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.