13 Ekim 2012 Cumartesi

new blog post

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I follow a bunch of fake pro guys on the internet. All that they post about is how much they ride. It annoys me for some reason. I think its because I am working and not riding.

Anyway. Riding is fun. Yesterday we did a great ride. People's fitness is all over the place.
5000 feet of climbing in Pittsburgh is pretty tough, cause it is all burg's that are 400 - 500 feet at a time.
Distance: 60.62 mi
Time: 3:42:47
Avg Speed: 16.3 mph
Elevation Gain: 5,131 ft

The ride that crushed Babik's soul.


Seriously one of my life's biggest regrets at this point..

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In 1992 Bad Religion were touring with this band Green Day. They were scheduled to play a small club in Pittsburgh called "graffiti." It maybe held 500 people? I remember not doing much in terms of school and planning on being grounded when the show was to happen. My brother bought a ticket, and I did not... Thinking that I was saving 12 dollars. Anyway I dont think that I ever showed my parents my report card that year and did not get grounded. Dang.



Don't know

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Yesterday I was trusted with a two-year old for five hours. I can't change a diaper and I have no experience but I got to hang out with the girl for the afternoon. I took her to a place in Pittsburgh has animals roaming around some buffalo a few caged animals in a big pond. There was a family there with a child who is probably my age who was a little bit physically handicapped and mentally slow. He couldn't speak the tried communicating with us and it seem like other kids were afraid of them as he was very social so I just told my little friend to talk to him. I think it made his day. A little while later we saw him again and his mom gave us five dollars for a pony ride for my little friend. I think it may have made her day seeing her son socialize somebody who just treated him normally.

Friends.. life's stories

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When I was 19 or so I went to my dad's townhouse in the burbs to do laundry. I had been gone for about two years and probably went back three per times year, despite living about ten miles away.

I talked to a friend who was also at his parents' house doing similar stuff. He lived a few blocks from me and we both went to Pitt. We had a few classes together. We had been friends since we were 8 or 9 years old. I would say best friends since 11 or 12 years old. By that time I was racing a ton of bmx and he started getting into it as well. Within a year of racing, he was winning the 12 year old expert field. He ended up two year streak as age group expert PA stat champion...

We hit our teenage years and dated girls who were also best friends. Lots of double dates, lots of "coupling." We continued riding together, however he was way better than me at dirt jumping. He could do BIG 360's and pretty much had no fear. I had no shortage of fear. I remember once when we were about twenty, upon meeting him a kid went "whoah... I had a photo of you on my wall growing up..." He was good.

Anyway, so we are in the burbs doing laundry and decide to go to the restaurant where we both worked as teenagers with two other good friends. Yeah we even had the same job. It was closing,so we went to a local diner, Eat n Park. The first one that we went to was SUPER crowded with teenagers on a Friday night. We left to go to another one like three miles away. Upon leaving, we were going through a traffic circle and had a weird interaction with another car. The tough guys in the car halted us by pulling in front of us and asked if we, and me in particular, had a problem. I was laughing at the situation and told the driver that yes, I had a tetanus shot the day before and I was really sore. That was my biggest problem... Ive been not funny for a long time.

So we pull out and talk about how weird that was, and how those dudes were dicks. We realized that they were following us after a couple of minutes. We continued on to the less crowded diner. Looking bag, we should have just gone to a police station, or somewhere else, but what could possibly happen.. right?

We pulled into a spot, and they pulled right up to our bumper, parking us in. We kind of collectively decided to fight them. We got out of the car and this big dude gets in my face. I remember the trial where the prosecutor asked him how much he weighed and it was something like 225 and 6'4". I was like 145 at the time. Dude is in my face and pushing me. I just kept saying "dude I am not going to fight you" like it was a mantra. I think this just made him madder. I knew this dude. He was two years younger than me in high school. The other dude in the car lived on my high school girlfriend's street.

So when the giant starts pushing me, my best friend steps between us. He was pretty strong and took the push without moving. Then the giant's friend pushes the giant away and just starts tearing at my best friend with a pretty big knife.

