it sure is a long way up

Top of the mountain!  Looking east!

Rainy saturday morning rides south through dorchester, down along the lovely and scenic neponset river, through milton to the blue hills reservation, and a quick jaunt up the observatory access road on great hill.  the great hill is a mile of an almost straight up climb that twists through the woods above the ski hill.  

some psychos were full on training day and just going up and down, up and down...

for me once was enough, a little rest at the top to drink some rum from a hip flask, check out the view, and then fly down the hill fast and loose.

ski trail.  westerly view.

Quincy.  

red line bridge next to the hancock st bridge over the ol neponset rivah kid!

for those about to ride

i got a new job, working in a factory.  we build bicycles by hand.
this is my workbench, prepping steel and titanium frames for
the paint booth with some filing and blasting.
open the blast doors!

this mean looking machine is the sandblaster!  he mixes high pressure air with little abrasive particles of media to clean up a steel bicycle and make the metal all nice and ready for paint to stick too!

close the blast doors!

paint

this is my "office".  i've grown up and graduated from sitting on a bike saddle all day, and now wear a full body suit and spaceman lookin' helmet to hang out in this cross draft spray booth.
the future!

new toy for some lucky so and so.  carbon fiber tubes, ready to be cut and glued into a super light and stiff bicycle.  read - fast as hell

independent fabrication corvid.
one of the perks of the new gig is gettin' to test ride some crazy high tech bicycle machinery.  this guy is all carbon fiber, weighs less than twenty pounds built, and is so fast it screams up hills.  i rode this from provincetown down to brewster, and back, on ol' cape cod memorial day weekend.
the nicest bike i've ever put between my legs, this shot is at cahoons hollow beach in wellfleet.

yesterday's parties

we salute spending 80 dollars on beer and hotdogs at sporting events.

this was at a bruins game, and we won 4-0 against the blackhawks.

give a stranger a high five!

test riding shiny new bikes at the new amsterdam bike show in new york city.
the best part about the whole bike show was the bar, which featured haggard looking 'gansett girls
serving up ice cold tall boys of narragansett for 25 cents!  

beer for the bike show after party at horse cycles in brooklyn.   the picture barely does it justice, but it took
two grown ass men (myself included) a mighty struggle to wheel that hand-truck to the shop with
seven cases of beer.
we were rewarded handsomely with all the beer we could drink, and since i don't remember leaving the party
or how i got home, it was probably enough.

victory

this is my new bass, a gibson victory standard!

made in kalamazoo michigian sometime between 1980 and 1985, it is impossible to tell really because the neck has been replaced with what seems to be a precision bass clone of sorts.  ted nugent's bass player, rob grange, used to play one of these guys.  it has a real long scale like a thunderbird, making it a man's bass!

 built neither for comfort or speed, it is truly a beast of nineteen eighties american industry.

 keep it fast and loose, wild and lazy

reasons to wake up

seasonal depression be damned, i can guarantee that i am looking forward to what little spring we get here in new england as much as anyone else out there, or, more likely, inside there...

snow, ice, subzero temperatures and plows can go to hell and melt for all i give a fuck, but there are more than a few reasons to suffer through these puritanical and tyrannical winters...

coke in a glass bottle.  much cheaper, and dare i say more refreshing, than beer.

thin lizzy records!

new drivetrains.  salty roads, say hello to stainless steel chainrings.

days off from work and wild weather to learn new tunes!

Doomriders and Ramming Speed

come on out and get gnarly!

this blizzard goes to eleven

this was the view out of my window on wednesday morning, about 715am, as i was stretching and drinking coffee.  the weather report stated that the worst of the blizzard was to happen between the hours of 6am and 8am.  since i have to be at the downtown office every morning at 8am, i was literally riding into the heart of the storm, the worst of the beast.

lucky, or maybe unlucky, for me, i have been doing this long enough to have proper bad weather gear.  i just got some new "waterproof" boots at tent city i was really excited to test out.

trees were fallen on cars all down my street and through my neighborhood as i walked my bike towards the intersection of columbia and mass ave.

here's the road warrior taking a quick break outside 311 summer street.  the good thing about working in a blizzard is no traffic, and no need to lock your bike anywhere.  if anyone is brave enough to go steal bikes in a snowstorm, and dumb enough to try and ride off, i guess they earned it.

snowy scene in city square, charlestown.  i walked over the north washington bridge to deliver two pieces to chucktown, and both offices were closed.  bummer.

a shot of the north washington bridge leading back into boston.  i rode over the icy grates coming back, tempting fate and recklessly defying safety as i sketchily slid my way back into town.

these guys at 50 staniford street were working harder than me, and had better storm gear too.  i think my jobs more fun, and they and everybody else looked at me like i was some kind of mental case all day long.  some real nice guy in a pickup truck even slowed down to tell me i was "a real fuckin asshole" for riding my bike in the snow.

you know, that famous building where old guys with wigs that are long dead now did important stuff that nobody remembers or cares about.

after work i had to go to allston rock city and help the lads shovel our van out of the snow so we could play our gig that night.  heres kal watching some heavy machinery clear the street for us.

i saved our parking spot southie style with a wicker basket and a cardboard box that i filled with snow so it wouldnt blow away.  it was pretty needless, as the entire band got too drunk to drive and we left the van stuck in the driveway of a friends apartment by ringer park.  i missed the last train back home and went to sleep on my buddies couch.