Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Everybody saw this coming.

I really should read my own blog.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

You are here: Home / John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House" / Well Done Everybody!

Well Done Everybody!

by | 139 Comments

This post is in: 

Congratulations, everyone. You made it through another shit week.

Just two more weeks and we can kick 2023 in the arse.

I am down to one final pet appointment for Thurston Howl to get him road ready, and an appointment to have my tires rotated and alignment done, and then a week to pack and tie up loose ends, and I am off like a dirty shirt for Arizona.

First order of business when I get to AZ is to buy a tricycle for adults. Looking for a bike helmet with viking horns right now.

Reader Interactions

139Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    First order of business when I get to AZ is to buy a tricycle for adults. Looking for a bike helmet with viking horns right now.

    I DEMAND PHOTO EVIDENCE.

  3. 3.

    Suzanne

    Dude, Cole, you need to start covering yourself in sunblock NAOW. You need, like, SPF MAYONNAISE.

    ETA: Maybe SPF DRYWALL MUD.

  5. 5.

    Scout211

    and I am off like a dirty shirt for Arizona.

    Every time we left for a big car trip with kids when they were young, Mr. Scout always started the drive with, “We’re off like a dirty shirt!”

    Good times.  Thanks for bringing that memory to mind, Cole.

    On your way out of town, be sure to say to Thurston, “We’re off like a dirty shirt!”  He’ll cherish the memory.  Maybe. 😉

  6. 6.

    SpaceUnit

    @Suzanne:

    Sherwin Williams high-gloss latex white should do the trick.

    I made the mistake of backpacking in AZ during the summer once.  Never again.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    I love the bike helmet with horns idea. Very few people could pull off that look, but you are definitely one of them.

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SpaceUnit: ​
      The skin pigmentation most of my family members tends toward fish belly white. We came mainly from the northern parts of Europe and ended up in Wisconsin for a reason. A summer spent between Columbus, GA and Lawton, OK, convinced me of the wisdom of that choice.

  11. 11.

    jimmiraybob

    OK, I’ll be that guy.

    Unless you go the extreme southern route you should also pack for snow.  I once drove through a blizzard in OK City that was pretty darn impressive.  And then there is some of the higher country further west.  AZ north of the Mogollon Rim can be a winter wonder land.

    Extra bankies, warm socks, munchies, water, batteries, etc.

  12. 12.

    Jackie

    @Betty Cracker: My daughter has a fun sense of humor. She’s  also petite and can wear kids things; like the rainbow glittered unicorn bike helmet – with a gold horn – I bought her! She loves it and wears it faithfully when biking with her boys. She’s a fun 40 yr old!😁

  16. 16.

    SpaceUnit

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m with you.

    I live in Colorado now and there’s a solid five months when you don’t dare step out of the door without slathering yourself in sunscreen.

  17. 17.

    Suzanne

    @sab: Oh yes. There’s lots of mineral sunscreens with zinc oxide. I personally tend to prefer the chemical sunscreens because I find that they last longer in the water.

  18. 18.

    Scout211

    @sab: Do they still make zinc oxide?

    Several brands of sunblock are made of zinc oxide now.  It’s back! This one is one of the ones we’ve used.

  19. 19.

    Dan B

    Our French Club in small bedroom town near Akron took a trip to French Canadia.  I rode with cool bachelor Phil Horrisburger in his convertible through the 1,000 Islands.  It was a brilliant low humidity day.  My nose got red.  The next day it got dark.  The day after that it turned black.  A week or two later the outer layer fell off.  Memorable!

  21. 21.

    noncarborundum

    @Albatrossity: In our family it’s “And we’re off with a four-note theme!” (P.D.Q Bach/Peter Schickele reference, for those who care.)

    I’d never heard the “like a dirty shirt” version. Or “herd of turtles”, for that matter. Of course I’ve heard of turtles.

  23. 23.

    Suzanne

    @SpaceUnit:

    I made the mistake of backpacking in AZ during the summer once. 

    I made the mistake of attempting to hike Camelback on July 4 one year. I decided to go back down when I was about 2/3 the way up. That was…. an incredibly dumb thing to attempt, and I’m glad I came to my senses before Bad Shit Went Down. (I have summited Camelback on multiple occasions, but in sane conditions.)

