Babies are cute. They're even cuter when they're your friends babies and not some random ones wandering down the street. Jude and Michelle brought their baby, Shiloh to visit the east coast this past week and it was an absolute blast to see them again. They arrived last week and decamped first to Washington DC where Paul and Mary now live. It was a Mac Scot Clan reunion of sorts and a definite bastion of Midwestern sensibility here in South Philly for the weekend.

Jude has just finished up his dissertation and is now a bonafide psychologist. They'll be moving back up nort', eventually to Duluth where he's going to be working for the VA Hospital. A large climatic and cultural change to be sure.

We tried our best to fill the weekend with fabulous activities, some influenced by the presence of the baby, some not. Friday we did the cheese steak/Italian market/water ice tour, then proceeded to make some fabulous pizzas in the oven at home. Saturday included a brief jaunt on public transit followed by a tour of some of Center City since the brewery tour that was in the original itinerary was a bit out of the way. Saturday evening we ended up going to West Chester PA for a bike race, just so happened to be MY bike race. I did the 3/4 race and ended up a solid 5th place, my best result of the season at perhaps my hardest race so far. I felt like crap for the first half, but ended up doing well so as not to let down my exceptional cheer squad. Mexican take out for dinner. I introduced our friends to the joys of the Torta Cubana. An exceptional sandwich for those interested in calories.

Sunday was our final day, but we made the most of it with a grand frisbee golf outing followed by home-made pulled pork sandwiches. I got up at 6 to start the smoker out back and slow roasted the shit out of a pork butt. It was awesome. I'm most definitely doing that one again! Then Jude, Michelle, Shiloh, Paul and Mary all piled into their little car and headed back to DC. Sad to see them go for sure, but it was great to have the guests. It was really cool to have a little kid crawling around in the house, but even better to be able to give her back to Michelle when she got cranky. We'll have to schedule a visit to Duluth next summer!

It's easier to avoid falling asleep when wrenching on bikes than when sitting in a quiet (mostly) office. I've always suffered from post-meal doldrums and it seems as though that trend has not abated. I usually try to counteract that with caffeine, and since there's no coffee machine here, I had to make do with my patent Coffee Bean GORP. That's right, just chuck some coffee beans right into the trail mix and you have ready made, power up mix.

I post today from the desk of my internship. I am now working full time for the first time in over a 2 years! Sure, I've divided my time up between two jobs, but it still counts as full time as far as I'm concerned. I'm now working on the East Coast Greenway as part of my work at the Clean Air Council. Oddly enough, I'm working for the direct replacement of my former supervisor's wife. Chris Linn was my supervisor whilst working at DVRPC last year in school, and his wife, Emily, was one of the first planning people I met here in Philly. I interviewed for much the same position as this three years ago when looking for summer work. Crazy.

It's also great to finally be able to use some of the networking I did over this past year. We're meeting next week with I guy I had an informational interview with last fall. I am continually amazed by exactly how small Philadelphia is. I guess that explains why I haven't been able to find a job in planning yet, everyone already knows everyone else. I am now trying to bust my way into the network at last.

The miracle of smoke. I was able to transform the fuzzy skins of my spanish chorizo into a delightful amber rind, all with the simple application of a bit of smoke in the ol' air duct-cum-smoker that I set up in the back. Give it another five days or so and we'll be in business with some tasty sausages!

Well, some days are good, other days are bad. Tuesday was a bad day for me. The morning started off ok, I often do a workout with guys from the bike club at 6:30 on Tuesdays. I got out to the workout ok, then the rain came. Thinking that I was going to be a tough guy and ride through it, I opted to continue on until about 8 or so when God's own thunder and lightning rolled out along with some of the strongest rain I'd seen in a while. Shitty that I had my cell phone in my pocket the whole time. I arrived home thoroughly soaked, cell phone on the fritz, to the sound of Jennifer in the basement with the shop vac. That of course means that the basement was aquatic by that time. Fortunately the rain was over by that point and we only had to bail 50 gallons of water instead of 100. We've had worse.

Of course at this point, while we were mucking around in the basement, I noticed that not only were the sopresatta that I'd been making starting to sprout mold, they had been gnawed on by mice! Those carnivorous little bastards! They didn't get to all of it, thank god, because that would have been about $40 worth of meat and ingredients down the tubes. The mold I ended up washing off to no ill effect, but needless to say, I was pissed.

Then I checked my email as I had been eagerly awaiting to hear back from the most recent job that I applied for. I heard back. I didn't get it. As much as I had tried to keep myself from getting excited about a job that was not yet (and never to be) mine, I couldn't help it. After the second interview, I was sure that I was going to be picked. As far as I know the girl who was my competition was another former Macalester student, and also a recent Penn grad. She had been interning at the office, which was an advantage to her, but the flip side is that I know from personal experience in dealing with her, that she is annoying as hell. Advantage me. As far as I know, the only person who has ever called me "annoying as hell" is Jennifer, and those are extenuating circumstances.

Alas, it was not to be. I am pretty fucking sick of this economy, or whatever it is that is conspiring to rob me of my chosen employment. Ennui ensues. I honestly don't know what I should do next. I guess I'll try to volunteer someplace and get some "work experience". How on earth one is supposed to get work experience if no one will hire you is beyond me, but so it goes. At least people are still interested in bamboo bikes.

A brief report on the darker side of amateur bike racing---


Here's the answer to the main question: Donnell is doing OK and has
plans to race Cargas.

He went down with about 5 to go in the slightly sketchy off camber
corner 2 at Bethlehem today. There must have been extra gravity there
because exactly one lap later, and despite the fact that everyone was
yelling "NEUTRAL LAP" other jerks decided to crash, in exactly the
same spot.
Against Donnell's request, I opted not to do the 1-2-3 and followed
him to the emergency room of St Luke's hospital.
Donnell and I spent the following 4 hours in the emergency room
thinking about exactly what he had done to invoke the crash gods, and
we came to no good conclusions. He probably crossed the same Gypsy
who has hexed Tyler's wheels with perpetual flats.

As far as his injuries go, D is pretty banged up and in a good deal of
pain, but it should be mostly temporary. He did not end up breaking
his collarbone, but merely separated his "AC Ligament", the C of which
is Clavicle, and the A I have no idea. This extends his streak of
never actually having broken a bone, despite his best attempts. This
sort of ligament separation is the type that they just let heal
naturally-- it will probably never be back to 100%, but the ligament
doesn't do much anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem unless he takes
up professional rock climbing or something. The doctor said that
recovery should be between 4 to 6 weeks, but I predict that D will be
on his bike again by next week. As a spectator to the whole thing, I
was pretty surprised by Donnell's toughness, he was a rock through
what looked like a lot of pain. He certainly made some funny noises
when they scrubbed the road rash, but he is one tough dude. We made
it home by about 8 this evening. The car ride was eased by a drug
coctail consisting of 2 shots morphine, 1 Percoset, 1 Valium and 2
pints Guinness. When we arrived at his house, his kid Avery assured
me once again that his daddy was the best bike racer, but that he
really liked my pink bike. "Daddy's white bike is faster though."

