At war.

Last week was the first battle. Trying to live the American dream on the cheap has me filling contractor bags with building stuff. The city says you can on their website and on the letter that they sent out. The garbage man said he wouldnt take it, although it met all parameters set by the city.
"Dont tell me how to do my job..." - Garbage man to me in my pajamas.

A call to the city, an hour standing out with the foreman and it is all resolved. The garbage man wasted my time, but my garbage is gone. This is a draw. The foreman gave me the supervisor's number, told me to call it. I did not due to not wanting to get anybody in any trouble, I just wanted my garbage gone.

Today it became personal when they left a 20lb bag of plaster/drywall dust outside. Bring it.

What they dont know is that they started a war with somebody who:
- Has unlimited time.
- Is convinced that he is 100% right 99% of the time.
- Will be "fixing 'er up" until they retire.

Foreman is on his way right now.

When I am not arguing with garbage men or writing emails to starbucks telling them that they were out of (and apparently never carried???) honey at the target starbucks (hell within hell) on route 8 (hell) in an effort to try and get free coffee cards, I am a bike racer.

Speaking of bike racing, there is a PITTSBURGH CROSS RACE. Sunday after Thanksgiving. 9 Days from today.
Here is how it works. You sign up. You race. It is successful. It happens again next year. That one is successful. Fred says "bike racing is awesome, I am going to put on Murrysville again." (Click the link and look at 8th place.)


Below is an image by John S. Minturn of me in my pajamas: 3XL white sweatshirt that looks like a cloud, and polypro hiking tights. Taking it back to 03 or so.

My trip to find Ray Brower.

Miniturn had a copy of Stand by me on VHS. My ride giver had never seen it. This blew my mind.

I remember 1987 or so, walking for miles to the "EZ shop," to the only place that rented movies on VHS in the area. Our family didnt have a VCR, but the older kids that I walked with did, and we watched it at their house. As a young kid the movie was just a good story with a bunch of cool scenes, and of course a Cory.

Looking back on it now as I have grown up some, the movie is a good indicator of life. You make a group of friends, have a shared experience, and move on. You find new friends, new hobbies, new subcultures, new spouses, and leave the old. I still call them friends and email them occasionally, but I dont have their addresses or phone numbers.

In my life I have moved through lots of groups of friends. I have had over 30 roommates, with whom I shared some of the best/most ridiculous times in my life. (Calling everybody on the "phone list" {houses used to have phone lists before everybody had cell phones with numbers listed in them} to have a Gorilla Biscuits cover band show in our living room at midnight.) Or the time we evicted the homeless guy who was storing "stuff" in our basement for months on end. Those are a whole other book.

Anyway, my coming of age, story was riding across the States with 5 best friends in 2001. I spent a total of 400 dollars over 2 months and a total of 6 dollars to sleep. It was a contest of who could be the most frugal, who could think of the most obscure movie quotes, who could hold an inside joke the longest. This pretty much alienated us from everybody we met, and drew us in closer to one another. We were a bunch of "men" that would swim naked anywhere we could. We would stop to throw rocks at trains when the headwinds were winning the fight. We had unlimited time for a finite trip. I dont think any of us wanted it to end.

We literally got rained on for the first 31 days straight. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but every single day. We left Pittsburgh and got rained on everyday until the day we left Fargo ND. Warm rain, cold rain, fun rain, drive you to suicide sleeping in a wet tent with a wet sleeping bag rain.

The trip made me love America more than I ever thought I could. The trip made me love human beings more than I ever thought I could. People would ask if we were afraid of strangers. Strangers let us sleep in their garages or guestrooms, bought us dinner, bought us coffee, adjusted our derailers, cooked us breakfast in their closed restaurants... We didnt ask for anything from anybody, but people just offered.

We got caught in a tornado in Minnesota and a woman FORCED us to come into her house because she thought we were going to die. We were taking pictures of ourselves in front of the green sky when she found us. I just remember carrying my camping spoon filled with peanut butter into her house. Some things never change. She offered us food and drinks. She was poor. Not like me being a bum poor, but like offering us roadkilled deer meat that the state gave to her in a welfare program for the poor. She had nothing and she offered it to us.

