only the most bad ass photo i've ever seen

photo swiped from change your life. ride a bike

alrightttttt

it's sunday, 9:30 a.m.
we got as far as the nellie's in kensington before an equipment malfunction (fucking water bottle holder!) and a double back.
all spare the dirty details but the last few days have been pretty intense with packing and moving and getting out of my place and trying to decide what to bring, and finishing all the projects needed for the trip. ok, the one detail i will include is that i have been waiting on paul.
awe've ridden like 10 blocks in the westerly direction before we stopped for breakfast and got a chance to actually talk and think in a neutral setting about some of the stuff we have packed. he ended up going back to our friends' place where we are storing stuff (our homebase for the last 2 days) to grab his messenger bag and hopefully ditch some other shit. i was dreading making another "goodbye" a false one by going back and facing our hosts again, so i stayed back and decided to blog.

kind of a shaky start so far. paul's handmade panniers and cheap-ish aluminum rack are slightly worrisome. we're far far behind schedule. it's supposed to rain tonight. i can't wait to experience putting kms behind us though.

so so so...

today we made a decision! we are leaving on april 20th!

been riding the sojourn, trying to break 'er in. it's fucking sweet! so many gears, which get more and more amazing as i slowly learn how to utilize them more and more.

been planning and thinking about our gear and budget a lot, although we still have a LOT to do, including calling some wwoof hosts and asking if we can stay on their farms! whhhhhich i am going to start as soon as i finish this blog post. paul is working on making some panniers out of leather. yea... ambitious. need to switch this desktop computer for a laptop we can take with us. plus a gazillion other things i won't bother typing out, because i already have some serious "TO DO" lists going.

alright, that's it for now. to the PHONE! wish me luck - calling people is pretty much my least favorite activity.

a little league of their own mighty giant ducks... um.. sandlot!

i was sitting on a milk crate in the very back of the kitchen at good earth today, eating a tuna sandwich, when this courier i've never met or seen before came all the way into the back and asked "are you kelsey?"
"yes...?"
"i heard you might be interested in playing girls' bike polo."
"yea... maybe"
"we play tuesdays and saturdays, you should come."



i didn't ask why HE was inviting me to GIRLS polo and instead thought about how much it felt like a set-up from a movie. like the rag-tag protaga-team has to recruit similarly rag-tag outsiders who do things like work at shitty jobs, eat tuna sandwiches and hide their amazing talent.

a stitch in time...

do you have certain dangerous or intense situations that you enact in your head and try to imagine what you would actually do if the situation entered the realm of reality?? well, as i've tried to imagine so many times, today my chain broke as i was headed down centre street. "so this is what it would be like. it's actually happening. wow".
luckily for me, it was at 4:30 am and there were no cars around me! and also my chain somehow folded up in such a way while staying attached to the frame, that it acted as an emergency brake scraping on the pavement enough to slow me down. i imagine that sparks were flying, but there were no witnesses to corroborate this.
i hobby-horsed down to the bottom of the hill using my shoe on the back tire to slow down this time.

lesson learned: keep your chain in good shape, use the "chain checker" tool once in a while.



what else... finished hermosa's bike a few days ago and she took me and paul out for deeeeelicious sushi as a thank you yesterday. i need to get a picture of this thing, it's a bright green "jr 5" apollo. it's so small! it has 24" wheels! it fits her perfectly though; i'm so happy it worked out.

ahh, looks like lots of people updated their blogs in the past few days, time for some readin'!

more bike shit!

last night paul and i spent maybe an hour on the path near eau claire nearing 2 in the AM, effing around on our bikes, and i am very happy to report (brag) that i can finally put my "nuts" to the handlebars and skid. i also learned a less geeky way to mount my fixie. trackstanding and to a greater degree riding backwards still elude me.

also big news, i made my first ebay purchase ever! i got a leather cardiff seat. annnnnd my second ebay purchase ever is going to be a biggie. i need a touring bike for the trip so... meet the raleigh sojourn:



can you believe it comes with the rack, seat, frame pump, and the fenders. for $800!

