Has a Squatter Been Sleeping in my Garden? Sure Looks Like It!

Warrior Spirit

'To be the best, you've got to have what i call the five D's: dedication, desire, discipline, drive, and determination. You've got to have some heart. And you've got to have some kind of ugliness in you. We all have ugliness in us, like we all have pain and sorrow. But the best fighters have a switch in them that lights that ugliness up. And you either got it that way or you don't.'

-juanito ibarra, rampage jackson's manager and trainer, rolling stone issue 1054, june 12, 2008, p. 76

Mr. B, once was lost for eight days, but now is throwing 4's

West Coast style, agrionymous horsfeldi testudinae style y'all.

I've done this many interviews. . .

Plus 50 or so more tapes' worth. These are a few of my interview tapes from 02-05 that i was moving to a new storage spot the other day. Took a sec to line them all up and go through them. A lot of good memories and adventures in this lot of tapes from Motley Crue to Queens of the Stone Age to Linkin Park to Paris Hilton.

One Gear/Powermeter/Full Frame Pump, Yo/That's How I Like to Roll

 

 

 

 

Carbon Nanotubes: Light, Carcinogenic, Doping Missing Link?

Whoa, don’t know how the cycling press missed out on this one from NPR, but a new study shows that if you cut materials made from carbon nanotubes, like, say, a BMC Pro Machine SLC bike frame (hey, maybe that’s how Floyd’s sample got contaminated, nanotubes. . .yeah, that’s the ticket. . .and Vino rode one, too, at Astana. . .is this the missing link uniting all of these falsely accused dopers?), you’re exposing yourself to as much lung damage, if not more, than if you were working with asbestos. That’s a jawdropper, guess the cycling media have been too busy polishing their Colnago C-50’s to notice. Oh, and if you think wearing a mask while you cut carbon nanotube material will help, think again. This stuff is a billionth of an inch long and can work its way through anything. Lawsuits coming soon, no doubt.

 

Why not run away?

If you try to crush an ant, it will sense you coming and go nuts trying to run for it.

So why will an ant gleefully march past 50 dead ants to eat ant poison?

That shit must taste really good.

Prediction: China Earthquake Fallout/'Justice'

Watch for China to arrest one to three Communist party officials from the Sichuan province to take the fall for shoddy construction in region/construction bribes/embezzlement/etc, some time in the next week. Directly following, they'll have a swift show trial, then execute him/them while simultaneously pumping up the relief effort pr blitz. They claimed they pulled a 103-year-old woman out of the rubble after ten days. Bullshit. No fucking way.

And if you're in the market for a kidney, liver or other transplant organ, chances are you will soon have a shot at owning some infamous replacement parts.

More Lightning in a Bottle, Bikes!

 

Something New--Exotic Birds as Rave Toys

Really.

Bike-powered Wooden Mandala

No Cash? No Problem.

Put your glow and fire toys on your Mastercard or Visa at Trick Concepts.

More Atmosphere from LIB

Rad LED glasses and rickshaw drive by. Notyour typical crap concert like Coachella, no VIP caste system bullshit just a lot of people camping and having fun freaking out in a forest.

Lightning in a Bottle Panorama

The best festival i've ever been to outside of Burning Man, and a hell of a lot easier to do. A+

DIY Ergo Saddle for Spin Bike

I've been nuts about customizing my gear's ergonomics recently. Drawing inspiration from the drilled&ut components on Eddy Merckx's hour world record track bike, i took a drill to the Reebok brand saddle on the spin bike i picked up to use for interval training in the comfort of my smog-blanketed back yard. Ride report tk.

Rave baby

The alien landing

Hippy women, flexible

Hippies Ain't Got No Double Dutch Rhythm

Trapeze--not just for grownups anymore

Lightning in a Bottle Exotic Birds

Yes this shit is real.

Prediction for DJ Wolfie's Email Next Week Regarding Lightning in a Bottle

The freezing rain and temps in the high 40's inspired an epiphany that left him with a touching life lesson he shared with a raver girl about just how awesome life is! Rain is awesome! It's life giving! It's Mustafa and all the characters in the Lion King rolled into one rolled into a big Hakuna Matata acid drop!

Ride of silence with corey k

Tea bagging is back!

Try This With Your Prius

Haulin' lumber y'all carbon-emitting west coast style.

Always West Coast, Always True

In the event i'm run over, don't let 'em say they couldn't see me!

Chinese vs. American Reproductive Policies

Much ado has ben made of China's One Child policy. The BBC AND NY Times have both run tearjerker page one stories about Chinese parents who have lost a child, the only child they will ever have (particularly in the case where the parents are now too old to reproduce--all the more dramatic). A tertiary effect of the One Child policy might be a lack of parentless children for begrieved Chinese parents to adopt. Recall that China recently tightened up its policies regarding foreign adoption of Chinese babies, banning gays and other demos proclaimed undesirable by Beijing following a boom in American adoption of Chinese babies in recent decades).

Add it all up and you have the perfect ingredients for tear soup as mentioned above and yet more damning evidence of the outrageous inhumanity og the barbaric Chinese system of government.

Then you rememer the Katrina debacle. President Bush wrote off the population of an entire American major metropolitan area and has been whistling Dixie ever since.

