Kilts

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kilt.jpgAs of Saturday night, I am the proud owner of what I can hope is Austin’s first Sport Kilt. A sport Kilt is apparently a traditional Scottish kilt, with a little less fabric and a modern closure system, in this case velcro.

Before we start deriding me as a scot-poser-braveheart-wannabe, let me start by saying that while that movie was good, Mel Gibson has turned out to be something of a chump in his later years and has really given some us of the semi-scotch persuasion a hard go if it. Indeed, there were even a couple of ‘Freeeeeedom!’ yells on Saturday (inaugural kilt day) … come on guys, that’s so 1996. Anyway the round-about point I’m making is that while Treichler is Swiss, if you bounce a little farther up the family tree you run into the McClain branch of the tree. That’s right, I am distantly related to John McClain from Die Hard, who’s saved the world from terrorists way more times than President Bush has.

Now sadly, according To Seamus at Sportkilt.com – ‘…the McClain Tartan, it’s a quite ugly.’ So on his advice my parents wisely choose the ‘Irish Revenge tartan.’ I’m not sure what I’m being vengeful about, but when ever I put it on, I clearly am ready to kick some Irish ass. I mean, just look at the picture (although I have no idea how I got to Ikea, what I bought or when it will arrive (actually that’s pretty normal for me and that store)).

Irregardless, good times were had with friends and family – a nice way to bring in a new decade. Oh, and you you’re getting old when there’s more pictures of your friend’s kid than anybody else at your birthday party.

Microwaves

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You people have been bitching at me for years, so I finally got one. What the hell for? The food that comes out of it tastes like rubber-butt, it takes up space in my already small kitchen and it’s using terrorist-funded gamma rays to cook the food. Ok I made the last one up (series of three always seem better), but seriously, about the only thing this is good for is melting ice, and i live in Texas so there’s not a lot of demand for that kind of thing.

Call me back when we can buy jet-packs…the future clearly isn’t here yet.

New to the Stable

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After a little bit of waiting, my custom road bike is done. Well, almost, but hell, its painted and sexy. More to be had here.

Or…

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Maybe the $50K Airstream was a bit over the top – How about one of these instead for my birthday. 100mpg and, what ? yeah its badass too.

Puns

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The worlds greatest, apparently.

Salad Serving Sizes

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This weekend is a bit of a blur for several reasons (alcohol and difficult bike rides being primary ones), but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I had scheduled myself to be pissed about, until Amber sent this email…

…I’ll bring the rest of your Caesar salad to the party next weekend…

Oh yeah. That restaurant. And the non-salad.

Ok, I’ll admit it–I was being cheap. I ordered a $6 Caesar as an entrée at dinner. But I also wasn’t extremely hungry, and lets face it I’m not getting any skinnier on the unclerob diet (no offense dude – it works for you, not me). So yeah, this place is already on my nerves a bit, as its full of old people, pink table clothes and a very very bad elevator-music band. The Vodka tonic I ordered was about 78% carbonated water, 2% vodka and 20% pissy bartender. All these by themselves are forgivable, but then they brought out my plate.

Four pieces of lettuce. Dressing. Croutons.

This is not a salad, this is the salad leftovers you feed the rabbit. I have big ears but I’m distinctly unfuzzy. At least I didn’t order the half salad, which was all of three pieces of lettuce. Maybe it was some sort of Easter-season shout-out? Like ‘don’t you feel blessed because you jut got ripped-off for some artfully arranged edible foliage?’ I was sorely tempted to go next door to Sonic, order one of their salads, and walk it back to their kitchen and a visual learning tool. I mean would if kill you to grate some Parmesan on there at least? If the drive through fast food joint next door can swing it, can’t you?

It will be a benefit to mankind as a whole when they level that place and build highway over the smoking crater.

The Long Center

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Last week, Austin finally got a preforming arts center to call our own. It apparently not only rocks, but after 4 years of construction they managed to use a sizable amount of the old building as well:

…65% of the materials in it were recycled from Palmer, including 500 tons of steel, the stage house and foundation, mahogany from the Philippines, marble from an Italian quarry no longer being mined, and those love-’em-or-hate-’em roof tiles.

The idea of revamping the Palmer was conceived in the money-falling-from-the-sky era of the tech boom and went through a typically Austin level of drama as funds dried up, designs were scaled back and board members left the project.  A solid ten years later, the hard work has finally paid off.

Ex-Cheifs of Staff

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Leon Panetta (D) and Andrew Card (R) discuss the challenges facing the next president. Or rather how collosally screwed we are.

Bike Gods Are Pissed

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For those of you not hip to this jive, normally part a and b are attached to each other in a fashion that allows one to shift gears, while simultaneously maintaining tension in the chain and generally keep the bike moving in a forward, or at least semi-forward, direction.

We’d already had a crap crap crap ride, due to some erroneous information about the general dryness of the trail. When this forum says it’s dry, remember to take it with a kayak-sized grain of salt, because you’ll need one to cross all the flooded creeks.

Inexplicably though, after we were almost at the last major crossing (just before the fun part no less), on a stretch of flat reasonably level trail, these two parts decided to go their separate ways in mildly spectacular fashion, without any reasonable provocation. I’ve been riding a bike on trials for almost 12 years now, and I’ve never had this happen.

Yo bike gods – I apologize for any past transgressions (making fun of Gary Fisher’s goatee maybe?), but can we please, please stop this?

Town Lake Park

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The new Town Lake Park features a big hill in the middle that the city built for me to take pictures of downtown from (nice of them to think of me for a change). I guess they need to rename the park now that its officially Lady Bird Lake (which while she was great and all, just doesn’t have the same ring to it).

More pictures from our brief foray into the SXSW madness can be found here.