Cyanoacrylate. aka super glue.

Matt said that it defined our generation.

I flipped over the bars, put my teeth through my upper lip. Teeth are fine. Everything is cool, just a hole and some blood.

We go home and think what to do. Stitches? Not sure if they can even stitch a lip this close to my mouth.

I do lots of internerd research and come up with "Dermabond." It is made by johnson and johnson, is used in hospitals instead of stitches, and seems like what I want.
Oh its like 400 dollars and you can only buy it online.

More internerd research leads me tothis...

Cyanoacrylate is the generic name for cyanoacrylate based fast-acting glues such as ethyl-2-cyanoacrylate (commonly sold under trade names like Superglue and Krazy Glue), n-butyl-cyanoacrylate (used in the veterinary glue LiquiVet), and 2-octyl cyanoacrylate (used in medical glues such as Indermil, Histoacryl, Dermabond, Nexaband, and Traumaseal). Cyanoacrylate adhesives are sometimes known as "instant glues". The acronym "CA" is quite commonly used for industrial grades.



So Super Glue and Dermabond are nearly the same thing, one is just FDA approved and has "2-octa" in front of it. I have no idea what that means. Standard Super Glue was used in Vietnam to seal guys up quickly.


The procedure took about 5 minutes. I cleaned the cut (again), pinched my lips together how I want them to look for the rest of my life, and then applied glue. 12 hours later, it still looks good. The glue hardened and turned white, which looks gross, but it is still holding.

Hopefully it doesnt kill me. "At least I will leave a beautiful corpse" - Otto from the simpsons.

Bromance. Road Trip.

Broing down hard the last bunch of days.
Limited internerd time is a good thing. Maximum ride time is a good thing.

Matt flew in Friday night.

Saturday we rode roaring run. We swam naked under a waterfall. I got attacked by a snake and had to shimmy up a rope to avoid it circling around me while my "friends" laughed and didnt chase it away. We hit a gnarly restaurant in Apollo and got more food for 50 dollars than I could buy at KML (expired food store where I shop).

Sunday we met up with pROwley at Bavington for a crazy fast fun ride. Drove back to the Burgh on fumes with the gas light on (sorry amy), ate food and headed to frick for an evening ride. Frick is rad, but gets super boring alone. It was funny seeing how stoked matt was on it. It made me restoked for it.

Monday we headed to State college in the afternoon and rode Tussey Mountain. We stopped by nitanny wheelworks where the dude printed out a map for us. We hooked up with BAR warrior Straub and roached beds off of him.

Tuesday was Rothrock. Tons of rad stuff. Way more my style than the Tussey stuff. Twisty turny singletrack with isolated rock gardens. Rad long ride.
We drove back to State College in time to ride the Tuesday shorttrack ride/race thing. Some dude who runs it was CRAZY fast through these woods. You could only pedal one time before another turn hit you. It was hard and fun. LONG day.

Weds was traveling to the Lehigh Valley where Matt is from. We hung with his friends and went out with another former BMX guy for some trail riding, but flats and darkness prevented it. We turned it into bunnyhopping stuff and sprinting around Allentown for a bit.

Today we rode Salisbury trails in Bethlehem. A dude met up with us and led the ride. He was on an "all mountain" specialized and could ride over boulders downhill at like 50. It was a rad trail system. Tonight we will head to the trails behind Lehigh university.


-The prius is averaging 56.6 mpg.
-All of Matt's childhood friends have hand, neck, or face tattoos
-Said friends also own crazy businesses and are more successful than most

Pennsyvlania Mountain Bike Tour 2009 is 1/2 over.
Matt has a non analog camera, so pictures are coming. Rad.

So I am an old man.

In 1 day I wrote the following letters.

- Post-Gazette: telling them that the shooting on mine and babik's street was in Bloomfield, not Lawrenceville as the title of the article stated. They really cant seem to get it right.

- Whole foods: telling them that their peanut butter has gone up 60 cents per 18/oz in the last 6 months while Trader Joe's has only gone up a dime. I dont understand how that is possible.

- Trader Joes: telling them the same thing, also saying that their bagels have gone from 1.99 to 2.29 in the last week. I used to buy their crappyish bagels for 2 bucks, but now they are almost the same price as day old Brueggers bagels, which are better and have 1.5 times as many calories!!!

- Called 311 (mayor's non emergency complaint line) to complain about the debris in the yard of the crackhouse across the street. They dont really care about crack dealing apparently, but when I complain about debris the landlords show up to clean it up.

- Post-Gazette: 2 letters in one day. This one got published. THEY PUT BLOOMFIELD IN THE ADDRESS!!!!! I swear they did it just to screw with me. Oh well at least the angry yizner mobs will be off by at least 1 block when looking for me.

Also.
Last night I was eating spoonfuls of peanut butter out of the jar when babik texted me and said he and Rob were doing Dirty Dozen hills. Weird.

What did you do at school today?

"Ate Cheese."