two thousand and ten

heyyylo,
i'm feeling pretty fine right now with some extra time, so i thought i'd drop into the blog zone ya'll.

had some pretty good holidays. paul came with me to vermilion with me for 5 days and hung out with my parents, grandparents, and caylie. nice to be back though with books to read and hammocks to lay in. i'm reading a ton of books right now, all of them are really good. i have going:
The End of Money & the Future of Civilization by Thomas Greco
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Change your brain by Tim Leary
No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guerin


new years eve, resolutions blah blah. apparently i didn't put any down in the blog last new year, which is disappointing. i'd like to look back and see what my priorities were.

anyway, here are my 2010 resolutions:


1. be more connected with people. my friends who i suck at keeping in touch with. new friends who i will never meet if i keep this shit up. my family even. ways i will do this: more hanging out, letter writing, getting more out of time spent, being a better listener, cultivating hobbies, creating circles of people. ways i will probably not do this: facebooking, phone talking, making plans in advance.

2. learn to knit. for fuckin' realz.

3. keep learning, reading, and getting smarter. improve on communicating ideas. open mindedness and peace. get better with bikes.

4. write more letters to politicians.

"fucking idiot"?

yesterday was the first "blizzard" of the year, with some crazy winds and a lot of snow everywhere. my ride TO work at 4:30 am was normal, but it snowed ALL day, so the ride home was the challenge. around 5, after paul finished work, we decided to ride to kensington, then go up 10th street, and then hit up the home depot on 16th ave before going home. so how'd i do? RIDICULOUS. the bike pathways on the way to kensington was sketchy and i fell once. couldn't make it up 10th street on the road, so had to walk up the snow drift sidewalk. then we decided to ride right on 16th ave because it's 1000% easier and although it's a highway, traffic was going pretty slow. i still had someone shriek "fucking IDIOT!" at me, and paul got "ride on the sidewalk!!!!". not sure if our friend tom, who was ahead of us (him with gears, us on fixies) got a third insult or not. getting home from this point was the trial of my life. i cried, i threw my bike, i slid out and fell like 30 times. it took us SO LONG to get home. riding on majorish roads was the easiest part, but then you have to deal with cars. sidewalks and alleys were just plain fucked. i know that most people are having the same experiences in this weather (as i type this i can hear a car revving and revving and revving, obviously stuck), but this was my first time doing it on a bike (my fixie with 700c slick tires), and it was pretty hilarious, so i wanted to document it.

oh, the reward of the home depot trek was a hook for our hammock, which paul set up last night in our room. excited for that. i wish i could say i am just going to stay inside all day/weekend and hammock it up, but... not so. things to do, ice to slip on.

get your own bike!

ugh, i hate you bike thieves.

apollo = stolen.

out of my garage. ugh.

good stuff.

does everyone already know how awesome bill hicks is (besides me?) i've been missing out big time.


The World Is Like a Ride in an Amusement Park - Bill Hicks -



also, i already posted this on facebook and bike calgary, but bear with me, i'm proud!



i got the raleigh up and running and i LOVE it. i could probably take a better picture of it; this was snapped right after the first test ride. it's so streamlined and sexy. paul ordered me some gold pedals for it too.
i still have a lot of "fixie training" to do so i can really rip around downtown and such.

vancouver

was awesome. here is my trip:

we spent around 16 hours on the greyhound to get there, but it wasn't really that bad. it went pretty fast, despite greyhound being so ghetto. i took a bunch of stuff to keep myself entertained on the bus, like some knitting, some pants i wanted to patch up, and a book (in case i happened to be post-carsick), but they didn't have any lights on at all. not the low lit panel that goes along the side, and there were no overhead personal lights. we had to board in the dark and when we got off the bus i ended up seeing a brownish stain on my seat, eww! there was a lot more examples of the ghetto-ness, but oh well, it got us there and it was cheap.

when we got off the bus, we charged our phone at a coffee shop and for some reason Paul bought a china-man hat... you know the ones, right? then we walked directly though east hastings. fucking crazy and it was only 10 am!

