dangr-us thoughts

2012-02-13T09:02:00.002-05:00

I'm so glad J and I don't buy presents for one another out of obligation on stupid corporate Hallmark Holidaze. (We get one another gifts whenever we think the other would like something.)

Yay for XKCD:

I know, I've had a distinct lack of blogging. I was walking through rural Kentucky. More soon, maybe, if I find my camera. Ahem.

A journey of a hundred miles:

2012-01-31T08:40:00.001-05:00

is about to begin. Walking through rural Kentucky for ten days, with lovely people, bringing attention to the horrors of mountaintop removal mining.

Super excited. More soon.

Saccaminnow bound

2012-01-20T07:41:00.001-05:00

Okay, at the airport, and once again thinking the annual 50k miles I spend on Sky Club access is worth every penny. If nothing else, dear readers, it provides free wifi for me to blog. I know, tantalizing, right?

First: the TSA Pre Check program is pretty damn nice: to be able to walk through security without taking out my stupid 3-1-1 compliant toiletries, leave my shoes on, leave my laptop in my bag. OH, WAIT: that's what it was before all of this ridiculous security theatre. Okay, neeeeeext...

The Atlanta airport has a pretty nice Atlanta history installation going in in the pedestrian walkway between the B and C terminals. As many of you know, I'm a big fan of history museums, and this stuff is pretty solid. That said, it sort of pretty paints some of the uglier parts of Atlanta history, e.g., highlighting the 1996 Olympics without mentioning Christian Right terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph's bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed two and injured 111, and doesn't bother to even mention a formative part of Atlanta history, the 1906 Atlanta Race Riots.

But actually, one of my main gripes is that it puts an ellipsis my favorite part of my favorite Atlanta quote:

The complete quote:

South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills, peering out from the shadows of the past into the promise of the future.

-- W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 5: Of The Wings of Atlanta

In other news, here is what an angle grinder and set of cheap bolt cutters can do with a little time an initiative. No, I'm not a bike thief. But my plane is about to take off, so more later.

mapleoatmealeggsandwich

2012-01-12T13:03:00.001-05:00

File this emailed coupon under "Absolutely Fucking Opposite of Food Porn".

No, I don't think they're being ironic, or facetious. Some genius actually thinks that (a) this is a food product that (b) is going to sell.

Seriously: who eats this crap?

Not that impressive, but: FOOD PORN!

2012-01-06T19:40:00.000-05:00

Okay, they don't look that impressive, but these stuffed tofu steaks were pretty damn tasty:

I mean, they started out as this:

Well, actually, they started out with this: ONIONS, broccoli stem, and fresh jalapeno, stuffed in the slit tofu steaks:

Pan fried, braised with a sauce of tamari, chili garlic, and sesame oil, then baked for about an hour. Delicious.

And here is some other random food porn, since I was on a stress-reduction cooking binge last night:

$1 @ a time. Or $5.

2012-01-02T14:51:00.001-05:00

My little holiday season project was to give at least $1 to everyone who asked me for money in San Francisco and the East Bay. I didn't keep track, but since i was mostly staying with A & R in the Tenderloin, it wan't an inexpensive undertaking, and I'd estimate out of pocket around $45.

This was in part inspired by A, the first morning i was in SF, giving a guy selling Street Sense in the Civic Center BART station $10. We had just heard the overhead announcement "Attention BART Police, attention BART Police, panhandler on the platform, panhandler on the platform!" Except it was a little more shrill than text can capture. Then this guy shambled up, and could barely articulate the offer to buy Street Sense for $1. Without going in to too much detail, the guy had clearly had a very rough time of it.

A gave him $10 as i was going to my wallet, and said something like "What kind of a heartless motherfucker do you have to be to kick that guy out?" Indeed. So i decided i would give money to everyone who asked me on this trip.

Walking toward the BART station this morning to head to SFO, i found a folded $5 bill laying on the sidewalk in front of the Great American Music Hall, possibly from last night's Primus show.

The next guy who asked, half a block later, had a fairly big ask: "a couple bucks to get me something to eat?" He got the $5, and thanked me all the way down the block. It felt great, as did every other one of the 40+ gives.

Happy New Year! May all of yours be bountiful, gratifying, and unpredictable.

Food porn, travel, and reading -- year end extravaganza

2011-12-30T22:55:00.000-05:00

This is a very nice dinner J and I had out in mid December at Eclipse di Luna in Atlanta:

As you can see from the photos they choose to use on their website, it's a little business crowd Buckhead-y, but we didn't feel at all out of place in biking shoes and our normal (REI heavy schlubby) clothing. We had a halfoffdepot, but even without it, there was plenty of vegan selection, and the food was pretty delicious, so it was worth it.

It's been a veritable vegan food orgy in the San Francisco bay area: Souley Vegan in Oakland

is legitimately one of top ten favorite restaurants ever, of all time, no debate, no discussion. This is the "chicken fried steak" style tofu burger W got, which was insanely reminiscent of something you'd buy at Wendy's, yet actually tasted unbelievable. I could eat this every day.

And this is the before and after of my "choose 3" plate with aforementioned "chicken fried steak" style tofu, "mac and cheezy" and BBQ tofu. Res ipsa loquitor:

This was the night after I had an INCREDIBLE (yes, J, it defied credibility) dinner with E & K at Burma Superstar in Alameda

In case you're wondering, those images are from the pedestrian "path" in the Posey Tube which connects Alameda and Oakland underneath the water. It was a moderately unpleasant walk: loud as shit, and the path is only about 3.5 to 4 feet wide, so had any other pedestrians or cyclists needed to pass me while i was walking precisely ten minutes from one end to the other, we would have contributed to the weird soot wipe-offs on the wall.

The only good shot I got of the Burma Superstar food is the fantastic fermented tea leaf salad:

I know, it sounds a little funky, but this was off the damn charts.

Then last night A and W and I had an AMAZING (yes, J, I was amazed) dinner at Gracias Madre in the Mission. In case you're wondering why I didn't link to the restaurant website, unfortunately, they're looking for a buyer and will be closing down. So figure it out and get there QUICK. The food is delicious. The only decent picture I got was of the "creamed" brussels sprouts and A's tamales:

Then today for lunch I tried to go to Gracias Madre's sister restaurant, also about to close, one of the Cafe gratitude locations, but it was packed to the gills, so I walked back into the Mission proper to Herbivore on Valencia.

When this super delicious seitan BBQ sandwich and the (!) vegan potato salad were one of the less astonishing dishes I've had in the last 72 hours, that's really saying something.

Okay, okay, enough with the food porn! (At least until I process and resize some more images.) Today on the Muni I added up all the books I've completed in 2011, and they amount to 3758 pages read (not counting the crappy ones I put down.)

Probably the best book I read: Mudbound by Hillary Jordan.
Probably the worst book I finished: The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle.
Totally not even worth reading more than a quarter of: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. (Yep: sure, it was "witty" and "incisive". And also "profoundly mediocre" and no way I was going to read 576 pages of it.)

Another terrible picture of another delicious dish

2011-12-30T18:13:00.001-05:00

This is the BBQ seitan sandwich at Herbivore in the Mission in San Francisco. Definitely not as good as Souley Vegan in Oakland (which is truly one of my ten favorite restaurants of all time) but very good nevertheless.

Xmas cheer. Sorta.

2011-12-23T07:39:00.000-05:00

Twas the night before the night before Xmas, and all through the airport. Wait, that's not how that goes.

Here in Atlanta, it's the predictable scene: busy, frenzied travelers, bored, lazy TSA agents, and tons of kettles shocked that they have to remove their shoes. At the Sky Priority line, there was a dude never before seen, and likely never to be seen again, with a radio and a smile but no uniform, happily chatting up the 75 or so of us in the "priority" line, claiming "oh yeah, it's usually like this, maybe just a bit more for the holidays, but at least it's not out the door! It usually is!"

Ummmmmmm, no. It's not out the door, almost ever, at the south security checkpoint at ATL. What the hell are you talking about?

Okay, gotta go catch a flight. To sunny California!

Small Change

2011-12-17T14:28:00.005-05:00

A emailed me this morning quoting a song from Tom Waits' album Small Change, which caused me to put this too-seldom played, incredible album on.

If you don't know it, I suggest you consider listening to the classic The Piano Has Been Drinking.

While I'm still getting used to blogger's new interface, I LOVE the new image interface, which to test, I uploaded this Mystery Picture taken near Alamosa, Colorado:

I love that you can now modify the images once uploaded by clicking on them to get a context menu.

The land? You'll be hearing more about it. Probably.

Blog Archive, by year

2011-12-12T11:15:00.001-05:00

Sure looks like I had a lot of time on my hands in 2010. Sure didn't feel that way.

Always hit it with a hammer.

2011-12-12T10:21:00.006-05:00

Well, so, that kinda sucked. But not quite as badly as it could have. Here's a long story about bikes, locks, and how I spent a couple of my hours last night.

It started when I rode my bike down to Whole Foods to buy some produce for dinner. My whip was the trusty Sitba. I locked Sitba up with my decade+ old Kryptonite U-lock, the combination model. Essentially an older version of this lock:

I've had it since long before I started law school, so... that's a while. No, it's not super high security, but I've long liked the combo lock, and visually it looks strong to non-pro bike thieves. In significant part, it's visual deterrence: a smart bike thief will skip over the U-lock and go for the cable lock most every time, unless they know bikes, and have plenty of time to spend on stealing.

From a user perspective, it's quick and easy.

Yeah, well, it's quick and easy until it gets stuck and you can't open it.

Basically, you turn the numbers to your combo, then push the button right to release the lock. The button was stuck. Really stuck. I tried and tried it, tried to leverage it with my bottle opener, tried every possible angle. No dice.

So I called J, who was riding home from elsewhere, and asked her to gather a bicycle liberation kit: the 4.5" angle grinder, extension cord, ear and eye protection. And kind of on a whim, a hammer. (Hey, why not, right?) And a printout of the spreadsheet I keep on the computer for insurance purposes, detailing our bikes including serial numbers, and hopefully the receipt for the bike. I also pull up a photo of myself on my phone with the bike, and if needed, once it's cut off, could pull out the seatpost and turn it upside down, and my business card (folded into quarters and taped) will fall out. Basically, conflict management with cops and security if J can't find the receipt or other clear proof I own the bike.

I then went in and explained to Employee A at customer service what I was going to do. Basically, make a big ol' loud hot mess right in front of their store. Employee A is totally cool with it: oh, and I can borrow their cutter, no, even better, she'll get someone to do it for me. I'm doubtful that they actually own an angle grinder in the store, but she gets Employee B, who clarifies that it's a set of bolt cutters, and he can't do it for me without me proving it's my bike, which I'm completely comfortable with, and it's kind of moot, since bolt cutters won't work anyway.

So Employee B gets Store Manager A, who is super sympathetic, agrees the bolt cutters won't work, and is highly enthusiastic about my angle grinder plan. Absolutely, anything he can do, of course I can plug in to their power outlet, yeah, sure! I say my wife is on the way, I'll let Store Security Guard A know when I'm about to do it. Sure! Great!

