The world, as in all those other countries besides ours, has written an open letter beseeching McCain to drop out of the race because…well…if he wins, we’re all going to have to move to the previously mentioned other countries.

“Look, this isn’t funny,” said a world representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “You’ve got one candidate who has a reasonably sane and comprehensive foreign policy combined with detailed knowledge of American domestic affairs, and another candidate who isn’t always sure which country he’s talking about and whose domestic policy consists of telling people to stop whining. Why are you even throwing this open to a vote? Are you people out of your minds?”

Read the rest (Via Clusterflock).

Texans are insane. It’s the heat and the good food. More specifically though, Austin cyclists are really insane. By some lucky quirk of geography and wind patterns, the weather in Austin is dry enough (a little more so than the eastern parts of the state) for us to pretend like we’re in a really hot, less mountainous version of Colorado. With no pine trees. And no snow.

People in this city are active, almost psychotically so. You want  to drive across downtown on saturday morning ? Forget about it, there’s a 5-10-15k going on. Probably most Sundays too. Something wrong with your car and you need to pull off to the side? Chances are peloton of road bikers are going to be asking you if you need a hand.

And all this while it’s 100 degrees out (and god knows how high with the heat index). I like to think it makes us tougher than our neighbors to the north who tend to stay inside or do non-stupid sports (frisbee golf? ) when the weather gets ridiculous. Or maybe we just work to hard - most of my motivation for getting on a bike after work has to do with dispersing some of the rage built up from sitting in an air-conditioned mausoleum all day and having photons unsympathetically shot at my face. An effort to dial the asshole meter back to a more tolerable four or five so my co-workers will be able to deal with me the next day.

I think we instinctively, biologically miss the old days, when working for a living meant physical effort, whether ti be tilling an existence out of the land, or earning a wage via the fabrication of something physical. Although I’m certain my Great-Great-Grandfather, a farmer from southern Oklahoma, would probably think I’m absolutely insane for waking up and riding a bike 25 miles for fun. Different times I guess. He probably wouldn’t get the time-investment involved with this website either (neither do I sometimes).

To cycling specifically, though,  Austin breeds some hard riders. Setting aside that one guy who won the Tour de France a few times, there are hard-core people out on the roads and trails - this dude for example who’s doing an eight day, 530 mile endurance race on the Colorado Trail (A race with camping sounds pretty fun - anybody?). There’s two weekly Crits that go on through out the summer, even when your tires are starting delaminate from the heat coming off the pavement. There’s also a Short Track Mountain bike race in the fall and a rumored Cross Season. There’s even just plain stupid people like us who do dumb shit like ride Lost Creek after work, when the average temperature is 98 degrees.

I was in a meeting recently, with some guys who know what they’re talking about and someone said that I was an average Austin cyclist - In this town, that’s one hell of a compliment.

Obviously, things are not well in server land.

Update: When Moses came down off the mount (or wherever it was he got the commandments from – I’m a little fuzzy on that, and I only have one Jewish friend to verify these things and she’s busy), it turns out he left a few up on the hill (after all the were heavy, being made of stone). Among these lost commandments include - Thou shall not waste money on premium Gasoline as it doth not improve performance, Thou shall not mix vodka with diet tonic, nor nay even ever consort with fiendish diet mixers, and most importantly thou shalt always keep comprehensive, redundant back-ups of the files on your webserver (even if your hosting company claims to be doing this for you) to avoid inexplicable deletions of the entire server by unknown parties. 

In short, $75 and some lost sleep later, we are back in business. 

I have relationship with lightning that could be characterized as decidedly unfriendly.

To be fair i think that most living, breathing creatures that want to remain in the practice of inhaling and exhaling, are not really too cool with bolts of electricity shooting from the sky. But it really seems to have it in for me personally and my dad as well, by association, I suppose. The reason being, lightning – and really the whole New Mexican system of monsooning afternoon thunderstorms – is out to thwart us. I have been rained on, snowed on, pummeled with hail (thank god for bike helmets), and oh yeah, I’ve gotten that little tickling feeling while standing on the side of the highest point in the state, 500 feet from the top, as all the hairs on the back of my neck went vertical - that special sensation to let you know that Zeus is taking aim (we tactically-withdrew, booked it, scampered, retreated, fled, monty-python-ran-away (take your pick) that particular time).

Smote by the weather gods - a series of abortive hikes that my dad and I have attempted, and for the past four years been turned back from our destination.

This year, though we finally made it to Lost Lake, a spot I hadn’t been since i was at least 14-years-old. As hikes go it’s kind of a classic - rockslides, switchbacks and of course, kick-ass views. And the best part - thunderstorm free for once. We didn’t go all he way to Wheeler, the aforementioned highest point, but we’ll chalk it up to a scouting mission for next year, maybe an overnight excursion - it’d be pretty amazing to watch the sun come up over that lake.

The other bit of epicness on this trip was, of course the South Boundary. Read the rest of this entry »

The American Roadtrip. I’m not sure if other countries have this – it seems to me that Europe is too close together, and to interconnected with highly sensible trains, and the rest of the world can’t afford to be that extravagant. Maybe in China, but I’m not Chinese so I don’t know.

Regardless, the summer tradition – load the car and head west, an unconscious tribute to the days of taming a wild continent (genocide of the natives is kind of over looked for the sake of the kids here).  The drive to New Mexico is something else. It’s 12 hours, 34 minutes and 24 second from my parking spot to downtown Red River, nine hours of which is spent getting out of Texas. It’s a big damn state folks. We opted for the previously mentioned stopover in Amarillo, complete with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and angry English people. Amarillo has always been best described as “rode hard, put up wet,” a phrase that nicely captures its western cowboy roots and its utter craptasticness, although given the number of spanking new wind turbines up there (it looks like a strange forest), there could be something bright on the horizon for them.

Another fine thing about the road rip is the early morning roll out. Given Amarillo’s previously mentioned status, there’s no reason to hang out for the continental breakfast. 5 a.m. finds us on the road, watching a grey sunrise of the panhandle. Then it’s across the state line and up the flat plains of the Canadian river valley, screaming across pavement that has its origins in the Nixon administration.

This is the West as I like to see it – empty. You can drive for five hour and maybe pass three people on the road (who will of course give the requisite two-fingered steering wheel wave). Then, in Springer, you catch your first glimpse of the mountains – the distant purple lumps on the horizon, little teasers as if the guys who built these roads knew you’d been driving through the panhandle with nothing but flat cornfields and a game of highway alphabet that is indefinitely stuck on ‘x.’

Finally, your brain thoroughly unplugged after 11 hours from the driving motions of 20 mile stretches of flat, straight highway, you hit the first canyons in Cimarron, and from there you’re rewarded by 45 minutes of downshifting, hair-pin turns, mountain passes, gorgeous scenery as you wind your way up to 10,000 feet.

In short, we made it.

Read the rest of this entry »