I dont know about you all, but Im gonna be there.

Alright.. I dont know how we can go anywhere but down after that, but lets give it a shot.

Weve got this from Brian;

"Hi Stevil,

Attached is a great publication from the Us Consumer Product Safety Commission about bicycle safety. Hey kids! It's Sprocket Man!
(it should be noted that I somehow lost the attachment. Sorry.-S.K.)

My favorite is Sprocket Man's expression on page 16 reacting to the kid riding his bike on the sidewalk. He's so embarrassed. See additional attachment for embarrassment screen capture.

-brian"

If that bums Sprocket Man out, then the following email from Johnny would absolutely kill him;

"Some pretty ridiculous ridiculousness happened last Friday to the south of us. There's a fine line, of course, between activism that informs, encourages, educates and changes minds and the kind that just fucking retarded."

As I told Johnny, I suspect the fine line lies somewhere just short of riding your bike on the freeway, but what the hell do I know?

I dont know if its like mindedness, or folks are actually looking at me with an arched eyebrow about the following report, but I swear, I was in Vegas all last week, and trapped in the warehouse for forever before that.
I dont think Ive ever even been to New jersey;

666 signs are going missing.

But then again, maybe maybe the Italians had something to do with it.

Our pal Ken has been up to a few kinds of no good and has got this throw down brewing;

Hes even got some spew about it over at the Kryptonite blog.

Handsome devils, every one of 'em.

And speaking of handsome devils, DPow! wrote in to let us know that our little buddy can never catch a break.

Except of course here,

and here, and here, and here.

By the way, these shots are very much worthy of the promised shirts.
Ill handle it.
I promise.
Again.

Tobie gave us a shout to let us know whats what in the Midwest;

"Dear Stevil,

Here is something mostly unrelated to you and your locale, but we’re a small town and this is a sweet poster.

Tobie DePauw"

As long as its freaks on bikes having fun, it is always directly related to us.

And no sooner do I mention freaks on bikes, does Newt lay a Chicago style Urban Assault Ride report on us;

"Sorry for the brevity of this...

The jist of the Assault-

We registered, lined up our bikes to the edge of the pile in the proper direction for the Lemans start
Fully rocking SWOBO wear, because its like wearing a hug.

The 4 of us, 2 bike nerds, 1 commuter and 1 complete green horn newbie..
2 teams as one...because we needed more grey matter for clues and puzzles..yes ...we’re dumb
I grabbed our addresses and charted out our route to all the checkpoints.
We went as fast as we could, since the Greenhorn was deep in the Pain Cave, swearing under his breath like a dirty old Troll.
This event resembled a long smiling clown parade at most checkpoints, Everyone having a blast trying to get in all nine.

We were crafty in 90% of our routing, Chicago is a simple grid filled City with sneaky diagonal shortcuts, and our cumulative knowledge, which wasn’t much.....worked to our advantage.
We screwed up on only one secret clue which took us miles out of the way.
And this put us somewhere in the Top 15 out of 200 teams...not bad.

The Reward...We got four kegs to our selves for at least a half an hour until the rest of the herd arrived.

The URBAN ASSUALT was a blast, especially after a long season of racing with uptight Roadies.
The UA staff was amazing and the free beer was delicious..
I would do this again in a heartbeat."

The big guys golf shorts are amazing.

Nick also sent us some goods, although these are of an entirely different nature;

"You should broadcast this to the world.

-Nick"

I should, and will.. But I dont know if Im doing anybody any favors.

Justin, who was the captain of the Scumbag Cup ship was kind enough to give us a run down of the chaos;

"So its all over and ive finally gotten around to writing up a summary of the amazing weekend. I may have seemed stressed all weekend, actually i was stressed all weekend but when so many people came up to me and thanked me for a great weekend it made it all worth it.

So heres the rundown, The day started off with a time trial which started from my house and winded down spring garden st and out to kelly drive and back in on west river drive. This was a most beautiful day so the racers finished quick with the fastest coming in around 35 minutes!

