I'm a lasagna boy!

Doing it right (facts are useless in emergencies).

Yojo sent a link to an awesome (disturbing + amusing) story about grade-schoolers' reaction to Radiohead.

Bright in the night.

This morning I rode the Crystal Springs route to work -- for the first time in a month! -- and felt glorious. Later in the day I spoke with aram and he pointed out the Kogswell fixed-gear frame. Not only does it have tidy rear fork-ends (or drop-outs, whatever), but it's fully lugged! I decided then and there to get a rainy-day frame; ever since I cracked the frame of the Blue Dutchess, I've needed a spare frame. A nice relaxed road-geometry fixie setup with fenders. And the Kogswell has eyelets!

Later in the evening, sitting on the stoop with jimg, who was explaining half-step gearing and his desire to build up an audax bike, we saw a bright set of lights pedal past. I called out "Nice Bike!" and the rider wheeled around and pulled up to the stoop. jimg recognised the bike, a custom Sycip, as the idiosyncratic three-speed that recently rode PBP. Turns out that the rider, Joel Metz, recently organized a race from SF to Portland.

Portland being my current fave-rave bike city! Legend has it that some kinds spirt places donuts and coffee (or bagels and cream cheese, depending on whose version of the lenged one hears) out on the Broadway Bridge. And drivers and cyclists appear to coëxist much more happily, with motorists giving cyclists ample room, and cyclists riding more courteously and confidently. The grass is always greener? and Portland has wide, clean bicycle lanes marked on the roadway and on signs posted along the side of the road. San Francisco recently started a campaign to educate drivers and cyclists about courteous and safe behaviour, but the campaign consists of clever ads on the side of MUNI buses, not better-maintained signs along bike paths or the clear and accurate "Bicycles on Roadway -- Merge carefully" sort of sign one sees in Portland.
The SF campaign is certainly useful, but the wordy ads are only a part of the solution. We need more and better signs, wider and safe spaces for cycling, and better traffic calming than those ridiculous ersatz roundabouts.

Where everyone knows your name!

Stopped in at La Mooné today for the first time in more than a month! That's a sure sigh that things are getting better. Matt made a delicious Milwaukee roll with his signature tempura flakes, and told us that he's still holding down three jobs.

Two men eating sushi at the bar greeted a newly-arrived friend: "What is that on your t-shirt? I really like it!""Oh, it's Arabic! It took me ages to figure it out." The two other men cooed over the shirt.
Later, when they all ducked outside to have a smoke, I saw that the writing was devanagari

You might think.

I used to think that I would ride four miles for every mile I rode in a car. And I did, for three years. But after getting a car and a job, I find myself driving more and more and more and more. And biking less, alas.

Goril^.la goril^.la

Sad to see a headline that Floquet de Neu, or Snowflake, the beloved albino gorilla at the Barcelona Zoo, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

When I saw him last autumn, he had just fathered several little 'uns, and was quietly playing with them (but staying out of the sun). He's the only known albino gorilla *ever*, and a proud emblem of Barcelona.

You can read me the riot act.

Strolling down Alberta Street, saw a yard full of chopper bikes, a porch full of punkrock, and a street chock-full of food vendors.

Belly-dancers and oud players, glittering pink-bedizened ballerinas, six-foot-tall choppers, endless steel-drum barbecues, jigsaw art ...

... frustrating attempts to obtain beer, first a forgetful but friendly waiter named Brooks who brought me a shandy but forgot all other beer at the table; then a pleasant but pointless hostess who cleared a nice sunny table for us, but negelected to tell us that we needed to go inside to procure comestibles. A half-hour wait at the next pleasant beer garden we saw; and then a nice pub further down the street, with an obscure and romantic patio but distinctly snooty service. Said one as she brought out the food we ordered, "You'll have to go inside to get more beer; we're very busy." And she then came back with the rest of the food, asked "Do you need anything else?" in a pleasant way and immediately walked off as we contemplated getting another pitcher.