    The sun damage on the skin is seriously no joke. Trader Joe’s makes a facial sunscreen for about $9 that is a pretty good dupe for the Supergoop, which is like $40.

    My grandfather had lost his hair, and he was good about sunblocking his head or wearing a hat. But he forgot about his ears, and a freckle on the back of his ear turned into a big chunk of melanoma. My FIL also developed melanoma on his bald head.

  31. 31.

    SuzieC

    Yeah let’s kick 2023’s ass!  Good news is that thanks to Bidenomics and the accelerating stock market I have more money than I ever dreamed of.  I will donate a lot of it to BJ recommended winners in 2024.

  33. 33.

    SpaceUnit

    @Suzanne:

    My friend and I attempted Sycamore Canyon in mid July, about 50 miles southwest of Flagstaff (a town I love BTW).  There was supposed to be spring and a pool.  But our guidebook was shit.

    We got lost and it seriously sucked.  I’d never been so baked and parched in my life.

  34. 34.

    Suzanne

    Oh…. I had a classmate in college who would leave by saying, “Well, I’m off like a prom dress”. Always made me smirk.

  35. 35.

    Kelly

    Our cat Phoebe intentionally joined Mrs Kelly in the bathtub today. She has been intrigued by the bathwater for years laying on the side of the tub paddling the water. Today after a bit of paddling from the side she eased into the water and sorta quivered with excitement. Stayed in the water until Mrs Kelly got out. Totally sogged took a couple hours to dry out. One clean kitty.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    @SpaceUnit: Yeah, the combo of elevation and dryness (plus heat, depending on the time of year) can be brutal.

    A couple of years before I met Mr. Suzanne, I was seeing this guy who was a runner. He signed up to do the Prescott Whiskey Row half-marathon, and he asked me if I wanted to do one of the races with him. I was like, “Well, I’ll do the 10K”. (For reference, Prescott is also a mile-high city.) So, fine….. I’m running, it’s all fine, then the course turns a corner and I start hearing people saying “HOLY SHIT”. The course went up this hill that was so steep, it looked like a goddamn wall from that angle. And then….. back down the same hill. Saw a few people try to gain time by sprinting down the hill, and more than a few of them lost footing and took nasty falls. When I got home — after the race — I decided to look up the course. Turns out Runner’s World ranked it one of the ten most difficult running courses in America. Had I not been a total dumbass, I might have looked this up prior to the race.

    I’ve done a lot of dumb shit, come to think about it.

  42. 42.

    Dan B

    @Martin: Seems to be made in Seattle if the corner of the skyline and the towers on First Hill / Pill Hill seen from Gasworks Park is any indication.  Great looking e – trike!

  44. 44.

    Eric S.

    I hiked Camelback once. 25 years ago or so. It was in January.

    JG Cole, I know you aren’t much of a car guy but think about visiting one of the car auctions in January. I understand it may not be your cup of tea, but Barrett-Jackson is a spectacle. A lot of walking but good people watching and couple, three trillion cars.

  45. 45.

    SomeRandomGuy

    Who wants to find someone to construct an adult sized Big Wheel for John? Just me? I’ll come in again….

    Man, I used to like bicycling – so much better than walking, because you can actually *get* somewhere, even if it’s only to the convenience store with the best hot dogs and nachos for lunch.

  46. 46.

    noncarborundum

    @BethanyAnne: I don’t know that one, but I’m a big fan of the Concerto for Piano vs. Orchestra.  Also, speaking of obscure references, the Concerto for Horn and Hardart.  “And they’re off with a four-note theme” is from a bit that imagines radio announcers commenting on Beethoven’s Fifth as if it were a sporting event.

  49. 49.

    Suzanne

    @Eric S.: I’d agree with that.

    Cole, you’ll also be there during the Phoenix Open, which is also a good time. Another time you’re there, you can check out the Arabian Horse Show.

  50. 50.

    Scout211

    @frosty: superannuated commenters

    Wow. That sounds so much better than “old.”

    And yes, I do remember 1968.  The year I got my driver’s license!

    Oh. Did something else happen that year?

  51. 51.

