Sooper-Genius

New blogs for old subjects

2010-08-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

I set up two new blogs, one for my portfolio and resume, and one for my bike tinkering stuff. I may just leave my unpalatable political philosophizing over here.

www.PhilipWilliamson.com: my portfolio and resume. Stuff I've made over the last 20 years, professional and personal work from the last 20 years. PlayStation game console interfaces, toy store website design, assemblage sculptures, weird comics and more.

www.BikeTinker.com: Me breaking stuff on my bike and having to fix it. I'd like to showcase people's bike makeovers there, too. Maybe sell some bike-related kits or artwork.

I also made a blog about my dog, but I haven't put much time into it... I kind of went on a WordPress bender, there.

New Words

2010-08-01T10:15:00.001-07:00

Bigly
Smilable
Motoristic (it means be-engined)

Michael Specter's "Fear of Science"

2010-04-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/13/specter.denying.science/

This is interesting -

His THESIS is that anti-science ideology is dangerous. His CONCLUSION is that genetically engineered foods are good. He has a point I hadn't considered - that issues of science and politics in GMOs are not synonymous. Seeds being licensed like software isn't an issue of science, but of law. The outlawing of seed saving in Iraq (the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of agriculture, the place where WHEAT was domesticated) is a matter of law, not science.
It's worth noting, but humans have a way of conflating tools and intention. Guns. Abortifacients. Evolution, DNA, Nuclear anything. Cars. In fact, Michael Specter (is that really his name?) does the same thing at the end of his talk, when he says that the science of genetically modifying food crops is good, because it can do good things for poor people.
I don't think science can really be separated from law and politics, and I think some people are afraid of some science because it ALSO has the potential to kill us.

For the record, I'm pro-vaccine in theory but not practice, anti GMOs (probably not in practice, since they're ubiquitous), pro-evolution and anti-supplements.

And when he says drought is "nearly permanent in sub-Saharan Africa," that's like saying wildfires and floods are almost permanent conditions of the entire U.S., Canada and Mexico. Dude - it's a continent, and you just exempted the driest part. And how have people survived on cassava up til now if it's such a sucky food? Did they really have to wait 8000 years for Bill Gates to pay food scientists to save them?

Copper wire handlebar twine

2010-04-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

Grant Petersen of Rivendell Bicycle Works has popularized "twining and shellacking" bicycle handlebars to finish off the bar tape.

I agree with Grant Petersen most of the time; I've gone back to cloth tape, tried a Brooks saddle, and I haven't ridden clipped-in in two years, even on technical-ish singletrack. I don't know where my cycling gloves are.

While my bars are an inch above the saddle (but not with a Nitto stem), and I only use electrical tape on black cork bar tape, I don't like the idea of melted bug parts coating my handlebars, and I think hemp twine looks pretty darn rustic. I'll stick a feather on my bike any day, but I'm not into the twine look.

I wanted something that made a fancy transition, without going all nature-boy, and I have a spool of copper wire left over from an art project. We put on a kids' collage festival with decent materials, not egg cartons and toilet paper rolls*.

So... copper wire bar twine.

Make a little loop-y, and place it across the area you'll wrap. Here I'm covering a half-assed wrap that has lasted for more than a year, but I want a more substantial and clean ending for my bar tape.
You begin wrapping from the open end of the loop, up to, but not over, the closed part.

Wrap, wrap, wrap. The new wire kind of slides in between the old wire windings, and fills them in.
When you get to the end, you poke the free end through, in order to pull the free ends back under the wire.

Pulling the beginning strand pulls the loop and free end back underneath the wire wrap.

I hope you like the look, and consider wrapping your bars with any twiny, wiry material you may find. Brightly insulated phone wire might look cool...

*It's a crime to give students crappy art materials, even if they're making trash art.

recycled bar tape

2009-12-16T22:41:00.001-08:00

recycled bar tape, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

The best part is that the roll on the left, which is from an under-layer across the tops of the bars, is composed of about nine separate short ends of black, yellow and green tape. All the black tape is just short pieces pressed together end-to-end.
It looks like someone working in a bike shop kept the trimmings from several bikes and reused them as padding. I may take them to the Cozine Community Cycle, where they can be used the same way, 15 years later!

Busted pedal

2009-12-03T21:54:00.001-08:00

Angelina broke one of her pedals completely off on the way to Winco for groceries. Dang.

She had to push the bike to the store, and then push it home, loaded with groceries. She detoured to stop at Joanne's to buy supplies for her "Stitch and Boots" Etsy shop - she's making shoulder/shopping bags that exactly fit in the smaller Wald bike shopping basket.

Her saga reminded me of a story my Anthropology teacher told of an Inuit fishing trip. An ethnologist (a sociologist for non-European non-upper non-middleclass people) set out on a fishing trip with some Eskimos. About a day out, the outboard motor broke, and they paddled over to an ice floe and set up camp. One of the Eskimos found a piece of broken metal, and the leader guy started shaping it to replace the broken gear. After two days, it was ready. They fit the part in, and tried the engine. Failed. The ethnologist is getting really antsy now - they're running out of food, three days into their three-day fishing trip, and he's been on a 1/2 acre ice floe for two days watching a guy file metal.
They spent another day on the ice, filing that gear into the right shape. Finally, after a full day of file-file, fit the part, fail to start the engine, they ate the last of their food, filed a little bit more, put the new gear into the engine, and... fired it up! Thank God!
"Finally! We can go home!"

The Inuit looked at him. "Fuck that. We came to fish."

Fairly Irritating Words, Pt. 2

2009-06-30T22:59:00.001-07:00

I've been cataloging words that don't mean what they sound like for some time now, and these are my least favorite. They're not only tricky, they also sound like dookie. Except "turbid," which sounds kind of cool, but turns out to be more like naming a kid "Jetlag" instead of "Jet."

Fulsome. "Fulsome praise" means fake, or so over-the-top that it's disgusting. It does not mean full and heartfelt, or warm and honest. A "fulsome bosom"... well, I've been in situations where that was an appropriate comment, but it's just too subtle. You say that at a crowded party, and people are just going to think you're a creep. Not a mean creep, either. Just a creep.

Pulchritude. Guess. Guess what "pulchritude" means. It sounds like something that oozed out of a squashed cockroach. Icky ichor squished. Plague-ridden cracked detritus. Crushed chitin oozing. Pulchritude. "Pulchritudinous." "Chitin" is also irritating, of course, because it's pronounced according to some Greek rules of pronunciation. It's a word you will almost only ever read, but if you ever do say it aloud, you'll sound like a fool. I think we all know how I know.
And of course..."pulchritude" means "beauty."

Enervate. Well that sounds good! Energy, nerves, nervous-energy making. Any word with a "v" has some vim, vigor and vivacious voom, and "e" words emit electric emotion. Except this vile verb, which basically means "soul-sucking." Mental, physical and moral lassitude. Ah crap. It's an adjective, too, so you can actually BE "enervate." In Tam Valley, where the 7-Eleven is, there used to be a little market in the early '60s, and next to it was a bridge over the creek. Yes, there's a creek there. Teenagers in black clothes and dark glasses used to sit on the railing of the bridge, all day long, every day. Day after day, all Summer long. My parents lived across Shoreline, in a cute little cottage, and my mom used to tell a story of how one day, the woman who owned the market came out onto the bridge and got right up to those kids and screamed, "I hope you go down to the Bay and DROWN!"
Those enervate kids had finally broken her.

Turbid. Well, I think we see where this is going. "Turbid" is a lot closer to "turgid" than it is to "turbo." It means muddy and cloudy, heavy and confused. It's an ugly word. I think we should stop here.

And thanks to Richard von Busack for "wordsmith" => "turdsmith."

Words that make Philip angry pt. 1

2009-06-30T00:09:00.000-07:00

1. "Ginormous." It sounds awful. It's a portmanteau of two perfectly good words, enormous and gigantic, and detracts from both of them. Try using "whacking great," or "particularly large" instead. If you really really need the exaggerative factor, perhaps "thundering" is what you're looking for. The only worse word in the English language is "vaginormous."

2. "Appletini." That's it. Repellent, no? The word is used to mean "trendy apple-flavored cocktail." Chocolatini, melontini, WOWtini. Abortions all. "-tini" is not a suffix. Neither is "-gate" or "-aholic," but those have been legitimized by lazy journalists for the last 30 years. A Martini is a drink. It's simple, it's established, and it really doesn't taste very good. That's why some people argue over the finer points of how to prepare one; shaken vs. stirred, "dry" vs. "downright parched." It's also why other people want to sex it up with apples and chocolate. It's the same with burgers and espresso. All you have to do is start with decent materials and take a little care at each stage of the operation. It's that simple. It's the difference between "Yum!" and "This tastes like shit!" If you can't be bothered to put forth the effort, or you just don't like gin, don't drink Martinis! If you'd like an apple-flavored cocktail, go ahead and invent one, but make up a whole new name for it. Something like "Golden Delicious," or "Dr. Gravenstein's Monster," or "Twee Li'l Bastard."

3. "True Dat." A phrase more than a word, it's still not okay. Middle-aged straight white males ironically copying young gay males' ironic aping of teenage black females' English usage is unacceptable for two reasons: a) Ironic language never stays ironic, but becomes habitual. b) It makes you a little whiter and a little straighter every time you say it. See also: "That's what I'M talkin' about," and "You GO, girl."

4. "Foodie." Rhymes with... doodie. And clafoutie. Food is not status. It's not money, breeding, privilege, or a simulation of those things. Food is food. Preparing food, eating food and sharing food is one of the most basic things humans do, and should be done with joy, not intellectual obsession or snobbery. Scientific studies showing that the "foodie" trend has jumped the shark all point to a single symbol of irrelevance, one worthy of Marie Antoinette: the Bacon Cupcake.

Gear Ratios for 700 X 32 / 32-622 tire with 170 mm cranks

2009-05-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

	32	25.0 %	40	10.0 %	44
15	57.6		72.0		79.2
13.3 %
17	50.8		63.5		69.9
23.5 %
21	41.1		51.4		56.6
10.5 %
19	45.5		56.8		62.5
35.7 %
14	61.7		77.1		84.9

QB = 32/40 chainrings
Ross = 40/44 rings
15t fixed cog wheel
17/21 double-fixed cog
19t cog on 2-speed hub - The 14 in the chart is the equivalent high gear from the auto-hub.

I want to build my new Torpedo Automatic hub into a wheel I can use on my Ross (frenchified touring bike), and my Quickbeam (british-style rough-stuff bike). I realized that replacement cogs are a lot cheaper than replacement chainrings, and easier to install. The same three-spline cogs work on Sturmey-Archer, Sachs (F&S), and Shimano internal gear hubs, and seem readily available: $8 some places, $15 from Harris, who has a comprehensive selection of sizes (14 to 23 teeth in both chain widths).

A 36 tooth ring would work perfectly with the 19 tooth sprocket the hub came with. Luckily it's 3/32" width, as well, rather than the 1/8" bullshit BMX/track width. However, the chainring setup I have is perfect for each bike, and getting a 36 tooth chainring would almost necessitate a new bike. Or building the hub into a 26" wheel, which just isn't going to happen.

Since the rings on both bikes work great with the 3 fixed wheelsets I already have, one of which I JUST built up... the Torpedo cog was up for re-consideration.
My existing wheelsets have 15t cogs and Surly "dingle" cogs (really unfortunate name - I say 'dingle,' you say... 'berry'). The double-fixed cogs work great on the Quickbeam for road and steep singletrack with the 32 and 40 tooth rings, and also on the Ross, with 40 and 44 tooth "Rocket Rings" from Harris Cyclery. You can see from the chart above the gear inches I can use.

After a lot of cogitation, mathematics, and plugging numbers into Sheldon Brown's gear calculator, I decided that the best cog for the Torpedo Automatic... was the one it came with! A 19 tooth 3/32" dished cog.
I think that will give me the most fun and versatility with each bike. The 'road gear' on the Quickbeam is crazy-low at 62 inches, but it also usually has larger tires (35 to 42 mm), which knocks it up an inch or two. On the Ross, the high gear is 77 inches, and the low gear is 57", both higher than I prefer, but very usable.

There's no way I would be doing this right now and considering it fun, if it weren't for Sheldon Brown. Viva Sheldon!

Obligatory Post

2009-04-29T21:22:00.001-07:00

Today I wrote to my (someone's) Oregon Representative to entreat him not to try to TAX BICYCLES. He wants to force every adult to register every bicycle they own, to the tune of $54 each every two years. Fucking tax and spend Republicans!

Say it again. Tax and Spend Republicans. They're the ones who instituted a TAX on SHIPPING in New Jersey. Everything you buy online in New Jersey... the shipping gets taxed. The government gets their cut of a service you're probably paying the Postal Service to perform.

Tax and Spend Republicans.

Bike! Me! Cold dead hands!

Circumcision

2009-02-19T23:43:00.000-08:00

My kid is circumcised.

I made the decision.

I did it for kind of bad reasons. Well, one bad reason, and a couple of good ones. Reasons that are compelling, if you're a guy.

The bad reason:
1. Anti-circumcision arguments are hysterical and purposely misleading. The worst sort of hippie arguments. Just because people are offensive and irritating doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, though. (I'm looking at you, Ralph Nader). Really, the best argument against circumcision is "Do chimps do it?" If it doesn't occur in nature, there's no good reason for people to do it. This includes high colonics and representative government, though, so hippies don't like to take this tack.

The good reasons:
1. I'm circumcised. I like my dick. It's nice. Whatever you anti-circ people say, you're really saying "you circumcised people are all fucked up, and you should be different." Let me be the first to say, "am not!" And "so's yer mom!"
2. The most strident anti-circ person I knew in person admitted to throwing up the first time she saw an uncircumcised penis, and refused to have sex with it. Boy, that couldn't have been traumatic, could it? Nah. Us guys just laugh that stuff off, especialy if we're "intact," and inherently more self-confident.
3. I knew someone who elected to get circumcised at 13, because he wasn't before. Apparently it was really really painful. On the other hand, I didn't talk to him about it.

So I had my kid circumcised at the hospital. Basically I flipped a coin, and it came up heads. My assessment is that both sides of the argument are full of shit. The two arguments are that circumcision is an "easy snip-snip" vs the assertion that it's a "horribly traumatising" experience that your baby will never get over.

Snip-Snip: It's not a simple 'snip-snip.' It's a 15 minute operation. It's an operation. There's a lot going on down there! The foreskin is like attached and stuff! There's more going on than just a simple flap of skin. The doctor had to dig down and separate penis-skin parts from other, sturdier penis parts, cut them out, saw them off, and tend to the penis-wounds. I think it was 10 minutes with the knife and 5 minutes of prep and cleanup. To a layman, "snip-snip" is 30 seconds.
We think 'changing the wiper blades,' not 'bleeding the master cylinder.'

Traumatising: I heard there would be pain fear and crying, but Fritz was pretty calm through the whole thing. He didn't cry until the nurse came by afterwards. He didn't like her face, I think. There isn't much pain, because the doctor uses a local anaesthetic. He shoots the kid up, lets it set, and does his job. Duh. It's a hospital. Newborn babies aren't scared of enormous needles - they've never seen one before.
On a trauma scale of 1 to 86 (and I speak from experience here), being born is about 400, and circumcision is about 0.