So I stand around outside for a while, keep messing with the lock, have a nice conversation with Homeless Guy A with a bike, who I'd given money to on my way in to the store. (I also gave money to another guy on my way out. Apparently good panhandler karma doesn't translate into good bike lock karma.) Homeless Guy A is chilling out at the outside tables in front of Whole Foods, which Parking Lot Security Guard A and Off Duty APD Cop A don't dig, so they hustle him out of there with a mix of fake friendliness and slightly cruel sarcasm. I glare from about ten feet away, but they ignore me. Probably for the better to avoid direct conflict, since I'm going to look like a bike thief in a few minutes.

J arrives, I go back inside and mention to Store Security Guard A what I'm about to do, and he's almost as enthusiastic as Store Manager A. (And doesn't bother to inquire whether I own the bike.)

First power outlet doesn't work, second one father away does, so while J is unraveling the 100' extension cord, I decide to bang at it with the hammer, mostly for fun. Two bangs on that nasty little button, and it opens up just fine.

So we collect our little middle class bike theft kit, I put the bike on the back of the car, and Store Security Guard A comes out to congratulate us, and tell us to have a good night.

The moral of the story? I dunno. Maybe that being a white middle class Whole Foods customer with power tools is a really effective modus operandi for being a bike thief? Or maybe: "always hit it with a hammer." Yeah. Maybe that.

Colorado beer, food porn, etc.

2011-12-11T16:52:00.010-05:00

The important stuff, of course.

Our Colorado vacation included visits to four new breweries, as well as a return visit to an old friend, Wynkoop, and the previously posted Trinity Brewing Company in Colorado Springs.

San Luis Valley Brewing Company, Alamosa:

Denver Beer Company:

Strange Brewing Company, Denver, before:

Strange Brewing Company, Denver, after:

Tasty beer, and tasty food:

A terrible picture showing the incredibly tasty vegan buffalo wings, and a fun vegan poutine, at City O' City, Denver (sister restaurant to the always lovely Watercourse, where we had breakfast yesterday before flying out):

Unfortunately, they seriously upscaled City O' City and jacked up the prices. I'll still keep going for the wings, but it's a big disappointment.

We also did a fair bit of our own cooking when the hotel rooms provided for it. This is a pasta with fresh broccoli, green peppers, and fake chicken from Gardein. Tasty. The Full Sail Wassail and bourbon were nice too, since it was COLD. Like, really, seriously cold. -4 before windchill, with stiff winds.

This is at Root Down in Denver, which is fancy and somewhat spendy, but has some great happy hour specials (pdf), and all vegan items clearly marked on the menu. Vegans should make sure when they order the sweet potato fries (right) to get a dipping sauce other than the "Curry Lime Dunk" which has sour cream in it. Boo. The portobello slider (top) was tasty but a little too sweet, while the Edamame Hummus with fried wonton chips (left) was RIDICULOUSLY good.

This is a semi-artistic rendering of our drinks, including the $3 happy hour draft, Odell's Isolation Ale. J's Rosemary-Lavender Lemonade (left) was actually $2 more!

Root Down has these super cool "smart" toilets: after you do your business, you wash your hands in the sink on top, then it uses the gray water as the next flush. The only problem is that the temperature of the sink water is cold (granted, it's December in Denver) but it seems like this could easily be fixed by just plumbing it with warmer water.

And, since no good food porn post would be truly complete without: ONIONS! Before flying out, we knocked out a bunch of tofu and onions to make wraps:
Yes, it was a bit of a risk, since the last two times J and I have taken wraps through the ATL south security checkpoint, it has resulted in false positives for bomb residue. It didn't happen this time.

Incidentally, that's a Thomas Hardy 2005 in the wine glass in the background of the photo.

Okay, with all this blogging about food, maybe I should go buy some so we can have dinner tonight. Just food, though: here in Atlanta, we remain in the dark ages until January 1, 2012.

Denver Beer Company

2011-12-09T14:35:00.002-05:00

Solid. Just, solid. The basic pale ale, Bunny Trail Pale Ale, is one of the best I've had in a long time.

Denver Beer Company

New favorite brewpub

2011-12-08T10:59:00.001-05:00

At least in the top five: Trinity Brewing Company in Colorado Springs. Exciting beers, great people, shitty location, and some of the best vegan buffalo wings I've ever had.

Don't worry, A2, we're going to go update the vegan wings competition today at City O' City. We'll toast you!

J is a genius, again.

2011-12-08T10:56:00.001-05:00

Toasting bagels with an iron for hotel room breakfast. (J gives credit to Top Chef for this surprisingly effective technique.)

Yep, we're rocking it super classy style here at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort, in the shadow of NORAD. Hey, it was Priceline, okay?

Vintage, indeed.

2011-12-05T19:02:00.001-05:00

The Vintage Resort Hotel in Winter Park, Colorado. Putting the vintage back in vintage.

We sat in the outdoor hot tub last might when it was 4 degrees, then ran like hell for the indoor dry sauna. Priceless!

Google+ = SUCK, Part Deux

2011-12-02T12:57:00.005-05:00

Following up on the preceding post, this asshat spamming me through Google+ is what led to it:

I still haven't figured out a way to block someone from my "circle" without first joining Google+. Lame. Suggestions welcome.

Well, I'll make it all feel better by going skiing in Colorado with J. We leave tomorrow. Yay! Time to pack.

Google+ = SUCK.

2011-11-27T09:07:00.002-05:00

Dear Google+: here's the thing. I don't WANT you. I don't WANT social networking. I LIKE being un-networked socially.

Why am I yelling at you in public like this, ironically enough using your own platform (blogger)? Because people I don't know are adding me to their Google+ circles, then spamming me. And I can't block them without "joining" your goddamn service.

You fail.

p.s. Anyone know how I can block someone without joining? Please let me know!

Facebook, by Dinosaur Comics

2011-11-22T11:40:00.001-05:00

I didn't find the comic today as incredible as usual, but the mouseover, above, was CLEARLY AWESOME.

Ubuntu, external USB hard drives, and .Trash:

2011-11-16T10:34:00.003-05:00

And much frustration ensued.

Okay, it's like this. My computer has been giving me some trouble on bootup lately. Finding annoying disk errors that (maybe) aren't really there, not letting me try to fix them, etc. So I decided to do some work on it.

(in case anyone happened upon this through searching the webs and cares, I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx; and the external hard drive pre-dates my generally very happy switch to Ubuntu, so it was initially used on a windows XP machine.)

Before starting said "work" I decided to do the smart thing and back up my important files to an external hard drive. Smart, no?

So first I went through the external USB hard drive (320gb), which had all manner of shit on it from many years of use, much of it redundant backups (like, say, "Acer laptop backup Nov 09", "Acer Laptop Backup June 10" and "important files from Acer laptop Dec 10", which a bunch of repetition) and started trashing things. Then clicked "Empty Trash". Presto!

Except ubuntu does this clever thing where it doesn't actually let you delete the files completely: it saves them in a folder called .Trash-1000. So something like /media/ExternalVolumeName/.Trash.1000.

This will give your dumb ass a second chance if you accidentally deleted something, then emptied the trash, and then changed your mind. Great, right? Sorta not, since it means that you don't recover the disk space.

So I kept trying to delete these nasty files. And somehow, somewhere deep in a dark hole, it created some sort of circular/redundant result, and kept trying to move the files to the trash. See this screen shot?

Remember that this is from a 320GB external hard drive, and it's the only other drive mounted on my desktop computer (which also happens to have a 320 GB hard drive, and no other storage.) So obviously, something is wrong when it's preparing to delete 1.7 terrabytes.

I finally got pissed off this morning and went with the nuclear option: since I'd already backed up the important files from the external drive, I fired up Disk Utility and reformatted the damn thing. And lived happily ever after. I think. Now I'm about to do a fresh new backup of files back to the external drive, so I can go back to the original problem. So we'll see if another followup blog post tells more tales of woe.

food porn, SPECIAL EDITION: VINTAGE!

2011-11-12T13:58:00.003-05:00

Going through an external hard drive, and came across some cool VINTAGE food porn! Yay!

This is a bigass pan of potatoes, tofu, peppers, and ONIONS that I made for a camping trip that my brother S and his son D and I did in Alaska in summer 2008. It was delicious. Bears visited the cabin next to Eklutna Lake. I fell and got hurt riding my bike back to the car with the kid trailer for more firewood. I got towed by a guy on his four wheeler, got the firewood, rode back the approximately 2 miles, bleeding heavily, and S did excellent brother care: he found the vodka.

Here's a closeup of the potatoes, tofu, onions, and peppers. It was good stuff.

This is our grill in Anchorage with tofu steaks and seitan steaks. Yum.

This is that dinner, plated, with vegan creamed spinach and sauteed mushrooms.

This is a delicious fried tofu hot salad, with careful presentation. I have absolutely no idea when it's from.

Broadway bike time lapse

2011-11-10T13:18:00.001-05:00

This video almost made me a little seasick, but it's still pretty cool: a time lapse from a helmet cam of a person riding all 13 miles of Broadway, south from the Bronx to lower Manhattan.

Vegan hotel room food porn

2011-11-04T16:00:00.003-04:00

I know, y'all just can't get enough of this shit, can you?

The hotel is quite nice, especially with a jacuzzi and wonderful heated indoor pool. I love having tons of hotel points.

(UPDATE: I wish the camera on my phone didn't suck, since it's an awfully convenient way of mobile blogging. Sorry for the craptastic quality of a lot of the images.)

Vegan food porn, CNY Redux

2011-11-04T15:53:00.001-04:00

Same as in this post, this is the spicy tofu scramble at Strong Hearts Cafe in Syracuse. While the folks i'm working with have been great about accommodating my veganism, this was still a special treat this morning.

Back to ATL tomorrow, then J and I are presenting together (for the first time in years) in NYC on Tuesday about street medics. Pretty cool.

I'm a snot machine, but life is great.

Vegan Indian food: Syracuse!

2011-11-01T20:31:00.001-04:00

The $9 lunch buffet at Samrat in Syracuse was AMAZING. The pickle was genuinely some of the best I've ever had. Wow. I stuffed myself at 2:30pm so extensively I couldn't even think of eating again yesterday.

Charlotte, NC airport: NOT HELPFUL

2011-10-23T18:53:00.001-04:00

Third in a series.

The inside of the bathroom stall, where you have to use your thumbnail to lock the door.

Charlotte, NC airport: HELPFUL

2011-10-23T18:51:00.001-04:00

Second in a series.

The DUI station is the bathroom, the only one I've ever seen.

Charlotte, NC airport: not helpful

2011-10-23T18:48:00.001-04:00

First in a series.

A non-working flight status screen, and an asshole airport employee who wants to be a rentacop throwing me massive stinkeye for photographing it.

TSA = incompetent asshats

2011-10-13T07:40:00.007-04:00

I know, I know: what y'all really want to hear about is my vegan sky club breakfast:
From top left, that's a screwdriver, a half-caf "espresso", and my spork from home in oatmeal with raisins in a compostable, 100% recycled cup. No indication that composting is available in the sky club, nor the amount of post-consumer content in the 100% recycled cup.

