Bicycle! Bicycle!

Just to let everyone know, I'm going to be incommunicado (apparently, that's near cognito) for about a week. My friend Kick Enemy Men and I are doing a bike trek. We're riding from his house in Maine to my house in Vermont. Taking it slowly (40 mi or so /day) and see the World's Biggest Ball of String, etc. We'll eat in good restaurants and camp at night. No roughing it as we do when we backpack (couscous, bean flakes and green tea, pretty much). We're looking at four or five days of riding, so it should be something. I hope we don't get on each other's nerves.

Pictures will be posted, but here's a pic of KEM with the bike he'll be using for the trek. It's an ActionBent Tadpole. This was taken on it's first major test-ride the day after we'd assembled it. I'd driven out special to help with the assemble, having worked in three bike stores over the years. That thing's got like eight feet of chain!



The other pic is me, but that's not the bike I'll be riding. It's my very first mountain bike (1988 Trek Singletrack 950) that I refurbished into a sort of trials bike. It was taken in 2004 or so when I was delivering one of my old bikes to Mike to long-term borrow. It was too small for him, but he used it until he could buy the trike. This was our first ride together. It's sunny at that moment, but then it rained . So we rode to a Japense restaurant and sat on the deck in the rain eating sushi, drinking sake and having the chef come out to laugh at us. Good times.

Since this is an art blog, I'll leave you with a piece from 1995. I drew it while on temporary deployment at USCG Air Station Chicago (from USCGAS Traverse City, MI). It was during the big heatwave and I sequestered myself in the only air-conditioned room in the hanger with a gallon of o.j. and drew. This is from the Brian Jaques book "Mossflower". It is the only BJ book I consider worth reading, as after this one, every book was the same: Redwall Abbey is under threat. Abbey animals must go on quest to save abbey. They end up meeting the current mountain badger. They get whatever they need to defeat the threat. They eat a lot. The end.

Anyway, here you go:




listening to while posting: Sweet Enemy yelling at me to get upstairs. We're watching "Labyrinth" to celebrate my being gone for a while. She'll miss me, but she'll aim better next time.