One: I was kinda hoping to get a little time to watch Donnie Darko this weekend. Feels like it’s about that time of year.

Two: I’m head over heels… for turkey!

And with that, I bid you a fond holiday, and wish the best for youse and yaws.

Have a great weekend!

I’m buried at work, will be chopping away at 2 projects right up until dark on Wednesday. I’d normally be pretty excited about a 3-day week, but it’s gonna be a sprint all the way through. That’s getting in the way of posting, but it can’t be helped.

My house is filling fast. This weekend was Ruby’s Fourth Birthday Party, the theme was Princesses and Robots, and there were about 45 people enjoying festivities yesterday. It was both a big huge fun blast and a good dress rehearsal for Thursday, when we’ll attempt to entertain 18ish family members and whatever friends decide to drop by. It’ll be less people, but they’ll have higher culinary standards and entertainment requirements than a pack of feral toddlers.

There’s a lot going on, many pics to share, and I’d love to sit with you over a cup of coffee in front of a fire as the frost collects on the window panes, but that ain’t happenin’ this week. It’s as if this blog’s oxygen couldn’t get around the big, meaty bolus of work and family lodged in the throat of our connection to each other, the lung of… shit runnin’ out of metaphoric components here, what’s left? The lung… of your… ummmmm…

Aw fuckit. I’ve been super busy, I’m still super busy. I hope to be less busy soon, and to share with you items of interest. But how can I make up for lost time? What can I leave with you as I struggle with the To Do lists? Oo I know!

Fire in the disco!

Throw a little whiskey and Irish cream in your coffee, eat a bunch, have a great holiday and remember: wait until everyone’s at the table before you tell the family you’re gay. It’s just good Thanksgiving etiquette.

Cheers!

There’s a lot of big news today, lots to talk about, lots to catch up on. We’ll talk about bikes and elections and all that shit later, Stevil has provided us with the most astonishing thing ever to grace the InterToobz, and it needs its own space.

Note to every rock band there’s ever been or will be: you can stop now, game’s over. Red Fang wins.

You’ve got a big decision to make tomorrow, citizen.

There’s a lot to think about as we approach this historic election. There’s more than one dire problem to solve, more than a few turds hurtling towards the blades of a big, angry fan, more to be resolved with higher stakes than ever before.

We’re mired in geopolitical conflict, and the way home is difficult to find, harder to navigate. We’re hooked on an energy source that’s dirty, expensive, and often comes at the cost of supporting some nefarious organizations. Our economy is shaky, fragile, and everyone’s looking over their shoulder for the axe to fall. Health care is skyrocketing, and getting sick often means bankruptcy. Bridges are falling into rivers, cities are falling apart, our manufacturing base is much diminished, and the guy you’re trying to order that Bacon Cheeseburger from doesn’t seem to speak much English.

What will be in store for America as we enter the next chapter in our history? Which candidate is better equipped to handle these challenges? What’re we gonna do?!

I know that when I ponder issues of these magnitudes, I try to imagine how the best of our presidents would tackle them. I contemplate Washington’s moral rectitude, Jefferson’s master statesmanship, Teddy’s cunning diplomacy, FDR’s inspiring leadership. Ultimately, the path of my meditation will lead to Lincoln, whose counsel is always the same.

You’ve got a big decision to make tomorrow, Superstar.

Boo! Happy Halloween! remember to give your teeth an extra scrubbing after mowing through nearly half the candy you bought for the kids. Those snack size Snickers and Three Musketeers, they look so small, like little medallions. You could just keep eatin’ ‘em, all night, they’re so small. They’re just tiny, you ate a little over 2 lbs of chocolate, peanuts, and nugat. The 8 rolls of Smarties didn’t help either, but you were on a roll.

Not feelin’ so hot now, are ya? Yeah, you want candy.

Anyway, lots goin’ on, between work and gettin’ the kids ready to strike adorable terror into the hearts of thousands, so this has to be short and sweet. Today we jam econo. Say hello to the Minutemen, they have no badges.