The most interesting aspects of his injury were those left by the
helmet; he has a mark on his right cheek where the strap gave him
rugburn in the crash, and he totally abraded the top of his left ear.
I am confident that the helmet was a key factor in us being able to
drive home tonight, without it and I don't even want to speculate how
ugly it could have been.

New Favorite Sport:

I think that possibly Cheese Rolling tops my previous favorite of Mangold Hurling as top crazy British sport.

I had forgotten how peaceful the Midwest is, especially when compared with Philly. I spent a really nice 4 day weekend in Minneapolis and Saint Paul for my youngest sister's graduation. Leah graduated Cum Laude from Mac, besting both of her brothers in grades and equalling them in the quality of drunken incident stories. Good stuff. The Dark Goat is happy.

The rest of the family was up too, and it's an unusual occasion to have all 7 of us in one spot anymore. Christmas is about the only time it happens these days. We had a good time, hanging out, cooking food, shooting the shit, telling stories about all the dumb stuff that we (mostly I) did as kids.
The ever popular stories included: Aaron shot himself with the BB gun, Aaron fell out of the tree while repelling off of the garden hose, Aaron cut his finger with the butcher knife, Aaron made gunpowder, Aaron nearly burned the house down etc.

It's nearly miraculous that I survived childhood.

Speaking of childhood, I spent two nights at the ever hospitable home of my friends Ben and Marye where I was able to meet an amazingly cute baby, thier son Levi. Check out the pictures for your self, the kid is a pure photogenic genius.

Proof positive. I was sired by an alien. The mystery is over.

I went out for our weekly shop ride this morning on the Daruma Cycles Mark II frame. It's approximately my size and is set up as a cyclocross/touring commuter. I put it together last week with all of the parts from my cyclocross bike in order to do a test run before sending it off to its eventual home. My impressions are overall quite positive. The bike rides great, looks good and attracts stares. My friend Cliff put it as, "Like riding a bicycle made of puppies," in that everyone wants to stop and talk to you about it. I even got a double take from this woman in business attire, stilletto heels, and legs that went all the way to the ground. Had she been looking at me, it would have been a first, but lots of people have asked me about the bike, so I chose not to be too flattered.

Last Friday I had people over for a birthday pizza bash. Great fun and great food was had by all. I bought enough dough for about 25 pizzas and we ate probably 22 all told. The pizza stone is one of my kitchen favorites: nothing tastes better than pizza popped straight out of the oven, except for maybe pizza that has been pulled straight from the oven 4 minutes ago, after the cheese loses its ability to peel the skin off your mouth.

I was also happy to debut my first ever home-made sausage. The picture should say it all, but 8 pounds of sausage is a lot! I need to tweak the recipe or my technique a bit, I have not quite mastered the interior texture, these were a bit too grainy and not quite as unified as I'd like.

Just in time for racing season: a benediction for the fleet of wheel!

http://www.theblessingofthebikes.com/

Due to the regrettably inexorable march of time, I am rapidly approaching my 30th birthday. Heck of a deal.

No new news on the job front, but that's to be expected, I think. I have however purchased all the necessaries for making my first batch of home-made sausages. A nice fat pork butt, some casings, some spices and away we go! This will hopefully complement the home-made bacon, homebrewed beer and some nice home-fired pizza that we're going to be making this Friday. Thirty shouldn't be so bad afterall.

My third batch of bacon is now ready to be eaten, and I must say that it's the best of the lot! Jennifer and I ordered a bunch of supplies from Butcher Packer Supply: pink salt (Sodium Nitrate), wet casings and also some dry casings for making sopresata. This, combined with the cookbook that Jean gave me for my birthday, will put us well on our way to making our own fresh and cured sausages! I just have to make sure not to kill myself with botulism.

Alrightie! The presentation is up on the Darumacycles Blog. I had a really good time meeting people and talking about Jennifer's bike. As it turned out, a lot of the other presenters didn't really have a good feel for the format (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide) and so didn't present the information in a very interesting way. I think (perhaps because I have little else going on right now) that I was able to put a bit more into the presentation, and it turned out quite well. In my dream world it would have been something like, "Aaron, great presentation! I loved the bikes, but have you considered working for a city planning/design/architecture firm? Here's my card..."

No dice.

I was able to chat up the Philadelphia City Planning Director, but he's got a smaller budget than I do right now, so I guess I'll hit the pavement.

Ok, I've had some requests for a report on the presentation I gave last week and it is forthcoming, but check out these shirts first!



I have never been happier to be an Iowan!

I've started a new blog as I am figuring out what the hell to do with my bamboo bicycle concept. I dearly love building these bikes, and am already in the process of building one for my brother Ian's boss at Willy Bikes in Madison. The new blog is called Daruma Cycles, with a link over on the sidebar of this blog. Daruma is a Japanese god/good luck charm. He's known for perseverance and good will and I think that I'm going to need both of those if this venture is going to succeed. The Japanese buy little Daruma dolls at temples around new years, and then make a wish while coloring in the pupil of one of his eyes. When the wish comes true, you color in the other eye, and then burn the daruma to send your thanks heavenward.

I'll be much happier once I get done with the presentation I'm giving this Friday at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson architectural firm. One of my teammates from the bike club is an architect there and recommended me for the session. The format is 20 slides, 20 seconds each. It'll be a fast and furious presentation and I hope I'm up to it. I'm a bit rusty after several months of non-academic work.

 

It is time to get back on the horse again. Winter be dammed, it is approaching cycling season. As much as my bike Pinky loves the snow, after crashing once or twice, I think that I'll stick to a different bike for slippery conditions. I eventually put the snow tires on my cyclocross bike. That was a good idea for sure. I always love the invincible feeling of studded tires as they click across the ice, saving my ass from certain flattening.

New Surf Club, and I'm in it. ESSC stands for the Eastern Seaboard Surf Club. Check out the Blog!

Bicycle construction remains a-pace. I've been working on building a new frame jig, this time more easily customizable and much more sturdy. I've also begun the process of curing the next round of bamboo, should be interesting as I've decided to put it into the smoker!

In other news, my first recipe from the Alaska Bootlegger's Bible turned out not to be the smashing success that I'd hoped. Milk wine, as it turns out, tastes pretty gross. When the ingredients are powdered milk,sugar, Lactaid and yeast,one can't really hope for much, but at the same time, I had some high expectations for something at least drinkable. Nope. Not for human consumption, though I might try to set the stuff outside to see if the cats get drunk off of it.

I've been a bit delayed, but I thought I'd post some pics from my newest diversion, SURFING. I got a call from our friend Matt who happens to own two surfboards and two wetsuits and we headed out about 10:00 on December 2 to Ocean City to foray into the wild world of surf. I spent most of my time trying to get out past the breakers, and had maybe 3 chances where I could maybe have stood up on the board. I didn't really stand a chance. I emerged about 2 hours later, exhausted but strangely exhilirated.

A couple of observations: Wrestling your way into a wetsuit on a 40 degree day is not exactly fun, but is in no way as bad as wrestling your way out of one, wet, on a 40 degree day.
Secondly, Waves, while they may not look crazy from the shore, are much bigger when your head is only inches from the surface of the water.

I had so much success making a bike at home that I thought I might diversify... TO BACON!!

After reading several accounts on how inferior store bought bacon was, and how easy it is to make your own, I decided that I had to try it for myself.

