Hollow crocodiles, motorcycle chases, and hurricanes

I had another dream about zombie crocodiles; they'd get this virus that turned them into zombies and completely hollowed out their bodies. If you looked in their mouth you'd see this big rotting flesh cavern all the way down to the end of their tail. Then as we were trying to escape these, a hurricane came through, and I was running around this mansion trying to escape. I ended up clinging to a part of the ceiling below a skylight, and survived.

Also, I had one where I was trying to escape from something else (don't remember what), and I stole a little motorcycle to get away. I had this awesome chase scene where there were stampedes of bears, llamas, and yaks, and I had to get through them... but every time I got close to one of the animals, it'd chase me, and I'd have to elude it. It was really really fun. Then I met some old redneck lady (who, in retrospect, was chasing me), and her little weird baby. She was telling me some secret as to why she was after me, but then Naomi called, and I woke up.

Bikes bikes bikes

First of all, a picture, because it's a gorgeous night to ride, and it needed to be celebrated with a bit of narcissism.

Anyway, the post. So my GXP crankset is #^&@%$. I spent a bit of time this afternoon pulling the pedals, cranks, BB, etc, off the KHS, and swapping BB / crankset / chainring over from the Fetish. Luckily, the chain was long enough, and it's a fat chain / fat chainring / skinny cog, so I can still run everything. I rode over to Kyle's house, and he said "Oh, you got a new crankset." "No, it's an old one I had sitting around." "Oh, you just so happen to have a carbon fiber crankset sitting around." "Yes." Hahaha : ) It jumps me up 4 teeth in the front: instead of 42:16, I'm pushing 46:16 now... It's what I used to ride all the time, and it feels pretty good still. I can go faster that's for sure. Also I put an old Gatorskin tire on there, which should wear better than any of the other ones I've been using recently.... and I can skid like hell on it. Speaking of skids:



That's just awesome.

Also, you can go to MashSF.com, click on Videos, and click on Austin - TX, to see all the Mash hipsters riding fixed on the street with Lance Armstrong. Worlds are colliding, and it's pretty fun to watch.

*edit*: This bike is still in the possession of the original owner, from 1974. It is immaculate, and beautiful.

Another weird dream.

Man. So this time, I was at a picnic with Naomi, her dad, and a bunch of other people. Some kid asked me about my elbow, because I guess I had a scar on it. I brushed the question aside, and said "Mitch here's got alot of scars. He's got a great one on this ring finger here" (setting him up for one of his favorite things, of revealing his cut-off-finger-stub to unexpecting people). The kid didn't seem interested in that, and tried to show us another scar of his. He then found a little skin fold on his palm, and proceeded to peel ALL OF THE SKIN on his flexor forearm and palm apart down the middle like opening a book. His dad then started poking around in there and was like "You're in med school, can you tell us what nerve this is?"

I was like "Oh my god, stop that... you really really need to take him to the hospital right now, this isn't normal at all." To which they replied that he'd been there yesterday for something, and they had just packed his arm and sent him home, so they could avoid having to reopen it back up to check some deep structure later. Still doubtful, I was like, "Alright then...." and just let it slide.

Then I woke up.

Another Dream

This morning I had another bizarre dream. I was in a machete fight, and then had both of my arms chopped off. I ended up dead, I think, because I found myself in the afterlife, which was a huge warehouse modified to look like a very maze-like hotel.

I somehow managed to escape, armless, and managed to hitchhike to a T-station by jumping in front of an oncoming REI semi-truck, that had big cushy tent pitched on the front of it, so I kinda was pressed by wind resistance against the tent and was borne along.