Hope your weekend is horrifying and awesome, cheers!

[IMPORTANT UPDATE]: One of them Heatwole boys of Bawlmer alerts me to the Candy Codex. If you’re lucky enough to see these in your neighborhood, use them to maximize your yield.

Man, you dodged not one, but two bullets today.

Wednesday night I woke at 2:30 in the morning, saw the dimmest outlines of the ceiling fan above me as I came to full consciousness, and realized I had the Wooo OoWoo WoooOooo parts of Sex Dwarf looping through my brain. I think it had been part of a dream, because it had already gone through several loops by the time I was awake enough to figure out what was going on. So, I almost gave you this video of live Soft Cell, but I’m not going to do that. Isn’t that nice? Sugar and spice?

(Seriously though, if you click that link and get a bad case of the Woo Ooo Woo WooOoo’s for the next week, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

I also discovered, a few weeks ago that I could watch whole episodes of South Park online. You’re asking yourself, “Wow, how far behind are you?” I’m that far behind. I’d kinda lost touch with the show after about season 4, so I’ve been catching up on episodes when I get little bits of time. Little by little I’ve come to realize that Butters is Muh Main Man. I think it was season 8, probably the AWESOM-O episode, when it hit me.

This is where brutal, loud, profane satire connects with sweetness and comfort. Among the things I find endearing about Butters is that he sings Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now to himself. Sappy? Easy Listening? Yacht Rock? I can’t answer those charges. All I can tell you is that that tune’s catchy as all hell, it hits me square, and Chicago’s horn section wins. This is not irony or kitsch talking here. Everyone’s got a secret, a secret that may one day destroy them, and this one’s mine: I fucking dig Chicago, at least up through Chicago X, and maybe even a little farther. I’ve been whistling that to myself as I’ve pedaled my ass around D.C. this week.

So you almost got live Chicago, circa 1976, with Peter Cetera sporting a satin-polyester varsity jacket and a feathered mullet for the ages, doing If You Leave Me Now. Not so much Woo Ooo Woo WooOoo as Woo Ooo OOOOOOOO.

Nevertheless, I feel the need to leave a hook in you, one that you’ll struggle to remove for the rest of the weekend. And for that, I’m going back to Peoria, Illinois, into my grandparents’ basement during the early 80’s. I can see the pool table, a couple chairs, the unfinished wooden body and neck of an electric guitar stripped of its guts, a macrame hanging lamp, my uncles partying with their friends. The smell of beer, dust, and Central American marijuana is close and alive. It was there that I, on the cusp of my teenage years and as yet unaware of the coming punk revolution, heard Billy Squier for the first time. That first album, Don’t Say No, had more hooks than a bait and tackle shop, and didn’t have a bad track on it. Yeah, that should do the trick.

If you’re interested, I ran across this acoustic version he did at a show in 2008 that’s really sweet, but I wanted to send you off on your weekend with the original. No need to thank me, the look on your face is thanks enough.

Hopefully the gun I’ve been under for the last couple weeks will ease up, and the unbearable lightness of posts will get heavier. In the meantime, spank someone who deserves it. In a loving way, of course.

I’ve been using Nigel almost exclusively for the last couple months, he’s been an able, agile steed with great character and as useful as he is good lookin’. But Cledus and Clovis have been languishing in the meantime, and they deserve better than that.

So last night, after work, I raced home and swapped Nigel for Cledus before riding the second half of the trip to the Riverdale Farmers’ Market to meet the family. Before there was a Nigel, Cledus was my one and only, we were as tight as Chicago’s horn section. I certainly wouldn’t have thought getting on a road bike after a couple months on a mountain-bike based Xtracycle would be such an alien experience, but it was.

The most notable immediate difference came through the handlebars. Nigel’s cockpit is built on 56cm Nitto Albatross bars, and my position is nearly upright. Even though Cledus is set up for a pretty relaxed position, with a short, high stem and brakes high on the drop bars, it’s a much more laid-out position, and the Salsa MotoAce Short and Shallows feel tiny in comparison. I never thought I’d call a Long Haul Trucker “twitchy”, but it took me a couple miles before I could acclimate to the feel of the skinny bars, and to having my hands so far out on the brake hoods.

