Road to Nowhere

Late afternoon busting through lingering storm clouds over a very pleasant bike path near Copper, Colorado.

Don't abandon your pets, assholes

Today was a beautiful day.  I went for a longish ride and felt better than I have in a couple weeks.  But all that feel-goodiness came crashing down when I encountered an adorable dog that seemed to have been recently abandoned in Fairmount Park.  It looked like maybe a sheepdog-terrier mix or something like that.  No collar, but cleanish, which makes me think it had been abandoned within the last few days.  I wanted to catch him and bring him home, but he had crossed the road and disappeared into the forest by the time I caught up to him.  Even spent a while clomping around the underbrush (Philly underbrush, meaning broken bottles, trash, and a jungle-growth of weeds) in my cycling shoes and calling "Here, puppy!" but no luck.

Anyway, don't abandon your pets, assholes.  If you can't take care of them anymore, there are ample resources for adoption or fostering.

To close this out, here are some pets.  I figured I posted too much dog up in here, so cats now: the late Perseus (or as I called him, Percival cause he was really not a Perseus by the time I knew him) and the current Poison.

That's one hell of a Gruber Assist!

Bonus familiar face in the pro men's field.  Boyfriend as moto marshall- ain't he cute?

(For those not abreast of the heady world of pearl-grasping Cycling Drama, a primer on GruberAssistgate 2010.)

CAWES That's How They Roll (Or so they keep telling me!)

Yayay Philly Pro Race was last weekend!  Yayay a particularly large bunch of local gals in the field.  Yayay most of them fucking finished!  Badass.

Women's world champion in the field...natch, she took it all home.

These last three are ladies from a local women's team by the name of CAWES (Or Capitol Area Women's Elite Squad), which I believe was started last year more or less explicitly for this race.  And they did really well- I think all but one finished (that one being injured, so, yeah) which is pretty amazing for a bunch of local Cat 2s in a professional women's race.

Still Pretty Damn Kinetic, Still Pretty Damn Kensington

Maybe you did fool the Philadelphia, rag the Rochester, josh the Joliet.  But you never did the Kensington kid.  You?  Never!  Did the Kensignton kid?*

Come with me, if you will, back into my time machine to the year 2010 where we are still a blissful year from Judgement Day and enjoying some kinetic sculpture ("sculpture").

I have to assume these guys totally envisioned how it would look to drag "Real Healthcare Reform" and "Single Payer Insurance" through the muck (of partisan politics? of powerful lobbyists?  of OMFG SOCIALIST!! scaremongering?)- its just too apt.  Although their analogy kinda falls apart when the guy labelled "insurance company" tries to help.

And how is that coulrophobia coming along?

*Big ups to anyone who gets this reference (no google, dammit!).  Boyfriend is excluded because ostensibly he pays attention to what I read.

Kinetic in Kensington

Photos from the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby, which was last weekend.  Wait, you say, I was at the derby and/or in the vicinity of Philadelphia last Saturday and the weather was ridiculously awesome with nary a hint of cloud, let alone drizzle- there must be shenanigans happening here!  You'd be right.  I could not attend this year's iteration, so I humbly substitute these never-before-seen-because-I'm-lazy shots from the 2010 edition.  Paste on some blue sky, and I'm pretty sure no one would know the difference...there is a lot of beer floating around at that event.

Fuck You, Spring!

Today I went for a short bike ride after work.  I do this on many days with nary an unpleasant incident.  But today ye gods decided my little ride was the height of promethean impertinence and decided to slap my mortal ass back down.  We kicked it off with a drenching and wind-ing courtesy of a classic east coast spring thunderstorm and then followed with three flats.  Three!  And before you say "Hey, did you ever think you're just completely fail at fixing flats?," I elaborate- both tires were involved (two in the front, one in the back), and I pulled glass and/or rocks out of the tire after each flat.  Dammit, I am awesome at flats.  This was just a triple dose of bad luck.  But at least I kept my liver.

Racing amid decay

Two shots from this weekend's Navy Yard Criterium in Philly's half-decrepit formal naval base.  I say half because a sizable chunk of the area now consists of expensively renovated headquarters for companies like Urban Outfitters or less-showy but still decidedly non-decrepit offices for shadowy government arms contractors. 

But the other half made this one of the most interesting sites for a race that I've seen.  Abandoned and crumbling buildings abound- former barracks, admirals' quarters, hangers, factories, meeting halls...I got to put my climbing skills to work circumventing half-closed off ladders and doors (and got kinda dirty in the process), but unfortunately none of my more aggressive/experimental race-shot compositions worked out very well.  Didn't help that I am not exactly rocking a sports photography lens.

L' Oeuvre de la course cycliste

This morning I finished Zola's L' Oeuvre (The Work, or The Masterpiece)...