Off To See The Wizard of AAAAHS!

Today was crazy, ran around like a chicken on meth, trying to get ready for the 101. Now it's way too late and I have to get up way too early.

What was in the box? This was in the box:


Thanks to my good buddies at Trek I will be rolling on a fully-operational wheel this weekend. Only thing is, it's a center-lock wheel and all my shit is 6-bolt. So I paid a little visit to my nearest neighborhood bike shop to see Brian about an adapter.



He hooked me up with what I needed, although I was so frazzled that I thought for a moment that it wasn't what I needed. Oh god...too tired to get into semi-technical explanations now. Later for that.

Lesson #1: Bring BEER to the bike shop. Even if you're a dick like me who works for and races for another shop, you will get the royal treatment. Look how happy Colin is. He's not happy to see me, he's happy to see BEER.

Thinking that I had been hooked up with the wrong thing, I paid a visit to the guys at Ace Wheelworks. They also helped me out with the adapter I needed. And after I took a closer look at the adapter Colin E. had found for me, I realized that the one Brian had given me was correct as well. Hey, I never said I wasn't an idiot. I bought it anyway, I'm going to need it for the front wheel that my official LBS sponsor is helping me out with in the near future.

And for whatever reason I did a weigh-in. Not bad.

And check it out:

The suspension cables on the Zakim bridge remind me very much of the "wheel strings" on my new Bontrager RXL. That's a pretty sick lookin' bridge.

OK, Jesus, I gotta get me some sleep, see you...Monday?

What's in The Box? Not Nachos

What's in the box?

Was it just a pair of HUGE socks?

No, there was a Gary Fisher Collection shirt in there too. But was that all? Why then is the box so darn big? That's an awful lot of real estate for a T-Shirt and a pair of socks, however big they might be. Oh but I do love me a big pair o' socks. So much so that I bought a gigantic pair of Swiftwick Embrocation socks off of James Morrison a few weeks back.


I often run into James, he basically lives in the attic of The Shop. He's up there sorting slick looking Embrocation goods for hours a day with the help of his not-stereotypically-short helper Elf, Pete Bradshaw. One day I'm up in the attic and I bump into James and he says, "Thom P., if you could have anything in the world, anything, what would it be?" And I replied, "Well James Morrison, I would desire a prodigious pair of blue socks with pictures of coffee pots on them, because there are two things I love in this life — big socks and coffee." And he said, "You're in luck!" And I was and it was great. Way more lucky than smashing my forehead on the hatch of the Subaru outside that McDonalds in New York that time so hard that it left a dent (in my head, not the car), a dent that quickly ballooned into a purple Easter egg looking thing which the cashier couldn't stop looking at as I ordered my overly sweet and overly cream-diluted ice coffee.

But here's the thing, I only bought the socks because they were big and look cool, not because I'm way into cross or rubbing Mace-The Ointment! on my pale appendages in the middle of winter. So I'm happy Travis and the guys at Trek threw some socks in with my super-secret weapon...or whatever it is that was in that box. The Embrocation socks will now be relegated to recreational use only, for wearing to super-cool bike industry events and whatnot. OK, maybe I'll have to broaden their application, if I only wore them to super-cool bike industry events I'm afraid they'd wind up just getting eaten by moths in my closet.

The Embrocation guys do have some sick design-stuff going on, check out these custom Cinelli bars:


Bradshaw had a pair in the shop the other day, but I had a rare episode of decency and decided not to snap a spy photo and post it before they got a chance to. More pics over on their site.



And in a hatchet-shop segue...
M and I went to check out that new Flatbread Pizza in Davis Square the other night. We went to the original Flatbread up in Waitsfield Vermont just a few weeks back, it was amazing, best brick oven pizza in the universe. The slick commuter pictured above was parked outside (that one's for you Georges). I.F.'s in Somerville are like rats in New York or deer in...upstate New York.


We got the Taco Pizza, which I insisted on calling "nacho pizza." I don't know, I've got a thing for nachos, it's an even stronger predilection than I have for big socks and coffee. Emotionally, I'm eight-years-old, whenever M asks me what I want for dinner I scream "nachos!" and do a little dance. It's all consuming. And speaking of all consuming...


I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Oh wait, no I can believe it, I'm a freaking pig, especially when you combine two things more valuable to me than gold and diamonds — pizza and nachos. This culinary triumph trumped the waffle fry nachos at Jake's Dixie Road House as my all time favorite thing ever.

