Water Bottles

Let's broaden our world view a little bit today, shall we? There's a lot of other good stuff out there going on beside my ruminations that you should know about.

My friend and teammate Ryan at The Service Course has been en fuego lately. The Giro provided plenty of grist for his insightful and funny commentary; he covered the Clarendon Cup and the Air Force Cycling Classic for Velo News, putting interesting notes and commentary on his blog. Ryan is an excellent writer; I wish I could write like he does. He's busy with babies and work, but we'd all be better off if he had the time to write more. Check him out and bookmark him, if you haven't already.

Burt NSFW Hoovis, MABRA's own walking First Amendment Zone, recently found himself on a flight to San Francisco, when he "noticed that there were a bunch of really hot russian chicks on the flight." I just so happens that it was the Bolshoi Ballet. The post is really disappointing because 1) there are no pictures; and 2) there are no pictures of half nekkid Russian ballerinas in a booth at the Cheers bar in San Francisco International kissing on each other. If you're the kind of person who gets offended at Burt's blog, I'm sure you can still find plenty to be offended at anyhow. But I'm just saying that when I read he'd encountered a passel of the world's hottest, fittest Russian girls, I would have expected some photographic evidence. It's probably not what I would have done under the circumstances, but he should have at least tried. You see, Burt has a standard that he sticks to, and I'm all about holding people to the standards, even if their standard is "entertainingly pervy." Frankly, I'm a little disappointed.

Going on to the blogroll is ironically named The Old Bag, who appears to be neither old, nor baggy. She commented this week. I'd never seen her blog before, but she writes beautifully. I read a bunch of her older posts and found she has almost a John Dos Passos vibe to her writing. She rides road and mountain and... oh, who cares. She writes beautifully. Take your time when you read her more artsy stuff, give it a chance to sink in and for you to see what she's doing with the language. As Auden wrote in his ode to W.B. Yeats, In Memory of W.B. Yeats:

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

A few people on the blogroll here don't write much but they're on the list because when they write, they write damn well. The Old Bag writes quite well and she writes pretty often. I think Gwadz would particularly like her style, and I suspect anybody who likes good writing generally will. Click through and check her out.

Angela Brown doesn't write that much either, but she usually says interesting things when she does write. Like this bit about spending a weekend at a resort with her husband, who doesn't ride. Being a MTB racer, Angela naturally got in a ride. A relatively epic ride, from the sounds of it. I don't know how she pulled that off but suspect she's got some strong mojo and/or a great guy. Angela gets double bonus points for turning me on to Cage the Elephant, a young band that sounds like Beck meets Southern Culture on the Skids, they get hammered with In Living Color, do something regrettable and then have a love child with the Beastie Boys. I'll be looking for this band to hit the mainstream, I hope they hit it big. They probably won't because they play rock music instead of focus group tested pre-chewed pop, but you never know. Maybe we can catch 'em at Rams Head sometime.



Here's a little more:



I likee.

I also like DCMTB (Brought to you by Family Bikes) and their new kit. (H/t GamJams). Hey, is Mike Klasmeier's mouth open with lots of words coming out? Major respect for DCMTB - lot of good guys and gals on that club whom I respect for reasons other than just racing prowess, and most of 'em you only get to see from behind, at least once the whistle blows. Many racers and clubs are primarily about training and racing; they could be triathletes, for all they care about bike culture generally. In contrast, some are about bike culture too, appreciating the beauty of nice bikes and respecting other cycling achievments (e.g. PBP Randonees, the guys who commute even in the snow, Iditarod-Bike, touring in Italy, practical commuting on a whatever bike is handy, pub crawls, bike community activities). These are bike people. I know a lot of bike people on DCMTB and as a member of Squadra Coppi, a velo club that has a lot of bike people and a focus on conveying racing *culture* to its members, I have a lot of respect for DCMTB's tribe.


Now for the news you didn't hear on CNN this week:

A woman in Detroit shoots and stabs her father to death in a fight over a dinner roll. Man, I hope that roll was worth it.

A man sues a strip club, claiming that a stripper permanently injured him with a kick to the head. Um, isn't getting your ass kicked one of the risks you assume when you decide to start slapping strippers on the ass? IMHO, he's lucky that the 5'1" stripper beat him up, and not one of the bouncers.

And in other news, a squirrel has been caught stealing tiny American flags off the graves of veterans in a Michigan cemetary. It's inexplicable. Inexplicable, that is, unlesss it's a Red Squirrel...