But I digress. As the title indicates, I mostly want to rant a little about how incompetent TSA is. Now, my rather dim opinion of TSA is known to readers of this blog. But they really outdid themselves at ATL this morning.

First off, the guy at the xray monitor: totally amateur hour. At least the slow, incompetent guy at Las Vegas the other day was clearly a trainee. This guy was, apparently from his uniform, an actual TSA "agent." I literally stood to wait to push my bags through the belt while he examined the monitor for several full minutes. To the point where I was laughing. To the point where the TSA agent at the metal detector was looking around uncomfortably, knowing this dumbass was holding up the line. To the point where they decided (not uncoincidentally, I think) to shut down the p*nis machine, aka millimeter wave scanner, because they had to dedicate all available agents on that lane to doing secondary screenings the dude on the monitor asked for.

Okay, so I finally get to get through, and stand there and watch while he looks all curious like at the monitor with my one carryon. He tries repeatedly to draw outline boxes with his mouse around the two danger areas: my sunglasses (which I've taken through, ummm, lemme see, EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN FLIGHT I'VE BEEN ON SINCE AT LEAST 2004) and my breakfast wrap. Yep: my tortilla with tempeh, caramelized onions, green beans, garlic, and vegan cheese. This very suspicious looking thing:

Okay, it's wrapped up in tin foil. One sheet. Like, ummm, I dunno, about FIFTY similar wraps I've taken through TSA in the last several years.

Okay, so he pulls the bag over to the secondary screening conveyor. Conveyors do not convey. I stand there for literally about 60 seconds looking at my bag, and finally ask if I can get it screened. The two nasty TSA agents in the next station literally yell at me: ONE AT A TIME! Oh, oops: there is a backup of THREE people needing secondary screening and explosives testing at my lane.

Okay, so I wait another several minutes. My line has... stopped. Nobody is going anywhere.

Finally it's my turn to get screened, and the guy goes through my bag. Asks about the sunglasses. Opens up the case, but not the bag they are in. Okay, fine. Asks about the wrap. "A breakfast wrap", I tell him. Okay, I just need to screen this for explosives. Ummm, sure. He screens it for explosives. AND IT TURNS UP WITH A POSITIVE RESULT.

So now this is getting fun. I actually am about to get the dreaded invasive patdown. They have to go through every single thing in my (rather innocuous, except for a shitload of vegan snacks, and an allegedly explosive breakfast wrap) carryon bag. Which is, incidentally, a Mountainsmith Day Pack which most of you who know me have seen before. No suitcase (I checked it), my liquids all properly compliant with that sillyass 3-1 rule, my laptop out, my shoes off. Oh, but they have to run my shoes again. 'Cause the first time wasn't enough, 'cause my breakfast wrap came up positive for explosives.

So the poor TSA agent at secondary, who I'm actually beginning to feel somewhat bad for, has to launch in a long, detailed explanation of all the places he's going to put his hands on my body. I actually needed a clarification when he got to the point of where his hands will be in my crotch: he mumbled, and I was genuinely interested. (No, he wasn't that cute, I just wanted to know what kind of fun time I was about to have.) He mumbled it again, but now I was pretty sure he'd referred to the top of my crotch as my "isthmus."

An isthmus, for those of you who are wondering, is "a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land areas usually with waterforms on either side." Thanks, wikipedia. Confidential to TSA: you should let your agents read wikipedia at work.

As he was explaining what he was about to do, and I'm openly laughing at the notion that my breakfast wrap tested positive for explosives, he's trying to show me through his body language and tone that he agrees it's kind of silly. He said something to the effect of "just so you know, this isn't my favorite part of the job." Yeah, pal: me, neither.

He has to call a supervisor over, who re-asks me all the same stupid questions he has already asked. Yes, it's a FUCKING BREAKFAST BURRITO. I told them they were welcome to open it up, or I'd be happy to open it up for them. I explained each of the ingredients in it, and started to go into detail about the cooking methods. The supervisor got a little nasty with me, so I asked her if she was hungry, and told her I'd share.

Anyway, the patdown was relatively uneventful. He tickled my armpits a little, and did, indeed, get marginally up into my "isthmus" but didn't actually grope me. And was very consciously and carefully (para)-professional about it. And slooooooooow. The whole fandango took about 15 minutes. Literally.

Yes, friends, that is, along with a pre-flight screwdriver in the Sky Club, why I try to get to the airport at least two hours early. So I have plenty of time to be fondled by TSA, whose stupidass machine says my breakfast wrap has explosive residue on it.

The TSA masseuse actually told me, sincerely, to have a safe flight when he was done. I thanked him. It's sort of not his fault that he works for a BUNCH OF FUCKING IDIOTS.

Fucking idiots. Fucking shitass equipment. Fucking ridiculous security theatre nonsense foolishness.

On now to Philadelphia, for which my flight is delayed due to ground holds. Gonna be a rainy couple of days.

Mmmmmm... vegan donuts

2011-10-09T10:59:00.001-04:00

Why eat one, when you can eat a dozen? No, actually, not all these are for me. I'm on my way to a protest and vigil. Seriously.

Vegas

2011-10-08T19:17:00.001-04:00

Ahem.

Thinking I might go to Komol tonight. A2, you should be here!

New Bike Day!

2011-10-07T10:54:00.002-04:00

J got a new bike yesterday, a Mercier Kilo TT Pro. We need to get a singlespeed rear cog, since the flip-flip ships fixie, and she'll soon be ready to roll. 'Cause J is fierce, but even I don't rock the City of a Hundred Hills fixed.

UPDATE: J is SO DAMN FIERCE that she does, indeed, rock it fixed most of the time.

Too long

2011-09-19T15:30:00.011-04:00

Heh. Only a couple of you get the reference in this post's title, but I'll keep it obscure. Simply said, it's been a while since I had a general information post, and I'm sure my loyal readership, all 5.38 of you, need some FOOD PORN!

And actually, check out the labels for this post: it has a little bit to please everyone! (food porn, travel, bikes, fundraising, onions, homebrewing)

It's been busy, but also pleasantly slow-ish (as much as I let myself take things easy, I have.) The fall protest travel season is on the near horizon, and I'm out of town every weekend in October, and at least three in November.

The travel starts with riding in the Wapiyapi Classic in Aspen next weekend, which I'm very excited about. (And which I'll throw out one last pitch for you to please consider donating, as I talked all about in this post.) I'll get invited to a pre-ride party hosted by Lance Armstrong and Anna Hansen if I'm one of the top 10 fundraisers, and currently, thanks mostly to the lovely and generous people who read this blog, I'm #8 9 (but by a thin margin.) Please consider donating: http://www.active.com/donate/wapiyapi2011, and type my name into the boxes at the top next to "Find a fundraiser to support".

Okay, okay, to make this worth your while, how about some images, including FOOD PORN, and ONIONS!

Due to popular reader demand, how 'bout some FOOD PORN, and ONIONS! Conveniently co-located with tofu, which almost deserves its own label on this blog, and featuring a visit by some freshly chopped sage leaves.

File this one under the "J is a genius" category. And not just at her chosen profession. So, our (apprimxtaley 8 or 9 year old) washing machine has increasingly been stopping mid-cycle. Basically, for no obvious reason, the lid got bent, and so the contact that tells the machine the lid is closed and it's okay to start spinning all the water out was regularly not engaging.

So I started feeling around in the works, and the craptastic plastic assembly literally started crumbling in my hands, out of sight. I pulled half a dozen pieces of plastic crap out, never again to be properly reassembled. I avoided dropping any of them in the washer full of water (clearly shown in the picture.) Oh, and I got lightly electrocuted.

Enter J's genius. And her small hands. She started feeling around, and determined it was basically a single crappy connection, and hypothesized (which fancyschmancy scientists do) that all we needed to do was pull it out, twist it together, tape it up, and stuff it back in.

I took this one level ~~further~~ easier, and proposed we just twist and tape it above the hole.

Which we did.

And it works a charm!

Non-sequitur #1: Grilling peaches, pineapple, and.... I can't really tell for sure.

Grilling peaches, pineapple, and pears!

No, those aren't vegan organic hand grenades. They're eggplants studded with rough-cut garlic and then baked, which infuses them in a truly extraordinary way to make baba ghanoush. Another shining example of "J is a genius."

Eating healthy. WOOT.

Drinking creatively, even if not, ummm, healthy. Friends and I did three all-grain batches yesterday, which was honeslty too ambituous, but I'd already smacked the yeast smack packs, so we'd have lost almost $8 if we didn't brew the third batch.

From left, that's a bourbon oaked imperial stout, then a spiced pumpkin strong-ish (7.7% ABV) ale, and a witbier.

I made an outstanding decision and didn't drive home after a long day of Rule #1.

Okay, need to ride to the library and drop off donations for Friends of the Library, then think about dinner. It'll definitely involve onions (I bought a ten pound bag today) and spinach (I bought 2 pounds of organic spinach.) Mission: cookbook shelf!

Another fundraising pitch

2011-09-14T16:26:00.002-04:00

[apologies for cross-posting if you already received this via e-mail!]

Hello friends and family,

So, here's the thing: I really hate asking for money. Seriously.

And since I mostly don't do social media, it's hard to reach out semi-anonymously. (Though I'm going to blog this well... again.)

I'm going to ask anyway, and if you can give even $5 or $10 (or more!) that would be fantastic. And if not, and I know many of you don't have a lot of money to give, no problem at all.

I'd like you to consider donating to the Wapiyapi Classic, a 50 and 25 mile bike ride that J and I will both be riding later this month in Colorado. You can donate by going to this page and typing in my name at the top. My mom made a really extraordinary donation, so I have easily met my fundraising goal, but this is really a great cause that I'd like you to consider.

As you might recall, I rode last year's Courage Classic in memory of J's best friend from medical school, Gretchen Life. Gretchen and her husband died in a boating accident on Lake Ponchartrain shortly after Hurricane Katrina. I blogged about it, and that post explains a lot of the background of why this ride, and the Courage Classic, are so important to me. Please check it out.

The Courage Classic was an amazing experience: summiting Colorado mountains with Richard, Gretchen's dad. Patients from Children's Hospital waved us out at the start, and into the finish line. And gave great high-fives. Literally dozens of times throughout the weekend, I was struck by how important Gretchen's loves, children and pediatric medicine, were.

The Wapiyapi Classic is a little different, but very much in the same vein. 100% of the proceeds from the ride benefit Camp Wapiyapi:

Wapiyapi is a Colorado based nonprofit organization that offers a community of hope and support to families affected by childhood cancer. Wapiyapi hosts free summer camps and year-round family retreats to provide a respite for children with cancer and their families.

Gretchen volunteered at Camp Wapiyapi, and changed the lives of children living with cancer, and their families. J and I are doing this ride as a small part of trying to help carry on this beautiful mission.

Please consider donating. And if you have already, or even if you can't this time around but made it this far: THANK YOU!

I hope you are well, and happy, and excited, and challenged. If we haven't been in touch recently: please, let's change that!

Love,
d

Motorized ice chests: Part II

2011-08-27T16:16:00.003-04:00

Turns out that motorized ice chests, previously given only cursory mention in this blog, can have a useful application:

Unfortunately, it can also have unfortunate consequences: a DUI ticket. And not just in Australia.