Step one is to get a pork belly. I happen to have a butcher at hand who not only sells pork belly, looks like he has a little one of his own! You take the pork belly and slather it with a dry rub of about 50% salt 50% brown sugar and stick it in a ziploc bag in the fridge for about a week. I thought that I would be creative and I took some pineapple and blended it up with the salt/sugar mix and pasted it all over the little porkbellies. Bad idea. Pineapple apparently has some sort of chemical in it which essentially digests meat protein. After about a week in the fridge, I looked in the bags and found that instead of drying out the juices and curing the bacon, the exterior of the pork belly had turned to salty pig slime. No matter, I simply washed off most of the slime and re-salted the little bastards, left it in for another 3 days and proceeded with the process.


The picture here shows the cured pork belly with the salt brine washed off. The most disconcerting part of the whole affair was the fact that pork bellies come with skin and in this case, a nipple, still attached.

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Next step was to wait over night while the surface dried out into a "pellicule" and then smoke the bacon. I decided to turn our chimanea into a smoker by placing a plank over the top and front, and then suspending a piece of wood with spikes and a thermometer from the top. This would be my pork holder. I stoked the fires, and then quenched them a bit by covering the bed of coals with a double layer of tin foil. This kept the heat in the chimney at about 200-250 degrees, ideal for smoking. To create flavor, I put some water-soaked apple wood chips that my dad had mailed to me (think I'm crazy? Meet Ronn Ritz)on top of the foil layer. The water keeps them from bursting into flame and produces more smoke. Then I sat back and waited for about an hour and a half while the bacon smoked and reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees.

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After smoking, the bacon was essentially done. All that remains is to slice,

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and enjoy!!

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Tastes pretty damn good. Next time I skip the pineapple, add some sage and some sodium nitrate!

If you're still curious about the bamboo bike project, I've posted more pictures on my flickr page.

There is some descriptive text next to each. The basic gist is that it wasn't honestly all that difficult if you have a sense for how bikes are put together. The total cost for frame materials was somewhere in the range of $200, and that includes the MDF and bolts used to make the jig. I'm hoping to put together a cyclocross bike for myself this winter some time--I think that the vibration damping qualities of the bamboo would be nice for that application. I've harvested some more bamboo and while waiting for that to dry, am contemplating my next frame jig, hopefully something more adjustable that will work for different frame dimensions. I'll post more on that process as it goes along.

Wow, thanks to everyone who has complimented me on the bike, you boosted my ego just like I had hoped. I've received numerous inquiries about the project and a bunch of "You should sell that!" comments. No plans for such things yet, but talk to me in a couple of months and I may have a different opinion depending on how the job market treats me. I'm kinda not too optimistic about that; too many people are way to freaked out about their financial future to offer me a job. Kinda sucks, but I'm more or less resigned to it, and I've been able to find some alternate employment for the time being. My new gig is guinea-pigging for the NIH. I'm going to be a part of a cholesterol study in which they starve me, feed me heavy cream and then take a core sample of the fatty tissue of my ass. ALL HAIL SCIENCE! At least it pays well, $1200. I would imagine that it will be at least moderately unpleasant because the pay is so good. No one would pay you that much for something easy.

Tonight I finished Jennifer's Bamboo road bike. I have but two words to describe how I feel about the thing: Supreme Satisfaction.



The project has been ongoing much of the summer, I started in late May by harvesting some bamboo growing north of here along the Schuylkill River. I then dried the bamboo for about a month and a half out in the back. By the time the bamboo was bleached a pleasant tan, I was ready to begin the bike.

Stage one involved plotting out the geometry, along with about 6 hours of relearning trigonometry as well as drafting on the kitchen table to get things right. Then I built the jig, mitered the bamboo tubes and glued them together with epoxy.

Next I began the process of laying up carbon fiber sheets around the joints. I've got no pictures of this because my hands tended to be covered with epoxy at that time















After probably close to 100 hours off and on over the course of the summer, I finally finished the frame and then began the lengthy process of acquiring parts. I opted for Campagnolo, because really, it's the best. That, and I had a number of spare parts floating around from my various Campy bikes.

And here is the finished ride. The kanji on the down tube and seat tube read, Ichi go, Ichi e, which is a Japanese saying that translates roughly into, "you have one chance in life, so make it your best," or alternately, "every instance is unique and valuable." Honestly, it sounds a lot less corny in Japanese. I first heard this term on a sake brewery tour when we were in Nagano in which our host's actions truly exemplified the idea of ichi go ichi e.
As for the bike, I put it together at Trophy Bikes and took it for a quick test ride earlier today. The ride quality is TOTALLY SWEET! I realize that I have a bit of a bias, but truthfully I have ridden very few bikes that felt nicer. The bike seems to float over bumpy road surfaces, almost as if it were on giant baloon tires, but nope, they are just 700x23 clinchers pumped hard as rocks. My big worry was that I had not gotten the frame alignment right, but that seems dead on too; riding no-handed is no problem. Oh yeah, and it corners like a fricking roller coaster and it accelerates as fast as anything I've ever ridden. Maybe that's due to the fact that it weighs only 16.5 pounds! I had no idea that it was going to be so light and honestly did a full on "YESSSS!" complete with double fist pump when I hung it on the scale.

Despite my bias, I think that my claims are somewhat well founded. I had as many people as I could test ride it earlier today, mostly to show off, but everyone was suitably impressed, and I don't think that they were just doing it to be nice. I am SUPER PSYCHED, as was Jennifer. She insisted that I take pictures of the bike and post them as soon as I could, and then proceeded to put the bike in the bedroom so that she could take pictures of it. I think that she likes it.

Here are some shots:

I honestly don't give a crap about baseball. I remember one summer being cajoled by Jude and Alf to drag myself to a Twins game. It sucked. All I wanted to do was escape and I think I bitched the whole time about how slow and boring the game was. Shitty shitty baseball.

But, on the other hand, THE PHILLIES ARE THE 2008 WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!
There's something pretty awesome about the collective joy and catharsis of a winning sports club in a city like Philadelphia. People here are pretty up front about their emotions and those emotions overflowed last night as people were honking, screaming and apparently throwing rocks late into the night to celebrate. I even found myself cheering a little when Brad Lidge struck the last guy out in the top of the 9th inning. Yes, I even know some of the players names now. I even know what some of the plays are called. The apocalypse has come.

Here are some pics from my latest cross endeavour.

I'm well into the third fall here in Philadelphia. It's been nice not to have school to contend with, but honestly, I'm getting a little buggy without fulltime employment. I have been assured that there are jobs out there, but damned if I can find them. I have thus far been able to occupy myself with small tasks around the house, building Jennifer's bike and various other things. Now I'm just antsy. At least I have a bike to ride.

I was cross examined this weekend, in a big, painful way. Result: Pass, but just barely.

The Granogue race was on saturday. The race course is laid out in a segment of the DuPont family estate, and has a wide variety of hills, dales and rooty trails to negotiate. Overall the course was on the technical side with those riders who could get out in front quickly and stay away in the following melee at a distinct
advantage. I, without the virtue of preregistration, found myself squarely starting in 108th position at the line. Not the ideal place to be on a course in which crashes and ugly conglomerations of riders make moving up relatively difficult over the long haul. I felt pretty decent, had no real mechanical failures and eventually found myself in no-man's-land toward the middle of the race. This is not quite as bad a place to be as in a road race, but it still no easy feat to bridge
up to riders further along the course. With one lap to go, I managed to get a side stitch and lost 3 or 4 places to various other folks and ended up in 49th.

