I'll never get it.

I just don't understand what manner of insecurity evokes people to yell out of the window of a moving car toward a cyclist.

DNA and I were at some local bars tonight and on my way home I broke a chain on my fixie (try to avoid this if you can). For some reason, after retrieving my broken chain from Durston avenue, a drunken gentleman in the passenger side of a half-ton Chevy pickup felt the need to yell 'there's no blahblahblah in Bozeman, you Fuck'. In general, this would elicit a U lock thrown though the window from me, but on this particular night I only felt disdain tinged with ambivalence. The normal anger this act would elicit any other time just wasn't there. In that moment I went past feeling anxiety about cars to feeling far superior to those insecure enough that they feel the need to yell obscenities at people on bicycles. I don't really understand why people think driving a particular type of mechanical conveyance is reason to feel important. You bought a car? Great. That says nothing about your character, it only speaks to your credit rating.

I will state emphatically at this point that people who ride a bike to work every day do, in fact, think that people who drive (you) are weak. We think you are soft and pathetic, and that you have made yourselves unwitting slaves to that which makes you ripe for enslavement.

I am ambivalent to someone issuing inanity out of the window of a car because I find those who drive daily beneath my concern. So, pay four dollars for a gallon of gas America. You are weak and you deserve to reap the reward of your slovenlyness.

:)

Die cars DIE! Now, bring on 5 dollar gas!

Moab

Really, that's all I need to say, and in the minds of people who know there are images and feelings conjured that cannot and need not be expressed in words. Ok that was lame...but spending a few days riding around trails like this makes one a little euphoric.



Suz and I had an unbelievable trip. The weather was perfect. It actually rained off and on the whole time, which was the BeesKnees as far as I was concerned. We crammed the two days we had with AmasaBack, and the Sovereign Trail (which has been changed considerably for the better since I was last there), as well as spending a day hiking (actually slickrock scrambling) in Arches.



I rode the single speed down there, and while maybe not the 'best' bike for the gnarliest terrain I know of

I certainly didn't regret having only one bike with one gear. I probably would have had more fun on a big travel bike, raucously burning down epicly technical sections of broken rock. But I'd've missed the subtle satisfaction of using years of skill to flow through and over sections that will ask for everything you have just to stay upright...that, and the disbelieving looks from others after cleaning something on a singlespeed that they had trouble with on a freeride bike.



It was one of the best trips I've been on in a long time, but after a few rough days I was more than ready to head up to Salt Lake to a hotel with a shower, and then to Jen and Dan's wedding, which was beautiful, as well as drunken ridiculousness even considering strange Utahian drinking laws.

Cheers

Leaving for Moab

We're leaving for Moab today. I'll try to get some pictures posted whilst we're on the trip, so check back often...actually it would be best if you made this your homepage, just so you don't miss anything :D

Some quick math

This got me to thinking.

I commute around 10 miles a day, which is 300 miles a month. It's actually a little more than that, what with random grocery trips n such, but I digress.

My 4runner gets about 15 miles to the gallon, so that's about 20 gallons of gas per month. If gas is 4 dollars per gallon, that's around 80 dollars per month, just in gas, not counting oil changes, tires, etc, which all add to the price of driving, here's a more realistic calculus for the cost of driving a car.

My xtracycle cost me around 400 dollars back in November. If it hasn't paid for itself by now, it will have by the end of the summer.

Crap

The Suz and I are going to a wedding in Salt Lake City next week. This is going to necessitate a little side trip. It's a difficult life I lead.

A quesiton of perspective.

So I was at a get together with some peeps tonight. Someone is getting married and this necessitates a large gathering of people from out of state. One of those people is a gentleman from NYC, who used to live in Bozeman, and worked at a shop with my boys. This cat came out last summer and spent the week riding around on a fixie DNA slapped togther for him. This time around our visitor had in tow a young lady he is courting. Towards the end of the night his girlfriend was getting tired and giving him hints to call it a night. It occurred to me that obviously this time he wasn't staying with DNA and I asked him were they were staying. He replies (I promise this is actually going somewhere, just bear with me) with the name of a local motel, and I then query if they rented a car in Bozeman. To which his girlfriend replies with a 'yes' that implied that the answer was so obvious that there was no need to have asked the question in the first place.

The great part about the group of people I hang around with is that everyone in the room immediately started offering to loan this couple the use of bikes (since we all have several) in order that they could get around without being encumbered with a car. We even got into a complicated discussion about what would be the best way to get bikes to these two. It was so spontaneous that I didn't even think it was odd, until I noticed the bewildered look on our buddy's Girl's face. It snapped me back to reality and I realized that to most people this would seem completely absurd. It does, however serve as a fantastic and ironic view at the paradigm of my friends verses what you might consider 'normal' people. To us we were lending a hand to someone in need. But to this poor tired girl, who just wanted to get to her motel and relax, we were presenting her with an onerous burden.

Maybe this is a 'had to be there' story, but I chuckled most of the way home, interrupted only by calling a guy driving a red pickup a word that I won't repeat here.