Grunt Foster

The day before the 4th of July and all that is red, white and boom we were called upon to help with a just found special needs puppy for a 2 week foster. This one's special need was based on some sort of huge sensory over load from the very small perspective of a roughly 6 week old little puppy that had been recovered from under a bush near a heavily travelled busy road. Grunt was a very skittish and scared little fellow when I first met him, in the car on the way home he was so struck with fjear(no copy right or write infraction there little buddy) that he completely locked out petrified. He immediately however started packing well with the other 3 who run the place, all seems a quick relatively easy fix. Danger took him under her paw and taught him quite well about domesticated pack life. His house training has gone faster than expected as well as his manners at feeding time. Our liaison at the Humane Society asked last week that we extend this one's Foster for another which brings us to him headed back on the morrow, off to a sure adoption and hopefully a fun and real connection with the humans who take him home. Here, take this one he really likes people.

Olfactory System Senses Contrast Explosion

commuting by bike on the morning connected to the landscape of which i was born into grounded by the ribbon of thin black road connected with that small patch of rolling rubber on the tires my senses sometimes seem heightened, hyper aware of what is going on with all the perceptions, hearing, taste, touch, vision and smell. i am picking up on things that i know i would have never had, had i been in a car at that exact same moment.

i travel west on the stay alive, west on the earth which is theoretically spinning towards me under my wheels rolling over it as it comes. my morning ride is pulling me closer to the density of the million people who have come to dwell in the utopia of mecklenberg charlotte, not away from them. behind them not really that far is the rest of the world, 7 billion or so just on the other side of the jar still spinning in my direction. the air with the revolving earth, the atmospheric condition, the wind is coming from the same direction that i am traveling to, as i go west, it is floating east being pushed by wind, sometimes strong fast winds, sometimes calm, rarely is it not. as i get closer the smells change, the waste of that million sometimes becomes so clear that i cannot look away. garbages, food waste, human waste, that liquid white ooze coming out of every dumpster behind every building, sewer lines oozing under ground, the carbon heat smell of the cars all that is being release by society and cultural over consumption to fill the needs of my convenience.

as the temp rises this stuff starts cooking and has no where to go so it stays low, ground level and above your head maybe a few hundred feet like an invisible blanket of smell across the plastic steel and glass landscape adding to the filter that we have come to know as ground level ozone. the smell intensifies in spots, sweating already at 0744hrs on the lows of the east side, not just smell anymore, it is a hot smell that is cooking and cannot cool down, for the heat is coming up again with the sun and the radiant condition of all the no trees and plenty of asphalt, faux siding and post industrial urban design where there was never any industry. it can be a rancid bile like smell of waste that you have to try to ignore to stifle the desire to vomit or gag. the body and mind must continue and get through to the hill on central where 10th street comes in. there is a break there, it is chocolate from the pastry factory. it comes up the 10th and louise streets, crosses and stays with for a few fleeting minutes but it sure is nice and brings a smile in the early hours. chocolate i tell you, hot, warm, like the road i am riding on is made with melted chocolate pop tarts, strange after taking in such perpetual nasty. it is as if i was now transported on to a landscape that is a candy land board game. i love the contrast of CHOCOLATE PASS for sure directly before i enter bank town usa and all the clean smells i am about to immerse my self in for the day before i start it all over again.......

Cadel Evans cracks me up, for real.

I am not laughing at Cadel Evans at all but at the way he reacts to the ones responsible for messing with him. This started the other day when I was watching Le Tour on the morning after this interview was shot. Cadel was being asked a question by the official VS's team while rolling out in Yellow towards the start of that day's stage when the Yellow Mic appeared on his right shoulder. He sort of snapped by shooing it away in a hurried manner trying to stay focused on the original question. Then I looked on the tube and found this clip from the day before after his podium to receive the Yellow. Anyways, it made me laugh and that seems like so much to ask for these days that I am compelled to share. Once again Cadel Evans is obviously an extra ordinary person no making fun of that at all for it is more serious how much of an athlete he is but his manner towards the Yellow mic and the one who tried to pet his lion cracks me up....