I dont really remember watching him getting stabbed. I do remember watching the big guy pull the stabber off. This probably saved my best friend's life. They jumped in their car and took off. My best friend was dumping blood everywhere. Like fucking everywhere. He had new shoes on and took them off, cause he didnt want to get blood on them. I dont think that he realized that he was maybe going to die. I guess he was in shock. Im not sure where everybody else in the car was at this point. My memories are super tunnel vision. We laid my best friend down and ran to find a phone... remember when there were not cell phones everywhere?

Anyway, when the paramedics said casually "we should get the helicopter"... I knew things were really bad. Anyway, this is going nowhere and is too long already, sorry. My best friend had both lungs punctured, his liver punctured and his stomach punctured. Bile went into his body and made him go septic. Like people are always like so and so "almost died" or "it was on the verge of death" ... but yeah I think he was. He lived. He spent a month or so in the hospital. He had to drop out of college, etc. There was a long shitty trial where the kid delayed the inevitable by like a year with bullshit lawyer stuff.

Like I said, this isnt really going anywhere, but was something I have been thinking about lately. I remember going home and staring at my ceiling until I passed out. I remember sitting on my living room floor calling the hospital to see if he was alive the next morning. I remember thanking him when he came to in the hospital. There is no doubt that I would have fucking died. My friend totally punched the stabber a few times and was limiting the damage as it happened. I am weak. I would have been dead. My friend told me "I would do it again" while he was in the hospital. man

There are not many people like this. Even best friends.

4th grade.

My Wedding 20 years later

Bicycle racing and art.

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Friday night Amy and I took in a lot of art. First was performance art, followed by a gallery thing. I dont know anything about art. I dont know anything about playing music or acting or interpretive dance. I know about a few things one of which is bicycling.

I sat and watched art and thought about how under appreciated cycling is. Competing at cycling, especially bikes that require talent more than natural ability (mountain, cross, etc) is really hard to do. It is similar to being in a band or making art in that there are very few rewards for most. Most people do it for something as simple as self satisfaction.

One great thing in the world is watching somebody who is naturally gifted using their gift. Its not often, but in any discipline of life, it is amazing.

Issac "groundchuck" McCrea. I grew up riding in the woods with him. A few guys we rode with went to the Extreme games and then the X games. He didnt do tech stuff, just big and smooth. I would rather watch him just ride than some super tech kid do 1000 tricks in one air. Below is an ad that ran in the 90's. Sickest 1 handed tabletops evar.



I have never been able to play guitar. I have never tried, but whatever. Watching J Mascis shred his guitar is unlike any other musical experience that I have had. It is so awesome.

12 Ekim 2012 Cuma

Mason, Lebanon, Corwin, Xenia, Yellow Springs, Springfield Ohio: Little Miami Trail

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09/28/12 72m
Got a fairly early start, departed the Comfort Suites in Mason Ohio and rode crosstown to intercept a spur trail off the Little Miami that runs northwest to the town of Lebanon. Our notional destination was Cool Beans Coffee, thinking that it would be nice to do a short ride to warm up and then enjoy a cup of coffee. When we got there we found that seating was somewhat limited, who knew?




So we repaired to a nearby doughnut shop which was very good. Went back to the trail and headed to the Little Miami, and was intrigued at this bit of graffiti:

Because, you know, a smile is just a frown turned upside down.

Once we were back on the Little Miami Trail, reversing the segments we'd seen yesterday for the first time, I really had a sense of how perceived time moves slowly when proceeding into unknown complexity and flows quickly when proceeding into familiar simplicity. Snacked on some granola-with-chia-seeds, first time I've eaten that. Decent food, I'll have to wait and see if my beard starts including green spouts.

We stopped in Corwin, about an hour short of Xenia, and was pleasantly surprised to find that yesterday's advisor was wrong; the Corwin Peddler is still very much in business, renting bikes, selling snacks, serving lunch and British high tea. It seems like they've gone to a winter operating schedule and are closed three days a week, but this is a most excellent place to stop. Wifi, coolers of cold water outside, rest rooms, coffee, ice cream; all my needs fulfilled.