So many distinct aspects of the ride were that different. After putting in so many miles on our longtails, the Trucker’s response to pedal strokes felt strangely immediate. The 700 x 35c Marathons that I once considered “fat and sassy” were little racing tires compared to Nigel’s 26 x 2.35″ Fat Franks, they rolled seemingly without effort. The short wheelbase, the weight, the fork rake and trail, the purr of the freewheel, everything felt… odd.

For the most part, I can’t even say that these qualities fall into “better” or “worse”, with one exception: the brakes. Cledus sports Tektro Oryx cantilevers, fine brakes really, shod with KoolStop Mountain pads. I think they fit well on a Long Haul Trucker. But Nigel sports Avid BB-7 disc brakes with a 203mm rear rotor and a 160mm front, which can bring his considerable mass, even fully loaded, even in the rain, to a full stop almost instantly. It’s really not fair to compare them, but the Avids have spoiled me and I was surprised by how much forearm I had to put into the cantis to stop Cledus.

There’s a few points where they’re doing construction along the paved paths from Brookland to Riverdale, and the detours go over some dirt and grass paths that Nigel’s Fat Franks (and Sylvie’s Big Apples) chew up without blinking. But the Trucker on those Marathons are zippy and adept at handling light offroad duties too. We’d left the kids’ seat on the back, so I drove Huck home. Lemme tell ya, we were sporty.

It’s a treat to have my old friend feel like a completely new bike, but it has me thinking that, as a compliment to the longtails, having a mid-90’s rigid hard tail mountain bike and a steel loaded-touring bike is an imperfect answer to an elusive question. For riding, touring, or camping with the kids it sure seems like the longtails are perfect, and there’s not much reason to augment their capabilities. The Trucker is a great road bike, but honestly it’s built for a kind of touring that I’m just not doing. The old Trek 970 was a great mountain bike, but what I like about it is that it’s adept on road and dirt, and it’s set up more as a rough-and-ready commuter with some trail skills than as a dedicated single track steed.

And that leads this seeker to ponder a better complement to our longtails, which so admirably and pleasurably meet our child-hauling and camping challenges. Perhaps the right dish to sate my other appetites is something more like this, riding on these? It also brings to mind something this bald, heavyset, sheet-clad guy once said about desire, grasping and suffering… I think it was something like, “Yar, dude, you totally need a Cross Check.”

Anyway! I have no segue into this, but what the hell, when is is not a good time for Clutch?

Good times, vive la difference, and have a great weekend.

Apologies, all, for failing to post a music video on Friday for you, in turn, to not watch.

Friday began with a great deal of promise, a perfect early autumn morning, and I was excited to get to it. After morning coffee on the front porch, I grabbed the Huckleberry and headed upstairs to take action on his stink pants. Immediately after changing him, I was holding him on my left hip, turned counterclockwise, and felt a patch of muscles just below my arm pull and fail. The area around the initial pop started to seize up, grew like spreading cracks around a fresh hole in a sliding glass door. I set the boy down as quickly as I could, laid myself on the bed, tried to find a position that wouldn’t put any stress on it, and breathed fast, shallow breaths. If you’ve ever had a really good back spasm, you’re reliving it now.

So Friday was toast, and Saturday I moved slow and lifted very little. By yesterday my back was mostly fine, only the original spot still had stiffness, and I was able to get the last remaining bits of the deck done so we could seal it before it gets too cold. Today I rode Nigel into work, in low gears, nice and slow.

But what’s that leave you, dear reader? Well, it means I’m about a day behind on the big project, so I’m focused like a laser on mission-critical deliverables that I absolutely must move forward on before I become another action item, left to die on the road.

But I still owe ya some entertainment from Friday. In honor of the twisting and the shouting, I offer you an entertaining interlude of such quality, so exquisite, it may make the whole rest of your week shinier.

I just want to say, “Good Luck.” We’re all counting on you.