My favorite sushi at home: Super best friends roll with avocado and ebi (shrimp) and seatbelt hotate (scallops)

It's sometimes hard to justify my love of sushi with my love of the environment. The worst is that the best tasting stuff, the toro (fatty tuna belly) is also threatening to hunt the bluefin tuna out of existence. It is a curse to be tasty!

Parking Lot

 

It's REALLY easy to find bike parking in the winter for some reason.

I have to say that while I love snow in general, snow in Philly just isn't that great because there's nowhere to put it and usually not enough of it to make skiing worthwhile. I'd love to be able to ski as cross-training for cycling or heck, just for fun, but in Philadelphia the standard rhytmn is:

Panic
Snowfall
Some more panic
Messy slush
Melt
Repeat

Family time

 
Before we headed back home, Aunt Karen, Uncle Denny and Denise and her flock stopped by to hang out for a bit. It always takes me a bit to remember all the kids names since I've only seen them on rare occasions and at holidays. Aunt Karen had unfortunately just come from the dentist where she'd had one of her teeth extracted. Not exactly the most fun way to start a week, but the novocaine hadn't worn off yet and she was hoping to see us before we headed out. We tried to roll out at about 1:00 to get back in time to see Leah off for her drive to Minnesota, but Grandma waylaid us by dragging out about 30 pounds of various foodstuffs including her unchanging chocoloate chip cookies, ranch oyster crackers, horseradish sauce and jars of jelly. She was still trying to lug all of that upstairs in one trip, hoisting the bag one step at a time when I stopped her and carried it up myself. She's probably lived so long from sheer feistyness.

Writing names in the snow

 

Sioux City got a bit less snow than we did in Ames, but they had some risidual drifts from earlier in the month. Monday morning Ian, Asa and I went for a hike at Stone Park, just north of Grandma's house. It's always good to see the countryside around Sioux City and the loess hills were scenic as usual. I've been thinking about various places to take a bike tour, and it would be great to ride the hills up the Missouri along the western border of Iowa some summer.

Best present

 

I got this cleaver from my grandmother by way of my dad. The cleaver used to belong to my granfather who died when my dad was just 7. Grandpa Ritz was a butcher for a while, among other jobs he held, and this was one of the cleavers he used for work. I'm not sure exactly the next time I'll need to do some serious work on a big hunk of animal, but I know what knife I'll be reaching for.

Seen on the Street

 


Spotted this on my way to survey some bike rack locations this week. I'm not exactly sure what the message is, but I have a feeling that these "Traveller" guys are probably interested in motorcycles and women.

Asa's Slide Show

 

Christmas at last

 

It has been our tradition as young, and not so young adults, to drive up to Sioux City for Christmas to spend some time with Grandma Ritz. She's in her 93rd year and despite a fall off of the front stairs at her house which knocked out one of her teeth and broke her wrist this July, she's doing marvelous. Nearly as cantankerous as ever, and MORE than willing to send you home with 5 pounds of cookies,some jelly, horseradish and lest I forget, ham. Ian, Asa and I arrived at about 6:30 and following the great success we had with cooking her dinner last time, whipped up some cheese steaks for dinner. After dinner Asa pulled out his laptop and showed her pictures of his trip last year to Chile. She was duly impressed, but kind of lost track of where exactly Chile was. She then produced some map placemats that she had been saving for just that purpose, got her bearings and we were back on the way.

Oh Trophy Bikes, and Typewriters

The first ever Type In sponsored by guess which bike shop.

Wish I had seen this before arriving in Japan...

Ben's Chili Bowl

 

At last I have been to the mecca of meaty eats, Ben's Chili Bowl on U street in Washington DC. I was down in DC for the day on Friday to check out their bicycle infrastructure, and lunched at this fine establishment. Eating one of these on a regular basis is not advised, but when it's 35 degrees and windy, they are a godsend of protein and salt.