Wissihickon on Sunday. Got there plenty early and the wide open course was great for spectating but also great for whipping any last trace of heat from a person's body. I'd raced the course in past years and had a bit better idea of what to expect, plus the wider trails allowed me a bit more chance to pass people. I also preregistered (a must for a big cyclocross race) and was a few spots ahead of last this at the start line. The race went pretty well, and except for my general weakness in the tighter technical spots, I did a decent job of making up ground
against other guys. I ended the day in 30th spot. Another Pass.

The best part was sitting in the sun afterwords, drinking some Victory beer and watching the OTHER guys suffer. That's what cyclocross is really all about.

Ahh, I just had a true hankering for the home country, the midwest. My sister, Leah, recently wrote an article for Minnesota 2020 about locally produced beer from Minnesota. Beer brewing has always been an autumnal hobby for me, mostly because summer is too goddam hot to boil up a kettle of boiling wort. Fall days though, bring me the desire for hoppy, malty goodness.

For some reason fall always produces ueber strong feelings of nostalgia in me. I don't know what the deal is, but the crisp, cool mornings and the smell of drying and decaying leaves suck me back in time to previous years. Fall rolls around and suddenly I can think of nothing more than bike touring through Europe, or hiking through the mountains above Nagano, or running in cross country meets across the upper Midwest. Why, it was just about 8 years ago to the day that I ran my best 8k time at Lacrosse, Wisconsin. 26:24 I believe.

This fall has been occupied with thoughts of job getting and bike riding. Jennifer's bamboo bike frame is complete, I just need to get some components and build the thing up. I'll post pictures of it when I get things all settled. I had a great time at Interbike with my dad; we totally got overexposed to bicycles but somehow I still want more. Part of it is that the show is like candy for me. I just can't bear to let the sugar high go, and so I want to purchase all of the stuff that I saw there. Maybe when I get a real job I'll be able to afford all of these goodies.

Though it may seem obvious to some, a couple of beers is not a good prerequisite to an evening of sharpening knives. As per usual, I learn through trail and error. Mostly error.

Monday I head out to Las Vegas to meet up with my dad for a father-son-bike-geek-out at Interbike, the largest bicycle industry trade show in North America. It should be a blast. I have rarely had an overload of bicycle stuff, but this may be a chance for me to do just that.

Yet again, far too long since my last post.

Projects underway as of September 1st:
-Home carbonation techniques have been refined. I have made my first batch of tonic water and have perfected my recipe for carbonated coffee. It surprisingly delicious.
-Jennifer's bamboo bike project has come into the final straightaway. I merely have nto sand away the excess epoxy and give it a final finish. I've already got the head tube badge logo figured out. It should be pretty classy
-Tomatoes are delicious, even if they have managed to get the goddamn blight for two years running. At least it seems to only affect the leaves. I've eaten little but BLTs for the past three days.
-Sourdough starter is finally up to snuff. I have discovered the joys of the sourdough. It's not difficult, and need not be all that sour. My biggest problem lies in following a recipe, so I end up with a lot of different breads coming from the same general list of ingredients.
-Job Hunt is on. I recently interviewed with the Montgomery County Planning Commission and found the job to be much to my liking, though the commute wouldn't be. It would require a 10 minute bike to a 40 minute train followed by a 5 minute walk. Given my current spoiled state in which I can roll out of the door 18 minutes before I need to be at school or at the bike shop, this would simply not do. I came to Philadelphia for the walkability and convenience of living in a city, and this would be a sidestep at best.
The second interview was with an outfit called the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia. In addition to sounding important, they actually produce a great deal of good work; primarily in the form of policy documents and reports on issues affecting livability and economic vitality of the Philadelphia region. Given my firm belief in regionalism and in the fact that the fellow with whom I interviewed was a bike nerd of similar caliber to myself, I think it would be a good fit. We shall see what the second interview will hold.

I'm finally getting the hang of this bike racing thing again this year. It always takes me a few races before I start to see any of the front of the pack. Last weekend 5 of the other Smurfs (Quaker City Wheelmen have an amazingly smurfy kit) and I lined up in Mount Holly NJ for an action packed race complete with hill, tight corners and fun fun fun. I ended up missing the key breakaway by just a few meters. Two riders had gotten away early in the race, and I had gotten into a group of guys who were briding up to the leaders at about 15 miles to go. Unfortunately for me, the hill came up at just the wrong time and something, no everything started hurting really badly on the short climb. I got gapped and never caught back on. The picture above is my last view of the winning move. Maybe next time.

I've been meaning to fill in on the rest of our California trip with some photos of Pete and some insights on why the Bay Area is so ridiculously expensive. But instead I will grace you with the South Park version of myself. I think that it's reasonably accurate as a representation.

 
Time to do a little updating about our recent vacation to California. Jennifer had a conference, so I flew out as well and we had a SPLENDID time. We saw the sights of San Francisco and then met up with Pete Dillon in Berkely. I hope that people have half as good a feeling when they leave my house as we did upon leaving Pete's. That guy just rocks!

The picture above is from our overnight hike into Yosemite. The peak in the background is called Cloud's Rest and is a pretty scenic slab o' granite, it sits right north of Half Dome. I'll post more pictures on the blog in a bit, but the address of the web album will allow anyone who's interested to check out my pictures en masse.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronritz/YOSemite

Yes, I actually graduated my program, and have the pictures to prove it. I actually just got a card from my grandmother today, "Congratulations on your Master's Degree" it said. I didn't even know that they made Congratulations on your Master's Degree cards. In it she wrote, "Here's $10, I guess that's enough for 2 gallons of gas. Maybe you'd better stay put. You finally have done something that you can be really proud of yourself for. I know I am."

Finally? Well, I guess that Grandma must have high expectations of us, since the bachelor's degree apparently wasn't enough.

Pictures located here: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronritz/Graduation

99 degrees in the air, 120 on the pavement. It was a hot day for the Philadelphia Classic. This is the longest running and longest course of any professional bicycle race in the US. 200 riders started and only about 80 finished after 156 miles. Needless to say, I was stoked just to be there. The video shows the second to last of the small finishing circuits, with Svein Tuft, former Canadian Time Trial champion making one final bid for victory as he solos off the front. Badismo.

 

Among my other projects, is the one that you see here. These parts, along with a little epoxy and some natural fibers (ie bamboo) are going to help me complete a life long dream! I'm in the process of creating a bamboo bicycle for jennifer. It's going to be SUPER SWEET! I'll post pics of the progress as it comes.

Just goes to show that there is a benefit to being unemployed.

Holy shit it's been a long time since I posted. Fear not, all is well. Items to update include:

Graduation Status: Yes, Graduated
Job Status: No, no job (yet)
Relaxation Status: Relaxed, very relaxed
Vacation Quotient: Full, but anxious for more
Home Repair Status: Work in Progress, but actually working
Side project Status: At least 3 totally awesome side projects


I'll attempt to post pictures and musings later today.

