YIKES!

I have no shame. Yes, this was me circa 1992. No, I will never grow my hair this long again.

Easy Reader Jive

Morgan Freeman (a.k.a. Easy Reader) getting his groove on. Does anybody else remember the Electric Company?

Happy Halloween!

Change is in the air.

Just a heads-up for anyone who takes the time to view my blog, I will be abandoning fixedandsingle in the near future. I started this blog as a way for friends and family to check in on my travels and adventures when I moved to California. Well, I'm no longer in California and traveling quite a bit less so I thought it would be good to bring this chapter of my life to a close.

Don't be disappointed, because I'm going to continue blogging at a new location. I'll be posting the new address once I have everything ready.

Thanks for taking the time to check this humble blog out.

-tony

Things that make you go "hmmm..."

Caught this taking place behind the drugstore across the street from the bike shop. At first I hoped they were making a pick up and not dropping off material. But then I realized both situations are pretty bad.

Johnny Mohawk Spies Beer, Tony Helps Him Investigate

On a whim I went up to Minneapolis this last weekend to visit my good friend Johnny Mohawk. I've known him for about four years or so. We worked together at Cycle Works, and then lived together for a while at the Dirtbag Mansion. He moved up to Minneapolis last spring to go to work for Quality Bicycle Products, a large bike parts distributor. We had a lot of fun drinking beers and riding bikes all over the Twin Cities and hanging out with some of his friends and co-workers from "The Q". People who work at Quality call it The Q, a fact that never ceased to illicit a chuckle from me. Why is this so funny? Well in Lincoln we have a well known gay bar which is called The Q.

Johnny and some friends hanging outside a bar/bowling alley just a few blocks north of where Johnny lives.

The Minnehaha Falls. The falls are 53 feet high and are in the middle of Minneapolis. John and I took a very relaxing ride past a bunch of the lakes in the city to go take a look at the falls.

A pretty view of the creek just a bit downstream from the falls.

We stopped by Eric Noren's workshop, he's a co-worker of John's at "the Q" and his own custom bike company, Peacock Groove. Here we see a close up of one of their headbadges.

Finally, I want to show the world that Minneapolis has boring, ugly things too. Of course, I could just be fooling you and really just went and took a picture of some grain silos near my home.

Vomitron's Birthday

Jerod celebrated his birthday last week at O'Rourke's. A small group of us gathered to celebrate. Here we see Jerod react to finding out I didn't get him a damn thing for his birthday. I later bought him a beer and he seemed all right with it.

Five bearded men gathered to celebrate the anniversary of Jerod's birth and how to take over the world. BuWaHaHa!!!

Holly and Zach showing exactly why they are the reigning "Cutest Couple In the World"

Hole-y Goodness

My friend Brent Hermes acquired a pretty cool 1970's race bike. It's dressed in some very early Dura Ace components, including this crank made from a very rare and possibly non-existent metal called drillium. Funny, 30 years later and modern crank arms don't feel any lighter. When are people going to start drilling out carbon fiber? There's probably some idiot who's doing it already.

Bob's Baby Blue Bike

Bob Downey, all around swell guy, likes to own really awesome bikes. He's got a stable of Trek road bikes that is probably only outdone by the likes of mister "7" himself, Lance Armstrong. Well, old Bob decided he wanted to mix it up on the dirt and ordered up a Yeti Arc through the shop. This bike frame might be responsible for more XC wins than any other. It certainly set the bar for what a fast, cross-country hardtail should feel and handle like. I remember drooling over the pages of Colorado Cyclist in the early-mid Nineties, longing for one of these frames. Well, I never got one, but I did get to build up Bob's. I only got to ride it up and down the Cycle Work's back alley, but it felt awesome. Funny thing though, where my 22-year-old self would've LOVED to own this frame, my 32-year-old self found it a bit stiff and harsh. Is it an awesome bike? Heck, yeah! Is it still my dream bike? Nope, 'cuz Mary bars would just look funny on it and my back hurts just lookin' at those swoopy-stays. My tastes have changed from Porsche performance to Cadillac cush.

Peach Street Lords Of Balance - Unite!

My roommate Tim displays the PSLOB weapon of choice, the 5-foot-tall giraffe unicycle. This vehicle strikes fear into the hearts of all who dare set foot into our territory.

The blurry photo is appropriate because my first time on the giraffe was shaky at best. I was successful on my first try and rode it down the street and most of the way back.

Tim makes it look easy.

Husker green and black?