we found our way out to Richmond, where we were staying. paul carried all my stuff, and even pushed me in a shopping cart for the last leg. we were staying at some calgary friend's of his, and they have a great apartment filled with bikes and a hammock.
we stayed out there for a few days, going for awesome bike rides and blazin' and having the usual stoner conversation about how the world is messed up.

all of us went on a mountain side ride that was nice. we got to share the path with a million longboarders in training, it was cute. we got off the path for a bit and watched some dragonfly sex and looked at trees. paul and i road in to granville island, stanley park, and downtown 'couver.

for a few days after that we stayed with my friend in the downtown east side and it was a nice change, and kind of funny, suddenly being so close to everything that we had just struggled to ride our bikes too the previous day. we had brought a "fun" chocolate bar along with us that we were sort of rationing. we finally ate the majority of that and hit up an awesome arcade downtown. i love pinball! it's my new favorite thing. i love the combination of digital and analog that makes up the machine. my favorite was the adam's family one. oh look, here is a picture of it that i googled.
we did some more bike rides and i attempted to find shoes because mine were on the verge, but it's impossible. i ended up getting some at a vintage clothing store in kitsilano pretty randomly on the last day.
we ended the trip with the nudie beach at UBC. it was wonderful - so hot and sunny, and being naked on the beach is GREAT.

we decided to fly back and we got a ride from paul's brother, straight from the beach to the airport with no time to spare.

i tend to not take great photos, but here are 5 sort of:

• a slug on the path. we were all kind of concerned he would get run over so we watched him cross for quite a while.
• paul in the only underwear he brought on the trip, on a beach downtown.
• me walking to wreck beach. i knew the nude portion was coming up, so i was half way there already.
• a night bike ride. i think i was actually from a boys' only ride. i was in the hammock sleeping already.
• bamboo in stanley park. paul climbed it, i watched.

soon.

• soon i will have the most organized desk ever. i took everything out, organized it into logical piles and now i'm putting it back in.

• my teeth hurt all the time. well not ALL the time. only when i eat really sugary stuff... which is ALMOST all the time. ow, it hurts. i will go to the dentist soon

• dan leahul is back in calgary for a month. we are hanging out as soon as he gets here.

• i'm taking a long long bus ride to vancouver with paul tomorrow. we just bought the tickets today. we didn't plan very much of anything and now the trip is very soon.

ps - i brought my new bike home today. it's still got a free wheel (single speed) on it, but you can probably guess when i will be changing that.... (SOON!)

don't worry, i'll keep brakes on my other bike for big hills

maybe it's NOT officially fall.... YESSSSSS.

i finally paid the huge fine i've had on my library card all summer. it was up to $36. yikes. i'm happy to be back on track, i realized when i was there how much i missed the library. they are actually going to be tearing down my library in not too long as they are building a new, futuristic one a few blocks over. kind of sad...

SO i was doing some volunteering at the Good Life (Bike Shop) a few days ago and long story short, i found a new bike. yayayay. it's a glittery green apollo, just my size, that the greaser was going to turn into a single speed anyway. i jumped in there and so far i took out the extra chain rings, removed all the shifters and gear bullshit, put new VELVET bar tape on it, and put a new chain on it. there is still some work to do... like take off the brakes, because ima gunna fixie it!

the new stopping technique i must learn and perfect so i don't die:

RECAP PACER

alrighty, we saw somebody raking leaves today so i guess that's it... cusp of fall.

time to recap the summer, RIGHT??

well, i kicked it off by fixing up my first bike, planting some tomatoes and sunflowers in pots on my balcony, and volunteering to be in charge of the compost at the Looogie House (they have a garden and compost bins, other than that, not important).

the couple of jonathan and kelsey had really lost it's cohesion and we had been fighting ALL the time and i thought about escaping to B.C. and then Belgium. but he had lost his job and i finally convinced him the best thing would be if he just went back to quebec... so he did. phew. a chapter closed.

