5.4.2016
Over the last Holiday Season, my in-laws were in town. Come to think of it, they were here the one before that. And the one before that. I think they've been in town since the little robot came home from the factory the first time. And that's what makes it make sense.
Anyway, during their last visit, several of us took a walk to the coffee shop / bakery a few blocks away. They have good coffee drinks and good-to-really-good baked goods. I got a cafe Americano and a bachelor loaf of their very sour sourdough bread. My mother in-law, after much deliberation, got an iced vanilla latte. I am a meat-and-taters robot. A cup-of-coffee robot. A nothing fancy robot. I don't fuck around with soy lattes, half-caf cappuccinos, decaf or anything with flavor crystals added to it. I don't order iced vanilla lattes.
On our walk home, my mother in-law's yellowish brown drink caught my eye. It was a weird color and the ice clinked weirdly in the transparent plastic cup. It apparently held my eye long enough to catch her eye and she held it out for a better view.
I asked her how it was. She said it was good and did I want to try it. I shrugged and tried it after shaking it around to make it really cold. It was good. It tasted like a vanilla Carnation Instant Breakfast.
"Thanks. It's good. It tastes like a Carnation Instant Breakfast," I said.
"No it doesn't." She said.
"Ice cold milk and vanilla powder? It tastes just like Carnation Instant Breakfast," I repeated.
Again she said, "No it doesn't."
Because I couldn't fathom a way it didn't taste like Carnation Instant Breakfast, I asked her, "Have you ever had a Carnation Instant Breakfast?"
"No," she said.
I was about to say something, then decided not to.
Since then, I have ordered and enjoyed exactly two iced vanilla lattes. And they both tasted like Carnation Instant Breakfast.
Tonight - The Homestead
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Thursday, May 19, 2016
May is National Bike to Work Month
5.3.2016
And if it's National Bike to Work Month, and National Tavern Month, who has a better idea than to combine both!
That's right ... go get a job at a bar and bike to it!
Or ... just bike to a bar.
Or ... just get to a bar however you can.
These days the bar I bike to is the one in my little house. I'll take a picture of it for you some day.
I'll mount four GoPro cameras to my bike helmet and snap some footage for you. I got the idea to mount four GoPro cameras to my bike helmet from a guy who blew past me while I waited for a red light. He had all those cameras pointing fore, aft and to both is left and right somehow affixed to his helmet. I have a feeling that the one pointing forward and the one pointing rearward are the most useful for whatever purpose footage of a bike ride through Venice has. Not sure about the left- and right-facing cameras, though. Perhaps they were dummy cameras or maybe the guy has been T-boned before. If you blow though red lights, you indeed have a good chance of being T-boned. And this guy will have footage of it that his family can play at his funeral.
Tonight - Mission Bar
Putting the "fun" into TNSC fundamentals.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
And if it's National Bike to Work Month, and National Tavern Month, who has a better idea than to combine both!
That's right ... go get a job at a bar and bike to it!
Or ... just bike to a bar.
Or ... just get to a bar however you can.
These days the bar I bike to is the one in my little house. I'll take a picture of it for you some day.
I'll mount four GoPro cameras to my bike helmet and snap some footage for you. I got the idea to mount four GoPro cameras to my bike helmet from a guy who blew past me while I waited for a red light. He had all those cameras pointing fore, aft and to both is left and right somehow affixed to his helmet. I have a feeling that the one pointing forward and the one pointing rearward are the most useful for whatever purpose footage of a bike ride through Venice has. Not sure about the left- and right-facing cameras, though. Perhaps they were dummy cameras or maybe the guy has been T-boned before. If you blow though red lights, you indeed have a good chance of being T-boned. And this guy will have footage of it that his family can play at his funeral.
Tonight - Mission Bar
Putting the "fun" into TNSC fundamentals.
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, May 12, 2016
May is National Tavern Month (REDUX)
5.2.2016 (first posted this month 10 years ago)
That’s what it says on a red necktie from the 50’s that the Linkey-Loo Robot owns.
It also says “Support Your Local Tavern” (which I did, by the way, with vigor.)
In honor of National Tavern Month, tonight we will be visiting not one, but TWO taverns!!
The first one up is being hosted by long-time TNSC Member Tim Pries and his roving band of hooligans:
Stop #1 - Grumpy's American Pub
An Advertising Agency favorite (6pm - 9ish)
Stop #2 - Comstock Saloon
A TNSC favorite, and short walk from Stop #1 (9:30pm - ???)
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
That’s what it says on a red necktie from the 50’s that the Linkey-Loo Robot owns.
It also says “Support Your Local Tavern” (which I did, by the way, with vigor.)
In honor of National Tavern Month, tonight we will be visiting not one, but TWO taverns!!
The first one up is being hosted by long-time TNSC Member Tim Pries and his roving band of hooligans:
Stop #1 - Grumpy's American Pub
An Advertising Agency favorite (6pm - 9ish)
Stop #2 - Comstock Saloon
A TNSC favorite, and short walk from Stop #1 (9:30pm - ???)
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
Thursday, May 05, 2016
I'm a Janitor, Oh My Genitals
5.1.2016
For the first time in a few years I can bike to work again and I really love it. For a lot of reasons: It's a good workout, it keeps you sharp, it shows you just how shitty drivers drive, and you can chat with and be friendly with other bicyclists - and some car drivers, if their windows are open and if they, too, are friendly and chatty.
Most of the time, though, the discourse between a bike rider and a car driver involves one or the other cussing the b-Jesus out of the other for something one of them did and the other did not care at all for. I gave up on yelling at cars from my bike many years ago when I decided that they would win any altercation whether they were right or wrong because they had twice as many wheels as me and literally tons of metal they could weaponize.