    Chetan Murthy

    @SomeRandomGuy: My sister tells me that the modern equivalent of that is an e-bike.  She tells me that she tools all over town on that sucker (and she’s got a car).  And this is SF, so that means up-and-down hills.

  54. 54.

    noncarborundum

    @Scout211: I turned 10 in 1968. Does that make me just annuated?

    I remember arguing with my mother that summer that I should be allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch Star Trek (a rerun of “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, IIRC), pointing out that I was “a whole decade old”. As I recall, she was not impressed.

  55. 55.

    Hoppie

    @frosty: Indeed, I figured as much.  Scary how much participatory blogs are yesterday’s thing, eh?  Also, climate change makes me glad to be oldish.

  56. 56.

    wombat probability cloud

    John, hope you have safe and interesting travels, and fabulous food once you arrive.

  60. 60.

    karen marie

    @jimmiraybob: The road from Flagstaff to Phoenix in December, when I did it, was terrifying. Very steep, very windy, and lots of tractor trailers. Plus snow. I thought my car was broken at one point when I kept losing power and having to downshift. Car was fine. It was the steepness of the grade.

  64. 64.

    SomeRandomGuy

    Hearing people talk about SPF brought to mind a fascinating fact. SPF is diminishing returns. An SPF of 10 means it blocks 90% of UV. SPF 20 means it blocks 95%. SPF 50 means it blocks 98%… once you’re past SPF 10, you’re battling for that final 10% of UV.

    Once you get to those kinds of values, how long it remains on the skin is often more important than how high the initial SPF is – you don’t care if it says you could stay in the sun for 8 hours, if it washes off after 4!  Heh. And, you do want to consider SPF: Drywall mud (=”go back inside the house for a bit, after having fun in the sun”) as part of your protection plan.

  67. 67.

    Devore

    Yeah.  The southern route might not be a bad idea that time of year.    But I40 cross country is memorable.   Makes you appreciate just big the US is

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    Ahem.

    Viking warriors are associated with horned helmets in popular culture, but there is no evidence that Viking helmets had horns. The depiction of these horned helmets as historical is a fallacy that began in the 1870s. It was part of the construction of great Norse myths to be adopted by Germans, who wanted their own ancestral myths.

    The depiction of Vikings in horned helmets was an invention of the 19th-century Romanticist Viking revival. In 1876, Carl Emil Doepler created horned helmets for the first Bayreuth Festival production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which has been credited with inspiring this, even though the opera was set in Germany, not Scandinavia. There were also a few earlier, lesser known depictions that inspired Doepler. Source

    ;)

    Considering an electric trike?

  71. 71.

    Alison Rose

    @SomeRandomGuy: Well…as a whiter-than-white bitch, I’ll just say that in my previous life, if I spent time in the sun with anything less than SPF30, it was like I wasn’t wearing anything at all. I pretty much only used SPF50 and if it had been feasible, I would have simply cannonballed into a vat of it before leaving the house. Very fun to have a skin tone that says “I grew up barricaded inside a cave in Siberia”.

  73. 73.

    Harrison Wesley

    I’ve read a number (not all) of the comments on the various types and strengths of sunblocks in this thread.  I can’t speak to that, since the advice I got while growing up in Saudi Arabia was don’t walk around outside in the fucking daytime in the fucking summer.  Perhaps we were victims of an earlier, more innocent, less commercialized time….

  76. 76.

    karen marie

     

    @Harrison Wesley: What years were you there? My dad worked there late ’76 through mid ’78. I went for the summer and Christmas in ’77. Went to a boarding school in Las Palmas, Gran Canarias ’72-’73 with a bunch of Aramco kids. One of them was named Wesley.

  77. 77.

    Suzanne

    @karen marie:

    He’s going to be riding it only in Joelle’s driveway because taking it on a road here would be suicide.

    Agree. The canal path or side streets are the only safe places, IMO.

    A friend of mine was killed in Scottsdale while riding her bike two years ago. And I am one or two degrees of separation from probably seven other people who were killed while riding bikes in PHX over the years. Those big, straight roads with douchebags in giant pickups…. deadly.

  79. 79.

    dmsilev

    @Harrison Wesley: Yeah, that tracks. I had a summer student last year who had lived for a while as a kid in the UAE and she said that in the summer, you scuttled quickly from building to car, and then car to building at your destination, and staying outside was a ‘avoid if at all possible’ thing.

