ONNA KEIRIN OH

1953 movie poster courtesy of Tomity.

Another Letter to Patches

Don't call my landline. It's a fools bet. If you ask me for a different number, I'll give it to you but I might not answer it the first time. You gotta be gentle with me. I need coaxing sometimes.

I'm listening to music that I begged off of friends or stole and none of it is very good. Again, ask me another time and I'll probably tell you. Right now I'm hot and my neck hurts and I've been drunk for four days. Ask Moishe. I chased him out onto the front lawn and threw a glass at him and he woke up his wife and they left in the middle of the night. I think he's feeling sensitive too.

The clutch is finally gone on my truck after nursing it for a year. I think all the snow did it in. I guess I have to fix it now, and I'm not looking forward to it. Those transmissions are heavy and my broken collarbone aches and keeps me awake and any more stress on it is just going to make it worse, you know?

I guess your baby is probably doing pretty good. Don't teach him to speak if you can avoid it. I have two and they are damn loud all the time. They learned to shake hands with each other and it's a real Dad moment for me when they do it. There's been less biting, but more punching. There are valid reasons to not have children, but it got me to finally quit smoking, and I guess that's something.

We'll be in Idaho next week and I'll buy you a beer. Look out for me.

I Am One of a Kind

i hope that the new year brings peace

Love, bikes, and beer to you, my friends.

Big Blue

Ride, Hamachi?

This was before we got another four inches yesterday.
They're saying four to six more tomorrow.
Hamachi, Wife, and Dogs are supposed to be driving up from Oakland tomorrow.
I know how much they like Redding, but I hope they don't have to spend the Holiday there.

Cock

It is seriously snowy out. We went for a ride around, saw a lot of skiers, a few cars, and then went to a bar.

Seems like the right thing to do, non?

Ninkasi Oatis

Astounding.
I'm hoarding bombers of this since it seems that all of the great local seasonals seem to pass so quickly. This is one for the books, for sure.

What are you drinking right now, loyal readers?

Note to My Wife

Installation utilizing broken toys, found objects, a tent, a table, and discarded foodstuffs.



Detail: Crayola marker on butcher paper.

The Buff Medways

When I get lazy I post music.

And I've been back to listening to Childish.

This one is a terrible song, but I like the clip and it's about his mom riding bikes in austere postwar Britain. I like everything about that.

Sometimes on iced-up, 22 degree days like this I wish that everyone had no choice but to get on a bicycle or walk to the bus stop. Except for old ladies who have already lived through a bunch of hard times. For them I wish that the grocery stores still delivered.

Real strange out the last few days, what with snow on what the weather-jerks like to call the "valley floor", and me and Big Blue out trying to stay upright. There have been 40mph gusts and it's freezing and there is ice under the snow but yesterday I rode for 3 hours for fun and I just kept thinking about Patches and how he used to do it for a living in Minneapolis, and it sort of seemed okay. Today I just rode to get a beer and fuck almighty was it cold to be on the bike.

I'm geared up good with Swiss and German army woolens, some Filson, some Barbour, $6 plastic bmx pedals and my Danner hikers but all of my tips were cold. You can keep your fucking Assos bibs. When the weather turns to true shit you better have some serious wool and leather and waxed cotton on hand. There have been no racer boys out on the streets. Only Subarus and Volvos with telltale racks on top. Pussies.

Yesterday I strapped 30# of groceries to my porteur rack and made it half a block on 28th before I fell onto a curb. This on top of the night before drinking poison and getting towel-snapped all over my legs and staying out until 3:30 so my wife was smelling me to see where I'd been. I did not smell good, but there was no glitter, so it was alright.

I have been serving penance by changing all of the diapers, cooking noodles and trying for two days to get un-hungover but I just keep getting drunk.

I feel like writing a poem about it but I think I'll spare you.

There is still no work.

The money is spent.

I hope next year will be better for us.

Damn Your Fucking Work

Thee Headcoats.

SF to LA, 1902

I have no idea when this was taken, who it is, the location, or the photographer.

Here are Big Blue and The Lads looking purposeful at the graveyard.



This was a very nice day for us. It may snow tomorrow and put a crimp in our cycling, but it will be cool to have some winter weather.


Apparently, I'm a sartorial man, now.

Huh. Glad I stuck with it for so long.

More Saints

From the Archivist.

From DC

The Saints

The Goggles Do Nothing.

Apologies all round for the bummer posts and short absence. Life's got me by the short hairs and is threatening to toss me down the stairs.

Let's review:

Cross season is over.

The Lads speak now.

Bourbon County.

It still hasn't really rained.


I go to bed at 5 am more often than I'd like to. Once a week, but still...

New shop space? Affirmative. More to follow.

If I have to eat any more vegan chili, there's going to be blood.

The Sart says I'm finally back in style.

The Gonz hasn't gotten less weird.

I unearthed this from an old diary.
It is true.



"This is the part that I’ve never written or talked about. It’s too unreal, and too much like a dumb movie, and it doesn’t seem believable. I don’t think I’m ready to do this, but I’m going to try.

Laney passed me on the left.

She was looking straight ahead, squinting into the mist. As she came around the front of me and accelerated, I saw her elbows flap and the weak red spot of her taillight swing violently side-to-side. And that was it. That was all.

She lost control of her motorcycle on the wet train tracks on Seventeenth street and smashed into the back of a parked car. When I got to her she was underneath it. Her bike was upside-down, spilling gasoline onto the street. I pulled her out by her jeans and screamed into her face. Her eyes were half- lidded and looking, unseeing, in different directions, and there was blood on her lips.

This is the dumb movie part. I’m kneeling over my dying girlfriend, yelling for somebody to call for help. We’re bathed in the yellow headlight of a destroyed motorcycle and the rain is starting to fall.

The sirens came quickly, and the paramedics worked in that methodical, frustrating, slow way that they do. They cut her jacket off of her, and her jeans. The rain was falling on her breasts as a woman pushed a tube down Laney’s throat. Her abdomen began to distend as the air from the breathing tube flowed out of her punctured lungs. She never moved. She never made a sound. A young couple walked by on the sidewalk, both of them looking straight ahead.

There was the ride in a police car, the wait in a room with a telephone, the two doctors who came in to talk with me. I called her mother at four a.m. to tell her that her only daughter was dead and then I went home and fell asleep on the floor of our bedroom."


Missing you right now, Lu.