So think carefully about where and how you'll operate it before spending between $349 and $1,399 on a Cruzin Cooler.

Leaving New York, yeah...

2011-08-26T20:03:00.004-04:00

Yep, evacuating. Seems like a good call. Delta gave one freebie change, and I booked direct to ATL, totally spacing that I could have gone to CT/VT to join J and out niece and nephew to camp and hike.

Detailed photos of the WALK IN to JFK coming soon!

MoMA

2011-08-25T13:43:00.001-04:00

Much Madness. Ok, neat museum, it was free for me, but it's a horrific visitor experience. It's jam packed with people taking pictures of random shit, who have no ability or willingness to share space courteously and/intelligently.

At least I took a picture of something good.

Ok, so...

2011-08-23T16:48:00.001-04:00

Tasters for a buck. Ok. But tasters for a buck that come in a tiny portion cup? Not ok. J Ryan's: you saddened me.

OK:

2011-08-23T12:48:00.001-04:00

Syracuse has its charms. The Erie Canal Museum is actually excellent. Small, but well done.

And right across the street is J Ryan's , and excellent beer bar with a lovely outdoor patio. Sure, the interstate looms overhead, but it's pretty cool to drink a beer on what literally used to be the Erie Canal.

All the better that that beer is a $4 cask Middle Ages Druid Fluid Barleywine. Say whaaaat? Better get my cheap beer in before I get to NYC tomorrow.

Middle Ages Druid Fluid Barleywine

vegan food porn, upstate New York style!

2011-08-23T10:43:00.004-04:00

This is the Spicy Tofu Scramble at Strong Hearts Cafe, just down the street from my hotel in Syracuse. The scramble was good, not amazing, the toast came out dry (but fortunately they have a cruet of olive oil handy), and the coffee bordered on bad. I think it was instant: it had that consistency weirdness going on, and lots of semi-tasteless sludge at the bottom. But I'll absolutely return: $6 for a tofu scramble? Cheap, good enough, and I like to support 100% vegan restaurants.

Wow, Syracuse is... kinda boring. I'm actually struggling to fill up the one full day I have here. I think I'm going to go over to the Erie Canal Museum. Yeah. Like, for real.

Fortunately central New York has a pretty solid regional beer scene, so drinking is a real option.

I visited "The 'Cuse" a number of times in the late 90s and early 00s, since E2 went to school here, but we always had a little routine of places to go, and I never had to much think about how to pass a day. Sometime today I'll probably hit up an old favorite, Empire Brewing. Had a nice vegan sandwich last night at Sparky Town, which had RIDICULOUSLY nice people working there. Actually, on balance, the average central New Yorker resident seems to be quite nice.

Tomorrow is a court hearing (not appearance) in a SYR suburb, then flying to JFK.

Vegas airport, redux

2011-08-18T23:53:00.001-04:00

Ok, the Las Vegas airport still sucks, but I have to be fair and update a couple things. The shitty annoying airtrain is only necessary if you're going to D terminal. It's still stupid.

The food options throughout D still suck, but there are two known vegan options: the Baja Fresh Express, and for almost double the price for about half the food, the vegan wrap at Burke in the Box.

The beer is still wildly overpriced, but they do sell it in bigass mugs.

It's oddly slow in the airport tonight. Guess Thursdays when it's 103 aren't big.

Walking out of airports: Vegas edition, baby!

2011-08-18T15:10:00.001-04:00

My feelings about the Las Vegas airport are known, but no airport is too terrible to walk out of , right?

Well, there might be a better way here, but I just walked to the "Zero Level" (fancy code for ground level) of the parking deck, then across the employee parking lot, through a drainage ditch, over a low wall, across a busy road, over another low wall, across another busy road, and BAM: I was on Russell Road heading east toward Maryland Parkway (which, conveniently, is the road UNLV is on.)

The bulk of the walk was quite pleasant, in the high 90s with intense sun.

I'm thinking about other routes for my return walk this evening.

vegan food porn, grill style

2011-08-15T14:37:00.004-04:00

So, here's the thing: in condos in the City of Atlanta, you can't have propane grills (or any other open flame) on your balcony. And when you live in a complex with a ton of other units, using the community grills, no matter how well they're cleaned, just isn't that attractive for vegan grilling.

So we finally buckled down, and bought a small electric grill, this Meco 9300.

Naturally I was excited with the manufacturer's capacity demonstration:

I nevertheless went a slightly different route for the inaugural grilling, with fresh Georgia crookneck squash, tofu steaks, and Georgia banana peppers.

Then some fresh Georgia grilled corn, and tempeh.

Toward the end, I threw on some green onions and marinated artichoke hearts, and we made toast to go with it. Yum!

Airplanes, Peru, food porn, avocados

2011-08-10T13:38:00.009-04:00

Pretty excellent comic that's relatively new to me: The Oatmeal. Check this one out for How commercial airplanes should be laid out.

And alright, Apple Juice definitely didn't find me, so it's time for some... wait... FOOD PORN, PERU STYLE!

Here's the summary: I ate pretty well, went through probably 5000-7000 calories in an average riding day, got almost no protein except quinoa, ate a literal shitton of avocados (sometimes three in a meal, sometimes ten per day.)

Peruvian food is... bland. Almost everything you see below required salt and pepper, at a minimum, to be added.

This is the special breakfast I got served three or four mornings at our hotel in Cusco, while my fellow trip members ate scrambled eggs that looked like yellow and white dish scrubbies. Yes, I shared. No, I didn't eat the honey.

The folks who cooked for us on the trip went out of their way to make me special vegan food. Yay! This was a lunchtime salad. Sometimes lunch occurred at 10am.

Breakfast. I told you I ate a lot of avocado, right?

Pizza! We went to this place at the foot of Macchu Picchu twice, and, uhhhh, I got some avocado. I was particularly hungry at this meal: this was when we hiked up Macchu Picchu, and Huayna Picchu, and then A6 (I think he's A6) and I hiked back down on the road with about a million switchbacks, rather than do another set of endless stairs.

Bland food, but you do see a lot of beautiful salad presentations in Peru. This is at the same pizza place as in the previous shot.

Ummmmm, how about more avocado, and more salad?

Okay, how about more salad. And more avocado.

Need more avocado, and more salad?

Fine, sure: more avocado. Good thing I love avocado so damn much.

Most of the coffee in Peru is, in a word, dreadful. I drank a ton of instant, made ultra-strong just to make it drinkable. The brewed coffee in hotels and restaurants was usually thin, bitter, insipid crap.

I drank a decent amount of beer, too. This is Cusquena, the beer that had floating around under the seat in the van for a week, that we drank while driving back from our last day of biking. It was pretty bad. It did provide for one highly amusing (for some) moment: in my rush to toast, I foamed beer all over the trip leader, and A6. They were... not amused. But everyone else was.

Lots of quinoa. Usually bland, usually with bland, unseasoned tiny vegetables in it.

We went back to this place three times. No, it isn't that amazing, but the trip leader really liked it. And after an initial incident with mayonaise, they figured out how to serve me avocado vegan-style. We actually managed to empty their stock of avocados on at least one occasion.

This is a sandwich. Yep, really. This is at the Cusco airport restaurant, but it burned through through nine soles (about USD$3.25) and got some food in my stomach.

The lovely little hostel I stayed a couple nights at in Miraflores, Lima, The Gallery House, had a kitchen. So I ate some more avocado!

I mixed up the avocado with sauteed ONIONS! and asparagus.

WAAAAAAIT. You said you want a detail of ONIONS?!? You got it! Oh, and some garlic playing second fiddle.

It may not look super appetizing, but a terribly exciting find in the supermarket in Lima was dry protein chunks (essentially dehydrated seitan.) They were a little over USD$3, and got some much needed vegan protein into my diet.

On my last full day in Peru, I stayed at a basic but totally serviceable hotel near the airport called Hostal Victor, and took my own picnic dinner (and breakfast, and avocado sandwich for the flight the next day.)

Okay, enough food porn for now. Gotta get chugging on, uhhhhh.... other stuff.

More Peru food porn

2011-08-09T17:41:00.001-04:00

This includes the juice from the crazy orange juice machine I blogged about in the Lima airport. Looks pretty unlikely that Apple Jack is gonna find me, so I plan to put up more images soon from my mountain biking trip in Peru.

High Museum = lame

2011-08-08T08:27:00.005-04:00

I really like museums. Most of you who have traveled with me know this. I particularly like free and cheap museums. Even museums that aren't free or cheap, I can love: I'm a huge fan of the Atlanta History Center, and rank it in my top five or ten favorite museums anywhere (this list include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, LAMCA: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the British Museum.) I did a significant chunk of my law school studying at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston.)

We've lived less than a mile from the High Museum, which bills itself as the "leading art museum in the southeastern United States", for over two years. We haven't gone, though, since it's stupidly expensive: $18 for adults. Finally, a halfoffdepot.com coupon and J getting in free through her work enticed us to spend a hot, muggy Saturday afternoon there.

The air conditioning was nice, but on balance, it was an incredible disappointment. Despite a truly stunning (if somewhat disorienting) physical space, it's totally overrated. The curation is ridiculous: it looks like someone went on a meth binge with an art history book in one hand and googled the word "modern" with the other. There was a photography "exhibit" I was excited to see that ended ended up consisting of one room, about 10x10, four photos, and an "interactive" display (where you can put different sizes of frames against a print to see if you would have framed it the same. Whee.) They tell me that John Marin was the most important American artist of his time. Huh? The guards occasionally have to literally yell at the stupid people who touch the art. Yes: yell. As in: "DON'T TOUCH! DON'T TOUCH! DON'T TOUCH!" Navigating through the three major wings and walkways is confusing even with the map. There is all sorts of "art" that is only "art" because the museum tells me it is.

And I'm not the only one who thinks the High Museum is on the wrong track.

It's a kinda long story as to why, but we ended up getting in entirely for free yesterday. I'm going to give away my remaining free entry voucher: it's that uninteresting to me to bother going back in the next two months. Oh, if you want to check it out yourself for free, that famous patron of fine art, Target, is sponsoring free admission on Thursdays in September.

MIA sucks

2011-08-03T19:29:00.001-04:00

Yep, it's official: MIA is definitely my least favorite domestic airport (indeed, it ranks near the bottom of all airports.) Stairs, escalators, elevators, and ridiculously long walks plague this dump. I just wanted to check out dinner at a place next to D8, I'm flying out of E9. The walk, done rapidly just short of jogging, took 20 minutes, including a stint on the Airtrain.

Ultimately I didn't have time to risk ordering food and waiting for it. I hustled back (a slightly arduous journey since the ol' tum-tum is on a flight rebellion.) I got to my gate with five minutes to spare, to consider the way the BA 747 dwarfs the Aerolineas Stalinistas 738 I'm flying (can't really complain, though, since I'm in first class, on miles, which is making this whole journey vastly more pleasant.)

In case you're curious, though J and the newly re-coined W already know this: the only close competition for worst domestic airport is DFW (which you might know is also a major hub for Aerolineas Stalinistas. Coincidence? Unsolved mystery? Dear readers, you be the judge.