So I mentioned to my dad, who's 32 years older than I am, a Southern Baptist minister and PhD psychologist, that I'd had the boy circumcised. He said, "Really? Why would you mutilate your son?"
I was like, "??!? So how come I'm circumcised, Dad?"
He said, "when your brother was born, your mom and I talked about it, and I told her it was an awful thing to do for no reason. When she was in the hospital, she had the doctors do it. When you were born, she asked what I thought about circumcising you, and I said, 'You KNOW what I think, but you did it anyway. You're going to do it no matter what, so don't ask.' So she did."
"Oh."

Uncircumcised penii are pretty silly looking, but so are the modified kind. As far as penis shape, I prefer the ballpoint to the fountain pen. I don't think it matters to self-image or sexual development, once it's done, though. That said, if there's no benefit, why do it? I think most boys in my social strata are not circumcised, but I haven't really taken a poll. I would be surprised if many boys opted for the cut in five years or so.

Would I do it again? I'd probably flip a coin.
Actually, I probably wouldn't - if he wanted that later, it could be his own choice. We've all spent five days in bed squirming in pain over something.

Five points if you can spell "circumcision" without hitting an S after the M.

Compromise, Hell!

2009-02-15T15:50:00.000-08:00

Bipartisanship. Why bother?

Why pander to the guys who fucked the economy? Why "get them on board" with ideas they fundamentally disagree with? Why even listen to them?

The republicans are saying, "Hey, when we were in charge we slashed taxes, tanked the economy and enriched the rich! The only way to fix the problem is more of the same stuff that caused the problem!!" It's like homeopathic economics.

Why do the newspapers and President Obama even treat them like their noises resemble speech?

As Jesse Helms said, "Compromise, hell! If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" Personally, I think Jesse Helms was all for tyranny, hated freedom and wore his ass on his head.
Good quote, though.

Moonlight Ride

2009-02-09T01:03:00.001-08:00

"Cycling, like sex, is often a solo affair."

-Pablo Naruda

There's nothing I love so much as riding alone under a full moon. Tonight I rode the Ross fixed gear out Baker Creek, listening to the babbling of the creek and the rattling of my battery light.
The light didn't do much illuminating. The moon was much brighter.

When I got fairly far out there, I was surprised that I could spin the rear tire, seated, on a flat road. The road was sparkly with tiny ice crystals, and a little farther up everything was frosty, like it had snowed. When I turned around, I got a little creeped out by the idea of a mountain lion drawing a bead on me. Big stinky prey.
I was pretty careful coming back down the hill, and through the frostiest low section next to the creek. The careful pace became a habit, until I realized I was never going to make it home at that speed, and my thumbs were starting to smart from the cold again. I stopped and listened to an owl hooting for love, then hauled ass home.
Coming by Grenfell Park, I noticed a funny crackly feeling in my beard, and put my hand up to my face. Ice! Ice in my beard! Crazy.

I saw three cars the whole time, and two of them when I was almost back to 'civilization,' so they almost didn't count. In the last mile home I felt a couple of raindrops and hurried on even faster, still being careful to take the corners kind of wide and upright. Apparently I'm still afraid of these 25mm tires!

Custom high-rise stems

2009-02-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

My riding yesterday up in the woods showed me just how poor my fitness and bike handling skills have become. Rather than inspire me to ride more, it made me want a custom stem to put the midge drop bars a little higher and closer! Specifically, a 52 x 180 stem like the one illustrated below.

BikeCAD drawing courtesy M. Whitmore

Anyway, instead of riding this morning, I researched custom stems.
Vanilla, Sycip, et al. seem to only make stems for their custom frame orders. MAP cycles (one of my favorite Portland builders) will do a custom $325 stem. Ahearne will do a fillet brazed stem starting at $275.

It looks like the bargainz are the $135 stem ($165 with removable face plate) from Rex Cycles, a possible $175 Rock Lobster (a good match for a Bontrager, I think), and Willits', $150 Scorcher stem. Wes Williams has made hundreds of super-high-rise stems for exactly this purpose.

New three-speed fixed gear hub

2009-02-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

First - I hope people realize that this blog is mostly to write down my ideas so I don't have to think them up again later, right?
Secondly, it might be useful to someone else who's thinking along the same lines. Those people are pretty few, but you know who you are.

In that vein, here are my thoughts on the new Sturmey-Archer S3X, an internally-geared three-speed fixed-gear hub. More info, including a schematic, and the proposed colors can be seen on the Sturmey-Archer SunRace blog.

What is it?
A hub-gear that lets you change gears without deraillers, like the old Raleigh 3-speeds. What it doesn't do is let you coast.

Why would you want that?
Because it's COOL. I don't like to coast. I like fixed gear bikes. I like the feel of the drivetrain, I like the challenge of the uphills and the down. I like them.
But if the challenge is so fun, then why a multi-speed fixed gear? Because I have one now, but I have to monkey with the wheel to change gears. I like to ride my bike, and the places I've lived have always had hills. Sometimes mountains right in the middle of your ride, and dirt trails are harder to climb than paved roads.

What is that S3X EXACTLY?
It's a three-speed fixed hub that has a wide gear ratio of Direct Drive (the most efficient, 1:1 gear), 2nd gear at -25% of 1st, and 3rd at -37% of first.

This gear spread is like the old Sturmey-Archer 3-speed AW hubs most people are familiar with. The gears are not like the uber-rare Sturmey-Archer ASC 3-speed fixed gear hub it most resembles otherwise. In 10 years, I've known maybe five people on the internet who say they've owned one. The AW was one of the longest-lived bike parts ever, possibly one of the longest-lived mechanical items of any kind. The ASC was kind of cultish from the start, and was made for British time trialists (race against the clock on public roads). The ASC had a narrow gear range for optimum efficiency over roads that weren't that steep, ridden by real hard riders. The AW was made for a wider range of landscape, load and rider.

The people I've heard complain on the internet about the "useless" wide gear range of the AW and the new S3X have never backed up their assertions (to my knowledge) with any data about their own multi-speed fixed gear riding.

I think this hub is awesome, and I'm actually going to save up, and possibly sell something to afford one at the $140-$160 pricepoint it's rumored to have. To see how it meets my needs, I'll sum them up.

Here's my multi-speed fixed-gear riding experience:
I've had a Rivendell Quickbeam for almost 5 years, and run 42" to 74" gears on it. The QB has 40t and 32t chainrings, a 15t and a 17/21 Dingle cog. I also have a Ross touring bike with 40/44 tooth rings and the same Dingle cog for a 70" and 51" gear combo.

I've pushed my 70" gear over Sonoma Mountain, and taken it 50 miles through Occidental. I should've dropped down to the 32 for Sonoma Mountain, but I wanted to see if I could do it in the big gear. I've ridden out to Sweetwater Springs Road in the 72" gear, dropped down to the 57.6" gear and rode over it. Multispeed fixed gear is my favorite thing. I also like brakes.
I've ridden the 57" gear up Mt. Tam's and Mt. Diablo. 57" is too high to climb Diablo comfortably for me. I've offroaded the bejeezus out of the 41" gear (Surly Dingle cog, another awesomely great invention). Intellectually, the 41" gear is way way too low, but in practice it's really really good.
For general riding I like a 70" gear, but I've gone as low as 64" and as high as 74" for periods of time.

Given that background, and this upcoming hub, I'm interested in being able to run a a 70", 52.5", and 44" gear, or 84-63-53 to put the normal gear in the middle and have a bigger top end. A stronger rider or a road-only rider may prefer this to the 70" direct drive, but I've been really liking that 42" climbing gear! Someone who only rides down hills might like a 94-70-60, too. That actually looks pretty good for long flat rides, but I've never lived places like that.

For the riding I do, I could be happy for a long time with the 70-52.5-44, or a 72-54-45. No fussing with the wheel at the bottom of the mountain to change gears, no fussing with the fender as the wheel moves back in the dropout to tighten the chain with the smaller chainring.

It looks like the Sturmey Archer S3X will have 12 and 13 tooth cogs, which seem smaller and more wear-prone than bigger ones, but they'd save some weight and minimize the chances of people ripping up the internals with a tiny ring and a big cog.

Real gear choices from the S3X:
My favored 70" to 72" top gear could nicely be gotten with any 30 to 34 tooth chainring, and a 40x13 looks pretty nice at 83-63-53. It would be a different set up than I've got, but the larger gear would last longer. I've got a couple 40t rings, 63" isn't so bad for noodling around town, and steep descents would be a lot easier. Maybe too easy.
A 36x12 would give you 81-61-51, and a 40x12 puts out 90-68-57.
44x12 would give you 99-72-62, for all that Southwest Louisiana road riding you do.
All calculations arrived at with Sheldon's Gear Calculator of course, and rounded for simplicity.

Fantasy gear choices using a Schlumpf:
Tom Shaddox (New Golden Age of Gear Bashing pt. 42) points out that an S3X running 36x15 with a 2009 Schlumpf Speed-drive would be a perfect set of six fixed gears: 113", 85", 71", 65", 49" and 40".

See your own choices:
Here's my Google Docs spreadsheet of the S3X's gears. The Excel formulas I used look like this:
A3: desired top gear B3: =A3-(A3*0.25) C3: =A4-(A4*0.37)

GLOW in the dark OURYS!

2009-01-18T00:35:00.001-08:00

GLOW in the dark OURYS!, originally uploaded by twotone666.

Click the picture and read the comments.

sonofson: What, are you EIGHT?

Sorry. Earlier today my tolerance for my generation's hard-on for the trappings of childhood hit its limit. Spawn dolls aren't cool. Murakami isn't cool. Glow in the dark grips ARE cool... until you're 14.

helmets and cars

2008-12-11T23:40:00.000-08:00

Ever have someone in a car ask you, "where's your helmet?"

I did once, and she waited until the light changed to do it, too. Which means she was stewing about it for a couple minutes before she had the opportunity to ask a rhetorical question without any repercussions (except my patented "dumbfuck deadman" look that clearly conveys to anyone around that I think you are so stupid you should be dead).

For years after that, I waited for it to happen again, so I could shout, "IN MY PANTS!"

Of course when it did happen again, about two weeks later, on a beautiful green singletrack trail, I was once again too dumbstruck to do anything but stare.

Basically, this isn't a "newsy" blog post, I just wanted to point out that someone in a CAR, asking me where my helmet is... that's like a retard with a gun who thinks I should wear a bulletproof vest.

"I don't have to be careful... I've got a gun!"

Rebel yell

2008-12-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

I have some thoughts about "Rebel" flags.
Many liberals feel that the Rebel Flag is a symbol of racism, and everyone who flies one is a White Supremacist. I don't think that's accurate. In my experience, under every Rebel flag isn't a racist, but quite often just a real dumb fuck.

Let's see:
a) I have an American flag and a Confederate flag on my truck. I live in Oregon. My family came to Oregon from Iowa. I don't know what you're talking about when you call it "the War between the States."

b) I'm a Real American, goddamnit! A real patriot! I proudly display the flag of a bunch of people who said "Fuck you, America! We hate you and your American freedoms!"

c) My proud rebel flag flies high! I'm a tough rebel winner! Wait... the South lost??? Like the Cardinals lost the Super Bowl?

d) I'm tired of being oppressed by Negroes, Hispanics and women!! The South gonna rise again!

("You're in Oregon, dude.") This is the basic disconnect. Like how I was shocked to read (in "Blood in the face,") that White Aryan whatevers hate Jews because White Aryan Whatevers are the real Chosen Ones. The... real... nation... of Israel. The Israelites. What the FUCK? You know the question "what kind of idiot are you?" THAT kind.

I used to ride my bike to the bus as part of my commute. One time I sat next to a fellow who had a BMX bike on the rack next to mine. The only empty seat was right up front, next to him. We chatted about bikes, and told me all about getting a DUI on a bicycle because he ran into the back of a stopped cop car with its lights flashing, on top of an overpass. He also randomly told me how his grandfather, father and him were all plagued with weak ankles.
Then he started preaching racial (white) purity. "Whaaat?"

So here's someone NO ONE'S father would want them to marry, talking about how "the white race is being diluted." With what? Strong ankles and minds? People who would ride away fast if they rear-ended a policewoman writing a ticket?

I told him I couldn't disagree more, that some of my favorite people in the world were mixed-race, and that hybrid vigor was good for dogs, plants and people. We had an uncomfortable silence until we started talking about Kingwood station wagons again.

TransGendered

2008-11-20T21:56:00.000-08:00

I saw the GenderAnalyzer on BikeSnob (the NYC one, of course), and of course I put this humble blog through the highly accurate* and scientistic analysing machine.

I was feeling pretty manly, with a not-overbearing, but solidly masculine 73%, when I ran my other blog. Good God@! I'm transgendered! 96% woman!

I would've thought the beard was a dead giveaway, but GenderAnalyzer is pretty inclusive, facial-hairy-wise. (sidebar - in Blogger, ctrl+shift+z="redo," just like Photoshop!)

Anyway. Shocking. That girl over there at mcminnvilleoregon.blogspot.com... 96% XX chromosomes. Except for the beard, she'd be pretty hot. No wonder an old friend congratulated me on coming out of the closet* (thank you Facebook rumour mill!)!
Spelling rumor with a 'u' doesn't help, I'm sure.

Angelina's blog, (my wife!) is all about cooking, and housekeeping, and parenting, and craziness... only 62% female! It's more reassuring than 96% male, that's for sure. I'm not sure how I'm going to break my own gendericity to her.

*And about being "outed," that still cracks me up. An old friend, who shall remain nameless (plus he uses an impenetrable pseudonym) emailed me with "I just heard... wow. I mean, congratulations, but that must be tough. Are you and Angelina still amicable?"
"Huh? No we're all happy and shit, kid, cats, dog. House. (es)... wait a second... you think I'm gay! ...and I know who you heard it from, too!" (our one mutual Facebook friend - I'm like Hercule Poirot, me.)

"Uh... oh. Oh. Yeah. On some level Jimo just wants every guy to be gay. It's kind of endearing."

It is endearing.

In Jimo's defense (as a freewheeling Hercule Poirot in his own right), I love Rufus Wainwright's "Chelsea Hotel,*" I think anyone who supports Prop. 8 should just go get their Klan hoods out of the closet and burn themselves on their own front lawn, and, uh, this.

*3% better than random chance! Numbers to live by!
** seriously - it's one of the two saddest songs in the English language.

President-elect Obama

2008-11-04T22:05:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhhh....

Cross your fingers - there's many a slip between now and 8 years from now when he can retire.

It's just now hitting me that he's black. That's kind of big, huh? The only time I ever think of him being black is about four minutes after Robert bounces into the office and says something like, "if Obama wins, are they going to have to paint the White House?
"The White House?*"

'Whaaat?'

Oh yeah.
That's kind of in poor taste. If it was in poorer taste, would it be funnier? If it was funnier, would it be worse? Or better?

It is a big deal, though, to have a black president in America. I ran off some ground flowers (pussy fireworks suitable for Democrats, gay people and children) with Max and listened to Black 47's Paul Robeson: "My father was a slave! My people died to build this country! And I'm going to stay here and have a part of it, Just Like You, and no fascist** minded people are going to drive me from it. Is that clear?"

I do wonder why a person with a white parent and a black parent is "black" and not "white."