At long last, school is over.

I must say, I am relieved, but I'm going to have to learn how to relax a bit. Though the finals period were hardly as bad as they have been in the past (April/May 2007 was pretty rough) I'm still a bit edgey, and I have the sneaking paranoia that there is something hanging over my head on a daily basis. I'm sure that something will sneak up on me, like a forgotten assignment, or maybe I didn't turn in a paper or something.

Then I remember, "Aaron, chill out, you're DONE!" Then all is good again.

Now I just gotta get me a job!

When it comes right down to it, I may miss school. I will not miss homework however. I've been putting off my last take-home final until the bitter end because I can hardly bear the thought of staying indoors on days like today. Sunny, low winds and a temperature in the upper 70s make for ideal cycling weather.

I graduate from gradual school in a little over a week, and from there the world is my oyster. Kind of an accurate description when you consider that oysters are damn hard to get open without a shucking knife and some fortitude. Kind of like the job market, as well, now that I think about it. I missed out on the job opening at my current internship, my hyper-productive fellow intern took that spot. It's not enough to just be nicer and more personable, you still have to prove your worth with reams of paper and text. At least I interview well. All that time spent in front of the blank stares of Japanese school children has made me relatively impervious to the discomforts of the type awkwardness found in job interviews. Ganbattemasu ne?

Just two more weeks to go in my educational career, then I can stop learning for good. I have been stressing myself out with the various classes and things that I've got to do before the end of the year. It's not even that I honestly have that much to do, it's just that I'm already mentally checked out to a degree. That, and I'm still very much on the job market in these somewhat fiscally constrained times. In positive news, I am somewhat older than I was last week, and feeling none the worse for wear. I bought myself a bottle of mezcal and a pink bike seat for my birthday. It turns out that mezcal is kind of like the scotch version of whiskey- a taste like a fire pit and lots of kick. I like it, but it seems that most other folks don't have such a fondness. I guess I just enjoy flavors that kick me in the taste buds.

The pink bike seat completes the pink and silver bike ensemble magnificently, however it does crush my ass, so we'll just have to see who gives in first, me or the bike seat. If only there were more manly choices in pink available to a fella.

So I'm looking for jobs right? Hopefully something that I studied to do, is close by and will pay me a wage that will allow repayment of the $50,000 loans that I have hanging over my head. Something along those lines would be ideal. Jennifer said that she'd help me find a job and I saw her looking at the "employment" section of some website.

Jennifer suggested that I work at Turkey Hill Farms in Lancaster. Apparently the pay is pretty good and as a bonous, I'll be able to take home a lot of extras at the ICE CREAM FACTORY!

Maybe she wanted to ship me off because I wouldn't walk to the store and buy her a half gallon earlier tonight, maybe it's the fact that she's peeved that I spend most of my waking time in front of a computer at work or school. I don't know. I do know that I'm going to need to locate a job if I'm going to prevent myself from getting shipped off to the ice cream factory.

A quick listing of the ingredients found on my Torta Cubana at El Zarape, on the corner of Morris and Passyunk streets, about a 5 minute walk from here:

Bun
Refried Beans
Avocado
Tomato
Lettuce
Fresh mozzarella
Ham
Chorizo and potato hash
Fried Chicken Breast
Chicken-Fried Seak
Fried Egg

It was as close as I've ever been to a heart attack, and it was delicious.

Hey, our studio project got in the newspaper!!!

I guess that one would expect it if a guest was a reporter for the Philadelphia inquirer, but here you go.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20080328_Phila__visitors_compare_SEPTA_to_Toronto_transit.html

Now that I'm famous (indirectly and actually not at all) the job offers should be flooding in.

At long last I have put together a selection of photos from the recent trip to London and Toronto for my Studio Class. The ostensible reason for travelling was to examine these two cities and their transportation systems and take back ideas for use in the Philadelphia region. Overall, we got a lot of ideas but they were mostly of the, "London is soooo much better than Philly, there's no way we can do anything like that here," variety. London IS waay better than Philly, and I will go so far to say that it is the BEST city that I've ever been to. I say best in the all inclusive sense; it has history but is vibrant with a modern urbanity that is refreshing and interesting. The city is well run and is trying to get better still. They place a great emphasis on global warming and in fact are truly taking the lead on that front. Things are generally clean and they've just pledged 500 million pounds for bicycle and pedestrian improvements by the Olympics in 2012. Stupendous stuff.
After London, Toronto could only play second fiddle. They are much more comparable to Philly, but the city felt like a wierd mishmash of Minneapolis and New York in collision. We did get an opportunity to hobnob with some of the best and brightest from Toronto and Philly at the "Sips and Nibbles" event, which was a good chance for me to practice my "hire me" face.

More pictures are available at my Picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronritz/London

Sheeeit, three weeks of non-stop school work behind me, now I just gotta get through another two easy days and I'm off to London!! Our regional transportation studio presented the midterm report on monday, and as I was one of the 4 suckers who presented, I ended up wearing a suit for the first time in 3 years or so. I cannot honestly remember the last time I put my Goodwill suit on, but I looked SHARP! I gotta remember that when I go looking for jobs in the near future.

So yeah, on Thursday we head out to London some time in the evening and have a couple of free days before we meet with some grand high muckety-mucks at the London Transit Agency, London 2012 and some other place that I'm forgetting. Next Wednesday we then jet back to Toronto for a meeting with some important folks on this side of the pond. It's going to be pretty sweet, and in a nerdy way I'm hoping to get to see all of the city planning wonders that these places have to offer. We're going to ride the tube, see the sights and spend alarming amounts of money. Goddamn weak dollar!

What the hell is the "wintry mix"? Back where I come from, the Midwest, people have actual names for the kinds of precipitation that occur in winter. No, we're not quite as eloquent as the Inuit with their 50 odd words for snow, but we at least know the difference between things like sleet, freezing rain, hail, snow and ice. Not out here in the wild wild East. Here, when anything appears to be falling from the sky that is not immediately perceived to be rain, it is assumed to be the horrific wintry mix that gets Philadelphia's collective undies in a bundle. It just reeks of wussiness to me.

It's a good thing that I screwed up my knee three weeks ago, or I'd be going crazy!

As those who know me already realize, being injured normally makes me into quite the whiny bitch when I can't do what I want to do. Not this time!! This time I have changed my tune, and I'm just taking it easy. Actually, my lack of preoccupation with what I'm not doing stems from the preposterous amount of school stuff that I've got going on. I can't imagine being any more busy, even with only 3 days of class per week. My studio class is really the killer; 6 hours twice a week in a dungeon-like room in the basement of Furness, really eats into one's motivation to do other things. That is coupled with three other classes for the fullest load I've taken yet. Yay. I'm getting my money's worth, that's for sure. At this point though, I feel kind of relieved to be overworked as it takes my mind off all of the things that I'm not doing.

In other news, we're hosting a dumpling party this weekend, it should be good times and good eats for everyone. I'm even going to bust out the tako-yaki maker for its thrilling debut in our house. Everyone can enjoy tasty fried octopus dumplings!!