My dad took me to a Husker game this last Saturday. Gotta see the team open up a tall-boy can of whup-ass on the Trojans. Ok, not THE Trojans, but the ones from Troy,. Alabama. I guess they were just working out their frustrations from the USC game. It's been a long time since my Dad and I had seen a game together, as you can see we are out of practice and forgot to wear red. As the night went on I put on my bright, yellow jacket which made it very easy for us to spot each other in the crowd.

The new HuskerVision video board is insanely huge. That whole thing is a video screen, even the side parts with scores, stats and ads. It's over 115 feet wide. I heard that it's currently the 3rd largest video screen in the world. The U. of Texas has the largest, of course. Just how big is it? I was in my car at the corner of 11th and South streets, over 1.5 miles directly south of the stadium and I could clearly watch replays on it. Even more crazy, it's HDTV ready but not yet displaying an HDTV image (they have to buy new cameras) so it will get even clearer.

Beware carbon fiber!

Carbon fiber is scary. My co-worker and friend Matt Peterson's fork on his road bike broke at the base of the steer-tube. Amazingly, he wasn't hurt. Do forks really need carbon fiber steer tubes? Do you save that much weight? The bike industry is going carbon crazy. You see it everywhere being put in every application possible. Carbon fiber chainrings are a reality! If one of those snap on a climb it could be as bad as a fork snapping. You have to wonder how many catastrophic failures the industry will be seeing in about 3 to 5 years.

Beware re-tread!

Spare tires are scary. A couple of weeks ago I was driving to GI to suprise my mother on her birthday. My car started to vibrate. I got off the interstate to get on a slower moving highway. I inspected my tires. No damage visible. I kept driving, the vibration continued and worsened. BLAMMO!!! Blow-out. Stranded nine miles from GI. Happy Birthday, mom. I'm buying you four new tires for my car. Moral of the story. Don't drive for two months on a spare, even if it is a full-size tire.

State Fair!!!

Last week Kimber and I ventured to the State Fair to take in the sites and sounds. It had been a few years since either of us had attended the fair and we were both excited to eat junk food on a stick and be subjected to a verbal barrage of taunts and sales pitches from carnies on the mid-way and booth vendors in the expo hall. What fun!

















One of the first things we saw at the fair was the giant Roberts Dairy cow. If you havent's seen it before, it's quite big and is an attractive, stylized representation of a dairy cow... except for the udders. If you've ever seen one of these cows you've undoubtedly noticed the very veiney udder. I don't get it. It looks gross and the rest of the cow looks cute. I'm not a farm kid, but I can assume cows have veins on their udders, but are they that pronounced? Ewwww.

















My main reason for going to the fair was to discover as many types of food-on-a-stick as possible. I wanted to eat as much of this decidedly fair fare as possible, but was limited by a budget (fair food ain't cheap) and gastronomical tastes. For example, here we see a Corn Dog stand. Corn dogs are about as American as you can get. I love cornbread and I like hot dogs, but put them together though, and I gag. I can't explain it. To say the least, I passed on the corn dogs.



















This stand claimed to be from Louisiana. Judging by the attendent's accents and lack of dental hygeine I'd assume they were telling the truth. Kimber and I decided to try the shrimp on a stick, passing on the gator "tastes like chicken" meat.

State Fair!! (part 2)

Here we see Kimber getting ready to enjoy her shrimp on a stick. Pretty much like a deep-fat fried kabob. Hmmm... I don't recall seeing any Kabab stands at the fair. They use a stick, what's up with those Carnies?



Fried peaches on a stick. Didn't try that one but was told it tasted like peach pie. I'll have to give it a go next year.



I had heard about Cheese on a stick, but wasn't quite sure what that would be like. Kimber and I decided to split one. The breading makes it look like a corndog, but the center is all Velveta-y cheese. Tasted an awful lot like a grilled cheese sandwich. It would've been better if you could choose your cheese variety. "Yes, I'll have the fried brie on a stick with a medium merlot--no ice please."



I'm not familiar with the Husker Indian tribe. Does anyone know where their reservation is located?


When I was in Scotland last summer the locals were bragging about their love of fried foods and that you can get pretty much anything deep-fat fried, including candy bars. I didn't try one but saw them being served in plastic baskets on wax paper and being consumed with utensils. Yeah, well leave it to good ol' American ingenuity to add "THE STICK!"



One vendor was selling Coke-on-a-stick and being parched from all that stick-y food I decided to quench my thirst. Well, what sounded good in theory didn't work so well in execution. All I ended up getting was sticky.