That was the answer that my man Ramazani (link is story about him crapping on my floor) gave me one day. He is my favorite of my 30 or so Somali neighbors. Amy says it is unfair to have favorites, but its my life and Im going to live it my way.

Anyway, the Trib did an article on how the kids are fitting in. (article online here)It is a fluff piece. There is actually a lot of strife between the Somalis and the American blacks. There are groups trying to bring them together and doing stuff about it, which is great. That is not why I am writing this. I am writing to show you my main man, in the newspaper with his shirt pulled over his head, eating a grilled cheese.

Gas pumps hate us.

I have been watching the olympics. The trade off for having short commercial breaks is the frequency in which they have them. I have been stuck watching lots of commercials, or rather, the same commercials over and over. Being somebody who doesn't really buy anything, and who doesn't really aspire to own much of anything, they are all lost on me. Amy gets to hear my ranting about most of them, but the worst of them all is the new Chevy commercials, and it is so bad that I will rant here.

If you have not seen it yet, you aren't missing much. Some overpaid "creative" type thought about who would benefit the least from a few extra MPG's attached to these cars. Not the evil gas corporations who are posting record profits, not the death squads that shell hires to kill the natives (not being dramatic), this person came up with gas pumps. Assigning feelings to an inanimate object... funny, cute quirky.

Anyway, I just thought they were dumb until I saw the one about the Chevy Tahoe, then I became somewhat outraged. GM is bragging that the Tahoe gets 20mpg HIGHWAY. According to fueleconomy.gov it gets 14mpg city. They are bragging about this. They are taking something really bad and calling it good, and then trying to sell it to people. Are people so dumb that they are believing it? Maybe the person that I made fun of above is actually a genius and knows exactly how to get people to believe total bullshit. Maybe I have too much faith in the average car buyer's IQ.

"Hey look 19mpg is REALLY BAD, but 20 is AWESOME. Forget about the fact that cars made 20 years ago were getting 40mpg highway (9er the whiner's ford escort from the 90's recently did this, as does Chew's mom's geo metro from the 80's), forget that you could have double this, buy the one that gets 1 mpg extra and feel like you have won something."




Just to check myself I looked at the 89 geo metro at fueleconomy.gov. 51 highway and 43 city. I guess progress is making something 3 times as big and only halving its gas mileage.

The jig is up. The news is out.

Jake came up with a new story this weekend about his first concert ever.
"I went to see Styx play. I had no idea what the concept of an encore was, and they finished and left the stage. I was like "What... they arent going to play Renegade?!?!?!"
The sad thing is, I think he was like 18 or so in 1984 when this all happened. My math might be off.

Babik got 2nd in a 62 mile road race with like 5000 feet of climbing. FREAKY!

Dan Chew is finishing up back to back to back 1000+ mile weeks this week. Yes that is 3 weeks.

First Spanish cyclist tested positive for EPO. WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED!!?!?!

Olympics... Road trip... Bike racing....

This site has a good listing of olympic cycling.
podiuminsight

I had been looking for awhile and really couldnt find anything. Hope this helps.

There is nothing new under the sun. Cyclocross is like 4 weeks away. That is crazy. Elite nationals are like this week, whoops guess I missed the ball on that one! My quote to Turner, "Yeah dude you can take my bike box, I can drive to Ohio to get dropped, I dont need to fly to Orange County." Have fun.

In a few weeks, my buddy Matt and I are going on "tour." In the 90's, anybody who was remotely cool in the world of BMX would go on "tour." It basically meant driving around for a few weeks during the summer and hitting as many trails as possible. It was maybe 1995 when Matt and Cory Muth and I drove around for a bit, riding trails and hitting "jams." A jam was when kids at local trails decided to have people from other trails come visit them and just ride all day, BBQ, give away prizes for cool tricks or hard crashes.

My destination was "the fat house," a place in Ft Wayne, Indiana that was filled up with dirty BMX dudes. They paid like 80 bucks a month in rent, rode nonstop and ate free bread from the goodwill 2 blocks away. The backyard had a 5' mini ramp (this was before every freaking neighborhood had a skatepark), there were good trails a few miles away, and there was lots of riding to be had. We would get up at noon, ride to the trails, ride the trails, ride home, eat mac and cheese and sit on the porch all night. The ghetto of Ft. Wayne provided nonstop entertainment. This may have been the last time Matt had a 40, when he was 16 with a FULL BEARD and bought it without an ID.

I basically spent two weeks trying to be older than I was, riding a ton, and trying to hook up with girls 5 years my senior. Matt and I will spend a bit over a week trying to be younger than we actually are, riding a ton, and checking in with our ladyloves as much as possible. Some things have changed, some never will.

We will head from Pittsburgh to State College to ride the trails there, then head to the Lehigh valley, where Matt grew up. We will ride some there before heading to the Shennendoah 100. We should be super fresh for the 100 mile race from driving/riding/camping a ton.

Matt is going to head home and do the Furnace creek 508. Solo. 508 miles solo = not fun.