Barack Obama is more like "half-Kenyan***," maybe.
It's weird, too, that he's a second-generation black American. Many black Americans' ancestors were here 200 years before my forebears came here from Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Iowa. The first record of Africans in what would become Virginia was in 1619. The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

*"Just half of it."
**I read some comment on a news site today where an anti-Obama poster warned of the imminent takeover of Fascist Liberals, and then a non-anti-Obama poster called that person a Communist. WTF?
***Interestingly, genetic diversity in Africa is greater than in the rest of the world. There are more different kinds of Africans, and they can be more different from each other, than a Swede is from a Korean.

American Spam

2008-11-01T00:18:00.000-07:00

I just received a forwarded email.
No promises of free tickets to Disneyland, but still. I figured I'd pass it on, with commentary, to alla y'all.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 8:16 PM, XXXXXXX@XXXXXXXXXX.XXX> wrote:

A DEFINITE must read!

No matter what your political convictions are this is an eye opener....What a thankless people we are!!!

David Letterman, on President Bush. (Surprising)

David Letterman wrote this; it's the David we don't often see....

'As most of you know I am not a President Bush fan, nor have I ever been, but this is not about Bush, it is about us, as Americans, and it seems to hit the mark.'

'The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some Poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the President. In essence 2/3 of the citizenry just ain't happy and want a change. So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, 'What are we so unhappy about?'

A. Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 Days a week?

B. Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter?

C. Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job?

D. Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?

E. Maybe it is the ability to drive our cars and trucks from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state.

F. Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter?

G. I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough either.

H. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

I. Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home.

J. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family, and your belongings.

K. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.

L. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90% of teenagers own cell phones and computers.

M. How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world?

Maybe that is what has 67% of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S., yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have, and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.

I know, I know. What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks? The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me?

Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn't take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad? Think about it......are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the 'Media' told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day.

Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an "other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a ''dishonorable" discharge after a few days in
the brig.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans?

Say what you want, but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells, and when criticized, try to defend their actions by "justifying" them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn't kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it
this way......Insane!

Turn off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad. We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.' 'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, 'Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?' -David Letterman

Please keep this in circulation. There are so many people who need to read this and grasp the truth of it all.

Respectfully, For God and Country,

Dear friend,

a) I don't believe David Letterman wrote this, since people on the internet also attribute it to Jay Leno and anonymous. Less than a minute of poking snippets of the email into a popular search engine indicates it may have been written by a guy named Smith.

b) Being profoundly unhappy with the President is not the same as being ungrateful to be an American.

c) 90% of Americans have been personally injured by the policies of the Bush administration.

d) 5% of Americans have been bloated with cash and privilege by the Bush administration.

e) The Christian Conservatives I've heard are neither. They haven't an ounce of Christ-like-ness about them, nor are they fiscally or rationally conservative. They make their God out to be very very small. And they lie. It's like all they do is lie.

f) I saw a website from a radical christian right-wing group (or person) that used an American flag for its favicon next to the URL. It makes me mad that he's using MY flag to promote HIS religion. That's like Chinese shoes with Nike swoops*. It infringes.

g) Many media outlets do favor sensationalism. Do you know why? Because people eat it up. More viewers mean ad space can be sold for more money, and the people who will believe what they see on the news will believe what they see on the commercials.

h) I believe news media outlets whip up feelings on both sides, for profit. When candidates raise money, how do they spend it? On commercials. Print ads. Media outlets.

i) Many people are suckers. Suckers and ghouls. If people weren't suckers, the "if it bleeds it leads" paradigm wouldn't exist. Evolution in action.

j) How can you blame Americans for being spoiled, and praise the system that spoils them? For the last eight years we've been living on borrowed time. On credit. That's how Bush (etc) "rescued us from recession." "Rescued" is what should be in quotes. Credit isn't real money... it's much, much more expensive.

k) Post 9-11, we didn't gird our loins to fight terrorism, we hired a lot more government workers and borrowed a lot more money. Pretty much what FDR did, but we don't have any of the bridges, power plants and murals his plan put in place. Just paper houses, SUVs, and a Middle Eastern colony that isn't paying its way.

l) The question of "why should we trust the same people who got us INTO this mess to get us out?" has been answered. We can't. The $700,000,000,000 stimulus package has been passed, and the money used to pension off the genius financiers who wrecked the economy, and to fund monopoly_building by the banks that still exist.

m) Seven hundred billion dollars will buy every 100th American household a $200,000 house, free and clear.

n) The volunteer army is still being killed, and forced to kill others in the service of a war to make rich men richer. It's working. It's a complete success. Those rich men have become richer! Yay! The poorer men who refuse to fight are dishonored, thrown out of work in a recession, and dishonored. But that's okay, because they volunteered.

o) Even in the midst of two ongoing wars, and a patriotic war on terror, armed forces recruitment focuses on the money you'll get for college. Money you need to get an education, which you need to get a job, because there are no trades left except construction. Which is drying up, now that there are fewer people building McMansions for other people to buy on credit.

p) Schools are mandated by law to release the names, addresses and phone numbers of their recruitment age students to the armed forces. So they can hard sell them on joining up. It's mandated by law, to give children's names to army recruiters. "You can't legally drink (because we don't think you're mature enough to handle it), but you can indenture yourself to the government and abdicate most of your rights as a citizsn in order to become an expert at shooting another child in the head from a long ways away! (Or debugging a weapons system on an F-16 (hi, Jim!))" They just don't say that in the brochure, for some reason. A school who refuses to give its childrens' names and information will have its federal funding cut off. Courtesy of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

q) So yeah, I'm unhappy. Jobs in my industry were outsourced to Singapore, and I was laid off. I was lucky or blessed to sell my California house before it became unsellable, and spent all my money trying to start a business. I failed. I was lucky enough to get a job that pays very little, but I can keep my house, as long as I put any large expenses on a credit card. I can only afford to insure one person in my family, and we chose the kid. I was refused insurance for preexisting conditions that developed while I was previously insured with the same company in another state (broken arm and asthma). You move, you lose your insurance. The asthma drugs I'd like to take cost $300 a month, but I could get them from Canada for $170 a month. I'm waiting for the paperwork to clear so that two drug companies that sell the same drug to Americans for 1.8x as much as they sell them to Canadians might get around to providing me with tax-deductible goodwill-inducing free (or just cheaper, they're not very clear) medicine.

r) I have at least two jobs at any one time. I work 40 hours a week, and in the evening I work on freelance jobs. Angelina has between three and five jobs, depending. She has a 25 hour a week job (5 days a week) working online, a retail job two days a week, a manufacturing job one day a week, and a freelance photography job whenever she can fit the time in. Both of us would prefer to drink beer, watch TV, and play with the kid in the evening, instead of working. Really. We're Americans; it's what we like. Instead, we put off the work we need to do and bitch about it on the internet.

s) John McCain suggested that people wanting to keep their houses "should get a second job," but he couldn't say how many houses he owned. His staff would have to get back to us. He married a beer heiress. Is that his second job? Would America be able to realize the American dream if she married... Germany?

t) He thinks plumbers make $250,000 a year. Dude. Senators don't make $250,000 (on the books.) Senators make $125,000, and plumbers make $45,000 to $80,000. I make about $25,000 a year. I used to make $50,000 to $80,000. That was nice. I didn't have any savings, but I didn't have to put the cauliflower back if it pushed the grocery bill over $90.

u) I should run for office. More money, great benefits, and free home improvements.

v) Plus, you can bully your fellow senators and citizens (and even other countries) if you play your cards right.

w) How come the rest of the world is in such dire poverty, anyway? Lack of resources in their nations? Uh... some of them. Some have diamonds and oil, and they're still hosed. No democracy? Some of them. Some democracies are sworn enemies of America, and we seek to depose (or have successfully deposed) their leaders. They're the ones with diamonds and oil.

x) Perhaps poorer countries have corrupt leaders, a wide gulf between rich and poor, monopolies on their resources and a religious state? Golly. All the things so-called Christian and so-called Conservatives are striving for in America, and have spent the last 8 years implementing.

y) So...

z) How've the last eight years worked out for you?

*I mean non-Nike Chinese shoes.

Uzi. Eight-year-old. oh god.

2008-10-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

If my son dies from my stupidity and you ask me how I feel, I will hit you just as hard as I can. Block high, 'cause I'm not very wily, and I'll go for the head.

Then I'll curl up in a fetal ball and you can spit on me. My wife will leave me, my cats will hiss at me and my dog will bite me. And my son will be dead.

How can that guy talk to the cameras? I don't get it. It's not even my kid, and I'd be hard pressed to give a coherent interview. "Excuse me, sir, how do you feel about someone you've never heard of before, dying from a gun shot wound to the head?"

"Fuck you! I kill you! Let me open an artery and spurt blood on your lenses and microphones, you jackals!"

eBay sucks!

2008-10-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

Nowadays... if eBay doesn't find anything in the category you're searching in, it goes ahead and searches every single eBay category. If I'm looking for a kickback hub in "cycling," of course I would be interested in a purple Transformers eraser.

Rather than searching for Kick Back instead of Kickback, it just swerves off into the fleamarket and starts knocking over tables.
Similarly, if it thinks you mistyped something, it will run the search as if you typed what it thinks you should've. If one is interested in a Surly Dingle cog... perhaps the kind sir would be interested in bicycle earrings? They dangle!

eBay has now become as smart and helpful as Microsoft Word, or a phone system that will only accept spoken commands. "I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Can you please repeat your 40 digit access code? I'm so-"

$700,000,000,000

2008-10-02T00:25:00.001-07:00

I thought about what I could buy with $300 a month, if I didn't have to spend it on medicine to breathe... but what could I buy with $700,000,000,000?

Well... I could buy three and a half million $200,000 houses.

Then I could raffle them off... every American would have a one in 100 chance of winning a house, free and clear.

Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars. sevenhundredbilliondollars.

My asthma medication costs $300 a month.

2008-09-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

Just for Advair and Singulair, not counting the emergency inhaler at $40 a pop. That made me think about all the cool things I could buy with $300 a month.

Join the Phil Wood wheel-of-the-month club!
Order two custom Rivendells and have the money saved by the time they're ready.
Buy a sweet LED bike light. Every month. For the rest of my life.

That would be if I had $300 a month that isn't spent on housing, food, utilities or beer.

I never did find anything cooler than breathing, though.

10 Things You Need to Believe to be a Conservative

2008-09-24T01:57:00.000-07:00

You have to believe the media is liberal, and that AM radio somehow is not a media outlet.
You have to believe intellectuals threaten America's safety and culture the same way they threatened Germany in 1932, Russia in 1937, China in 1966, and Iran right now.
You have to believe Jesus hates.
You have to believe that homosexuality is so attractive that EVERYONE would do it if it weren't proscribed.
You have to believe that freedom is democracy, democracy is capitalism, and that capitalism is working.
You have to believe the Constitution only has one amendment.
You have to believe that every day, for the past eight years, the President and his advisors have gotten up in the morning and said, "What Would Jesus Do?" and every day, Jesus said, "Lie."
You have to believe that every argument against evolution for the past 200 years just wasn't argued in a court presided over by enough ignorant people.
You have to believe that when teenage girls have sex, they should darn well GET pregnant!
You have to believe that when you forward this email to 10 people, Microsoft will give you four tickets to Disneyland.

gessoing fool

2008-08-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

I went ahead and turned all my rabbit schmaltz (yes, I know it isn't really) into gesso. I had to recalculate the amounts. 16 oz rabbit, to 24 oz gypsum. I got it hot to melt the gelled glue (when you tap on the jar, it reverberates like a spring in there!), then mixed in the powder.
I poured out of the bag, into the fakey double-boiler, until the bag weighed what it should (4 lb less 24 oz = 3 lbs 8 oz?). That way, less mess.

I stippled the first coat, brushed the second. The small panels got a third coat brushed as well.

Lessons: keep the stuff hot and thin for the brush coat - it melts the bumps from the stippling. Hot and thin for the stipple coat works better, too.
Don't bother gessoing the edges! Especially with the little ones. We already did the math on the size, and the edges eat up a lot of material. Are you going to paint the edges? Like detailed? If not, just hit them with oil priming white or something at the end.
In fact, the best thing to do is probably what I usually have done before: size and gesso bigger panels, then cut them down to size and round the edges. Faster, easier to handle, less wasteful. Also, the edge transition starts looking like an iced cake, and then you're going to be sanding all that off. More waste.
Gesso big panels, cut down to size.
Buy a thrift-store double-boiler to keep everything consistently hot.
Scrape down often.

Rabbit Schmaltz

2008-08-23T00:24:00.000-07:00

Today I took the first step in prepping my 16 little boards for ID card paintings, and four or five larger boards, also for ID card paintings. Mostly. And re-prepping a 2x3 foot panel that had been gessoed about 6 years ago, knocked about, and peed on by mice. Ew.
Almost as eww-y as 15 ounces of pure rabbit schmaltz.

20 ounces of water (2 1/2 cups) and 2 ounces (2 tablespoons) of granulated rabbit skin, heated and stirred.

It took about an hour and a half, and used about 5 ounces of solution to do the first coat of size. Assuming the second coat uses the same amount, I should have 10 ounces left to put about a pound of gypsum into to make the gesso. Maybe I'll find some dry zinc pigment before then.

I made two experiments - I put the size on two painted panels, and a weathered wooden box. I don't think the painted panels will work at all. They didn't dry the same as the others, and (duh) the size didn't soak in. I think I'll sand all the paint off the backs of the panels before I size them.

Which reminds me... doing all the backs will use up 5 more ounces. So if I do two coats on each side, my 20 oz. of size will be completely gone.
Hmmm.

So I should've done 30 oz water, with 3 oz rabbit, leaving enough size to take up a 1 lb of gypsum. To do one thin coat of gesso on each side... the thicker the gesso, the more luminous the surface. So... 40 oz water, 4 oz rabbit, 2 lbs gypsum. At a minimum. For what amounts to 3 decent-size boards.

OCD alert:
So this is 1856 square inches (~13 square feet), in 24 pieces. I assume everything would go a little further with fewer edges. Maybe a lot further. If it was one 36"x48" board, and I covered 1/2" on each edge, that's only 84 square inches of edge (half inch on each side: 18+18+24+24). Already that's the size of a sheet of paper.
Adding up the edges of the boards I actually did gives 203.5 square inches. Almost 2 1/2 times as much area on the edges, and more than the surface of all 16 of the 3"x4" boards.

Natural Pigments

2008-08-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

I just came upon the Natural Pigments site while researching recipes for 'true' gesso: gesso made from gypsum and rabbit skin glue.
Pretty exciting stuff - paints made in the ancient style to the historical colors, like Pozzuoli Red, which I was just reading about in Frederic Taubes' "Painting Materials & Techniques."
And geez, I love pan watercolors. I've refilled the same old Cotman travel boxes about three times each in the last 15 years. I use all the warm primaries, then switch to the cools, then refill the boxes with tube color. Ideally, I'd layer up the paint in the pans, letting each one dry before covering it with the next one, but I don't.
I've popped out the white and black and replaced them with earth tones, but I don't use them, either.
These Natural Pigments "Cozens" watercolor travel boxes are made with just straight pigments and binder, in the dull blue-green palette of the eponymous painter. Totally appealing, except for the, um, palette.

I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. In theory. Less so in practice.

The Natural Pigments gesso method takes about a week, with two separate sizing coats, some dodgy filtering/double-boiling and somehow keeping your not-boiled rabbit's skin glue around the house for several days.
"Hey, what's this in the fridge? It smells weird."