Oh, and, in case anyone is wondering why I'm prattling about this rather than the wild trip I'm returning from... I have a bet with a fellow trip participant that he can't find this blog by googling me. He has a week, so I'll post images and text soon-ish. Even writing this, of course, is sort of throwing him bone. You listening, Eh Jaay? Yep, this is me!

Crazy orange juice machine

2011-08-03T07:17:00.001-04:00

res ipsa loquitor, no?

Peru food porn!

2011-08-02T15:15:00.001-04:00

At a nice little hotel, Hostal Victor, http://www.hostels.com/hostels/lima/hostal-victor---airport-hostel/1070, 10 minutes from the airport. Got food, got books, got cheap red wine, got wifi, so all set to post up and get a good night's sleep before my 0430 (ugh) transfer to the airport.

"Premium" lounge at MIA

2011-07-21T19:06:00.001-04:00

Citrogne, Grand Marnier, fresh fruit. Yep. Life is excellent.

Obligatory

2011-07-21T14:35:00.001-04:00

beach picture, since I'm standing in the ocean. Life is outstanding. Holy shit, I have a great life.

Vegan Miami Beach!

2011-07-21T14:04:00.001-04:00

I know, a little surprising, but true, and delicious. This was a raw vegan pasta-less eggplant lasagna at ThriveVegan.com. Delicious!

Miami Beach

2011-07-21T13:48:00.001-04:00

Kinda, well, sucks. But I have 12 hours to kill before my flight to Lima (whee!) and MIA is genuinely one of my least favorite airports on earth, so... yeah. Had a decent stout at Abbey Brewing Co., which A and W (the Artist Formerly Known As J2. Or J3. Or something) may remember from our rough sleeping romp to Florida . (happy barfday, W!)

In Peru mountain biking and wandering through August 3, so posting will be sparse. Shocking, no?

WV,

2011-07-20T17:40:00.003-04:00

Sorry, readers: it's been a wild few weeks. Got back from West Virginia Monday midnight, and fly out to Peru tomorrow morning for 8 days of mountain biking. Yes, yes: life is rough. Or not.

In a likely futile attempt to satiate my readership in the meantime, what's better than some FOOD PORN?

A full on salad and fixins before I left ATL.

Here is some high speed vegan stir frying love in the outdoor kitchen.

Here are some fresh pickles, and some of my very kind and capable sous chefs prepping for the dinner I made for around 12-14 people (wraps and fresh pickles.) An excellent new friend who, shall, sigh, be coined J5, provided a ton of fresh produce, including a case of cucumbers.

OK, it's not food porn, but it is about West Virginia: this is what your tub looks like when you clean your thermarest in it.

Taking:

2011-07-01T22:09:00.001-04:00

Taking suicide food to a whole new offensive level.

Welcome to West Virginia.

Wild and Wonderful!

2011-06-30T07:31:00.001-04:00

A picture of last night's schmancy vegan dessert, at Cafe Sunflower, for my slightly early birthday dinner (or J's very, very delayed birthday dinner, depending on how you see it.)

Headed to the airport now, for the first of a couple trips to WV this month, and got on the MARTA in the correct direction at that. Yay!

(as one reader, A2, knows, the last time I took MARTA to the airport, I got on the northbound train, and didn't realize it until, ahem, Doraville.)

Running, Eating, Playing

2011-06-29T20:54:00.004-04:00

Last Saturday, J and I ran a 5k, J PR'd, then we treated ourselves to a big, delicious vegan brunch at Soul Vegetarian 2 (which notwithstanding the name is actually 100% vegan):

This is the tofu scramble and soysage.

And with the tofu scramble in the background, vegan pancakes, and the house classic BBQ Kalebone Twists, with mac and "cheese" and collard green sides.

Even better, it was a Scoutmob!

We then went to play in the streets at Atlanta Streets Alive, which was lovely and inspiring and calming and exciting. Yes, all of those at once.

Tomorrow I fly back to Wild and Wonderful. I'll miss J for much of the next 1.5 months, between WV, Peru, and upstate NY, but I'm also excited to be back in WV.

of Js and motorized ice chests

2011-06-24T09:02:00.003-04:00

This photograph was taken by our friend J2*, who was on the phone with J when he saw it in Albuquerque:
Yes, friends and neighbors: that's a motorized ice chest. No, I don't know why he made it, how fast it goes, or where the guy puts his feet while (riding?) J2*, feel free to elaborate in the comments section if you have additional details!

*As I was starting to write this post, I found myself in the throes of a naming dilemma: I realized I have described two different people as J2 in previous blog posts. And I have already coined a J3 and a J4, so I can't just reassign further muddying the waters. As a matter of fact, I was out at a local filmmaker showing last night with J4 and someone who will now be coined J5 when J was on the abovementioned phone call with J2*. This shit is getting confusing!

The thing is, you'd have to know me reasonably well and at least know of my friends if not know them personally to be able to decipher who any given blog post references. And referencing people in the blog is mostly a shoutout to the person, not meant to identify them to the masses on the internetz. So any confusion, well... kinda doesn't really matter.

But dammit, what was it with naming kids names that start with J in the 1970s and 1980s? Actually, a little more internetting shows that J names were awfully prominent throughout most of the 20th century.

Thus, going forward, it's like this: J2(a) and J2(b), y'all are now joined in cosmic-cyberspace bondage. This is forever, since the internetz don't forget. Readers, you'll just have to sleuth it out in any given post, or email me for clarification. J2(a) and J2(b), deal with it. I actually think you'll like one another quite a bit. And I don't want to hear any fighting in the back seat if you don't, or I swear to god, you'll be walking home! (A shoutout there to mom. Or maybe it's more a shoutout to my brothers, since we actually had to walk home once.)

Another bicycling & fundraising appeal

2011-06-21T15:08:00.003-04:00

Hey all. I'm writing this for both a blog post and email, so please pardon if it reads weird.

Basically, I'm asking you to donate some money to a good cause, and I'm really not good at asking people for money. (Odd, I know, for someone who spends so much time volunteering and working with nonprofits.)

On September 25, J and I will both be riding in the Wapiyapi Classic, a 50 mile bike ride starting in Aspen, Colorado. 100% of the proceeds from this ride will benefit Wapiyapi, a Colorado based 501(c)(3) non-profit. The mission of Wapiyapi is to offer a community of hope and support to children and their families affected by childhood cancer.

This ride is very personal to me, for the same reasons as I made a fundraising plea on this blog last year: there is a direct connection to our friend Gretchen Life. Gretchen was J's best friend in medical school, and J was the maid of honor at her wedding. She died in a boating accident in 2005, just before she was to finish her pediatrics residency in New Orleans and return to Colorado to become a pediatrician in Rifle. She was incredibly gifted with children and people, and it's no surprise that she was a longtime volunteer with Wapiyapi.

I wrote about Gretchen at much more length in that post, and I'd encourage you to go read it, since just writing this is making me cry. Actually, I'll paste in some of the backstory at the bottom of this post.

J and I will be riding this year with Gretchen's father, who I rode the Children's Hospital Courage Classic with last year.

On to the ask: each ride participant is required to fundraise a minimum of $200, and we are also encouraged to exceed that amount. ($800 covers the cost for one child affected by cancer to go to summer camp for a week.) Any amount you can give, even $5 or $10, is helpful, and 100% tax deductible. Please check out http://goo.gl/jnaaU to donate, and be sure you fill in my name at the top of the page where it says “Find a fundraiser to support:” (Either my full first name or nickname will find my personal page.) Anything is immensely appreciated!

An aside: I'll probably get notified when you donate, even if you select the “hide donation amount” and “anonymous” donation options. A had the irritating experience of trying to make it anonymous with the Courage Classic, and I still got an e-mail saying something like “A________ donated!”

More information about the ride and organization can be found at: www.wapiyapiclassic.org

THANK YOU!

p.s. Here is some of that prior post, explaining a little more about Gretchen:

...to honor her life, and her commitment to pediatric medicine, which she was natural at: she had an immense amount of love, compassion, dedication. She was genuinely one of the kindest people I have ever known.

Gretchen's death was, in a strange way, sort of caused by Hurricane Katrina ([for] which I flew to New Orleans to assist with protests, rebuilding, and resistance work around, and to stay at Gretchen and Frank's house, only to show up on the doorstep and find out they had drowned two days before.) This drowning was a little different than the ones we heard so much news coverage of: Gretchen and Frank went out in a boat that Frank had built on Lake Pontchartrain shortly after the hurricane, it capsized in high winds, and they held on for hours: long enough to shred their lifejackets from the friction of the boat bobbing up and down. Before the hurricane, a boat floating out on Lake Pontchartain within a half mile of the Pontchartrain Causeway would have been cause for alarm. Not so after the hurricane, when debris was still floating throughout the lake, thoughout New Orleans. So for J and I, and perhaps for Gretchen and Frank's families, the official death toll from Katrina should be 1,838.

101 miles

2011-06-17T22:35:00.005-04:00

Rode an out and back century today on the Silver Comet with my friends K and M. Great ride, great people, great times. At K's urging, we started right near the crack of dawn, just after 7am. We rode out to just past 50 miles,
turned around, and had a lovely lunch at a Silver Comet legend, Frankie's.

Shortly after departing from lunch, the skies opened up. Fortunately we had already done our triumphant bikestand at the Brushy Mountain Tunnel:
(faces obscured to protect the innocent and the guilty.)

Good, good, good times.

Busy busy busy busy: Brief notes from recent travels

2011-06-16T10:04:00.007-04:00

photo by Cheshire Tongkat

Just back from a truly amazing, and challenging, and inspirational, and difficult, and extraordinary experience in West Virginia: Appalachia Rising: March on Blair Mountain. I had the privilege and honor and delight of working with some of the most amazing organizers and participants imaginable, and we overcame some pretty extraordinary obstacles. Five days of marching on narrow busy roads through two of the most pro-coal counties on earth to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining, culminating in ~775 people marching on Blair Mountain, and around 148 of those walking up to the historic battlefield, one scene of the largest armed labor uprising in modern American history: the Battle of Blair Mountain. Yeah, run-on sentence, what?

Drove back yesterday through some of the worst driving weather I've ever dealt with: it was basically nonstop driving wind, thunder, and lightning from the VA/TN border, all the way back to Atlanta via Knoxville.

Now unpacking, and putting stuff together to ride a century tomorrow with a friend.

Need to book travel to Afghanistan, for which the departure will be very shortly after returning from Peru, in early August. Like maybe the next day.

Lots and lots and lots of pictures to come, I promise. Now I have this burning desire to shower, shave, eat breakfast, listen to public radio, and drink good coffee.

What to drink

2011-05-24T11:10:00.001-04:00

when the power is out in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica: fresh orange juice, squeezed with a battery powered juicer!

Just under the wire!

2011-05-20T09:10:00.001-04:00

Checked in and dropped bag with literally 2 min to spare. Ran from MARTA to Delta sky priority check-in.

Am looking good. On Airtrain to E gates now.

Holy SHIT, I hate this nervewracking last minute bullshit.

But, it all worked out.

