Goings on

http://people.uwec.edu/millerjs/cycling/

"Join Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich on Sunday, October 4th to show your support for the UW-Eau Claire Clean Commute Initiative and to help on-campus bicycle parking.
Check in begins at 1:30 p.m., rain or shine, from the Schofield Hall circle parking lot. This is a 21 mile informal, noncompetitive bike ride around Eau Claire and Altoona using a mix of bike trails and city streets.
Suggested donations: $10 for general public; $5 for UW-Eau Claire students. Proceeds will go to improving bike parking on campus "

Sounds wind makes

57 Degree high today. Wind gusts at up to 41mph. Fall is here and it means buisness.

In comparrison Last Thursday I hung out with Zacher with my shirt off rode bike all day, ate pasta salad in the yard, took a nap, and we rode out to Dan Bakers house for a fire and libations.

Despite being rediculously busy I got to see Sunny Day Real Estate and Grant Hart this week. I bought a new sewing machine, interviewed a bunch of people and almost finished my zines. An almost that seems like I've been resting on for 3 months. Tour d'Eau Claire is coming up VERY VERY SOON, so if you haven't thought about it you had better get ready to rock and roll.

The ghetto cross race sounds like it's coming together to so if you havn't heard about that you should keep your ear to the street.

Interbike also happened. If you don't know Interbike is an annual trade show in Las Vegas.The best coverage I saw was over at Hipster Nascar where they have all kinds of pretty photos. Look here and go googly eyed.

Thats all, don't blow away.

More tour rad-i-tude

Print this. Put this everywhere.

Impulse

So I realize it is rediculous to feel animosity towards people for riding thier bikes instead of walking or driving. Really the more I think about it the less practical hating on someone for riding 3 blocks on their "tricked out" fixed gear seems.

A.Once this trend dies off we get their parts.
B. They are raising awareness(in atl east some way shape or form)
C. For every 10 goofy set ups I see I see at least 1 really cool bike. (most recently a Campy'd our Cannondale)

But fact of the matter is I do feel great deals of animosty towards this trend. When college is out we got to be the special few that rode their bikes every day in all weather and had tons of fun doing it. No one I've met has proven any legitimate contributions to the EC cyling community thus far and does little more then play at the hip image.

I realize that makes me sound like an arrogant asshole, but that is something I'm working on. And I'm also typing this as a means to challenge all of these new riders to come and hang. It would be freaking awesome to see more people riding Thursdays year round and helping organize races and events. Seriously, do it newbs. The Eau Claire cycling community does a really really good job of looking much larger and better organized than it actually is, and the more people helping out the merrier. There you go, that is my atempt at turning animosity into something positive.

Speaking of something positive, last Saterday Derek, Erik, magyar and myself rode out to Elk Lake Tavern to race crappy bud light Tandems around a field and hang out with the Elk Lake locals. Despite breaking almost all of the bikes,being obligated to take a bite out of a hot dog, and losing by a long shot we all had tons of fun. You should have been there. But you probably wern't so here are some pictures stolen from the EC velo blog.

Clean commute day is coming up. That means nothing to most of us, but it is a nice gesture I suppose. I'm super busy but I plan on seeing dozens of you at the Thursday night ride. I want to bring my camera and film a shitty little short so we can show up Prolly. Yes yes.

Tour d'Eau Claire

Get registered now suckas.

See you all tonight, at least I better.

All things in moderation

Friday night the cops showed up at Dereks house and threatened to arrest us all if we didn't leave. That is the abridged version of the story. There was a lot of shouting and hollow threats made mainly by the police. I was told I couldnt look for my glasses and if I did I would be askig to go to jail. Now that just seems silly.

The event disturebed me for a lot of reasons. Primarily, these cops were really shouty and scary and I wouldn't trust them to walk a small child across the street let alone behave themselves in any real position of authority.

But my other gripe goes to society as a whole. Since when do we just quit talking to eachother about problems and instead go straight to some authority figure to deal with our disputes. Is it unreasonable for a neighbor to go to another neighbors house and ask them a favor? "Can I borrow some sugar?, Could I borrow a rake?, Please keep it down, the baby's sleeping." It really bugs me that people are so isolated from eachother even if they live 50 ft. away. There is this huge disconnect in peoples minds that makes them think that they are only part of a community when they want to be and the rest of the time they can just have other people take care of problems they have. Neighbors sending cops to loom over fences and bark out orders at neighbors is just one of the dumbest things I can think of.