  82. 82.

    karen marie

    @dmsilev: That’s pretty funny. My dad worked for a small architecture subcontractor doing work for Aramco. He was assigned a non airconditioned pickup truck. My parents and I rode in the cab, my brother in the truckbed. It was hot the summer I was there (’77) but – maybe it was my youth – it wasn’t as bad as AZ. Having access to the gulf made a difference.

  84. 84.

    Harrison Wesley

    @karen marie: I was well gone by then – went there for 3rd through 9th grades in school, then went elsewhere to high school while the rest of my family lived there (Dhahran, BTW), went back after 1st year of college, but after getting expelled from school had to get a job.  Last year I was there was either ’69 or ’70…..years of various substance abuse have clouded the memory somewhat.

    As an amuse-bouche, prior to SA I lived in Iran (Abadan, to be exact) and went to the 1st grade there.  Alas, my only memory of Farsi, which I don’t know how to transliterate, is (roughly) ‘pansado bist’ which was my street address in case I got lost.

    And, no, I’m not Harrison.  This has been tonight’s budget travelogue.

  85. 85.

    Aussie Sheila

    @sab: Ahhhh. Zinc Cream! When we were young, the ‘go to’ for sun protection downunder. Since our family are all red heads or other wise extremely fair, it was a must to protect from the fierce southern hemisphere sun.

    Yes, it is stronger downunder than in the northern hemisphere, owing to the 20 degree tilt of the earth. The strength of the sun here in Summer is unfathomable unless you have experienced it.

    Personally, I love it, but my skin doesn’t .

  89. 89.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Albatrossity:

    Well, off like a dirty shirt sounds a lot faster than a herd of turtles. I think my dad was mostly commenting on how long it took to organize all of us (I have five siblings) to go anywhere! 

    LOL!  My grandpa said the same thing!  It’s become an emoji message whenever my parents and I go visit family.

    🐢🐢🐢

  90. 90.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Chetan Murthy: Yes, that too. Although my understanding is that it  is now closed over. At the time it was a big deal, and the government messages about using sun screen were unrelenting. Quite properly of course. People are much more aware of the danger from the Australian sun now than they used to be.

  91. 91.

    noncarborundum

    @NotMax: Well, I distinctly remember the “decade” thing, so it had to be 1968. I probably just misremembered which episode it was (I did say “IIRC”).

  92. 92.

    karen marie

    @Harrison Wesley: No, we were in Dhahran North – which probably did not exist when you were there. It was pretty close to Dhahran.  As a subcontractor employee/family, we couldn’t shop there. I remember going with my parents to visit a work acquaintance of my dad. It was like another planet. Dhahran North was an area of desert they’d scraped the loose sand off and plunked down a couple hundred identical white, prefab 2 and 3 bedroom homes, with a fence around the whole thing, and a 24-hour sentry at the gate between the family and bachelor camps and at the two exits. No one hung around outside.

    I got a job as a secretary for an American aggregate sub rather than spend May through mid September inside that box. The sub had several sunfish sailboats and two motorboats for waterskiing they’d haul to the beach every weekend for use by employees – including lucky me! It was wonderful.

  94. 94.

    Harrison Wesley

    @karen marie: Christ, that sounds like the surface of Mars or something.  I mean, Old-Time Dhahran wasn’t any great shakes (or sheiks, if you like bad word play), but it was sorta-kinda community.

    ETA:  Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to a presentation by somebody recently returned from SA.  Will be curious how things have changed.

  96. 96.

    karen marie

    @Harrison Wesley: You might be someone who knows. In Dammam there was a guy on the street cooking these things to sell to passersby. I have no idea what they’re called. He had a big metal drum stood up, with fire inside, and a big, round metal plate on top for the cooking surface. Remembering back 46 years, I think he put a ladle of a thin batter on the greased (butter? ghee?) griddle and then a maybe 8 inch square of maybe a single sheet of phyllo on the batter, or the other way around, and then banana and maybe a sprinkle of sugar, and then he’d fold it in quarters and fry it till it was crispy and brown. He’d quarter it, put it on a paper plate or just paper, squeeze a bit of lemon, and hand it over.