I was intending to spend about two hours on the project. Now that I've done my research, it sure won't be tonight.
I did get the recipe I was looking for, though: 8 oz of size solution (1:10 glue granules to water) mixed with 12 oz of gypsum.

The Natural Pigment adaptation of the Cenino Cenini method (written by Tom Irizarry) requires a hotplate, a double-boiler, bowls, cheesecloth and a wooden spoon. I thought I was doing pretty well just digging out the crock pot!
"Hey, what happened to all my cheesemaking supplies? They smell weird."

If you want to do it right...
Size the panel, both sides, with the 1:10 solution, while it's hot.
DO NOT BOIL!
Let it dry for two or three days.
Apply a second sizing coat to each side.
Let it dry for two or three days.
Reheat the glue solution, just until it's just hot, and immediately move it from the double boiler to a low-heat hotplate.
DO NOT BOIL!
Mix 8 oz. gypsum and 4 oz zinc oxide pigment together, then carefully add to 8 oz. glue solution.
Filter through two layers of cheesecloth into a clean bowl, clean all your tools and pots.
Reheat in the (clean) double boiler until liquid
DO NOT BOIL!
Now you coat your panels with 6 to 8 coats of gesso. Stipple the gesso on, wait until it's almost dry, brush a coat, almost dry, stipple coat, brush coat (opposite direction), repeat.
Let it dry for two or three days.
Scrape with a steel scraper, 2-3" wide, firmly pulling it toward you across the surface in a criss-cross pattern. I'm envisioning a putty knife, but you have to round the sharp corners with a grindstone, and put a nice burr - a slight burr - a proper burr on the leading edge... with "an Arkansas oilstone."
Let it dry for two or three days.
Finally, temper the surface with ONE thin coat of Copal varnish (a 'fossil' varnish - none of the crap varnish you may have around). Maybe check out the Copal varnishes from Western Maryland Gallery?
Let it dry for two or three days.
Finally, check to make sure you didn't ruin it halfway through: if you got the glue too hot, you'll have little bubbles. Too much glue in your size - tiny cracks. Too little glue, and your gesso will flake off your panel. Start again.

Oy. I think I'll heat the glue, size the boards, add the gypsum and gesso the panels all in one evening and see what happens.

Solzhenitsyn

2008-08-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

Alexander Solzhenitsyn died today, at the age of 89.

That makes me sad, but that's a pretty good run - 89 years. Especially if you've been down the hole and back again. Solzhenitsyn was sent to the labor camps for writing letters critical of Stalin, won a Nobel prize, was convicted of treason, stripped of his citizenship and deported to live as an exile.

I wonder what was harder for him - eight years in the Gulag, or 20 years in Vermont? Well duh, probably the labor camps, but it seemed like he really loved his country, even though it was run by asshole dipshits.
Hmmm.

He returned to Russia in 1994, which was right after I read The Gulag Archipelago. I read it while lying in super-hot baths with a glass of Sandeman port and a pipe of tobacco in the 6-foot clawfoot tub in our first San Francisco apartment. I don't think I could've made it through that enormous tome of suffering without all the trappings of luxurious comfort.

One of the things that struck me about Solzhenitsyn was his humility and his humanity. He didn't rail, but quietly showed how humans were human even in the most egregious situations. Being worked to death for no good reason at all (your unit was trapped behind German lines for three days - off to the camps!), people are still petty, stupid and noble.

It made me realize that the day to day internal shit is universal, no matter your station in life.

There were also good survival tips: never volunteer for anything and avoid the Black Work. The Black Work consisted of the toughest jobs, and were rewarded with an extra crust of black bread and extra grubs in your soup. The extra rations didn't make up for the calories expended, and the Black Workers always died.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a mathemetician, and knew the value of running the numbers.

I bought The Gulag Archipelago in Patrick's, a Fairfax coffeeshop/bookstore.
I once walked into Patrick's, stood in the door looking around at the half dozen denizens, and turned around and walked back out. My friend coming in said "who's in there?"
I said, "nobody."
Inside, I saw someone look up from his book and say to his tablemate, "who was that?"
His friend shook his head and said, "nobody."

Why don't horses have horns?

2008-08-02T00:30:00.001-07:00

That's it. Why don't horses have horns?

Gazelles have horns. Bison, buffalo, elephants, deer, goats, sheep. Horns.

Did horses USED to have horns?

The REAL Truth about Global Warming - and what you can do about it!

2008-07-30T23:27:00.000-07:00

Did you know that "Global Warming" isn't a result of burning fossil fuels?

It's because of all the Burning Souls in Hell? There now are so many dead souls burning away underground that it's warming up the Earth, and it's just getting worse - all those Athiests and Canadians - the real trouble is coming.

There are more people living now than the sum total of all the people who have ever lived (source: Anderson, 1993). They will all die, and most of them will go to H-E-L-L.

In the next 38 years, the population of Hell will DOUBLE, raising the mean temperature of the Earth by 42 degrees.

Basically, we've passed the point of Peak Sin, and will have to deal with the consequences.

Skate deck pedal redux

2008-07-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

**Update** These pedals are now available for sale from BikeTinker.com

A while ago I posted about the skate-deck platforms I made to clip into clipless pedals. I screwed old Eggbeater cleats into cut-out chunks of skateboard deck, then clipped the platforms into the pedals, so I could ride in regular shoes.

After more than two years of almost daily use on a couple different bikes, I finally broke one. The pedal pulled off the cleat on a hard pedal strike, stripping the screws right out of the wood.

I filled in the holes on both platforms with wood and glue, figuring to redrill a small hole and thread the screws in, but I chickened out, when I realized that the plug (a random dry stick, broken to fit) was a lot softer than the laminated skate deck.
Instead, I cut the pedals down to a smaller size, and drilled new holes.

The new size is about the same as a caged mountain bike pedal, but with a lot more contact area. The old ones were 3.5"x4.5", and the new ones are 3.5"x3".

The part I cut off was the curve I'd had in the originals. It was fine with all my shoes, except the Keens I got this year, so I wanted to try some skatepedals that were (mostly) flat.

In the course of the refurbishment, I sanded the old graphics off the decks and put on some varnish, so they look a little nicer. New grip tape would really round out the package. I'm still really enamored of grip tape for pedals.

Workbox II

2008-06-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

Workbox III

2008-06-22T23:29:00.000-07:00

Web app design

2008-06-11T03:01:00.000-07:00

Before.
After.

Does Google care about their page rank?

2008-06-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

I saw a link to Google on someone's site, and I thought about all the 'Search This Site With Google' buttons I've seen, and thought, "all those inbound links have to be good for SEO, right?" Millions.

I had to laugh - does Google care about its own page rank?

Apparently it doesn't. If you Google "search engine," Google doesn't even come up on the first page. Google.co.uk comes up 23rd. Reg'lar old 'merkin Google comes up 33rd.

AltaVista comes up number one. Remember when we used to Google with AltaVista?

Farewell, Sheldon

2008-02-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

:^(

Midge Bars

2008-01-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

With a little help from various internet friends (thanks!) I drop-barified the Bontrager. Midge bars, Dia-Compe 287v brake levers for the V-brakes, bar-end shifters. The friction shifters seem to work fine with the 9-speed drivetrain, but I've yet to use them while tired and climbing on dirt. The stem extender is the key, here. According to Miles' BikeCAD drawing, it would take a 180mm stem with a 52 degree rise to get the bars to the same spot.

I thought the bars were short in the ends, but the length is perfect with the bar-end shifters installed. Like they were designed for that. I did have to wrap the Planet Bike cork tape 'foreskin' fashion to cover up the scratchy bolts in the shifter pods, but it's working okay so far.

Ahh... I think that's the best look for the front of a bike. They seem to flare a little less at the ends than WTB drops, and the tops are wider. I think I can hang my Carradice "Junior" bag up there, which is too wide for the WTB bars.

I'm a dork. Portly, too.

How not to photograph a bike. Junky backyard crap and a dog's tail! Zero contrast in the part of the shot you want to show off... can a bike photo get any worse?

The Dunes.

2007-12-26T22:57:00.000-08:00

It was Shane MacGowan's birthday yesterday.

This is a song he wrote for Ronnie Drew, called The Dunes

I walked today on the cold gray shore
Where I watched when I was much younger
Where they built the dunes upon the sand
For the dead from the great hunger
for the dead from the great hunger

Although I was a doctor's son
I gazed in fear and wonder
As they perished from the raging plague
That came in with the great hunger
that came in with the great hunger

When I watched at the age of four
In Eighteen Forty Seven
The mounds they built upon the shore
They seemed to point to heaven
they seemed to point to heaven

The wind and the rain have worked away
The dunes they are oft uneven
The children kick the sand around
And the bones they are revealed then
and the bones they are revealed then

My brothers and my sisters died
My mother only four and twenty
And I alone survived to see
The potatoes grow in plenty
the potatoes gron in plenty

As we died in vain they stole our grain
To put upon their tables
The dying covered the dead with sand
And danced while they were able
and danced while they were able

And the fiddler played we drank poitin
Then ate the last of the berries
Then knelt and said the rosary
Round the mounds of dead we'd buried
round the mounds of dead we'd buried

I saw dark shadows rise up from the sand
Dance all around the dunes
They danced the rattling dance of the dead
To a set of mournful tunes
to a set of mournful tunes

A crack of lightning split the sky
The rain on the dunes it poured
I left them lyin' where I shot them down
The bailiff and the landlord
Then I went for a drink in Westport

I walked today on the cold gray shore
Where I watched when I was much younger
Where they built the dunes upon the sand
For the dead from the great hunger
for the dead from the great hunger

goths

2007-12-25T22:33:00.000-08:00

This is funnier than BikeSnob.

I'm not a goth, but I married one in Vegas. Which is a pretty good trick if you're a hippie/metal/punkish mountain-man. Not so tricky if it's the real thing, I guess.

Anyway, that video made me laugh until my face hurt. "Blasphemer!"

I do think Andrew Eldritch could kill that guy from Nine Inch Nails with a single withering glance.

Actual Sisters of Mercy videos are funny, too, but not if you like the music.

Ah, but 1959 is one of my favorites.

Aviation Gin - local to Oregon

2007-11-11T17:09:00.001-08:00

The state liquor store in Mac has a whole rack by the door of 'local to Oregon' spirits, including several Canadian whiskies that are blended and bottled in Portland. Which is bullshit. It's got to be distilled here, and there's not much in the way of whiskey that doesn't originate in Canada. No tequila, either, which should surprise no one. Grappa, but it's expensive. Evergreen-flavored gin, which sounds like you should use it to thin oil paint.

You CAN get locally produced oil paints: M. Graham, which is made with walnut oil in West Linn (they make watercolors with honey as a thickener, too, so I'm thinking I could thin them with the evergreen gin, and then eat the paintings), and Gamblin, which is made around here, too.

I tend to start stories in the middle, then wander off into the distance.

For my first foray into the local spirits scene, I bought a bottle of Aviation Gin, which costs about $27 Oregon Dollars for a 750c bottle. I really like it. It's more soft and Dutch-gin like than Sapphire, and tastes better (much better) without lime in it. At the price, I would now choose Sapphire on cost rather than taste. I like the Aviation Gin better, but it's more than I care to pay. Considering that our money is the worst in the civilized world, you'd think locally produced goods would be a little cheaper than imported.
Maybe that will save us... the exchange rate will price China out of the crap-electronics and lead-paint category, and we can start poisoning ourselves again. Ah, it's a good thing no one reads this blog. :^)

I've drunk a lot of gin. I like Sapphire and tonic with double lime. I don't like martinis. The only martini I've ever enjoyed was at a party, served in a Dixie cup. I was like "sure! I'll have a martini! (what the hell)"... I took one sip and said "is this Sapphire??" Yah.

So the Aviation Gin is really good, and I came home all excited, because the label was very attractive, and it's a local product. Angelina wouldn't drink it, because the tonic wasn't local, and you couldn't have lime. Because they don't grow here. "Damn you and your principals, woman!"

So... I may need to seize my CO2 canister from its 10 year sojourn with my brewing friend, so I can make my own tonic water. I'm not sure if quinine can skate as a 'spice' or if I need to substitute some other bittering agent. Almond shells? Paint?

Oh my gwad.

2007-11-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

Canadian dollars are worth more than real dollars .

We're completely screwed.

I see Matt Chester is planning on building bike frames again, which makes me pleased and happy. I've rooted for him ever since I saw his bike on fixedgeargallery and said "you bastard!" because he nailed my mtb-meets-roadbike aesthetic down to the ground.

What's the German for 'opposite-of-Schadenfreude'?

He had some hard times for a while, and stopped taking orders for frames, but now he's getting married, moving to Canada and he'll take new frame orders in March.
$2200 Canadian for a custom titanium frame. "That's a bargain, eh? What is that, like $1800?"

No, y'hoser, it's more like $2353.57!

Well! The opposite of Schadenfreude is mudita, taking delight in another's well-being. That's cool.

Workbox 1

2007-10-28T21:57:00.001-07:00

Workbox 1, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

I've got a stack of very weathered wooden boxes I've been planning to turn into "workboxes", with found items inside. Originally, they were all going to be work gloves I find on the road, but it turns out most lost gloves are lame gardening gloves, or so new you look around for the other one.

So I branched out. When I got this chain off the street I knew it had to go in a box, but I didn't know how.

That's how.

pocatello almost IV

2007-10-27T23:11:00.001-07:00

It's gotten to that point... "oh this looks good; I could really ruin it now!"

So I only painted a tiny bit, and organized my paint box, instead. I put the brushes in the top drawer, and moved all the paint to the two deeper drawers.

My paint bin is very cool. It's a chest from England, that looks like it was made from some nicer scraps, and there are paystubs still in it from a woodworker in a coachbuilding company. Angelina and Max got it for me last year. Father's day, I think.

I never paint with black. I just mix the darkest blue and red I have together and use that. I learned watercolors from Eduardo Carrillo at UCSC, and we just used the primaries for everything.
So I have lots of black paint. I run out of white, and cerulean, but I've got unused tubes of ivory black, lamp black, noir, etc.

pocatello III

2007-10-24T00:28:00.001-07:00

dave3, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

Surprisingly, it actually looks better.

I had a few bad moments when I was like "what is this paintbrush DOING?" and "there's always more paint tomorrow."

I did have to go to Elliot Smith (CD), since the Led Zeppelin (vinyl) was making me too cocky.

I may never get over my amazement at the optical illusion of putting some color in the near vicinity of where it looks like it oughta be, and then you stand back and it actually LOOKS like something. Something more than the mess you expected from looking at it up close, I mean.

I'm such a faker when it comes to eyes. I'll go over someone's hair for three days, and then just smudge in a couple of loose squishies and call them eyes.

pocatello II

2007-10-23T00:27:00.001-07:00

DSC08316, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

So I painted over the background tonight, heading into more of what it's going to be. Done. The new background is made out of three colors: titanium white, cerulean and cinnabar green. Which is, of course... yellow. I sort of mix with the brush on the palette, and then mix it more on the surface.

pocatello idaho

2007-10-23T00:26:00.001-07:00

DSC08315, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

I did the preliminary painting for this ID card painting a couple years ago. Angelina thinks it's finished, but I know there's more to come.

