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Two weekends back got in an hour and a half on my mountain bike on both Saturday and Sunday. It may not seem like much, but it felt pretty good to me. And it’s about three hours more than I rode last weekend. I hate to say it, but I actually felt a bit like a proper cyclist for at least a few of those pedal strokes.
Tucson was Swap-tastic. Bought shit I don’t really need, saw things I wanted but couldn’t afford, sold a few fine pieces of DC merchandise. I saw a bunch of folks I haven’t seen in a while. A couple of guys I hope never to see again. Ate glorious Mexican food like it was going out of style and even rode a bike to a bar and back. Maybe an hour of pedal time for the big man.
And this coming Saturday I’ll be doing El Tour de Tucson off the couch.
Yep. OTC. Off The Couch.
‘Cause I can.
It’s a really bad idea. Fucking stupid in fact. But that’s just what I do. Fucking stupid things.
They’ve got four distances: 109, 80, 67, and 33 miles.
What am I doing? The One Oh Nine! (route info here if you’re interested.)
Bacardi Marti signed me up as a motivator to ride my bike, and maybe a reminder that I haven’t been riding enough. As in “at all”. Well, to work and back. Does that count? That was enough of a challenge at first, but now it’s just plain easy.
Who am I kidding? I was coughing for an hour this morning after I went way to hard for no good reason on my way in through campus. That cold & dry air will always get ya.
And it got me.
Just like El Tour is going to get me.
Oh well, at least it’s pedaling, right? Better than most other things I could be doing. Like, say, drinking beer and laughing. That’s just such a waste of time.
If I could just work beer & laughing into El Tour, I’d be set…
Today’s retarded link dump:
[Nostalgic Pan-Asian Kink ] poetry.rotten.com
[Bike bonk bloke lands on sex offenders’ register] theregister.com
[Good times] highclearing.com
[$100kl] bikeportland.org
[Bitch’n] 40ozmaltliquor.com
I’ll leave ya out with this gem by Frank Rich as it’s too damn good not to quote at least part of it:
In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.
This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s.
Source: nytimes.com
Read the whole thing. It’s worth your time.
But, then again, I am a godless liberal.
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“What am I doing? The One Oh Nine! (route info here if you’re interested.)”
Do it or don’t come back.
We’ll run your site good and proper after your gone.
If your gone.
…109 miles ain’t much, compared to all the mileage in this post w/ all it’s links…jeez…kinky ass asian art…dude “doing” his bike…maus & the portland scene is always interesting &/or scary…beer, lotsa beer, 40 oz’s at a time…& last but not least, the lovely world of politics…
…frank rich knows from whence he speaks…the greatest subversion this government has faced has come from within & from the top…it’s always been riddled w/ incompetency but thats nothing compared to the insidious affectations that have slowly been put in place by this administration…call me a conspiracy theorist & i’ll call you an idiot…
…BUT, maybe best of all, big jonny sounds like he’s starting to hit his stride again…go, jonny, go…