The above shot was sent in by Garro some time ago. I think I've finally found my calling..
Delivering three of my favorite things.

Then, the one known only as 'outoftheoffice' wrote in to let us know about how their little neighborhood beer crawl has evolved into a ride with hundreds of their closest friends;

"Stevil. Seeing the various accounts of bummer life avoidance each week does more than words can describe, HTATBL is an inspiration to us all.

Saying the bummer life was avoided this past weekend in Lubbock, TX would be an understatement, it was confronted, decimated, and ultimately buried under a heap of bicycles and beer cans. The Tour de Tech Terrace started 5 years ago with 35 close friends; this past weekend that number blossomed to 1137. Imagine a roaming block party that moves every 20 min covering 10 miles while stopping at 10 different houses and manages to bring people from all circles together under the umbrella of bicycles and libations. What makes this ride great is how its done: no entry fee (just canned food donations), run solely by college students, completely not for profit, oh and its BYOB.

The ride started with some of this;

Keep fighting the good fight, we'll be here cheering.
outoftheoffice"

So there you go.. If you thought there was even a slight waft of bummer life in Lubbock, you very obviously thought wrong.

Now that the sun is shining on most places in this great nation of ours, the celebrations of being outside are beginning to happen with more regularity. One of which is going down in Los Angeles (where ironically the sun shines most of the time), this coming weekend.

If you live in the area, and you love the two wheels, why not get out to see what's what? Our own El Corpo will be there flying the freak flag in force, so track him down and slap some skins.

Boise's Bikes and Rec has some goods coming up as well;

Take note folks. Freaksouts are fixing to abound.

It's not just us old grumps that have a thing for the bikes neither. No sirs and maams.
Proof can be found in this email and clip sent from Dan in which he writes;

"she is my buddies little girl. 21 months old. fuck yeah."

That's pretty cute, but I could have used about 21 more seconds of Slayer.
Maybe that's just me though.

Ok, here is some mad scientist nonsense sent in from Zlatty;

"Stevil,

I've always wanted to try the old fixie MTB. I copied the idea of drilling disc rotor mounting holes into a SS cog from somewhere, but still wanted to run a disc brake. It's a little out of crazyville, but I bolted the disc rotor to a second SS cog and mounted it on the cassette side (now the left).

It works. Plus the disc rotor freewheels when you roll backwards (totally useless feature, but it looks sweet!).

Keep up the good work Mister.
-Zlatty"

I can barely handle wrapping my mind around threading the pedals in the correct side cranks. This project just made my brain leak.

El Corpo sent in a clip to me that tell me a couple of things.
One, this guy hasn't seen "American Psycho" and two, this guy is well on his way to winning the biggest douchebag in the planet award.

The only thing that would be better is if when you opened the card this video played.

So if you've read this blurg for any length of time, you're aware that despite the fact that I spend so much energy on this virtual medium, that I'm a huge sucker for pulp. You know, a zine or magazine that you can hold in your hands, or fold up and put in your pocket. Just such a magazine is Bike Monkey, who has a new issue coming out directly.

They do good work, those bike monkeys do.

In closing I'm going to go ahead and poach a bit straight off of the Soulcraft Bicycles blog from Friday;

"Back last December when Soulcraft hole-shotter Hurl came out for our annual training camp, we wisely replaced our secret stash with brand new supplies. Well, on Friday afternoon as I was slaying a fierce set of hill repeats I thought to myself "I'm a might bit parched. I probably should have stopped by the lick to pick up some training libations." Just then the light bulb above my head popped to life.
"Ahh.. The log..."
Like the Hydra protecting the treasure, I was pleased to find my own personal force of Army Ants taking care not to let any interlopers wrongfully procure the booty;

It's activities such as this that ensure my vice-like grip on solid mid pack finishes all season long.

Sheeoot, I couldn't have said it better myself.

I suspect at this point, your attention span is waning, so I will go ahead and pull the plug on our latest installment.
I've got more for later, and will try and dump the rest of it out on Wednesday, cause that's what I do.

Also, for this week's header shot, I gotta offer up thanks to The Bike Lemming. Is the photo one taken by the mystery blogger or of the mystery blogger?
That is a question we just may never have the answer to.

It is now that I'd say 'happy Monday', but that phrase has never made much sense to me, as the two words fit together like 'restrained force' or 'compassionate conservative' so I'll just leave you with my hope that you get out of today in one piece, and that we can join up together on Wednesday.

xo