What's it gonna be, 85° tomorrow? If I put the sweat suit on, wrap myself in Glad bags, and hit the bike path at noon, I can maybe make weight for the big bike race Saturday.

Straight Outta Brompton

This post wasn't actually supposed to happen. I was supposed to be sleeping tonight, resting up for the 101, but I got nailed with a vicious bout of pre-sleep insomnia. Not the waking up at 4:30AM and not being able to go back down kind that is more common with me. Hey! It's almost 4:30AM now. Oops and ouch, tomorrow is gonna hurt. But only when I use my eyes.

The above photo there...that's Peter Bradshaw, former Messenger World Champ and Cat 1 killer on the Embrocation Cycling Journal squad. In a shocking development, he's decided to give up riding 700c road bikes and take up riding and racing 20" wheeled folding bikes. As any 26" wheeled mountain bike rider will tell you — smaller wheels are faster. He was sick of getting passed by commuters with milk crates zip-tied to their rear racks while he was in the recovery or warm-up portion of his training rides. He said enough is enough and from now on he will take out all his violent, competitive urges on un-witting utilitarian cyclists.

He's hoping to trade in his Dahon for a Brompton in time for the 2011 Brompton races. Dream big Peter Bradshaw, dream big.


In other fascinating news, I figured out a much more substantial clamp system for my Contour HD by V Hold R! Just in time for the W101. Much better than the mess below:


My first attempt at a custom clamp involved two 25.4 stem face plates. I was going to use a long-ass bolt, thread a nylock nut down the bolt to get the clamp-age going, then bolt the existing Contour clamp to that business. I got this far:


But then I looked down and saw one of these on the bench in front of me.

"Wow, what is that?" you are saying (if you're still here). Well, it's a handlebar bottle cage mount, meant for bikes that don't have water bottle bosses (or King Cage top cap mounts). Immediately I saw it as a much better platform for my project. The end result wasn't beautiful, and it still involved zip-ties (but just to prevent the clamp from rotating and causing the mounting nut to back out). Check it:


Are you amazed? I'll be A-cappella-ing this fine creation at the 101.Running it on my bars where I can rotate it all over the place for a variety of kooky shots. I'll also be running the Helmet Hero and packing my point and shoot in my pocket. I'll be so weighed down with cameras, I'll have no hope of beating Jeff Schalk.

What The Hell Do I Know About Not-Partying or Anything Else?

For some insane reason I was up at 5:20 his morning. Allow me to reiterate that this is NOT normal for me. Alright, maybe it's normal, but it's definitely not planned and it's certainly not pleasant. I tried to look at the bright side and kid myself that I had begun my "waking up early training" for the Wilderness 101...and The High Cascades 100...and probably The Breck Epic. Ya, that's a whole lot of big, crazy, racing stuff, I have bitten off more than I can chew, both physically and financially. Expect a frantic fire sale sometime in the next couple weeks. Hopefully I'll still have some body organs left to sell on the black market to get me to SSWC10 NZ (Cough! Crack pipe dream — cough!). As unlikely as my trip to NZ might seem, the Oregon and Colorado trips are definites, the plane tickets have been bought, I gotta go. And of course the 101 is solid as well. My buddy Will C. will be picking me up Friday AM for the drive down to State College, PA whether I like it or not. I'm less nervous about this 101 than any previous edition...all two of the ones I've attended, ONE of which I wrote about. The back to back 6 hour races have given me the confidence that, for once, I might actually have the miles in my legs necessary to do this thing effectively. This will be my first geared edition, which gives me the confidence that I will be able to crush my Breck Epic blogger grant buddy, Montana Miller. He'll be on one of those ridiculous single speeds. Those things are wicked, wicked slow, who the hell would choose to Jazz-Funk one of those things (I'm not giving up my quest to retire and replace "rock this" or "rock that.") of his own free will? At the very least I hope not to have my fragile soul brutally squashed like it was in '07. Or, more importantly, not as brutally squashed as Dicky's soul was at the ORAMM this past weekend.

The massage I just had a couple hours ago down at Big Hands Massage seems to have worked out the issue I was having with the recurring sensations that felt like Ninjas jabbing hot shurikens into my scapula. If I'm not lying on the ground, rolling around on a miniature can of coke like I was in the Pats peak feed-zone two hours into the 101, I'll be ecstatic.

