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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Thu, 30 Jul 2009Thanks to a tip from Stephanie, I picked up the August copy of Seattle Metropolitan magazine, and flipped to page 107. There on the right, we find the "MetPicks" sidebar: "Five August events you won't want to miss." And bringing in the #3 spot, we find: PENGUINS, EPISODE 1 Playwright Scot Augustson busted guts with the profane puppets of his Sgt. Rigsby silhouette shows. He's found another filthy outlet for his Python-esque cheek: This stage parody of gratuitous HBO dramas, which imagines an ongoing turf war between nuns and priests. Stunned by sacrilege? Stay home. [Annex Theatre, Aug 14-28] Almost verbatim -- they listed the old opening date, and I've updated it to be correct. Now that's some positive pre-press I can get behind! (If you haven't been sufficiently in the loop, I'm designing props for Penguins, including a delightfully obscene Ken doll, enough guns to arm a whole brace of adventurers in The Matrix, communion wafers, and a host of other sacriligeous items. The script kicks ass, the cast kicks even more ass, and it's gonna be one hell of a show. Literally. Opens August 14, 11 pm, and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 11, and Sundays at 8 until August 28 at Annex Theatre. Don't miss it!) Posted at 22:29 permanent link category: /theater
Sometimes, you just have to roll with it
I was helping a friend with some photo stuff last night, and we were trying to sort out a question about my camera, which she'd borrowed for a trip. As I was taking test shots, she said, "Oh, I've got great guns, get a picture of them!" referring to her recent attendance at the gym, and improved arm musculature. True enough. She agreed that I could post the picture as long as I didn't name her, and a well-timed head movement blurred her face. Done.
Posted at 15:02 permanent link category: /misc Sometimes, there's just nothing to say. The only context you need to know is that this picture was taken in the men's bathroom, next to the door.
I watched over the course of about a week as new post-it notes were added to the display. Posted at 14:49 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 29 Jul 2009
A Brief History of a Car Free Life
Way back in 1999, I bought my first motorcycle. It was a BMW R65LS, a sort of Star Wars stormtrooper-looking beast, but I really liked it. In fact, I liked it so much that I went on to buy another two BMWs, a Moto Guzzi, three Kawasakis, and three Hondas, of which I still own two Hondas and a Kawasaki. And really, that's where this all starts. I'd been more or less obsessed by cars for my adult life until that point. Cars were cool, they represented freedom, and speed, and sex appeal, the whole nine yards. I had, you might say, bought into the hype. In my life, I've owned a variety of cars, pretty much continuously, until the last one, a 1992 Honda Civic. In about 2002, I was living with my girlfriend (who had a Jeep Wrangler), and I basically got around by motorcycle -- at the time, a 1995 BMW K75. If I was doing it by myself, I went on the motorcycle. If she and I were going somewhere together, we'd take the Jeep. My little Honda ended up sitting for months at a time. Finally, I saw the writing on the wall, and decided it was time to sell the aging car. I liked it, it was a fine car with nothing major wrong, but it was neglected. On top of that, I was paying something like $70 a month for insurance. I listed the car on Craigslist, and it sold a week later for about my asking price. I was now, technically, car-free. Of course, there was still the Jeep, so I wasn't actually living without access to a car. I just no longer owned one. It was a sort of technicality. Well, that girlfriend and I parted ways, and I realized that with her Jeep went my ability to carry anything larger than a loaf of bread. I lived the single life for a while, but I also found and bought a Honda Goldwing sidecar rig. This thing was so big that it might as well have been a car. It certainly got car-like gas mileage, around 25 MPG most of the time. Eventually, the sidecar rig had fallen into disuse due to poor mileage and the comparatively high effort to drive it. Then, in September 2006, I had an epiphany: no matter what, no matter who you believe, we are going to run out of fossil fuels. There's a finite supply. We may run out next year, or we may run out 100 years from now, but it's going to happen. In addition to that, evidence was strong (despite the Bush administration's efforts to suppress the facts) that human activity was contributing to significant changes in the world's climate. And the real nail in the coffin for me: the vast majority of the food we eat is fertilized with petrochemicals. When the gas runs out, it's not just that we're suddenly all pedestrians, it's that our food production gets slashed. This epiphany brought home the fact that I could no longer stand by and do nothing. I pulled out my bicycle, and cleaned it up, determined to ride it to work every day. I only live 5 miles from work, and that's an easy bike ride -- I'd proved it every time (you know, once every 6 months or so) I'd ridden in previously. So of course the first thing I discovered was that my bike had a cracked head tube. It may or may not have been under warranty. Unwilling to let this stop me, I went out and bought a new bike, figuring I could sort out the old one later. I started commuting by bicycle. Since that day, I've bicycled to work (and many other places) the vast majority of the time. I'd guess I've ridden a motorcycle to work perhaps 20 days in those nearly three years. Now, if there's one thing that was suddenly true, it was that I'd gone from being able to carry a loaf of bread to being able to carry very little indeed. I didn't want a rack on my bike, so I was limited to what fit in my shoulder bag (in fact, I probably could carry a loaf of bread, but it might well get squished). After some wrangling -- ok, a lot of wrangling -- I got a replacement frame for my old