Then I got off and had to try to figure out how to get a T-pass purchased, loaded, etc., with no limbs beyond my shoulders.

bizarre dreams, written right after waking

i just woke up at 3 am, remembering this from my frantic last dreams.

went outside KC backyard w/ naomi, neighbor's rottweiler was atttacking her, so i beat the crap out of it as best i could, it kept coming back, i started stabbing it, it kept attacking, til it finally bit the crotch part of my jeans and just held on, so i walked next door to show them the problem. they apologized and we signed some contract. i told them next time it happens i'm killing it. then i came inside and was on a bed with a ton of flapper girls from the twenties , in my room, and there was an alligator on the floor (completely non-sexual, we're all clothed. and it's in black and white). all these girls are frantically trying to stay on the bed, as a narator describes the bizarre situation in the past tense, about girls sacrificing each other to keep from falling down to the alligator. then it climbs up on the bed, and i stab it in the head with 3 different knives, only to realize it was pretty much already dead and rotting anyway, and in its last little bit of life, it climbed up on the bed. i tell my mom about that and grab the three knives that are mostly rusy and pitted, to go sharpen them. all of a sudden i leave the house and find a drunk dara from highschool wrestling and some fat white kid trying to steal my car. i chase dara down as he throws flasks of liquor, throwing stars, and ultimately kerosene and powdered magnesium at me, threatening to light me on fire. finally he makes a gigantic pile of magnesium as he throws a bag at me, getting himself lightly dusted in the powder. he threatens to throw a match at me and light me on fire, so i run away and encourage him to do so. he does it and of course it backfires and burns off all his hair and most of his clothes. a bunch of his fat white boy cohorts start throwing incendiary powder on him because they didn't' like him anyway, and he keeps flaring up in mini firework explosions. then in was walking home, in front of the fat white boys who hate me, and waved bye to them as they are dancing to "walk it out" by UNK. they are drunk and dancing so they happily wave bye, and i run away in slow motion. up a side street that is really really steep (a dream version of a street here in KC). then i got in a fistfight w/ a gigantic fat pinheaded baby-man and the goal was to knock him out. previous record-attempted and the guy punched him 189 times and couldn't knock him out. i try, and after 183 punches to the head, including dribbling his head like a basketball under some sonic-restaurant rubberized benches, i gave up cause i felt bad. somehow i end up on top of a gigantic building / terraced grass thing / fountain / landfill filled with gigantic tupperware dumpsters. i run / bound down this, and it turns out the dumpsters are filled with diapers. as i'm running down it man vs wild style, i'm knocking these over, get my hand covered in baby shit, realize i'm making a big vandalism-type mess by knocking over all the dumpsters, and then get to the bottom of the hill, and bound across a stream on some rocks to get away as fast as i can to keep the cops from seeing me. i look back to see a skinny homeless asian woman wading through the stream, and a bald guy in a red sox fan jersey, as well as a bunch more pedestrians further away walking around this big grassy central part of a roundabout. no one saw me knock everything over. i run around looking for the Kenmore exit in the roundabout, because that's where i need to be, and can't find it, but know i'm miles from where i am supposed to be. i ask the local guy in the red sox jersey and he also didn't know where it was. i went into a bathroom, and then woke up, completely soaked in nervous sweat.

i think i might be insane.

also i think a big portion of the dream might have been lucid.

also i apologize for the very poor and probably hard to understand stream of consciousness narrative. i have been typing for about 12 min and was very very blurry for the first part.

Back from Boston

So I just got back from my 4 day trip to Boston. It was great.

Seeing Naomi was really really awesome. It made me realize even more how good we are together. It felt just like old times, walking around Boston together.

Went to El Pelon twice, and got delicious burritos and a T-shirt to replace the one that I somehow lost in New Zealand.

Went to Boca Grande for a third Boston burrito.

Met up with Bjorn and Katie a few times, which was great. Hadn't really had time to reflect on how much I missed them.

Also, I stopped in the old bike shop, and the mechanic recognized me. That made my day. Nice to be vindicated a bit, and have some proof (outside of my friends) that "hey, I used to live there."

Didn't get a chance to go to O'Leary's. Next time.

Boston, and all the people there, were a huge part of my life and it's strange that it's not quite like that any more... but it's good to see that things haven't really changed. The people are the same, the city is the same. Great.

Oh, and of course I didn't take any pictures. Gaa. I need a camera.

Ok, off to podcast 2 hours of material at double speed. Sigh.

Ship

I painted this on my tablet PC. It's about the most artistic thing I've ever done. (Click for larger)

I am all that is man.

