Remember when you were a kid, and Honeycomb cereal used to have those contests where you could win a free BMX bike? For a while, they had those tiny little metal license plates that said “HANG 10” or whatever stupid slogan would be on there, and they were each a miniature replica of a state license plate, and then you would rig them up on your seat bottom or handlebars with a bunch of twist-ties. They probably eventually discontinued them because a kid split open someone’s face with one, or because actual metal cost too much or something. Anyway, the old contest was to get a special license plate, and you’d win the bike. Later, it was just some sort of puzzle book where you scratched off some silver lotto ticket paint off a page that said “sorry, try again!” or “25 cents of Honeycomb economy size”. Well, once after a trip to Kroger, I tore apart the cereal box and went through the book and scratched off the matte grey boxes, and I WON! I won the BMX bike!

My mom checked and double checked the rules a million times, figuring there would be a catch or that I won a chance to enter in a raffle or something. But no, it was legit. She sent the thing off, and I waited what seems like years for the package to show up.

One rainy Saturday, it did. UPS dropped off a box from the Huffy corporation, and inside was my brand new bike. It’s probably worth explaining that at the time, I was riding a total POS Huffy with a banana seat that was not cool at all, very far from BMX. And this was when BMX was bigger than Jesus. This bike had a red frame and all of the chrome parts were a bronze/gold plated finish - the rims, the handlebars, the crank, and the chainguard. It had the handlebars with the extra bar across the top that was dipped in the center, the four-bolt neck, coaster brakes but also a secondary lever brake on the rear wheels. The tires were red knobby BMX tires, and it had the pads on the bars. It was AWESOME. I put that thing together in record time, and brought it outside for my trial run.

I remember that day so clearly. It had rained like a mofo all night long and all morning, and it was just starting to let up, but there was still a haze. And there were earthworms EVERYWHERE. Sometimes after a good rain, they get flooded out and are all over the street. I got out just as the sky was starting to clear, and took off through the subdivision. Everything about this bike felt 100% better than my old clunker. It all looked cool, every part spun perfectly against every other, and most of all, I WON THIS BIKE! It was awesome.

I think I rode that bike well into my Freshman year, when I finally got a real ten-speed, and probably long after (or before) it was cool to ride a 20” BMX bike with no speeds. Come to think of it, it was probably never cool to ride any kind of bike to our school, but the bus sucked, I always worked late at the school theater, and it’s not like mommy and daddy bought me a 5.0 GT Mustang when I turned 16.

So the reason I’m excited NOW, is that I just bought a new bike. I know I already have two frames and a bunch of pieces in my kitchen and neither run. And I’m not sure how long it will take before either will run, so I decided to make a small (~$300) investment in a complete turnkey bike that actually rode well. The lucky purchase was the 2005 Dahon Boardwalk D7. It’s a folding bike, which is pretty cool; with the pop of a couple of latches, the handlebars fold down, the frame folds in half, and then you lower the seat and fold up the pedals and you have about 25 pounds of fairly compact metal to throw in the trunk or schlep onto the subway.

The bike’s based on 20-inch tires and a very low-slung frame, with highly extended seat and handlebar posts. It’s got 7 speeds in the back and none on the front, so it’s not like one of these new 78-speed mountain bike mofos, but the smaller survey of gears, switched with a twist-grip on the right side, works pretty well for the city. All of the components are full-size for the most part, very well thought-out and they are made for a big guy to ride around, not as a toy or for kids. It came with a rear rack, a set of fenders, and a fairly comfy standard seat.

I bought the thing at lunch, and rode back to the office from Bicycle Habitat, maybe a few blocks at most. Later, I took it out for a quick spin around the office, and I hauled it home on the subway to the first stop in Queens, then rode the rest of the way back. It was dark and I had no lights and a black jacket, plus I didn’t want to get stranded if something broke right out of the gate. (That happened on the first MTB I bought here in New York, the Mongoose. I rode way the hell out in Queens my first time out, and the fucking derailleur SNAPPED. I ended up walking the fucking bike home five miles.)

Anyway, the little thing is FUN to ride. The balancing is a bit different, but it’s not like pumping around on a little BMX. It’s very compact, easy to weave through traffic and up and around stuff in the city. I thought there would be some warble or flex in the frame, but it’s solid, almost as tight as my old Giant road bike. Everything works well; the brakes are tight, the shifting is good, and the headset is very smooth. It’s not as smooth on the New York excuses for streets as a good rockhopper with full suspension would be, but it’s decent. And I couldn’t see riding 100K in one of these things, but I could see commuting every day with no problems.

The folding isn’t hard to do, although it took a few practices. The worst part is that everything I have for the old bike doesn’t fit. I have water bottle cages with allen screws that go into the frame, but I really need some kind of handlebar-mounted clip thing to hold my bottle. I have a nice computer that even has a heartrate monitor, but the cable on the sensor is too short, and I’m sure that’s a huge witch hunt and a $30 purchase. I can’t find the frame mount for my Kryptonite lock. (NO it is not the one you can pick with a pen, you motherfucking blog readers.) But I think maybe I shouldn’t add anything to the bike, and just tough it out. I mean, I could spend the cost of the bike getting the approved Dahon-Apple iPod mount with the Bose wraparound handlebar speakers, or I could just ride around with no music and either hum a tune or think about something else. I could spend a few hundred on the official Dahon panniers, or I could just bring less stuff, or bungee down a gym bag. I think I need to do the less is more approach.

