Leto, Dr. Mike, and Balloon Guy back together after a long lonely winter.

This is Sarah. She is an artist who sculpts with metal. She also owns a plasma torch. I had no idea what a plasma torch was. Only that it is just the thing for cutting up stainless steel kegs for brewing kettles. I asked around and finally met Sarah. She was really nice and understanding about my lack of knowledge of metal working. She converted four kegs for Claire and I in return for some beer. More than we really need but who knows ? Oh and the plasma torch looks and acts just like something out of Star Wars. Some how by blowing compressed air through a electrical current it gets hot enough to cut through a keg like butter.

Anne and have been meaning to take some photos of our chickens for a while now. When we move to our new home the chickens also needed a new coop. The old one was OK if maybe a little shabby looking. Now I have some real tools. I found better wood in the new neighborhood’s trash and Ana left some old paint in classy colors in the basement. Throw in two garden gnomes and two dumpstered window boxes and you have a chicken mansion.

Claire went on this crazy bike tour across the southwest to Texas. While she was gone Brew Club kind of stagnated. I tried to work on other stuff like cooking, learning linux, stealing wifi, and eventually setting up my own home network. Despite Claire and I’s absence Thud finished the brew tower and boy is she a sight. He writes a little about at his blog and has some great photos. I have some here too at its different stages. All that is left to do is find the hundreds of hard to find, tedious, non-existent, or design and build it yourself parts. Then Claire and I will drink a gallon or two of our brew, take our rock and flathead screw driver and put it together. Watch out world (including the fire department, police, local hospitals, and federal authorities)!

It was terrible. Our evil landlady stole all our money. It was New years Eve. We couldn’t remember how we got some of the furniture up the two flights of stairs and therefore got the couch jammed in the corner on the way down.

It took three days, a trip to the dump, and lots of help from Lance and Claire.

In all though it was worth it. now we live Ana’s old house not far away. It is bigger, prettier, cheaper, and our new landlady isn’t an insane harpy.

So I was reflecting back on my life the other day. It seems that I have done some things and taken some pictures since February. Also looking forward to the far future I am planning on having some adventures worth writing about this summer. So to catch up I offer the following posts in no particular order.

Doobybrain.com » Blog Archive » New newsstands for New York City

This guy seems to be on the same wave length as Tom and I.

Some of you may have heard already that Tom and I are opening a newsstand at Pioneer Square this summer. Now that I have some drawings and our plans are more concrete I thought I would post a little something.

News stand pdf

The kiosk is on the corner of 6th and Yamhill in the old entrance to the underground bathrooms across the street from the old Powell’s map store. In theory it should open some time in June. Since the kiosk is on the new Transit Mall and spitting distance from the two original MAX lines we’re trying to set it up as a really fast place to get a cup of Stumptown and a paper or magazine. Also since it is near seven or eight high-end hotels we are going to cater to the visitors as much as possible. We’ll offer advice and steer them towards more interesting stuff than what you might find in the POVA guide or the Powell’s map. We’ll also offer them some normal Lonely Planetesque guide books and also some homemade sight seeing tour guides. Since I’m going to be stuck in this little metal box for 10 hours a day I want to make it as clever as possible. No idea is too outlandish. Post to the comments anything you might come up with or if you think there is some way you can help out.

Now I’m late for Brew Club. Claire’s going to punch me in the poo spot for sure this time.

$18. Thats how much it apparently cost to get into the bike show. I love Ira. I love Natale. I love keeping my money in my own pocket. Therefore I snuck into the show on Friday during the media pre-event. It was a simple matter of looking like I was supposed to be there and having a believable cover of delivering my fancy Ira Ryan bike to the fancy show. Going in the loading dock probably helped too.

True to all the hype there were a lot of very pretty bikes. Racks, retro looks, and wood are very in again this year. To be honest though I didn’t stick around long. Bike nerds make me nervous and Ira and Natale were too busy to hang out. It was fun though and I heard the crowds got out of control later despite the ridiculously overpriced cover charge. I’ll stick to Portland’s home grown show next year. I’m more into seeing what my friends are up to and the fruits of their hard work. The out of town builder’s bikes were cool but I like to keep my money and sweat equity in the family. Without the generosity of Ira, Cool Breeze, Meagan, Claire and others I wouldn’t have the cool crap I do. I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway.

The real action was Saturday night at the Rapha sponsored roller races. Again the organizers were charging a fat cover to get into their event that was sponsored by the makers of the most expensive cycling clothing known to man (not women, they don’t even make women’s clothing.) the event was put on along side the Teams of Portland show over at W+K. Each Portland team put three of their riders up on rollers against all the other teams and who ever could peddle the fastest won. There was one wild card team that just happened to be made up entirely of bike messengers who had dominated the open qualifiers on Friday. So the PÜMA was made up of Eric (Sharky), Damion (Corndog), and Nerf. the wild card team was Chaz, Will, and some messenger from SF. Sharky, Damion, and Will were eliminated in the first round. Nerf was beaten by his own hair in the second round.

I don’t know when the SF kid went down. It was at least the second round. Chaz took the whole thing. I’m sure someone can do a play by play better than me. The gist of it is that it was one of those sports underdog stories of the working messenger against a semi-pro Spandor. Chaz was cool under pressure, peddled really fast, and was a good sport about the whole thing. It all paid ofF with a set of custom pink rollers and a custom Ira Ryan frame.