Just going to put it out there,
I still have no place to stay and no transportation in Bend or Breck. I smell nice and I am sometimes quite quiet and sedate in person.


This past weekend was a weekend for not riding a lot and going out to drink the beers with the peoples. Friday was a bust, I was way too cooked to go out, but Saturday night I ventured out to Charlie's Kitchen where I met up with some local, awesome cycling people, people like Adam Myerson and Leah Pappas-Barnes. There was even a brief, but very pleasant Matt and Mo sighting. We sat at a table, three feet from one another, but it was so loud, we had to text each other everything we had to say all night. Then we discussed our social-media campaign — Adam would tweet about it, Leah would post it to facebook, and then I would blog about it.


Our neighbors at the next table over may have only tipped a dollar on a $60 tab, but the dollar was in the form of an origami elephant, but we couldn't step to that. Wait...do paper airplanes count as origami? What about a sailor's hat? No? Damn.

Seth's shirt reads : "Shit Sandwich"

It was nice to pretend I had a life outside trying to race and trying to work and trying to write things besides this crap and trying to sleep, if only for a few hours.

The S.C.U.L. "battalion" navigates the "Harvard Constellation"

As we left the bar we saw a S.C.U.L. ride roll by, some of them on their tall bikes. I have been on a few S.C.U.L. rides in my time, none of them at all recently. There seemed to be a shift going on during the time I associated with them. At first the rides were like a raucous parades of incredibly-dangerous-to-ride-bikes that went from party to party, it was mayhem. On subsequent rides there was way more time spent doing "recon" at parties with drawn out, coded discussions ensuing and less time spent actually partying. These days it appears that they have effectively become LARPERS on bikes, with their own lingo and ranking structure. In fact, I think they prefer to be called "BLARPERS" (Bicycling Live Action Role Players). Who knows, maybe all that craziness was part of the deal all those years back too, I could have been too hopped up on PBR's to notice. But of course I'm just a "bandit" or a "CBU" (carbon-based unit), rolling around on my "civilian ship." What the hell do I know about not-partying or anything else?

Incredible Feats of Mechanical Prowess

I did not have the most successful weekend of riding. My legs never quite got back under me after the 6 Hours of Power, I was draggin' ass all week. Saturday I watched The Le Tour De and procrastinated to the point of absurdity. And the thing is, we have no food in the house, I mean NONE. OK, except for a loaf of crappy bread we got in New York last week. It was no good to begin with, now it's just foul. So I had toast for breakfast and then didn't eat for about five hours. When it dawned on me that I was going to be significantly under-fueled for any sort of riding all I could do was start eating gels and blocks and other fake-food-type-items. It was too little (and too gross) too late. I would be bonked-out before I even left the house.

It didn't improve matters when, after stalling and stalling some more, I decided to ride my much-neglected single speed. It needed work, lots of work. I forgot that I had started my ride with Big George up in VT a few weeks back with totally cooked rear brake pads. So those had to be replaced. I found that one of my pistons had gotten all sticky, so that had to be pushed out and swabbed off with some alcohol and monkeyed with for a while. After that I went to swap out my COG from a 20t to an 18t. (I might be riding the gears at the moment, but still I love me some Endless Bikes.)

Now I didn't go babbling on about how I switched from using my '08 Bontrager Race X Lite with a DT Swiss RWS 10mm Thru-Bolt to using a more recent Bontrager Race Lite with a standard quick-release and a Surly Tuggnut. Well I was using the Tuggnut, for one ride, the one with George up at Perry Hill, it worked great. But, when I went to swap cogs I realized that the Tuggnut wasn't going to work with an 18t cog. No matter what I did with the chain length, the little mammer jammer wouldn't sit right. If I put the QR skewer in the fore-positioned hole, the adjustment bolt would bottom out before it reached the end of the dropout, like so:


If I put the QR through the aft-hole, the entire device would have to sit kind of askew, not really lined up with the dropout well at all, and awkwardly bumping into the junction of the seat stay and chain stay, as pictured below:


I was adamant that I was riding the single speed and I was adamant that I was Reggae-ing the 18t cog. That's the new, cool thing to say. The days of "Rockin'" things are over, "Reggae-ing" is the new rockin'. Hey, it's gonna catch on; I'm the guy who gave Adam Snyder a nickname that totally stuck. And shit, you can "New Wave" things if you want, you can even "Adult Contemporary" (lame) things if you want. In fact, on the rare occasions when I wear my Keen sandals, I "dirty-hippy-jam-band" them.



