r.i.p. pierre

the frame is bent. just behind the headset, on both of the "top" tubes and on the bottom tube.

the front wheel is trapped to the right of the frame. this bike will only be ridden again if the front wheel is replaced with a much smaller one. or if the rider only wants to go in counter-clockwise circles.

look at how i detach from it. a week ago, i would have talked about pierre and his headset; now it's "the"s and "it"s and "this bike"s.

so, pierre. has some tight components. his french-threaded bottom bracket is hard to find, so i could sell it or, in the event of future peugeots, hang onto it. the saddle, handlebars, pedals, and rack will likely be transferred to the bicycle of my future. the fork and seat tube are probably fine, but not necessarily worth saving. the wheels seem fine, the brake is fine, all the drive train shit is fine; the derailleur is all of three weeks old.

i cannot believe this. i am stripping down and piecing out pierre, undressing him with my mind. (i would do it with my eyes, but to see him i'd have to move to the other side of the couch.)

rest in... piece?

may critical mass

i rode up to mass with steph, as well as second-years emma and gwen. emma is friends with max, and was in fact riding his fixed gear. (max is currently biking the pch on emma's road bike.) i had a mental block in remembering gwen's name, i suspect since gwen w. can't ride a bike.

i stuck my trash can in my rear basket, along with a "please recycle" sign and a blue bag. the trash can is medium-sized, about knee height. i was initally worried about how much of the basket would be taken up by it, but i had no reason to worry: there was still room for a case.

a photo of my recycling bin was captured here. i'm not in the photo, but you can see the rear view of mah bin. you can also see AndyTheProfessor, a midnight marauder, in his short shorts! look for the pale legs on the far left. he'd just ridden down from evanston, and put on real pants over the bike shorts shortly after he arrived. and before any of us had a chance to make circumcision jokes, too!

still in daley plaza, some guy complimented my recycling bin. i thanked him, and told him to feel free to toss in any recyclables he had. our conversation then went something like this:
he: oh, no thanks, i don't have anything recyclable.
me: would you like one?
he: ...
he: what?
me: um, i was offering you a beer, dude.

and he was shocked. appalled. "you drink while you ride your bike?" i was equally baffled. "is this your first critical mass?" my guess was wrong: he'd been to them in ithaca, portland, and some other northwest city (eugene?); he was attending a chicago cm for the first time, though.

i ended up taking the recycling load back to hyde park from logan square, which made for a noiser ride, but wasn't really a bother. the recycling contained...

1 can budweiser
5 cans bud light
1 bottle corona
8 bottles flying dog
4 bottles groovy brew
1 bottle heineken
1 can heineken
5 cans mgd
1 16-oz can miller high life
1 can miller lite
1 24-oz can miller lite
5 cans old style
1 can pbr
1 16-oz can pbr
1 16-oz can sapporo
6 cans tecate
1 water bottle

for a total of 27 aluminum cans, 14 glass bottles, and 1 plastic bottle.

i'll be thinking about this some more, and likely adding more later, but two things strike me: the large amount of piss beer, and the large number of cans. for real, what's the deal with all the light beer? are these bikers worried about their carb intake or something? i just don't know.

as for cans vs. bottles, cans are obviously a better choice for riding; in the unfortunate event that one falls ("man down!"), you neither spray your fellow riders with glass shards nor endanger your/everyone's tires with broken glass. it may be less conspicuous, also; there were a group of guys drinking tecate, for instance, and i initally thought the red cans they were holding contained coca-cola. very tricky.

i was near todd allen's sound system for most of the ride, which was chill. i didn't see any conflicts or spills, for example. i'm not sure where i was in the mass, which alex wilson estimated at 1500, but i seemed to be closer to the middle and back. i tried, but not too hard, to catch up to the front a few times, but the streets were pretty crowded. typically i just scoot left and breeze by, but the sheer mass! so many bicycles! it was hard to get through. i also slowed down whenever i heard someone say, "hey! recycling girl!" or something to that effect, which made it harder to advance.