    They were so good. I can still taste and smell them 46 years later.

    Not being able to have delicious things I once tasted irks me. I wish I knew what it was so I have a name for this desire.

  97. 97.

    karen marie

    @Harrison Wesley: It was pretty grim. A friend of my parents in the states was a real estate agent. She gave me a “sold, we have others” sign that I brought along so we could tell which one was ours. My brother and I dug a little ditch along the front of the box, backfilled it with sand, and planted oleander cuttings. They grew surprisingly well. No one else bothered.

    The dust was insane. If you hit the stuffed furniture clouds of it would shoot out.

    Yeah, you Aramco kids didn’t know what living was! Hahaha.

  99. 99.

    Harrison Wesley

    @karen marie: Meat pastries are the only things I remember – anything with fruit or veggies was from elsewhere.  Probably following later hiring trends.  If you want to learn how to make them, better off with a Filipino cookbook.

  100. 100.

    Harrison Wesley

    @karen marie: Ah, yes, oleander – what a beautiful plant!  Poisonous as shit, but beautiful.

    Everybody (including we ourselves) refer to us as “Aramco Brats” by the way.  Spoiled, pampered, etc., etc.  All true.  As one might expect, an awful lot of my compatriots are MAGA, and I’m a pretty right-wing Democrat myself (Democratic Freedom Caucus is my vehicle of choice).  I have no desire whatsoever to let the swinish oaf replicate KSA here, however.

  102. 102.

    karen marie

    @Harrison Wesley: The food differences between Dammam and Al Khobar surprised me. In Dammam, schwarmas were made with something akin to hot dog buns where Al Khobar’s were pita. But who knows – I only ate schwarmas in Al Khobar at a Lebanese joint. I don’t remember any street food in the outdoor evening market in Al Khobar.

  103. 103.

    karen marie

    @Harrison Wesley: “Aramco brats” – yeah, didn’t want to say …

    After doing a school year with them in Las Palmas, I felt like I understood the problem when I wound up there three years later.

  104. 104.

    Harrison Wesley

    @karen marie: Dammam had basically nothing when I lived in SA.  Khobar was pretty limited, and street vendors there – or anywhere else I went, even Riyadh – were non-existent.  Obviously much changed very quickly, and it sounds like it was for the better (can’t have too many street vendors).

    As far as schwarma, I guess I’m spoiled by what I’ve eaten in Beirut.  But it is mos def something that BBQ/picnic folks here should pick up on.  It’s not hard to make, and it’s delicious.

  108. 108.

    karen marie

    @Harrison Wesley: Lebanese make the best shwarma, no contest. I had some pretty good ones in Boston in the ’90s. Hard to find places that don’t make them huge and – even harder – ones that have the pickle.

    There’s a place here, owned by Syrians. Theirs are pretty good but I have to bring it home and make two, and no pickles.

  110. 110.

    Aussie Sheila

    @frosty: Well I have never heard of those hats, but they sound super protective. The issue here is to keep the direct sun off exposed skin, and to cover any exposed skin with appropriate SPF cream. The other and main point, is that no one should be out in the midday to 3pm sun in summer for more than 15 minutes unless you have suitable sun cover. And I don’t mean just cream, no matter what the packaging says.

    I swim a lot. Always before 10.00am or after 4pm in the summer.

  111. 111.

    frosty

    @Aussie Sheila: ​I got my first Conner Hat when the dermatologist said I had to wear sunscreen and a hat any time I went outside. Since I’m essentially bald I’ve been wearing a hat for 40? years. Sunscreen runs right off with sweat so I looked around. Anything that works for Aussies should work for me. Last two annual appointments were good!​

  113. 113.

    Aussie Sheila

    @frosty: Yes. Sunscreen runs off with sweat or water. Hence either stay out of the sun in the worst part of the day, or cover up completely. Unfortunately there’s no other option when the Sun is as fierce as it is here.

  115. 115.

    opiejeanne

    @noncarborundum: I’ve seen PDQ Bach in concert 3 times, and the first was at the Dorothy Chandler in LA.  A couple of the local sportscasters did the play-by-play and “color”, and the tympanist did a commercial for a shaving foam at the half-time. That was probably in 1974. They gave us each a glass of champagne before it began, to loosen us up, and Peter Schickele slid down a rope from the balcony and ran up the aisle to the stage.