We ended our food-on-a-stick consumption with a pickle-on-a-stick. Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery juice and I failed to document it. You'll have to take my word for it, it was tasty.

Cracker!

My favorite band, Cracker, played in Lincoln at Knickerbocker's last night. Kimber and I went and had a great time. The last time I saw Cracker in Lincoln was in 1998 at Guitars and Cadillacs. That show was horribly promoted and maybe 50 people showed up in a venue that could probably hold 1,000. David Lowery opened that show by saying, "Welcome to Cracker's first, last and only show in Lincoln." Well, a few years later and being cut from Virgin records and they're back. The band's bassist was MIA due to a death in the family, so some songs were played sans bass and David took over 4-string duties on others. They took a few requests. I yelled out one of my favorites, "Been Around the World," a few times. I didn't expect them to play it, but they ended the encore and closed the show with it. I don't know if I influenced them or not, but I was happy to hear it. I also discoverd that cel phones make good tools for recording set-lists during a show.

We've got your crazy, right here.

One of the interesting things about where I work is that we get customers from all walks of life. On occaision this can be very entertaining, other times very annoying and frustrating. Andrew is one of our "regular" customers. My friend Todd who works at a bike shop in Beverly Hills likes to talk about the crazy people he interacts with there. Well, I'll put Andrew up next to anything Todd can describe and I think he'll hold his own. Andrew can be seen riding around town on a 24" wheel bike from Target. It's the only bike he'll ride. His bike, like most everything he owns, is covered in paint. Layers and layers of paint. He says it makes thing more beautiful. I'm fairly certain the pigments in the paint aren't the only colors Andrew is seeing. He likes to ride the wrong way down streets-into traffic-at night without lights. He wears vinyl track suits all the time, even on the hottest, muggiest days of the year. And he smells like a gas station bathroom with broken plumbing. Some of Andrew's observations about life and the people he meets are quite intriguing, but getting him to stop talking about them and actually leave your store can be very agonizing. Often we end up helping him just to get him on his way so he doesn't scare the other customers. Andrew kinda makes me sad. Here's this guy who wasn't able to deal with his problems or cope in society on a normal level and turned to drugs. Now he doesn't have much of a mind left and exists in the margins of society. I don't know much more about him, I've tried to pry info from him, but that's frustrating, too. As much of a pain he can be, I worry that I'm going to read about him getting smeared on his bike on O Street someday.

Trees' Mini Mean Machine

This guy, Trees, came into the shop a couple weeks ago. Check out the gear ratio on that bike. I think he just needed some air. He said the bike was great for ridin' dirty.

Ahhh!!! Snakes On A Bike!!!

 

Went up to Ponca State Park to camp this last weekend with my girlfriend Kimber. We had a really good time relaxing and hiking the trails. Lots of beutiful scenery and wildlife to be seen.

On the trip up to Ponca we followed this truck for at least half an hour. I had a strange hankering for pork.

Kimber and her bestest-pup, Rip.

Here's a spy shot of Iowa's undocumented missle program. Nebraska Governor Heineman is considering it an act of aggression and has deployed the Nebraska Navy to the Missouri river to defend "The Good Life."

There was an abundance of butterflies of many species to be found through-out Ponca.

Kimber and her part-dog/part-frog pet, Rip.

The glory of the shower house on Sunday morning.

Ash Falls Fossil Bed. If you ever get the chance you should visit this most interesting place. Entire skeletons of bizarre, prehistoric animals unearthed right here in Nebraska. Well worth the drive and $5 admission. You can even take your dog into the Rhino Barn.

AHHHHH!!! BUGS!!!! The one on the left being held my filthy fingers is a cicada, or more commonly and erroneously called a locust by most Nebraskans. The shell on the right is what the cicada sheds shortly after emerging from the ground. My cousins and I used to hunt for the shells when we were kids and would line them up on our grandparent's kitchen window screen. We'd sometimes get over a hundred shells on the screen in a single summer.

Photo hunt. Find the bug.

Good ol' Nebraska ditch weed.

Went to Kimber's friend David's farm somewhere in the boonies near Nebraska City last weekend. It's kinda cool being so far out in the country that all you can hear is the wind and the birds and the cicadas.

A couple of swingin' babes! My cousin Tiffiny's two adorable baby girls Abby and Maddy having a good time at Grandma and Grandpa's.

Up-Skirt Pervert

J-Rod taking a gander at some local community art.