In a fit of inventiveness, I decided that we should make hand-pulled noodles for dinner last week. Despite knowledge to the contrary, i thought, "How hard can this really be?" Well, after abotu an hour and a half of pulling and kneading and resting and doing it all over again we came up with some tasty but not quite as thin as they should be hand pulled noodles, a la Aaron. My favorite style!!

I recommend the experience to anyone, but honestly, it's a lot easier to buy the ones from the store, plus they taste almost the same.

Below is the final result, hand pulled noodles in a peanut sauce, delicious!

Check out my pictures of the Hamptons, where Jennifer and I passed a fabulous newyears. Our friend Marie happens to be a real blue blood (though she fell on the hippie side of the tree) and her family owns a beach house in Easthampton on Long Island. Though her parents' house is a 5 bedroom, 3 fireplace job with a pool and room for a pony, it's rather modest by the standards of the area. Go figure. A house a kilometer up the beach had it's own observatory with the rotating dome and 15 inch telescope and everything. Now that's a a frickin' beach house.

Over the course of the holiday we broiled some salmon, flew kites and shucked our own oysters. It was truly a New Years to remember.

My photos are found at
http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronritz/TheHamptons
Another good set is at Matt Lyons page
http://picasaweb.google.com/matthewtlyons/Hamptonians?authkey=fIFHufQF8ns

Holidays beat work days, any day

Holidays are indeed better than work days, scientists have now proven it! The study was published recently in the International Journal of Studies with Sample Size One. In this study, a scientist took a sample of one person, himself, and found that work days are unequivocally less awesome than those days in which work was either optional or unnecessary such as holidays.

Ok, I admit, the journal is this blog, and the scientist is me, but dammit, I'm right here!

I'm in the process of posting some pictures of our recent escapades in the Midwest and East, but given the prolific nature of my photography, it's taking a while. Jennifer assures me that I take far too many bad pictures, but for me that was the whole point of getting a digital camera, I can take as many junk pictures as I want and just cull the herd later.

Back to the HOMELAND

I have finished my semester of school. And it is good. We head home this evening to lovely and frosty Ames, Iowa. I mentioned that I was from Iowa this morning to a co-worker at my internship, to which she responded, "Are there a lot of strip malls? That's what I think of when I think Iowa. I mean, who the hell is from Iowa."

 

I love the East Coast.

Instead of doing my take home test for my Real Estate Finance class, the class that has repeatedly kicked my ass, I have decided to post some pictures of my increasingly beautiful road bike. Over thanksgiving I wasted about 20 odd hours sanding, prepping cutting stencils and applying decals to my 2007 Cannondale CAAD9. I think it looks pretty damn sharp, and with the upcoming addition of pink brake hoods and saddle, I think that it will soon be complete!!

I get a lot of comments on it while riding, mostly ones like, "You fighting breast cancer?" To which I answer, "Hell Yes!" I love breasts, and therefore hate breast cancer, so yeah, this for all of that, but more importantly, it makes me look cool.

Tim’s parents are heroes

And well heeled ones at that. It does my heart good to see land preserved. Though the twin cities is one of the few places in the country with an actual metropolitan government, it's also the third most sprawled metro. Land gobbled up like so much popcorn.

 

http://www.startribune.com/south/story/1538517.html

Hemmingway had it right.

Since writing papers is such a god-awful task these days, I've decided to follow the Earnest Hemmingway School of writing. Namely, drink scotch and sit in an overheated room and sweat at a keyboard. Sure, he was on Key West and busy fishing and drinking and leering at local dames, but I've got he Internet, what more do I need for the same sorts of distractions? Apparently Papa Hemmingway's favorite drink was a Teacher's Scotch and Soda, and so just now I had myself a glass of Glensalen Pure Malt Scotch Whiskey and some seltzer. Not exactly the same but guess what, I can write like CRAZY!!!

I think that the slight buzz helps me ignore the boring ignominy of what I'm writing (Form-based zoning codes in Peoria Illinois anyone?) and just spit out the verbiage. Not only that, but I feel smarter and sexier! It's like beer goggles in reverse!!

While digging through a box of crap on my bedside table, I found this old business card from the earlier days of my dad's career as a preeminent bicycle nerd. This card dates from probably the mid 70s when the bike shop was at the corner of Fifth and Kellogg in Ames. This location predates all of my memory at the bike shop, I can still remember the second spot, at Fifth and Main street, which must be some 24 or so years ago ( I have an amazing memory for bikes).




The second location, at Main and Kellogg had the creepiest basement with its requisite dank spaces and centipedes, but the coolest second story, full of bike parts and a pinball machine and a giant stuffed soldier doll, not to mention the samurai sword that Michael had in his office. There was also my dad's co-worker Charles, who would make elephant noises and lend me Spiderman comics. It was good times.

We are on our way to eco-responsibility. As odd as it is for me to think of buying worms, Jennifer ordered a compost culture full of red wrigglers this past week from some hippie outlet in Michigan. After a short trip to the hardware store and a long bout with the hand drill and box knife, we have our very own indoor urban composter. The worms eat all manner of things, from newspaper and cardboard to fruits and veggies. We finished their new home last night and Jennifer has it stashed in the basement, awaiting our detritus.

Bloggin’ aint easy…except when you’re procrastinating

I am currently being 'bent over a barstool' by classes, as they say in the parlance of our times. I have most recently enjoyed a weekend of debauchery, if in fact, Real Estate Finance is debauchery. I will likely post more interesting stuff once I've got some free time, probably around next May or June.

The following are what's up with me:

• I now have a new mouse for the computer. It is called the Quill Mouse and it is absolutely amazing. My wrist went from being ridiculously sore to just somewhat uncomfortable after my most recent 10 hour computer session. I heartily recommend it to anyone with wrist problems.
  
• I recently drank beers at a strip club for the first time. It was modestly traumatic, but I got over it. The best part about the place was that they had a Wall of Fame; girls from 1962 until the present were memorialized on the walls.
  
• I am now the official unofficial vice president of my bicycle club. The office is totally amazing, and I can't wait to go on Air Force 19 (which is another name for my red Raleigh with the brooks saddle)
  
• I have made extensive use of 911. I've had enough of the goddam drug dealers on my street, I'm calling the cops until they get fed up enough to do something.
  
• Jennifer and I could likely double our house price if we sold today, according to Jim down the street who has made his business the gentrification (or more humorously Jim-trification) of the neighborhood. I say bring on the rich folks.

Crunching the numbers, that's me. I knew before I signed up that I wouldn't like the Real Estate Finance class, and by god, I was right. While I find it interesting to learn a bit more about how businesses make the decisions that really shape the built environment in this city, (who are we kidding, city planners don't build cities, MONEY does) I am not exactly smitten with the whole world of MS Excel that I have found myself thrust into. I've been smacking my head against the concepts of asset valuation, discounted cash flows and expense reimbursements all weekend, and I am still foundering in the quagmire that is my first assignment.

I'm taking some comfort at least in the adage, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." which I am currently interpreting to mean that I don't actually have to ace this class to still get a job.

When English is not a first language, creative license takes on a whole new dimension. Check out the picture from my friend Stacey, who is currently working on a planning project near Seoul in Korea.

I rode my bike so hard that my ass fell off.