i had another anectode, but what what was it. um, i saw deniz and fred and met luke, a guy who's in my linguistics class. deniz was doing a sound recording, after an unpleasant interaction with a cop last month. some guy had a small camcorder duct taped to his headtube; he was filming a bike's-eye-view of the ride. oh! i thought of the story. in a six-way intersection, lincoln-ashland-belmont perhaps, we were (understandably) taking our sweet time. keep in mind i was at least halfway back in the mass, but i am pretty certain the mass didn't zip through as quickly as it could have. there was probably some circling going on, where the first few riders in an intersection, um, well, the term is actually a pretty obvious one, so i'll spare you. some photo evidence shows some chicago hold-ups going down, too. a chicago hold-up slows down the mass in two ways: one, there are obstacles (bikers standing around) that impede the mass's flow; two, passing bikers will sometimes stop to chat with friends who are bike-saluting or, for that matter, corking.

by the time i got to this intersection the hold-ups had ceased, but there was still some general milling around. the mass had made a soft right turn (though as a southsider, i don't know which street we turned onto, or off of). groups of cyclists were corking and talking, either to each other or to drivers who wanted to know what was going on (and likely, when these idiot bikers were going to get out of their way!). it was clear the mass had been there for a while, and cops were starting to get fed up -- nudging us forward, politely enough. one officer, though, didn't quite know what he should say into his loudspeaker. he apparently thought it would be wise to tell us to move along and "let these cars through." oooh, yes, let's let these cars through. why, that should be a new ccm motto!

the map said we were to end at montrose beach; i can only assume that's where we ended. i do know that there were bathrooms, and friends i hadn't seen all ride, and beers finished. there were two after-parties in logan square; i went to one with a big group: justin and martin (who quibbled over the best way to get there), tallbike travis on a rollover bike (you have to see it), elizabeth and richie (two new marauders), steph, andy, malinda, some guys whose name i forget, and perhaps some others. we stopped by a liquor store on fullerton before heading to the party, where alex and margot were. there was vegan food, and dancing/flailing, and good times for all.

may marauders: blues brothers

oh man, this ride was hella fun. w00t.

what what.

i tried to start a respectable blog once. one that wasn't on livejournal or blogspot. one that was open source and sexy. i even got a tight url from the monks of cool; http://bluestreak.monksofcool.org/

you can see the pathetic remains there, for it was not to be. i am insufficiently l33t. so here we are on blogspot, where the easy-ass interface will make it easy-ass to post all these entires that have been sitting around on my hard drive. and some place-holding posts will go in for all those entries that have been sitting around in my head, because maybe i'll eventually type them up.

and the name? well, it's no blue streak. but it's true, lauren bikes! and i'm totally going to tell this blog all about it. just you wait.

april ccm

this post is gonna be epic.

april marauders

the theme was north side dive bars, though we only went to two bars aside from the hb. and we didn't even have enough time to drink at the second one! what kind of lame-ass bouncer doesn't tell you last call has already happened when you're trying to enter the bar?

outside of said bar, my u-lock got stuck while it was locking BOTH my bicycles (milligan was using pierre, and i had sancho). which was pretty scary.

more later.

march mass

by now, i've realized that the thing to do is buy beverages downtown or along the ride, instead of hauling things up from hyde park. so with a little research, i found myself selecting some 6-packs at warehouse liquors on 634 south wabash. all four in my basket made my brief ride to daley plaza a little tipsy, but not in the way you're thinking. not yet, at least.

so i'm lane-splitting up dearborn, and just as i pull up to the light at washington i see a bike cop to my right. "hey, is one of those for me?" he asks. "maybe if you ask nicely!" i reply. the light changes, and i pedal onto the plaza.

some UofC friends were hanging out on the southeast side (i know, what else is new?), so i joined them. i offered beer to xerocrats who were passing out maps of the route and invitations to an "up in smoke" fish cookout on montrose beach in the following week or two. one guy, perhaps todd gee, suggested i at least make a half-assed attempt to cover my basket's contents. "don't make it easy for them," he said. i had some spare clothing in case the ride home got too cold, so i threw a shirt over the cargo. i also put two of the 6-packs in my bag, so my bike would want to tip over less often.

