Baltimore

A few weeks ago, my friend and I embarked on a milkcrate installation and tire/tube replacement on a quiet Saturday afternoon. It was very spur-of-the-moment and got more so with the addition of snacks and beer. I got some photos of Mr. D doing funny things with his knee brace, but I’ll keep those to myself.

This probably makes it look like we’re whinos. But this was definitely a treat for both of us.

Photo Friday: Spontaneous.

Either my caffeine addiction is more alarming than I thought, or a lot of the people who I work with have a different definition of “too much coffee” than I do — and I like the people I work with a great deal. “I heard you guys on the sixth floor are coffee nuts?” “He wants to meet the people who drink coffee in the afternoon.”

In the afternoon? All day! LOL

Oh, well. If you’re going to have a reputation for something, it could be worse. Much worse.

I blame the tons of good coffee places within a five minute walk of my office, even more within ten minutes. But on the same note: Baltimore has a lot of good coffee shops around mid-town/Central Baltimore. Oh, dang. Poor me.

(I know; we have a bike blog. But I’ve been dominating the posting lately and have been neglecting this blog, so here you go.)

It’s a bee-otch. I have been having a lot of tire trouble lately. Or, maybe, I’m just riding more and getting more flats. I officially blame the Jones Falls Trail, particularly the part under the Howard Street bridge. Of my recent flats, three were caused by glass from right there. And after my recent adventures, I’m rocking Kevlar-belted tires. That didn’t help yesterday when three huge slivers of glass that looked like quartz stems stabbed my tire. I came out from work and suspected someone was messing with my lock and noticed my rear flat. I didn’t feel like patching, so I put my spare tube on. Those tires are pain to get back on, so it took a bit for me to figure out the trick. I was running low on air, so I stopped to put some air in when I got to the trail and realized why: busted valve stem. While I was examining this, some dickhead wizzed by me on his bike without a word, bell, etc. (I hope your trunk bag fell in some mud, wanker.)

What’s up with the rude cyclists lately? Are they pissed that they have to ride because of gas prices or something? I mean, I love the greater number of cyclists. But there was a time when most of the people I passed greeted me back or even first. You know: last year!

Anyway, I went to some shade to patch my tube after taking off this new and busted tube. Some old guy came over and silently watched my work. Told me I have a nice bike. That I should get some tire strips and that I would have payed less for my bike at the bike shop he likes. I didn’t feel like getting into how tire strips rub and then cause flats, how the price of my bike did not differ (in fact) from the different Giant dealers in the Baltimore area in October 2006. I just finished, thanked him for his company with a handshake and went on my way.

I was stupid enough to try to plug the hole in my tire tread with rubber cement. Did a number on the rest of the rubber. I think it’s Okay for a while. But I patched the inside of the tire, ordered two spare tires and some more spare tubes — just in case. Overhauled my brakes last night, too. Replaced my front pads, which were doing a number to my rims. Poor things.

I rode a different way to work this morning, avoiding my usually sylvan ride in favor of riding through traffic the whole way. In some respects, I like it better. Though I’m probably upping my chances of getting hit. When I was on the Maryland Avenue bride this morning, I turned around and saw four other cyclists riding to work and school. Five bikes on that little bridge at once!

Biking in Baltimore is coming around.

I wish I could sit home with a good book on a day like today. I like my job. Here I am, hyped up on coffee and with a few minutes to spare. And I’m blogging on company time, on a computer that is supposed to be “monitored.” But, like I said, I like my job. A lot. Being a VISTA is great, and I have a nice little office with nice people in nice little offices up here on the top floor.  I have a lot of lunch meetings, but not today.  Today, I get to do my favorite thing aside from biking up to Charles Village to meet Mrs. P.: get a coffee/snack and hole up in my office for an hour reading a good book.  It’s a good way to spend lunchtime.

I wussed out and took the bus to work today. I rode the bus three days last week, but that’s because The Duke was tire-less. I’ll ride my bike in the rain, and I have. But “severe storms” — no. Not if I don’t have to. Not today. The bus picks me up outside my apartment building and drops me at Penn Station, across Charles Street from my office. It’s a good deal. I am soaked now from a coffee run with a co-worker. My sandals are on the AC vent drying. My bike is at home with new rim tape, new tubes and new tires with frikkin Kevlar in them. I feel like I’m cheating or being disloyal.

I am tired. I went to see Candlebox with my brother Sunday night, tickets to which show (along with a Tshirt) were my birthday gift. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but I was beat yesterday. Yesterday, I worked from 9am - 8pm and ate pasta and green beans when I got home and watched TV and went to bed. I’m still tired, but that could be the weather now that I think of it.

This blog got all “this happened, and I did this, etc.” all the sudden.

