Fillet-brazed Phoenix...

...and a bow to some Belgians.

Picked up my frame a week ago from Tom. Damn, he did one helluva nice job setting up my Cross-check with new dropouts and rack spools. The quality and craftsmanship this guy brings to his work are unrivaled. Have a look at the pix and you'll see what I mean—the added bits appear to have grown right out of the frame. Top-notch, period. Tom seems to be the type of builder who treats each frame—be it a custom build or a repair job—as if it belonged to him, and the expertise and attention to detail shine through in the finished work. Can't wait to rebuild the Beast and get it back in the line-up.

After settling up with Tom, I managed to work in a short ride down to Fell's Point, along with biking demi-legend and semi-local man about town, David Blum, who met me at Palermo's shop near Baltimore.

Once there, we hit a food joint whose grill was down ("WTF?" you ask...yeah, me, too), but which managed to keep a steady stream of locally-famous Resurrection Ale flowing into our glasses. We chatted a while with a drunk and demented drifter, a Texas ex-pat, who sat down at our table to smoke, drawing us deeper and deeper into his personal padded cell with every adjective he uttered, before presenting us with a rambling handwritten manifesto of sorts that he swore was "it". Sadly, it wasn't. We wished him luck, settled up, then pedaled over historic cobblestones [injured shoulder and wrist telling me in painful (re)morse code¹ that it's not quite time] to a quiet little placed called Max's. Those of you cursed with a grotesquely overdeveloped (i.e., highly compensatory; more Athena than Priapus, get it?) cerebrum will be quick to imagine what took place within this hallowed establishment. For the rest of you, here it is, plain and simple: beer flowed, bullshit followed; both of the highest order.

Good times, Dave, thanks.

Speaking of life, beer, the escape from the former via the latter, and bikes, don't forget to mark your social calendar for the Third Annual Bootlegger's Bliss event, tentatively scheduled for Satyrday, November 1st, of this very same year. New artwork, new pint glasses, same old sots. More details to follow soon. Get brewing!

(This post unknowingly inspired by the fine folks of Brewery Het Anker, makers of Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor, the boldly bitter, bottle-fermented, beatific Belgian blond ale pot-de-fer that fired the neurons on a crooked trajectory from axon to dendrite to more or less get this post written. I salute you, oh faux friars from a faraway land...keep up the good work.)


1. (* - *) (* * -) (* *   *) (- * -) and (* *   * *) (*   *) (* * -), to be exact (American Morse Code).

A Ride of Monumental Proportions...

Hmm...this event is very tempting. I mean, pedal from DC to Baltimore with a phalanx of Charm City cyclers—just one set of wheels among many—indulge with like-minded individuals in the fruits of the alcoholic paradise that is Fells Point, then wobble back en masse with the DC locals, bathed in the last rays of waning sunlight.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for a timely showing of cycling solidarity.

Tip o' the hat to Jon Baler for the link.

Fuxed...

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
—Ernest Hemingway

Doubtful.

Yesterday afternoon, while hanging out with some Outlaws¹ at an undisclosed SSOFT outpost in Baltimore—and freshly fueled by a few rounds of Loose Cannon—I made the mistake of calling the Disco Cowboy's bluff when he said half-jokingly that he would join team SSOFT Machines this weekend coming for the 12 Hours of Lodi Farm race, under one simple condition: that all of us ride it fixed.

Possessed of a large dose of Dutch courage,² and exuding more than my usual degree of faux braggadocio, I listened to the steady voice of reason and, without hesitation, offered up a response that was nothing less than a fait accompli: I agreed.

In the sober hours that followed that dubious commitment, I did the math. I analyzed information gleaned from countless rounds of empirical assessments, merged details of the race course from years past with the wealth of experience garnered from the one or two times I've ridden fixed off-road, assayed my current “level of fitness”, sought guidance from dirty fixed-gear legends, evaluated my bike set-up, administered more Dutch courage,² checked and rechecked the calculations, arranged the numbers in complex matrices, and ran the equations over and over again, until every error was pinched out of its margin.

And now, after compiling all of the data, I’ve arrived at one final, incontrovertible, utterly unambiguous conclusion: I'm fucked.

My Karate Monkey is already set up fixed with a TomiCOG bolted onto a Paul rear disc hub. That's the good news. The gearing is 32:18, a ratio that is more or less equivalent to a 2:1 on a 26er (my current ride of choice). The fork is rigid. There's a disc brake on the front that I fully intend to use. The thing is heavy and slow, a pregnant brontosaur with elephantiasis whose bottom bracket shell all but skims the earth beneath it like a cow-catcher, promising plenty of pedal strikes and unplanned detours. And with Lady Nature unabashedly emptying her boundless bladder upon this little corner of paradise this very minute, there’s not much time to gain experience. Oh, did I mention that I haven't ridden the beast—fixed or free—in months? It's all coming together nicely.

This is going to be fun...

...like a date with the Marquis de Sade...

...minus the happy ending.

1. This gathering occurred after a most informative and highly entertaining tour of the Clipper City Brewing Company, to which SSOFT member were cordially invited. More about the tour later.
2. Yeah, I know, not politically correct…if you’re Dutch, you're surely strong enough to handle it. There, there’s your offsetting compliment...have a beer and relax.