There are lots and lots of dedicated, striped bike lanes these days. I don't remember a single one in Chicago or San Francisco and I rode for many years in both of those Championship Cities. My route to work has a couple, and one of them ... well ... "ends" for a bit, then picks up a lane over to the left of where it was. This is to let those turning right at the approaching cross street enter the right turn lane that takes over for the parking and bike lanes. You gotta dodge some cars and Frogger over to the bike lane, and this leads to some driver anger and biker angst, but since the signal is usually red, and because there's no turn on red, and that there are a quarter-million cars already stopped at the red, nobody but the bikes are moving.
Some days there are lots of bikes in the bike lane. It's nice to see the variety of people that ride in them. Some, like me, are clearly off to work or school. A backpack and some safety gear reveal their purpose. Some are headed to the beach. An attached surf board, wet suit or bathing trunks, bikini or whatever give them away. That and no safety gear whatsoever. Some are in full kit as if on a team - and many likely are - and are warming up, warming down or already cookin'.
I spied the latter a few blocks ahead of me a day or two back. He was on a skinny bike (12-speed road bike with skinny tires) and had tight-fitting spandex clothes, bike shorts, a team shirt festooned with logos, SPD shoes and such. I saw all of this when I got closer, and I got closer in part because I go fast and in part because he was doing a lot of screaming and gesturing to a car. I caught up to him at a red light, and noticed that he was wearing star-spangled socks, was grey-bearded and was yelling obscenities at and making lewd and obscene gestures at a car. In a moment I realized he wasn't yelling at "a" car, because he then cussed-out the cars going through the intersection.
"Fuck you, Gasoline! Gas KILLS! Fuck you all!"
A car tried a left turn and oncoming traffiic honked.
"SEE? SEE? FUCK YOU CARS! FUCK YOU ALL!"
Whoa. This guy was raging against the whole burrito. I noticed a small child in the car that - when I pulled up - he was originally swearing and gesturing at. Ugh.
The light turned green and I let skinny angry man go first. He started out and flipped-off the cars that had stopped for the light. He really didn't hold back from giving the finger to any car. We went along for a while and I decided he was going too slow (and he was a liability), so I decided to put on the jets and leave him to his rage.
I pushed the big ring, and as I passed him, he ...
... held his hand on my side down in an inverted, two-fingered "peace sign," signalling solidarity with two-wheeled brothers and sisters, and said, in a low voice, "have a good ride."
Tonight - Pop's
(by request - SF's only 13 hr Happy Hour)
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
For the first time in a few years I can bike to work again and I really love it. For a lot of reasons: It's a good workout, it keeps you sharp, it shows you just how shitty drivers drive, and you can chat with and be friendly with other bicyclists - and some car drivers, if their windows are open and if they, too, are friendly and chatty.
Most of the time, though, the discourse between a bike rider and a car driver involves one or the other cussing the b-Jesus out of the other for something one of them did and the other did not care at all for. I gave up on yelling at cars from my bike many years ago when I decided that they would win any altercation whether they were right or wrong because they had twice as many wheels as me and literally tons of metal they could weaponize.
There are lots and lots of dedicated, striped bike lanes these days. I don't remember a single one in Chicago or San Francisco and I rode for many years in both of those Championship Cities. My route to work has a couple, and one of them ... well ... "ends" for a bit, then picks up a lane over to the left of where it was. This is to let those turning right at the approaching cross street enter the right turn lane that takes over for the parking and bike lanes. You gotta dodge some cars and Frogger over to the bike lane, and this leads to some driver anger and biker angst, but since the signal is usually red, and because there's no turn on red, and that there are a quarter-million cars already stopped at the red, nobody but the bikes are moving.
Some days there are lots of bikes in the bike lane. It's nice to see the variety of people that ride in them. Some, like me, are clearly off to work or school. A backpack and some safety gear reveal their purpose. Some are headed to the beach. An attached surf board, wet suit or bathing trunks, bikini or whatever give them away. That and no safety gear whatsoever. Some are in full kit as if on a team - and many likely are - and are warming up, warming down or already cookin'.
I spied the latter a few blocks ahead of me a day or two back. He was on a skinny bike (12-speed road bike with skinny tires) and had tight-fitting spandex clothes, bike shorts, a team shirt festooned with logos, SPD shoes and such. I saw all of this when I got closer, and I got closer in part because I go fast and in part because he was doing a lot of screaming and gesturing to a car. I caught up to him at a red light, and noticed that he was wearing star-spangled socks, was grey-bearded and was yelling obscenities at and making lewd and obscene gestures at a car. In a moment I realized he wasn't yelling at "a" car, because he then cussed-out the cars going through the intersection.
"Fuck you, Gasoline! Gas KILLS! Fuck you all!"
A car tried a left turn and oncoming traffiic honked.
"SEE? SEE? FUCK YOU CARS! FUCK YOU ALL!"
Whoa. This guy was raging against the whole burrito. I noticed a small child in the car that - when I pulled up - he was originally swearing and gesturing at. Ugh.
The light turned green and I let skinny angry man go first. He started out and flipped-off the cars that had stopped for the light. He really didn't hold back from giving the finger to any car. We went along for a while and I decided he was going too slow (and he was a liability), so I decided to put on the jets and leave him to his rage.
I pushed the big ring, and as I passed him, he ...
... held his hand on my side down in an inverted, two-fingered "peace sign," signalling solidarity with two-wheeled brothers and sisters, and said, in a low voice, "have a good ride."
Tonight - Pop's
(by request - SF's only 13 hr Happy Hour)
bye-ee!
whrr ... clik!
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