Being a Bike Messenger is So easy

that a gorilla can do it. it is picking up and delivering on work that you do which is what you create, staying upright in traffic, communicating what is happening with the job or blowing up balloons and twisting them into shapes that people see as familiar for a laugh. it is all paying attention is it not? my favorite thing is in the rain, not when it is 29F degrees and raining but like the rain in the warmth of the summer. if you are on a direct drive bicycle, fixy more or less you can look down in the rain and see yourself directly under the bike in reflection on the black wet glossy asphalt. it is strange looking, the spinning cranks constantly first in the picture with wet pavement as the moving screen the movie reflection film plays on. it is a hypnotizing scene, curious science when you see your own power transfer in to forward direction on the skinny little tires aided by the mechanics of something so clean appearing as the nickel plated chain powered drive. again this view is upside down but comes to you right side up from where you sit rolling, it is backwards looking momentum converted to the forward by the visual senses and the rain pelting your face....i have to stop looking at it sometimes even though it is so close for i cannot see where i'm going when i'm looking down at the reflection of what is getting me there.

Spider eats Bug

Click any of these for big, they are neat looking larger. The first one below when magnified is amazing, the head of the spider actually looks like the head of a miniature wolf eating it's prey. Is there dog DNA not only in bears and humans but spiders and dandy lions as well? I was called a spider once by someone who had scanned but never met me, not sure what they meant by that but this little woolly fellow definitely got my attention.

Photo Doc-Day In Charlotte NC Yesterday

Here is part of the photo essay that I worked on yesterday starting at around 0900hrs with the last images taken just before 1400hrs before the device was actually moved in to the back of a Bomb Squad trailer and hauled off to be dismantled. The faux but apparently real looking pipe bomb device was found by a random human(He is pictured below) on the ground at the base of a tree at the 200 North block of College St. early yesterday. Over the next hours the Police and support of specific departments made 3 attempts to blast the cap off of the device and all 3 failed. The robot featured below then picked up the apparatus, loaded it into a trailer and the cops took it off to do the final dismantling somewhere out of the uptown. The details came out to the public by the evening news, it was officially not an explosive device but it was made to look like one. click any of them to see full size detail...

ACCORDING TO THE POLICE DEPARTMENT THE DEVICE WAS A REAL PIPE BOMB THAT DID NOT CONTAIN THE EXPLOSIVE CHARGE.

This photo is from roughly 250ft above the street, the truck(the ball on top of the flag pole) on the top of the American flag is a very appropriate symbol of what I was seeing.

Quiet at 0930hrs, normally heavy traffic

The news used tons of fuel raining down on us to cover the big story, all 3 local stations had their choppers lined up to get in for the best view so that all y'all in the toon could wonder what I was doing....

The 2 guys in the middle pointing, the one in the black shirt on the right is the one who called the cops and when I asked him a question about what he saw, he told me that he probably should not say anything to me. There was awkward silence for like 10 seconds and then I said, "Why?" He really did not have an answer...maybe he was thinking about is future 4 million.

Unwarranted Bike Repair-Leaves Warranted thoughts...

photo courtesy and kindness of Chris Radok(December 2001)-click for big

Yesterday afternoon while waiting for time to pass on the park bench in front of the opposite of creation Tower Rich (all you Mike Piazza fans out there should check out his latest interview representing Team Dicky for Velo News)noticed that the Giant Zum Zum Commuter Rig locked to the rack in front of us had it's rear V brake cable noodle unattached and wide open rendering it useless. Function check. I went over to the bike and tried to put the noodle in the grommet but something was wrong, the front ferril was out of the lever housing which Rich put that back in correctly. Spin the wheel, contact with the brake pads major, no spin. Wow, this guy must have really smacked something hard and instead of fixing it he simply opened the brakes and ignored the problem. With Dicky's help not permission we turned the bike upside down while still locked to the rack and then I began to true the wheel as best I could. It was really far out and after the first few minutes I was not even sure if I would be able to line it up or make the problem worse. Time passed, I could see it coming around again but there were many turns of the Park Tool spoke wrench to make. Now that the big hobble was out there was what was left from that pull leaving a little opposite side to side close by that original lub dub. More time, Lee rolled up to ask me what I was doing, then Dude. You guys, I do not know, I saw this commuter lock up and I cannot let him leave without brakes, you know I am not doing anything right now anyway. With Lee there I finished and the wheel was almost perfect all over again, he helped me upright the bike and then I made the final adjustment to the left brake arm which was only a small turn of the screw. I left a note for the commuter telling him he had received a free street side bike repair from the CMA and to enjoy his newly operating brakes. Had I been thinking about potential Blog Fodder I would have snapped some pictures of this maintenance call but while I was working on it I never thought about the blog. Sometimes it seems strange to differentiate between life and bringing that life to the blog for although intertwined I am not necessarily sure I want one to be the catalyst for the other. Hunh? Life is worth blogging but blogging is not worth living, there you have it an original thought with a sleepy head. Next time I fix some one's bike without their permission I will do my best to make a photo document as well.......