And if the Chinese quake had hit, say, Cape Girardeau, MO, which is a small town in southwest Missouri built on a fault line potentially more deadly than the San Andreas fault. If it had happened in the Cape, as lokes call it, parents may well have lost an entire brood of children in one fell swoop. Given the same circumstances, kids there would have been in school at that time of day, and Cape's infrastructre and building codes might conceivably be destroyed by a quake of the same magnitude.

When it comes to formulating a differential equation to gauge the suffering of the Chinese parents who lost children in the quake, you have to turn Kant on his head and rock an inverse categorical imperative. The question becomes, which is the worst for the greatest number--the Chinese One Child Policy or the Amercan Crunch All You Want We'll Make More attitude?

Remember the thousands of monks that went apeshit in Lhasa a short while back and the hardcore Chinese police on monk ass beatings that followed? I’ve addressed the political/cultural/economic intricacies of Tibet as a state here before, go have a read if you want to learn the actual facts behind this mess (summary: it’s not as simple as the Beastie Boys and millions of stoned college students seem to think. How about that! And who knew the Beastie Boys weren’t leading world authorities on Tibetan history and culture? Doesn’t that come with an NYU degree?).

But while these monks rot—or more likely get tortured—in Chinese jails, a whirlwind of press coverage of the latest from China, the mega earthquake, has focused on China’s massive sea change with regards to how the government is treating, covering, and reacting to the event. In the past, China strived to conceal these disasters and didn’t provide much info to the outside world—that would show weakness, not something the hard as nails, indomitable Chinese are known for.

Post Tibet revolt/Olympic torch/wheelchaired woman being tipped over, China knew it had a PR problem the size of Mongolia on its hands. But it has taken this earthquake and made lemonade from the rubble with a bright, shiny human interest story that shines a beacon on the Chinese government in a different light—as a caring entity interested in the welfare of its citizens and open enough to share its problems with the world (finally).

The past week, China has been all about showing the world how compassionate and caring the Chinese government is towards its citizens. The US press has eaten up every man/woman/child pulled from the rubble and celebrated it as a miracle. I caught a brief snippet on NPR the other day about a man being pulled out of the rubble after 100 hours of being buried. A miracle!

Or maybe the Chinese government fabricated that particular event—you know, stuck the dude in the rubble and had the Chinese military dig him out. Why? Great fuckin story, wouldn’t you say?

While this reads like a ruse, China may have inadvertently opened a door it won’t be able to shut. Ultimately, a more free and open exchange of information with the outside world will cause change in China. That and economic exegencies. When the Chinese people have enough access to information, when the world has enough access to information about them and when the Chinese government sees that unbridled capitalism yields a population that’s forced to take care of itself in the stead of a welfare state, then change will come to China and Mao will be buried for good.

Until then, like Mike Tyson’s Mao tattoo, the communist ethos will keep on keeping on—but not for long.

NY Times: a mirror of the everyman's concerns

D7, Thursday may 15, from 'A 30,000 Volume Window on the World':

'For the last seven years, I've lived in an old stone presbytery in France, south of the Loire Valley, in a village of fewer than 10 houses. I chose this place because next to the 15th-century house itself was a barn, partly torn down centuries ago, large enough to accomodate my library of some 30,000 books, assembled over six itinerant decades.'

Life shouldn't be so rough!

Google's Final Solution

"ultimately, you want to have the entire world's knowledge connected directly to your mind." -Sergey Brin

Reshuffling the office, came across a pile of old mags i'd saved, found this quote from Brin in an interview he/Larry Page gave to Playboy in September 04.

Sounds good to me, bro.

So West Coast I Throw When I Type

Ps--hey, GQ magazine, 'bro' ain't dead here on the left coast. Ever.

How big is Kindle? One hand tall.

How big is the Kindle?

Slightly taller than an apple/orange double stack (always the best, sturdiest way to stack 'em up).

Hardcore west coast kayak rodeo backyard style, west hills 1 am

Live from the home shop it's McGeyver Time!

Another ride, nther jacked up pedal. Retention resistance nub popped out on road somewhere, secretly replaced it with Folger's Crystals back home.

Luckil back out on the road the fix worked, but it seems these pedals have had a global retention failure. Even the 'good' one won't hold my foot in. Does anyone make product that lasts more than two seasons? To me pedals/shoes are a big, long term commitment. Swapping out pedals n four different bikes and setting up new cleats just so takes time and money, and if you botch setup get ready for some sweet tendinitis for a few weeks.

These days, i look at a mountain bike and i see a machine with a lot more stuff to break that's more prone to malfunction due to enviro conditions offroad. Ie, time suck. I want to spend my free time riding, but being a full time mechanic comes with the territory. That's why it's worth finding stuff that works for you and sticking with it.

On an up note componentry wise, i've been on some bontrager carbon bars on my primary road bike for a few months. This is literally the sixth set of bars i've tried in my quest for comfort and efficiency, and i finally feel like i have something i can hang onto for a while. Comfortably.

More doping scandals, just in time for the TDF. Whooo!

 

Man, the UCI has impeccable timing. Sounds like they have a time bomb they’re going to hold onto to maximize fucking over those ASO bastards. Destroying the sport entirely will show them who’s boss!

 

You wanna try me? Well first you better learn how to mop.

Want abs of steel? Pick up a mop.

West coast