Now back to the very important and technical matter at hand.

So the very nice under normal conditions Surly Tuggnut was working about as well as Tom Cruise's campaign to appear tall and heterosexual.


A few years back I won a midnight crit on my Schwinn Varsity, in the basket class. For my efforts I received a really hokey-ass chain tensioner, some stamped-metal, Chinese-made piece of absolute crap. It had been sitting around my shop area since then (October 2006) and finally I had a use for it.

UG-LY

It's hideous and total shit, but it works. The nut isn't even metric. Of course it was set up for a 10mm axle, so I had to "adapt" it to accept the step-down that comes with the Surly device using a file and a rubber mallet. The Todd Downs was spinning in his sprinter van.

While we're on the subject of incredible feats of mechanical prowess, check this out: I just got a new HD helmet cam, the Contour HD by Vhold R. I was sick of running the helmet cam during the longer races (can you say "ow, my freakin' neck!") so I got the bar mount for an extra $20. It lasted through about, oh...a minute of its first ride. I had lost the wing nut for the clamp at the 6 Hours of Power, so I threw a 5mm Allen bolt in there and tightened it down with the ball end of a Bondhus allen wrench. I rode down my front steps, hopped the curb on the other side of the Alewife Brook Parkway and — SLIP! I took out my multi-tool and tightened it up, again not using all that much torque and — CRACK! The freaking thing broke. I've had issues with the cheap plastics used by the Go Pro guys as well, but their clamps last at least a week, unless it's cold out, then all bets are off.

No problem, I'm a bike mechanic, I'm very proficient at opening beer bottles with any object in sight and fixing things with zip ties, check it:


Do you think my rickety system worked? Hell no! It slipped faster than Versus' ratings after Lance fell out of contention at the tour. I'm hoping to work out some sort of much-more-serious clamping system before the Wilderness 101, perhaps involving plumber's hose clamps, black magic, and Gummy Bears.

Icarus Was a Massive Dumb Ass

I've got no races to hype up for this weekend. My next event is the Wilderness 101 on July 31st, but all I can think about right now is how rad Jens Voigt is and how badly named the Ridley Icarus is. If you didn't catch the story about Jens Voigt NOT abandoning The Le Tour, you can check it out here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/refusing-to-quit-the-tour-de-france/
Here's an excellent excerpt:

So then the broom wagon pulled up and was like, “Do you want to just get in?” And I said, “Oh no, I don’t need YOU!” But there I am with blood spurting out my left elbow and no bike. Finally, the race organizers got me a bike, but it was this little yellow junior bike. It was way too small for me and even had old-fashioned toe-clip pedals. But that is the only way I could get down the mountain, so I had to ride it for like 15-20 kilometers until I finally got to a team car with my bike.

If the guy ever gets busted for dope, I will shoot myself right in the face.

What does this have to do with unfortunately named Ridley Icarus? I'll try to explain, not sure if I'll be successful. The name "Icarus" reminds me of other in-aptly named items. Items like the Chevy Caprice Classic.


The above Caprice Classic is not the one I think of when I think of Caprice Classics. I bet you guys didn't know that Wonder Woman may have flown in an invisible jet, but when she had to drive, she drove an unfortunately visible '77 Caprice wagon. When I think of the Caprice, I'm thinking more of the 90's version:

UG-LY

In no sense of the word is "caprice" a good thing. Merriam-Webster defines caprice as:

1 a : a sudden, impulsive, and seemingly unmotivated notion or action b : a sudden usually unpredictable condition, change, or series of changes s of the weather>
2 : a disposition to do things impulsively

Sounds like a great car...
if every time you drive down the road you want to jerk the wheel into a Goddamn bridge abutment.



The name Icarus has a similar connotation. The myth of Icarus can be interpreted in different ways, but my interpretation is this: Icarus was kind of a massive dumb ass. Ya he could be a symbol for man striving for unattainable heights, or he could be a symbol for man greatly over-estimating his engineering prowess and eating shit in the ultimate way as a result. Icarus' wings were held together with wax; hopefully the Ridley Icarus' tubes aren't held together with something equally non-durable. Just don't ride your Icarus in the sun, you'll be fine.

And here's where I tie it together.

