tour. great stuff, chances are they are coming to a place near you soon, or you missed it, in which case, suckage ensues.

ive been to a few over the years, but have missed the last couple. we were literally in the last row after montelake traffic was worse than normal, it was held the the seattle mountaineers new building out in the sand point boneyards.

the first film was my favorite all night. lo and behold i found it in online, not such a large feat at 6 minutes. but still its good stuff.

a few notes

-man there were lots of nalgene bottles and gortex in the hall

- 20 seconds of water sports in 3 hours

-30 seconds of biking

-corporate interests seem ot be getting more and more of a foothold in this series, many of the films were sponsored

-there was one amazing backcounty mountaineering and skiing film which drew plenty of ‘ahs’ and ’sweet’ from the audience, but the trials bike rider RIDING ON  FRICKING CHAIN between two cement blocks drew ‘thats impossible’ and ‘no fucking way’ ‘a chain dude,,,,,,a chain’

im excited about this.

http://www.fatcyclist.com/

Team Fat Cyclist: Fighting For Susan

For 2009, I am going to form Team Fat Cyclist: Fighting For Susan for the LiveStrong Challenge, and I want you to join me. If you’re willing to put in some work, together our neighborhood will not simply break these records; we will crush them.

No, we will demolish them.

And humiliate them, just for fun.

Oh, and by the way, by either joining the team or contributing to the team — your choice — you will automatically be entering yourself in raffles to win prizes that will make your head spin.

and livestrong is coming to seattle this year, no driving to portland.

fuck cancer. and everyone i know who reads this, im so hitting you up for cash