Then I read this quote that’s over a hundred years old:
I still feel that varable gears are only for people over forty-five.
Isn’t it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailer?
We are getting soft…As for me, give me a fixed gear!
–Henri Desgrange, L’Équipe article of 1902
When I picked up my bike at Mellow Velo on Saturday, David had replaced a few parts and the bike rode MUCH better. Could it have been the new 44T chainwheel, the Japanese 1/8″ chain, the pedals or this?
Tonight the sky is cloudy, large shapeless clouds that cover Santa Fe as if somebody placed a giant milky bowl over the city. As the sun is setting, that translucent, but not clear bowl lights up in many shades of yellow and orange. It has an otherworldly, slightly threatening look.
This morning I rode the Mariachi Bullitt to Counter Culture to have breakfast with Jon. We always order the exact same food and I remarked that it would be a funny scene for a movie. A man or woman who always eats the same dish for breakfast at restaurant A, followed by a certain dish for lunch at restaurant B and another specific dish for dinner at restaurant C. Do you do that, asked the counter person, horrified. I said, of course not, but it would be funny.
Later I walked to Mello Velo, but my fixie wasn’t ready yet and so I walked back, making a pit stop at Downtown Subscription.
The afternoon was spent in the studio, working on Bikers #3 – I am using the working titles our engineer wrote onto the 2 inch analog multitrack tapes in 1995 – from the LAVA recording and Heart Still/Beating from The Santa Fe Sessions. Both pieces are coming along very nicely and should make their Ottmar-Friends debut sometime in the coming months. A CD of the remixed and remastered album The Santa Fe Sessions will be released in 2010 – twenty years after Nouveau Flamenco. Or maybe it will be released as a download-only album.
LR sent me a link to an article in the UK Times called Young Music Fans Deaf to iPod’s Limitations. It seemed to me that the writer mixed up Data Compression and Dynamic Range Compression, which are two very different things. I wrote about the article and you can feel free to leave comments or questions at the end of this here post.
For dinner I made an arrugula pesto (I substitute arrugula for basil and use walnuts instead of pine nuts) for dinner and experimented with using less water to boil pasta – see this article in the NY Times. Used a large frying pan and 1.5 quarts of water. Worked well.
This morning I rode my fixie to Mellow Velo. Almost didn’t make it there. Riding over a bump the chain came off the chain wheel and torqued the wheel to one side, locking it up completely. Luckily there was no traffic and I was able to skid to a stop. Since I didn’t have a wrench with me I carried the bike back to my house. Love how light even steel frame fixies are!
The repair only took a few minutes and then I rode to the store without incident.
Thought I had a 46T chainwheel with a 16T cog, but discovered that it is actually 48T/16T. I had ordered 46T/18T but the San Francisco dude talked me into 46/16 and then shipped the bike with the 48/16 combo…
David wants to put a 44T chainwheel on the bike, which would make it 44T/16T, which I think will work well in town…
From Mellow Velo I walked to Ohori’s for a cup of coffee and from here home. Bike should be ready tomorrow.
Found this on Bruce Sterling’s blog today:
Kim Stanley Robinson: Postcapitalist Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human story. Choosing not to study a successor system to capitalism is an example of another kind of denial, an ostrich failure on the part of the field of economics and of business schools, I think, but it’s really all of us together, a social aporia or fear. We have persistently ignored and devalued the future—as if our actions are not creating that future for our children, as if things never change. But everything evolves. With a catastrophe bearing down on us, we need to evolve at nearly revolutionary speed…
(Via Beyond the Beyond)
I think we will see more of postcapitalism. Unchecked capitalism is as useless in the long run as untempered socialism. I sense that the best way is in the middle somewhere. We might have to blunder about, searching for the right mix for a while.
I was waiting for a review before I was going to order the DVD. I read and laughed and ordered the movie.
Guys Who Cut Their Own Hair | Blog | Detail | I See saId THe blInd Man As He reacHed For hIs Hammer And Saw Eventually I got sleepy and paused the film so I could continue it later with a fresh eye, but I can say without reservation that anyone who has ever thrown a leg over a track bike, or better yet, knows the dizzying sensation of turning left in a pursuit of triumph should absolutely procure of copy of this themselves to bare witness to the originators of the craft.
As one who enjoys the abuse of substances, I was taken with the stories of performance enhancing supplements such as a blend of Cognack, sugar water and Ether to aid in the participant’s quest for domination. As a matter of fact, just so I could fully enjoy the experience of the film, I mixed up that very concoction for myself, but before long got distracted and found myself in the corner of my living room attempting to gnaw through a garbage can lid.
At any rate, I whole heartedly recommend any and all lovers of the two wheels and the fixed cog to get this movie if for no other reason than to see first hand where they came from.
Rode my bike to Counter Culture for breakfast with Jon. I noticed the above sign and was glad that I was observing the new rule. We discussed some of the issues I brought up in my last entry. We tried to figure out what led to the bottomless coffee cup and unlimited buffet frame of mind in the first place. First of all there had to be a sense of abundance, e.g. we can obtain this food so cheaply, even if customers eat three plates full we WILL make a profit… but it is probably also true that managers recognized that their customers valued quantity over quality and therefore would not care if the bottomless coffee was actually damn weak and horrific. What do you think? Is this a phenomenon or the Seventies or Eighties, or did this start way back after the horrors of the depression. Jon and I managed to eat and talk for 100 minutes. I am always surprised how timeless a good conversation is/feels…