Jens Voigt should have a signature model called The Prometheus. Now that's a myth about a total bad ass; not a dumb ass. He was like "Screw you gods, I'm-a bring fire to the mortals." And the gods were like "Screw us? Oh no, no, screw YOU. We're gonna strap you to a rock and have eagles eat your guts for all eternity!" And that's Voigt's attitude toward bike racing, he just goes. He hurts, but he goes. He lays it down at 70 KPH, and he finishes the race, on a yellow kid's bike. He keeps getting wrecked, but he keeps re-generating and attacking again. Prometheus.

Jens after his '09 Le Tour De crash:



And for whatever reason, Jens' accent reminds me of this:



Have a great weekend riding bikes. Unless it's sunny and you're riding a Ridley Icarus. In that case I would stay indoors.

The Three Days of The 6 Hours of Power

Visit beta.cyclingdirt.org for more Videos

Colt may move this video by the time I wake up (which won't be early, it's 2AM),
so you might be looking at a dead link. If so, just go to the Cyclingdirt main page, it could be there. Or who knows, it could be floating around in the ether somewhere.

The 6 Hours of Power Report is UP!

And it might be the best thing I've written in days, maybe weeks even. So go check it out.

6 Hours of Power Pre-Report

Ya, ya, I said I see yuz Monday, well this is MY Monday. It took three days to get to the 6 Hours of Power and back. It's nigh on midnight and M and I are trying to catch up on three days of DVRed Le Tour De coverage. You have to have your priorities y'know. During the next 24 hours I'll be meticulously outlining and fact-checking my very official race report for the 29er Crew blog, which I will hopefully be posting some time in the next couple days. It went well, crazy crap happened, it was a great trip altogether. It did start and finish with a bit of meteorological histrionics.



We left Friday night, after The Work. We were immediately hit with torrential downpours. M was white-knuckling the wheel for the first couple hours of the trip. I was white-knuckling the dial on the ipod, trying to cue up the most grating possible music.


Traveling with my wife is always better. After The 6HOP, I was telling Peter "BMP" Keiller, between mouthfuls of 5-minutes-past-al-dente-pasta, how I had my best SSWC performance as a result of my wife's attendance at the event. The night before SSWC08 in Napa she had the presence of mind to suggest that maybe, just maybe I was drunk enough just as Buck Keich handed me an entire pitcher of beer. I thought it was a good idea to drink the entire thing as if it were a pint. She thought it was a good idea to lead me home like a brain-damaged child so I could sleep it off and race in a semi-serious manner the next day. Or at the very least not puke on myself trying. That night I may have said something that sounded as if I didn't appreciate her guidance, I probably said something like "Hey Warden...yer not the boss-a-me...sazza-flazza-flazza." But in the clear light of morning, I saw her wisdom.



One way in which she improved this trip was by suggesting that we drive a few hours on Friday night, stay at a motel, and then continue on to East Hammondsport Saturday morning. Left to my own defective devices, I would have undoubtedly dicked around Saturday AM, driven it straight, and arrived late having not slept a wink. She made me sleep until 10:45, it was nuts. Um...and the BL Lime, that's hers. My Zimas are in my bag.


Saturday, on the way to East Hammondsport, we stopped off for a little spin somewhere in the state of New York. What we rode was part of The Finger Lakes trail, it was not a well-traveled piece of trail.


Coming through the town of Bath, we stopped to grab a couple things at CVS. There was a little town fair-type-thing going on down on the common. When we got out of the car I heard what I thought was a loud car stereo blaring death metal. I thought that there was some kid being a total punk, blaring his tunes while all the old folks in their lawn chairs were trying to listen to a barber shop quartet or something. But no. The death metal was coming from the gazebo in the town square. It was a high school band playing full-on, Amon Amarth style, roaring vocals, terrifying death metal. Excellent.



We got to East Hammondsport in time for dinner and a tour of the premises.


The '67 Chevy is a new addition.


My Auntie Ann's place has a multitude of killer places to relax while enjoying beautiful views and drinking beer from Keuka Brewing.


See. Part of the reason the race went so well (shut it, more on that later) was all the EXTREME relaxing we did the night before.


There were crazy lightning storms overnight, and for some reason I couldn't sleep, I mean extra-special, even for me. In the morning I woke up feeling like ass, but it was a beautiful day and there was a-racin' to be done. So we hit it —

to be continued...