Rode into Xenia under increasingly sunny skies. When Ohio builds a trailhead, they seem to go about it in a big way:


On the main strip in Xenia we saw this mural next to Surf'N Cycle:


We passed opposite-direction to a really cool HPV (human powered vehicle) velomobile, kudos to photo-ninja S. for getting this shot on the fly:




As the trail passed along Antioch College we stopped at the Womyn's Park and met a group of local cyclists. Interested 'Burgh point of reference: Antioch College ceased operations in 2008, and Pittsburgh Board of Ed Director Mark Roosevelt resigned that position to take up new duties reopening Antioch, which enrolled 75 students in the incoming class of Fall 2012.


Departing Yellow Springs we saw this mural on the community pottery center:


We got back to Springfield pretty quickly and our vehicle was still there which is always a nice thing. Changed out of our bicycle togs for normal clothing and settled in for a four-hour drive home.

The Little Miami Trail is truly excellent. The only possible negative that's going to keep me from frequently riding it is the distance at which it's removed from Pittsburgh. Highly recommended ride.



Foreign Visitors to the GAP

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09/30/12 233# 51mA different sort of ride today, I got to help two foreign visitors see the Great Allegheny Passage.

G. from Alberta and E. from New Zealand had come over to visit friends MG and B. and specifically to ride the Great Allegheny Passage with them. I was fortunate to get to ride with them for their first few miles.

They had rented bikes from Golden Triangle Bike Rental, on the Jail Trail, and I was really impressed at how well Tom took care of them. The bikes were in great shape and ready to go with spare tires, locks, lights, and panniers as promised. +1 to Tom and his folks.

We started riding in West Newton in intermittent light mist, after pausing for a pre-ride photo:


The trail was in excellent condition although a bit wet. We stopped for a break at the Round Bottom campsite, about halfway to Connellsville. It started raining pretty seriously a few miles from Connellsville and we took refuge in their Wendy's restaurant, where we all had chili and coffee to warm up. Very nice stop.

The ladies had a credit from a local B&B from a previous cancellation so they decided to overnight in Connellsville rather than go out into the heavy rain and push on to Ohiopyle, which I thought was a great decision.

I picked up some snacks at Sheetz and started riding back to my vehicle in West Newton. Once I was a few miles north, the rain stopped and eventually the skies turned quite blue, it was an unexpectedly pleasant end to a different sort of ride.

I was very glad to get to show two international visitors from closely allied nations a part of the country that I'm pretty familiar with. I hope they enjoyed it, they seemed to.

I think it shows the type of draw that the (soon-to-be-)completed GAP will present. Here were two people, well-traveled professionals, that decided to come to Pittsburgh and ride the trail to DC.




2012 Coffeeneuring Challenge and Burgettstown with B.

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10/01/12 234# 56m
The Second Annual Coffeeneuring Challenge has been announced, and having been one of the Twelve who completed the event last year I am eagerly looking forward to bike rides to coffee shops in the upcoming weeks.

After this morning's fog burned off it was a clear and brisk day, around 50F, blue skies with high wispy cirrus. I met B at Boggs and we rode the Montour Trail south to McDonald, then joined the Panhandle Trail and rode west to a point a few miles west of Burgettstown.


We reversed and lower clouds started to develop. We rode to McDonald, back on to the Montour Trail to Boggs. B departed due to other obligations, but I had time so I continued to Groveton and then returned to Boggs, encountering light drizzle the last few miles.

56 miles and a great ride.

PSA: Slow the F*** Down

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10/3/12 11MI do my bike- and Type2-diabetes blogging here, mostly, but when I've got a topic for non-bicyclists — that is, when I want to preach to the non-choir — I have another place for it, and so I'd like to respectfully suggest that you check out Cher The Road, and a Samuel Jackson Public Service Announcement: Slow The Fuck Down. Today's profanity is quasi-justified by yet another Pittsburgh motorist running over another Pittsburgh bicyclist.

Spent most of the day on a short leash due to domestic entanglements, which is a ingrate's manner of saying I'm not homeless and that sometimes interferes with Building My Perfect Day™.

Got out late this afternoon and took the time to do some oft-deferred bike maintenance before the ride, then my schedule collapsed because in this space-time you apparently can't be in two places at once, which my Google-calendar keeps straight for me IF I enter my events in my calendar – which I failed to do.