Noreen

2007-10-18T00:07:00.001-07:00

I really like this painting. Lots of pencil, only a little bit of color. I got to dig out my 6Bs and go to town. Berol turquoise 6Bs are lighter than normal 2Bs. I can't believe they used to be my favorite pencil. They don't (didn't, 15 or 20 years ago) have those horrible scratchy bits in the lead, though. GNeek!

I'm starting to think the process I go through to disguise personal info is more interesting than the actual paintings, though...

100 mile food challenge

2007-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

Angelina and I are eating locally for the next year. For a couple weeks I've been thinking about investing in a bottle of Scotch, but I missed my chance. I drank up the last of Lorena's vodka a while ago with homemade Kahlua in White Russians. So... what do do on the beverage front?

With beer, we've moved from Sierra Nevada and Deschutes to Bridgeport IPA and Halo IPA. The first day of the challenge, though, I came home with Red Hook. "But it's $4.99 at Plaid Pantry!" Oops.

Spirits, though... a little research turns up the fact that the micro-distillery movement is pretty much headquartered in Northern Oregon, and we have a lot to choose from, hard-alcohol-wise!

Clear Creek in Hood River makes Calvados and Eau de Vie de Poivre and more. Apparently the oldest distiller in Oregon, they win medals in Europe for their Eau de Vie.
Edgefield makes whiskey and brandy and gin and...
Medoyeff makes vodka right in Portland. I think they started in Cottage Grove, which is right inside our 100 mile line.
Rogue Brewery (hey, another beer we can drink!) distills rum and 'spruce' gin in Newport and Portland.
Side Pocket Foods (?) in Cottage Grove apparently makes Lubrication vodka and various mixers... an interesting concept. Lorena was asking about local vodka yesterday. She could walk to Medoyeff from her house!

We truly live in the best area in the world. I'm excited about exploring all the local options, and really getting into the people and land around me. Starting with Dolmen Distillery, right here in Mac!! They make... uh, honey liquor. They make distilled spirits out of mead (fermented honey).
I need to take my list to the state store on Baker and see what they've got, local-wise.

This year, I'd like to visit the towns that are right on the line: Oysterville (a bit over, but a great name, plus it's on the coast), Doty and Dryad, Trout Lake, Lyle and Rowena, Tygh Valley, Warm Springs, Cottage Grove and Dunes City.

DIY bike-lane parking tickets

2007-10-11T20:15:00.003-07:00

BikesnobNYC had a recent post about his commute through Brooklyn, with many photos of people parked in the bike lane (which he was trying, y'know, to use).

This 'official' fella didn't come out on film, but through the Magic of Computer Enhancement appears to be a big ape.

Commentors suggested getting the police to ticket bike lane parkers. Or stickering their cars.

Or... two great tastes that taste great together... put your own ticket on those cars and see how many people mail $115 checks to BSNYC. Of course, I'm so far behind the curve it's sick-making. Ah well... never stopped me before!

Get the parking ticket PDF file, change the address and go to town!
Don't forget the envelope!

Finally: a needle for my record player!

2007-10-11T20:15:00.001-07:00

I went through a lot of trouble setting up this killer cabinet with amp, record player and CD player (actually piss-poor DVD player that stopped playing DVDs), only to find that the needle had been crushed in our move. Irritating.

I shored up the bottom with plywood, built a shelf, moved the drawer pulls around, and loaded it up with CDs. Pretty much an all-afternoon project when Angelina was at the shop. Now, though, the CDs are in the canning-jar boxes under the unit and the records are inside. I got the cabinet at the San Rafael Goodwill about 10 years ago for $200 (which I didn't really have). It has a painting of a ship on the top (the HMS Ajax), and VR all over it. My grandmother looked at it and said "Victoria Regina." I tried to find out about the ship, or the captain, but no luck. No idea if's old, or just cool. Antiques Roadshow would probably say "Victorian ship's captain's chest, worth between fifteen and thirty thousand dolars, except the repairs you made to the bottom devalue it quite a bit... you'd be lucky to get $75."

At Vortex Records, next to the Dollar Store, they have a box of different needles in the back. Pretty cool. I randomly asked, after buying "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" for Angelina (Ranch Records is closed on Sunday), if they knew where to get record player needles. The guy's like "I probably don't have what you need, but I have a good source. Bring it by." Fifteen minutes later, I was back with the cartridge.
"What model Technics do you have?" "Uh... I don't remember." He looked at me like I couldn't remember what kind of car I drive. Mercifully, Technics players are DJ-riffic, so there's still stuff around for them, and he had a generic $17 needle for it. The name-brand model was $40, and he didn't have one.

So for $17 I basically bought 100 albums. Got them out of hock, I guess.

They were playing Leonard in Vortex. Classy.

Wow. That's a big zit on the neck of the blue-collar-james-taylor.

He may outlive us all...

Best record ever. And Village Music is now no more.

I got this at a church rummage sale as a kid.

mark flaming

2007-09-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

Mark got his painting, so now I can put this up here without blowing the surprise!

This is the one Mark gave me and said "you don't have to paint this one."
"DUDE, it's the best one!

Portland Crucifix

2007-09-13T21:25:00.001-07:00

DSC08025, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

Max and Clinton and I walked down to the water park, and then went to an Ethiopian restaurant on Williams, where we saw what looked like Ethiopian gangsters and had awesome food.

So of course, I took pictures of Christ through a gate.

"Where are the pictures of Max frolicking in the water and refusing to eat Ethiopian food?"

Too dang arty for my own dang good.

lawrence farmer

2007-09-09T00:07:00.001-07:00

lawrence farmer, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

A couple years ago I found a stack of photo albums by the Benton Street Market's dumpster. They showed polaroids and snapshots of a local high school couple from the early seventies, and what looked like Army life in the Philippines. On the last page of one was this SRJC Student ID card.

I paint people's ID cards.
Serendipity.

I kept the ID card, and put the photo albums out with a bunch of free stuff in my driveway. They were the first things to go; before the old lady got out of the Town Car to rifle our old knick-knacks, while her white-haired old husband kept the getaway car running; before the dark-haired hipster tucked Angelina's gold lame jacket under his arm and sped away on his ten-speed. First.

The overhead projector never went.

silver wire bar wrap finisher

2007-09-03T12:51:00.001-07:00

DSC08006, originally uploaded by Philip Williamson.

This is the Quickbeam tape finished off with much much finer silver wire. I also spent a lot more time winding cleanly and put the loop underneath the bar where it doesn't show.
There's definitely some room for improvement in my technique to get a more uniform wrap, but it's a lot nicer than the job on the Ross. I might like the look of the copper wire better, though.

Copper wire to finish off your bar wrap.

2007-08-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

I aired up the Ross and oiled the chain to ride it to work today.
It takes four minutes to drive, six to ride. Then it takes a couple minutes to park, but can I carry the bike up into the office, where my new bosses also ride their bikes to work. Cool.

Unfortunately, the cork tape I've had on the bike for years and years (six?), and re-wrapped a dozen times has unraveled like the sleeve of time. When I came home for lunch I took five minutes to secure the ends, but couldn't find any electrical tape. Also, I'm pretty sure the only tape I've got that wasn't old when this bike was new is red, which doesn't work with the severe black-and-silver Gondor theme I've got going here.
It's a fairly plain bike, made of pure Allentown 1020, so maybe more a Lyle Alzedo / Oakland Raiders theme.

Anyway, I've never been a fan of the Rivendell twine finish for bar wrap, but I stole the basic principle and applied it to copper wire. I did a thrash job for a couple of reasons:
1. I'd already eaten lunch and only had a couple minutes until I had to be back at work.
2. As Pablo Picasso said, great geniuses are too busy breaking new ground to make things look beautiful. Leave that to the lesser artists.
3. I was going to change the bars tonight, but I blogged about the old ones instead.
4. Pablo Picasso was an asshole.*

This is what came out of the art bin, but I know I have some stainless steel wire. Which I bought for art purposes. Which is what I'll use when I get fresh tape and put the moustache bars back on.

These are the essential tools: wire, needle-nosed vice-grips, dikes so old that little Dutch boy probably lost a finger to them. Beer.

Put down a loop of wire, and then wrap over it.

Wrap, wrap, wrap wrap wrap.
I went from the 'far' end toward the loop, leaving spaces but pulling tightly, then back and forth, dropping the new wraps into the old gaps. I crossed under the bar, so the top looked more smooth. Next time I'll put the loop underneath, too.

When I was 'done' wrapping, I put the newly cut end through the loop I started with...
I'd been working off the spool, which was in my pocket - kept it close and corralled, but let it unspool cleanly.

Oh yeah: "um, started with..."

...and pulled the other (original) free end back underneath the wrap with the pliers. The loop part disappeared under the wrap, along with the captured second end.

Snip snip on each end, then kind of shove the one sharp end under the wrapping with the tip of the dikes and Bob's yer uncle!
Copper-wire-finished bar wrap.

And it's darkening outside... time to put the kid to bed.

*In his avocado el Dorado.

Illustration for Dirt Rag

2007-07-22T19:45:00.001-07:00

Amanda Zimmerman, the new Dirt Rag art director, commissioned an illustration from me to go with 'Last Chance For Gas', which is the piece that closes the magazine. Amanda encouraged me slip in a cycling bird reference, too, which was fun.

We went back and forth with sketches of the inside and outside of the shop, and the narrator and the new commuter he sees outside. Finally it all came together with both, and I floated the panel anchored by the big rectangle of the window that separates the two people.

Calling the the shop 'Paradise Cycles' was about the last idea, when you'd think it would've been the first. My favorite part of the finished picture is the pile of tires on the left.

Rebus

2007-07-21T13:47:00.001-07:00

A rebus for Clinton. And for my new favorite blog. Where the phrase comes up a LOT.

Surly Dingle

2007-07-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

I got some use out of my Surly "Dingle" cog today, riding up Peavine Road. Peavine is remarkably low-traffic, even around 5:00.

This Dingle cog has a 17 tooth cog and a 21 tooth cog. The Quickbeam's 40 and 32 tooth chainrings make a large gear of 63.9 i nches and a low gear of 41.4. I have my usual 15t cog on the other side of the wheel for a 72.5" gear. Your exact development changes depending on your tire size and crank length, of course; I'm running 35mm Paselas and 170mm cranks.
Dingles are also available with 18, 19 or 20 tooth big cogs. I chose this one because I'm an extremist. Also, I'm remarkably weak, and I wanted something that would take the pain away.

I rolled around town a little, cutting through the park to get onto 2nd, which took me out to Hill Road. This was the highest traffic leg of the loop, or maybe it just felt like that because the shoulder disappears halfway to Peavine and I was passed by a big rig and a dump truck that was tailgating him.

I rode out Peavine, and switched to the low gear when it got a little steep. There's a nice shaded turnout there at just the right spot, but of course I went another hundred feet up the road and changed gears across from a dirt driveway on a blind corner.

Of course, there was fender-fussing, where I had to brute-force a little more slack from one side and finesse the quick releases about halfway before the fender wouldn't rub the wheel in its new position. The Dingle makes the low gear axle position about half as far back as with just the two rings and a 15t cog.

The 32x21 is a nice low gear for that road. There were a couple times when I spun out on some slight downgrades, but the sustained climbing felt really good.

When I got to Power House Road, though, I switched back to the 40x17 and navigated the steep washboard gravel road. Too much speed and you just start bouncing around! The trick seemed to be to stay off the rear brake. The 35mm tires seemed to handle the gravel fine, though.
There was one big black pickup that came up the road, throwing a lot of dust. I took a deep breath and half-closed my eyes to get through that roiling cloud.
There's also a house with two enormous Rottweilers. They came running out the driveway, but I said "HEY!" and they let me go. I'm glad Power House Road is a lot shorter than I thought. About the time I started saying "this road sucks," it was over.

Right turn on Baker Creek, and I'm almost home. I stopped at Ed Grenfell park for some water, and because I always like to make a circuit of the park and cross the bridges.

Great Divide Race

2007-06-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

Update: Well, the race is over, two guys beat the course record, and several guys were laid low by dehydration. Praise be to folks who are smart enough to drop out before they damage themselves permanently. After the last couple years, finishing on a fixed gear is starting to seem... impossible. Nathan Bay, the only finishing singlespeed rider this year (and only the second after Kent Peterson?) finished 8 hours over the limit. Topofusion shows it as 8 minutes over, which boggled my mind at the unfairness of it all. :^)

Follow it here.
Read the posts from the bottom, one at a time. This would make a great movie, just the phone messages, some maps and lots of footage of the route. It would be hypnotic.

These guys are racing from Canada to Mexico down the spine of the continent. On bicycles. Unsupported. Everything they need, they carry on their backs.

Here are the stats from Topofusion, updated by Scott Morris (probably not the same one I knew at Sony). A lot of the positioning is best-guess, since they self-report from payphones to an answering machine, and some of them don't seem to do much of that. Tom Purvis transcribes it all onto the GDR blog.

Dave Nice is doing it on a fixed-gear machine. Whoa.

It's the only sporting event I've ever found remotely interesting, and I wish them all the best best best. Holy cow, man.

Optimum Tire Pressure - 35mm tires.

2007-06-21T23:49:00.001-07:00

Update 7/2/2007
I've extended the graph a bit, because I intend to gain a bit of weight this summer. Now I can use it to figure my tire drop when I weigh 275 with a 25 lb bike (180 lbs on the back wheel).

Now if someone could just figure out the line for 45mm and 54mm tires!

The latest issue of Bicycle Quarterly had a short article (by their standards) about how to optimize your tire pressure to get the ideal 15% 'drop' front and back. The drop is how far your tire deforms when you get on the bike.
If your tires are too hard, they bounce on road irregularities and rob you of speed. Also, it's less comfortable. Too soft, and there's too much drag.

The BQ tests corroborated a Frank Berto test that indicated 15% is the 'sweet spot' between too soft and too hard, and included Mr. Berto's chart.

Unfortunately for me, it didn't have a line for 35mm tires, which is what I currently run. I found two places where the gap between 32 and 37 evenly divided into fifths, and measured me a new line.

I even weighed my bike, with me on it, with the tires on a doctor's scale and a decorative cinder block (which was the perfect height) to get the weight biases fore and aft. It came out 40/60 with some random (but light) stuff in the basket.

So I plotted the tire pressures, made sure it was also a 40/60 ratio, and pumped up the tires to 55 front and 75 rear with my hugely aggravating SKS Kompressor pump that probably needs a new red rubber part to grab the stem.

Eternity

2007-06-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

We all know I love street art. Stickers, stencils, art-art, stuck to trees and signs and asphalt.

There are three reasons I love graffiti.
1. Graffiti is branding.
It is absolutely the same as putting "Southern Pacific" on every railcar and trestle. It marks territory. Graffitti says "I am here," and to an extent "I own this." It's a cat rubbing its face on your leg. People who've already peed on that tree sure take exception to it.

2. Humans are artistic animals.
The need to make marks is intrinsic, just like the need for music and our propensity towards faith and fermented beverages. It fills me with joy, glee and satisfaction to see it in action.

3. It looks cool.
This should be number one. Duh.
It is often more interesting, more universally engaging, and less pretentious than what I see in galleries. The same exact thing on the street can be arresting and puzzling, where in a gallery it would be irritating and twee. Of course, I'm not the first person to notice this. Basquiat was famous for scrawling "Samo" ('SAY-mo') everywhere, and Twist and Banksy are real Art Stars.