Next stop: Costa Rica!

observations on aging

2011-05-20T07:54:00.001-04:00

Getting old and being physically active both suck sometimes.

Tore up my heel, and ripped part of a big toenail off, on eve of flying to Costa Rica (on train to airport now, meeting A2 in CR!) Still going, but will have to cancel a jungle hike that I was VERY excited about.

Also have 2 week old poison ivy that is infected, and that J is worried might go septic.

Boo. If I weren't on my way to a great vacation, you should feel bad for me.

Bike porn, food porn, booze porn

2011-05-19T16:52:00.010-04:00

Yep: this post has it all!

My lovely bike. I recently took off the milk crate, and it was kind of amazing how much lighter and more nimble Sitba feels without it.

I used to, uhhhh, hate bloody marys. My sample size? One. Unfortunately, it was after running a hot, fast 10K in Denver some years ago, and they were giving away free bloody marys with some top shelf vodka. I took one sip, and nearly had to spit it out. Then last year, I bumped into my friend J4 at Atlanta Streets Alive, and we popped into the Corner Tavern, where J4 introduced me to how delicious bloody marys can be, if made well. The not so secret ingredient? A little bit of high quality stout! The above bloody mary was at J4's house, before the Inman Park Festival.

This was the bloody mary fixins bar.

Speaking of the Inman Park Festival, yeah, well, it sort of sucks. I'll leave you to judge the above image (hints: yes, that is a Volvo crossover, I think an XC60, and yes, they were an official vendor for the event.)

When was the last time you cooked 10 quarts of coconut vegetable curry on camp stoves? For me it was last weekend. (And this won out of four dinners over two nights in our friendly but fierce little competition.)

This is what happens when you organize a cycling event for 400 people, are are somewhat obsessive about diverting recyclable and compostable material from the waste stream. Yes, that is my kitchen floor.

Busy busy busy. Today Atlanta, tomorrow Costa Rica, next week West Virginia. Whee!

Bikes bikes bikes!

2011-05-04T22:19:00.005-04:00

So, yeah: I've been SO DAMN BUSY these last few weeks I've barely remembered to eat, much less blog. Here is a cool video about one of the big things that has been taking up a ton of my days: BIKES! WHEE!

I totally love the intro line: "Bicycles are beautiful, like the stars are beautiful."

More soon, really, seriously. Soon means after Saturday May 7 when a major event I'm helping organize is done.

File under: police beatdown

2011-04-25T09:56:00.005-04:00

From what I could tell, the initial interaction involved an intoxicated homeless man declining to stop and talk to the popo.

Good job, Atlanta Police Department cop: you managed to throw a guy down to the sidewalk who could barely stand up in the first place. Good job, backup APD, you all definitely needed seven cops to stand around while one cop grabbed one guy, and threw him in the back of a patrol unit, and then open up the door to give him some shit. And a shout out to the astonishingly worthless rentacops from Central Atlanta Progress who crowded around as beatdown voyeurs: nice showing, but you still look silly in your pith helmets.

Perhaps the most troubling part of it was that the cop you see doing the beatdown was laughing and joking and smiling hugely with his cohort.

Confidential to APD: I don't feel safer knowing that you enjoy throwing people down on the sidewalk and smiling and laughing after you arrest them.

A little more food, a little more travel!

2011-04-25T09:39:00.005-04:00

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have a (not totally unsubstantiated) concern that J doesn't eat well when I'm out of town, so I'm in the habit of making sure we cook a lot right before I leave, and leave a shit-ton of leftovers for J to eat.

I'm in the airport about to fly out to WV for five days, and here is our fridge as of this morning:

This morning as I was getting ready to leave, J said something like, "Now, honey, I just want you to note what the fridge looks like. So when it's empty when you get back, it's because I've been eating well, okaaaaaay?"

I love her.

A little food, a little travel

2011-04-19T11:43:00.003-04:00

This:
was a fairly tasty, and fairly fun, and fairly expensive, "Steak and Cheese" vegan sub at Cafe Green in DC. The slaw was good, the pickle good, the sandwich... slightly underwhelming, especially for $9. But I couldn't resist trying a sandwich with a vegan meat substitute I'd never heard of before: “boolgogi”.

This is what happens when you are sitting in the airport lounge, and you need to simultaneously charge your laptop, i*od, and (semi-smart) phone with only one charger. Here's to standardized USB!

And since I'm throwing around random photos, here's a totally, completely gratuitous shot of onions.

Unbelievably busy lately, with half a dozen different major projects on the burners. So I should really quit blogging, shouldn't I? Yeah.

ONIONS! and a busted car

2011-04-07T14:12:00.003-04:00

Just for you, A: I couldn't resist some delicious images of ONIONS! (I know, some of you don't know A, and can't understand why the hell I blather about onions so much in this blog. Just, uhhhhh: trust me. Okay?)

Frying onions in a pan.

Making a quesadilla with daiya, onions, and sauteed cremini mushrooms on a chipotle-lime tortilla.

Two quesadillas, about to be wolfed down. Delicious, they were, yes!

Okay, and to balance out the onions, here is why you don't want to take shelter in your car in a windstorm:

Walking out of airports, food porn, bicycles

2011-04-07T12:48:00.005-04:00

Seriously: after a long draught in blogging, what more do you want than these three things? Tell me, dammit, and I'll probably make it happen, despite being ridiculously busy and juggling about ten pots on the burner.

Back in March, I once again enjoyed walking out of the Eugene airport, and back in at the end of my trip.

Here's a view looking north, as you're about to actually get into the airport proper. As you can see, there is plenty of shoulder to walk on. (Go back to that linked post for explicit instructions on walking out of Eugene, and for more discussion of walking out of airports generally.)

And a little food porn: I've gotten really in to sandwiches lately. This is tofurky, fresh tomatoes, dijon, and ONIONS!

And here's the obligatory bike porn:
This is my mountain bike after 28 miles of some of the most challenging cycling I've ever done, up in the wilds of Chamblee and Dunwoody, GA (ugly big box suburbs northeast of Atlanta that have some incredible off-road riding in the woods.) At various points my front wheel was over halfway submerged in muddy water (and remember that this bike is a 29er.) I got some moderately bad poison ivy:

Doesn't look that bad, I know: but this is almost two weeks old.

SURVEY! FACIAL HAIR!

2011-04-07T12:29:00.005-04:00

Here's the thing: I think I look dorky with facial hair, but J likes it. My facial hair doesn't grow in uniformly, and the beard is now a mixture of brown, red, and silver. (Don't ask me why: my regular hair is all brown, all the time, with individual gray hairs just coming in.)

No, unlike A, who can go from clean-shaven to backwoods lumberjack complete with Elvis muttonchops in about three days, it takes me about three weeks of not shaving to get to this scraggly-ass goatee:

This is odd since all of my brothers are hairy beasts. Hmmmm. Mom, anything you want to tell me confidential-like? If so, please post in the comments section.

Enough family secrets, and back to the topic at hand: I did a series of shots while shaving the other day, and I want YOU, Dear Reader, to chime in on which you think looks best.

This is just shaving off the mustache which, while it might work when I'm rocking my singlespeed through local hipster strongholds L5P or EAV, is also the part that, as you can see above, looks the most 9th-graderish.

This is sort of a half-assed combination of chin puff plus soul patch.

Just soul patch (which I actually once wore back when I used to appear in court several times a week. But I also had hair down to my shoulder blades then, so it was, ahem, a different time.)

And what is probably my favorite, but also the most work: clean shaven.

Okay, readers: lemme know what you think! If there is a clear consensus, I'll even grow it out that way. Maybe.

What I Learned from this experiment: when you are taking flash pictures of yourself in the mirror, you have to squeeze your eyes VERY tightly closed. Shaving with little blinkie white spots floating in your vision ain't much fun.

UPDATE! A sent in this contribution to this post:

it's true... as an a bona fide, backwoods born Alaskan I can channel the spirit of the Devil's Club and mythic powers of the elusive Nagoonberry to produce this any time I take a particularly gruntworthy shit in the forest!

and attached this image of, ohhh, overnight growth:

Hey, is that a chipmunk I see hiding in there? ALVIN, ARE YOU OKAY?!?

Cliché, I know:

2011-03-30T15:48:00.002-04:00

but I love it anyway:

"live with intention. walk to the edge. listen hard. laugh. practice wellness. play with abandon. continue to learn. appreciate your friends. choose with no regret. do what you love. live as if this is all there is."
-Mary Anne Radmacher

So true, since this is, indeed, all there is. Every day.

More blogging to come. Gotta get some graphic design done first.

Second root canal

2011-03-21T12:15:00.001-04:00

in as many weeks. Dental insurance benefit for 2011 already maxed out. Coming out of pocket. Boo.

Moral of the story: don't use Squirt as combination toothpaste and mouthwash when you're 15.

Food porn: special West Virginia edition!

2011-03-18T10:17:00.005-04:00

I'm uploading the below images at a way smaller size than usual to conserve limited bandwidth (satellite internetz here in rural WV.)

If anyone wants full-sized images, like A wants the onion images to blow up to 18x24 and hang on his walls, just let me know and I'll email them to you when back in the ATL.

Staying with a bunch of wonderful people, and did some cooking, and some prep. Here are a bunch of delicious dumpstered onions.

How about another gratuitous shot of ONIONS?

Turnip greens, kale (I think that was kale anyway), and mushrooms.

And these were soup ingredients: dumpstered corn, mushrooms, fresh jalapenos, and bell peppers.

We didn't just cook: we also drove a bunch around rural WV. This trailer sign kind of says it all. yeah, the Big Coal River runs right behind it, but it's not called the "Big Coal River Detachment", is it?

And surprisingly good vegan Mexican food was had in Logan, WV.

Back in the ATL sometime tomorrow. Busy busy!

food, food food! (and squirrels)

2011-03-09T12:28:00.005-05:00

I'm going through a bunch of images from the last couple weeks, and the cries of the people will be heeded. I will not fight to the death, but I will also not step down from the exalted dangr-us thoughts throne in November. No, my friends, this will remain a benevolent dictatorship, and I will lavish you, my loyal subjects with food porn to keep you happy!

This is the incredibly greasy, yet still delicious, "Twice Cooked Soy Slices" from Lotus Garden in Eugene, Oregon. At the bottom center, you can see the standing pool of oil that covered the bottom of the plate. With a name like that, though, I suppose you know what you're in for:

*Twice Cooked Soy Slices………………………………...................9.50
( Veggie pork, cabbage, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, bamboo shoots)

Back at home now, that's a Whole Lotta Tofu!

And who doesn't love some ONIONS!?!? These got caramelized, and were just damned delicious.

Some artichokes hearts and sun-dried tomatoes, about to get flash fried.

And the completed cast, clockwise from top: fried tofu, caramelized ONIONS, organic whole wheat penne pasta, and the flash-fried sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts.

Not super creative, and something that I have long used as a fallback dish when we don't have much in the fridge, and I don't feel like going to the store (before my 7pm meeting) and it worked out juuuuuust fine.

It. Was. Tasty.