I Smell Canadian Bacon

Wednesday, on the way to work at the Newton shop, I double-flatted. Now I don't believe in bad luck really. I flatted because I was commuting on racing tires (Michelin Pro 3's) and they were beat to hell, it was only a matter of time before it happened. But twice in one ride? C'mon! It was pissing rain too, total deluge. I fixed the first flat, rode for about another fifteen minutes, then BLAM! Second flat.


I wound up riding the rear flat all the way from Weston over to Newton, at least five, maybe seven miles. It got really dicey when I stopped to grab a coffee. I was riding one-handed down Needham street with my rear end washing out all over the place. That road is about as smooth as Robert Davi's face. It was a minor miracle that I didn't go down.


When I got to work, I had some more bad luck — I hadn't packed socks and my feet were soaking wet. This is the only time I buy socks. I wish other clothing items were bought on such a necessity-driven impulse basis. I would have a much better wardrobe. I couldn't find any socks that I liked, so I decided to get all crazy and check out some of those compression socks that are all the rage with senior citizens who don't want to get blood clots in their legs on planes and bike racers.


The socks I bought were black and I was wearing all black, so I could delude myself into thinking I looked like an awesome Kiwi rugby player from The All Blacks.


Didn't Johnny Cash write a song called "The Man In Black (Compression Socks)"? Compression socks are totally bad ass.


I thought that the fact that they went all the way up to my shorts felt odd, so I decided to experiment with different short lengths. Dan The Man was stoked. Look at him checkin' me out. I think he wants to, as he says, "yummy down on it." His words, not mine. That's his weird blue foot in the photo a couple back. He's rockin' those barefoot running shoes, they totally creep me out. He looks like a member of blue man group who forgot to take his shoes off in the shower.

I asked James Morrison from Embrocation if he wears the compression socks. He told me (in so many words, that were nothing like these) that those things are for pussies, all the cool kids are rocking the full-on compression tights these days. I told him that those are called "panty hose."


Take two, this one with the socks actually pictured. This one is more for Peter (and maybe a for Dan too a little, hi Dan) who put the following comment on the blog yesterday:

fuck you.
I AM DOING six hours of power.
YOU stay where you are.

See those meaty Mirko Cro Cop thighs Peter?


They're coming to the Six Hours of Power brutha. I'm towing them behind the Subaru in a Uhaul trailer. You better be ready for a battle, cuz I'm-a bring my A-War. I'll ride circles around you so fast that a vortex will be created. You'll be so turned around and upside down, you'll be calling ham "Canadian Bacon."



And now, in a very smooth segue from meaty thighed smack talk to...to, I'm not sure what. M and I stayed down at Pop's Camp in Wrentham last night. It's incredibly relaxing. I spend all my not-blogging and not-watching The Le Tour and True Blood time reading. It's sweet. What was not sweet was waking up to pee in the middle of the night. Well, not waking up to pee, but waking up suddenly as I smashed my fucking head into a 2 X 4. We were sleeping in the loft of the cabin, it's a little low in the ceiling. I thought I was being attacked as I dropped back to my pillow. I thought "Oh, so this is what it's like to be beaten to death with a bat in your sleep. Remind me not to piss off anyone with anger management problems and a collection of Louisville Sluggers."

Or cut Mark Renshaw off in a sprint lead-out:




In the morning, when I woke up from my concussion-aided slumber, I pulled my bike out of the boat and bike house. It's difficult to hit the road for a hard couple hours on the way to work when there are colorful floaty things in the boat house and beer in the fridge.


That's the cabin below. We call it "Pop's Camp." Pop was my great grandfather, he built the place. My Mom and my aunts and uncles all used to stay there in the summer with Pop.



In-between Wrentham and the Boston shop there's a pocket of some of the most amazing roads around. It's not a bad commute. It's not short, but it's almost 100% awesome.


There's a little bit of a contrast between Wrentham and Allston. It's mostly an olfactory thing. Wrentham doesn't smell so strongly of wet cigarette butts and urine.


But wherever you are, it's always a good thing to run into K.P., Kevin Porter. He is perpetually stoked and his stoke is contagious. I wish I could keep him in my closet. Every morning I'd wake up feeling like I normally do, which is probably worse than I should, and I'd open up my KP closet and he'd go "YEAH MAN!" and all would be well in the world.


Alright, off to New York for the Six Hours of Power. See yuz Monday.