some police officers were not thrilled with us riding around in their district, so they decided to tail the mass with their sirens blaring. i suppose the reason for this was to hurry us along, not to deafen us, but the latter was definitely the only of the goals they attained. whenever i, say, stopped to give someone a drink, i'd find myself suddenly near the rear, then i would sprint up a bit to avoid later ringing headaches.

i was pretty annoyed, but howard later pointed out on the listserve that their presence had a positive: everyone was avoiding the back, which kept the mass's ass end nice and tight. just how we like it.

seriously. it's unsafe otherwise. the last block or two of the group will typically be quite spread out, which is dangerous because drivers may see a brief gap in cyclists and take the first opportunity to blow through a group that's held them up for a couple minutes. i've seen drivers do this too many times to count; it seems to be the maneuver of choice, in fact, especially when the car doesn't actually have enough room to do it safely.

there are a few ways to avoid this. corkers, physically stopping cars from driving into the mass by standing in front of them, are a huge help. most are wise enough to yell "close the gap!" to approaching riders, who are sometimes wise enough to heed them by speeding up. sometimes corkers rejoin the mass when they see the end is near, though, and groups who are further behind can get severed. while it lasted, the, uh, gentle loving nudging from chicago's finest kept the stragglers from straggling this month, though.

so we rode our bikes, drank some beers. one purchase was this tasty-ass nut brown ale from a brewery whose name i've since forgotten. i saw leslie underneath some bridges. i saw scott, whom i met when i commented on his fuzzy purple jacket in january, and was reminded of his name thanks to some goggles he was wearing(!). a road behind a grocery store brought joy and sorrow: some rat patrol kids dumpster-dove bagels and threw them to other massers, but tracks on the same street took down two bikers that i saw. biking tip: always try to cross tracks as perpendicularly as you can. if you ride along them, your wheel could get caught in a rut. this is one of the easiest ways to fall off your bicycle.

we almost-but-not-quite went out to navy pier. we snaked between cars on michigan (though i have since learned that this is a Very Bad Thing to do). also on michigan was a not-entirely-legal incident with a billboard truck, brought up by t.c. in the post-script of an e-mail...

P.S. I have never approved of vandalism or property
damage-- even to the truly deserving-- on a CCM ride,
but I'll admit what happened to that billboard truck
at Oak and Michigan was hilarious.

after howard asked what happened, i sent my recounting of it to the ccm listserve. many knickers were subsequently tied in twists about the vandalism issue...

though i was slightly ahead of the action*, a friend later relayed it to me.

if you're not familiar with those obnoxious billboard trucks, you need
to know that there is a door on the back. it's a small door, but large
enough for someone to get inside. some clown** tested the door handle,
and lo and behold, it was unlocked! he opened the door to reveal a
space of light, which he insists was pretty despite the trucks' ugly
function***.

the "dreadlocked wookie" mentioned earlier was not the tagger, but he
was the one who stuck his head inside the open door and turned off the
lights that illuminated the ads on either side of the vehicle. shortly
after the lights were off, someone else tagged the billboards.
although, honestly, there were lots of kids with dreads on that ride,
and the the tagger might have also had them.

lauren

*whoops on weaving through traffic, my bad! i know to stop next time,
so as not to thin out the mass.
**this is a Hint.
***if you could call it that.

at some point in the ride, i noticed igor ahead of me and took the opportunity to grab his ass. "you're the third person who's done that to me," he said. seems steph and leslie had beaten me to the punch. thankfully, i was able to control the urge to push them off their bicycles.

we poked around chinatown before eventually going back to the loop, ending outside a bio-burlesque show on 742 north lasalle. one turn and a half-block later, i fell. i hit a patch of clumsy in the open, obstacle-free road, and i just went splat on my left side. recycling spilled from my basket, but a handful of friends were nearby and helped me collect myself -- igor, katherine, steph, and some others, including "john the generic," yet another marauder whose name i often forget. (earlier in the mass i tried to guess his name, remembering at least that it was a generic guy name. i started with dave and dan, but he told me it was john before i got further. i've since decided that all the marauders should have "the something" appended to their name, to follow in jimmie the saint's example. i could be lauren the shiny, for example.)

i headed south with the aforementioned hyde parkers, but they went for mexican while i went to a party in bridgeport.

the end?