Dinner also included squirrel stew. No, silly: we didn't try to create some sort of weird vegan squirrel stew. We ate dinner while watching Winter's Bone, the excellent if gut-wrenching Oscar nominated drama about the brutalities of life in the meth-cookin' Ozarks. Excellent, well done, kinda downbeat. Normally J and I have a pretty strict policy of not watching depressing movies: we have enough difficult stuff in our day to day work lives that we don't really need to add to it. But we're on a netfl!x route of watching as many of the 0scar best picture nominees as we can, so, squirrel stew it was!

Must be spring!

2011-02-28T10:44:00.003-05:00

Yeah, it's Atlanta: less than a month after the gnashing of teeth and rending of winter garments when the temperatures dropped into the single digits and we got two inches of snow in one day (OH, THE HORROR!) we're starting thunderstorm season here in the A-T-L:

"
TODAY
CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IN THE MORNING

THEN SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IN THE AFTERNOON. WINDY. SOME THUNDERSTORMS MAY BE SEVERE WITH DAMAGING WINDS IN THE AFTERNOON. HIGHS IN THE MID 70S. SOUTHWEST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH. CHANCE OF RAIN NEAR 100 PERCENT.
"

Sounds like a good day to blog, yeah?

(Oh, and BTW, the benevolent dictatorship here at DANGR World HQ has heard the cries of the people, and we will allow Free and Fair Elections(tm) in November. No, to hell with that, we'll fight to the death. But we'll throw a bone, since the cries of the assembled masses have been heard, even all the way up here in the corner office: triple sec!)

Food porn, SF style!

2011-02-24T14:45:00.004-05:00

'Cause the peeps in the SF like their food porn!

pizza fixins

and more pizza fixins.

and, uhhhh, more pizza fixins.

I'm not honestly sure why our "make your own pizza" night fixins table took three photographs to capture. It absolutely may or may not have had something to do with the various bottles you see sneaking in there (that small clear one, by the way, is Egyptian auzo (more commonly spelled ouzo, but the transliteration from Arabic to English can be imprecise.) Regardless of how you spell it, it's delicious.

ONIONS!

2011-02-24T14:33:00.003-05:00

To round out today's posting binge, how about, uhhh, I dunno... some ONIONS!?!?

Onion ring prep -- DAMN, those ONIONS smell good!

Making the already delicious onions EVEN BETTER!

Much hot oil and many minor scalds later, we had a big pile of delicious ONION RINGS! (and since wo/man cannot live on onions alone, even though I'm willing to try, some tofu snuck its way in.)

(round out: Get it? Ha! Ha!)

Sangria porn?

2011-02-24T14:27:00.003-05:00

A few of you know this, but for those who don't: I make a pretty mean sangria.

Raw materials = not cheap. The fruit alone cost around $20.

After much slicing and peeling.

And with the liquid love added.

The only thing you're not seeing is my super secret ninja ingredient. Whoever guesses it correctly gets me to make them a bigass pitcher of delicious sangria the next time I see you, so light that Comments section up, people!

File under: graffiti and bikes

2011-02-24T14:24:00.002-05:00

Wait -- you don't have a file named "graffiti and bikes"? Well quit wasting time on this scintillating blog, and go create one!

BeltLine love

2011-02-24T14:21:00.003-05:00

I do, indeed, LOVE the BeltLine. I've been on it at least five times in the last six days.

Here is what your socks sometimes look like when riding off-road on the BeltLine.

I'm not sure if this is part of a public education/cleanup project, or witty hipster snark. Probably a little of Column A, and a little of Column B.

food food food

2011-02-24T14:11:00.005-05:00

A whole bunch of random food porn from the last week:

vegan risotto (including sun-dried tomatoes and spinach)

self-evident (right? no? okay, fried polenta cakes)

baked tofu = YUM.

prepping zucchini as pasta fixin', with a beer (Port Hop 15) close at hand

and here are the final fixins: clockwise from top right, that's fried tofu with red pepper flakes, fried zucchini (with random seasonings that I forget), fried ONIONS with dill, and fried asparagus with a whole pile of garlic.

More soon!

BICYCLES!

2011-02-20T09:25:00.004-05:00

Yesterday's bicycle mileage, in order of which bike I rode throughout the day:

surly 13.1:

mountain 11.3:

singlespeed 15.2:

for the mathematically disinclined, that's 39.6 miles, total.

I ride all year around, but seems like spring, doesn't it?

Casulaties: one flat (pinch flat on the singlespeed from popping off a curb), one broken seat bag, and two sore ~~butt bones~~ ischial tuberosities.

Gonna go do bike hashing today.

Whee!

Food porn! (and, uhhh, stuff.)

2011-02-17T12:22:00.005-05:00

I've been ridiculously busy, but not too busy, dear readers, to throw a little food porn your way:

Damn, I love avocados.

Whistles wet? Okay, okay already! Here's some more food porn!

Here is the fixins plate for some vegan sushi we made the other day:

Clockwise from top, that's cucumber, baked tofu, flash fried asparagus with garlic puree, fresh ginger, and fried fresh jalapeños.

Here is a roll ready to, well, get rolled, with some avocado (did I mention how much I love avocado?) in there, as well as some ~~carrot~~ candy.

And here's the little camera that just won't die: it's been on nearly every trip and outdoor activity I have in the last five or so years, including many thousands of miles on my bike, usually just banging around in my pocket or bag. It recently was fully submerged in running water, several times, while I was out running in the woods in the dark and crossing through running streams (yes, on purpose.) A couple days to dry out, and bang: it's rockin' again! (And still taking better photos than my much newer, higher resolution phone.)

On another note, the ipod nano I bought in summer 2007 is showing signs of dying: the top panel (where the on/off/lock button is located) is bowing and about to pop off. For replacement, anyone got any non-proprietary (i.e., non-crApple) products to recommend?

Vegan brunch! UrbanPl8! Yum! Good!

2011-02-07T13:00:00.004-05:00

On Saturday J and I had a nice ride and lovely brunch at UrbanPl8, which is horrifically located in a weirdass condo & retail development inconveniently located in so-called "West Midtown." They had two delicious vegan options:

(that's the vegan tofu scramble on the left, and vegan breakfast on the right, with a pinto bean cake, collard greens, and fried sweet potatoes on the right.)

The staff is ridiculously friendly, and the $10 bottomless mimosas were SLAMMIN: strong, constantly refilled, delicious. The 50% Scoutmob app coupon only saved us $7.75, as the bottomless mimosa (did I mention it's only $10?) wasn't discountable (fine, it's booze) and neither was the $2 coffee (what the hell is with that? At least the coffee was delicious.) Completely inexplicably, they don't have soy milk (?!?) but one of the ridiculously friendly servers pointed out they do keep coconut milk mixed in the bar, and he loves it as a vegan option.

We loved the food and the people, and will definitely go back: even without the Scoutmob coupon, our receipt included a $5 off coupon. So I'm really sad to have to link to the prediction in one of my favorite blogs, Tomorrow's News Today, where the (very well informed and very diligent) author put Urban Pl8 on his 2011 Q1 Deathwatch, and has had it on the Deathwatch since Q2 2010. Sure, it's still making a go of it, but the location just sucks, and even though they had every table occupied during brunch service on Saturday, I have to agree with Tomrrow's News Today that it's hard to see how this physical space, in this location, could possibly do enough business to make it work.

Ill-advised

2011-02-03T13:31:00.004-05:00

What would any reasonable person do when they feel a vicious, violent sneezing, eye-tearing winter cold coming on full force? Ride their bike 20 miles roundtrip in 36 degree weather to ~~Your Dekalb "Farmer's Market"~~ hell, of course!

Hey, I didn't claim I was that reasonable person, did I? And I need some chili-garlic sauce, which YDFM is one of the only places in Intown ATL that sells it. I still detest the place. Blog bitching likely to follow.

Why the Las Vegas airport sucks

2011-01-28T15:46:00.003-05:00

Likely the first in a series, since I seem to be coming here several times a year...

The rental car return center is conveniently located in nearby Arizona.

The security lines are always miserable.

The TSA personnel are typically surly, and always inefficient.

Perhaps the above can be explained in significant part to the immense number of Ma and Pa Kettle fliers rolling through kerr. God, what a bunch of incompetent nitwits. (The remainder is largely due to the asinine security theatre the TSA engages in systemwide.)

You have to take an obnoxious sky train to get ANYWHERE.

The green vest wheelchair attendants crowd the obnoxious sky train, see above.

All around: BOO. I hate this airport almost as much as Miami.

There is no Delta Sky Club. BOO.

Three best beer available, at least in the D terminal which Delta uses, is Spam Adams. Yuck. And it's $9.99. BOO

Ethiopian vegan love

2011-01-27T00:01:00.001-05:00

Sitting in an Ethiopian restaurant a little off Strip in Las Vegas, am the only one using English as my first language. It smells wonderful. The bartender/server/manager, when I said "I think I know what I want" replied, "oh, yes, veggie combo?" Sometimes I actually do love Vegas.

And oh, god: that was truly in the top three best Ethiopian meals I've ever had. Wow.

Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant, 252 Convention Center Drive, Las Vegas, 702-732-4250

Vegan hotel breakfast!

2011-01-26T18:39:00.001-05:00

Craptastic picture, I know.

Good thing it's included in my room rate, 'cause while I liked it quite well, the buffet wouldn't possibly justify the $20 they charge for it.

I did like having fresh pico de gallo and capers to put on top of the otherwise unremarkable breakfast potatoes.

Vegan airport lounge breakfast!

2011-01-25T09:26:00.002-05:00

I know, I know: it's kinda gross, but: I'm actually getting to kind of like the toasted stale plain bagel, with cheap peanut butter, stale dried fruit mix, stale granola, and stiff little raisins.

Hey, we don't always go to breakfast with the vegan options that we want, okay?

Boarding a flight to Las Vegas in about a half hour, so if you buckeroos play your cards right, there MIGHT, just MIGHT, be some vegan food porn Sin City style(!) in your near futures.

More depressing shit

2011-01-25T08:27:00.002-05:00

Most of you who know me have heard me talk about mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). (If not, find out more here, and by clicking through to any of the partner organizations on this page.

But you live in California, Washington, Alaska, Massachusetts, New York, right? So what is your connection to the vile, reprehensible, wretchedness of MTR? Find out here by simply entering your zip code.

I know this runs the risk of sounding preachy, but seriously, think about it: when you leave that light burning, or buy the pretty but incredibly energy intensive halogen fixture from Ikea, or even take the elevator one floor when you could walk, YOU are connected to MTR.

Those of you who know me know that I use electricity. I'm typing this on my laptop, in an airport lounge, on a wireless connection. But I'm very conscious, all the time now, of my electricity use, and the true coast of coal. (We love the Bees!)

Of snow and driving

2011-01-13T13:43:00.005-05:00

Here is this morning's balcony panorama at sunrise.

I learned an important lesson: don't mess with the default focal length and focal length multiplier settings in Hugin Panorama Creator unless you know what the hell you're doing, or you'll get something like this:
Yeah.

Speaking of not knowing what the hell you're doing, if you live in Atlanta, and don't know how to drive in snow and/or ice, STAY THE HELL HOME. Really. Read a book, nap, play cards, clean the house, drink yourself into a coma, whatever. BUT STAY HOME.