bike. Only, I already had my daily rider, so what was I going to do with this (incredibly stout, semi-downhill) spare frame I now had? The answer quickly became obvious: build a cargo bike. I built it up and bought an Xtracycle Free Radical subframe, which is an add-on that fits on any bicycle frame, and turns it into an ass-kicking power-house cargo bike. Even better, after some thought (and a particularly near-disastrous trip with three cinder blocks perched on the Xtracycle's deck), I determined to build a cargo trailer for my cargo bike. With my friend Jesse's considerable assistance, we welded up a two by four foot trailer, and the Freight Train was born. The trailer's rated (by my conservative estimate) for about 100 lbs, and is large enough to carry a huge variety of things. So, my daily life now consists of a bicycle ride to work and the theater, cargo rides to go shopping at the grocery store or Costco, motorcycle rides to places further afield, and rarely, very rarely, a rented Zipcar when there's no other way to do it. I even have studded snow tires for my commuter bike, and was perfectly able to get around last winter, even climbing a hill I wouldn't have been able to walk up, due to the packed ice. The cargo bike now has about 1150 miles on it, and the commuter is pushing 5300. My monthly gasoline consumption (by which I mean direct consumption, unfortunately) fell from around 20 gallons a month to around 3. I still see the inside of cars to some extent, but I now spend an average of a few minutes a month inside a car, versus the hours and hours I did before motorcycles. It's not a perfect life, but it's an improvement. Posted at 10:01 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 19 Jul 2009I've been riding the CL175 streetbike around quite a bit lately, enjoying the tiny, lightweight bike. In the last month or so, though, the engine had started making this odd clattering noise, particularly when it was cold. On a 35 year old bike, even when it only has 14 thousand miles on the odometer, odd clattering noises are not at all comforting. My mind ran through some of the chilling possibilities: bearing wear on the camshaft or crankshaft, either of which would require tearing the engine down and possibly replacing huge chunks of it; broken pieces in the valve train, potentially causing more damage for each revolution of the engine; a broken camchain tensioner, leaving the camchain to flop around inside the engine, messing up valve timing and shaving chunks off the engine case... The possibilities were myriad and daunting. I decided, however, to try the simple solutions first. The simplest is to adjust the valves. If they're out of adjustment (gap too wide) they can make ominous clattering noises like what I was hearing. After a certain amount of grunting and swearing (because nothing's ever easy, even on super-simple vintage bikes like this one), I got all the valves adjusted. I found that the intake valves were both fairly loose, and one of the exhaust valves was loose. Not enough to cause the clattering, I thought, but enough to cause performance problems. So no matter what, it was a fine thing to do. Imagine my relief when I started the motor, and the doomful clanking noises were no longer present! It was a beautiful moment, and one that I felt like sharing (and here we are). It's so nice when the solution you really want to work is the one that actually does work. Posted at 12:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 15 Jul 2009I'd better hurry up with this story, before it escapes completely from my mind! The defense attorney initially called some fairly uninspiring witnesses: a couple of friends or acquaintances of Larry (our defendant). One testified that Larry had been paid for jobs in a particular way (with $50 bills), and another testified as to his living situation. Earlier in the process, during jury selection, the defense attorney had made a big deal about what we would think if the defendant didn't get up and tell his own story. The general concensus in the room seemed to be that, while not technically incriminating, it would introduce doubt about him. Certainly based on what we'd seen so far, I think the jury would have come to a guilty verdict pretty quickly -- of course, I don't know that, since we weren't allowed to talk about it, but that's the impression I had. So with this setup in place, there was a little thrill of surprise that ran through the jury when Larry was called to the stand. Alas, I won't possibly be able to do his testimony justice, but I'll do what I can. His story, told through a series of mumblings, speaking too fast, two people speaking at once, objections, instructions from the judge to answer the question at hand, giant plot holes, logical loops, etc., was about as follows (I've assembled the story much more coherently than he told it): He was driving along, minding his own business, but looking for drugs, at 3 am. Danielle leapt out in front of his car, or possibly flagged him down, and asked if he was looking for drugs. He said he was. I lose the thread at this point, but somehow this evolved into a long conversation on the sidewalk between Larry and Danielle, which included a trip into the friend's house, next to Danielle's apartment building. This was to call the dealer. She came back out, and they went down to the area next to the house to do some resin hits (smoking out of a used pipe which still has crack residue, but no actual fresh drugs). They came back up, and Danielle disappeared into the house again, to call the dealer and see what's up. Larry clarified at some point that this was to be a "breaking bread" arrangement, where he would by drugs through Danielle's dealer, and split the drugs with her as a courtesy for using her dealer. At some point, the dealer shows up in a shiny black SUV with heavily tinted windows, a thumping stereo, and chrome wheels. Larry has, by this point, given his $50 bill to Danielle, and she takes it with her into the SUV. It then drives down the block, possibly making a U-turn at some point, where