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So my friend Louis and I were talking Giro D’Italia talk. Basso looks indomitable and we’re both apprehensive that he’s going to ruin cycling like Armstrong did for the next five years. I don’t mean to upset the yellow bracelet army, but let’s face it, Armstrong killed the TdF as a spectacle for 7 years. Basso will probably win the TdF in a walk, but we believe his greatest competition is Jan Ullrich. People have written him off as a has been, but what’s remarkable about him is what he accomplishes without really trying. (more…)

Well last week was national bike to work week, and I rode my bike to work everyday last week except for one round trip on Thursday. I saved about 48 miles of driving. I started the week with a quarter tank of gas, and I have just slightly less than a 1/4 tank this week. So I managed to stave off the pump for one more week. Last week was a mess as far as weather. It ranged from 50F to 75F with sun and rain and everything in between. That in mind. I think if I got a rain cape and some rain overboots, I’d be set for almost any weather condition. I’m also thinking of getting a mud flap for my front fender as well. (more…)

I don’t know who started the whole magnetic car ribbon thing, but it’s getting out of control. I’m not against magnetic ribbons per se. I like how it serves a niche market of people who want to support a cause but don’t want to support it enough to stick a semi-permanent sticker on their precious vehicle. The part that’s out of control is who gets what color. (more…)

So everyone’s bugging me for what I want for my birthday, so here’s the list:

• 1/24 scale Tachikoma. I used to build a lot of models when I was a kid. I found it very relaxing. I could use more relaxing hobbies now, and man tachikomas are so cute.
• Carradice Zipped Roll. What a pretty bike bag. Not as massive as the traditional saddlebag, perfect for spare tools.
• A piece of the class action lawsuit with Verizon for tapping my phone calls. Nothing like sticking it to the man for birthday cheer.
• 48 hours to ride my bike, read books, sleep under the stars, and pal around with my friends - uninterrupted by any responsibilities

So there’s some hub bub about the NSA sniffing everyone’s phone calls. The majority of Americans don’t care sayin, “Hey as long as they’re catching terrorists, I’ll waive my rights. Civil liberties are for pansy liberals.. bah.” Meanwhile the minority of civil libertarians are all hysteric about how our privacy is at risk blah blah blah. Meanwhile Google, Yahoo and TiVo know more about Americans than the government ever will. As Scott McNealy told us a long time ago, “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it.”

I’m in the McNealy camp. Privacy has long been dead, who cares. But I’m still against NSA wire tapping and here’s why. Have you ever known any large government program with no built-in accountability to ever be successful? Of course not. We’re supposed to believe that the geniuses that brought us the Iraq war and the 2005 hurricane disaster management are going to figure out how to do something useful with terabytes of phone information. Well rest assured, your privacy is probably guaranteed because the jokers in the administration probably can’t even spy on you properly. They’re too busy trying to find the next great terrorist plot the AFSC are hatching, because you know what those quakers are like…

The real scandal is that this is a massive project that costs millions if not billions of our tax dollars with no tangible results or accountability. Osama Bin Laden is laughing in his cave right now. This is exactly what he intended, for the U.S. to bankrupt itself into oblivion. They did it to the Soviets and now it’s our turn.

I’ve been on a blogging hiatus for some time. A one-two punch of laziness and busyness. However I’m back, and I’m prepared to give you more details of my dull life. The food of the week is the maitake mushroom. This is a humongous fungus as shown to scale with a fork. It can be eaten raw or cooked and has a flavor somewhere in between a standard white mushroom and a shiitake mushroom. When you cut into it, the insides have a cool pattern that somewhat resembles a brain. I ate some of it raw and chopped the rest to cook in a Chester County style mushroom soup. I like the Chester County style of soup because it puts all the emphasis on the mushroom flavor and not on the cream, unlike cream of mushroom soup. Incidentally this mushroom was purchased in Kennett Square, the mushroom capital of the world.