At least, that's what it felt like yesterday after I finished my 40K Time Trial near Harrisburg. In contrast with previous races, a lot of things went right: I got there on time, got ready on time and didn't even miss my start. The course totally suited me, it was a series of rolling hills that eventually trended upward over the course of 20K and then returned along the same route, giving me the psychological boost to fly down at what seemed like an amazing pace on my way back in . I finished the course in 57:30, which works out to something like 26 miles per hour for nearly an hour. That was pretty fast, though had I had the experience of doing one beforehand, I would likely have gone a little faster. The winner's time was 56:30, and according to my handy online pace calculator, I would have had to go only .5 miles per hour faster over the course to make up the difference. Jennifer continues to make fun of my newfound obsession with aerodynamics, however, despite the OBVIOUS advantages in both speed and geekiness.

Thank god for forest first aid. I am happily free of poison ivy despite smashing into it with my face. Amazing.

In other news, school is just around the corner and that means that I'm going to be up to my neck in coursework in the next few weeks. While I generally like the stimulation and the more relaxed schedule of class as opposed to work, I'm usually not crazy about the homework. One thing that can be said for the life of the working stiff, is that when you're done with work, you can go home and do something entirely different, no need to stress about upcoming papers and tests. I'll just have to keep the end goal in mind during classes.

I've got my fingers crossed. While mountain biking today at the Belmont Plateau area of Fairmount Park here in Philly, I somehow managed to smash my face into a branch hanging down from a tree above the trail. While this is usually a painful but tolerable part of mountain biking on the tight single track of the park, this particular branch gave me pause. Just after I was thwapped on the right side of my forehead, something about the hairyness and shape of the offending shrub gave me pause. Yes folks, it was indeed a large-ish branch of poison ivy that I had splintered with my noggin. Uttering some choice words, I headed back home at top speed, stopping only long enough to smear some touch-me-not stem juice on my face and spray myself down with water.

We will just have to wait and see if my face turns into a pussing boil or not. I'll post pictures if it's really nasty.

Ok, so today has not been a very productive work day. I will readily admit that this was one wasted. But, I found some interesting racer diaries, specifically this one from Ben Kersten, an Australian who is learning the ropes in the Japanese keirin circuit. While my experience there was quite different, I can empathize with him on sooo many levels. It is one of my few regrets about my time in Japan that I never got to watch a keirin event. Next time for sure.

NEW SPORT ALERT!!! NEW SPORT ALERT!!!

I had never heard of this particular sport, but I think I've just discovered a new favorite!! With an introductory paragraph like this, there is no way that I'm not going to engage in some Mangold Hurling this fall:

Thank you for your interest in ballistic root vegetables. This is the official site of the Mangold Hurling Association, whose goals are to make the traditional Somerset sport of Mangold Hurling known to a wider public and to encourage others to join this happy band of Hurlers.

What is Mangold Hurling? Put simply, Mangold Hurling is the sport of throwing – or more accurately pitching – the mangold-wurzel. It requires skill, strength and cunning. Mangold Hurling is usually performed during October each year. The mangold-wurzel (or mangel-wurzel) is a vegetable of the beet family, grown mainly as a fodder crop.

I found myself lacking the quarter necessary to procure a cup of the lovely "Flavia" coffee from the machine that sits like some kind of hyper-caffeinated robot on the table in the lunch room yesterday. Not to be put off the chase of a warm, sugary beverage I turned the proverbial lemons into lemonade and created a drink all my own. Noticing a container of Coffee Mate Non-Fat French Vanilla Creamer sitting on top of the Flavia, I poured a hefty amount into my mug, squirted in some hot water and created the ALL CREAMER HOT DRINK! It was pretty good, much like a white chocolate chocolate milk. While the drink contained a tragic number of chemically altered lipids and semi-solids along with an equally disturbing number of artificial ingredients, at least I had the necessary sugar rush to carry on for the next 45 minutes. Necessity truly is the mother of invention.

See, office life can be fun. Just lower your expectations a little and the fun rolls in!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

DVRPC Social Club is hosting a Miniature Golf Tournament !

Greetings Staff:

What's more fun than mini-golf? Hmmm. I can only think of one thing... that's right, competitive single-elimination match-play mini-golf with your cheerful co-workers in lovely Franklin Square! Are you getting excited yet? DVRPC Social Club and Wells Fargo are sponsoring the first annual William Penn Open. It works like this: all those interested in participating will be entered into one of four Mini-Golf Madness brackets: Bacon, McCarg, Furness and Jacobs. Competitors will be randomly paired (no seedings, Karen C. and Rich) with a co-worker, and then it will be time to go for the green. It works like a standard single-elimination tournament -- winners move on, losers go home. Kapeesh?

Eventually, the winner of each bracket will go head-to-head in no-holds barred combat for the coveted Franklin Cup. The semi-finals and finals will be televised on ESPN 8, "The Ocho." A champion will be crowned, a parade will be held, and one lucky competitor will hoist the Franklin Cup. In addition to the Franklin Cup, the winner and runner-up will receive handsome cash (or cash-equivalent) prizes (seriously), an endorsement deal with Spalding, a one year tour exemption, and a truck-load of dredge spoils.

Though I have long professed to hate soap operas, my favorite sport is nothing short of that. Not only do we have intrigue and mayhem on the international stage, the Tour de France was littered with the stuff that smutty paperbacks are made of, but even among the mediocre talent of the Philadelphia bicycling community, there are tales of intrigue galore.

So and so said this...

He doesn't know how to ride, he's a goddam menace...

He said that he'd work for me in the race, but he just sat on and then sprinted for the line...

Just last week, a couple of folks that I train with were out on our standard morning ride around a loop in Fairmount park. There is often a group of 30 something women led by a guy who used to be on my club. They ride at a casual pace, and much to our dissatisfaction, often 4 abreast. We've had incidents before in which some of our group has nearly been taken out by some of their group, and last Tuesday we decided to discuss this particular point, as we had on the previous week.

As it turns out, Kevin (the guy who used to be on my club) isn't really fond of criticism of his ride and blew up in spectacular, purple, cursing form at the suggestion that he wasn't leading his ride with respect to us. This somehow led to a threat to one of my teammates, James.

"James, you sonofabitch, you don't have the balls to ride against me! Come out Tuesday if you're any kind of man! I'm not stupid, I've got a triple-digit IQ! Come near me again and I'll ride you into a ditch!"

While James is sometimes obnoxious, and has an uncanny ability to push buttons, there was no real call for this personal threat, particularly coming from a psychologist (no, I'm not kidding).

In the end, I stepped in as the mediator and calmed down the blustering Kevin. Fortunately, my 3rd Grade Junior Resolvers training took over and by carefully avoiding "you statements" I was able to save the day.

Sometimes I miss running. At least there, the competition is primarily with the clock. Those who are better than you go faster, those worse, slower. Plus, it's harder to run your mouth when running a 6:45 mile than when sitting 5th wheel back.

Casual Friday is totally sweet. I never thought that I'd be into office parties or things of that nature, but there is something to be said for them. I think that with the desk job, there is little unstructured interaction, and the office get-together is really the ideal situation to put that back into the work day. Friday we had our end of fiscal year party, which included an all staff meeting, and a lunch cruise on the Delaware River. Now, the Delaware near Philadelphia and Camden is not what I'd call a "scenic river", unless you consider oil refineries and dockyards to be scenic. We take what we can get in Philly.

