Wolfpack. Done.
A month ago I took the photo on the right after attempting my first Wolfpack Hustle ride. I wrote about it that night, about how friends told me I was insane for even considering trying it, and about how it was definitely far beyond my capabilities, but not completely out of reach. The Wolfpack rides every Monday, and in the last month I’ve gone on every one of them, including the All City Century (a 100 mile ride of which I completed about 30 miles of). I haven’t finished one of the rides, usually getting dropped after the second stop or so.
Until tonight. I and about 5 other people took a minor shortcut at the very beginning after getting caught at a light and caught up with the pack right away. We made it from Sunset and Fountain (in Silver Lake) to Washington and La Cienega in 30 minutes flat. Another rider getting a flat between there and the Staples Center gave me a few extra minutes to catch up, and catch my breath. Just north of Chinatown my luck went the other way, I’d fallen behind and lost sight of the pack, I missed a turn and rode several miles before consulting my GPS and seeing my error, and then turning around and getting back on track. At this point I was definitely dead last, cruising up Riverside all by myself when I got hit by a car. I had a green light, there was a woman in a car stopped at the red light, she looked right at me, and pulled out right into me. Luckily she was coming from a complete stop and only hit me at about 5mph, but still. She had no license plate, and hauled ass the moment she realized what she’d done. Shortly there after I called a friend who I knew was still with the bulk of the pack and he reported they were just nearing the finish now. Getting hit by a car gave me the extra shot of adrenalin I needed to book it the rest of the way back to Tang’s. If that hadn’t happened I probably would have broken off as I rode past my house. Instead I finished the ride. I came in dead last, about 20 minutes after everyone else, but I finished it. Doorstep to doorstep, total for the night looks to be 43 miles. Oh, and I did that on a fixed gear.
I’m in so much pain right now, and I couldn’t be happier.
Phone for Europe
Anyone in LA, or near LA, or who will ship really quickly to LA have a SIM based unlocked mobile phone (preferably with qwerty and web) that they aren’t using and that I could borrow for a few months while I am bouncing around Europe? I’m thinking along the lines of Nokia, blackberry, or something? I’m thinking of just picking up one of those pay as you go T-mobile cards to throw in it, and then working some magic with Skype and my Helio as well, but yeah I need a device to do it. The last SIM/unlocked phone I have are my old Treo 650 (which is effectively dead and in constant reset mode) and a Sony Ericsson T610 from many years ago which just will not do the trick at this point. Anyone?
one two two one in the am
That’s the time I started writing this anyway. I haven’t been blogging much in the last, well, last chunk of time that I’m referring to because I’ve been doing other things. What might those other things entail?
- Working on Metblogs, including a ton of meetings with new and potentially new partners, and working with The Groop on the new design which I can’t wait to show off.
- Starting to freak out about my next trip. I leave for Europe in about a week, and will be there for almost 2 months. Most of the time I’ll be in Vienna thanks to the monochrom folks and the Austrian cultural residency program I’ll be participating in. I’ll also be speaking at a few events, showing off some friends art, taking part in some shenanigans, and trying to do something cool with my time there. In addition to Vienna I know I’ll be in Berlin and London for at least some of the time, with New Years aiming to be in Berlin. I’m kinda freaking out because 2 months is a long trip – it’s more than just a trip really, I’m kinda moving there for a while. So I have to make sure that my things and duties and responsibilities here in LA are covered and taken care of while I’m gone. I wonder if I can hire an assistant for just those to months to run my errands for me and pay bills and stuff. I’m running through the massive list of things I need to sort out before I leave and every time I try to do that the list gets longer. Ack!
- I’ve been riding my bike like crazy because I like it, but also because I sold my truck and so my bike is my only form of transportation at the moment. Yes, in LA. Imagine that. I do plan on getting some form of motorized vehicle when I get back to town, but it doesn’t make any sense for me to worry about that now, or buy something before I leave just to have it sit for 2 months. I need to sell my old bike as well (which I think I’m aiming to replace with a geared road bike of some sort) but I also haven’t even been able to think about that and will most likely just deal with it when I get back.
- Trying to sort out my ideas for my talk at RoboExotica which I think is happening a few hours after I get to Vienna or something. I’ve got the ideas in place, just need to figure out the actual wording and structure of the talk. I’m a bit nervous about it because while I’ve been on a lot of panels I rarely present anything on my own, and with this I’m not even presenting my own thing, but rather an idea that people will either think is cool, think is totally bullshit, or is super obvious and stupid that I’m even pretending to be cultivating. But no pressure.
- Being shocked at how much easier it is to get married than divorced.
- Thinking about cool projects I might work on while in Vienna with people and resources that will be around me, both those from Vienna and elsewhere that happen to be in Vienna. Both Scott and Kent will be in town hanging with me out while I’m there.
- I’ve almost made 3,000 posts to Twitter. Yowza.
- Filming. On Thursday of last week spent the day on location with Jessica Stover filming a little documentary kind of thingy, and Friday I was out in Santa Monica on a set filming something else. Links and info on both of those are forthcoming as soon as I have more to share.
- Buying sweaters. Shocking, but true. I’m using Vienna as the excuse, but really I just like them all the sudden. I think I’m going to be fully prepared for the coldness there, the only thing I’m a little worried about is footware and I think I’ll just worry about that when I get there if I need to.
- I also bought some new luggage, mostly because it was on crazy sale but also because I’m traveling so much these days that I really need something solid and not a hand me down of a hand me down that I’ve been using for years. Most of all though all of the luggage I have is small carry on size which works for the small trips I take but I needed something a little larger for 2 months in Europe. So yeah. You might have noticed that this is going against my recent “get rid of everything possible” theme in which case you’d be right and it’s not something that I haven’t noticed myself – it’s actually something kind of bugging me and that I need to do something about as soon as I realize what.
- Tonight I went and saw my friend Chris’s art show. It was cool and fun. He had a piece that said “Your positivity is freaking me out” which jumped out at me and I bought it. Kind of fitting I think, for a lot of reasons, and in many directions. Yeah. How about that.