Professionally, the trip was good as well. DC is kicking the pants off of us in every respect bike related save one: we have more bike racks. We have a lot more places for people to put their bikes when they're out and about. The situation at Union Station is particularly weak: the bike rack is on a stretch of unused driveway and is not even bolted to the ground.

In other respects though, DC is leagues ahead of most cities in the country. Helping them in that pursuit are their money and wide streets. Since the District functions as both a state and a city, they have a bit more control over their spending than we do in Philly. That, and they just have more of it. Wheras we have about 1.5 staff people devoted to bicycle and pedestrian issues, they, in a city half the size and population, have 6 people fully devoted to bicycle infrastructure projects. Wide streets also make it much easier to take lanes of travel for biking without paralyzing the urban core. Of course they all complain of congestion and tight quarters, but it's really nothing compared to our diminutive rights-of-way in Center City Philadelphia.

That said, they are doing amazing work. Bike sharing with 100 locations across the city and more to come online next year, bike lanes everywhere, a bicycle locker-room at the train station and two new and totally cool projects including a separated cycle track (divided from cars by a parking lane and bollards) and the new two way bike lane down the center of Pennsylvania avenue mean that the president can ride in comfort from his house all the way to the Capitol.

I've put some pictures up in my Picasa account for the transit nerds out there.

JUNKET

I am working hard to get myself into as many bicycle-related projects at work as possible. Those efforts paid off today with my impending trip to DC to see some of their improvements and meet some of the big-gear mashers of bicycle policy.

Also, I'll have a chance to give bikeshare a try for the first time ever!

Does this need to exist?

Hand pumped espresso machine, or perhaps an elaborate bong. You be the judge.

Kickin' Corner 10 years on

 

Totally should have posted some of these pics weeks ago, but Brendan and Meghan were up for the weekend of November 5th and 6th. Good times were had by all, and an excessive amount of food and drink were consumed. (Meghan seems to be in the midst of digestion in this shot.)

We did the standard tour through the city, which included the Italian Market, Reading Terminal, and the re-opening of the South Street bridge, all of which were reasonably fun. Best part of the weekend was probably making pizzas in our kitchen. Assembling the ingredients that we'd procured lovingly throughout the day. We also did a fair bit of boozing, polishing off nearly 2 bottles of sake, and many many beers. You'll see the results in other pics, but we can safely say that not all that much has changed in the intervening years. Put a few drinks in me and I'm out on the couch!

Yep, boozing and snoozing

 

Economic Stimulus Proposal

I think that the City of Philadelphia should give all of its employees the Friday after Thanksgiving off, just like almost every other business in the city as an economic stimulus measure. If I weren't at work, I would assuredly be spending some money somewhere, some time. Instead, I'm just making money, sitting behind my desk, pretending to be working hard.

Jomar

 

Jomar is the best place to go for crazy deals on crazy stuff. I think they are in the business of selling out stuff from random places that go out of business. I only wish I could have thought of something to do with pyrodex when I was there. Such a good deal!

Makes you wonder if this has been a problem?

 


It's not like the faint of heart would be buying durian anyway. God bless asian groceries.

Not philly, but too cool not to repost

Very cool street art in NYC. Damn that creative empire! We have our little robot-dudes in thermoplastic street adhesive, but New York has us beat in sheer volume of brains and creativitiy.

Dream Job

Started reading this bike review in Cyclingnews because of the bike, but as it turns out Joachim Parbo may have my dream career. Too bad I wasn't born Danish.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/pro-bike-joachim-parbos-kch-leopard-cycles-jpx-prototype

Parbo has made his career on the racecourse but back at home in Denmark, he adopts a decidedly slower outlook as a part-time 'bicycle path inspector' for the city of Arhus. Among the job responsibilities are surveying the 560km (350mi) of paved paths, reporting any damage, and generally acting as an ambassador for the fellow commuters he encounters, offering up riding and bike maintenance tips.

Sound like a dream job? Parbo seems to think so.

"I have to oversee 350 miles of bike paths and other infrastructure so I have a lot of ground to cover," he told us just a few hours before leaving the US to head back to Europe. "I can actually train while I'm working!"