I’m ready.  You can come out now.

I should be thankful. We had a relatively mild summer, especially at the end. And, really, as far as a hot week in early September goes, this isn’t so bad. But it felt like it yesterday afternoon, as I patched my second tube in three days in the afternoon sun, on the side of the road, after a crappy day.

But it’s still only 9:30pm, so it’s not over yet. So I’m going to enjoy it for a while longer, before I spoil it all by writing about it.

Even my journal’s lounged since Friday morning.

I’m going to have some tea and watch 300 with my wife.

Two weeks ago, Dan helped me put a crate on my bike. He even traded me this frikkin sweet red one. I should write about it more for the bike site, but it’s perfect for this particular Photo Friday: Exercise. Because riding four miles home from work, all uphill, with weight in this baby, is exercise!  I’ll write up directions/how it works on the bike site.  There you go.

Now I can take all my crap to work without getting sweaty. Plus, I wonder what effect it is having on potential thieves. It’s not all that cool looking, unless you’re a Fred. But it’s awesome just the same. A family member saw me riding home one day and identified me by that big red red red crate.  And it’s a great canvas for stickers, which adorn it currently.

Dan’s awesome backpack he’s taken everywhere, even to the hospital when his adorable daughter was born, with a Czech army bag I bought in Philly two weeks ago.  I might need to rethink my baggage for going to work.  Rainy days where I need to bring clothes and my big Klean Kanteen require a second bag, which is a pain.

Got back home last night/this morning at about 2:30am.  Took a nice cab back from Penn Station from Amtrak from Penn Station (NYC) from the Acela from South Station (Boston) from MBTA Commuter Rail to and from Concord from North Station (Boston) from Amtrak from Penn Station (Baltimore) from a late cab from my home from a cab that night from a concert at Pier Six.  I slept like a rock that drank a case of beer last night.  Seven and a half hours of the closest sleep to death I might ever have slept.  That’s overly dramatic.  But, seriously, that was good sleep.

We walked everywhere this week.  All over the Inner Harbor/downtown Baltimore Tuesday.  We walked to Walden Pond.  Walked all around Boston, only taking the subway when rivers were involved (Quincy and Cambridge) and the train to Concord.  Walked so much all over New York for two days that I should get to be on TV.  We only got on the MTA subway once, to go from the garment district to the Natural History museum to save energy.  Then from there through the park, through midtown, all the way to the village.  Then back to midtown for our late train.  That was after two walks from midtown to and around and through the village the day before.

Only one twisted ankle, one twisted foot (on the way out of the apartment and to the train station) and one broken/bleeding toenail.  Not bad.  I did a much better job of staying hydrated than I usually do when I travel, too, which is good.  I’m not sitting here suffering through a mock hangover.

And we were smart enough to mail home the books we bought in Cambridge, dirty clothes and Walden Pond goodies/gifts from the post office right near South Station, since we literally carried everything for four days.  We scored a lot of good reading, including two by my favorite other worshipper at the altar of the god of walkers.  I’m stocked up until the cold comes, I think.

I hope I get time to post some photos soon.  We had a great time, and I’m outta here again from Tuesday until Friday for “business” in Philly.  I think I’ll get some freetime while I’m there, though, to explore a place I’ve really been wanting to go for a while.

[Larger.]
Not my bike.  (My rims are black.)  This is what happens when you don’t notice there’s no air in your tire and then try to ride off.  Busted valve stem; Slime didn’t help.  I sanded this rim for this person.  Because I like playing with sandpaper.  And because I like this person.  A lot.

Photo Friday: Awful.

In celebration of Paps’s birthday today, NBBB is having a casual ride to Fell’s Point.  Here is the poem I will toast with:

I’m off’n wild wimmens
An cognac
An sinnin’
For I’m in loOOOOOOOve!
~ E.H.  Paris, ca. 1922.

Next month, Waverly Main Street and Greater Homewood Community Corporation are hosting the National Night Out Kick-Off parade, which includes a Bike Pageant.

Download the flier here, which I host with permission from GHCC’s PR person.

People can ride in the parade by signing up.  I might do it in a dress or some other feat of daring.  Daring because I don’t have a step-through frame, not because wearing a dress is necessarily brave.  I played a little gig in a nightgown once, in college.

Even more info can be found at Waverly Mainstreet’s blog.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my grandmother was staying with my parents in Hampden this spring.  She went home to Canton three weeks ago.  Everything was fine, and then she could not move yesterday.  So my mother, her twin brother, her older brother and I spent yesterday at the hospital.  We were there pretty much the whole day.  They X-rayed my grandmother’s hip; couldn’t see anything.  We sat around for an hour and half waiting for someone to get her and take her to get a CAT scan.  Finally, the nurse got fed up and took her down herself.  Nothing was broken.  All day in the hospital for them to tell her to take Tylenol.