It boils down to the fact that I would just like to see more people interact with eachother genuinly instead of bitching through third parties and back talking. I don't hink Im to much of a victim of this because I think my friends are awesome (Friday proves that) but I'm not ignorant to think that I am impervious to being both perpetrator and reciever of this sort of silly crap.

In other news I'm keeping extrmely busy and I don't like it one bit because it is sidetracking me from things I really care about.

The Tour d'Eau Claire is coming along and you had better get all of your friends on board to make this a huge event.
more info:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=184901099&ref=name#/event.php?eid=115069489931&index=1

A bunch of people raced Cleghorn and did alright. I chickened out and worked instead.

There is a new Urban Velo out, and available online HERE
I really really really like this idea http://torontoist.com/2009/08/bicycle_ticketed_for_excessive_awesomeness.php

These are a bunch of pictures I've had laying around that I thought were worth submitting to the internet.

Im sure there is a lot more to talk about but I can't remember for the life of me what it is. So I will conclude with this.

Also: http://www.cvccbike.com/taxonomy/term/2
http://www.uwec.edu/cycling/

"cyle chic"

So I found this new blog and I thought it was kind of cool.
As silly as i think most fixed gear videos are the first one makes me acctually excited about riding my bike.

A Taste of The Toast from Michael on Vimeo.

This video makes me want to kill myself.

ORANGE BIKES TAKE MANHATTAN from Kalim Armstrong on Vimeo.

Reg Harris

Maurice Garin, winner of the first ever Tour de'France. Please note the cigarette.

Frame a little small?

put the heart back in heart attack

Last week this was my life.

This is my life now:

Byatt, A.S. Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye: Five Fairy Stories.
Carver, Raymond. Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories.
Mosley, Walter. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.
Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge: Fiction.
Winterson, Jeannette. The World and Other Places.
Aiken, Conrad. "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. Eds. Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert Wise. New York: Random House, 1994. 132-149.
Allen, Woody. "Count Dracula." The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose. New York: Random House, 2007. 68-73.
Baldwin, James. "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem," Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. New York: Dell, 1962. 98-116.
Baldwin, James. "Sonny’s Blues." The Story and Its Writer. 4th ed. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: St. Martin’s, 1995. 74-98.
Bloch, Robert. "The Beautiful People." Out of the Mouths of Graves. New York: Mysterious Press, 1978. 19-34.
Campbell, Ramsey. "Call First." Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. Eds. Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg, and Martin H. Greenberg. New York: Galahad Books, 1994. 442-446.
Capote, Truman. "Miriam." The Complete Stories. New York: Random House, 2004. 37-50.
Derleth, August. "The Drifting Snow." The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories. New York: Penguin, 311-321.
Derleth, August. "The Lonesome Place." American Supernatural Tales. New York: Penguin, 2007. 209-220.
Ellison, Harlan. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective. The Kilimanjaro Corporation, 2001. 177-189.
Jacobs, W.W. "The Monkey’s Paw." Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. 567-578.
Joyce, James. "Araby." The Story and Its Writer. 692-695.
King, Stephen. "I Am the Doorway." Night Shift. New York: Doubleday, 1978. 66-79.
King, Stephen. "Jerusalem’s Lot." Night Shift. 3-38.
Leiber, Fritz. "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories. 334-348.
Leiber, Fritz. "Smoke Ghost." The Dark Descent. Ed. David G. Hartwell. New York: Tor Books, 1997. 629-640.
Lovecraft. H.P. "The Call of Cthulhu." The Dark Descent. 85-107.
Lovecraft, H.P. "Pickman’s Model." Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. 177-189.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Black Cat." Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. 23-32.
Russell, Ray. "Sardonicus." Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. 347-379.
Saki (H.H. Munro). "Sredni Vashtar." Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. 123-128.
Wagner, Karl Edward. "Sticks." The Dark Descent. 209-224.

Thats one class.

+2 jobs

+4 more classes

+trying to maintain some semblence of a social/recreational life.

I hate college.

The only upside(maybe?) is that I have seen at least a dozen kind of neat bikes on campus I have never seen before. Most of which are brakeless fixed gear conversions with one piece cranks and no toe clips BUT they do have pretty, bright colored rims.

I am tired, bitter, and I have to go to work. See you tomorrow.