Anyway... randomly looking for "like Copperplate", I found a poem which intrigued me. So I poked at the internet a bit, and came up with this.

It's the story of Arthur Stace, who wrote the word "Eternity" in chalk or crayon in "a beautiful copperplate hand*" on the streets of Sydney for 30-some years. Half a million times, according to my trusted internet sources. The word in his handwriting even appeared in fireworks at the Sydney New Year's 2000 celebration. And the Olympics festivities.
See, graffiti IS branding.

*well, it's oKAY...

genius* convention

2007-06-08T13:30:00.001-07:00

Elizabeth, Clinton and I went down into the Pearl to check out some art. From about 6:30 to 10:30 we walked for an hour, ate sushi for an hour, and looked at art for an hour. No idea where that other hour went; I think it was spent laughing so hard I almost choked to death on beef noodle soup.

Clinton's idea for Pork that Tastes like Tofu will have to be featured in a guest post on Sooper-Genius: "All of the Fat, None of the Flavor!"

That wasn't what almost killed me, though. That was a story about how he acquired the only tie he owns. "I stole it from a ree-tahd**." What immediately flashed through my brain was, "because I wasn't absolutely sure I was going to Hell."

The sushi at SushiLand (mysteriously also called Marineopolis) is extremely fresh and pretty cheap, too. I didn't like coming home smelling like a sushi bar, though, especially since Angelina's a vegetarian. I haven't smelled of Parfum de Tempura for about 20 years, since Clinton and I worked at the Samurai in Mill Valley. Back when he was "Clint" and I was "Phil".

According to Clinton, this was the best piece in the whole place. He said "I think it's called '20'."

Clinton is a Practicing Curmudgeon. He once spent 20 minutes in deep study of a climate-control device at the Louvre until a handful of tourists were gathered around assessing its artistic merits.

So this series of artworks is dedicated to him. Next month maybe he'll curate a show here of the "Best" art he sees on the Art Walk.

Ha! I frame you! This one is called "art school detritus."

So is this one.
Boy, that's a big load of poop. Where'd it come from?

Wow. Who'd'a thought? It doesn't seem possible, does it?
Elena saw one of these and had a rough time because she couldn't have it. "I'm not STEALING... it's, um, performance art. Conceptual art. Like 'erased de Kooning', only it's called 'stolen horse.' It's about the empty space left by something that was, like an object or a lover, and of course it relates to class distinctions and the role of... RUN!!"

Clinton took us over to see this monkey he'd noticed earlier and really liked. He thought it was done by hand with a marker, but it's VINYL! A big vinyl sticker. Hmmm... who do I know with a sign-cutting machine?

This is probably too 'on purpose' for Clinton's idea of art. He's even POST 'post-post'. The only art is art that was never intended to be art. He really needs to write a manifesto called "Wild Readymades Can't Be Tamed."

"It's in a gallery, dude... of COURSE it's Art!"

To reach your own conclusions, more pictures are here.

____________________________________________________

* Elizabeth says it's very Gen X to declare yourself a genius, whether you are one or not. The Post-Post (post-post-postmodern) art movement (of which she's a founding member)'s central tenet is that declaring yourself a GEENIUS is what makes you one.
** this happened in Bwoston.
*** by the time I realized this wasn't true, it was too late for me.

Business Cards

2007-06-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

I made some business cards, for which I resurrected my old 'inkling industries' logo.

This guy used to go on the sleeves of my tee-shirt designs. I brought him out of retirement because he's still a good little logo. When I was working at Blue Water, Lisa got out of her chair, stomped over without a word, bent down and stared at the sleeve logo for a long minute. She went back and sat down and said, "I hate you!"

See? Good logo.

I cleaned up the little fella and vectorized him last night. Now I can make him any size and he'll be crisp and sharp! I wish I could say the same about myself...

I like the tension between the fancy flourishy type and the typewritery Courier, and I like the way the inkling character plays against the buff paper and swirly type, too. Cracks me up.

My favorite detail, though, is using the descender from the 'p' as a slash to separate graphics and illustration. SOOOPER-genius! :^)

How to make a logo

2007-05-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

0. Find someone who needs a logo.
Get a client. One who's reasonable and smart, has money to pay you, and has thought about their logo, of course. Maybe they'll have colors already picked out and a font already, too.

1. Talk to them.
Look at their sketches and ideas, talk it out, find out what they want to get across and what they like. Scratch out a little thumbnail drawing.

2. Enlarge upon the thumbnail.
Scan it, and blow it up to use as a template. Make sure the proportions are pleasing. This one I redid until the cup was proportionate to the book. Flip and mirror the nicer half of the sketch to make it symmetrical, curve their name to fit, and print it out.
3. Draw.
Trace the mock-up on a light box, then scan THAT. Drop it into the original file and save it with an iterative name ("logo_02") and show it to the client for feedback.
4. Talk to the client.
Listen to the client. Find out what they think, and get them talking about what they like and don't like. Do not take offense. If something is bugging them, find out why. Define their terms. Don't stop at what they say, ascertain what they mean.
Here, the book looked "too cartoony," and "like clip-art."
~~Go away in a huff and work out something totally new, hoping it will be better~~
Find out what that means to them, and address it. I have a second-hand anecdote about client miscommunication that ends with the punchline "BLACK! Black is the brightest color!"
Turns out the fat black lines around the pages weren't to their taste. Fairly easy to rectify, and the chunky look wasn't appropriate anyway.

Showing your work to someone else is a great way to suddenly see all the flaws. Right before you send it, have a look at it as if you were GETTING it instead of sending it. If there's a problem, talk it out. You may get a good suggestion like "what if the steam was really curly?" or "I think it would be cool if the words were on ribbons."
This may spark your own ideas like "the steam could make the ampersand!"
5. Work hard.
Do what it takes to meet the client's needs.
This had to work as a 40" vinyl window logol. So it had to be clean. Really sharp and really big... it should be vector art. So I learned how to use Photoshop's Pen tool to make paths and vector masks that could scale up and down without getting ragged or blurry.
6. Talk to the client.
You think it's done. They love it, but want more "dimension" and "texture". Does that mean scanned paper textures dropped into the shapes? Mercifully, no. Just some shading to model the form and give the feeling of an antique book. But how do you do that with vector graphics?
Simple. You don't. You just make new layers and paint over the surface. The EPS I sent to the signmaker worked fine, because the shapes scaled perfectly and the painting was airbrushy enough so that if it got blurrier blown up to three feet... cool.

7. GTM. ("Throw me the check, I throw you the logo!")
Print out a hard copy, and burn the final PSD file to CD along with a big JPEG preview image, the fonts and the printable file you sent to the printer. Put it all in a big envelope and give it to the client when you said you would.

Mac local

2007-05-03T17:03:00.001-07:00

The ring makes 'shop local' read as 'local shop', too, which is what the sticker would identify: local shops.
I like the idea of letting people draw their own fuzzy definitions of 'local', so I included a list of larger and larger areas that could be considered 'local', depending on one's perspective.
I like the typefaces, but mostly as a result of trying out a bunch that were either too boring or too freaky.
The ten-pointed star means nothing; it just adds impact and draws the eye. I checked a bit; it doesn't appear to mean anything bad, either.

Ghost Bike Memorial tee shirt design

2007-04-06T11:18:00.000-07:00

steampunk espresso tamp :: GUEST geeenius!

2007-03-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

Custom-turned hunk of aluminum mated to an antique doorknob.
By Mark.
"Y'know what would look steampunk..."

Ornate. But clean and modern. Dark and worn, but shiny and new.

VERY comfortable. It's like doorknobs were made for the human hand, or something.

Exactly 49mm, baby!

NAHBS autograph hound

2007-03-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

I had such a good time at the North American Handbuilt Bicycle Show, you couldn't believe!

I arrived shortly before closing, because Amtrack was... six-plus hours late. I actually laughed out loud when I realized (sitting in the train for an hour in a marsh in Benicia) that I might miss the show for a second year in a row! Last year, I broke my arm two days before it, and was in surgery on the day I was supposed to be there. About three seconds after that I got really angry, thinking that I might get in so late that I'd be stuck in San Jose!

My friend Mark saw the whole show twice, came to the station three or four times and had to walk a dozen blocks to find a cell-phone charger for his car so he could find out what happened to me. Total hero.

My other friend Mike I was supposed to meet up with there said he kept marvelling at things going "there's no way Phil* would willingly miss this!"

I also missed out on meeting the iBOB (Internet Bridgestone Owner's Bunch) folks, which was a real shame. I spend a lot of time internet-yakking about bikes with them, and I would've really liked to meet some of them face-to-face. Ah well, I guess I'll remain a mysterious cypher for another year. (Yeah, that cracked me up, too... or was it only me?)

I did meet Rick and Gina. He remembered that Angelina had bought my knickers for me, and I told Gina I liked her bike. She'd had the same trouble with the Amtrak pizza that I had (chicken mysteriously become sausage and pepperoni). They're really cool. I'm happy they're part of my internet circle.

I talked to a guy at the Bilenky booth while I was waiting for Mark to get back from parking the car (and after I'd just walked in without paying - sorry, I didn't see anyone taking money that late).
Wow. I'd heard about Bilenky for years, but never seen the caliber and coolness of their bikes.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/philipwilliamson/416733968/

Mark made a big deal out of showing the girl at the gate his wristband, which almost blew my cover, and we were off! I was like a kid on a sugar high going back into the candy store. I think I may have been a little much for some people coming off the second day of a big show, but most of them seemed as amped as I was.

The thing I did this year that I wanted to do last year, was get builders' autographs and a little line-drawing of a bicycle. Kind of a bike-signature, which is a pretty weird idea. Over all, I'd say most people were surprised and flattered. Some were non-plussed but did it anyway. Very few actually came across with a drawing, but the ones that did were great!

I saw Richard Sachs in his booth, and looked at his bikes. Mmmm... smooth. Ira Ryan was away from his booth, but I got a shot of his pink porter**. If he had a 'cross bike there, I spaced it out, but the pictures I've seen of his 'cross bikes... they have a different aesthetic than Sachs', but maybe more my style.

I got Sacha (Vanilla) White's autograph. He's super-friendly, coming out to meet anyone stopping into his booth and chatting them up. Cool. He talked a bit about teaming up with Rapha for a couple things, and how they sponsored his 'cross team with a load of gloves and gear (knickers?). We agreed that it seemed like a perfect match, with them "kinda coming from the same aesthetic."
That's Sacha White's autograph at the top of the page. Tom Oswald was about the last guy I talked to, he was starting away from his booth as they were shutting off the lights, but came back to talk to me. I was inarticulate and weird, and he was gracious and smart. Oddly, he randomly chose to sign under Sacha, bringing it full circle.

I got to Bruce Gordon's booth and flitted from bike to bike like a crazy moth, or possibly a bee. "Wow. I didn't know... look at this! And... hey!" I could kind of see the Petaluma influence on my aesthetic, and the Rock n' Road genealogy in my Quickbeam. Great stuff.

I asked Bruce for his autograph, and he said "sure, if you buy my CD - it has professionaly pictures of every bike here, I'll sign anything you want!" I was like "I paid $5 for a Heineken***, I'll buy your $7 CD." I asked him if he remembered my friends from Dempsey's. He did, which launched him on a good reminiscence, culminating in "that Lisa - she was as cute as a bug's ear!"
Then he spied Mark's camera. "Are you shooting FILM? Is that a... no. Wow. Can I hold it?" Apparently he used to be a "Nikon man - Nikon FM," but he really coveted a Leica. If I ever see him again, he won't remember me for our mutual friends... I'll be the "Guy with the Leica Guy." :^)

I talked to Mr. Old Man Mountain, and admired his Alfine bike. No fenders, but a nice minimal rack (panniers only). I liked the bars especially well. They were milled down out of a big chunk of aluminum. I was like... "so you work with Old Man Mountain racks and make the bikes?" and he was like "oh, I've been doing the racks a long time, it's all me."
He's a young guy, and for some reason I expected sort of an old man...

Ties with Sacha White for "simple, tag-like signature." Maybe second.

Got Rick Hunter's autograph, and he loaded me down with a pocketful of postcards. Nice guy, really affable. I'd only ever really seen (paid attention to?) his forks, usually attached to Matt Chester customs. His bikes looked great! I love me the curvy-tubed 29ers!

Speaking of which, I only sideswiped the Retrotec booth, but those bikes looked a lot more put-together than the ink-jet four-page catalog he sent me a couple years ago. Yow. Nice. No pics. :(

I got Wes Williams' signature, and got to tell him I'm happy he's back in the bike business. He said he took a break to sell cars "for good money - real good money." Maybe I should do that.

He drew me a Mountie, which is the original curvy-tube 29er. That is a good-looking bike. The one he drew looked like it had a rigid, curved fork, too. Nice.

I spent a little time in the Ahearne booth, because the details in his frames are so... detailed. They've got my found-object funky aesthetic going, along with my bike-love. I talked to Joseph Ahearne about "bikes-as-art," and he was really amenable to showing some frames at the McMinnville Art Walk if I could arrange it. Woo. We'll see. That would be totally cool. It could be across from Tommy's Bikes in the Courtyard where we used to have our shop, and, and... :^)

Cool guy. He was really into the autograph thing; he seemed to think it was flattering and hilarious at the same time. His bike drawing was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. He showed it to his friend in the booth, who was like "mmm... maybe it needs an arrow pointing to it that says 'bicycle'..."

I'd gone by Steve Potts' booth and took a billion pictures of the vintage blue Potts up on the rack, and chatted with the woman manning**** the booth while Steve was talking to the Reynolds people. After I scared Tom Oswald with my stalker-like intensity I spied Steve back at his booth and went over to see him. Steve Potts' bikes really formed my idea of what a mountain bike, and a bike in general, should be. I'd seen him around, and been by the WTB shop a couple times, but I finally got to tell him that. It was good.

I introduced myself as a born-and-bred Mill Valley boy and asked for his autograph, "and a little drawing, maybe a bicycle or something," and asked if he remembered my old friend Will Hassinger, who used to work at WTB. "Let me tell you something about Will," he enthused, "I knew Will before he was born!" He went to work on the drawing, and told me stories about Will as a kid, "eight years old, with his skinny butt sticking up out of the dumpster, looking for mechanical things - to take apart! - I LOVE Will!" That would've been about when we used to crash into each other to see who had the harder head. I believe it was a tie.

He went back to the drawing, and asked me if I still lived in Mill Valley. I described McMinnville, and he said he knew it; he'd gone through last year and really liked it. They (him and who, I dunno) take road trips all over the country and never touch the interstate. "That's how you see the country - the real country."
He said he was coming up again, and he'd be in my store. "We'll have dinner together!" I said "Sure! My wife's the best cook in the world!" I left there dead chuffed. Steve Potts is coming over to my house! :^)

After we got in the car and drove away (ignoring the talking navigator's bogus directions), I spied a beautiful silver bike flowing through traffic, and I tried to see what it was. Mark was like, "is it a Bianchi? Chrome?" I'm craning my neck, and then I refocus and I'm like "that's GINA's bike!"
Sure 'nuff, Rick and Gina, moving through the streets like fish.

The show, even though I only got about two hours of it, was a total knockout. I can't wait for next year's, which should be in Portland. Very exciting, and a whole lot closer.