The low point was finding the rope swing at dickey lake. A teenager had told us about it hundreds of miles before. We would ask every teenager where the swimming holes were and where the rope swings were. This rope swing ripped open Cy's taint and caused 100+ stitches in a very sensitive area. Again, nice people did nice things and we took a week off while he healed. He stayed in Whitefish and we camped at the lake. After one week off, we did back to back to back to back to back centuries and hit the Washington Ocean in six days.

This is long. The point is that these guys are all nearly gone from my life now. People who I spent one of the best times of my life with are out of contact and have grown apart. One is in Chicago and I think might read this. We are facebook friends. One is in Mongolia, I think? One is in the far off land of Philadelphia. One is in Arizona and we occasionally email, but I forget to respond and he probably thinks I am jerk. Finally one married an ex girlfriend, which made things weird at the time, and we havent spoken in 4 or 5 years.

Time flies, life is short, love your friends.

So I finally bought a tubular for cross.

Lazy me has 2 pairs of tubular wheels sitting in the basement waiting for cross tires on them. This has been for 3 years.

This weekend, Gabe who runs race wheel rental dot com offered me a set of his newest tubulars. Brand new, like NEW. "Nobody rented them, go for it." Wow thanks man, that is so rad of you. Needless to say, they ruled and I was actually sold on using them the next day for a FEE!

Being the nice mooch that I am, I offered to take them back to my weekend house (minturn's apartment) and clean them for the next day. They didnt make it. They totally blew off the wheel mounts on the roof rack. Worse things have happened and I didnt actually freak out. Gabe took it well enough and I bought myself a wheel. If you are between bridgeton and philly, go look for it, it was a nice wheel. Of course it had to be the rear, so I bought myself a nice cassette too.

The other lowlight of the weekend was finding out that Bridgeton was Saturday and Highland park was Sunday. I hate bridgeton (aka beacon cyclocross). There is tons of sand, and when there is not sand it is like 30 miles per hour on packed sand. Then there is the Amplitheater of Pain, which is just totally not fun.

Sundays race would have ruled if it were 35 minutes or so. I would have gotten a UCI point or two. Instead I got 13th. Thats how it goes.

I got the following emotional text message from Miniturn on the way home:
"While I was driving back I was thinking about us driving back rocking out to wu-tang and how sweet life was. I do miss it. Tell Patty she is lucky."

That is John talking about us driving to and from races when I was racing the B's and his pedals would fall off during the A's in 2005. Man time flies.
Patty = new pittsburgher who I bummed a ride off of.

Somali Halloween Pictures.

Two years ago, Amy went to Burger King and took like 20 crowns and they decorated them to make costumes. This year the a group of Pitt tutors found them a bunch of awesome costumes and dressed the kids up. My little favorite guy was heard yelling "Hey spiderman, I am Batman... HI" to another kid.
Cute overload.

The expired food store had organic chocolates cheaper than snickers bars, so that is what the kids in Lawrenceville got. It is like covert gentrification, get them hooked on fancy candy and shortly there will be fancy chocolate stores here like the mall at east side.




How much sass can you handle??










Little Somalia Rages.

Danny Chew Article.

Much like my article in Cyclocross magazine on Hebe, I used somebody else's hard work and determination for an article in the new Urban Velo.

The subject: DANNY CHEW.

Issue 10 Download. I cant help but think of all the time I would save if all magazines were downloadable! I would never have to ride my lazy ass over to bookstore and sit there and read all of their magazines without actually buying any. That would be pretty nice.

Anyway, enjoy.

Coming up: Pictures of Somali Halloween.

Dont buy a car if you cant put air in the tires.

Seriously. Yes it is true that at one point in my life I got a flat in a borrowed car and had to ride my bike back to Amy's house (pre cell phones) to get her to come change it for me. I was impressed by her skills. She also opens jars for me.

Anyway, Friday night we were driving to the USGP in KY. I was crammed into a shoebox in the back of Ed's car for the entire trip, but that is another story. We stopped at a gas station, and I didnt get out of the car because it was POURING COLD RAIN. We see Craig run out of the gas station and give us the "1 minute" gesture, as we prances toward a caravan. There is a mildly obese mid western woman following him (with umbrella). We watch Craig fill up this woman's tires in her freaking minivan (with license plate that says "WOW GOD".

We watch this from the inside of Ed's car. But not after we watch the woman get inside of her car, with her umbrella and leave Craig in the pouring rain to fill up her tires. We were like "maybe she is going to hand him the umbrella through the window.... Nope.