So I left class a little bit early today to race down to the Tour of Missouri, a high profile bicycle race that includes Olympic riders, Tour de France riders, etc. I missed the finish by a few minutes, which was a bit disappointing, but Alex and I still had a chance to walk around and look at some of the various bike vendors and merchandise kiosks they had up for the race.

One of the kiosks was sponsored by some Missouri Beef association, had some trainers set up, and you could get on and ride as hard as you could to see what your maximum power output per pound of body weight was. The hourly winner was supposed to get a T-shirt, and the daily winner was supposed to get $200 worth of beef products (steak, jerky, etc).

At this point, one of the spectators / drunken participants in the contest saw me with my Hapkeyer hat, rolled up jeans, and fixed gear, and the heckling began. "Did you deliver the mail yet, bike messenger?!....Show me your trackstand!!....We've gotta ringer here!!!"

Anyway, after having ridden 40 miles Saturday, I still figured I'd give it a go. My first try, I put out 1102 watts of power (for a power/weight ratio of 6.89 watts/lb). For comparison, a horsepower is 746 watts (with a power/weight ratio for .62 watts/lb (assuming a 1200 lb "light riding" horse [wikipedia])).

My 1102 watts set the hourly record in terms of absolute power output (independent of body size), and also the daily record for power/weight ratio (some other guy had put out 1210 watts earlier, but he must have been a bigger guy, as his ratio was only 4.4 watts/lb).

However, the people putting on the contest had apparently determined that the power/weight calculation was too difficult early in the day, and so were no longer calculating this ratio.... so I didn't get the $200 of beef (those bastards). But I did get a quick-dry wicking T-shirt that says "BEEF. It's what's for dinner" on it. And it did make me feel like a monster.

Rockin.

This weekend...

...I rode 40 miles on a fixed gear
...I lost feeling in my junk (see above for reason)
...I resolved to get a new saddle (see above for reason)
...I was loaned a new saddle for free ninety nine
...I fished
...I camped
...I ran some trails
...I jumped from rock to rock across creeks
...I got sunburned
...I got attacked by fire ants
...I didn't get a mountain bike, but have now fully resolved to. SS of some sort for the fall is the goal.

For some reason, I'm tired.

Bob Dylan's Man of Constant Sorrow

I didn't know he ever recorded this song.

YES!

So Google's Personalized Homepage (iGoogle) feature was pretty awesome... until they subjected some of us to an "experimental" new version of the homepage layout.. and there was nothing we could do to opt out of this experiment. It was very frustrating, as the new interface was particularly buggy and counterintuitive. It was even more frustrating that some people didn't have to deal with this crap! (Eg, Naomi still had the old iGoogle, while I had the sucky one).

Anyway, I found this online at a Google Group page: a way to revert back to the old iGoogle!

Here are the instructions:

Go to "http://www.google.com/ig/settings"
Go to the bottom of the page, export your settings. Save it some
where offline.

Go to the "reset" iGoogle page "http://www.google.com/ig/resetprefs.html"
select "Reset all preferences"

Go back to "http://www.google.com/ig/settings"
Go to the bottom of the page, import the export from previous steps.

Back to non-Experimental iGoogle.

(Here is the original link to the solution)

It works perfectly. Awesome.

New Cycling Cap!

My custom hat from Spokepunchers.com just arrived. I'm really happy with it. There's a central orange stripe down the middle of it, front to back, that didn't show up due to the angle of the pictures.

Neat time lapse of moulting cicada

I didn't make this, it's just cool:

(from wikipedia)

New Kicks

I never get excited about shoes.... except these ones.

Senior year I picked up a pair of Converse, and they were the greatest shoes ever. It was only when I went to buy another identical pair that I realized that they must've been a special edition, because I couldn't find them. I recently discovered a similar pair in a store nearby, but they were a hideous color, and not my size. But, I did learn their name, so I found them online.

They are the perfect shoe.

Oh jesh.

Ehlers-Danlos?

So I wonder if I have a mild case of Ehler's Danlos. Here are medical pictures of individuals diagnosed with it.






Here is me.



Possible, I think.