It was good to socialize with some of the other interns and folks who work at DVRPC, there are actually a number of cool folks, unfortunately they're cool folks that I never get to talk to in my daily affairs. I think that in the future I'll look for a somewhat smaller office where people are a bit more collaborative...yeah that's the ticket!

Well, bike racing is a mixed bag. Yesterday I lined up for the Faulkner Honda Criterium in lovely Hummelsville PA. The course was super sweet; very technical with 8 corners and 2 chicanes in each lap of a little less than a mile. Not being the absolute best of cornerers, I was a little bit apprehensive as I started the first race of the day, the Category Pro-1-2-3 race which included a couple of elite level riders from Massachusetts and a number of other local strong men. I had lined up with a couple of teammates and our basic plan was just to stick like glue to the fast guys and see how the rest of it went. I was doing all right, but the pace through the corners was fast enough that I got gapped at pretty much every turn, meaning that I had to accelerate eight times per lap and then try to make up for lost ground on the two straight sections. It was challenging to say the least, though I was able to handle myself pretty well despite it all. After about 10 or 15 laps ( it was a 41 lap race) I started pedaling too soon while coming out of a corner and hit the edge of my pedal on the asphalt, bouncing my rear wheel up and sideways. When it came down I must have dislodged the tire from the rim because I felt a "whump whump whump BANG" as my tire blew. Since I had not brought a spare set of wheels, I was kind of out of luck, no chance for me to get back in with the group. Fortunately for me, Art Miller of the International Christian Cycling Club had also found himself out of the race and gave me a tube and loaned me a spoke wrench to get my wheel back in order. I guess he didn't notice the Flying Spaghetti Monster logo on the back of my jersey.

Fortunately enough, I had registered for both the Category 3-4 race as well, and lined up about an hour later with a larger, but hopefully less intimidating group of riders. The pace was very much the same as the first race, attacks out of each corner, with accelerations and crazy bike handling through the sharp turns and the chicanes. I knew with a group as large as this that I'd have to stay in the front if I wanted a chance at a good result. With three laps to go, things started to get a little crazy as everyone tried to jockey for position among the final 20 or so guys who managed to stay on the main group out of the initial 60. Coming through the last lap I knew that I had to make a move to the front or be doomed in the single-file turns and corners of the rest of the course, so I sprinted quickly up to third place as one of the riders from the hometown team hammered it home, thinking that I was one of his teammates. This worked out PERFECTLY for me as I was able to keep a constant 3rd wheel throughout the final lap. I heard crashes behind me, always an ugly sound, but fortunately I was able to maintain my ideal position through the whole lap, until the final corner when my "lead out guy" peeled off and I gunned it for home. Somehow, due to the complexity of the course and the result of my frustrating and abbreviated first race, I was able to sprint in for the win. This is by far the best win I've had in cycling, I played it smart and I beat a large field on a challenging course, which went a long way to erasing the doubts about shelling out $30 per race every weekend.

Blogging takes a back seat when you're working hard to be the best tour guide in South Philly. My parents spent an enjoyable stint here from the 23rd to the 30th of June, and in the course of the week, ate cheese steaks, hoagies and real steaks; saw the Liberty Bell, the Empire State Building, Chinatown, lots of street garbage and crazy people and went on a brewery tour. Oh yeah, they also painted and fixed our house, and spent a whole day slaving away in 95 degree heat while I sat in air conditioned comfort at my office. It was good.

My parents were even able to watch one of my bike races in scenic suburban New Jersey. I attempted to be entertaining, but it was a tall order on a flat race with 45 other guys who had the same idea. I ended up finishing about 15th but might have done better had I not been slapped in the face by a tree branch on the last lap. That was a little distracting.



My dad and I also did a fabulous "father-son bike ride" through some of the nicer roads in the wealthy Philly suburbs. It worked out well as we were able to stop by and climb the famous Manyunk Wall, a 1 kilometer long 17% grade climb that is featured every year in the professional bike race that runs through town. It's a gut buster, but we persevered and finally did once what the pros do 14 times in the race, twice as fast. Oh well. I guess we need to start doping.

For their anniversary, we cooked up a beef tenderloin that Jennifer scored at the local supermarket. $6 a pound for delicious super tasty beef was a hell of a deal. Dad decided that he would add some of his personal flair to the salt crust that we baked it in.

Sadly, I don't think I've got any pictures of Mom, she was always behind the camera and if I did get a shot of her, it would probably have been of her painting the back bedroom, or the bathroom, or cleaning, or potting some plants or other housework that I told her not to do, but dammit, she did anyway. That was sure TERRIBLE.

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In other news, the prayers to Saint Felicula must have worked, either that or the Philly Water Department actually did their job. Due to the fact that our house is on a private (read old and decrepit) sewer, they were reluctant to fix the problem as it is "not part of the Philly water system" and was created before the official lines were installed. At any rate they came out just before my parents arrived and were able to fix the "choke" in the line that was flooding our basement with sewage. The upshot: no more water leaking into the basement!! It's fabulous. I no longer have to wear galoshes to go to the washing machine, the mold has stopped proliferating and life is good.

Also good, Jennifer recently was promoted to the post of Assistant Research Associate from the lowly rank of Research Assistant. This means that she is now the highest ranking person on her staff without an advanced degree and has received a hefty pay raise to boot. She's my sugar-mama for sure!

Getting back to the working world was rough last week, thank god for the Fourth of July which nicely broke up my grueling schedule of 9-5 with half hour lunch break. Such a life.

This is a shout out to all you Catholics out there:

Help save our basement from flooding with your prayers!!! Our basement is unlikely to weather the thunderstorms that have been sweeping through Philly this week without some serious "sewer reflux syndrome".

Please give up a prayer to Saint Felicula, the patron saint of sewers!

A little more about her...

St. Felicula
Her feast day is June 13. She died a virgin martyr, the foster sister of St. Petronilla. Flaccus, a powerful Roman official, pro­posed to Petronilla and was refused. He then had her arrested. After Petronilla’s martyrdom, Felicula went without food or water in the prison. She was then thrown into a sewer, where she died. St. Nicomedes recovered her remains.

I'm not sure if other people know her as the patron of sewers, but I think that her particular death would probably make her count as one. Anyway, Philly Water Department hasn't been doing their job, so I thought I would call in a higher power.

I picked up a copy of ESRI News, which is the main publication of ESRI the company that makes ArcView, the dominant geographic information software on the market today, to find a lengthy and interesting article on the overall degradation of geographic knowledge in the general public. This article was written as a matter of "Geographer pride" by a professor at Kansas State University, one of the few institutions in the country that offers an advanced degree in my undergraduate field of study. Apparently, while geography is one of the 9 critical subjects involved in the No Child Left Behind act, there have been $0 allocated to teach it in our schools. None of the ivy leagues offer graduate programs in Geography and only Dartmouth even offers it as an undergraduate option. While almost all of the "great" presidents of the past had official geographers, there has not been one since the Roosevelt administration.

What is geography? It is more than knowing the state capitals. Geography is to time what history is to space. It is the study of spatial relationships between places, things and people. It is cool. I have a degree in it. GO MAC!