So where does this take us? People who NEED lights that indicate when they need to put air in their tires are morons?? People with umbrellas are selfish? (this is something that I have stuck to for years) People in Ohio love god? Craig is too nice? In her defense, apparently she offered Craig A DOLLAR as a thank you. "can you please use me AND insult me?"

Anyway there were only 3 highlights to the weekend.

1) Talking to Todd Wells about bmx and it turns out that he came down to Pittsburgh from NY and RODE OUR TRAILS a few times over the years. What a crazy small world that he was like "oh Pittsburgh, did you ever ride PUSH?" and I was like "yeah dude that was like 5 years of my life."

When he lapped me 2 hours later I wanted to be like "Hey dude, we are bmx bros."

2) Going to dinner with the Pittsburgh guys. 7 dudes hanging out who would probably not talk to each other if it werent for bike racing. Best part of the conversation was when 2 dudes were telling Marine boot camp stories and then Euro Mike chimes in with "I was listening to NPR the other day..." Then Angry Andy talking about Obama taking away his guns or whatever, then Mike talking about going on a zen retreat for 10 days and not talking the entire time all while Pflugger is probably thinking up some crazy shit he can do to make is mountain bike faster or more unique.

Andy confirmed that the Dumbass who tried making the 15224 look ill totally made it up. This could be highlight 2.5 cause I was really happy to hear that it wasnt true. I am going to star the rumor right now that the police pulled over Santonio Holmes because he fit the description of the attacker (tall black dude.. who else?) So Ms Ashley Todd, not only did you lose any credibility you might ever have in your entire life, you made the Steelers lose too.
Andy yes, 15224 and Pittsburgh hate you.

I am going to make that an entire weekend highlight, upping it to 4.

4) Not getting lapped Sunday and feeling pretty good riding a cross bike with a bunch of REALLY fast dudes. Elliston, the Pabst guys, and I were looking around on the line and the PA guys were the only ones without carbon tubulars. Bill and I are from Steel towns, so we are holding it down with METAL RIMS!!!! The philly dudes are probably just drunk.

Below is a video from 1997 that I may have posted before, but I dont care cause these were the freaking glory days. Pennsylvania trails used to rule. If I paid more than 12/month of internet maybe I would be able to watch it too? Fast forward to 8minutes and 6 seconds in

New non UCI cyclocross callup rules.

For non UCI races, apparently some promoters have been using Crossresults.com to establish a start order, but I would like to recommend promoters follow these new rules.

1) First row is reserved for cyclists who have blogs in which they refer to themselves as "pro" bike racers. Yes they are posting from their day jobs as bike mechanics and computer geeks, but because they get lapped by Ryan Trebon twice a year they are now "pro." The front row is for these fine people.

2) Depth of wheels. The next row is reserved for those man enough to rock the 60mm rims, the trispokes, the disc wheels (seen it),( the Rev-x's dont count due to the extreme risk factor and social suicide of riding them) etc. Obviously if you are willing to put 3000 dollar wheels on the line, you are training harder than the most euro cross racers.

3) Smell. This is easy enough. The more liniment you rub all over your body, the more euro you look, and the faster you will go. You can be smelled from the last row by the official with the whistle. Move up.

4) Skinsuit to temperature ratio: The more inappropriate your skinsuit is for the weather, the further up you go. Long sleeves with a feed zone in the race because it is so hot? Move up. Shorts in KC in December. Move up. There is usually a direct correlation between the liniment and skinsuit rule.

5) Style off the bike. Can you be mistaken for (what people think) a not at work bike messenger (looks like) when you are not racing? Visible tattoos and piercings? Cycling caps and Chrome bags? Again, the final call ups are for you.

Tie breakers go straight to the hottness of the girlfriend which you brought to the race to cheer/pickup your jacket from the start grid. (Just realized that I usually have Mayhew or Ed, lose and lose again.)


Compound any of these for a guaranteed front row start.

New stuff = fun.

Logistic nightmare: Bum ride down from the Rowley's. Meet up with hebe after race, bum place to stay (thanks as always) and a ride back to race venue sunday. Hope to see Andy Gorski to bum ride home after race sunday. Have backup plan of mailing stuff home and doing a 180 mile single day ride on tuesday, chew style.

Iron cross lite. Old stuff. I have done it before and it is a regular cross race. Good times, but old stuff. Got dropped from the leaders, Hammakers chain got dropped from his gears and simonson won with flat bars.

