Leave it to the Spaniards...

...You catch them for massive organized doping campaigns and not long after they're making scientific proof that boozing is good for you. The result, a little recovery tip sent from a reader (yes, I have those...), that will tickle all you barfly MTBers:

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/3467

the fray...

I'm goin' to Africa and I ain't got no pants

Some people might call it foolish to go wandering about foreign continents for a month with only two pairs of pants and a pair of shoes so worn out that they're alternately held together with duct tape and plastic bags (until time was made for permanent repairs). I, however, don't know those people. Nor, do I any longer have pants. Now, I know what you're thinking, 20-something guy goes to the city with "XXX" on the flag and it's no surprise that he can't keep his pants on. Well, it's totally not like that. The first pair was abducted by the hotel laundry. Then there's the other pair...

This weekend was the beginning of the Tall Ships event in Amsterdam. In keeping with the theme, the fab conference concluded with a boat building competition where a bunch of us concocted some contraptions and launched them in the canal. This was all well and good until the first person fell in and turned pirate, swamping every boat they could reach. Long story short, it's a wonder we didn't all contract the plague. We did however draw a huge crowd with our antics (easily 200 people):


Guess we're more fun than a bunch of stodgy old sailboats:


Back to Kenya a little bit freer...

The Birth of the Cool

Continuing on the theme of how Amsterdam is a magical place, a little anecdote from last evening... Everyone knows that Amsterdam is something of a party city, what with its lax drug, alcohol and prostitution laws, vibrant night life and compact geography, but unlike most of the "cool" places I've been, the funk goes all the way to the top. Last night I wandered into my foofy conference hotel (the Lloyd Hotel, for those interested) at about 2am, and stepped into the elevator only to hear and elevator music version of Dr. Dre's "Bang Bang". That's right, these never forgot about Dre.
Another example of cool had to do with today's adventure, involving a homemade composite boat, a public dock and public transit. After drawing an amused crowd on the shoreline as we paddled around in the ocean with our cotton-fiber contraption, we proceeded to bring it onto the the train, whereupon the conductor started giving us a hard time (while trying hard not to laugh). We called his bluff and pushed back, asserting that it was lighter than a bike and not any bigger than the largest person that might get on, resulting not only in our admittance, but also his insistence that we didn't pay. Conclusion: Amsterdam rocks.

Possible mission for today: homemade hovercraft...

Only in the Netherlands

Can't find free Internet to save your life (I'm totally in an alley grafting off someone's wifi), but you can find stairs with a trough to roll your bike up and down. Dunno if that was deliberately engineered as such, but seems to be a popular feature nonetheless.

Oh and sorry about never finishing the New Mexico pics. Been busy :)

Hello from the Chama

Contrary to popular belief Pedal and Wrench are not dead. I rode with the Pedal, in fact, not two weeks ago (visual evidence is on my desktop, so you'll have to take my word for it). It's been a rough winter for the two of us though, with new "jobs" and life changes and all that, but short of packing on a few pounds we're still alive and kicking. Courtesy of some friend's nuptials, I happen to be kicking [it] at the moment in New Mexico and doing a little exploring. Here's a taste of updates to come:

From pedal to ped

If there is a place the wild things are, it certainly isn't New Jersey.

I'm missing the Zen of the holy shit moments, the rhythm of man and machine flowing through the curves and over a mountain, the hair raising descent down a stony gulch on two inch tires and a saddle slapping my chest. I even, honestly, truly miss that wretched day in BCBR where I hated the earth the sun and myself. And what I wouldn't give now for a ride with Keith and Seth in the Fells, on snow and ice, new trail ahead and uncertainty below?

Life is hard, and harder when you're at your desk looking out the window at fresh snow, thinking back on grand adventures where each moment held a lifetime. I try not to do much of it, looking out the window that is - better to focus on the work before me. If there is a way, it is for heart and mind and body to be one. As athletes, we trained our bodies to do a task and to do it well. Beautifully perhaps. We transformed ourselves to a purpose - our muscles, our dreams, our minds merged into one, a single goal, a reason for being. That reason escapes me now.

As much as I would like to try to convince Keith to take another go at the BCBR, I don't have it in me, the time or the strength. What I need is a return to a simpler way of being, with time and space for thinking and not thinking, for doing and not doing. I'm taking a hiatus from the pedal, turning to hiking - a meditation of steps through the Sierras. I don't know how far I'll go or how long I'll be. I need something simple, tangible - a hike ending at a hot springs, counting off time with a song sung a hundred times over, fighting sleep to catch one more glimpse of the vastness of the stars overhead.

I have a guide book to the Tuolumne Meadows area to think on, and a new stove, an MSR Dragonfly (you have to respect a stove that burns white gas, kerosene, gasoline, diesel and chicken fat). The seeds are sown. Here's to focus, honest work, and a dream of the wild.