Ended up with a pleasant, short ride on my well-tweaked bike with a nice, clean chain. #STFD



Present Tense, North Braddock Aviary, No Brouhaha

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10/11/12 232# 39mCoffeeneur-2012 ride 3 of 7.

Started at the Bastille at about 0830 at 35F. Brisk, bracing, cold. Rode to the Casino, Ft. Duquesne Bridge, Ft. Pitt Bridge, Hot Metal Bridge, Junction Hollow, Fifth Avenue, Squirrel Hill, Murray Avenue, 61C Cafe.

My third coffeeneuring expedition of the 2012 Coffeeneuring Challenge:


drink: Latte w/extra shotte
shop: 61C Cafe, 61Ccafe.com
location: 1839 Murray Avenue, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA 15217
date: 10/11/2012
mileage: 39 miles

ride details: Rode with S and R, enroute to Braddock and E. Pittsburgh. Keith was on duty at the counter, very nicely done. Excellent shop, great coffee, great snacks, great wifi. The cafe is named after the bus route that runs by their door. Very bike friendly.



We had missed a local mural on our previous sweep of Squirrel Hill, so we continued down Murray Ave to catch the 2009 MLK mural on the side of the pet shop:

It may not come across in the photo, but it spells out "Squirrel Hill" while presenting various animals you might find in a pet store.

As we rode out of the neighborhood we saw a few canvas-sided sukkot in people's front yards in celebration of a Jewish holiday, that was pretty interesting.

We rode around Regent Square, through Edgewood and Braddock and into East Pittsburgh looking for a mural at Bessemer Ave in East Pittsburgh. My navigation took us on a very long, almost a Columbus-like route, and we serendipitously found this mural in East Pittsburgh at Linden Ave. and Electric Avenue:


Eventually (with the help of a mailman) we found 416 Bessemer and this mural, "Present Tense":


We were able to get back to Braddock without retracing our great-circle-route, and came across the Transformazium, an 1880's United Brethren Church repurposed as an artist's studio.

These are "street pastings" by the artist Swoon in a doorway:



Also by Swoon, on the rear facade of the building:




With the help of yet another mailman, we found our final mural target-of-the-day at Ajax and 4th in Braddock. This is an amazing little alcove of art, and if you didn't really need to be here you'd never have any reason to stumble across it.


The title mural proclaims the artwork as representing the "North Braddock Aviary - Hall of Male Birds in Courtship Plumage". Wow.









After that we departed Braddock and crossed the Rankin Bridge. We parted company at the south entrance to the Waterfront. I needed to make time back to the vehicles at the Bastille in hopes of keeping a coffee date with an old friend, so I stayed on 837 to the Hot Metal Bridge (noticed some new signage on the HMB), took the Jail Trail and scooted back. R and S took the Waterfront Trail, the Sandcastle and Keystone Metals route, and stopped SouthSide at ThickBikes, which is a pretty awesome place for indulging your inner bike geek.

It was a beautiful day for a ride. While it started off cold, it was about 50F when I got off the bike, sunny and blue.

As I drove away I realized we'd rode bikes all morning and never once had anybody mentioned the whole George-Levi-Frankie-Lance-brouhahaha. I like that.

11 Ekim 2012 Perşembe

From Bras to Braddock

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10/4/12 235# 43M

Beautiful weather for a bike ride. Started at the Bastille, road around the Casino wondering why there were hundreds, maybe thousands of brassieres tied to the fences. Came to American Eagle's corporate campus on the SouthSide and saw this arrangement - the photo doesn't show it, but the display is constructed out of bras, and to the left there's a bra-tree.


The notion goes, we're raising awareness of breasts to raise awareness of breast cancer, and after we leave this (used) underwear out in the elements for two weeks we're going to donate to poor women.

First: does anybody thing that America needs even more attention paid to boobies? Second: who leaves used underwear out in the weather for two weeks, gives it to poor women, and considers that a good work? This is just brightly-colored marketing with a high-gloss frisson of pseudo-charitable titillation. (sorry) It's telling that the only places doing this are commercial properties. < / rant off >


My first coffeeneuring expedition of the 2012 Coffeeneuring Challenge:
drink: Espresso Tusk
shop: Commonplace Coffeehouse, commonplacecoffee.com
location: 5827 Forbes Avenue, Squirrel Hill
date: 10/4/2012
ride details: bras, murals, braddock with S. The shop was unusually crowded because a local geek incubator had a fire alarm go off and they all brought their laptops over to sniff the wifi.
mileage: 44 miles




A beautiful private mural by Julie Webb on Douglas Street, viewed from a common alley:



"Trainscape: Community and Industry" in Swissvale, by Anthony Purcell.