Iron Cross regular = new stuff. The iron cross was the same amount of fun, the same ups and downs, the same pain and glory as an 8 hour race, but in half the time! That cannot be beat.

I decided last week that if I want to be a serious bike racer, I should get a Co2 thinger. I hate buying disposable stuff. It is like bottled water, you are paying a per fee use each time. I could have just carried a pump, but I would have lost like 3 more minutes. ughhh. Randy hooked me up with one that he won, and I was on my way. On my way to a freaking flat.

Long story short: Flatted 5 miles in. Picked my way through people for an hour. I am guessing around 120 people or so. Started being told I was in the top 20. Worked with Gorski a ton to work our way through people. Flatted agin, but right at an aid station and changed it with a floor pump. Finally found my way to 8th placish overall, 5th in the "senior men" category. Gunnar beat me on a single speed, and a couple of old guys finished ahead of me. It was hard going from the back to the front, but I got to ride my own ride and push myself instead of having my pace dictated by faster dudes, which may have resulted badly considering that we were bombing dirt roads at like 45 mph all day.

I wish there were more races like this.

Chew update: he hasnt eaten in 4 days and has lost 16lbs. Total body cleanse

6 Spinergy Rev X wheels spotted this weekend.

2 Saturday at the Hagarstown race.
4 Sunday at the Month of Mud race in grove city. 2 of those were in our car.
The Rev x's were rumored to have catastrophic failures, but chew has gotten 20,000 miles out of a pair, and Babik couldnt put the finishing blows on a pair during our "as many people ride as the low temperature" rides (ok it was really 8 degrees 4 people).

Anyway... One would think that racing the same people over and over every weekend would get boring. You can pretty much look at results and figure about where you would be in a cross race. If you cant do that, Crossresults.com will literally do it for you, letting you put the bikereg preregistered list into it and they give the results of the race in advance.

This is all based on "math" and "logic" or whatever. Every once in awhile though, you have a good race, and somebody has a bad race and it works the other way. Last year, I remember a race where the dude who was supposed to win got dropped and a dude who was on a borrowed bike beat me in a sprint. Cross results wouldnt have predicted that.

Yesterday was similar. Poor ruggs tried some rocky IV type stuff and moved to remote Warren PA for super secret training and bachelor life. Something like that anyway. So of course we have done much battle in the past few years as we have become faster dudes together. Everytime it is awesome and fun to race somebody, even if you have raced them dozens and dozens of times before. It never gets old.

Speaking of getting old:
The nutella I had expired in 2008 despite everybody in the car trying to convince me that it was 2003. I bought it at the expired food store, and the first jar I had you couldnt tell the last number. I checked the second jar when I got home and can confirm it was only a few months expired, not a half a decade.

financial realization.

There was a Target commercial on the TV the other night that was actually kind of right on. They know that most people are financially hosed right now, and a smart advertising person sold them a good idea: sell people things they need cause they arent buying things that they want.

So it is basically like "things you are going to pay a reoccurring fee for, just buy once and do it yourself." "gym membership" - shows a guy riding a bike. "hair cut" shows somebody cutting their own hair. Etc.

This is a great way to save money for sure. Those of us that are cheap enough to have gotten by for years doing these things (I have paid for 2 haircuts in the past 15 years, one of which was at "THE STRAIGHT EDGE BARBER" the other was 16 cents at a czech barber college) know how financially beneficial they are. (5 grand over 15 years?)

Honestly though, as one of the cheapest people ever, I feel threatened by this. If the average Target shoppers are hurting so badly that they need to live like my barely working self, does that mean that I am going to have to start working a lot more to continue to meet my low standard of living? This might be a true sign of the times.

Imagine going to work 40 hours a week at a job that you hate, paying 4 bucks a gallon for gasoline to get there, only to come home and not be able to afford the things that jobs are supposed to afford you. Wow, glad I came home from working all day to eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, after eating them for lunch, followed by eating peanut butter french toast for breakfast.

That scenario is like one step lower than what they are currently advocating.

PS. target if you read this (that one post the GM dude seriously read)... please pay me to film me walking around my house this winter wearing a parka and 3 pairs of long underwear and explain that you only need to buy these items once in exchange for 10 degrees on the thermostat at a reoccurring monthly bill.