I been here at the airport working on various projects and reading the new Rivendell Reader and catalogue that I got in the mail (Thanks, R&D!), and my flight’s been delayed about 3 times. I was supposed to leave at 8:05 and it’s 9:15 right now. I’m not complaining or anything. Actually, I am complaining.

Intelligent Design lost this time around, did you see that? I’m gonna put my computer away and hope we board the airplane soon.

I went to Bikeworks tonight and learned how to clean, repack and lube a headset, pretty much did the same thing to a bottom bracket. Every Thursday and Saturday they have work parties where you can get together and work on bikes that have been abandoned, found in the dumpster, I don’t know, where you can find them. All the bikes go back into the community, rebuilt and rideable. Some of the bikes go to Farestart and some go to Treehouse.

This is spectacular, I get to learn how to work on bikes somewhere people know what they’re doing and where there’s a large supply of bikes to practice on, and the bikes go to people who need them.

When I walked into the work party, everyone stopped dead in their tracks, it turned very quiet, and they turned to look at me. I got a little red in the face, I’m sure, but things returned back to normal shortly after they realized I was there to help. There were just a handful of people; a guy named Rich taught me how to pull apart the headset, cranks and bottom bracket on an old Trek mountain bike.

I was talking to Owl about a couple of weeks ago. I think all this volunteer work I’ve started doing is pretty rewarding. It really makes me feel good. I know some people frown upon doing things for the credit, and I’m not saying I want a ton of recognition for doing these things or that I’m doing them so that people will think better of me, but I’m certainly not going to downplay the idea that I feel really good about helping.

If anyone ever wants to go down to Bikeworks with me and help fix bikes, you know where to find me. I said I’d be going back next week, but forgot that I’ll be in San Francisco for a week starting Wednesday night, but when I get back!

From the meme Jonas was continuing:

I didn’t go to many shows in High School – but the few I remember were very, very good. Number 1 show of High School has to be the time Glenn, Brandon, Josh, Nathan and I (is that right?) drove to Pullman to watch Sebadoh. Those Bastard Souls opened, and I remember seeing a sign that Built to Spill would be playing there shortly thereafter.

It was, without a doubt, the actual freedom of being in a different town seeing this band that made everything worthwhile. We drove for hours and I don’t remember if it was this time or another where Brandon and I argued about the preparation for seeing a show – I condoned fasting from the band beforehand; not listening to anything by them in the car on the drive, so as to arrive with fresh ears. Brandon believe in saturation, listening to the records over and over to familiarize yourself even more with the band. It could be that I never liked that method simply because I never felt I was unprepared. That’s a wholly different sentiment these days.

I remember Lou Barlow, who was terribly aloof when I talked to him during the Sebadoh reunion shows last year, had a familiarity with the audience back then. He dropped banter with ease; “We got a place to go tomorrow night… It rhymes with ‘noisy.’” That cracked me up.

It was right around the time “Harmacy” blew up (before anyone would know what I was talking about when I said “blew up”, and “Bakesale” wasn’t so old that the songs felt dated. Barlow’s songs, for the most part, also warmed cold hearts of high school rejections like nothing else at the time. It could have been juvenile, but it was High School, of course it was juvenile – there was no way to identify with it if it weren’t. Barlow’s always been a champion of ambivalent lyrics, titles, whatever. (See: Emoh)

It’s a pain in the ass to think that that kind of shit is so far away now. All that crap about the innocence of youth is cliche for a reason, because everybody has some sort of stake in it, so everyone’s got something profound to say about it. Nostalgia means longing for the past, but I’m not not necessarily longing for it, I just wish I could remember it better.

Some pics of the bikes, as well as bonus pics from last weekend at Whidbey, Thanksgiving weekend with the family, and a couple pics of dudes at the Tin Hat, which is now, like every other bar, restaurant, bowling alley, and non-reservation casino in Washington State; smoke-free. Also, a couple pics of items being sold at the Greenwood Space Travel Supply. I’m there every Sunday, 2:30-5:30.

Who wants to go get some beer at the Tin Hat tomorrow?

So, this is the only solution I could find for the Recent Links section to have a comment space. I also have failed to find out how to make the rss and Recent Link archive work, and it’s kind of pissing me off.

I finally got one of my bikes in riding condition and took it out tonight and cannot for the life of me figure out now if the reason I’m coughing is because it was too damn cold outside for me to ride or if it was because the bike just kicked my ass riding up 28th. Short hill, I know, but it’s been a while and it pretty much killed me. I rode around the neighborhood after wrapping some new drops and putting a new stem on the red fixie. I’d take pictures, but my camera is currently out of batteries and I haven’t gotten around to charging them. Pitiful, I know.

It turns out the headset lockring that was keeping me from replacing the stem earlier was in fact a headset lockring, meaning I didn’t need to remove it all to get the stem out. Yanking it really hard seemed to work just fine. Got a cyclocross (interruptor) lever to put on the right side, some diagonal wire cutters to cut the brake cable, and voila, a working brake. For some reason, however, the long reach isn’t reaching very long, and it is hitting the tire. Also: It may just be the width or positioning of them, but I cannot climb for shit with drop bars.

Looking at the frame and feeling how heavy it is – the front badge says “Dolphin” on it, but I’ve never heard of a company that built bikes under that name, I thought it might be a Schwinn, since the frame looks like it was painted at one point and the seat stay looked like a varsity, but at second glance it wasn’t so, and the serial number doesn’t match up. Mystery frame.

I did finally get a chance to look up my Raleigh frame serial number though, and it dates it a 1970 and possibly Reynold 531 tubing. Damn, those campy dropouts are sweet. I gotta go to sleep.

Nothing else much to report other than that, and that people in the office are going crazy about it, including me. I bet it sounds pretty dead quite outside right now.

Update 1 : weak, it stopped already. now it’s just freezing

Update 2: yay! it started again.

Anyways, I’ll be working at Greenwood Space Travel Supply tonight from 6-8. Stop by and say hi!