it disgorges Danielle. She comes back bearing a baggie with 5 rocks of crack, and leaps into Larry's car. They drive down to an alley, where she directs him to park. They slip inside a garage which numerous individual policemen have already testified was so securely locked up that they felt no need to search it, and proceed to smoke some crack. Danielle does an heroic amount of crack (an entire rock in one hit, as Larry says), goes all wild-eyed, then announces to Larry (and here he imitated her face and words), "I'm gonna suck your cock!" She proceeds to yank down his pants in an ecstasy of crack-high, and starts going at it like a milking machine (I'm pretty sure Larry didn't use this similie, but it's what he was trying to indicate). Meanwhile Larry is looking down in horror at the scene playing out below where his belt would be if he were wearing one, and thinking to himself, "Wait, but... I have a girlfriend... Wait.. Stop..." but fails to actually say any of these words or give Danielle any indication that he wants her to stop. Events were a little unclear at this juncture, but somehow Larry got his pants back on, and handed Danielle another $50 bill, for the purpose of acquiring more crack -- the first 5 rocks were just a sample, to make sure she was selling him high-quality drugs. There was also a counter-story that the $50 he gave her was for services rendered in her putative role as a prostitute, although he was clearly confused on that point. She then departed the scene at speed, and he figured she was making off with his money, with no intention of delivering the promised crack cocaine. He caught up to her and detained her, while having probably seen her stuff the $50 into her purse. Maybe. They go around onto Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd again, and had another long conversation. Possibly she went back into the friend's house to call her dealer again. At some point (there's a gap here where either the story was too incoherent, or my own memory is starting to fade), they end up a couple dozen feet up the street, and she has some kind of a seizure. He searches her purse, and discovers an asthma inhaler, which he tries to administer, thinking all the time that she's OD'd on crack, and he's going to be blamed with the death because it was his crack that did it. The inhaler gave up the ghost after two and a half puffs, but she seemed to revive a bit. Now her attitude has changed, and she's threatening to go get her brother and beat the crap out of him, for reasons which were never entirely clear to me. He takes it as a real threat, and beats a hasty retreat, headed down past the friend's house, trying to take a shortcut to get to his car, which is parked in the alley behind the house. He gets caught up in the undergrowth and trees which dominate that section of the block, and gets turned around. He's panicking, convinced that at any moment he's going to be beaten within an inch of his life for an offense he doesn't understand. He blunders back to MLK, where he runs up the street and around a corner. He finds some bushes, and plunges into them, to hide and avoid his beating. He hears several footsteps rush by, and is starting to think maybe they've given up when he hears or sees a dog running towards him. The dog savagely attacks, ripping up Larry's arm, swinging him to and fro like a ragdoll (note that Larry is a stout man of about 220 lbs, and the dog has been described as about 15 lbs). He sees the dog's controller, a policeman, standing off an indeterminate distance, pointedly looking at the birds with his arms crossed. Poor Larry is calling to the policeman to help, to call off the dog, he didn't do anything wrong! The policeman is deaf to his cries, but finally deigns to take notice of the situation, after a period of 30 to 60 seconds, and calls back the dog. He completes the ignominy by handcuffing Larry and arresting him. Larry has meanwhile dropped the crack cocaine and crack pipe he was carrying, somewhere there in the bushes where he'd been hiding. Possibly he threw them from him, possibly he just dropped them; both stories were related. He was still clutching the $50 bill and Danielle's purse, though. Thus endeth Larry's story. I have to say, my head was spinning by the end of it -- the story was so completely different from all the previous testimony that I was having a hard time integrating it into the narrative and facts that we already had. I remember thinking to myself at the time that his story placed them in about the same locations at about the same times as her story. Obviously, her story hadn't included any drugs at all, and the various policemen who'd testified hadn't mentioned any drugs. Indeed, the dog hadn't given any indication of drugs either, which seemed unusual. The story as I wrote it includes the cross-examination by the prosecuting attorney. Her questions mostly served to clarify or amplify one or two of the less-clear parts of his story. I had the impression that if she weren't in a courtroom, her reaction to his testimony would have run along the lines of, "You have got to be kidding me." The trial wrapped up pretty quickly after Larry got off the stand. Closing arguments were brief, and the defense attorney's closing argument was almost comical in the extent to which it didn't refer to the trial. He pulled out a lot of quotations, and went off on a tangent about justice and the jury system and such vague things as slide completely out of my memory. The state's closing argument was comparatively rock-solid, and reiterated the facts of the case, which didn't look good for Larry. Up next: deliberations. Posted at 15:28 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 02 Jul 2009In a potentially misguided attempt to both provide less incentive for the crows to scream about at 5:30 in the morning, and to follow my doctor's advice to eat a high-fiber diet, I just picked over 6 lbs of cherries off my tree. Dang. Posted at 12:35 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? 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