sometime in between breaking up with jp and him leaving, i met paullllo. paul. he likes cracking necks and backs and fingers and toes. he likes cold hands on his back. he is resourceful. he has rough hands and he feels like safety. his physical being is a marvel to me!
it's been a few months of coupleness and no complaints here. we've made every every day together a good, full, positive one. with the help/inspiration/guidance/company of him i have done a bunch of stuff from my LIFE TO DO LIST that i made a while back, mostly nature, nurture and fixing bikes. we both got really into the composting project and ended up with a slightly demanding daily route of other cafes providing compost material. basically summer 09 was a summer of compost for me.

in august i moved out of the cracked-out apartment and into a basement suite with a garage and a greenhouse in the back. paul's been hard at work setting up a whole hydroponic growing centre in there. it's so amazing! almost daily i check the plants, including peas, cucumbers and peppers, and the amount of growth is mind blowing to me. in a few weeks most of them have grown the craziest, longest roots ever. i'm not sure what's going to happen to the whole system once it gets colder.

lame giant blog post, i know. but whatever, that's been my summer.

a lot of blogs i've read lately are about clothes and fashion or music. i feel really disconnected from all of that. i don't really get into music the same way. i put on music just to have something playing, but i don't really care to look for new stuff.
i haven't bought new clothes for a long time, because i have no money.. ever. but now i'm even more consciously adamant about wearing out the ones i already have.

i kind of feel like i am really on to something as far as my lifestyle goes. i'm turning into such a bicycle zealot because i think that it's the easiest, most accessible step towards EVERYthing good. physical activity, sustainability, community. there are no draw backs from bikes (except for accidents i guess).
as far as the "lifestyle" thing.. or living life goes, there is still so much to learn and a zillion ways to improve, but i made some giant steps this summer and i'm hyped up for the next season.


here's a photo of us on a break from longboarding with some rum & lemons. i don't believe they get much better than this:

bike/work/chips/news

my bike is SO PIMPIN.
i wish i knew bike lingo so i could detail all the work i have done on it. on the superficial side, i just put some vibrant blue wrap on the handlebars, it's pretty. i'll take a photo or two. previously i have taken the part where the pedals attach in the middle out, cleaned it, and greased the ball bearings. i think that was called re-packing the hub..? i also tightened and loosened the spokes on both wheels so that they roll straighter - aka "truing the wheels". i put new cables on the brakes and new cable housing on some of the gears.

i started opening up the cafe at 5 IN THE AM. can you believe that?? i used to have the most trouble getting to creb for 9! i started two days ago, and so far so good. it's hard to get up early, but the roads are empty so i can just rip there on my bike and it's nice to finish work at 1.

right now i'm eating some chips that just came in my spud delivery, and i have to give a shoutout because they are seriously amazing. kettle brand! mmm! right now i've got sea salt & vinegar, but i've also tried honey dijon and salt & pepper and they were all delicious. and they have "absolutely nothing artificial" in them.

if you share the same disgusting fascination with bill o'reilly, glenn beck and sean hannity and the rest of the right wing news pundits, you might appreciate this website - news hounds their slogan is "we watch fox news so you don't have to".

carfree and carefree

+++
i finally got rid of the car!
applied for a pre-employment trades program.
got some things out in the open with my ma.
i raised over $400 for the ms walk (without putting any effort in really).
sunday crafternoon at broken city!
kriyayoga
stretching my ears, fuck ya'll.
bike riding
reading a lot (see below)

---
my place is the most gigantic mess
the program doesn't start until november
sometimes i talk too much
rookie moves that cause me great stress
working too much


books i finished:
the bell jar - sylvia plath
the stranger - albert camus
siddhartha - herman hesse

books i'm on:
the cost of living - arundhati roy

there's more, but i'm off to work #2.

summer time!

i'm in a great neighbourhood but i wish it was flatter. hah. i live on top of a big hill. WAY too steep to board down and kinda steep for my bike to get up.

unrelatedly, my life is weird right now. my work life, my lust/love/crush/ life both feel kinda... wrong? but, only a week until the WBF assessment... and only... 4 years until the end of the world..

good things:
- i'm getting rid of my car at the end of the month. good riddance dead weight.
- i made a budget
- i signed up for spud organic grocery delivery service
- assess assess assessment