last weekend

christo lite

someone is wrapping stuff and locking it up around levi's plaza:

i wonder if it's a tribute to jean-claude...

i can relate

via flickr.

wear a helmet

...it happened on a friday. friday, may 29th, 2009, to be precise. i know this because it was several hours after my bike accident had occurred before i was able to answer the question "what day is it?" correctly...

cycling back to my office from a meeting in another of the company's buildings, the last thing i remember is a family unit of, what i assume to be, given the proximity to fisherman's wharf, tourists deciding to cross the street against a red light as i approached the intersection at a fair clip. i swerved, i blacked-out.

i vaguely remember spitting out blood at some point and i have faint auditory memories of being in an ambulance. i have no recollection but there is a voicemail to prove that i called stephanie to let her know i was en route to san francisco general hospital. apparently, i also managed to convince the paramedics to call my boss.

i sort of remember being rolled into the hospital and answering "yeah, ok" to a paramedic whose question remains completely unknown and whose face is very blurry...

i kind of remember someone asking "do you know where you are?"
"uuuuuhh... san francisco?" came my unsteady reply.
"good enough!" was their confirmation...

i started to realize i had a neck brace on and was strapped to a board as several people began undressing me. "please don't cut this shirt, it's really expensive!" i cried, not realizing i had already splattered it with blood and scraped a hole in the back...

i definitely remember lights in my eyes and being told to follow them while answering who the president of the united states is. "barack obama," i said, immediately. "woo!" said someone out of my field of view...

stephanie begins to melt into the memories at this point, but i'm pretty sure the timeline is still jumbled. i remember being rolled on my side for a spine exam, gripping someone's hands, telling them what hurts, having to push their hands away and having to hold my arms up with my eyes closed...

someone asked me (for the fifth or sixth time) what day it was and i struggled. "it's friday... it's not june, right? so, it's may, like, may 25th?" "pretty close," said my interrogator. "he couldn't answer that right on a normal day," said stephanie...

i refused the offer of pain and nausea medication once, but gladly accepted the offer an hour or so later. morphine is fantastic stuff...

the morphine and chemotherapy-grade nausea medicine went a long way towards stabilizing my mental state. having stephanie there helped anchor memories and establish some context for everything that was happening. my wrist was x-rayed (negative), my lip was stitched (once), cuts above and below my eye were dermabonded (glued) and then it was all about waiting a few more hours for a cat scan ("should be ready in ten minutes..."). i asked the doctor if i could have my x-ray film and she offered a digital copy for $10 that would also include the cat scan. i guess i was a pretty good patient, 'cause they hooked me up with the scans for free!

anyway, i walked away from a pretty bad wreck with some cuts, some scrapes, some bruises, a stitch, a sprained wrist and a mild concussion. considering i wasn't wearing a helmet at the time, i have no complaints... except one: the witnesses claimed i swerved to "dodge a car or something..." i can't remember a lot, but i'm pretty dang sure i remember swerving around people...

check out the gory details on flickr:

commuting by bicycle without any dignity

BikeSnobNYC has a recurring piece on the indignities of commuting by bicycle. in honor of the snob's fantastic coverage of that harsh reality, i offer up the following anecdote regarding a cyclist commuter who is A: doing it wrong and B: blowing it for the rest of us.

the Bay Area Rapid Transit system has a reasonable set of rules for cyclists that is clearly communicated to the ridership via their website, signs in the station, signs in the trains and regular announcements over the PA. while the following gentleman wasn't technically breaking any rules, he was trampling rather heavily on generally accepted "bikes on BART" etiquette.



most cyclists hang back and let the pedestrian riders board first, he clearly chose not to. to exacerbate matters, he also chose to line up for a car that i had already been waiting at for several minutes, not exactly the most generous of gestures. you may be wondering why i'm taking such offense, as this picture obviously shows it was not a very busy day on BART anyway. you'll have to trust me when i say that there was a fair number of other commuters that simply wanted to go nowhere near him. i can only posit that this was due to A: his blatant disregard for "bikes on BART" etiquette singling him out as a weird guy and/or B: the fact that his gnarly long hair was still dripping from his shower (i hope). or perhaps it was C: the part where he pulled out his norelco and started freaking shaving right on the platform...

bike hero

tip of the hat to patoflowerwaddel.

a tale of triumph

some nights you stay up too late playing new map packs for halo 3. thus, some mornings you wake up real tired and cranky. then, as you wait for the light to change at embarcadero a kid on a fixie goes by in the direction you're headed. at that point, something in you decides you're gonna catch him, half-mile lead be damned!

and you almost do, but you have to turn up north point and he keeps going straight. suddenly, you don't feel so tired and cranky anymore.

the end,
by matt

mashin

so there was that whole night of hype seeing the premier of the MASH SF film that sent me spiraling into the eventual purchase of a fixed gear bike. well, steph got me the dvd of that film for christmas. dvds often come with "extras." one of the extras on this dvd is a section featuring one of the cameramen, gabe morford.

if i was super hyped at the premier, i might have actually split in half had they included this part, instantly my favorite part. the guy is a total champion for skating behind these guys on the hills of SF and he has super awesome style on a bike. check it:



ps: he also picked one of the best songs with some of the best guitar work ever out of the 80s. bonus!

i need new pants

because the ones i'm wearing have some holes now. remember kids, rain and streetcar tracks are NOT your friend whilst riding a bicycle:



it looks a lot worse than it feels. fortunately, they keep the first aid boxes well-stocked here in the office. nobody tell steph, ok? oh, wait...

argument against rushing a job

i popped my new tube whilst putting my new tire on the rim...

EPIC FAIL.

i want to ride my bicycle

my birthday present, IRO Angus 59cm fixed-gear bike:



shane and i rode from the shop up to barclay's for dinner and some guinness, then up to ici but the line was too long, so back down to ben n' nick's for some guinness, then home. i can't wait to ride it to work tomorrow! and then ride it somewhere for lunch! woo hoo! bikes!

mashed

saturday was so awesome. jarrett came down from nikeland and we went to see the world premiere of the mash sf movie. i got to meet a bunch of cool new people and i got super excited about fixed-gear bicycles. a little too excited, perhaps. possibly also a little drunk. we may never know...

anyway, i can definitely recommend the DVD for purchase or netflix-queuing when it is released. very cool to watch, feels all tough and raw like old skate videos. riding one of those bikes is really fun - big up to todd for letting me book around the block on his, despite my allegedly being somewhat inebriated. pretty awesome to outrun cars on a city street in like three pedal pushes.

one of jarrett's homies was there from japan and i made it onto his weblog as well:


i'm famous.