* Mike is one of about seven people who are actually allowed to call me "Phil," since they knew me when it was really my name. They're the ones who'd call my house and say "Is Phil there?" And get my mom going, "No. There's no 'Phil' here." long pause. "There's a Philip. Would you like to speak with HIM?" They put in the time, they get the perks.
** I'm officially tired of the French spelling. Partly because I have to pronounce French words all French, which is irritating and affected, but mostly because I'm a Porter, (by way of my mom), and I drink Anchor and Deschutes porter, and I went to Porter College, and we live in America, dammit.
*** On the train.
**** :^)

NAHBS

2007-03-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

I almost didn't make it.

My original sooper-genius plan (unencumbered by facts) was to ride my bike to Salem, take the train to San Jose for the North American Handbuilt Bicycle Show, rent a pickup from Enterprise and drive home with a bunch of plants we'd left with Sharon when we moved.

Ha. Haha. Enterprise only rents one-way in California. U-Haul costs $900 to go one-way from Santa Rosa to Portland. Five half-barrels filled with herbs aren't worth it. Ryder is a bargain, though! $600 one-way. Most other companies don't do it at all.

After much poking, I found that Avis rents one-way, and their biggest, most capacious vehicle is a mini van. That thing isn't that mini, either. It's a 6 cylinder Chevy with a long nose that looks more like a low-rider SUV than a mini van.
$150 dropped off in Salem, where I always get lost.

In the end, I drove my car, drove all around Salem looking for a bogus address before I found the Amtrak station. After 24 hours on the train, I was 7 hours late getting into San Jose so I got two hours at the show in a frenzy (but had a great time), went to San Rafael with Mark, had lunch with my Dad at Fred's in Sausalito the next day, and got a ride (I drove) with him to Santa Rosa.
My train diary.

Belgian girl's blog: siskalifornia.blogspot.com

Monday morning I rented the van, loaded up with garden statuary, the Kaiserin Frederich rose Angelina waited a year to get, lots of art and art supplies, including four cases of letterpress type(!) and jammed home.Santa Rosa to McMinnville, new Personal Best of 9:45 total time, including a 45 minute Denny's stop in Redding. Stopped to eat, stopped to pee, stopped for gas.

It took me about a week to recover.

We may be Ugly... but we have the Music.

2007-02-16T22:30:00.000-08:00

We just watched "Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man".

The differences in the performances were incredible. There's a thing that some performers have, some times, where they really feel the music, channel it through themselves and make it not only their own, but ours.
Other times, or other performers... that's what they're striving for. And the striving keeps them from it.

Of the whole deal, Nick Cave was the biggest disappointment. He was in it to 'say' something, to 'pay homage' to Leonard Cohen. Fuck that. Say something for yourself! Say something to ME. His "Tower of Song" was the second best cut on on "I'm Your Fan" (after the John Cale Hallellujah, duh - David himself would have to stretch to touch that shit), because he got inside it and rocked it. He gave you a taste of what it might feel like to be Nick Cave trapped inside the tower of song, inside the music industry, inside your own expectations of your own expectations. He rolls out a little "I asked Hank Williams... how lonely does it get," and chugchugchugs a little Elvis into it, "a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song, TOWER OF SONG tower of song."
Anyway. none of that this time, it was all Tony Bennett loungy loungy. Don't try to be Leonard Cohen... try being Nick Cave.

A couple good people made Leonard Cohen's songs their own; a woman who was hard to watch, and a country fella - I do like songs in the country and western idiom. They were both good, but Rufus Wainright made me cry.

After a drag number (only (mostly) not in drag), he pulled it all out for "Chelsea Hotel". He made me cry, and it came up again every time I tried to talk about what he had there.
It's coming up now.
He sang, and you could see on his face, all his dead friends. Maybe it's the "artifice" in Art, but it looked like he was singing Leonard's* words, and feeling them as his own, remembering friends, people who'd touched him, made a difference in his life, who were dead.
Gone.
And at the end of the song, the last verse, where Leonard Cohen reveals himself to be a dick, you see Rufus Wainright shake it off, throw off the melancholy, get rid of the feeling so he can go on with his life, standing more easily, looking around with "I don't mean to suggest... I loved you the best... I don't even think of you that often," and for the first time I saw the necessity of taking that stance in the song, to divest yourself of the pain and laugh it off.

Bono got it, The Music, and so did the hunchback woman. My mom always said she couldn't stand to watch Jim Nabors sing, and now I understand. Sometimes you gotta do what it takes to make your voice do those things, I guess.
Rufus Wainright got it. He did a good Hallelujah. with his 'dear friend', and his sister Martha, and he really had it there, too. When it was the dear friend's turn, it was gone. You look up, eat some popcorn, start chatting. She was striving. Martha had it; she was the quivering hunchback who did 'The Traitor' so well.
And I realized, it struck me, that there are some who push a song, and some who get on it and ride.

The hundred thousand singers, and the 100 million fans... that's what we're looking for. That getting inside it and making it our own, and we can feel it when someone does it. They don't make it OURS, they make it THEIRS, and because they believe it... we can feel it.
That's what keeps Celine Dion in business, the simulation of intense emotion and why Clay Aiken is the anti-Christ.

That bit in Leonard Cohen, where he has to end a reminiscence with... "I don't think of you that often," is like the knife in the sleeve. I have that in myself, the pathological refusal to play to expectation. The twist. In a sudden shift of perspective, you have to undercut, maybe to play down genuine emotion or pain, or maybe to pull the rug out from under someone who thinks they know you, let them know they don't. But they do. You don't fool anyone, you just get to pretend to yourself that you've eluded them, danced away.

This codicil may not survive here more than a couple days. Maybe only until I've peed and gotten another beer.

*I generally detest pretending to be on a first-name basis with one's heroes, but sometimes it just works.

American Cottage Industry Transportation Bikes

2007-02-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

A discussion on the iBOB bike list between framebuilders Doug Fattic and Tim Fricker about making transportation bikes in America, for Americans, inspired a little thinking on my part.

Doug has developed a transportation bike for the Ukraine, and Tim was thinking about something between the extremes of making fine bicycles for discerning cyclists and designing a bike to be built in China to reach a price point acceptable to American non-cyclists.

I thought about the people I've met who went to the UBI framebuilding school, or just bought a welding rig to make their bike ideas tangible. It seems like a LOT of people have recently learned to braze and TIG weld because they are ON FIRE about bicycles. What if all the people learning to build bikes got together? They can't all be the next Richard Sachs, but they could make some money and help change the world.
Perhaps they could organize themselves into a giant, distributed labor pool.

It occurred to me that 'local production" could be quite local: a network of American 'microfactories' making transportation bikes to a predetermined design. "Microfactured in America."

A franchise.

Say you're the franchiser:
You get cheap welding labor from people who are working in their garages. Cottage industry piecework.
They get a 'kit' of tubes. You've bought the tubes in vast quantity (with all that startup capital), and had them mitered, possibly by a subset of your cottage industrialists, bundled and shipped to the workers.
They get the plans for the bikes in a small number of sizes, and the plans to make cheap jigs out scrap wood.
They get a network of other folks who are also all fired up about bikes and excited to make them.
People in each city get access to locally made bikes, and every builder has a network of family and friends he or she can evangelize, and who are rooting for them to succeed. The "Farmer's Market Bike" can even be sold and displayed at Farmer's Markets. :^) Income could be supplemented with '$6 tune-ups', and retrofitting Wald racks onto other bikes, while free air and tool use could create more community good will.
Bikes stay local unless another builder needs a few extra. Or, with good communication amongst the distributed workpool, labor may divide naturally between good sellers and efficient welders.
You get some initial 'franchise costs' which you roll into tubing and plans, and you mark up the tubes and build kits somewhat, to get a percentage of each bike and recoup some of the costs of designing the bikes and keeping the pieces flowing.

Like a car dealership, but the factory is on-premises.

Every town has autobody shops that paint repaired door panels, etc. There might be a way to get small batches of bikes painted in "durable automotive finishes" with whatever's been mixed, or is popular. Sparkly dark green comes to mind. People like these colors, and they already associate them with transportation.

The bikes could have a simple headbadge decal and a small seat-tube band with the bike size and model, and the builder's name, address and signature.
A downtube decal that says "Main Street" or "Cottage Bike" could brand them, but I don't like down tube decals, and wouldn't drive a car that said "FORD" in big letters across the side.

Sprocket Hole Photography

2007-01-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

Studying art in college, I suddenly found myself with a broken Exakta, 100 feet of 35mm film, no money, and a $12 Ciroflex.
It didn't even occur to me to borrow a camera. I just thought I had to make the 35mm film work in the TLR.

Since film is made in big sheets, then cut and punched, I figured the emulsion must go out past the sprocket holes, and that it ought to end up looking pretty durn cool.

A little work with a Swiss Army knife yielded a sweet little system that magically made Cool Looking Pictures.

There's a great movement of photographers taking art pictures with 120 toy cameras: Holgas and Lomos, Dianas. Many of them shoot 35mm film through them.

Basically, you cut the ends off a 120 film spool, plug them into a trimmed-down 35mm spool, and away you go:

This vintage 1965 35mm Tri-X is going to be modified to work in a 120 camera. It was the only roll I had around, and it's a case of either "use it or chuck it", and I won't try too hard to make great images, 'cause it's probably fogged. It's older than I am (and I'm pretty fogged).

Trim about 3/16" off the spool of the 35mm film you want to use. Modern spools have a little 'step' inside at exactly the right level: two nubs inside that don't go all the way to the end. Cut down to the tops of them.
Do the same to a reloadable film cassette spool to use as a take-up reel.
Make it even, but don't worry about getting it perfect. If you do worry, you could probably run it on a sanding block to square it up.

To make the adaptor plugs, cut the ends off two 120 spools. The ones with vertical rectangular "windows" work perfectly. Cut them right under the tops of the outermost windows.
Trim off the two outside vertical pieces and the thin window-fill. Taper the remaining two middle pieces a little to fit inside the 35mm spool.
Test them for fit. Loose ends fall off while you're loading the film, which sucks. I often wrap the plug ends with tape to make them fit securely after I've over-trimmed them.

This is the disassembled reloadable cartridge, the modified commercial film roll, and the four 120 spool-ends.
Note the little ears that make a 'step' in the reloadable cartridge spool.

Make sure the cassettes are mirror-images: modified long end on top, film exit angle reversed.
Tape the film to the take-up reel and assemble the reloadable cartridge around it by snapping the top on and plugging the 120 ends in.

Plug the 120 ends into the modified film spool, make sure everything's even and secure again, and put it into the camera.

Check to see how much winding it takes to advance the film one frame. I mark the film at the edge of the full cassette with a Sharpie and wind it forward until the mark disappears inside the take-up cassette. On the C3 it's one full revolution. I think.
That's why I check. I have a lot of half-overlapping double-exposures.

Don't forget to cover the window in the back of the camera with aluminum foil or electrical tape.

"Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a victory out of my ass!"

2007-01-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

"Aw, Bullwinkle, that trick never works!"

This is a Bicycle Yellow Card - don't let it go to red.

2006-12-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

Peter Miller, an artist, designed magnetic yellow cards as bicyclists' warnings to drivers. The idea is that when someone almost kills you, you flick a card onto their SUV (only SUV drivers are aggressive and stupid), and it sticks, informing them of their transgression. Other cyclists can also then spot the dickhead. In his scenario, the dickhead doesn't jump out to fight, or crush you with his car.

I really like Mr. Miller's cards, but I think they're wordy. When you throw something on someone's car, it 'thwank!s", and a bright yellow piece of plastic is about the most visible thing in the world. This is why actual yellow cards and yellow flags in sporting events are yellow: for their high degree of visibility. Over about three feet, tagging someone's car with a yellow card is not a secret activity.

When you fling something at someone's car in full view of the world, you are calling them out. If it says "hey, slow down, let's be friends", you're about 98% as likely to be pummelled or chased as if it says "fat ass fucks drive fat ass trucks".

So say what you mean.

On a bike rid e recently, I rode up a freshly paved road that had these yellow plastic flaps glued to the road in lieu of striping. All along the side of the road for a couple miles were chunks of plastic that had been torn off by car tires. Hmmm...
I spent about 40 minutes riding to the top of a hill, stopping every 15 feet to collect them. I got 33 or so. I wrapped them up in my Wilco cap (the farm store, not the band), and put them in my basket. I was already starting to get an inkling of an idea...

At home, I washed the rainroadcrud off the plastic, and tested out markers. Only one of my archival waterproof permanent art pens was permanent on this surface, but the black wasn't as good as a reg'lar old fine-point Sharpie. Sharpies are cool.

So I put on a movie, opened a beer and went to town. If they couldn't be printed, they could all be hand-drawn. If it took a while to get something good, so what? I was drawing on trash! Making art out of trash is very freeing, since you aren't making it worse. If you don't like it, throw it away!

I came up with three designs: an exclamatory warning bike, a bike centaur variation on a tee-shirt design I did about 15 years ago, and this image of a guy pooping out cars. The first one didn't have horns or a tail, it was just a guy. I like it better, but my friend Mark just had to have it, so it's on his fridge now. All I got are devils. Angelina looked at it, and said, "your cartoons are too intellectual." I'm like "it's not intellectual, it's poop!"

Max was playing Hot Wheels in my studio today, and he looked at all the yellow cards and smiled. He asked, "is this guy pooping cars?" (I guess he doesn't know about "devil" iconography yet). I said "yes," and he grinned and said "REAL cars?"
"Well, yeah."

Getting magnetic cards to stick to cars is hard. From six feet away, you have about a 12% chance of success. Max and I played a fun game, taking turns throwing a card at our car, so I know.
Laying the card flat on your palm and swinging your arm wide to let it float magnet-first at the door works best, but too hard makes it bounce right off.

Once it's on, though, it seems to stick pretty well.

Jethro Tule bike tool

2006-10-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

I have a two-speed fixed-gear bicycle with two chainrings, one cog and fenders. Changing to a smaller gear means moving the wheel back two inches in the dropout, which can cause the tire to rub on the fender, if the fender has been set up with a nice line for the normal road gear. Last time I went on a ride and changed gears for the 1000 foot gravel climb, I had to pop the fender stays out of their quick-release blocks, and they sort of jostled around back there and scared me every time I gained a little speed on a flat section.

I also run larger tires sometimes, which means further fender fu. Sometimes I carry a small 8mm wrench to adjust the fender, but the times I carry it and the times I need it rarely overlap.

To loosen the track nuts and move the wheel, I use a "Jethro Tule." It's a nicely rounded chunk of steel with an offset 15mm hex set into it. It's small, but you can use your foot to get the nuts tight, and it feels good in your hand. Ahem. It also has a bottle opener.

If only the Jethro Tule had an inset 8mm wrench in the flat part, instead of the bottle opener!

This would make sure I had the fender tool when I had the track nut tool, and dispense with the thigh-gouging bottle opener. The only reason I don't carry the Jethro Tule around in my pocket all the time, is that Gouging Hook poking holes in my thigh. I don't want the Big Circumcision. The whole tool is sleek and rounded, except for that.

"But we need a bottle opener!" you cry, "how will people know we're rebels without our beer hooks?". Bear with me here. "In my day", we popped the tops off our bottles of Spaten on Bolinas Ridge at sunset with the cages of our Suntour XC beartrap pedals. Or a chainring. Or careful work with a key. Or the lighter trick. For some reason we never had a bottle opener, but there was always a lighter around. Don't know why.