    He used to put on a great show.

  116. 116.

    Chris T.

    There needs to be a better phrase than “having the tires rotated”. Rotating: that’s what they do. They rotate! Why would you rotate them when they already rotate?

    (yeah, I know, Andy Rooney did it better)

  118. 118.

    Nancy

    I want a grown-up trike and a safe place to ride it.

    I love the image of you, John Cole, on your trike, helmeted, horned, and sun blocked, conquering new worlds, sort of a Viking vibe.

  121. 121.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suzanne: ​
     

    Dude, Cole, you need to start covering yourself in sunblock NAOW. You need, like, SPF MAYONNAISE.

    ETA: Maybe SPF DRYWALL MUD.

    That had me laughing so hard, I needed to catch my breath afterwards. The SPF Mayonnaise was good enough, but when you topped it with the SPF Drywall Mud, that took it over the top.

    And of course it would be our resident construction expert who’d come up with the drywall mud. :-)

    Damn, I’m still laughing.

  123. 123.

    lowtechcyclist

    @BethanyAnne:

    I’ve only heard a few P.D.Q. Bach bits. Loved them, tho. I think my favorite was “Tocata and Fugue for Two Instruments That Don’t Like Each Other”

    Anyone here familiar with Beethoven’s Wig? They do ‘singalong symphonies,’ most of which are absolutely hilarious.  My favorite, I think, is “Please Don’t Play Your Violin At Night,” their takeoff on “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”  And I’d been (past tense!) counting down the days to my retirement along with “It’s the Same Every Verse” to Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

    Speaking of which, I went in and turned in my badge, laptop, and parking pass yesterday morning, signed the appropriate papers, got my retiree badge, and was out of there in fifteen minutes.

    My wife and I had planned to have lunch afterwards, but it was only 9:20am, so we ran some errands, and then had an excellent early lunch at Chris’ Charcoal Pit (a Greek place in Edgewater, MD), and after we came home, I napped most of the afternoon away.

    Woke up, cleared the work stuff of my desk and put it in a box for the shredder, and once it was out of the way I was able to dust off my desk for the first time in months, so it desperately needed it.  The room just felt so much better, too, with all that crap out of the way.  I was able to semi-organize some HOA stuff that had been piling up too.  Hardly all neat and filed (that’s not gonna happen), but at least now I know which pile to look through if I need to find something.  For the first time in years, I don’t feel overwhelmed by the chaos.

    And then last night, I slept for eight hours.  Can’t remember when’s the last time I managed that.

    I’ve got a haircut appointment at 8:30 so I guess I’d better get dressed and ready for that. The first day of the rest of my life!

  125. 125.

    NotMax

    @lowtechcyclist

    Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

    One Schickele bit described a yokel who heard that on the radio and later went to the record store, asking for “I’m Inclined to Knock Music.”

  132. 132.

    Skepticat

    Your first, second at worst, order of business when you get to Arizona ought to be registering to vote.

    And in my family, the departure line was “We’re off … but only slightly.”

    Safe travels.

  137. 137.

    Hidalgo de Arizona

    If you’re looking for a good place to buy a quality trike – and not something that’ll tip over when you try going around a corner – I’d strongly recommend Sun Cyclery in Phoenix.  They have a great selection of quality trikes – generally including used ones.  If you’re going for an el-cheapo sit-up trike (which I would not recommend) you can check in with Bike Saviours in Tempe, which is a really nice community bike co-op – they get them in on occasion and it’ll be cheaper there than anywhere else.

    Anyways, enjoy the desert cycling!  It’s amazing, in no small part because Phoenix is flat as a board.  Just remember to use lights if you’re out cycling after dark – the obvious safety aside, the cops have a massive stick up their collective rears and will happily ticket you for riding without lights after dark.

  138. 138.

    Dan B

    @Dan B: Oops.  The background to the Compass ev tricycle is downtown Seattle from West Seattle looking across Elliot Bay and to the left is Queen Anne Hill.  The new 70 story skyscraper looks like the Columbia Tower so it throws me off.

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