From Sunday, January 9, 2011, the first day of our current Snowpocalypse 2011 episode, this is a quick video of one of a dozen or so cars driving the wrong way in I-85, between Shallowford and Clairmont in Atlanta. Yep: just turned around and drove the wrong way, apparently to a place where they could illegally cut over to the frontage road. Literally hundreds of cars were abandoned on the freeway, many on the sides, but a number just parked in traffic lanes. Many were turned off, dark inside, no lights, no occupants.

Where do those people go?

Full-sized tractor-trailers jackknifed, and sliding off the road. I thought you all were supposed to be professional drivers? (Hot Tip: meth doesn't keep you from sliding if you don't know how to drive on snow.)

Really, people: you knew this storm was coming for days. Nowhere you had to go in your rear wheel drive sedan or truck was that important. And if you do happen to drive an SUV with alltime AWD, but still don't know how to drive in snow or ice, refer to the paragraph above, and STAY HOME.

In my SUV, with true 4WD, the 20 miles from Lawrenceville to midtown Atlanta took an hour and a half, and would have taken much longer if I was driving like most of the chuckleheads on the freeway. At no point did I feel out of control, or slide, or skid. I spent most of the time avoiding other drivers, though certain stretches of 85 were delightfully (and a little creepily) empty:

At the risk of sounding like the bozo that NPR always manages to interview to respond to a snowstorm in the south by saying something like "Well, uh-huh, in North Dakota, we call that summer", this was NOT bad winter weather for driving. For much of the northern part of the country, it was a very average, even light, snowfall. The problem wasn't the snow, it was the drivers.

Oh, yeah, and: Confidential to Atlanta metro area drivers: don't drive with your emergency flashers on UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY HAVE AN EMERGENCY. Not knowing how to drive in snow is NOT an EMERGENCY. Driving slow is NOT AN EMERGENCY. We SEE you fine: you're driving a big dumb car or big dumb truck, and the visibility is approximately a half mile. It sort of dilutes the point of flashers if you are just toolin' along with them on, like all the other idiots on the freeway.

We're still in close to a state of weather siege in Atlanta, with public schools and many businesses closed, and glare ice all over the roads. The City of Atlanta is implementing its usual snow and ice mitigation program: wait until it goes away on its own. Which I'm fine with: I've been walking and biking on it, and enjoying the quiet streets. Oh, and getting the crap cut out of my face by my glasses in an iceball fight at Piedmont Park. (It's all fun and games until you have multiple lacerations and a black eye from a single nasty iceball assault.) You can email me directly if you want to see pictures.

Okay, snow day #4 in a row or not, back to work. (Really.)

Winter skies

2011-01-07T16:50:00.002-05:00

My first recollection is a day in December
747 tracing lines through the sky

Okay, it's not December, but it's not far off. This is tonight's panorama from my balcony, before I drive to North Carolina for some skiing and winter fun this weekend.

Super busy, super good times right now. Bouncing between SW Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and other places. Atlanta is expecting possible record snowfall on Monday, so that should be amusing to watch a city get shut down with, uhhh, a few inches of snow.

2010-12-31T13:39:00.002-05:00

Last night A, R and I (no, not some guy named Ari) went and saw MarchFourth Marching Band at The Independent:

Mediocre picture, I know, but in some ways it does a strange sort of justice to this fantastically strange band. (Yes, that is a stilt walker on the far left.)

One reason the picture isn't so great is that I took it without a flash, observing the request of the venue, unlike many other dbags in the hipsterarrific audience.

Really a great show. I can't possibly begin to do it justice, you should read about the band or, better yet, go see them in person: it's that kind of show.

Merry New Year & Happy Xmas FOOD PORN!

2010-12-31T13:11:00.006-05:00

Christmas Eve dinner, California vegan-style:
clockwise from left, that's oven roasted potatoes, sauteed mushrooms, caramelized onions, fried potatoes, flash fried brussels sprouts, and tofu taking center stage.

Now for some perspective, here is how my family likes to assist with my taking pictures of food:
See what I go through to get you your food porn?

Waaaaaaaait: did someone say FOOD PORN? Holy moley it's been a long time, readers. Fortunately, at least half of my known readership was present in the room for this next food porn extravaganza, where three of us gathered in Kitchen Stadium, East Bay Satellite Location, for a Chopped Top Iron Chef Throwdown.

With a spending limit of $25 at Berkeley Bowl, we all made dishes with the theme ingredients of tofu and asparagus. Except that the asparagus was too damned expensive, so we whacked it from the competition mid-shop.

Soon, the kitchen in E & K's apartment was buzzing: blenders blending, frying pans frying, ovens ovening. The guest judges played Nintendo Fit in the living room. I worked double duty to provide commentary on the dishes as they were being prepared, and then served.

Here are the final dishes, (sort of) just before being fed to the judges.

Since I know you were desperate for details, and that jerk Alton Brown seems to have abandoned this blog post, here is my (winning) dish:

Tofu, Thai style
Baked firm tofu squares
Manila mango slices with salt and chili powder
spicy Thai peanut gin sauce (this was damned delicious, if I do say so myself)

Tofu, Mexican style
(in the rough shape of the Mexican flag)
fried extra firm tofu squares
green: avocado slices and garlic chives
white: disc fried white onions
red: flashed fried tomatoes and red peppers
pureed sauce of chipotle, adobo, cocoa powder, and Mexican spiced chocolate

Good times were had by all. The leftovers lasted us three days back on the peninsula.

Now in my continuing search to find a bike I can ride in tonight's critical mass. My life will be complete when I have ridden Critical Mass in San Francisco on ~~New Year's Eve~~Halloween.

Thoughts on airport

2010-12-24T07:46:00.003-05:00

Catching separate flights an hour apart, J and I hurried to the MARTA station this morning, only to find it running less frequent than usual. The train was the most crowded MARTA train I've ever been on. Nothing like a crowded NYC subway, mind you, but essentially full. Lots of huge people with big bags and bigger voices. Full-on pedestrian traffic jam to get on the stairs down, with people shoving and talking shit not quite under their voices. Christmas does bring out the best in people, doesn't it?

At the airport, J was cutting her flight a little close, while I have time to blog. By email, we agreed that elite status is worth every penny sometimes. It's a regular fucking freakshow at the airport. The south security line was fine. Of course the morons in green jackets were telling people bullshit about which lines had which waits, and claimed that both south and north had 15-20 minutes waits, while main was allegedly sub-10 minutes. Total bullshit, especially for elites: I could see a long line at main, which doesn't have an elite line, and my wait was about three minutes in the elite line at south (which they are actually enforcing today, a relatively rare occurrence.)

The underground walkway between terminals was fine, since most people preferred to sardine themselves into the inter-terminal train, but walking through the B terminal is like the Amazing Race.

Now in the Sky Club at B25, there are two enormous fat guys, apparently brothers ("Think mom is awake yet?") sitting a table one over. Brother #1 just can't shut his fucking mouth. Just keeps talking. About nothing. And saying "unbelievable" with a big gushing release of air sort of sigh. Brother #2 mostly wipes his Mr. Clean head, picks his nose, and ignores him. Brother #1 is making various phone calls to get a "general antibiotic" and discussing checking into the hospital. Totally unclear why.

Interestingly, while the other people on the MARTA and many other passengers in the airport are all a-tizzy (or just downright rude and obnoxious) the staff I've dealt with have all been cheery and happy, including some of the rentacop TSA agents.

California here i come (remember that song?)

Family Joad Style

2010-12-24T07:33:00.003-05:00

Bet you can't guess where I am :
J and I did a bunch of cleaning before a recent (lovely!) visit from A2. As part of this, we revisited our need to get rid of the crappy green thrift store suitcase that I bought (on a trip with A2!) at a thrift store in Denver for $7. It served its purpose then, which was getting a bunch of bike stuff back to Atlanta, but, well, it kinda didn't roll.

So we filled it up with a bunch of other stuff we needed to donate, and did the logical thing: strapped it to the back of my bike. J and I then rode to the always miserable Lenox Square Mall, only to find that the Goodwill collection trailer that used to live in a parking lot behind the mall is gone. No indication on the website, no signage in the lot.

We call to confirm the other collection center still exists. J goes into the mall to scout out replacement suitcases (we're really picky: we want a hardside 19" or 20" spinner that will absolutely fit in overhead bins. When you fly as much as we do, it's nice to be able to predict your suitcase will absolutely fit.)

I ride three miles up Peachtree Road to the new Costco location which is, inexplicably, located within a couple miles of the other two Costcos in Atlanta, all three of the min the northern suburbs.

The only notable thing on the ride was some pedestrian who, as I rode by, offered the unsolicited advice "get your ass out of the road." Thanks, asshole. Maybe next time. Or not.

I then get to the brand new, just constructed, built to suit Costco, to find that it has NO BICYCLE RACKS. Fail. Serious, serious fail. So I lock my bike to a pole. Inside, I find a suitcase that is basically perfect, for $50. I buy it, and to the significant amusement of the woman marking receipts at the door who sees my bike helmet, proceed to strap it to the top of my bike.

Here's the story (were you getting bored yet?) So I get back to Lenox Square, and we still have to ride about seven miles back down Peachtree Road, then a couple miles up Collier Road, to get to the Goodwill donation center that is actually open. How are we going to manage this, you wonder? Here's how:

Ohhhhh, yeah. Sitba kicks ass. Even the three cars engaging in a loud and reckless illegal street race on Peachtree Road near Piedmont Hospital gave me wide berth with this.

xmas spirit and bike porn! (and When Panoramas Go Horribly Wrong)

2010-12-23T14:25:00.003-05:00

My regular readers (all four of you) know that I'm a fan of panoramas taken from my balcony. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm technically competent, or that Hugin panorama creator will always save me (even when I spend a LOT of time manually providing stitch points.)

I nevertheless thought this was kind of cool looking, in an apocalyptic kind of way. This is a 33% version, converted to jpeg, since the full size tiff version is 7.6mb.

Speaking of apocalypse, we LOVES us some post-apocalyptic and dystopian movies. last night our netflix movie was among the worst movies I've ever actually finished watching: Cloverfield. Totally inexplicably to me, Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 76% fresh rating. Some of them got it right, though, like Brian Orndorf, from DVDTalk.com: "Basically a 70-minute YouTube video, Cloverfield has all the head-rattling jolt and dramatic verisimilitude of a prank phone call" and Kyle Smith, of KyleSmithOnline.com: "A combination of unpleasantness and stupidity that would be difficult to match, unless you were stuck in bed with the shingles while being forced to watch The Ghost Whisperer."

On another note, just in case any of you have ever accused me of being anti-christmas, or ever even CONSIDERED such an unjust accusation:

And as more evidence of it, I picked up a super deluxe xmas tree for J. From the ground. In the bike parking area at Whole Paycheck (where they obnoxiously kept storing xmas trees, so for over a week I kept having to shove them out of the way.) Here is said xmas tree:

Don't look too closely, or you might realize that it's, uhhh, about three feet by three feet. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to throw it away today, since it drips a little sap, and J and I are both going to be (separately) gone for xmas anyway.

California tomorrow(!)