mud was the...

lesson for the day. randy and i headed out this morning to westbranch state park. we didn't think that it would be as bad as it was. were we wrong. had to get one loop in. no turning back.

from the entrance to the trail, we had mud everywhere. mud. wet. puddles. snow. slop. slush. great riding in northeast ohio. at the end of january. i'd rather have this, than wooden planks. the smoothie took it well.

it became a delicate balance between when to pedal. how to pedal. get into the pedal. gear. slipping. and a sliding. at our first 'gu' break; we were able to check the damage...

randy shows us just how muddy it is...



a self portrait...



what was ahead of us...



as the trail continued; we kept hearing gun shots, and dogs barking. hunters. wonderful. we stayed away from where we believed that they were. the last thing i want to do is piss off a hunter for 'scaring' away the 'game.' onwards then...

after a long and muddy climb, that ended with a down tree in my walking way...we figured that the field that leads us out would be slop and mud. so on to the rocks...



randy hitting the rocks, after i stalled...



i did surprisingly well. all things considering. i did better today, then on nice dry days. what's up with that? time for the logs...



doing good...be zen...



for the first time ever i rode the logs the whole way without falling off. go figure. i did better with snow, slush, and ice.



randy's turn...



forward on...



we had a good day. i had some antics in the parking lot. wheelies. bunny hopping over snow packs. good times. to all riders...enjoy the weather. feel the weather. get out there. don't spend your time indoors. remember why you got on your bike in the first place. nature. the logs. the trail itself. conditions will not always be perfect. so what. is life? (for me yes, but that's another blog.) riding crappy conditions makes you a better rider. i'm damn sure i won't fall off the logs come summer. if you are able to ride well enough in the crap, image if you are able to transfer those skills to the 'ideal' conditions. advance. go further with your skills. become more than what you are...i bow to your buddhahood. peace.

i was just riding along...

and it just happened. this is the story that is often heard at bike shops. people come in with broken bikes, and broken parts. give a shrug of ignorance slash innocence. but we know. what the hell were you doing? they were doing something that they should not have.

so here i am the other night...taking apart my single speed. getting things ready. clean up what i'm going to use on the new frame. clean up what is going to go on ebay. i knew that my headset was a little off. maybe it needed to be re-greased, or something. so i'm taking things apart, and it happened. unscrew the top cap. loosen the stem. the fork just falls right off. plop. clunk. what the hell? pick up the fork. examine it. what did i find?
this...



notice anything? the bottom of the headset was still on the fork.



the headset snapped inside the headtube. so i had a piece of the headset stuck inside the head tube. i know...the fork is a little dirty. that's why i'm cleaning it all up.

here are the two pieces...



the silver piece should be attached to the red. so the silver piece was suck up in the headtube, and i had to pound that out with a screwdriver and a hammer. i have never seen this. i guess that i'm not selling this on ebay.

hey mechanics out there...how did this happen? i thought race face was supposed to be some great strong piece of canadian workmanship? i think those canadians are trying to kill us. now, not only am i weary of the french, now i have to worry about the canadians? they seem so friendly.

be safe, be well...

it begins...

the taking down and tearing apart of my single speed. so for a while i will be without. i will be a...(i don't know if i am able to bring myself to say this)...a...a gearhead. my apologizes to the single speed godhead. i will be taking apart my old single speed, as i wait for my new frame to come in. some of the old parts will be transferred over. others will not.



what we have here is my new chris king single speed rear hub. (sorry about the pic, i hate my digital camera) complete with disc adapter. spacers. built for their cogs. undoe the 'lock.' remove the spacer. put your cog on. put it all back together. easy. hollow stainless steel bolts with an aluminum cup. nice. i will be embarking on one of the greatest accomplishments a cyclist is able to do. build my own wheelset. i am very excited about this. i have my hubs and rims. mavic seven hundred seventeen. xc. disc. i'm still open on the spokes. so we will see there.

to build your own wheelset. knowing that as you ride along, you know you built this. laced. tightened. trued. dished. them yourself. pride. i built these. my love and hard work went into them. if something goes wrong...no one to blame, except yourself. unless, of course there is a major failure in the hub or rim. i once owned a pair of mavic crossmax. i hated them. i cursed the french from here to there. so i picked up a set of king/mavic rimmed. mavic makes good rims...that i cannot take away from them. but their overall wheelsets suck.

sure there goes a certain pride in building up your own bike. what you want. certain parts. a certain ideology that you put into the bike. i know that pride. i have done that with all the bike i have now. put some of my own; lets say...personality into your machine. but the pride of putting together your own wheelset. instead of just 'slapping' on some part. nice. now please don't get me wrong. it's not like i'm going to go out with my nose up in the air, because i built this wheelset. but i will feel good about them.

with that...i will be putting up my old one by one wheelset with salsa rims on ebay with a sixteen and twenty tooth cog. if any single speeder is interested that reads this let me know via email. i will clean them up, and put a pic on the blog before i put them on ebay. for a 'nice guy' discount. single speeder to single speeder.

take care...ride on.