Of course, I picked the wrong day to buy a bike - we’re supposed to get about twenty feet of rain over the next two days. Maybe I should go down to the bike store and buy one of those euro full rain getups and slog through it anyway. Well, except for the pneumonia and the possibility of a wreck on a brand new bike, that’s a grand idea.

So I’m seriously thinking of saying “suck it” to the MTA and riding in every day. I don’t think the bike will go with me to Hawaii, but I’d sure as hell like to ride every day from now until then, and then rent one local and have the energy to get up those damn hills. I am so out of shape now, it’s not even funny. But I sure feel great having a motivation to get some regular exercise…

I just had to restart xmms (aka my mp3 player), which meant that it went back to the beginning of my play list and went to the first album in the mp3 directory. For most people, that’s probably AC/DC’s Back in Black, but for me, it’s an odd little album called …To the Power of Three, by a band called 3. They’re basically Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer, 2/3s of the prog-rock band ELP, with Robert Barrie singing. This is a 1988 attempt at a serious rock album, back on the tail end of when Yes actually got a lot of mainstream airplay and even time on MTV. (Anyone else remember the April Fool’s day when they played like 267 different versions of the video “Leave It”, with the band upside down and singing? Except they swapped out band members for roadies and office staff at the studio and whoever else for the different iterations, and even played some of the commercials upside-down to keep with the joke. I know only like three people found that truly hilarious, but I was one of them…)

Anyway, the 3 album is a pretty weak stab at world domination. It’s got a cover of “Eight Miles High”, and the whole thing is basically 37

of vintage cheesomatic synth and very cookiecutter drums. I think I borrowed the tape from my friend Derik Rinehart at the time, and I’m not sure if I ever returned it (my old car had holes in the floors, many tapes didn’t make it.) A couple of years later, I found a copy of the CD for 88 cents, and picked it up. It’s one of those albums that is definitely stuck in my head, that I listened to at the time and thought “wow, Emerson sure can fucking play! This MIDI shit is the wave of the future!” and then got sidetracked when like Primus came out or something.

It’s been a nice three-day weekend here. I woke up way too early on Friday and had a bug to rewrite the backend of the glossary. I have a lot of work done on it, but I got stuck on something and decided to take a quick break and work on other stuff. I’ve been messing with this bike too, although it’s been a total pain in the ass trying to scavenge parts off of the old bike. I should have just parked that piece of shit somewhere without a lock and bought a completely new bike instead of trying to build one. I realized it’s been almost 20 years since the last time I built a bike, and everything’s changed. Every piece requires a specialized tool. It used to be with a POS Huffy all you needed was a crescent wrench and maybe a screwdriver, but now it’s like working on the Space Shuttle. I stripped off and totally fucked the crank on the old bike, so I gave up and bought a new crank and bottom bracket on eBay. That’s another hundred bucks and week and a half of time, but at least I will get a nice one, and save more weight. I have a huge problem with the front headset, but I think I’m going to tap out on that too and just bring the thing to the shop and have them put on a new one. (Probably another hundred.) Those things used to screw on, but in order to save like a dollar a year, they moved to these threadless ones that have to be pressed on with a hundred dollar tool. Well, at least I’m going to lose a lot of weight with this new bike. Not from the exercise, but from not being able to afford food anymore.

More photos are online. I’m also in the process of setting up a section of free stuff where you can download any of my books for free. You pretty much can do that already, but I want to put some section that screams “FREE STUFF! TOTALLY FREE! (p.s. sign up for my mailing list.)”

Also, has anyone ever installed vinyl flooring? Like those stick-on, foot-square things? I want to redo my bathroom and maybe kitchen floor, which have ceramic tile, but the shittiest tile in the world, and I figured if I could buy a hundred bucks of the stuff and a box cutter and invest a Saturday in it, maybe this place would look less like a crack den or something. I just don’t know if this stuff will stick to tile OK or if it’s a bad solution for what I just described. I was actually at Bed Bath and Beyond, and they had a big rack of it and no sorts of samples or pamphlets, so I took out the camera and started snapping away, and two big security guards sprinted into the flooring section like I was about to shoot the president or something. And when I asked if they had any samples or pictures or whatever, and they were like “look at our web site.” Which is pretty stupid, because what’s the difference between me taking a digital picture of the tile by myself, or going to their site and downloading a picture? So I just go to their piece of shit web site, and I CAN’T FIND THE TILE.

Oh yeah, and Best Buy was closed for Easter. I had to go buy DVDs and Barnes and Noble for like double the MSRP. I’m going to write them a pissy letter and complain that they don’t close for any of the Satanic holidays. Or at least a half day off for the Firestorm.

