Monthly Archives: October 2008

My weekend was quite good, and will probably be ranked as my best one in October.  My brother Nick and his fiance came up from South Texas to visit.  I haven’t seen either of them in almost a year.  Nick looks like he’s getting older every time I see him; I know that’s how it’s supposed to happen, but out of everyone I know, he seems to be the only one who visibly displays change over time.  We drank some wine and caught up on things – the things that telephones can’t quite communicate.

He seems happy in select moments; the life he’s made is more cluttered and stressful than I would ever want to live, but I think he’s always been that way.  He’ll be getting married in less than a month – which is still baffling to me, although I’m now convinced there’s another dimension to the equation I can’t see or I’m not allowing myself to see.  His fiance is an interesting compliment to his own personality; she seems careless with her emotions, while I completely ignore mine, and Nick floats somewhere in between these two extremes.  It’s difficult to explain.

We had coffee and pastries together on Sunday morning, and then they took off to the South.  I went for a short bike ride after they left, and took a nice long nap to finish off the rest of the early afternoon.  I worked on reorganizing and re-settling my place after the weekend’s visitors, took a shower, and lounged around for a bit before heading off to dinner at Emily, Stephen and Chris’ place.

The menu was pasta with red sauce, some handmade rosemary bread, and some fresh fruits – all made with discarded ingredients foraged from dumpsters behind our supermarkets.  The company was great, and the conversation invigorating.  It was good to be surrounded by revolutionary thinkers like myself, and to be able to have unrestricted dialogue about restricted topics.  James, a pseudo-roommate in the house, joined us for dinner, which was really cool.  He and I were acquaintances from outside Whole Foods – he had just finished hiking the Appalachian Trail as I was preparing to head to Alaska.  He was interested in planning a bike tour as his next adventure.  We randomly ran into each other after I returned – again at Whole Foods, and chatted about the trip.  We were going to make arrangements to pass along bike tour knowledge, and then out of nowhere he show’s up at the house on Sunday night.

I slept at their place that night, and then snuck out early Monday morning to get in some cycling before heading to work that afternoon.  I wanted to stick around for breakfast, but our weather here has been so remarkable that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to play in the cool and breezy sunshine.

I just got bit on the back of my hand by a mosquito.  Little bastard.  This chain of events brought back a few memories from my last foray into real mosquito territory; a place where those terrible insects seem to out-populate everything in the general area.  There are some places in the Canadian back-country where people just don’t live because the mosquitoes are so terrible.  I rode a bike through these places.  I distinctly remember waking up one morning inside my tent, barely able to see the rain fly because of the blanket of mosquitoes perched on the tent body.  Disgusting.  After a while, I think my body built up a bit of an immunity – so I wasn’t constantly swollen and itching, but it definitely wasn’t a pleasant experience.

My hand is itching now though…

I’m pleased to see all of the Obama/Biden signs popping up around Austin.  There’s a house on Shoal Creek Blvd that I ride past every now and then with a McCain/Palin sign in the front yard.  Judging by the side of the house, the trolls living inside are probably a fan of the McCain tax plan.  Today I was happy to see that all of their adjacent neighbors have populated their own yards with at least three Obama signs each.

It was cold this morning.  I needed to wear arm and leg warmers on my 10am ride – the first time this year.  I had to buy arm warmers first though, since the only pair I could find at home were bright orange.  The fashionable cyclist in me says that arm warmers must match leg warmers, and both must match or tastefully contrast (white and black for example) the colors of the team kit.  I hope I’ll get plenty of use out of this pair.

Speaking of fashion, I spent all day yesterday dressing mannequins at REI.  Judging from my previous work with the cycling department mannequins – which looked quite good in my opinion – I was deemed most fashionable by our store’s merchandising coordinator, and tasked with re-dressing all the rest of them.  I had a blast matching and contrasting colors; accessorizing with hats, belts and scarfs; and getting to showcase what I think are our best pieces of outerwear.  I’m pretty sure we’ll see a jump in clothing sales.  Fabulous!

It’s been an unfortunately long time since I’ve had the motivation to write anything for this.  I haven’t been particularly busy, or lacking in subject matter.  Just motivation.  Fall has arrived in Austin, and I’m no longer sweating on my rides to work and extended cycling adventures.  I love this time of year, which has a tendency to re-ignite my love for this city, since I can genuinely enjoy all it has to offer.

Last Saturday New Belgium Brewery came to town to put on the Tour de Fat bicycle and beer festival.  That was a party.  My initial plans kind of crumbled, with most of my friends stuck with last minute obligations, but in the end I think that turned out for the best.  Instead I got a chance to hang out with Emily (from REI), Steven (previously from REI), and a few of their friends, all who turned out to be quite entertaining.  I like having new faces around me every once in a while.  We drank delicious beer fairly steadily all late morning to early afternoon, then headed back to my place to enjoy some delicious single malt whisky.  With the plentiful sunshine and bike tour of the east-side, I was hung-over by 9:00pm.

What else stands out…  Austin Bikes moved locations and hosted a big re-opening party two weekends ago.  The new place is awesome; they’re actually a legitimate bike shop now.  Business no longer stops when they have two or more customers with bikes in the store.  I met up with a few T4k buddies at their party, and three of them decided to finally act on old intentions to get the Alaska flag tattooed on their arms.

Long story short, the tattoos came out great, but more importantly I’ve finally found my tattoo artist.  Let me explain…  A few years ago I was flying from Austin to London via Cincinnati or Cleveland, and was sitting next to this guy named Chris.  He was an Austin tattoo artist, and a rather talented on as far as I could tell, having studied Japanese art in Japan and a few other cool things.  I didn’t bother to get his name, or figure out where he worked, but after the fact I told myself this would be the guy who would do my artwork whenever I found him again and/or figured out what I want done.

Turns out it was Chris Gunn at Southside Tattoos on South Congress Avenue, where my friends got Alaska stars inked on after the Austin Bikes party.  My search is over, now all I need to do is figure out what I want done and where I want to put it.  That’ll probably be a bit more difficult.

I’m quite happy with myself at the moment – happy to be free from external pressures and worries, happy to be free from wants and needs, and happy to be careless.  As I was spending almost a fifth of my day yesterday on my bicycle, touring the landscape of west-Austin, I couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.  And there was a smile on my face.