A mural at 7510 Dickson Street in Swissvale, by the Busway, by Nicholas Hohman. I'm most intrigued by the activity in the top-left corner, where an old muscled man in a hardhat seems to be sitting across a chess/checkers board from an infant in a perambulator. Also, there seems to be a coded message in an alphanumeric block on the right side.



Murals occur in poor distressed neighborhoods. Nobody's painting murals in Sewickley or Fox Chapel. Murals go up in places like Swissvale, where you see signs like this one.



Four murals along Rankin Blvd, no artist identification:

 
 

Welcome to Braddock, by James Simon (of Gist Street)


Shepard Fairey, in Braddock:



Commercial mural, Mele's Flowers, 518 Braddock:


This is the result of a 30-artist "graffiti mural day". According to John Morris, Braddock mayor John Fetterman had been apprehensive that street graffiti would be a negative for Braddock, but relented and permitted one former department store to be used.


New Guild mural in Braddock:


By Anthony Purcell, (on the mayor's house?), click here for a making-of sequence.


In a shady, fenced courtyard which is the Mayor's house, the same building as the Greetings from Braddock mural (above), is a mural by Chris Stain:



On Braddock avenue and John Street:


At 910 Braddock Ave, "The World is Yours" by Noah Sparkes


From Unsmoke Systems in a former Catholic School building, by the artist Swoon:


This is a mural by Mary Tremonte, better photo here; and more.


We encountered James Simon (of Gist Street, Welcome to Uptown, and Duq. Univ) and Luke repairing and restoring a tile mosaic of theirs in the Verona Street Mosaic Park:


A SpongeBob SquarePants mural, "Just Keep Swimming" in the Kaboom Playground, next to a daycare facility:



This is a James Simon sculpture for the Nyia Page community center, and when I Googled Nyia Page I read a heartbreaking story of violent evil and a very well written hook line.




This was cool. Artist Anthony Purcell (who did the train mural in Swissvale) is about to paint a "greetings from historic Braddock" mural; a photo of the artist and his blank tablet.



This is apparently a hospital mural, which is ironic because all the hospitals have abandoned Braddock and left town. Maybe it's so people in town can remember what hospitals were. Glad to see the recently-delivered Mum has a Penguins jersey on.


This is outside of Braddock's Carnegie Library, which was the first Carnegie Library. (not the only Carnegie-Warhol collabo).


The figures spell out, "Road to Recovery", on the side of the Turtle Creek Mental Health facility. A staffer came out and explained the mural: it was designed by people in treatment at the facility, whose initials are included in the work. The facility is not allowed to present advertising so they could not explicitly present the name, "Turtle Creek", but you may notice a subtle turtle depicted in the creek. The theme, "road to recovery", evokes a new trend in mental health services that emphasizes recovery as an outcome.




Departed Braddock via the Rankin Bridge, a little bit of Route 837, the Waterfront Trail, Sandcastle, Keystone Metals, and the Hot Metal Bridge. Rode up Junction Hollow to Oakland, saw famous Burgh Biker Yale Cohen riding his bike, stopped for an ice cream cone.

Back down to the Jail Trail, took the trails around the Point to the Convention Center. Saw a bicyclist taking a bike nap in the sun in the Convention Center Riverfront Plaza, wanted to take a photo but it felt a little bit too skeevy to be taking pictures of sleeping ladies without their knowledge.

Rode the wonderful convention center Waterfalls Trail up to the streets, and over to Liberty Avenue to complete the day's documentation of James Simon artwork by checking out his "Liberty Avenue Musicians" at 947 Liberty Avenue, the former location of the Tambellini Building:


Almost too much to write about. A tremendous ride, all over town. Congrats to S who crossed 5000 miles for the year during the ride.