Not once did I, nor anyone I know, Fail To Drink Our Beer for want of an opener.

Nowadays, there are openers on every single alt.bike accessory: hitch-mount racks, dropouts, front racks, tools, and bicycles themselves. Some are actually just openers with tools attached. You could end up with more openers than bottles.

Maybe the backlash could start now, with an 8mm/15mm combination Jethro Tule.

Gotta be a follow-up

2006-10-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Poking around, trying to get the right link to the Picasso quote I came across an Artnews article on the use of photography in painting.
It made me think about what I'd just written, and about painting from photographs.

I don't generally paint from photographs, and I don't generally like paintings that are made from them. To me, the paintings are often stiff and dead, with no vibrancy of the subject. They look like paintings of photographs, not paintings of people. If I'm fooled by one, though, I don't feel fooled - I'm impressed. It's hard to transcend the single-eye perspective of the camera and get something that feels like life.
When you're making a drawing of something, your head moves. Even if the subject never moves (like, hopefully, a still life), the artist's eye level changes as she gets tired, or hunches down to get into the details. You shift sideways, get up, move around. Even if your head was strapped into some Clockwork Orange harness to keep your head still, the view of the thing is three dimensional, and you've got two eyes, so even there you've got two views on the same subject.

That's why I think paintings of photographic subjects seems flat. Cause it is.

Painting photographs where that's the subject, though, I think is fine. I like it. I do it myself when I paint ID cards. The subject is the subject only indirectly. It's still about the person whose card it is, but there's no pretense that the picture isn't a picture of a picture.

My great friend Dave almost exclusively makes paintings by projecting collages onto canvas or panel and painting them. I love them. They're not paintings of naturalistic scenes 'cheated' with a camera, they're pretty obviously paintings that are paintings, with lots of graphics, and an obvious collage source. He likes the process, and he likes the result. He says "tracing is an art form," which I think is a pretty funny quote.

If someone takes offense that I don't like paintings from photographs - don't. If you enjoy the process and the results - great. It's your art. If you make money from your paintings, that's super-fabulous. Your art is your art.

Man Ray said something great about artists in his autobiography. All artists are sacred, and bad art don't hurt.

Grandma Moses

2006-10-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

I have a report to do about Grandma Moses, so in my way I did a cursory examination of the material and sort of let it fester in my mind for a couple of weeks.

The cool thing about Grandma Moses was not the greatness of her paintings, but that she MADE them. She just hauled off and did it. She painted her neighbors and her life, recording scenes and experiences from her life.
She didn't paint paintings of paintings she'd seen, she made paintings of things she'd seen. This isn't earthshattering, but it's cool. Her paintings created quite a stir at the time, and a lot of their impact is lost now, precisely because she was so successful. I look at the paintings and say "So? I've seen folk art like this a million times all my life."
Well, it's not derivative, it's seminal. The reason it's so familiar, is because she made 1600 paintings over 30 years. Her images were printed on Hallmark cards, and she inspired legions of folksy artists. If you don't like it, you can definitely blame her, but you can't dismiss her. She wasn't copying that style; she originated it: the colors, the scenes, and the funky perspective in imaginary space.

Now, I think this is cool. She painted what she saw, and what she had, and what was real. Her community, the gatherings she went to, and the change of the seasons.
I think this is very mature, artistically. Maybe because she was mature, and started painting at 70, not 17.

Young artists tend to paint - to make art about - things we don't have. Our fantasies, what we wish were true, what we think our peers will think is cool. Immature artists make art about what they want, what they want to have power over. Angels, horses, dragons, hot chicks. Give it some time, and make art about what's really true for you, and you can grow up and be Picasso and get all that shit as as an old man, after all.
Then you paint what's real, and the critics call it "an old man's fantasy."1 Dude. You're missing the point. He was Picasso. He had a 23 year old girlfriend when he was 67. He LIVED that fantasy.

Anyway, I think it's artistically more mature make art about what you've got. What's real, and what you really see. I think that's what people mean when they talk about 'honesty' in art. Is a science fiction book cover an honest piece of art? No, not really. It might be really good, but it's an idealized fantasy.

I think the Greek ideal of idealized nobility is horseshit, but it affects people still, and they put their own spin on what 'ought' to be, to create something 'better' or 'more perfect'.
Because they want to control it.
I'm reminded of an article I read where prominent plastic surgeons were invited to critique and suggest upgrades for famous beauties, including Audrey Hepburn. Blasphemy. Literally. This is what God has wrought. You can do better?
The human is more divine than the human idea of the divine, if you get the convolution.

I think one of the great ironies of the ages is that teenage boys learn to draw so they can draw women. Teenage girls learn to draw so they can draw horses...

1. Artnews "Picasso in America"

2006-10-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

All fixed-gear bikes should have brakes... but they should squeal like hell.

I sent this to the fixed-gear list, but I'd been planning to put it here. I had this breakthrough the other day, because the cantis on my Quickbeam started howling like ancient Irish ghosts (for no reason!).
Instead of blogging about the usefulness of loud brakes, though, I fixed them so's they're twice as powerful and totally silent*.

Loud brakes on fixed-gear bicycles have several distinct advantages for the rider who wants to stay 'pure', but keep his pretty smile.

1) You will never ever use them just to slow down.
a. The horrible noise scares you, and trains you not to touch the brakes
b. The horrible noise is embarrassing, and will ensure any fixsters standing around the coffee shop will laugh at you and snub you forever.

2. They're there for emergencies.
a. When the Ford Extortion driver looks right at you and pulls out anyway... you don't die.
b. The driver shits himself at the noise, drops the phone, jams on the brakes, and you still don't die.
c. You don't have to yell at anyone through their side window. You smile and wave them through, but they're shaken and chagrined, and all the other drivers laugh at them.

3. They're there for anything else.
a. It's easy to maneuver a bike in tight quarters by locking a wheel and pivoting the bike.
b. It's easy to train your dog to go on rides with you, because the brake squeal makes her jump out of the way.
c. It's fun to make terrifying noises on purpose. "Snub me, coffee fixster?!" SQQWAAT! Hot coffee right down the shirt.

* Basically followed Alex's advice from the iBOB list: took off the Shimano "B" straddle cable, and made my own that was as short as possible. It's an inch shorter on each side of the carrier than the stock "B" wire. Now you can feel the brake mush the pads into the rim, and it lifts the rear wheel.

2006-09-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

Belgium is cool.

The REASON Belgium is cool is that of the top five Most Famous Belgians*, two are purely fictional.

My list:
1. Tintin
2. Hercule Poirot
3. Audrey Hepburn
4. Eddy Merckx
5. Rene Magritte

If this were scientific, and not based on my whims and biases, then Jean-Claude van Damme or Papa Smurf might knock one of my choices.

*Most of these people I've never heard of... which fails my personal test for fame.

2006-09-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

Women are different from men.

I just went to a PTA style meeting at Max's school. It was an "Art Literacy" meeting, where parents volunteer to present an artist's work and life to kids in school. There are 24 artists and materials in big rubber tubs, and each school in the system gets four in a year. If Mas makes it through his academic career in the Mac school system, he'll see every one of them.
We didn't get Hieronymous Bosch and David Salle this year. Maybe next year.

We're starting with Grandma Moses and M.C. Escher. I always thought Grandma Moses was black, and from Mississippi. I was totally wrong. That's what you get when you don't give a damn about art history or other artists' work.

But my POINT.
I was sitting in the back for about 10 minutes when I thought "huh, that's weird." I kind of scoped out the whole room... no other men. What should have been totally obvious to me from the git was not. They all noticed it, though. "Oh, you're our 'Duncan'!!"
Uh-huh. Apparently Duncan was the previous sole male member of the parents' cabal. Not only am I the only guy, I've got a lot to live up to. The most telling little story about Duncan was that after years of him being the totally commited volunteer father, his kid graduated and he quit. One of the women said "oh, Duncan, we'll really miss you!" and he said "I won't miss THIS!"
Uh-oh.

How many men go to the PTA meetings? At this point, I aim never to find out.

2006-09-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

Baskets rule all.

YEAH baskets rule all!

2006-08-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Angelina's mixte town bike.

It's not really a 'true mixte', with the twin lateral tubes stretching from the head tube to the rear axle, it's just a cheaper Steyr ladies' frame from Austria. I think Steyr was owned by Austro-Daimler, who also owned Puch bicycles. I had thought Steyr made its name as a manufacturer of cheap Nazi handguns, but apparently they've been making bicycles since 1894, and mostly made carbines and vehicles.
It ain't a showpiece, but it's been in service a long time. She didn't get her scooter license until this past year, so this bike has been her only non-pedestrian form of locomotion for about 9 years. I bought it for $30 at the Goodwill in Petaluma.
It carried Max in a Bobike Dutch front kid seat until he was almost four, made countless runs to the farmer's market, and her friend Kathleen became her friend at the Santa Rosa Junior College in part because they both had cool bikes. Kathleen's was a pink singlespeed cruiser!

This bike is a gradual evolution, as well as a gradual falling-apart. Just as every period of speciation is preceded by a period of extinctions, so too have the upgrades to this bike followed component failures. Sort of punctuated equilibrium; I decide replacing 10 broken galvanized spokes in one go is a foolish waste of time and money and build some new wheels.
That was pretty fun; building wheels is easy, if you've got the book.
If you're building an old three-speed hub, get little brass washers to put under the spoke head, because the hub flanges are narrower than modern ones. I didn't and had a spoke break and some wheel truing to do. The front wheel has been perfect. I built it on an old WTB grease-guard hub, but it wasn't as old as the other one I've had since new, so it wouldn't make a matching set. It's a fat-style hub, though, so it looks good with the big chrome AW hub on the back.

This bike came with a much more attractive and patinated shifter for the Steyria Dreigang hub, but when I built a new wheel using a '72 Sturmey Archer AW hub from a Schwinn Breeze, I wanted to keep the shifters and hubs together. The original had the brass showing through from thousands of fleeting thumbprints, and the lever didn't rattle. *sigh*
Now our neighbor Betty has that sweet little Breeze with the Austrian wheels. She rode it around and couldn't get over how comfortable it was. "You don't have to lean over!" I gave her that bike and a matching green Suburban 10-speed. The Suburban, with its 27" wheels never felt as smooth and stable as the Breeze, which has 590 (26x1 3/8", or 650A) wheels.
Basically smaller wheels, which allows the bike designer to make fewer compromises in the design of smaller bikes.
The rims I used to make the new wheelset were Sun CR-18s, 32h for the front, and 36h to match the AW. Good rims, easily ordered from my Local Bike Shop.

These Wald fold-up rear racks are great. They rule all. They fold out and snap open to take full-sized grocery bags, or (some) 12-packs of beer. Tall/skinny bottles like Redhook ESB make a small enough box to fit, but short/fat bottles like Sierra Nevada make for a box that's a little too chubby. Since these are baskets, though, you just stick a corner in and it's fine.
I've many times opened them both up to make a large flat surface, put a towel across them, and carried my son's 16" bike to Kindergarten so we could ride home together. The same could be done with a really big box.
I wonder if these would mount on a front rack on the front of a bike... ?
This here actually IS a front rack, a Jim Blackburn unit I bought at the ReCyclery in San Rafael for $15 many a yarin ago. Note the block of wood shimming it out so it fits and sits flat on the back. I filed a little notch underneath the block to let the brake move freely.
I just got the go-ahead to upgrade the braking, so we'll see if I need to modify the block again. Usually Angelina is pretty suspicious of any fooling around I do with her bike, but she doesn't care for the crappy braking. Single-pivot sidepulls have never been my forte. I think they suck.
The test for any change to the bike is that it is either completely unnoticeable in riding, or actually is better.
It's good practice for functional tinkering over stylish tinkering.

After the original cottered cranks and bottom bracket got used up, I took it into the Bicycle Peddler and had them put in a new bottom bracket and some cranks off my old mountain bike. They also installed a cheap 42 tooth ring, keeping the gearing the same.
The 42t ring and the 18t sprocket on the Sturmey-Archer AW hub give it a 45.3" low, a 60.5" medium, and an 80.6" high gear. Angelina uses the middle gear, and sometimes the low to start from a stoplight. I've used the high gear a few times to run yellow lights, but since the seat is usually too low for me, this isn't very effective. I use the low gear when the seat is Really too low and I'm carrying 20 pounds or so. In an ideal world, or if this were a different bike, there would be a 40t ring and a 20t cog, high gear would be the usual one and there would be two lower gears for loads and hills. As it stands, though, three gears is overkill, and I'm the only one that uses them.

This is kind of cool. The seat tube decal is worn away to silver from the lock and chain being wrapped around the seatpost. At first it bugged me that Angelina didn't care, but it's better to suit the tool to the person than try to make the person fit the tool.
Now I'm kind of pleased that there's a decal there to take all the abuse and it's not scarring up the steel and causing rust.

Next up, the brakes!
This might ultimately involve new levers, but I'm going to start with KoolStop salmon pads, then maybe better brakes. I'm not looking forward to trying to find attractive and unobtrusive levers that aren't mountain-bikey or too weird (i.e.: too much to my own taste).

If you'd like to see the most lovely expression of this kind of bike, check out Nysa's Jitensha Studios "Ebisu".
What's the Japanese idiom for "fabuloso?"

2006-08-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

Skateboard Deck Clipless Platform Pedals

**Update 2** These skatedeck pedals can now be purchased at BikeTinker.com.
**Update** A new post shows a smaller version, cut down from these.

I ride around on Eggbeater pedals in regular shoes sometimes. I like to go around the block with my son or cruise down to the beer store, and don't want to "gear up" for that.

I saw an article in the Rivendell Reader about Roger Durham (of Bullseye)'s plywood platform pedals. In my head, I conflated that with the plastic clipless inserts bike shops have for test rides and thought "what about something like that that just clips into your pedals?" Now if only there was a wood deck designed to stick to shoes!

I'm lazy, so it took about a year and half before I found a broken skateboard deck and then another long while before I cut it up and mounted cleats to it.

The real impetus was buying another pair of Eggbeaters for my mountain bike, which came with cleats. No way I'm buying $20 cleats for $60 pedals, especially not for a dirtbag hack like this.

I took pictures of the process, but that computer's long gone, and besides, it's not like hacksaws are hard to imagine.

I decided on 4"x5", since that was one of Roger Durham's sizes, and it seemed nice and big for my Euro 46 sized feet. I drew the rectangles on the underside of the deck, right on the transition between deck and nose, theorizing that when my feet are flat on the floor, the toes kind of curl up. It's comfortable like that, but it doesn't seem to matter either way.

I drilled holes that were smaller in diameter than the screws that hold the cleats on, then screwed them right into the wood. I didn't think it would last, but it has. The screws get loose after a while, but they don't seem to be stripping out. Weird.
I found some hardware that would pound in through the top and provide a metal sleeve to screw into, but the threading seems much coarser, and I'd need new screws. If the cleats start really coming off, I'll have a go at that.

I like the scuffed-up graphics, and the green color seems to go with the Quickbeam pretty well. Good support for regular shoes, and the grip tape is great. Lots of traction. Don't twist your foot, or you'll pop the platforms out of the pedal.

One day all pedals will have grip tape; it seems to make a lot more sense than pins that stick out and gouge your shin.