My new camera is here! I got a Fuji S3100 from Amazon. It is very neato and the first test photos look pretty good, although some are out of focus because I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s a neat new toy though, and should be good for the trip to Hawaii. I have some rechargeable batteries on the way, as well as a 512 MB xD card, which is good because the 16 MB card holds only 16 pictures.

It’s also a good time to mention my little project to put together a PHP-based gallery that works and doesn’t require MySQL and half the Linux libraries and packages available in the world to operate. Go here to check it out and look at a bunch of old photos. It’s very crude now, but it’s all dynamic and doesn’t require a lot of editing each time I drop in new photos, and that’s cool. (2026 note: this project is long dead…)

It’s weird to think that I bought my old camera about five years ago, and it was 1/4 the resolution and about 1/4 the zoom, but it cost about twice as much. Moore’s law in action. Anyway, pizza’s here.

I am excited - I finally planned and booked my “big trip” for the year, and it will be… Hawaii!. I didn’t get anywhere near enough time there in 2003, so I will be going back at the beginning of May. I’m going to Oahu again, flying into Honolulu and staying in a hotel in Waikiki. It’ll be a different place this time, the Ohana Maile Sky Court, in an oceanview room that purports to be a little larger than my micro-capsule of a room last time (but hey, I had my own deck!) I got the whole deal through Delta for maybe a hundred or two more than my ultra-stellar deal back in ‘03, although this does include an extra night free, and most other deals I found cost twice as much. It’s not the cheapest time to fly, so I’m happy I locked in this rate. I’m also happy I will get another 10,000-odd frequent flier miles, which means a free trip later in the year.

I haven’t planned at all what I will do when I get there. I’m not sure if I will go flying again - it was fun, but it was also expensive and took up the better part of a day. I think I will climb Diamondhead again, although I’ll try to remember a flashlight and some suntan lotion this time. I’d like to find some more stuff like that to do, and bring a bit more money for shopping. I also didn’t try any good food while I was there last time, unless you consider the Spam at McDonald’s to be good. (It’s not horrible, but not worth the trip…)

I had Balti beef tonight, from the local Indian delivery place. I guess I’ve never tried it before, and when I googled around, I found several sites explaining the origins and virtues of this style of cooking that’s named after the Hindi word for “bucket”. It’s essentially a poor man’s stir fry, done up in a pot that’s brought out to the table, and then eaten with nan bread. It’s a northwestern/Pakistani style of spices, hot but different than the curries you’d get from Southern India. I like a good vindaloo, especially when it’s cold out and I’m trying to beat a head cold. But the Balti is a slightly different mix, and I really like it. Also there’s just this whole tactile difference, the novelty of having it all together, that somehow appeals to the gadget-head in me. Plus you get a shitload of food for not much. So that’s cool.

I really feel that I should be writing this book, but I really want to play Mercenaries. Which one do you think will win?

I’m in the middle of eating a huge burrito from the tortilla joint on 30th ave and failing miserably. Time to go get a fork…

This was a weekend of media consumption. I did get out on Saturday and do some shopping with some fairly decent weather on hand, about 40 degrees and clear. I made a mega-purchase at Best Buy, since I was still getting over the whole sick thing and wanted some stuff to do while planted on the couch. The big thing that I spent too much time on was Mercenaries for the PS2, which is a very strange little game that’s a mix of Grand Theft Auto with SOCOM, and then some. You play an “independent contractor” who is dropped in North Korea to go through a deck of cards that contains all of the evil generals and lieutenants serving under the big man dictator. Like GTA, if you see it, you can pretty much steal it, as far as all modes of transport are concerned. Pandemic (Star Wars: Battlefront) did the game for LucasArts, and it’s got all the little touches while still being immensely playable. I’ve finished almost the whole lower rung of lieutenants, although I still haven’t figured out how to take people alive, since I usually end up nuking everything from orbit and then identifying the corpses for my reward money. It’s a lot of fun, but I think it’s going to turn into a huge time-suck. And I finally got the first season of the Chapelle Show on DVD, and laughed my ass off at that for a few hours.

I’m waiting on an eBay auction for a new mountain bike frame for another endless project I think I’m starting. I have this idea to strip my old bike of components and build up a new one with a lighter frame that doesn’t have a rear suspension. The rear shock is a nifty looking toy and all, but it actually sucks when you’re really torquing down on an uphill and the whole frame is bouncing up and down on you. Also, the bigger problem is that I have two different racks I’ve tried to put on the back of that bike, and neither one works well because a bike with half of its frame moving doesn’t really have three stable points to mount a rack. I want to get a good, rideable bike by spring and maybe get out of the neighborhood a bit more. I’ve rode from my place to Flushing Meadow a couple of times, and although it’s slightly a pain in the ass to get there, you have miles and miles of strips of asphalt to ride up and down, and also a lot of dirt trails with fun hills and stuff.

There is no way I am going to finish this burrito. I need to put this thing down and get back on the Playstation or something…