But what’s very weird to me is seeing her re-arranged rowhouse.  While the couch, chairs and TV set have been replaced a few times, the arrangement of the furniture in my grandmother’s house has remained unchanged since I was born.  Seriously.  Even before my parents were married, according to photos I’ve seen.  Now, the dining room table is gone, and there’s a bed there.  Large wooden things have been moved around, and the plasma TV my least favorite uncle bought has been ignored in favor of a smaller TV closer to the bed.  It looks like a different house, and it signals something sinister to me.

That my grandmother is on her way out, not a pleasant thought.  Nor what that means for my mother, her brothers, the ton of grandkids and greatgrandkids.  Not a pleasant thought at all.  I don’t really know what/how I think or feel about the downwardly-sliding situation.  I am really trying not to do either of them.

I do know that it’s frustration to be able to do nothing.

Geez, with the bike blog and with my free time being tied up in bikes right now, I’ve been neglecting this blog. Sorry. Go on over to NBBB for more on Ikea bikes.

But I won’t do something jerky like make that my “this weekend I spent hours fixing bikes” blog.  That’s this one!  My pal needed work done on his front derailer (Sheldon’s spelling), and Mrs. P. needed both of hers attended to.  Thing is, I forgot about the moving sun where I was working, and I got a bit of a sunburn.  I’ve gotten a few of those this year.  That’s not going to help the fact that I already look older than I am and have reached the age where that’s not good news anymore, just news.

But fixing things is always fun, and when you’re helping people to keep biking, that’s awesome, too.  Sunburn be damned.  A liter of water, an energy coffee drink dealy and Chinese food, and I was ready to face the world.

Which I did that evening, and Mr. Dan and I blasted all over North Baltimore, in search of a milestone on his new cyclometer.  We celebrated with cold drinks and chocolate, Mr. Dan’s treat.

I recently watched all six Star Wars films, too, in chronological order.  That is, in the order of The Force, not The Box Office.  Mrs. P. had never seen them, and I tried to keep my mouth shut.  I really did.  I hate how they changed the song at the end of Return of the Jedi, one of the most [musically] triumphant movie endings ever.  The other CGI stuff, I don’t know.  Whatever.  I’m pissed about that song!

Where are all these frikkin storms?

Damn.

When people are ragging on the Hon thing and Hon Fest, I hope they’re not crapping on Hampden entirely.  There’s much more to this cool little neighborhood than the big-haired tourist trappings.  I’m not saying that I hate Hon Fest or anything.  Certainly not that I hate Hampden, where I grew up.

Hon Fest this year was kind of boring for me, though.  It was the same thing as last year.  Even more ignorant county yuppies, too.  Not all people from the county and not all yuppies/buffies.  It’s a special brand of white asshole who walks with zero awareness of other people (just how they drive, which is scary as hell); wears special boring white people clothing that you can only find outside the city limits; displays a sense of entitlement to own Hampden because they went to Cafe’ Hon once — at night!  “Look, Chahllles, the city’s not so frightening!”

I think that a large part of Hon Fest’s popularity is that it’s an excuse for white people who fled the city to come back to it in a way that they feel is safe.  Hampden is still mostly white, and most of the people at the festival are white, too.  Don’t think pointing out a minority you saw this weekend proves me wrong.  I said “large” and “most”!  And I’m only half kidding.

Personally, I don’t enjoy celebrating Hampden’s “heritage” in itself.  The Hon stereotype comes from a lack of money, education (if you say “lack of class” I’ll kick your nuts!) and exposure to other cultures.  If you’re actually from Hampden, you know that the neighborhood’s non-Hon heritage involves racism, punks and blandness, underneath all the things Cafe’ Hon allegedly celebrates.  The only thing to celebrate about Hampden’s past is that it’s gone.

Instead, when I celebrate anything about Hampden, I celebrate what’s new and better about it and about The Avenue.  Places like Atomic Books and Atomic Pop, Salamander Books, Common Ground, Dogwood, Golden West, bike racks, a night life, people who aren’t all white — these are things worth celebrating.  This is all much preferable to the shithole Hampden was in the 80s and early 90s.

Yes, it was a shithole.  If you don’t know that, that’s not my fault.  You weren’t here.  But it’s true.  What’s also true is that Cafe’ Hon didn’t save anything on its own, no matter how much that gets repeated.  It took a lot of people and a lot of business owners to make that happen.  I’m sick of seeing one person get all the credit, and someone who lives in the frikkin county at that.

Dudes, you gotta check out North Baltimore Bike Brigade site.  It’s getting written on, yo.  It’s here.