"as long as we think we are the ego, we feel attached and fall into sorrow. but realize that you are the self, the lord of life, and you will be freed from sorrow. when you realize that you are the self, supreme source of light, supreme source of love, you transcend the duality of life and enter into the unitive state" -the upanishads

now as life...

moves forward, and i come to the realization that i'm older; i begin to notice things.

i am now on both sides of the college coin. half student. half instructor. as an instructor i would just look at the students and shake my head, and wonder "was i ever like that?" as a student i'm taking a deeper look. first, girls (not women) are wearing the oddest things. it boarders on slutness/pseudo punk/cardboard cut out. i'm really not sure what is going on.

my interest is the boys (again not men). the boys are very interesting. they are divided into camps. they are either white trying to look ghetto or rap starish. mind you i'm in suburbia. or straight trying to look gay. prep is no more. prep has changed to metro-sexual. now you know that they are straight, because you notice something that is off about the whole thing. namely their heads are snapping back looking at any girl that walks by. and then you have the pseudo punk look. i say pseudo, because it is false. punk use to be an idea of not caring. just doing what you do. my view is once you try to look punk you are in fact not. there is then nothing different between the punk and the metro-sexual in theory. making sure you have the right thing on, in the right way. no difference.

this is just an old man's view in a kids game. i must be honest. community college is just a higher level of high school. this is what the average community college student is thinking...who do you know...what are you doing...how do i look. i have always been the odd man out on this. school is school. business is business. the colleges have gotten weak. during the week i am at three different community colleges. and all three do not hold friday classes. they have monday/wednesday classes. they have tuesday/thursday classes. friday classes. once and a while they will have monday/wednesday/friday classes. but for the most part they stopped these, because students stopped coming on fridays. so the schools decide that the best thing to do is to bend to the will of the student. so the students rational is "i went out on thrusday. got drunk. decided not to go to class." the school response "o.k. you poor baby. we will just stop friday classes." so now as a school lets in some way promote going out on thrusday, fridays, and saturdays. and not prepare them for the real world, when if you don't show up for work you get fired. done. out. thank you higher education.

be safe, be well...

well,...

my holiday is almost done. school starts on friday. then i have monday off. lets start school, and then give em a day off. its been a great holiday. a lot of stuff went on, and is going on.

i just got handed another class; which i've never taught. i spoke with a friend/colleague of mine who taught the same class with the same book, and he assured me that there would be no problem. so that calmed my heart rate.

many new things i'm undertaking this new year. i believe that i'm doing it in the new year is just a coincidence. i'm not a new year resolution kind of person. in fact i hate new year's resolutions. this will all unfold as the year goes on.

as i sit right now my 'office' it is a wreck. books all over the floor. in front of the computer. notes on class. notes about personal ideas. two bags with school stuff in em. one bag getting ready for ebay. wondering why i want to include berkeley's idealism in my lecture. knowing that i have to complete aristotle's politics soon. needing to get my lecture going for my new class.

my holiday has been relaxing. busy. fun. there is one thing that i'm going to miss though. during this holiday i haven't been doing a lot of driving. no need. so a lot of the running around i was doing, i was doing on my fixie. put on my hypnotic design knickers; which are a great riding pant for causal hanging out riding. going to the post office. ups store. game store. bank. parents. grocery store. i felt like a true single speed rider when i went to the grocery store. i needed to pick up some things, and one product was beer. i had my backpack. figuring how much i could buy, with my other stuff. so i picked up two four packs of guinness, and a sixer of bass. man was that heavy riding home. i almost needed to pull one out for the ride home. good thing i've got a surly tuggnut chain tensioner on the fixie. so if need be i could open a bottle. that might be why they made them that way. one product. two purposes. tension chain. open beer. so i'm going to miss riding the fixie from place to place.

life is going back to 'normal,' with wondering when i'll get back on the bike. i did find a park out near lakeland where there is a park with mountain bike trails. so once and a while i'll take the bike and ride from the parking lot to the park. five miles down the road. hit the trails. come back. so i'll get some riding in there.

until next time...
do not miss this opportunity.
be safe, be well...

my apologize...

to any one I'm about to piss off or offend...

i was listening to the radio today on my way to hunt down a chipolte burrito (the things a man will do for food); anyway, as some of you might know that here in cleveland we have a new mayor. o.k. fine. well, recently in the news there has been a public out cry against some of the police shootings in cleveland. i believe that there has been three or four death shootings in cleveland. the public is upset. the mayor wants to better train the police officers in these situations (something to the fact, I was yelling at my radio at the time).

the public is so upset in fact that a couple of months ago a public forum was held on how you should deal with a police officer if you are confronted with one.

what?

how to deal with a police officer?