We all sat around in Logan circle up until it was time to kick off the Always Scummy in Philadelphia alleycat which had the racers leaving from and alley under the chestnut street west philly bridge racing down to Lincoln Financial field then boathouse row and then the ben franklin bridge. the alleycat also had 5 other checkpoints that could be done however which way you seen fit but those first 3 had to be done in that order. So with quite a few miles under their belt the work based alleycat kicked off from city hall and consisted of 15 checkpoints which included 2 bad addresses and a secret rush that got you much more money! The winner of the work based alleycat killed it with a whole 18 dollars more than the second place finisher! The last race on Saturday was the figure 8 Crit which kicked off at midnight and had a total of 20 racers racing around love park and city hall simultaneously!!

We got in 9 laps out of the 13 planned before the transit police stepped in and commited a whole bunch of abusing their powers by throwing 2 people in cuffs, another 2 held back, and an innocent bystander being tackled off her bike for taking pictures of the police wrongdoing.

Luckily for us the transit police have no jurisdiction on non transit property so no one was charged with anything and we all proceeded to the after party where a free keg and great tunes kept all the tired legs and party animals happy. After a rather short nights worth of rest we proceeded to get the main race kicked off without a problem and we had ourselves a clear winner by the end. The results of the weekend are as follows:
1st Overall- Marco form Philly
2nd Overall- KevX form Philly
3rd Overall- Matt Savoia form Philly

Time Trial- Marco
Regular Alleycat- Marco
Work Based- Steve Martinez of Philly
Figure 8 - Eric Davidson of Boston
Scavenger Hunt- Liza of Philly

All in all it was a great weekend full of great people and great times!
Thanks to everyone who volunteered and to all the wonderful sponsors!"

If that wasnt enough action for you, then you should click here. Then, if youd like more images, click here, and finally, if youd like to see all of Amelias shots, which is where I pinched the visuals from, you should click here.

Evan, yo! also got ahold of us with another report of an event that we apparently graced with some of our fine threads, though truth be told, I have no recollection of;

"Stevil-

Thanks again for sponsoring the Laramie Mountain Bike Series.. We averaged about 50 people for each of the six races throughout the summer. The winners of the expert categories received the Laramie Cups.

The jerseys and shorts you donated were raffled off in the 'Perfect Attendance' drawing at the last race; 11 people made it to every race. It was really a good experience for me, as I'd only ever organized a one-weekend collegiate race before. It was also really cool to meet all these other mountain bikers in the Laramie/Cheyenne area who seemed to come out of nowhere. I definitely plan on doing it again next summer.

Also, I thought you'd appreciate that even Hitler knew how to shread.

-evan, yo!"

I dont know about 'shread', but he evidentially knew how to ring the hell out of his bike bell.

Hey, how about some photo work from Joe?

"re: 666 content inspired by danzig with free donuts-

do i know how to write a snappy subject line or what?

anyhow, attached to this fine email you'll find a pitcher of my swobo sanchez parked next to some graffiti on the side of the railroad tracks taken with a craptacular (tm) $20 holga pitcher taking instrument.

i hope you enjoy it. feel free to share with yr fine readers.

seriously,

joe"

Heres a clip from J "E.B.A.T.W." R.

Never before has the possible erasure of human existence sounded so funky;

One of our own Swobo anti-hereos, CFO finally crawled out of beneath his rock to let us know what hes been up to;

"I got called a bum by a child again...In fact a hobo...as in "I'm gonna grow up to be rich and you are STILL going to be a hobo!" ...I have never been more proud of my accomplishments....(his mom is a really good friend, so I restrained myself from pulling his underwear into the deepest recesses of his ass.)

CFO"

hes guiding the minds of the youth, that one is.

However, as any self respecting luddite knows, mail doesnt only come in the form of the two dimensional, computer kind.
My boy Thad from Lincoln set me up with a goodie bag in the form of his fine pulp Lincoln Ve-Low;

And in the midst of getting hitched, Barry and his lovely and talented bride set me up with a bag of homemade bacon/peanut brittle;

Ive said it many times before, good things really do happen to bad people.

Welp, in the state that Im currently in, I gotta pull the plug on this nonsense. Again, I thank all of the folks who keep avoiding the bummer life close to their hearts, and my calloused index fingers in their minds.

Finally, Im going to link Bike Hugger just because I should.

Time to dump the inbox and see what new goodies await for later.

As always, wash, rinse, and repeat.. Whatever the hell that means.