Taste Spin...

"Droolworthy!"

Finally finished the build on my Salsa Casseroll last night. The hold-up? Finding the tires I wanted without further breaking the bank.

Since the narrowest Vittoria Randonneur (a current favorite) offering is a 700x28, and since I need a narrower tire for the Velocity Aerohead rims, and because I'm hung up on Vittoria ever since I had a set (and still do) on my 90s Bianchi Eros, I ended up cheaping out with some Vittoria Zaffiros, 700x25. At less than $12 a pop on sale at Performance, and with pretty good reviews online, the miser in me figured what the hell.

First impressions are that this baby is smoooooth! Part of this, of course, is the Phil hubs and bottom bracket, but the other piece is the frame itself. It's surprisingly stiff and responsive, very solid-feeling, but with a faint shadow of twitchiness, exaggerated, I'm guessing, by my inexperience with track-style bars—Soma's Major Taylors, to be specific. And...it's light! Well, compared to my Cross-Check, anyway.

And although past experience would suggest that I should have ordered a smaller size frame (the Casseroll is said to run about 2cm larger than the given frame-size), the 57 seems to fit me fine, at least during the short spin I took on it. In fact, I had to slide the saddle back a wee bit to dial in the cockpit. Speaking of which, I still need to determine where the stem works best, hence the uncut steerer tube and ridiculous quantity of spacers. Perhaps this weekend will provide me with the opportunity, if the weather cooperates.

Currently running a 49:18, since an 18T Soma cog is what was in the parts bin. It's not as steep a gear as I'd like, but it'll do until the 16T cog I've ordered for the flip (or is it flop?) side arrives. For a comprehensive spec sheet, go here.

Rating: 5/5 Forks, Spoons, and Knives.

Bon appétit!

Sweet Southern Heat...

So, my first bottle of Speedy's #44 Hot Sauce arrived in the mail from Virginia Beach early this week, courtesy of that expertly-inked southern ruffian turned condiment cuisinier, Dr. Jimmy of 2Drunk2Shift fame. I say "first" bottle because after tasting this nuclear nectar, I fully intend to purchase more for the holidays.

Why? Simply put: FLAVOR! This stuff possesses that rare perfect blend of sweetness (peaches! carrots!) and fire (habaneros!) that lends itself so well to so many different foods, converting the mundane to the magnificent with just a few dashes.

Let's start with the label, a nicely rendered drawing of a skeleton on a scorcher, leering skull emblazoned with colorful tats and streaming flames engulfing bike and biker alike. A fitting image, it's at once wicked and whimsical, redolent of those hot-rod trading cards you'd get (along with a stale stick of gum) for a couple of coins as a snotty-nosed kid. On the back, the all-natural ingredients list (buy a bottle and read 'em yourself), along with contact information¹ for future purchases.

I first sampled this lava largesse on a carne-asado burrito I picked up from WholeFoods. Though it was a relatively large burrito, I think the amount of sauce I used—as evidenced in the pic below—still accurately conveys my opinion of this fine salsa del diablo.

Like an expertly crafted IPA that meshes malt and hops in a heavenly union, the sauce strikes a delicate balance between flavor and heat. Too many hot sauces are either blazingly hot for hot's sake out of some misguided machismo association, or (equally disdainful) skimpy on the scovilles so as not to offend the faint of gut. Any fool can dump a ton of scotch bonnets into the mix and blister the skin on the roof of your mouth, or use a callow jalapeno that leaves you craving something with a bit more ass to it. But it takes real skill to make the angel and devil dance nicely together. Jimmy appears to have done just that. Doubtless, Old Nick himself would approve.

Hmm, wonder how it tastes on oatmeal?

1. Want a bottle for your very own? Shoot an email to the following address (substitute @ for the AT--the sauce don't go well on that kind of SPAM): rooster790cc AT yahoo.com

Mug Shot...

Yeah, shameless self-promotion. But hey, the image came out great, despite my neophyte status with Illustrator (of course, it helps to start with pen and ink). Gotta hand it to Cafepress.com for making a one-off possible at a relatively affordable price. Image transfer is spot-on, mug is solid and capacious (15 ounces!), and the artwork is one of a kind, for what it's worth. And yes, that's coffee in the mug in the pic, though it seems to hold beer quite nicely, too.

Speaking of which, also available here is a pretty husky, 22 ounce beer stein sporting gold trim, for those of you who prefer downers to uppers. If you rode it, own it, at cost. Remember, when my oeuvre is hanging in the National Gallery of Art overlaying the Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein pieces (hell, this mug would be the perfect accessory to Duchamp's Fountain, n'est ce pas?), you won't be able to afford me, and I sure as hell ain't giving you a price break then, even if you're cute and charming. It'd be beneath me, and I ain't stoopin'. You've been warned.

Whaam!—indeed.

(Just got back from my first team meeting at The Bicycle Escape in Frederick—more about which soon.)

"Art is a form. A form is something that does not exactly have a history, but a destiny. Art had a destiny. Today, art has fallen into value, and unfortunately at a time when values have suffered. Values: aesthetic value, commercial value...values can be negotiated, bought and sold, exchanged. Forms, as forms, cannot be exchanged for something else, they can only be exchanged among themselves, and the aesthetic illusion comes at that price. For example, in abstraction, when the object is deconstructed, when the world and reality are deconstructed, there is still a way to exchange the object in itself symbolically. But abstraction later became merely a pseudo-analytical procedure for decomposing reality, not deconstructing it. Something has fallen apart, perhaps through the sole effect of repetition."
—Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art

Personally Famous...

Ah, fame at last. Never imagined it could feel so edifying.

Wait, that's not the word; so, uh...so... pedestrian. Yeah, that's it.

Seems one chap who rode in the recent Single Speed Punk Bike Enduro appreciated the years of sweat equity (and strict asceticism normally reserved for trappist monks) that it took to raise my drawing talents to their material apogee, as represented in my latest artistic reification seen at right (with a dash of pink) and here.

So he approached me to ask for the rights, which I shamelessly granted. The result is shown in the pic above, artfully cropped to preserve his anonymity. Immortalized through the magic of the old school iron-on transfer—a DIY one-off job that seems to have turned out quite well—the image now adorns a canvas à trois dimensions in this world, having narrowly escaped the simulated, absolute zero confines of cyberspace. Nice work!

Did I say immortalized? I meant briefly rescued from shameful obscurity (damn 13¢ words!). The bane of iron-ons, of course, is their tendency to eventually peel away from the fabric like an old scab—hence their near annihilation beneath the bootheel of more technologically advanced processes such as dye sublimation and screenprinting.

But the iron-on's strength lies in its immediacy (as Hakim Bey uses the word), in the fact that it can be created at home with only a modest investment of time and equipment—the same intangible quality that makes all DIY projects ennobling. And its ephemeral nature offers another advantage, at least in this case: if it does self-destruct, it will probably happen before the tell-tale year included in the design renders it passé. Heaven—and all Hell's minions—forbid!

(The iron-on is sort of the fixed gear of the fashion world...long live the iron-on!)

Again, nice job, my friend.

Speaking of the Enduro, here's the GPS data for the ride, flagrantly stolen from Big John of Empathy Test fame. (Hmm, I recall a couple of miles that didn't seem to make the graph—then again, the lines I usually pick can't exactly be called straight.)