reason sets in with me. i have always been taught and understood that a police officer is an authority figure. not necessarily someone to look up to, but to respect. you do what an authority figure tells you to do. if you have a problem with this, you take it. don't run. don't make a scene. take it.

now let's look at this without reason...they have guns. they are trained to use them. guns kill. if someone with a gun tells me to stop. get down on the ground with your hands behind your head. i'm going to do it. no questions. if you have a problem with this, then ask in a polite way. if not you'll just piss them off all the more. and who wants that?

so why is this a problem? from what i am able to figure out, people do not take these two things into consideration.

the criticism comes up...well, why can't they just injure them? do you understand how hard it would be to shoot someone, say in the knee? it would take a trained marksmen to do that. now, how about a person running from you. towards you. with a weapon. with the creator knows what.

do people understand what the police go through on a daily basis? police get killed for a simple traffic stop. talk about stress on the job. i would rather be on a swat team; where i know i'm going into the shit, than wonder if the next person i stop will kill me or not.

it also comes out that those that were killed were on alternating substances. hmmmm. what's the really problem then? are we upset with the police taking action, or by the fact that we as a community cannot take care of other problems? in this case drugs. so we miss place the blame. "oh, my little boy isn't bad. he's a good kid." who just happens to do drugs. correct me if i'm wrong...isn't that against the law? i'll stop that there, because i don't want to get into a drug thing. but what is the real problem?

in the tradition of jean paul sartre...own up to your choices. your (are you ready for this word? it's a bad word. i hope you are able to take it) responsibility. damn. personal responsibility. what a concept.

on a lighter note...some of my recent bike builds made it to

speedgoat's blog

enjoy. thanks speedgoat for everything.
take care. be safe, be well.

i hope that...

everyone had a great christmas and a happy new year. i'm not a late night kind of person anymore, so it was a little difficult to stay up and watch the ball drop. in fact i passed out during the football game and woke up at a quarter to midnight to watch the festivities.

got to go out on christmas on a solo single speed ride. didn't know if i was going to go, so i didn't call anyone. thought i'd take the tow path and hit some trails, but the tow path was really icy. so i rode canal over to alexander. up alexander to the bike and hike. up the path, put some ass into it and my rear wheel pulled in on me. shit. where was my tuggnut when i needed it? pulled out my jethro tule and on my way i went. down nut house. over the creek and through the woods i went. no one was out. christmas riding is great. everyone feels the need to go to church and do there twice yearly duty. it's like when you were a kid, and you saw those relatives at your birthday and funerals. you thought to yourself "who are these people? at least they are giving me things, or they look nice in black." these have to be the thoughts of christ during christmas and easter. had a good run going down nut house. lost some grip due to all the leaves, but hey, i'm out.

couldn't go home after that. too soon. took a left on canal and headed towards sagamore hills. passed under the bike and hike. knew that would be icy too. kept going. god i love going up hills on the ss. left on dunham rd to alexander. back to the nut house. back down. took some time to meditate on the beauty of nature and the awe of it. this is why i couldn't be a professional racer. i'd stop too much and check out the scenery. and i suck. at the end took a right on canal and headed back to the car.

one of my achievements over this holiday season has been pouring a really good black and tan. half guinness. half bass. the key is the slow pour of the guinness to sit on top of the bass, and not to have any head on the bass. to see and distinction between the two. a clear line of separation. slow. patience. the ultimate ch'an experience. the peace and oneness of pouring a beer. i am now able to move onto a black and gold. one 'draw back'...you have to have two beers. you can't let two beers sit in the fridge opened. darn. i'm so proud of myself. it really is a hard thing to do. but now i must let it go, and move on. so is the way of the buddha.

so as i continue to ponder existence...i believe that who you 'feel' that you are depends on the company you keep. are you who you are because that is you or the people that surround you? did i get into cycling because of the company i keep? being around the guys at the shop, and so forth. i used to really be into hockey. knowing roosters. players. what was going on in the hockey world. why? well a good friend of mine is really into it, and we went to many a game and would talk about what was going on in the hockey world. it was like i would study for our conversations. well, we don't hang out as much due to distance of living, and life in and of itself. so it turns out that i'm not as interested as much. i still enjoy hockey, and would rather watch it compared to any other 'american' sport. let's face it...hockey is not an american sport. canada. born and bread.

back to topic...move away from the influences to find your existence. i enjoy hockey, but not the same intensity as i used to. i'm really into cycling without the influence of others. i don't hang around the people as much, and i still get out and move. i do still ride with them, but i don't see them as much. this is how you understand your existence. by yourself. without influence. many things are taught. morals. religion. move away from your 'company' to understand yourself. you many never 'know' yourself, but you are able to understand yourself. john locke stated that we are never free, because we are always bound to our desires. the buddha teaches us to be free from our desires. to see and understand a thing or experience without desires. free. without any prejudices. this is how you may 'see' yourself. without desires or influences. pure. be. here. now. peace.